The Devil's Pleasure Garden: Delmore Delivers a Eulogy:

Delmore Delivers a Eulogy:

Delmore and his team at the funeral home are playing musical chairs with the bodies while they extract the will a billionaire wrote and swallowed before dying. Hit man Joe France is monitoring the cremation of what he thinks is the billionaire, made up to look like Hemhold, who, in an attempt to escape his membership in the New Revelationist Movement, all in blue suits, had vanished, and then rolled to the surface in an intercity bus toilet.

"What's your name?"

"Delmore. Delmore Danruther."

"That's a stupid name."

"I know."

We laughed.

"I should kill you anyway."

I drank, belched, wiped my mouth. I was becoming jolly.

The crematorium was on a hillside by the river, near the edge of town. As we came up through the gates smoke was trailing from the stack and people were coming out from the last funeral. I took a final opportunity to self-medicate, threw the bottle on the seat and felt for the exit.

We formed up by the hearse. It was a nice day. Dog hustled the McFatters' flowers into the hall and the rest of us slow-marched up the stairs behind the casket. Inside, the attendant was clearing away the wreaths from the previous party.

I let the flock sort itself out as best it could, trod water in the direction of the pulpit and hauled myself up the steps. It was high up there. I hooked an arm over the lectern and hung helplessly while the movers set the casket on the runway. They filed into a back pew, and waited.

The place was full. The congregation shifted and grew silent under my limp-marionette stare. Catholics, Presbyterians, New Revelationists, barflies. This would take some tact, and I was so snookered I'd have to make my mouth move with my hand.

I dragged myself up straight and swayed domineeringly.

"Friends!" I called.

"Mourners!

"Fellow mortals!

"Another of us—yes, another of us—has gone on.

"Our brother—

"Our brother—"

Fuck was the guy's name?

"—Hemhold!

"has departed.

"There he is. There, but gone. In the bloom of his youth, at the height of his probing curiosity (how we'll miss it!): gone."

We turned our heads and contemplated the crate.

I had begun. If you are experienced in these matters you will know that holding forth in public is like peeing when somebody's watching you: it's hard to get going. But, like peeing when somebody's watching you, it’s easy once you get started.

"We don't know where. Or how.

"Whether through coercion, through falling in with bad companions!"

I glared at the blue-suiters.

Silence. Sniffing.

"Whether because, fed up with grasping at the ineffable mystery of life—terms, after all, on which anyone might reasonably refuse to live—he finally ran screaming off into the only desert that, at that crucial moment, offered itself!

"Or whether he had simply made his quota for this trip and was called back to the office;

"We shall, perhaps, in this mortal state, never know."

I bowed my head. The lectern slipped under my weight and almost pitched me into the pews. I danced with it.

"But why?" I demanded, lunging with the momentum. "Why?" These things have a certain form.

"Why? Why this final reduction to steaming mulch? Why do we have to be ants on the sidewalk while Death stomps by in hard shoes? Why do we get dumped on?

"Because this is you here, sweetheart! Try to face it!"

"AMEN!" cried the brothers and sisters.

I gave them a curt glance and seized back the initiative.

"Why? Tell me! Do we spend our lives waiting around for next year's models to come out just to be another streak in the garbage chute?

"Why? Is this supposed to be some kind of learning experience? Are you learning anything?

"Why? What are our feelings here today? Are we sad he's gone? Glad he's off the flytape? Should we celebrate his release from the cosmic detention camp? Rend our garments? Shrug it off?

"Maybe—maybe he's just changing trains! Maybe this is just another stop in the Total Transit System! Maybe he'll have to go through all this again, re-learn the holds!

"Maybe he was in it for the anxiety! Maybe we're all adventurers here and Scottie has just beamed another one of us up!

"Or maybe, how about this, maybe our profoundest intuition is true, and this really is a movie! The camera behind the mirror, all your sordid little outtakes.

"I really feel that way, sometimesl

"Or do you prefer zeroism? Are we mere spurious nothings after all? Neurotic monkeys fingering our fur for nits of Neverland? Certainly there are lesser consolations.

"I mean what do you know about this, really? If in some later phase a being of another order asks you what life here was even like, what are you going to tell it? Do you have idea one?

"You might I suppose enumerate some of the pros and cons. Avocado vinaigrette, say, as opposed to being thrown on the mercy of whatever happens. Almond paste, over against the horror-movie music that passes as avant-garde."

I was letting it all out.

"Because what else can you say? The head tells you it's all random, the heart tells you it's not and the generator is too busy to think about it. We are caught between the ding and the dong of the dialectic, ambivalence the very law of life, for it is inherent in this system, in this particular system, that there is no system, inconsistency is a principle of the system, each new formula a liberation from the last, everybody’s got something to sell, and it's nice, oh, it's so nice when we find something we can stay with for a while—Nabokov, Letterman, Crest—but we move on, we move on, upping the ante with each success, with each defeat, it doesn't matter, put it on this number, stabilize here, but on we go, grabbing at an illumination that can only come when we have exhausted everything, though we never do, we know we never will, it's all there to keep us moving, keep us interested, distract us perhaps, from the crushing conviction that God in his Infinite Boredom broke himself into a trillion us just to have somebody to talk to! But this too is a contortion, life is a series of contortions, pushing us into every possible position, having us every way it can think of, and even when we lie there, sated and sore, we are still sealed in, still have no clue what's next, our ignorance so seamless as to suggest a law in ambush, another law, the corollary to The Law, inscribed in stone over the exit sign: YOU DON'T KNOW SQUAT!"

I put my fist on my hip and held the lectern.

"REMEMBER that the next time you are TEMPTED towards an OPINION!"

There was no sound. Even the brute looked worried.

I smiled.

"But the Deity mutters, Our servant is grown useless. He no longer hurls himself upon the contradictions.

"And what, then, of God?"

I folded my hands and leaned on my elbows.

"What of the Creator?

"Of course we can form no adequate idea there, but we have to organize our twitching somehow! Shall we call him a Father?

"You are perhaps one of those who insist that he is a Mother, and there have been many, but the current texts have it down as Father so, unless you are convinced that the woman's movement is going to alter the punchline of the cosmic joke, let's go with Father for the moment.

"Now, what do we know about fathers?

"Well, one, they know everything. The world, themselves. You. They know infinitely more than you do, so don't even try.

"Two, they love you more than you love them, and are not above saying so. Which can make you feel like poopoo.

"Three, they can do anything.

"Four, but they don't. It's a big day if they show a little approval. Of course they help you and everything, but only when they think you need it, which doesn't always coincide with your feelings on the thing. Mainly they want you to fix it with Magic Marker and get on with it.

"Five, they'd better be there! But they're not. Especially when your car is being repossessed."

I admired my fingernails.

"So that's the name of that tune.

"Now: where does that leave you?"

I gripped the pulpit and glared around.

"What is left, when the props have been kicked away, of the perplexed and quivering wretch that is you?"

I chuckled and shook my head at myself.

"YOU CLOWN!" I screamed, leaping forward, the pulpit in a headlock. "YOU OAF! You've never KNOWN anything in your LIFE, HAVE you? Oh, you've known PAIN, sure, but any DONKEY knows PAIN, am I riqht?"

"AMEN!" said the brothers and sisters. I gave them a this-is-absolutely-your-last-warning look.

"You should SEE yourself alone in the dark, SHIVERING before enigma. Your own EXISTENCE fills you with terror. You don't know what you've done wrong to bring it upon you, but you figure as long as you know remorse now, maybe you won't have to WORRY! In the long run it's probably safest to despise yourself. Which is no problem anyway.

"In the morning you blink warily in the bathroom. You feel your body for new lumps. Will the shaving cream explode? How are your teeth?

"Not until you have emerged into the mercy of daylight do you march around surveying the other destinies, yawning with a closed mouth through your dealings with them, saying, You are essentially unworthy, and you are essentially unworthy.

"By evening, you will be leaping about like a lord, consorting with tartlets, sucking Jack Daniels from a bottle with a nipple.

"It is a whoredom!

"Do you give one thought to restraint? No! You want it oral, you want it anal, you want it genital and you want it now!

"YOU PIG!" I came forward and shot my finger at them. "And you want ME to FORGIVE you?"

The silence was tremulous.

I breathed angrily.

"Well, indulge, baby. Lay your trail of waste through the world. Belch as you rut! SOONER OR LATER! SOONER OR LATER, THE BOAT'S GONNA ROCK! YOU'RE MY CUSTOMER, SOONER OR LATER!"

My eyes fell on Joe France.

"Of course, not YOU! No, no," I sneered, "not YOU! ADD IT UP YOURSELF, SWEETHEART! One of these days, the BOX, the FLAMES.”

A mafioso coughed discreetly.

I threw myself at him. "DO NOT TRY TO SAVE YOURSELF!

"SUBMIT!"

I had dropped to my knees. Righteously, I looked them over. No one met my gaze.

I got to my feet and lay my forearms on the lectern.

"Now," I whispered. "What are you going to do about it?

"Is there anything you can do about it?

"Is there?"

Sniffing. Recrossing of legs.

"Well, yes, friends. There is.

"You can TOTALLY REORGANIZE!

"You can get going on a COMPREHENSIVE PROGRAM of REGULAR DAILY IMPROVEMENT! Start living your life according to TENABLE PRINCIPLES!

"RIGHT TODAY!

"Or, you can continue pacing the prison yard of your unregenerate self, it doesn't matter to me. All I can do is guide you, suffer with you.

"For some time now, I have been gone from your miserable midst, sojourning in the realm of the dead. This will testify that I have not failed to come back down the mountain and help you with your life. Serve out my stint in the slums of the spirit.

"But it won't be easy! You can't just lift a smoking beaker to your lips and become somebody else! You have to really want it!

"And YOU DON'T!"

I turned my face from the futility of it all.

"But, just in case you find the courage to change, here are a few do's and don'ts.

"First, don't get all depressed. No doubt you are convinced that your life is contaminated by a more than usual share of error. Maybe it is. You have sinned, I know that. You are lost in darkness and solitude, afraid for you very soul.

"Watch television, or something. If it means that much to you, you can always commit suicide. Big deal.

"Yes, yes, we are sucked down the drain of physical disintegration. So? Don't just sit there and fret! The young are out there, manically exchanging the new information! The dog gets what he can! I mean, this is like, you know, life!

"Remember, even when the last drip drop of despair has echoed in the emptiness, we can still get a fourth for bridge!

"And: don't worry about photographs of yourself. You don't look like that.

"Second, don't be one of those jerks who won't get out of the taxi until Bolero's over. Nobody likes that.

"Third, try not to lick your chapped lips when you’re passing women in the street. They get the wrong idea. Well, not the wrong idea, but you know.

"Fourth, and apropos of this last, seize the shield of faith against sexual allurements. And if that doesn't work, don't forget your little rubber suit, or you'll get into all kinds of trouble. Including support payments.

"Girls! Smarten up! Cut that stuff out!"

I stared them down.

"Fifth, and here's the big one, don't not want. There are many who would teach us not to want. Wanting, they say, is the whole problem.

"Now: no. These people are usually from the East, which is a mistake, anyway. I mean you can't just sit there and go all googie! And, as the employment of right reason should tell you, wanting not to want is wanting something!

"So go ahead.

"Now, what do we want? That is the question over which we should fast and meditate.

"Slave girls?

"Discipline? You could become a vegetarian, eat a turnip.

"Love?"

Love.

I drifted away. My soul floated out over the faithful.

When I snapped to they were all looking up at me, waiting.

"It's the only thing," I murmured, "that can ease your ambivalence. That, and—"

We looked at the casket.

"Well that's my interpretation, anyway, you can think what you want.

"Through God's will and grace,

"Ahmen. "

"Ahmen," they answered.

I reached under the banister and pressed the button. The conveyor belt hummed to life and carried the coffin along like a canoe to the rapids. As it passed under the flap the hall filled with the tolling of tape-recorded bells.

Beneath us the propane rumbled like the stomach of an all consuming power. There would be no flames in the oven: the heat was so intense there wouldn't even be ashes, just bones that would be fed through the grinder. Afterwards the clients would be presented with half a shoebox of fish tank gravel. Easy to divide up, anyway.

I lowered my eyes, hands folded on the lectern.

Suddenly I was lying on the floor. That didn't seem too strange. I had wanted to maintain a dignified solemnity but what the hell, I'd done what I could.

But there was a pressure in the room that unscrambled as a loud sound! An explosion!

I hauled myself up to the banister. The flap fell in flaming tatters and fire crackled along the runway. Hell was reaching out for the living!

I didn't really understand!

Then, Oh, no. The coffin! It was supposed to be cork or chipboard! It must have been fiberglass! We should have unscrewed the cremation plug! Who had time to check?

Oh, gee. Nothing makes a bang like your airtight fiberglass! You do get them with pacemakers. Hospital forgets to tell you the guy's wired, he blows the oven flat. But this was bigger!

Not that there was any danger. Unless maybe the flames should reach the gas reservoir.

I thought it through again, and turned to the congregation. "Time to leave," I smiled.

They were already heaving at the door, screaming and swimming over one another, clawing each other down. Smoke hung in strata. The bells were out of control.

To set an example of calm in a crisis I lowered my way down from the pulpit and pedaled slowly towards the mob, smiling serenely at whoever looked around. The woodwork was starting to steam. They were draining like salt in an egg timer.

When I finally saw some daylight I launched myself forward with such force that I found myself on my hands and knees. Which seemed to be working. I decided to stay in that mode until I had time to rethink it.

There was no trouble until I got outside to the steps. Then I lost it. You may know this from your own experience but, if you're going to crawl downstairs, you have to remember always to crawl backwards. Never forward. Forward going up, backwards coming down.

I forgot.

Fortunately for my dignity however the propane tank went up just at that moment and I seemed to the onlookers—for people from the next funeral were standing around watching—not to be falling-down drunk but to be blown keel over crow’s nest by the blast. Which, who knows.

They picked me up and felt my bones, made me wiggle my digits, stare at a moving finger. When I could balance I wobbled over and stood on the grass with the flock—torn clothes, charred faces—and watched the roof burn.

The Book

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Robert MacLean is a bad poet and an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi, Scanbox and YouTube, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a screamingly funny novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a reviewer of films, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, lives Greece, Irish citizen. He is of towering intellect but, as is often the case with such people, not that bright. Here’s more on this splendid fellow.