The Funeral Makers by Cathie Pelletier

buzzing for months after he’d gone.
    When a missionary visited in the fall, the Reverend built a fire big as the sun in the parlor which had been filled with neat rows of wooden folding chairs. The children sat on the floor in front and squirmed in excitement, waiting for tales of tribes that would terrify them. When the parlor had filled and the lecture hour drew near, a Sabbath hush befell the crowd as if they were about to witness the Second Coming itself. And when Reverend Ralph pushed open the heavy oak doors, necks twisted and eyes squinted so that they might catch a glimpse of the mysterious stranger who waited in the dim hallway. And then the Reverend would turn to face his flock and, with all the radiance of the forerunners before him, would thunder the introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen. Good Christians and neighbors. We have in our midst tonight the noble, the dedicated, the humble Reverend Wallace B. Cody, who has given many years of his life so that he might lead the souls of the heathen Tapir pygmies from the mountain ranges of New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean and into the arms of our heavenly father.” And the man of God, the man of the world, the man almost as new and strange to Mattagash as he was to the wide-eyed pygmies, strode down the space left him between the chairs, and when the room broke to applause, even the orange fire swelled and stretched to welcome the stranger in. When he opened his mouth, red and green and blue words rolled out to tell of the mud huts, of the leg bands and jangling beads. Every word he spoke was Gospel. His stories of poison darts, hanging spears, and woolly heads became as significant to the ears that took them in as the Sermon on the Mount. And when his fragile wife, pale as an angel, unrolled a yellowed map of that pulsing, exotic country and pointed a tired finger at the very spot where she had followed the man she loved, the women looked at her as though she were Mary, mother of God. A gangling daughter with buck teeth passed around crinkled photos of pygmies pasted on cardboard and told how even little pygmy girls of ten had their very own gardens. Having been born in the belly of New Guinea, her debut was an instant success, and mothers strained to touch her braids and pinch her cheek. And when her father ran out of his own stories, he told of other missionaries who were captured by cannibals and eaten, all except the bones. These they used as spears, or little heathen children made them into toys, or women wore them around their necks. One pious missionary is still there, walking from village to village, talking to tribe after tribe, collecting his daughter’s bones.
    By nine o’clock the other children were as good as drunk with the intoxicating visit. But she would watch her father’s face and see it fill to the brim with desire. And she knew that he held nothing so dear to his heart as the spirit of God in the form of a missionary. She knew that he wanted his own stories to pour out to the people like wine. He wanted to glide into parlor after parlor across the country with sagas even the venerable, dedicated Wallace B. Cody would envy. And she was sure that her father would become a great missionary one day. Then the three of them could pack up their belongings and ramble the countryside all their lives, bringing breathtaking tales to warm parlors full of listeners. She could see her mother unrolling the map and pointing out some tiny country in North Africa, while she herself passed around menacing pictures of men with rings in their noses as women kissed her and wished their own daughters were as clever.
    Later, when the guests fell upon the food and full mouths repeated the stories they’d heard, popping out bread and cookie crumbs as they spoke, only the Reverend Ralph C. McKinnon pushed the food away and refused to eat. Even as a child she had seen the empty pit inside him that no earthly food could satisfy. For years she