The funeral of Leonard Smith

The Funeral of Leonard Smith
By Spencer Case


Rob Benson stood over the casket of Sally Richardson, a girl he had never met, choking back tears he only wished were genuine.

Beside him stood her mother, a short, well rounded woman whose name started with an M. She had a swath of rust-colored hair and carried the scent of cigarettes despite an added layer of cheap perfume. As she wiped the bleeding mascara from her face with an appropriately black handkerchief and looked at Rob expectantly, the sudden feeling of self-worth almost made real tears come to his eyes.

“No, I hadn’t known her for long, really,” he answered at last. “I think it was December—or was it November?—that I first saw her at the library. I wanted to, you know, break the ice, but I’ve always been shy around girls. Then one day in the middle of February she approached me to ask when I would be done with this book on Norse mythology I was reading. Could you believe it! It’s not every day I find a gorgeous young girl who shares my odd interests, you know?”

The woman was listening to him intently though she continued staring at the same place on the casket, as if avoiding her daughter’s face. Her fingers were obviously fondling a pack of cigarettes in her coat pocket. When Rob reached the part about the book on Norse mythology, she turned back to him, a bit more composed than before.

“That would be my daughter alright; beautiful and smart as hell,” she said with a painful smile. “I don’t know where she got it from, but it sure wasn’t me.”
“Really, I think you underrate yourself, ma’am.”

She smiled at the compliment, which she knew was undeserved, then, after a moment of reflection, took Rob’s hand.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “You have no idea how much your being here has meant to me.”

It was times like this that Rob really believed that he was performing a service.


* * *

Rob lived in apartment number seventeen but his door displayed only a metal numeral one and a faded outline where the seven had fallen off. He inserted his key and stepped into the room that had been his bedroom, kitchen and living room for the last six months.

The only furniture in the room was a mattress lying on the floor with a blanket from the Army surplus store thrown haphazardly over it. He had long ago disconnected the telephone, tired of getting calls from creditors, and now the useless phone cord curled on the stained carpet like a withered tapeworm. The refrigerator seemed more alive with its continuous meditative hum.

In the left side of the room there was a closet full of several thrift store suits hung and a door to the bathroom. Shutting the door behind him, Rob slipped off his suit jacket and hung it up beside its cousins. He withdrew the obituary of Sally Richardson from his pocket, found a suitable place on the refrigerator, and used a piece of Scotch tape to put it up with the others. He stood back to appraise his latest addition. Feeling content, he went to sleep on the mattress without bothering to take off the rest of his suit.


* * *

The rain had been coming down so hard that the ground seemed to simmer. Rob waited at the corner where Steve was supposed to pick him up for lunch, but ten minutes went by and no car stopped for him. Uttering a curse word, he turned a and walked back down the street he had come from, no longer bothering to cover his head with the sales binder. The rain seemed to sweep away the last of his resolve into the foot-tall drains that gurgled at the end of the street. He had not gotten a sell all week.

Rob walked until he saw a church at the end of the block. From across the street, he could only make out the silhouette of a steeple through the grayish haze of the downpour. The parking lot was full of cars, unusual for a Saturday.

He stepped inside, hoping to borrow someone’s cell phone and heard the sound of someone speaking in the chapel. In the lobby where he stood there was a table that had trays of casseroles and a huge plate full of cookies that looked homemade. Rob was hungry so he took one. Only after he took the first bite did he notice the card which read “Sending our condolences…”

He took two more then, feeling guilty, crept discreetly to an empty pew in the back and hoped no one would notice the pest control logo on his company T-shirt.

Rob couldn’t remember the name of the person or any details about his life—this was before he started collecting obituaries. He only remembered that there was something comforting in the way everyone who spoke at the podium remembered the man so fondly. The choir sang Amazing Grace and Rob broke out in sobs.
Heads of people in the middle pews stole peeps at him, feigning glances at the clock. A few old women in excessively ornate hats whispered to one another, but they were not his concern. Rob was worried about the thin, fifty-something man who had seen him come in late. That man was looking at him too.

Rob was relieved when the congregation bowed their heads for the closing prayer. He brushed past the knees of strangers and made his escape. The door to the chapel slammed loudly behind him.

“Excuse me sir.”

Rob froze. He did not have a plan for this scenario.

“I’m so-and-so. I saw you sitting back there. You seemed pretty hard hit. I just want to make sure you’re okay,” the man said.

“I feel a lot better now, thanks.” Rob said without looking into his eyes, afraid of seeing compassion in his face.

“I was wondering—none of so-and-so’s family seem to remember you. We were wondering who you are and how you knew each other.”

“We were in the Army together. Both stationed in Korea. I just happened to be traveling through town doing sales when I saw his obituary in the paper.”

“Really? What a coincidence!” The man’s eyes lit up. “You’ve got to meet his family they’d be so happy to hear from you.”

“Sorry, I really have to go. Tell them I send my condolences.” With that Rob ran out the door and into the parking lot, without even giving the perplexed stranger his name.

Rob walked back to his apartment in the rain, figuring that his sales partner had ditched him again. He walked and wept like a kid shunned on a playground. He thought of the man at the funeral whose name he didn’t catch, the concern in his voice, the way he listened like his answer was important, unlike all those cruel prospective customers. He felt an urge to run back and tell him the truth, but kept walking.

That was the first time it had happened.

* * *

Rob attended at least two funerals a week. He would peruse the paper every day, looking for obituaries of people he would have liked to have known. At first, he was terrified of being detected as an imposter but he soon gained confidence when he learned that grief had a way of suspending skepticism.

As long as his stories lasted, Rob was as powerful as a god. The surviving family members would fix all their attention on him with yearning eyes and Rob had a choice: he could be a merciful god and grant them a brief reprieve of death by sharing a funny anecdote, or he could be a sadistic god and mention some tender detail that would stab them in the hearts with fresh pain.

He could do as he pleased with impunity. Whatever he said, they would thank him emphatically for coming and sharing his story and then embrace him. Rob would usually burst into tears as he hugged his new family, feeling the warmth of their hearts like coals on a sacrificial alter.

Within a few months, Rob’s refrigerator had become a matrix of cut out obituaries, like trophies. He spent hours thinking up new lies to tell at funerals and ways to revive old ones. His stories had become so good that he occasionally paused to determine whether they were real or not.

* * *

Rob went shopping with the first check he received from his new job at Telesurveys International on a Tuesday afternoon. He was loading up his cart with six packs of energy drinks when he saw the woman turn onto his aisle.

She spotted, she approached him and said, “Hey, nice to see you,” then seeing the puzzled look on his face, added, “I’m Sally’s mom, remember?”

Rob shook his head.

“We met at her… you know at the…”

“I think you have me confused for someone else, ma’am,” he said turning and walking briskly to the checkout aisle. Only when he reached his car and started unloading his groceries did he remember. He ran back into the store but could not find Sally’s mom. There was an unfamiliar clench of remorse in his stomach.

* * *

For a long while Rob could not bring himself to attend another funeral. Instead he spent his time lying on his mattress gnawing through a plate of stale, left-over funeral cookies that had been preserved in his refrigerator for weeks. He sorted through his collection of obituaries to assuage his loneliness. Here was Norman Studebaker (1976-2005, drunk driving) who had been his drinking buddy years ago. And here was Richard Donaldson (1955-2006, insulin shock) with whom he would play chess at the library. What good times they had had!

Exactly one month after the grocery store incident, Rob decided that his anti-social behavior was unhealthy. The time had come to start attending funerals again. But he wasn’t ready for just any funeral. Not just any one would do. He needed something small scale, something safe.

He found just what he was looking for in the daily paper: an obituary with no picture, so small that he almost missed it. The appointed Saturday morning arrived and Rob donned his favorite funeral suit. When his car pulled out of the parking lot of his apartment complex, the sky was a dour shade of gray and the sun was an opaque orb so dull that you could look directly at it without hurting your eyes.

On the freeway, rain came down in heavy drops, like a thousand ghost fingers tapping on his car. The drops splattered then swam up the windshield in sperm-like streams. Rob turned on his wipers and the rainwater sloshed back and forth in a dry funeral cadence. There was a tune stuck in his head. Amazing Grace.

At 12:45 p.m. Rob’s beat-up car rolled into the parking area of a squat, brick building with a sign that said Grover Funeral Home. He stepped inside the front door and a man wearing a suit and a nametag that identified him as Sam McGunter came to greet him. He had a jowly, expressive face that made him look like a preacher on TBN. Or a used car salesman. Or both.

“May I help you, sir?” Sam McGunter said.

“Yes, I’m here for the funeral of Leonard Smith.” Rob felt a panic when he realized he was reading from the cut out obituary. He instinctively stuffed it into the pocket of his trench coat.

“Leonard Smith?”

“Yes. The paper said that there were funeral services offered here at one o’ clock.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid the paper was wrong. Mr. Smith has no surviving family members—or friends as far as we know—so there was never any formal funeral service scheduled. His burial is being paid for by the county. We do hold brief memorial services in the cemetery in cases like this, but I’m afraid you’ve probably missed it. It was scheduled to start at twelve thirty and it’s almost one now.”

“I’ve driven all the way from Clifton,” said Rob. “There must be some sort of service I could attend.”

Sam McGunter was looking at Rob strangely, like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right way to phrase it. Rob knew what the question was supposed to be, but it was never asked.

“Well, hmmm. If we hurry we might still be able to catch some of the memorial service. Do you mind standing in the rain?”

Rob shook his head no.

“We have rain ponchos. I could get you one if you’d like.”

Rob said, “I’m fine.”

“All right. Wait here.” Sam McGunter disappeared around a corner, then came back wearing a blue, plastic rain poncho over his suit. He offered to give Rob a ride in the pickup truck he had parked outside, but Rob opted to follow in his car instead.
The cemetery was only a couple of blocks away, surrounded by a chain link fence. It was a treeless field of evenly-spaced headstones of various shapes and sizes like the pieces of a chess game that would never be finished. Rob could see a hearse parked on the lawn and by it, three or four people in suits trying to huddle under a single umbrella. One of them looked like some sort of clergy. They were all bowing their heads.

Ron parked his car beside Sam’ s truck in the parking lot and the two made their way across the field to where the others were standing. The rain was no longer coming down in torrents, but it was still steady.

By the time they got halfway across the field the bowed heads lifted and the people began to walk back to the parking lot. Rob could see the congregation walking past him: there was a reverend garb with a big Bible, an elderly couple—his neighbors perhaps—and one other man in the Grover Funeral Home suit who was climbing into the hearse.

Rob felt disappointed that he missed the sermon; he would have liked to hear what things the reverend thought made this man’s life worthwhile.
Rob and Sam McGunter now stood over the hole in the ground where Leonard Smith was buried. The hole was eight or nine feet long, five feet wide and six feet deep. A yellow caution ribbon strung from four stakes marked off the area, but it was close enough to the hole that it was possible for Rob to see his own inverted reflection in the sleek blackness of Mr. Smith’s coffin. Like a mahogany cocoon, he thought, but nothing would ever fly out of it.

He reached into the pocket of his trench coat and withdrew the crumpled obituary.


Leonard Smith, 91, was found dead in his apartment Feb. 7. The exact date of his death is not known.

He was born May 3, 1915, in Grover, Idaho to parents Eleanor and David Smith. Both of his parents died before he was 12, so he lived with his uncle Martin Smith on a farm for the rest of his adolescence.

He married Diana Hardy on June 3, 1938, but she died of mysterious causes five months later. He never remarried or had children.
Smith escaped the draft for World War II on account of his poor eyesight.

Leonard Smith lived frugally and invested the money he inherited from his uncle. Over the course of the next 55 years, he enjoyed a quiet life in his small house on Fourth Street. Those who met him describe him as reclusive, but polite.

Services for Leonard Smith will be held at Grover Funeral Home, Feb. 10 at 1 p.m.”


Sam McGunter cleared his throat and Rob, who had forgotten that he wasn’t alone, startled a bit. “I was going to ask you earlier,” he said. “How exactly did you know Mr. Smith?”

Rob opened his mouth to say any one of the numerous lies that he had concocted. He could have said that he met him as a door-to-door salesman some years ago and they became friends. He could have said that Smith’s investment in his father’s business had saved his family’s livelihood. He could have said all of this and more, but the words died on his tongue.

“Actually, I was never acquainted with Leonard Smith,” Rob answered.

“Then why make the trip?”

“I guess you could say we’ve got a lot in common.”

Rob stood there reverently for another fifteen minutes before he turned to Sam McGunter and said, “I’ll be leaving now.”

Sam McGunter reached beneath his blue rain poncho, withdrew a business card from his left breast pocket, and handed it to Rob. “If you need anything, anything…” he never finished the sentence, but Rob nodded as if in gratitude.

As Rob pulled out of the cemetery parking lot and back onto the freeway, he noticed the storm had mostly cleared up. The sun was still behind clouds, but the clouds were the lighter, billowy type and shafts of light filtered through. For the first time in years, Rob decided to listen to the radio. He adjusted the dusty knob through many channels of static until he found a contemporary Christian music station at the bottom of the FM dial. Anne Murray was singing Amazing Grace.

* * *
When Rob reached his apartment, he tore all the obituaries from his refrigerator and tossed them in the paper sack he used as a trash can. The new refrigerator looked to blank, like bird that had just been plucked. He felt Sam’s business card and Leonard Smith’s obituary in his pocket and taped those up instead.

He turned off the lights and reclined on his mattress then suddenly sat up again and turned on the light. There was something else that needed to be taken care of. Not tomorrow. Now.

At 10:30 p.m. he parked his car in front of a house with barred windows and missing paint. One hand knocked and the other hand grasped a page torn from a public phone book. The porch lights came on and a woman with flabby arms opened the screen door. She had plastic tubes running up her nostrils and connecting to an oxygen tank which she toted around like luggage at the airport.
She also had no hair. Margaret Richardson. Sally’s mom.

“Robert? I knew you’d remember. Come in, please, come in!”

She ushered him inside into a small kitchen, cluttered by a heap of dirty dishes in the sink, and insisted he have some Hamburger Helper and a cup of coffee. Rob, being really famished, didn’t refuse her.

“What’s with the occasion?” Margaret asked.

Rob suddenly realized that he was still wearing his funeral suit. “I went to a funeral earlier today. But don’t worry, it was no one I was close to.”

“There’s too much death in this world, isn’t there?” She said, taking a cigarette out of a pack.

“Listen there’s something I’ve got to tell you about Sally,” Rob said.

“Oh, it can wait. I’m really glad you stopped by. I don’t have many friends to talk to. It’s a wonder you caught me awake at this hour, really. Normally all I do is sleep these days. But tonight I was awake, thinking about Sally and Michael. God, how I miss them both. Anyway it won’t be long know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Honey, look at me. My body is in bad shape. The doctors don’t expect I’ll live two months.”

Rob took hold of her free hand. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Not really.” She lit her cigarette and took a long drag.

Rob’s eyes wondered around the kitchen. He could see the obituaries of her husband and daughter on her refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a strawberry.

“Margaret, do you ever wonder what things people we say about you after… your gone? I mean at your funeral. I sometimes wonder what people will say about me.”

She threw her head back and laughed the first full laugh Rob had seen. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it. I suppose they’ll say something about how strong I’ve been these last two years.”

There was a moment of silence, then she said, “So what was it that you were going to tell me about Sally?”

Rob untied the crooked bowtie that was still on his neck, though it wasn’t very tight. “I just came here to tell you that Sally and I never really…..”

Margaret tapped the ash off the end of her cigarette. She looked as if she was bracing herself for a disappointment. “Go on.”

“We never really… said goodbye.”

“I know what you mean, darling. Me too.” She twisted the cigarette out in the ashtray and embraced Rob.

They both started crying, but for different reasons.