Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2

‘Gangway! Let it pass!’

The men stood aside as all the wagons, carrying strange labels from southern France and northern Italy, making tidal sounds of bulked liquids, lumbered into the churchyard.

‘Someday,’ whispered Doone, ‘we must raise a statue to Kilgotten, a philosopher of friends!’

‘Pull up your socks,’ said the priest. ‘It’s too soon to tell. For here comes something worse than an undertaker!’

‘What could be worse?’

With the last of the wine wagons drawn up about the grave, a single man strode up the road, hat on, coat buttoned, cuffs properly shot, shoes polished against all reason, mustache waxed and cool, unmelted, a prim case like a lady’s purse tucked under his clenched arm, and about him an air of the ice house, a thing fresh born from a snowy vault, tongue like an icicle, stare like a frozen pond.

‘Jesus,’ said Finn.

‘It’s a lawyer!’ said Doone.

All stood aside.

The lawyer, for that is what it was, strode past like Moses as the Red Sea obeyed, or King Louis on a stroll, or the haughtiest tart on Piccadilly: choose one.

‘It’s Kilgotten’s law,’ hissed Muldoon. ‘I seen him stalking Dublin like the Apocalypse. With a lie for a name: Clement! Half-ass Irish, full-ass Briton. The worst!’

‘What can be worse than death?’ someone whispered.

‘We,’ murmured the priest, ‘shall soon see.’

‘Gentlemen!’

A voice called. The mob turned.

Lawyer Clement, at the rim of the grave, took the prim briefcase from under his arm, opened it, and drew forth a symboled and ribboned document, the beauty of which bugged the eye and rammed and sank the heart.

‘Before the obsequies,’ he said. ‘Before Father Kelly orates, I have a message, this codicil in Lord Kilgotten’s will, which I shall read aloud.’

‘I bet it’s the eleventh Commandment,’ murmured the priest, eyes down.

‘What would the eleventh Commandment be?’ asked Doone, scowling.

‘Why not: “THOU SHALT SHUT UP AND LISTEN”’ said the priest. ‘Ssh.’

For the lawyer was reading from his ribboned document and his voice floated on the hot summer wind, like this:

‘“And whereas my wines are the finest—”’

‘They are that!’ said Finn.

‘“—and whereas the greatest labels from across the world fill my cellars, and whereas the people of this town, Kilcock, do not appreciate such things, but prefer the – er – hard stuff …”’

‘Who says?!’ cried Doone.

‘Back in your ditch,’ warned the priest, sotto voce.

‘“I do hereby proclaim and pronounce,”’ read the lawyer, with a great smarmy smirk of satisfaction, ‘“that contrary to the old adage, a man can indeed take it with him. And I so order, write, and sign this codicil to my last will and testament in what might well be the final month of my life.” Signed, William, Lord Kilgotten. Last month, on the seventh.’

The lawyer stopped, folded the paper and stood, eyes shut, waiting for the thunderclap that would follow the lightning bolt.

‘Does that mean,’ asked Doone, wincing, ‘that the lord intends to—?’

Someone pulled a cork out of a bottle.

It was like a fusillade that shot all the men in their tracks.

It was only, of course, the good lawyer Clement, at the rim of the damned grave, corkscrewing and yanking open the plug from a bottle of La Vieille Ferme ’73!

‘Is this the wake, then?’ Doone laughed, nervously.

‘It is not,’ mourned the priest.

With a smile of summer satisfaction, Clement, the lawyer, poured the wine, glug by glug, down into the grave, over the wine-carton box in which Lord Kilgotten’s thirsty bones were hid.

‘Hold on! He’s gone mad! Grab the bottle! No!’

There was a vast explosion, like that from the crowd’s throat that has just seen its soccer champion slain midfield!

‘Wait! My God!’

‘Quick. Run get the lord!’

‘Dumb,’ muttered Finn. ‘His lordship’s in that box, and his wine is in the grave!’

Stunned by this unbelievable calamity, the mob could only stare as the last of the first bottle cascaded down into the holy earth.

Clement handed the bottle to Doone, and uncorked a second.

‘Now, wait just one moment!’ cried the voice of the Day of Judgment.

And it was, of course, Father Kelly, who stepped forth, bringing his higher law with him.

‘Do you mean to say,’ cried the priest, his cheeks blazing, his eyes smoldering with bright sun, ‘you are going to dispense all that stuff in Kilgotten’s pit?’

‘That,’ said the lawyer, ‘is my intent.’

He began to pour the second bottle. But the priest stiff-armed him, to tilt the wine back.

‘And do you mean for us to just stand and watch your blasphemy?!’

‘At a wake, yes, that would be the polite thing to do.’ The lawyer moved to pour again.

‘Just hold it, right there!’ The priest stared around, up, down, at his friends from the pub, at Finn their spiritual leader, at the sky where God hid, at the earth where Kilgotten lay playing Mum’s the Word, and at last at lawyer Clement and his damned, ribboned codicil. ‘Beware, man, you are provoking civil strife!’