Cadillac Cathedral by Jack Hodgins Read Free Book Online Page A

and later conducting some sort of funeral for their former Member of Parliament, and even making temporary use of a vintage Cadillac hearse for the occasion, maybe he would also be interested in filling out the proper paperwork requiring the hospital to hand the body over to Arvo as a temporary representative of his company.

CHAPTER 4

     
     
    THIS TIME IT WAS Peterson hammering on the door. “I been thinking about Martin’s boy. Shouldn’t we be letting him know about the funeral?”
    Martin’s boy had to be fifty years old by now, a successful businessman somewhere east of the Rockies — or so they’d been told.
    Arvo opened the inset door just wide enough for Peterson to slip through, then closed it and slid the bolt across. “He wouldn’t visit his ol’ man while he was alive, so why would he care about his funeral?”
    “Well, he’s bound to show up some time — to claim the house and all that waterfront property. He could be pissed we didn’t let him know.”
    Arvo used the rag in his hand to erase his own fingerprints from the left-side headlamp. “Martin’s lawyer will look after that.”
    Peterson waggled his shoulders, shaking off a topic that had probably been nothing more than an excuse to stop by. He grinned, eager to be in on things. “So — you got ’er ready yet?”
    Arvo led him around to the far side of the hearse. “We should be able to head out early tomorrow morning, but there’s still something I don’t much like. Have a look at this rear tire.”
    “Still as bald as it was last time I looked.” Peterson crouched to run his fingertips over the tread. “You think she’s dangerous?”
    “Well, tell me how you think we’ll like hearing the hiss of it going flat when we’re halfway home with Martin in the back and nowhere near a town.”
    Peterson grunted from the effort of getting himself upright.
    “But the only place I can think of finding a good match to the others is out in Billy-boy Harrison’s pasture.”
    “Ha!” Peterson said — not exactly a laugh. “You’ll need an extension ladder then.” Billy stacked old tires in tall black pillars out in his field. “Anyway, Billy won’t be home. This is Arts and Crafts Day in Portuguese Creek.” He said this with a bit of a sneer, while making quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “He’ll be up at the hall, trying to sell his so-called art. Which you couldn’t pay me to hang in my barn .”
    Billy-boy Harrison was one of the dozen or so Americans who’d shown up in Portuguese Creek during the Vietnam War — young men who’d chosen to live in this foreign country rather than let themselves be sent to die in another, or to sit in prison at home. Billy-boy had bought the old Houston dairy farm, as well as Wally Houston’s herd of Jerseys, claiming his grandfather had a dairy herd in South Carolina. When he wasn’t milking cows or delivering the milk, hefashioned “art works” out of junk he’d picked up at yard sales around the district.
    When Arvo pulled in beside the community hall a half-mile north of the Store, several cars were parked in front of the big unpainted hip-roofed building, others in the gravel beside the road. Albert Taylor and Willie Ford leaned against the railing at the foot of the steps, sucking on their thin, flat, home-rolled cigarettes and deep in serious talk. Willie nodded to Arvo. Taylor raised a finger salute to the beak of his cap.
    Inside, too many conversations were happening at once, most of them at the plywood folding tables to one end of the hall where you could buy coffee and doughnuts or a slice of blackberry pie. Harvey Foster raised a hand to greet Arvo without pausing in his grim-faced explanation of something aimed at Beryl Woods, who leaned back in her chair and seized Arvo’s pant leg as he was about to pass. “Come here a minute!” When he crouched beside her, she lowered her voice to a growl. “When’re you gonna have that pickup ready for my niece? Every