"… Floyd," mother said. "You need to understand I want a final look."
"Suit yourself," he said over his squeaking chair. Glancing over the steeple he formed with his stubby fingers he continued, "James, please step into the hall."
I rose from my seat. "James, sit down." Turning back to Floyd. "He's entitled to hear what you have to say. "
"So be it," Floyd reached for the baseball he kept atop his desk. "If you choose to view the remains, they won't resemble your father. You'll be better off -spiritually, emotionally- remembering his likeliness before the accident. What you see will be upsetting."
"That would be for me to decide." mother hissed.
"Of course it would." Floyd ran his fingers over the seams of the baseball. "This would be a closed casket deal if Stanley wasn't being cremated. His jumpsuit held his body together. He was crushed - like a grape, splat." I jumped as Floyd banged his fist on the desktop.
"You're out of line," mother protested.
"Sometimes it's the only way to get people to understand," the minister retorted.
"He proves you don't have to be a dork to be a minister," I told Shannie over the phone that night. I called from the hospital.
"If I can't talk you out this - it's a bad idea - at least allow me to accompany you," Floyd bargained with mother. She reluctantly agreed - on the condition she would have a few moments alone with grandfather. Floyd agreed. At the hospital, Floyd said, "she would have gone to the funeral parlor anyway." After taking a long, nervous drag off his cigarette, he continued, "I had a gut feeling something would happen."
"Don't worry about it,' father said. "You did us all a favor." Later, father let it slip that Floyd would have done us a bigger favor by stuffing mother in a nearby coffin and locking the lid. "We could have got a two for one deal."
"She's been concussed," the Emergency Room Doctor told us. "As a precaution, I want to keep her over night."
I stepped back from the doctor.
"We also stitched a laceration on the back of her head," he continued in a professional monotone.
"He needs a Tic-Tac," I complained when the doctor walked away.
"I knew it was a bad idea," Floyd vexed. "I never imagined such a reaction."