Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2. Ray Bradbury
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it!’ said Finn.
‘What?’ asked the crowd, fermenting close behind in the sun.
‘It would have caused a riot if it got out,’ was all Father Kelly would say, his eyes on the graveyard gates. ‘You’ll find out at the penultimate moment.’
‘Is that the moment before or the moment after the end, Father?’ asked Doone, innocently.
‘Ah, you’re so dumb you’re pitiful,’ sighed the priest. ‘Get your ass through that gate. Don’t fall in the hole!’
Doone did just that. The others followed, their faces assuming a darker tone as they passed through. The sun, as if to observe this, moved behind a cloud, and a sweet breeze came up for some moment of relief.
‘There’s the hole.’ The priest nodded. ‘Line up on both sides of the path, for God’s sake, and fix your ties, if you have some, and check your flies, above all. Let’s run a nice show for Kilgotten, and here he comes!’
And here, indeed, came Lord Kilgotten, in a box carried on the planks of one of his farm wagons, a simple good soul to be sure, and behind that wagon, a procession of other vehicles, cars, trucks that stretched half down the hill in the now once more piercing light.
‘What a procession!’ cried Finn.
‘I never seen the like!’ cried Doone.
‘Shut up,’ said the priest, politely.
‘My God,’ said Finn. ‘Do you see the coffin?’
‘We see, Finn, we see!’ gasped all.
For the coffin, trundling by, was beautifully wrought, finely nailed together with silver and gold nails, but the special strange wood of it?
Plankings from wine-crates, staves from boxes that had sailed from France only to collide and sink in Lord Kilgotten’s cellars!
A storm of exhalations swept the men from Finn’s pub. They toppled on their heels. They seized each other’s elbows.
‘You know the words, Finn,’ whispered Doone. ‘Tell us the names!’
Finn eyed the coffin made of vintage shipping crates, and at last exhaled:
‘Pull out my tongue and jump on it. Look! There’s Château Lafite Rothschild, nineteen seventy. Château-neuf du Pape, “sixty-eight! Upside down, that label, Le Corton! Downside up: La Lagune! What style, my God, what class! I wouldn’t so much mind being buried in burned-stamp-labeled wood like that, myself!’
‘I wonder,’ mused Doone, ‘can he read the labels from inside?’
‘Put a sock in it,’ muttered the priest. ‘Here comes the rest!’
If the body in the box was not enough to pull clouds over the sun, this second arrival caused an even greater ripple of uneasiness to oil the sweating men.
‘It was as if,’ Doone recalled, later, ‘someone had slipped, fallen in the grave, broken an ankle, and spoiled the whole afternoon!’
For the last part of the procession was a series of cars and trucks ramshackle-loaded with French vineyard crates, and finally a great old brewery wagon from early Guinness days, drawn by a team of proud white horses, draped in black, and sweating with the surprise they drew behind.
‘I will be damned,’ said Finn. ‘Lord Kilgotten’s brought his own wake with him!’
‘Hurrah!’ was the cry. ‘What a dear soul.’
‘He must’ve known the day would ignite a nun, or kindle a priest, and our tongues on our chests!’
‘Gangway! Let it pass!’
The men stood aside as all the wagons, carrying strange labels from southern France and northern Italy, making tidal sounds of bulked liquids, lumbered into the churchyard.
‘Someday,’ whispered Doone, ‘we must raise a statue to Kilgotten, a philosopher of friends!’
‘Pull up your socks,’ said the priest. ‘It’s too soon to tell. For here comes something worse than an undertaker!’
‘What could be worse?’
With the last of the wine wagons drawn up about the grave, a single man strode up the road, hat on, coat buttoned, cuffs properly shot, shoes polished against all reason, mustache waxed and cool, unmelted, a prim case like a lady’s purse tucked under his clenched arm, and about him an air of the ice house, a thing fresh born from a snowy vault, tongue like an icicle, stare like a frozen pond.
‘Jesus,’ said Finn.
‘It’s a lawyer!’ said Doone.
All stood aside.
The lawyer, for that is what it was, strode past like Moses as the Red Sea obeyed, or King Louis on a stroll, or the haughtiest tart on Piccadilly: choose one.
‘It’s Kilgotten’s law,’ hissed Muldoon. ‘I seen him stalking Dublin like the Apocalypse. With a lie for a name: Clement! Half-ass Irish, full-ass Briton. The worst!’
‘What can be worse than death?’ someone whispered.
‘We,’ murmured the priest, ‘shall soon see.’
‘Gentlemen!’
A voice called. The mob turned.
Lawyer Clement, at the rim of the grave, took the prim briefcase from under his arm, opened it, and drew forth a symboled and ribboned document, the beauty of which bugged the eye and rammed and sank the heart.
‘Before the obsequies,’ he said. ‘Before Father Kelly orates, I have a message, this codicil in Lord Kilgotten’s will, which I shall read aloud.’
‘I bet it’s the eleventh Commandment,’ murmured the priest, eyes down.
‘What would the eleventh Commandment be?’ asked Doone, scowling.
‘Why not: “THOU SHALT SHUT UP AND LISTEN”’ said the priest. ‘Ssh.’
For the lawyer was reading from his ribboned document and his voice floated on the hot summer wind, like this:
‘“And whereas my wines are the finest—”’
‘They are that!’ said Finn.
‘“—and whereas the greatest labels from across the world fill my cellars, and whereas the people of this town, Kilcock, do not appreciate such things, but prefer the – er – hard stuff …”’
‘Who says?!’ cried Doone.
‘Back in your ditch,’ warned the priest, sotto voce.
‘“I do hereby proclaim and pronounce,”’ read the lawyer, with a great smarmy smirk of satisfaction, ‘“that contrary to the old adage, a man can indeed take it with him. And I so order, write, and sign this codicil to my last will and testament in what might well be the final month of my life.” Signed, William, Lord Kilgotten. Last month, on the seventh.’
The lawyer stopped, folded the paper and stood, eyes shut, waiting for the thunderclap that would follow the lightning bolt.
‘Does that mean,’ asked Doone, wincing, ‘that the lord intends to—?’
Someone pulled a cork out of a bottle.
It was like a fusillade that shot all the men in their tracks.
It was only, of course, the good lawyer Clement, at the rim of the damned grave, corkscrewing and yanking open the plug from a bottle of La Vieille Ferme ’73!
‘Is this the wake, then?’ Doone laughed, nervously.
‘It is not,’ mourned the priest.
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