The Funeral Bill

Chapter 3

"In that house of yourn," RD said.

"What's that?" Jeffers said.

"Haints in your house."

"This house?"

"No, ourn. The one you lettin us have."

Jeffers lowered the pipe and shook out the match. "Rent."

"Yep. Haints in that house you lettin us rent."

Jeffers leaned forward and looked across the porch where he could see through a stand of weather-broken pines the squat gables of the house RD rented. Below the boundary of trees, a graying neighborhood dog was working over road-kill flattened on the unlined blacktop that split the properties.

"I'll be damn." Jeffers looked back at RD, who had climbed the first step and was leaning toward the porch as if he wanted to come up. He was almost panting.

"Them haints killed LaRae."

Jeffers leaned back in his chair and drew on his pipe. The spirit of the tobacco warmed his mouth as he considered his next words. RD climbed another step. He shuddered and proffered a what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it glare. Behind the spindly man, the sun was low and the sky bloodied in a balsam light.

Jeffers took the pipe down: "I am sorry about LaRae. But what do you want me to do about a ghost? I cain't charge it rent."

"You could pay for LaRae's buryin expense that's what, since it was your haints that killed her."

"How you figure they're mine?"

"It was in your house."

"Well, they could have come with you from Tennessee. I've had untold number of folks live in that house. Not one of them complained of 'haints.'"

RD squinted, catching the sarcasm in Jeffers' voice. He quivered.

"If there are haints in that house, as you say, RD, they must've come to roost the same time you did. And that house is only supposed to be occupied by two people. The way I see it, you might owe me money, housing your haints, when your lease says only two shall live there." Jeffers drew on his pipe, satisfied with himself. He felt a pleasant jolt of blood and adrenaline shock his body.

"That house killed her."

"House or haints?"

RD chewed the inside of his cheek. The broad outlines of his skull were visible. He reminded Jeffers of the half-fed prisoners who worked chain gang years ago.

"RD, how do you make money? You work?"

RD, leering, backed down a step.

Jeffers held his gaze wide-eyed until he squinted from the falling sun breaking from the clouds. If this was a scheme, Jeffers thought, it's awfully weak.

"Before LaRae passed, she told me that you would take care of her funeral bill. She said it was your wives who told her that you'd cover it."

Jeffers peered unblinkingly through white smoke.

"You going to pay?"

"What do you think?" Jeffers said.

"I think you will."

For a brief moment he considered giving in before a surge of meanness rose up: "Get the hell off my porch 'fore I throw you off."

RD stood up straight and a haughty tic ran through his shoulders. He turned and headed back in the direction he'd come from.

Jeffers called to RD when the little man was equidistant between the porch and the road: "If you see them haints, send them my way."

RD didn't respond. As he passed the old dog in the road, he stopped to stare at it, and then for no reason scared it off its tire-mangled dinner.

Jeffers spat a long slivery streak into his boxwoods. He relaxed and puffed, satisfied. But the reminder of LaRae's passing made him think again about his own shortening time, of what was to come. He lowered the pipe and leaned once more to see the house across the road, looking for the little, dissatisfied man, angry with him for his audacity and privation and for his existence, which Jeffers suddenly considered unearned.