Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’ve been south of south for so long I can’t even remember the last time I saw Ursas Major or Minor, I guess they’re still up there somewhere. The quantum perturbations at whatever latitude I’m in are extremely intense, so that I’m tempted to believe that if I look hard enough even further south the Two Bears will come lumbering into view. My astronomy textbooks are all mangled and the pages out of order, and I cannot say that my compass has been well behaved recently. Sun and moon yet shine.
A Texas Experiment in Mortuary Science
Before proceeding one step further, plain words must first be spoken about Blister County, Texas. Consultation short or long with any map of the Great State of Texas will not show an official Blister County (even though four state roads traverse it and a US highway bypasses it), but in this regard Blister County and its hundreds of residents are not only representative of but are wholeheartedly devoted to the stern resolve or the stubborn determination that Texans model by nature: it is so much a part of their nature that it requires neither second-thought nor even ready spontaneity, so much are these traits constituent to the constitutions of genuine Texans, such as those residing in Blister County.
And so: “Blister County,” such as it is, remains the unofficial designation of the outgrowth of the Blister Ranch, situated almost equidistant from Abilene, San Antonio, and El Paso, although some earnest Texas cartographers would put it almost equidistant from Abilene, San Angelo, and Fort Stockton, although as soon as they’d say this, other Texas cartographers would almost as soon insist that, no, Blister County actually resides roughly in the triangle between Abilene, San Angelo, and Odessa (or Midland, depending), although most Texas cartographers not being native to Blister County, they would not be keen to shed blood over a professional dispute like the actual siting of Blister County.
The Blister Ranch was founded and established by George Blister in 1899 or 1900, and unlike many rectilinear or quadrilateral political boundaries of ranches and counties in the former Lone Star Republic, the Blister Ranch was a little short on at least two sides of being an equilateral triangle. Mr. Blister had set up his ranch house, barns, silos, corrals, pens, sheds, pump house, and other buildings as exactly in the center of his property as any surveyor available could determine (in this case, an itinerant but enterprising surveyor who later unsuccessfully attempted to found and establish Jackalope County, Texas).
On the more or less three corners of planned and plotted Blister County, on the rough peripheries of the Blister Ranch, that is, Mr. Blister had seen fit to establish three settlements, miles away from his ranch home to insure his privacy but close enough to insure that provisions and supplies could be brought in as needed. These three settlements, accommodating both close and distant members of the Blister family, somewhat unimaginatively were dubbed Blisterburg, Blisterton, and Blisterville, in somewhat counterclockwise nominalization. Blisterburg was home chiefly to the Bank of Blisterburg, Blisterburg Hospital, and the First Church of Blisterburg. Blisterton became home to the Blisterton Gazette, the Blisterton Library, and the Blisterton Schools. Blisterville found itself home to the Blisterville Courthouse, Jail, Sheriff, Saloon and Cathouse, and for the pious regard of all concerned, the Church of Blisterville (an unaffiliated and non-denominational franchise).
Not until after Mr. Blister had gone the way of all flesh in the summer of 1922 (excessively warm and a tad more humid than usual, by all accounts and recollections) and required prompt burial in the cemetery adjacent to the Church of Blisterville did a single solitary member of the
extended Blister family realize that their County could not boast even one mortuary establishment. This was an oversight not of monumental proportions, since Mr. Blister himself had not seen fit to obtain such services even where his own carcass was concerned: but over succeeding decades, residents of Blister County began to think that, along with broadband service and avocado farming, it might be time to finally get a mortuary services establishment set up somewhere in the wilds of Blister County. The editor of the Blisterton Gazette (est. c. 1919) consulted with Blister County civic
leaders, wrote up a solicitous advertisement to this effect, and bought the smallest ad spaces possible for the notice to appear in newspapers in Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso.
As circumstance and coincidence allowed, the Perfesser had recently completed both an online doctoral program in Mortuary Science and brief incarceration in the Dallas County Jail. Buck, not possessing the same academic acumen, had worked hard to obtain an Associate’s degree in Taxidermy (from an internet purveyor of education or from a community college in West Texas, he never saw fit to admit or remember). The pair found the small advertisement sponsored by the Blisterton Gazette in a Dallas paper they’d picked up in Waco after successfully escaping Dallas one weekend and decided on the spot to turn right south of Waco in search of peace and quiet, relative freedom, and economic opportunity.
Even though the ad had appeared only after the Gazette’s editor had consulted with town and county fathers, the aforementioned were not terribly keen for any mortuary services establishment to be located right there in Blisterton, which meant that upon arrival, Buck and the Perfesser were directed to Blisterville, where cordial town fathers directed them to a remote and somewhat dilapidated structure (but rent-free) well outside of town. These circumstances, once recognized for what they were, suited Buck and the Perfesser to a Texas T.
The pair of entrepreneurs had been residing in Blister County for a little over eight days.
“What we got chare?” the Perfesser asked.
Buck scratched his right parietal region through his thin thatch of hair. “I caint tell if this is putrefaction or necrosis.”
The Perfesser leaned over for a whiff. “I can say without guessing that this is a case of galloping putrefaction. J’st look at all that green up there, and look at these enterprising maggots down here.” Deftly, the Perfesser scooped out the whole batch of fly larvae and the surrounding
tissue with a small hand trowel. “Better get to work fast on this ’un.” Buck began an earnest search for an unopened can of shellac.
“Remember, Buck: putrefaction entails rot of the entire organism, necrosis is an affliction of j’st localized tissue,” the Perfesser instructed his protégé magisterially.
“We didn’t get that far in taxidermy, our specimens always come straight from the freezer,” Buck duly reminded him.
The Perfesser was no longer listening closely, he was reading up on shrink-wrap processing for fresh cadavers but then discounted the journal he was consulting when he saw first the prices for the machinery and then those for the large rolls of plastic wrap themselves. “No,” he concluded judiciously, though before putting the journal down he did spy a page advertising mortuary-grade polyurethane.
A rumble and a rise of dust approached from the road that led from Blisterville. The rattle of Hank Hood’s F-150 was unmistakable. Buck and the Perfesser ambled out onto the porch to greet their visitor.
Buck smiled and waved. “Well, Hank, what the—PEE-YEW! Goddam, this fella’s mostly gone already, whut’d you bring him out here fer?”
“Charity case,” Hank winced as his nose curled, “hell, he’s so far gone, I couldn’t decide whether to roll the windows down or keep ’em up.” With the June heat and a functioning air conditioner, Hank had in fact chosen the latter, but now that he’d stopped his truck, the flies had caught up and were buzzing thickly around the truck bed.
“Good God!” the Perfesser let out. “Look at them maggots twirlin’ their tails! They done already et holes in him the size o’ silver dollars.”
“No, that’s where he wuz shot,” Hank corrected him.
“Hell, I thought it wuz another one o’ yore specimens o’ roadkill,” the Perfesser sneered.
“I tole you j’st the other day, me and Buck don’t need no more customers to practice on, we done
got our techniques as perfected as we know how to, now we’re waitin’ on someun’ willin’ to pay fer our services.”
“Hell, I wouldn’t waste even a small can of shellac on this one,” Buck admitted ruefully. “You go on and take this one off to the arroyo and tip him in like them other ones, then we’ll stay here hopin’ the wind don’t blow out the northwest for the next few days!” Buck paused to examine what was left of the dead man’s face. “Hol’ on a minute . . . Perfesser, look at ’em front teef.”
The Perfesser lifted his chin before turning his nose away. “What about ’em?”
“That leff front tooth has that orangey rusty kind of stain that ain’t on the right’n’,” Buck observed. “I guess I might want to try sandin’ it down some to see if I can get it at least as yaller as the other’n, you know, to practice on what you call ‘cosmetic display’.”
The Perfesser was not to be persuaded. “Buck, some other time, Hank’s gotta get this’n’ outta here fast or I’m gonna lose my brekfust.”
Not long after Hank’s departure with his nose-curling specimen, another cloud of dust and a quiet hum approached from Blisterville. It was actually a Blisterburg EMS vehicle, with no lights flashing or sirens sounding, thank god, Hank’s cousin Henry sat at the wheel. His windows were up, so they could tell he had the AC on high.
“Boys, this is a sad case here,” Henry opined as he got out, “and a import’nt one, too. Don’t know if you’d heard, but we found Lester Blister dead in his garage yestiddy evenin’, apparently he’d been dead since Saturday, no one missed him at church yestiddy till services wuz over.”
“Lessee . . . weren’t he old Mr. Blister’s great-grand-nephew or sumpthin’?” Buck queried.
“You got it,” Henry confessed. “The Blisters up in Blisterville want a decent funeral f’r him, too, so I brung him down here for you to get to work on.”
“Roll ’im on in,” the Perfesser directed.
Most fortunately for all parties concerned, Lester Blister had not in life been a man of ample proportions, and so his carcass was easily pushed from the EMS vehicle on his wheeled gurney.
“Look here, this guy’s as wooden as a fiddle already!” Buck observed. The Perfesser ambled over to notch the big air conditioner up to its maximum setting anyway, then turned to study their new client for a minute.
“I think we’ll be able to handle this economically,” the Perfesser made some quick mental calculations as Henry drove the EMS vehicle back to Blisterburg by way of Blisterville. “Go pull that new box of sawdust down. And j’st you be sure, Buck, to keep that shellac outta his hair, folks can always tell when the hair’s plastered down too much.”
Later that afternoon, before he got started good making room for the amount of sawdust he thought he’d need for filling in the abdominal cavity he had to create, the Perfesser made a couple of local calls to lease a backhoe, after which he sent Buck to drive it up to Blisterville where he’d get further directions for his work from grieving Blister family members. Buck would have time to add his finishing touches upon his return.
###
The next day, the Blister County Mortuary Services Establishment was bedecked in black crepe and bunting suitable for the occasion of the funeral service for any member of the Blister clan.
On the Perfesser’s orders Buck had taken pains and care to insure that all the “NO SMOKING” signs were not obscured by the funerary decorations.
Sister Hester Blister showed up after eleven with her little portable celesta to accompany the hymns. Members of the Blisterburg Blister clan were next to arrive in early afternoon: delegations of the Blisterton and Blisterville clans followed close behind, even though Lester had only been a deacon at the First Church of Blisterburg and not the pastor that his pious uncle remained. Other
mourners from the county converged for what everyone hoped would be a brief funeral and an extended Tuesday afternoon and evening of post-funerary celebration.
Lester looked positively dignified in his taffeta-lined casket, his family had spared no expense in that department, and though he looked a little more tanned than most could remember, still he had an even complexion even if he did seem a little shiny.
The Reverend Buster Blister of the First Church of Blisterburg officiated.
The Perfesser and Buck both were feeling pretty good about things. Mostly, the Perfesser was pleased with the way Buck had superglued Lester’s lips together without their puckering up like the last thing he’d done in life was suck long and hard on a large lemon. This was their first paying job since setting up shop, and most fortunately, no one had initiated any inquiries into their methods or practices, so the family looked on generally well pleased with the results.
Alas, tragic consequences shortly ensued.
Even though Buck had scrupulously followed the Perfesser’s instructions to keep the “NO SMOKING” signs visible on the building’s exterior, the state of Blister County’s public schools being what they were, literacy itself was not uniformly highly prized throughout and among the local population, the chief exception being in and around Blisterton itself, with at least nominal literacy rates common in Blisterburg. In point of fact, adult literacy rates in the County were lowest in and around Blisterville whereas rates of semi-literacy and sub-literacy were appreciably high.
Thus it was that, although he took pains not to light up inside the mortuary parlor itself, distant relative Foster Blister from Blisterville, a turnkey at the Blisterville Jail, flicked his Kool cigarette butt out back of the mortuary establishment and exhaled just before entering.
“Out back”, naturally enough, was where Buck and the Perfesser discarded used shellac cans and empty cans from the turpentine they used as a thinner, which all told included the dozen or so recently emptied in their respectful treatment of the mortal remains of the late Lester Blister.
Over Sister Hester Blister’s tuneful celesta, no one inside heard the “WHOOSH!” that erupted about a minute after Foster had discarded his cigarette butt, but the Perfesser was the first to detect both the sight and smell of smoke and conflagration. “Buck, go open them front doors while I tell folks to start filin’ out.”
Sister Blister was wheeling her celesta out the front door just as flames began to engulf the mortuary parlor interior. In the press of circumstance, no one had time to roll Lester out in his casket.
“Well,” his widow sighed as fire engines from Blisterville converged on the scene ten minutes later, “cremation always wuz his second choice.”
