JERRY BUMPUS
"What are you doing?"
I whispered.
He ignored me.
371
I opened the door and tiptoed down the room. Just as I was about
there, the legs slowly lifted straight up.
"Oh," I said and stood there.
After a while he stood and, hands on his hips, stepped up on the
side of the casket again. The legs in the casket remained lifted in a big
V, and he nodded toward them and said, "Want a turn with Rosie?"
I didn't answer.
He laughed and tumbled into the casket, banged down onto his
knees, and lunged forward. "Uhl" I heard.
The light dimmed, the walls dissolving. "What time is it?" he
called over his shoulder. I looked at my Mickey Mouse and told him.
He bounced around in the casket, then jumped up and the legs
lowered. He climbed out, closed the casket, and pushed it on its rollers
back into place and shut the steel door. "It's cold in here," he said,
quickly putting on his pants.
We carefully shut the mausoleum door, not banging it, and ran up
the lane to the cemetery gate. At the road we cut across the empty fields
toward the water tower looming above the low houses. His house
wasn't as bad as some of the others. He asked if I wanted to come in. I
said no.
He waved and went in. I started off, then came back and looked in
a window. He was in there with his family-a mother, a father, a sister
and a little brother. They had joined hands and were dancing around
the dinner table. I heard them laughing. Then he saw me looking in,
and as he danced by he squinted his yellow eyes and stuck out his
tongue.
I backed away and turned to the darkness
to
find my way home.
