Dangerous Undertaking by Mark de Castrique Page A

eyes stared at me over the rim of the glass. I would willingly lie on any operating table if that angelic face were looking down at me.
    “Of course, you couldn’t,” she said.
    “Uncle Wayne came in a few minutes after I called you. He’d been walking track in the northern part of the county. He’s no spring chicken, and he and his partner tried to cover too much ground. He was exhausted, but he still came back to the mess at the funeral home as soon as he got word.”
    “The Colemans. Does anybody know them?”
    “No. They’ve been down from Kentucky about a year. Luke Coleman is on the crew clearing the Broad Creek dam site. Ten or so families migrated here to work on the project. Evidently, the power company has let them build a shanty commune on some of their land. They keep to themselves. And Jimmy, the little boy”—I paused as I saw the child’s face in my mind—“the family’s adamant about no autopsy.”
    “Well,” said Susan, “that’s understandable. I’ve witnessed enough to know the procedure is pretty dehumanizing. If it were a child of mine, I don’t know how I’d react. No question about the snakebite? Ol’ Ezra Clark is not the sharpest coroner in the world.”
    “We saw the rattler. It was huge, over six feet, and the venom must have gone directly into the jugular. This Leroy Jackson, their neighbor, smashed its head with a stone. Snake blood was all over the front seat of his truck from where he tossed it in. Still writhing according to him. He quoted the old wives’ tale about snakes not truly dying until sundown. If there were any question about the cause of the boy’s death, an autopsy would be mandatory. Ezra said it’s pointless to put the mother and father through that ordeal.”
    “What happens now?” asked Susan.
    “Wayne put a call into a funeral home in Harlan, Kentucky. He’s making arrangements for transportation of the body and he’s coming in tomorrow for the embalming. We agreed I’d do more good looking for Dallas. Tomorrow night at seven-thirty there will be a short visitation. You’ll be gone by then.”
    “Me?” Susan’s eyebrows arched into question marks.
    “Mom’s invited you for dinner. At six. It would really cheer her up.”
    “And you knew I just couldn’t say no,” Susan said, stealing the words from my lips.
    “Wayne will be there, getting ready for the Colemans. And Reverend Pace. He’s staying in town for some meeting with his Bishop. I’ll be back from the search by then. With luck, tomorrow we’ll find Dallas and this will become just an unwanted souvenir.” I patted my wounded shoulder. The beer did wonders for the itch.

Chapter 5
    Reverend Pace blessed more than the food. Starting with the Creator, in five terse sentences he moved from the cosmos through the plant and animal kingdoms, across the fields of the farmers, to the God-given culinary talents of my mother.
    “Amens” echoed around the table. I opened my eyes to see Pace looking at Fats McCauley. Pace must have been watching him while the rest of us sat with heads bowed and eyes closed. “Soul-tending,” my grandmother would have called it: the ability to see a troubled spirit.
    The serving dishes heaped with Sunday fixings began their clockwise loop around the dining room table. Mom could have fed three times as many as the six of us. Dad had eaten earlier up in his room. More than a few people around him made him nervous.
    By the time I had gotten home from the search party, showered, put on a coat and tie, and picked up Susan, we had been nearly fifteen minutes late. Again, the hunt for Dallas had yielded nothing. Since Reverend Pace had had to preach at his churches and meet with his Methodist bishop, Tommy Lee had paired me with Deputy Hutchins. We scoured more than ten miles of the main line track between Gainesboro and Asheville.
    The trek had been exhausting. Not that the physical effort was that great. It was the tension. Any bend in the track, any