Funeral for a Holy Man

“That’s the thing about a holy state, you might win and you might lose.”

Indian Shadow was, apparently, a drifter, staying at the Ferret House, in Flagstaff, with a street musician who called himself Shelter John.

Shelter John was close friends with the owner of a used bookstore specializing in mystery and detective fiction.

The owner’s name was Napoli. He was dark Sicilian, skinny, and not much over five feet tall, with a hatchet face through which gleamed onyx black eyes, constantly appraising. He wore khaki riding pants, like a jockey, tucked into riding boots.

He must have had several pairs of them because he never wore anything else. His shirts, besides being some shade of blue, were identical broadcloths.

When Indian Shadow had gone to sleep, and wouldn’t wake up, it was Napoli who decided the man was in a holy state and should be left alone. Now the man was in the ultimate holy state. He was a dead Indian. Shelter John said, “That’s the thing about a holy state, is, it’s a gamble, like a coin toss. You can win or you can lose. Indian Shadow, bless his soul, he lost.”

Shelter John was skeptical. “We got no way to know that,” he said.

Shelter John owned a large black umbrella, which made fashion sense at a funeral. Napoli’s umbrella was imprinted with Van Gogh’s, “The Wheat Field, Sunrise.” For reasons known only to themselves, they left them open when they came into the chapel to view the body. They stood at the casket under their umbrellas and appraised the unexpectedly elegant corpse.

Napoli was dressed as a jockey, like always. It was his look, the way the camel sport coat and dark brown pants were Shelter John’s look. It was a pillar of their friendship that they observed in one another an appreciation for finding a look and staying with it.

Indian Shadow, likewise, had consistently dressed in navy blue Levis and bright red shirts. Like them, he found a look and stayed with it. He still wore a red shirt, a new one of finely woven thread, and his tie was dark blue cut through with slashes of yellow and green. But somebody had bought him a new suit. “This is expensive wool.” Napoli reached down and rubbed the dove gray fabric between thumb and forefinger.

The undertaker was standing at the rear of the chapel, waiting for them to leave so he could change Indian Shadow into a burial shroud and reclaim the suit, which he would return for a refund. All that he could see from where he stood was Napoli’s hand thrust into the casket about midway down.

“Holy Jesus,” he said, beneath the threshold of their hearing. “Let him go. The man is dead.”

“It’s a shame to just bury a suit like this,” Shelter John observed. “It’s a waste of a really nice suit of clothes.” He was about the same size as Indian Shadow. He likewise reached in and felt the fabric at the bottom of the jacket.

“He must have been a very close friend,” the undertaker said from where he observed them, ten feet away.

Shelter John turned back toward the undertaker, who looked like a dancer who shined his face with a pop cloth while listening to show tunes. “Where’d a poor man get a suit of clothes like this?”

“He wasn’t a poor man,” the undertaker said. “He had a roll of bills on him, which more than covered his funeral costs. The suit’s one of the funeral costs.”

“You sold him that suit after he was dead?”

“He couldn’t very well buy it for himself, could he? Besides, there is no record of any next of kin, or even of his real name. So what he didn’t spend on the funeral was going to go to the government, or into somebody’s pocket. I’m surprised you didn’t know he had those hundred-dollar bills rolled in his headband.” He smirked.

“His headband,” Napoli muttered resignedly.

“There’s no way some of us will get ahead,” Shelter John said. “It’s not in the big picture.”

The two men walked out together, one under his black umbrella, the other under a wheat field at sunrise. “Maybe we should’ve called nine one one,” Shelter John said.

“Hindsight’s perfect,” Napoli said.