Edwin's Funeral

Edwin’s Funeral

St. Anthony’s cemetery was cold and rainy, the clouds above like bruised pewter. Ten of us stood 'round Edwin’s coffin while Father Belderbos led us in prayer. Edwin’s ma wept and blew her nose. His pa, Buford, six foot four and in his best denim, pinched his eyes shut, cheeks wet. A stone’s throw behind us stood forty or fifty gawkers – UFO chasers, mostly. One of them filmed with a small, handheld movie camera. Its motor ticked, frame by frame, above the patter of drizzle on fallen leaves.

No one should die a fool – that’s what Pa always taught. I mention it because that’s how almost everyone in our small, backwater town of Slick Skillet saw Edwin.

He’d just turned eleven the night he shuffled home in a daze, stood before his ma and pa watching TV, said he’d been taken. Out in Lowrey’s cornfield, with no witnesses. Nor had anyone seen the saucer, big as a barn, that came out of the clouds and sang to him.

People here are conservative Christian folk. Salt of the earth types. They work the land and won’t cotton to superstition and nonsense. Most everyone, including the police, chalked up the incident to a young, pimply-faced kid struggling for attention.

In the fall semester he endured ridicule and bullying at school. If you brought up the abduction around Buford, he got angry, defensive. One night, drunk at a bar, he broke some loudmouth’s nose for poking fun at his boy.

Unfortunately, it didn’t end there. Edwin’s abductions continued. Never a witness to back him up. Eight incidents in ten years. By the second or third, folks figured he was just plain crazy. His folks had no money for therapy, and their family doctor found nothing wrong with him.

I was in Edwin’s grade and was just as backward as he was. We talked after school, and I tried so hard to believe the aliens were real, if only for his sake. So he wouldn’t feel so alone. I was sure of one thing – he wasn’t deceiving us. To Edwin, those smooth-skinned, huge-eyed aliens and their dazzling bright saucers were all too real.

Despite the bullying at school, Edwin graduated. After that, he held simple, unskilled jobs around town. His reputation as being bat shit crazy aside, our shy, gentle Edwin faded into obscurity.

Until late last weekend. Killed on impact, when he veered off the road and slammed a tree. Happened after his shift at Slossberg’s groceries. Fell asleep at the wheel the cops said.

As the population of Slick Skillet ticked down from 370 to 369, folks felt bad for all the fun they’d made of him, the bullying he’d faced in school. The townsfolk pulled together and offered their condolences. Too little too late if you ask me. His folks were a shambles. To think – their only child dead at twenty-two.

“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our Edwin, and we commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

A hush fell as Father closed the Good Book and glanced around at everyone.

“If anyone would offer any final words of comfort and remembrance, let them speak now.”

I’d been crying since the news of Edwin’s death. By now I figured no tears were left. But I was wrong. Still, if I could fight them back for half a minute, I might get through. I cleared my throat.

“Edwin,” I said, “we were friends since first grade. You were so kind and forgiving. I’ll forever cherish how you asked me to the junior high dance in eighth grade when no other boy would. I miss you.”

My voice cracked at the end, and I wept in silence. Buford stepped forward. As he did, the rain ceased. Birds stopped tweeting. Even the crows shut up. All at the same moment. It caused Buford pause. His eyes shifted about.

I felt a strange pressure from above. Folks started looking up to the clouds, so it wasn’t just me. A wave moved through us – a vibration so deep and powerful you could feel but not hear it. My insides started humming, and the ground began to tremble. Mrs. Beazlehut wobbled on her feet, then bent over and threw up on the grass.

The rumble grew louder, more intense with each second, until the pressure made my ears pop. Folks looked up and pointed, then started shouting and screaming as a giant, round patch of darkness appeared in the clouds. The clouds under the darkness turned into filaments. Like shreds of vapor, they flowed outward, toward the circular edge. Something big was coming through.

By God, I’d never been so terrified and so awed in my life. An immense saucer lowered from the clouds. Later, everyone agreed that they began to feel lighter on their feet, like they weighed less. Felt weird but fun at the same time. Made us giddy.

I yelped when the big bunch of flowers on Edwin’s coffin rose up an inch or two. Just hovered there in midair. That giant flying saucer was behind it, of course. You’d have thought most of us would have fled the graveyard screaming, fearing for our lives, but we were too awestruck to move.

There was a creaking sound from the supports beneath the coffin as it began to rise smooth and silent, an inch at a time. Buford’s face darkened.

“You alien sons of bitches!” he roared. “After all you done, you ain’t stealin’ my boy! You bug-eyed, gray-skinned bastards! Leave my only son in peace! With us!” He jabbed the air hard with each word. I’d never seen such rage in a man.

From behind us came the continuous clicks of camera shutters. Flashes popped all around as the UFO crowd did their best to record everything.

Edwin’s coffin had risen to eye level when Buford rushed forward, as did five other men, and gripped the burnished brass handrails. Together, they tried to pull the coffin back down. But it just kept rising, with such stability, despite these strong men hanging their entire weight on each rail, that I knew some powerful force was at work. Anything we humans did amounted to a hill of beans.

Buford let go, swore, smacked his CAT hat hard to the ground. He ran to his pickup. The other men let go of the handles, too, otherwise they’d be carried up hundreds of feet into the sky, and then what? A half minute later, Buford stomped back in a fury, his double-barrel twelve gauge in hand.

“Buford, stop! What you doin’?” his wife hollered.

He took aim at the saucer, his line of sight well clear of the still-rising coffin. Folks near him scattered and ducked as Buford fired off one deafening shot after another. It was dark around us, with the saucer blotting out the sky, so the flashes leaping from both muzzles made me see spots.

Then the trigger clicked on empty. He flung it upward at a steep angle, like a javelin, toward the spaceship. As the gun flew through the gap between the coffin and the saucer, it whirled around, as if whatever kind of anti-gravity ray the aliens were using affected it momentarily. Then it arced down and landed in the grass.

“Leave poor Edwin alone!” someone shouted from the UFO crowd. “You tortured him all those years! Made everyone think he was crazy! Turned him into an outcast! Like you done with all of us!”

Others soon joined in – those backward folks Edwin had told me about – who meet on Saturdays in Rumpstitch County to talk about UFO’s. Edwin told me that most have been abducted by aliens for strange and terrifying physical examinations.

Buford’s eyes shot toward them as they gathered into a tight group, their fists raised above their heads. They began a chant – discordant at first – until it wasn’t. You could feel the anger.

“Let him go! Let him go!”

Buford joined in, shouting as he shook his fist and spittle flew from his mouth. He put his arm around his wife, who was like a deer in the headlights as they both stared upward. Then the rest of us, even the preacher, joined in. But still the coffin rose.

Then the lights turned on.

That big black disk blotting out the rain and clouds and sky suddenly lit up with the most brilliant, vividly colored lights I’d ever seen. Some of them shone in narrow beams that swept around the graveyard, while others just glowed and filled me with warmth. Not a physical warmth, due to the light itself, but a warmth in my heart.

That pure radiance had a voice. It said – everything will be okay. Edwin will be alright. No one will be harmed. We are your friends.

I revolted against those reassuring emotions, because Edwin had told me how, every time they came for him, they hypnotized him into a beautiful calm and warmth beforehand. Is that what this was? Were these extraterrestrial perverts about to kidnap each and every one of us?

I knew everyone else was feeling that hypnotic warmth, too, because our collective chant to free Edwin fell silent. A blue glow emanated from the round hole at the saucer’s bottom, and Edwin’s coffin floated right up into it. Just before it vanished, his coffin looked so small, so fragile – a tiny black fleck in a sea of gorgeous cobalt blue light. The door coiled shut – the huge round hole shrinking in diameter until it was gone.

Accounts of what happened next vary widely among folks. Some claimed we stood there, staring mesmerized at the saucer for hours. Others said it was only a few minutes. However long it was, it was beautiful. In the end, the light had broken down my own inner defenses. I embraced an all-consuming sense of love and acceptance.

At some point, though, I snapped out of it. Others were doing the same. The aliens’ spell had broken. Tears started streaming down Buford’s face as his wife held onto him and hugged him tight with both arms. I walked over and threw my arms around both of them.

Cries from the crowd made me look up. These were cries of wonder, not fear. The door had opened again, its blue light shimmering, and the black fleck of Edwin’s coffin reappeared. Hope welled up – were they giving Edwin back to us, to lay to rest? Had they wanted to examine him one more time, to determine what killed him?

We watched together as the coffin descended. Those aliens were quite precise in their control, for it alighted perfectly on the coffin stand, with one major difference. The lid was gone.

Edwin still lay inside, thank The Lord.

The saucer’s lights winked out, plunging us into darkness. It took a while for my eyes to adjust, while the huge black saucer rose into the clouds. Soon, the saucer and its dark outline were gone. The rumble faded.

Silence.

Birds started tweeting. A crow cawed brashly, as crows do.

Some of us drew up beside his coffin.

Edwin’s eyes opened, and I nearly fainted. He sat up, looked at all of us, like he’d just awoken from a sound night’s sleep, never the worse for wear, wondering why he was here at the graveyard, beside a great big deep hole, with his family and friends around him…