Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2

‘Men like that,’ said Doone, ‘God has to hit with an axe to scare them off the place. Paris, now, we thought that might have slain him, years past, but no. Drink, that should have drowned him, but he swam for the shore, no, no. It was that teeny bolt of lightning in the field’s midst, an hour ago, and him under the tree picking strawberries with his nineteen-year-old secretary lady.’

‘Jesus,’ said Finn. ‘There’s no strawberries this time of year. It was her hit him with a bolt of fever. Burned to a crisp!’

That fired off a twenty-one-gun salute of laughs that hushed itself down when they considered the subject and more townsfolk arrived to breathe the air and bless himself.

‘I wonder,’ mused Heeber Finn, at last, in a voice that would make the Valhalla gods sit still at table, and not scratch, ‘I wonder. What’s to become of all that wine? The wine, that is, which Lord Kilgotten has stashed in barrels and bins, by the quarts and the tons, by the scores and precious thousands in his cellars and attics, and, who knows, under his bed?’

‘Aye,’ said everyone, stunned, suddenly remembering. ‘Aye. Sure. What?’

‘It has been left, no doubt, to some damn Yank driftabout cousin or nephew, corrupted by Rome, driven mad by Paris, who’ll jet in tomorrow, who’ll seize and drink, grab and run, and Kilcock and us left beggared and buggered on the road behind!’ said Doone, all in one breath.

‘Aye.’ Their voices, like muffled dark velvet drums, marched toward the night. ‘Aye.’

‘There are no relatives!’ said Finn. ‘No dumb Yank nephews or dimwit nieces falling out of gondolas in Venice, but swimming this way. I have made it my business to know.’

Finn waited. It was his moment now. All stared. All leaned to hear his mighty proclamation.

‘Why not, I been thinking, if Kilgotten, by God, left all ten thousand bottles of Burgundy and Bordeaux to the citizens of the loveliest town in Eire? To us!’

There was an antic uproar of comment on this, cut across when the front doorflaps burst wide and Finn’s wife, who rarely visited the sty, stepped in, glared around and snapped.

‘Funeral’s in an hour!’

‘An hour?’ cried Finn. ‘Why, he’s only just cold—’

‘Noon’s the time,’ said the wife, growing taller the more she looked at this dreadful tribe. ‘The doc and the priest have just come from the Place. Quick funerals was his lordship’s will. “Uncivilized,” said Father Kelly, “and no hole dug.” “But there is!” said the Doc. “Hanrahan was supposed to die yesterday but took on a fit of mean and survived the night. I treated and treated him, but the man persists! Meanwhile, there’s his hole, unfilled. Kilgotten can have it, dirt and headstone.” All’s invited. Move your bums!’

The double-wing doors whiffled shut. The mystic woman was gone.

‘A funeral!’ cried Doone, prepared to sprint.

‘No!’ Finn beamed. ‘Get out. Pub’s closed. A wake!’

‘Even Christ,’ gasped Doone, mopping the sweat from his brow, ‘wouldn’t climb down off the cross to walk on a day like this.’

‘The heat,’ said Mulligan, ‘is intolerable.’

Coats off, they trudged up the hill, past the Kilgotten gatehouse, to encounter the town priest, Father Padraic Kelly, doing the same. He had all but his collar off, and was beet faced in the bargain.

‘It’s hell’s own day,’ he agreed, ‘none of us will keep!’

‘Why all the rush?’ said Finn, matching fiery stride for stride with the holy man. ‘I smell a rat. What’s up?’

‘Aye,’ said the priest. ‘There was a secret codicil in the will—’

‘I knew it!’ said Finn.

‘What?’ asked the crowd, fermenting close behind in the sun.

‘It would have caused a riot if it got out,’ was all Father Kelly would say, his eyes on the graveyard gates. ‘You’ll find out at the penultimate moment.’

‘Is that the moment before or the moment after the end, Father?’ asked Doone, innocently.

‘Ah, you’re so dumb you’re pitiful,’ sighed the priest. ‘Get your ass through that gate. Don’t fall in the hole!’

Doone did just that. The others followed, their faces assuming a darker tone as they passed through. The sun, as if to observe this, moved behind a cloud, and a sweet breeze came up for some moment of relief.

‘There’s the hole.’ The priest nodded. ‘Line up on both sides of the path, for God’s sake, and fix your ties, if you have some, and check your flies, above all. Let’s run a nice show for Kilgotten, and here he comes!’

And here, indeed, came Lord Kilgotten, in a box carried on the planks of one of his farm wagons, a simple good soul to be sure, and behind that wagon, a procession of other vehicles, cars, trucks that stretched half down the hill in the now once more piercing light.

‘What a procession!’ cried Finn.

‘I never seen the like!’ cried Doone.

‘Shut up,’ said the priest, politely.

‘My God,’ said Finn. ‘Do you see the coffin?’

‘We see, Finn, we see!’ gasped all.

For the coffin, trundling by, was beautifully wrought, finely nailed together with silver and gold nails, but the special strange wood of it?

Plankings from wine-crates, staves from boxes that had sailed from France only to collide and sink in Lord Kilgotten’s cellars!

A storm of exhalations swept the men from Finn’s pub. They toppled on their heels. They seized each other’s elbows.

‘You know the words, Finn,’ whispered Doone. ‘Tell us the names!’

Finn eyed the coffin made of vintage shipping crates, and at last exhaled:

‘Pull out my tongue and jump on it. Look! There’s Château Lafite Rothschild, nineteen seventy. Château-neuf du Pape, “sixty-eight! Upside down, that label, Le Corton! Downside up: La Lagune! What style, my God, what class! I wouldn’t so much mind being buried in burned-stamp-labeled wood like that, myself!’

‘I wonder,’ mused Doone, ‘can he read the labels from inside?’

‘Put a sock in it,’ muttered the priest. ‘Here comes the rest!’

If the body in the box was not enough to pull clouds over the sun, this second arrival caused an even greater ripple of uneasiness to oil the sweating men.

‘It was as if,’ Doone recalled, later, ‘someone had slipped, fallen in the grave, broken an ankle, and spoiled the whole afternoon!’

For the last part of the procession was a series of cars and trucks ramshackle-loaded with French vineyard crates, and finally a great old brewery wagon from early Guinness days, drawn by a team of proud white horses, draped in black, and sweating with the surprise they drew behind.

‘I will be damned,’ said Finn. ‘Lord Kilgotten’s brought his own wake with him!’

‘Hurrah!’ was the cry. ‘What a dear soul.’

‘He must’ve known the day would ignite a nun, or kindle a priest, and our tongues on our chests!’