The Devil's Pleasure Garden: Jump, the Embalmer

Jump, the Embalmer

We had this guy working for us, his name was Jump. Nervous guy. Every time you spoke to him, he jumped. Just getting his attention was an act of cruelty. "Jump," you'd say, and he'd jump.

I don't know why he kept on with the job. The bodies frightened him. He hated being left alone with them, especially at night. Which of course was apt to happen.

He was always checking behind him. If he was working with two lights, and caught a glimpse of the second shadow, he'd jump, maybe throw the scalpels around. It was kind of dangerous!

He just could not not say to himself, This is a dead body. I am in the presence of a dead body. I am touching a dead body. No. For him they were too clenched, too passive not to be secretly hostile.

When a new one came in, his eyes would widen even before he looked up from the one he was working on. He'd watch the silhouette under the sheet, wouldn't turn his back on it as he moved around the table. The first thing he did, when he got to it, was cover the eyes, in case they should roll open, cut to him.

Maybe it was just habit that kept him at it. He was like a second-rate musician who'd achieved some kind of truce with his instrument—just hung in there and did what he knew how to do.

Then too, they say a lot of radio announcers are people who used to stutter. Every day they get up and face it again. Well, Jump did this.

The things that were bound to happen on the job every so often were agony for him. A tremor in the hand, a sudden emission of gas, let's call it, and he was liable to leap back and scream. Up front the clients would wonder what was going on. The boss would stick his head in, and we'd all have to look busy.

I'll give you an example. There's a trick to folding the hands on the chest so they stay in place. If you don't get them just right, an arm can fall away and whack you a good one when you're thinking about something else. It happened to Jump. He dropped an instrument under the table and got down to grope for it when the hand swung onto his back and settled there, the fingers spreading slowly. Of course you don't get a touch much colder than that. Impersonal, I guess you could say.

Jump couldn't speak or move. It was hours before we found him under there. We thought he'd gone out for lunch!

Trouble was, a temperament like that made him too easy to tease. Dog only really ever lit up when he was torturing Jump. He'd wire an arm and jerk it while Jump was working, and Jump would go off like popcorn. Or he'd sneak out at night and cut the lights, listen to Jump panic around in there, cry out every time he touched something dead.

If we got an accident case Dog might slip up and slide a hand into Jump's pocket. When the hand touched him he'd wrestle the smock off and hold it away from him, whimpering. It was really something!

They were both little guys but Jump was pudgy. Dog was gaunt, grim-looking. Dead eyes. A lurker telephone-wise, and in his entire demeanor sort of a scuzz-ball. Something about him made you want to hand him a Q-tip.

We had this joker with buckteeth and Nadine couldn't quite get the lips to close, so she shined up the enamel with a little steel wool. Dog formed the conclusion that that was how things were done and stocked his medicine cabinet with S.O.S. pads.

I think he held his breath too long or something. In most matters his server was down but if gratification was sufficiently immediate he could be something of a criminal genius. We didn't leave him alone with the bodies either.

One day he did a hospital pick-up and came back with a psychiatrist who'd been strangled by a patient reliving a trauma. I was stretched out on a table. Nadine had treated me to a pedicure and I was just coming out of the anesthetic. I got up on an elbow to peel a kiwi, I think it was, and saw Dog wheeling something quietly past so as not to alert Jump.

After a while Jump turned off the hose and took off his oyster bib. Some clients were milling around at a wake down the hall. We watched absently as he went into the bathroom, closed the door, turned on the light.

Of course the joker was in there, sitting on the toilet with his lips pinned back to give him a touch of snarling aggression. The eyes had something urgent to communicate.

Nadine didn't entirely approve of this sort of thing. Professional pride came into it. That oh-he-looks-so-natural look was something she could always bring off, even if it came down to sawdust and Polyfilla. She could put you back together if you swallowed a depth charge.

But the mouth is always a problem. If it doesn't stay the way you set it the first time it'll never look right. And if the r.m. set into this joker she'd have to tap it into shape with a hammer.

But anyway.

Jump hurled himself against the door until it splintered and he could squeeze through. He stood there winded and wiping his glasses while we pretended not to notice.

Dog roofed his eyebrows and looked around for approval.

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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.