It didn't matter that Blue had never actually been in the tree with a gun inhis hand because Blue had a regular talent for re-creating the past. He couldlook at a picture of, say, a woman wearing a blue frock with a little bit oflace around the collar, the woman short, fortyish, a little bit plump, plumpcheeks, plump lips, maybe even plump eyes, and he could think of her as hisvery own aunt if he felt the need of having one, call her Aunt Betty, andbefore too long that's who she'd be and then every time he'd look at herpicture he'd remember himself as a little boy and her taking him on a picniclunch somewhere along the Pokalawaha River, and maybe an ice cream afterwards.

For the moment, then, Blue Henry had been the one to shoot Mr. Thomas ChristianCavanaugh while hiding in the darkness of a tree, though why he could notexactly say, the deceased now stretched out upon a table somewhere in the backof Cooper's Funeral Parlor, an absolutely round face, absolutely white eyes,black hair cropped close, though what Mr. Cavanaugh actually looked like, wellBlue Henry couldn't say much about that either, and so it was only natural,wasn't it, that he wanted to fill in the gaps, to take a good look at the faceof the man he thought he had killed, at the face of death, so to speak, to knowdeath by looking at it, because death did not touch the young except remotely,that's the way Blue felt about it, like reading in the newspaper aboutearthquakes in Bolivia or a hurricane in Texas or Louisiana, because there wasno other way to experience death and remain untouched. So Blue Henry made hisway to the back of Cooper's Funeral Parlor and keeping as close to the whitebrick walls as he could, past the el-shaped row of dead azaleas and the hearseparked in the drive, and then he snuck inside.

For a long time he stood just inside the back screen door and he did not move.He was standing there, looking down a long, narrow hallway, a few doors openwide on both sides, the light of several rooms slicing yellow and white acrossthe hallway floor. At the far end of the hall there was a burgundy leather sofawith brass knobs nailed to the frame, and a mahogany end table next to thesofa. Up on the walls, neatly framed, there were pictures of coffins, hundredsof carefully crafted coffins, walnut, maple, oak, a few pine ones for the poorfolks, and a few that looked like they were made from brass with gold platedhandles attached for generals or admirals or maybe a few mayors. But there wereso many coffins that he really couldn't distinguish one from another.

Then Blue Henry heard the voices.

"Just a little more wax oughta do it," said the first. "If'n it don't get nohotter, you mean," said the second. "Why you weren't finished with him but anhour this morning when the wax it started beading up. Kind of like he wassweating, I said to myself, and I admit I felt like pulling out my handkerchiefand dabbing at his forehead, only I didn't, and then the next thing I know'dwhy them beads was rolling off of his cheeks and onto the table. Damnedestthing I ever saw. Looked like his whole face was melting."

The men stopped speaking for a moment, the hollow silence of exhaustedconcentration descending upon the white-brick building, upon the deadchrysanthemums and the crumbling walk, upon the one working wax into the faceof a corpse, shoulders stooped and stiffening, the wax of life he'd said whenthe other had come to work for him, the gift of rosy-cheeked immortality, andthe both of them had laughed at the thought; and the same hollow silencedescending upon the other one, him standing a step or so behind and always so,a bleary and bespectacled eye peeping up and over the stooped and stiffeningshoulder with a mortified and yet heartily insidious interest in the vanishingart of funeral preparation; and there was a silence about Blue Henry as well,though a different kind, him still standing in the hall, leaning back along theedge of the back screen door and the door giving a little because the hingeswere loose, listening, inhaling slowly, holding his breath, wondering if hewould recognize the face of the man he had shot at and killed, if anyone couldrecognize a face which had melted once and might do so again, the young manstill holding his breath, then the voices of the two men once again, and theyoung man exhaling, slowly.

"This one's been too much work," said the first.

"Them was my exact words," said the second. "You s'pose he'll keep?"

"He'll have to," said the first. "I'm through with him."

"Dont blame you none at all," said the second. "You want we should dress himup now?"

The first shook his head, smiled, and then the two began to clean up. Then thefirst started talking about a Mr. Peterson who had passed on the week beforelast and how Mrs. Peterson had come in and slipped him a jug of something nottoo dry about an hour before they closed the lid. For the journey to thepromised land she had said, and then the first he looked to the second andburst out laughing with that, and the second he was nodding slowly, thinkingabout the promised land, a bit bewildered, and then the first started in againabout how he had figured the only place Mr. Peterson was going to was into theground, at least for quite a while, and how he was a practical man so he hadjust waited till Mrs. Peterson went home and then he had slipped it from out ofMr. Peterson's bony white fingers, meaning the jug, and stashed it back of hismahogany desk. Then the first stopped talking and the two of them looked ateach other, eye-to-eye twinkling, and then the first again.

"No sense letting it go to waste."

"Them was my exact words."

So the two men stepped into the yellow and white light of the hall, theirvoices burning with an up-till-then unconscious thirst, the first one wearingan ill-fitting white smock over a blue serge suit, not tall, not thin, bulbousrather, with black bulbous shoes rounding up from beneath the smock, roundingup and then down and then up and down the hardwood hall, the second onefollowing close behind, smockless, serge-suitless, a pair of wire-rimmedspectacles dangling from a gold chain around his neck, the two men walkingtowards the burgundy leather sofa, the mahogany end table, then the halljig-jagging left, the men turning past sofa and table, and all the while thevarious and vividly-imagined possibilities of Mr. Peterson's sprightly jugdangling before them, the first recounting with insouciant admiration a timenot too long ago when the venerable and possibly alcoholic Mr. Peterson hadpassed up the pleasure of attending his own father's funeral in favor ofstanding outside the church, a double-barreled shotgun in hand, him calling outfor some sign that God did or did not exist, some reassurance, perhaps, thatdeath was not just a carnival sideshow, as he had put it, the dead nothing morethan freaks to be caged and then put on display and then forgotten, andreceiving no answer, at least at first, he had turned his gun in anger upon thebell-tower bell and began firing away, the rain of bird shot rising up and thendown upon the hidden nests of blue-gray kites, him then laughing uproariouslyat the sight of all those birds whirling round and round the tower in ashit-ejecting panic, a sign it's a sign a sign, he had cried, the bird shitfalling down upon his head with every shot then shout, him firing until he hadexhausted his supply of cartridges then sinking to a squat amid the gelatinousoffal of this blue-gray whirl, the birds unsettled still but empty as well, himstill laughing; and the second one nodding politely at the first, wondering notabout the filth of so many birds roosting in the tower and what had been doneto clean them out, nor about the impact of Mr. Peterson's penny ante tirade onthe general populace of Pokalawaha, the town not the river, and how ever sincethat theologically oriented shooting spree a man could get a week in jail justfor pointing a gun at the church, no not about the stench of birds or theshooting at church bells, but about how many other jugs had been buried, thetwo of them unawares, and how could they get at them before the liquor turnedsour and whose grave were they going to dig up first.