Jolly by John Weston Page B

each Saturday and some afternoons helping the window decorator when he was not down in the basement licking price tags to stick on socks or shirts or underwear. At any rate, the man’s breath grew shorter when he climbed the steps to his house, and it stopped altogether a few minutes after he had undressed and gone to bed.
    When Jolly left the store at six o’clock, Luke was in front, leaning against the fender of the mortuary limousine. “Climb in, Jeeves,” he called.
    “Jeez, Luke. I can’t drive a hearse.”
    “It isn’t a hearse. And you might as well learn.”
    Jolly backed the long car out into the street. “Where?”
    “The mortuary.”
    “The mortuary? Christ, I got to eat dinner sometime, you know.” Jolly cautiously negotiated a corner that took them farther away from his own house. “What you grinning about?”
    “We got one!” cried Luke exuberantly.
    “One what? Talk sense.”
    “We got a case! A body. Dad promised to hold off till I can get you there and all. Hurry up, goddamit. You drive like an old lady or something.”
    “But I got to eat dinner,” said Jolly as he turned the car onto the Meaders’ tree-shaded street.
    “You can eat later.”
    “I’ll bet.”
    “You chickenin’ out on me?”
    “Hell, no, I’m not chickenin’ out on anything. Here. You drive this train in the garage. I’ll probably take off about six fenders.”
    George Meaders was waiting at his desk when Luke led Jolly in triumphantly. “Well, Jolly. Are you ready?” he asked.
    Jolly answered with some difficulty. “Yes, sir.”
    “Let’s get started then. This takes about an hour.” He unlocked a drawer of his desk and deliberately set out a tall brown bottle of whiskey and a glass. He reflected a moment and then said, “You guys want a snort?”
    Jolly turned to Luke for his clue. Luke beamed. “Yes, sir! Don’t we, Jolly.”
    “Yeh. Yes, sir.”
    Luke’s father reached into the drawer for two more shot glasses and ceremoniously filled the three. He handed one to each of the boys. “Now this isn’t sippin’ whiskey. It goes down in one bad gulp.” He tipped back his head and drained the glass. Luke and Jolly did likewise. Tears sprang to Jolly’s eyes almost instantly as the liquid seared all the way down to his stomach, but he was determined not to sputter and cough, whatever else he did.
    “Steadies the hands,” said George Meaders, heaving himself from his chair. “Come on, you two. We got an hour’s work ahead of us.”
    The preparation room was disappointingly sterile, to Jolly’s way of thinking. He forced himself to look about the white-painted room before focusing on the “case.” One wall of the small room was lined with glass-fronted cabinets and held also a calendar depicting a big-breasted and denuded girl, her hands on her stiffly-locked knees, turned obliquely hind-wise to the camera, below whom ran the caption, “Our Supplies Are Better in the End,” and below that in big letters, Adams-Addison Mortuary Supplies, Inc.
    Against the opposite wall was set a large sink and a counter that held a contraption with hoses that resembled an office water cooler. The third wall was bare except for a chart such as Jolly had seen in biology class, tracing the veins and arteries in red and blue on a male figure, sans genitals. Near the fourth wall, by the door, lay a sheeted and lumpy figure. It lay on the wheeled stretcher from the hearse just as it had been placed sometime that afternoon.
    George Meaders took off his coat and flung it onto a chair with his tie. He rolled back the sleeves of his wilted white shirt. Then he stepped over the stretcher and flipped back the sheet. “OK, you boys put him on the table,” he said, indicating the high stainless steel operating table that could be pumped up or down like a barber’s chair, or tilted like a see-saw.
    “Why’s he naked?” asked Jolly, stepping to the side of the stretcher opposite Luke. He hadn’t expected the body to be