Oliver McKay, McKay Funeral Home

Folks say the dead tell no tales. That’s a lie, and I reckon I ought to know.

I’ve run McKay Funeral Home goin’ on forty years now, and I’ll tell you; the dead don’t stop talkin’, they just get quieter. Their stories hum through the floorboards and hang in the air like the smell of formaldehyde. It’s not words exactly, but if you’ve been around ‘em long enough, you catch their meaning.

When Tommy Wayne come walkin’ back into Piedmont last week, every last one of ‘em started stirrin’. I could feel it. The old ones, especially, the ones who went to their rest whisperin’ about that night and that letter.

He come by here two days ago, stood in the doorway a long minute before speakin’. Didn’t look like a man haunted by ghosts. Looked like one followed by ‘em. Said he wanted to see Merlene’s stone. Asked if I’d drive him out to the cemetery, said he didn’t trust himself to go alone.

We went in my old hearse, the 1959 Cadillac with the cracked dash and the smell of carnations baked into the seats. He didn’t say a word till we got there.

“Was she peaceful?” he asked me.

“As peaceful as a woman can be when she dies with her secrets intact,” I told him.

He didn’t answer, just looked down at her name cut in marble,

Dorothy Merlene Turner,

1912–2009.

I could see him tryin’ to pull something out of that silence. A reason, maybe. Or a forgiveness.

“You know,” I said, “some folks never believed she did what they said.”

He turned, sharp-like. “And what do they say she did, Owen?”

I didn’t answer right away, just watched a blackbird hop across the fence rail. “Depends on who’s tellin’ it,” I said. “But you start askin’ questions, and the Sheriff’ll come around soon enough. He always does.”

Tommy Wayne smiled then, and I swear it chilled me more than the morgue cooler.

“I was counting on that,” he said.

He left me there with the bird and the quiet and a feeling I hadn’t had in years; like maybe the dead weren’t the only ones restless in Piedmont.

*****

New Yesterdays is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and your favorite bookstores. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.