Easy Pickings by Richard S. Wheeler

the streets, misshapen and unclean. But maybe it didn’t matter. She was present, no matter how she was clad.
    â€œMay I offer the pulpit to anyone who wishes to eulogize Mr. McPhee?” the divine asked.
    March found herself rising and walking up two steps, and then facing the empty chapel. She didn’t know what she would say. She wanted Kermit buried within a cocoon of blessings and kindness.
    She was aware of how ill-kempt she was, but somehow it didn’t matter. What counted was Kermit.
    â€œMy husband, Kermit McPhee, grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland, and attended the university there. He graduated with a degree in geology. His gaze was always on the horizon, and soon he emigrated here, bringing me, his bride, with him.
    â€œHe was not afraid of hard labor or physical hardship, and saw opportunity in the North American continent, as yet little explored and much of it unmapped. I came with him gladly, proud to be married to a man who wished to advance through life on his merits and industry, through his skills and knowledge, through his integrity and courage.
    â€œSo he prospected for minerals, located the present mine, and followed your laws scrupulously, proving his claim and winning a patent, which he shared with me. There were things he scorned. He had no use for people who tried to snatch wealth from others through questionable means. Such people, he felt, were not real men; they were parasites, feasting on the courage and industry and wisdom of others. He believed in honest industry, and did what he believed in.
    â€œHe had a great heart, a rare courage, and a kindness that brought him friendship and trust from others. I can put it simply: he was an honorable man, and that separated him from those whose entire enterprise is to snatch away what others have won.
    â€œI shall miss him. I will visit his grave now and then, refreshing my understanding of what is good about the human race because he was a good and true man. He loved me. He supported me. He nurtured a family. He also inspired me, and his legacy to me is the wish to live as he did, with courage, kindness, and honor.”
    She gazed at the small audience, at the ones who would not meet her gaze eye to eye, but seemed to stare at the ceiling.
    â€œWe are burying this day a fine man,” she said. “And the man I love.”
    And returned to her pew.
    She had not started her eulogy to deliver a message but that was how it ended up. She knew she had forced those who heard her to consider their own conduct. Maybe it would do them some good.
    The service ended with a simple blessing, and she found herself in a cortège carrying her husband to his grave. He would not have approved of the coffin or the funeral. But what was done was done, and that was how his life on earth would end.
    The Marysville cemetery had few graves in it because of the rawness of the town, but one was ready for Kermit. Laidlow’s two young men eased the coffin into the gray earth, and off a way Constable Roach watched. The constable was determined to see everything and miss nothing.
    March left a red rose on the coffin, a rose supplied by the funeral home, and then they took her back to the funeral parlor, and she was freed to go where she would.
    Except that Constable Roach intercepted her.
    â€œMrs. McPhee, follow me, please.”
    She did, and he took her to his alcove in the city hall, and bade her sit down.
    He carefully removed his blue hat and eyed her, his mustache twitching.
    â€œYou are by definition a vagrant,” he said. “We have a law that forbids vagrants from loitering in Marysville. The law defines a vagrant as a person without visible means and without a residence and without funds and without moral or ethical scruple. You have no means, no residence, and no funds. You qualify. I will not hold you this time, because of your loss, but if you should enter my town again, I will be forced to place you in that cage there for a day