1974 – The Morgue

“How’d he die?”

“Shot in the head.” Dr. Henry walked around the stainless steel table and the pale body it supported. His son sat on a stool nearby, staring with a mixture of wonder and nausea.

“Huh," he said. "So, why do you need to look at him?”

“The police need a precise report. Could help solve a murder.”

“Oh.” Andy bit his lip, his twelve year old brain spinning like a hamster wheel.

They looked at the body on the table. His skin hung limp on his bones, pasty like oatmeal. Maybe this corpse used to be a person with a childhood, complete with mundane hobbies and dire aspirations. But now he barely seemed human. Doctor Henry shook his head. This man was somebody’s son, maybe somebody’s father only twelve hours ago.

Now he lay on the table, his mouth and nose encrusted with hardened gobs of bloody mucus. This is why Andy needed the stool. The boy tried to be brave, but he damn near fainted when he saw the man’s face. Can’t blame the boy. Even to a pathologist’s eyes, it was a foul sight.

Dr. Henry knew from the police report that he was forty-six years old, and that he’d be found dead in his car in front of a nightclub. As to the details, interviews with nightclub patrons as well as the autopsy report would prove enlightening. Knowing this, the pathologist began his autopsy in earnest. Andy craned his neck to watch.

“What’s, uh, the next step dad?”

“I’m going to retrieve the bullet.”

“How?”

“Well, I’ll remove the top of his head, skin first.” He placed the scalpel between his fingers, and leaned over the subject to begin cutting around his head. Andy rose from his stool and took a tentative step forward. “Eventually, I’ll saw open his skull and then we’ll search for the bullet.”

He peeled the skin right off the top of the man’s head. The bone was moist. A small hole appeared at the back of the skull, near the parietal region.

“Look here at this hole.”

“Yeah,” Andy said, casting a cautious shadow over the corpse’s head. “Right on the back of the head.”

“See that darkness around the entry point?”

Andy leaned even closer. “No, not –wait a second. Yeah.
Yeah I see it!”

“It’s carbon. This means that Mr. Head here was shot at point blank range.”

“Damn!”

“Easy, Andy.”

“Sorry.”

The doctor sighed. Goddamn. Andy was right to be shocked. Probably shouldn't have chastised the boy. How easy it is to forget that it’s a soul who’s been robbed of its life. But the examination must continue.

The man was shot right in the back of the head, point blank range. No exit wound. By the blood coming out of his nose and mouth, one could bet the bullet hit the back of his nose and got stuck in there. Maybe the nasal crest or the pyramidal process caught it and bounced it back into his grey matter.

He sawed off the top of the skull, and there it was, the seat of the soul soaked in its own blood. A small gasp came from Andy’s mouth, while his father sliced through the filmy dura layer. It was snug around the brain like saran wrap over a chunk of beef. It was time to follow the jagged path of clotted blood to the bullet. He reached towards the tray where the instruments lay…

“Dad,” said Andy. “Can I touch it?” The doctor looked up, and saw that his son’s face had changed. No longer was his struggling to smoke down his nausea. Instead, light filled Andy’s face, and his eyes twinkled. Pride welled up inside of the heart of the doctor. Like father like son.

“Well sure,” he said. “But put on these gloves first.”

1974 – The Killer

According to the autopsy, the man was shot in the back of the head with a .22. With the bullet retrieved, the police were able to trace the ordinance to its source –a black man with naturally red hair. To his friends and family, he’d always been known as “Red.”

After sneaking up alongside the car and unloading a slug into Gerald’s brain, he had tossed the gun, figuring the police would be hunting it like scent hounds. When they finally caught up with its owner, it was too late to dole out any justice.

Red was found dead in a residential area, shot three times in the chest by an unknown suspect with a 44 magnum. He was brought to the hospital under CPR, but was declared dead on arrival by the attending physician in the Emergency department.

1974 – The Funeral

Mabel was the cornerstone of the church, though she’d never say so of herself. If a soul needed advice, she offered the best in town. Never educated past the sixth grade, she had what people called “horse-sense.”

The adults of the church sought her out like a Delphic oracle, and the children were mindful of her. Any child that didn’t mind misbehaved at their peril. Didn’t matter whose child it was, they could expect a sound wallop upon their behinds. Her hands were gentle, and her fingers always smelled like pie dough.

But she never forgave herself for Red. When a child goes bad, who’s to blame but the child’s mother?
She had done her best to lead her son in upright ways, but the boy had a rebellious spirit in him. Still, she'd always held out hope for him, even if others were doubtful.

“Red’s got himself a demon Mabel, even if you won’t see it.”

“Naw, sir. You needn’t cast the blame on a demon,” said Mabel “Red always had a hold ‘a life. We can’t take the choice away from ‘em and put it on demons.”

“Either way, should bring ‘em to the church.” Said the preacher. “We’ll baptize ‘em agin’.”

“I wisht he’d come to church. But I dunno ‘bout no devil.”

But Red never came to church, never did come home either. This was a heart sick worry for his mother, though she kept her head held high.

Months went by at a time without her hearing from Red. She moaned in her bed at night, wishing she could calm the spirit within him. If only he’d come home, she thought. Just come home.

When Red turned up dead, the police officer who came by to give Mabel the news was kind. He sat beside her on the living room sofa, as she shook her head in disbelief and pounded his chest with hard, black fists.

On the day of the funeral, Mount Moriah Baptist Church was packed for Red’s funeral. But nobody was there for him. It was for Mabel that the pews were stuffed hot with bodies.

Organ music played with a mournful thrill, and the congregation sang. “Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on, let me stand…” The only one not singing was Mabel.

“Oh no,” Mabel cried out. “He ain’t dead!” Two women sat close to Mabel and wrapped their arms around her as she rocked back and forth in the wooden pew. A casket made of cherry wood rested before the altar. “Naw don’t tell me that’s my boy!”

“Oh mother,” the women cried. “Oh mother!”

Mabel was never the same after that.

1991 – Samsara

They called him at work. Andy dropped everything and caught the first plane to Knoxville he could find. His father, they said, had suffered a massive stroke.

When Andy arrived at the intensive care unit,a nurse in pink scrubs greeted him and led him to his father. He lay as still as a corpse, breathing only with the help of the ICU’s respirator. A man in a white coat walked into the room and introduced himself. Andy forgot the name as soon as he heard it; his eyes were only on his father. What mattered was the news, and the news was not good.

“So,” a shaky breath. “He’s gone?”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “Your father has had no brain activity for nearly four hours.” There was a silence. Andy’s stomach began to churn, as the room –the tubes in his father, the industrial hum of the unit, the blandly speckled tile of the floor –all of it, came into sharp, surreal focus. This moment, he thought, is real. And yet he can’t believe it. He bites at his finger nails, a habit he hasn’t indulged in since high school. But in the end, it was inexorably real. The man on the bed, intruded upon by the tubes and needles of life support, was really his father. But he no longer resembled anybody Andy knew.

“I’m very sorry.”

“What, ah…” Andy hesitated. “What’s next?”

“Well,” he said. “We will withdraw care, and without our assistance, your dad’s body will eventually die.” Andy looked at my dad’s ashen face. He already looked dead. Nothing of his vitality was there anymore. Only a slackened bundle of graying flesh remained. This wasn’t his father anymore. He’d left the moment a clot traveled into his brain and choked his life out. The doctor waited in silence beside Andy.

"Do you want us to stop life support now?” What Andy wanted no longer mattered. Nothing could bring him back now.

“Okay, yeah.”

When the doctor deactivated all of the life support systems, an hour passed before his heart stopped completely. Andy stood by the bedside all the while, saying nothing.

“The nurse has some paperwork for you to sign at the desk,” said the doctor. “But please, take all the time you need.”

Andy reached out to touch his father’s hand one last time, but stopped short. A deep breath heaved from his body as he shivered. In his mind’s eye, he saw a stainless steel table and a twelve year old boy, watching wordlessly as the knife began to slice.

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