Inevitable
an excerpt

There are things that always invite change. Sometimes they are tangible items such as a new animal or an addition to the family, or they could be feelings, such as happiness, sadness or hurt. One such thing that dictates change has been deemed the hardest thing to accept or nonetheless deal with. This thing is death, and death has changed the life of Benjamin McKinnon forever. Though where there is death there is a light, and in this particular case, death could be called fate, even if it has a grim beginning.

He could not have been in a worse mood, and those who knew him took and accepted this as a fact, though none of them were with him. Benjamin McKinnon clutched his favorite music player in his hands as his family drove down more and more deserted back roads. Behind him there was the faint tinkling of clanking china mingling with polished silverware and beside him his dog slept, his snores not even audible to his ears.

Glancing up from the soft rolling hills, dotted here and there by a cow, he looked to see his family. His father sat in the drivers seat, a picture of perfection in his black suit of mourning, while his mother sat beside him, hands crossed neatly in her lap. Her knees were pressed together tightly, betraying the calmness that seemed to be perfectly etched in her face. Only Ben knew how practiced the calm facade was.

The stench of a freshly manured field came wafting through the windows, mingled with the false smokiness of the early October air. The leaves were just turning color and the air didn’t seem as waterlogged as the summer months previous. Ben turned his face away from the open window and attempted to bury it in his sleeve.

Chancing a glance up he spotted buildings in the distance and instinct told him that they had reached their destination. This was confirmed when they drove into the tiny town, marked with an old and weathered sign.

Welcome to
North Crossing
Established 1918

Ben groaned. The town was worse then he expected. It was the typical small town that you see in the movies and of what he had seen on the way here, well out of the way of any major city. Being a city boy himself he could already see himself dying of boredom. He imagined his days filled with pacing dirt roads and watching the grass grow, not only up but brown as it died.

He did a double-take when they drove pass an actual horse standing quiet by itself outside of the towns post office. If only his friends could see him now. They would die of laughter before their bodies hit the ground from being unable to stand. They would chuckle at the idea of him, Big-City-Benjamin, residing in this little hick town until daisies popped out of their graves.

He closed his eyes, unable to stand the site of this bleak little town, only opening them again when the car came to a soundless stop (no squeaky breaks for Mr. Thomas McKinnon.) Before him stood the oldest church he’d ever seen in his life. The bricks were not the bright red of a new building but brown and pockmarked, the cement green with moss and were in a good need of a powerwash. The steeply sloped roofs were covered in old but what seemed to be well cared for shingles. It contrasted deeply with the modern cars parked in its tiny parking lot and along the tree lined driveway. Ben groaned when his father shut off the car.

His father turned to him and through one look Ben knew what he had to do. He swiftly turned off his music player and stashed it aside and got out of the car. His mother was looking around the church with a pleasant and pleased look on her face and this time Ben was sure it was genuine. She loved all of this small town stuff. She loved the simplicity of it. She wasn’t uncomfortable in the big city of Boston, but Ben knew this is where she felt most comfortable. She, like his father had grown up in a small town in upstate Connecticut. His father stood looking around and Ben knew that he was reflecting upon his childhood. He spent every Sunday morning and part of the afternoons inside those walls, and how he was going back, for the first time unescorted by his father.

He straightened out his black suit and his mother turned to him and pulled his tie straight and when that did not suffice she undid it and did the Windsor knot again. Then came the comb of terror which Ben ditched under, composing himself before his father could catch him. His mother, understanding, put the comb away joined arms with her husband. They walked up to the church together, picture perfect.

Ben winced as the bruise on his leg pulled, especially sore after the long drive from Boston. He followed his family up graveled drive, which gave his mother some trouble in her fashionable black heels, but she let no one know it. The steps were made of some granite like material which no one, not even his father, the architect could place. Ben made an eye contact with him and his father just sort of shrugged it off.

The door was shut and when it was pushed open it made a loud groan. The door was wooden, and it was easy to tell that it had been made of a tough durable wood that had worn thin in the years since it’s development. The door handle was iron, freshly coated with black paint and considerably lower to the ground then a modern handle, compensating for the height difference from ancestral generations to modern day, so much that his father had to bend only slightly at the waist to reach it comfortably. Once inside they shut the door again and it thudded shut in what seemed to Ben as a very gloomy sound.

Ben took in his surroundings. The ceiling was of average high, the corners decorated in cobwebs. In front of him, there was an almost bare coat rack, sporting an ugly purple jumper, that was so covered in dust that he was sure it had been there about as long as his father was old. The smell reminded Ben of a mix of air fresheners that had almost died, dust and decaying wood. On either side of them was a doorway, his father lead them through the right handed side one. Immediately Ben was greeted with a grim picture. In front of them was the large mahogany casket which inside lay his grandfather’s empty shell.

Since the last that Ben saw of his grandfather he had changed very little. The man wasn’t much over five and one half foot and skinny as a rail. The mess on his hair had thinned very much while the mess of a white beard on his chin had grown exponentially. The beard itself was white, with grey streaks, and fluffed out like the fir on a french poodle. It was all attributed to old age. The make-up on his face, chin and neck covered up the slight bruise he had received on his final stint down the stairs, which ended painfully. The suit however that was fitted over his lifeless corpse was the least Henry Thomas McKinnon thing possible. Not once in the living memory of anyone present at the funeral of the eighty-seven year old man could remember him wearing a suit except twice in their lives, this being one of them. The other, at his only sons wedding day, eighteen years previous. At his wife’s funeral he did not wear the black suit, but his work slacks and polo shirt, claiming that she would not want him breaking out the precious suit for afterwards it would have to be washed, dried and ironed, and she was no longer there to do so. Under his sons orders, the morticians had dressed the dead man in the clothes, which no longer seemed to fit the frail body. The hands curled over the jacket rested lightly, the nails for the first time in many years, dirt free.

Ben tore his eyes away from the body and the glaring sun reflecting off of the caskets highly polished surface and they landed the crowd filling the church. Everyone it seems, dies famous in a small town. The church wasn’t silent, but Ben had yet to pick up on the noise of so many humans. The black of the attire wasn’t all the same shade, in various forms of worn fabrics but it all seemed to fit with the fading wooden pews. The front pew remained bodiless.

A subtle touch from his mother brought him back to his senses. He looked at her, hazel eyes meeting her soft baby blue ones. She nodded and wordlessly they moved down the right aisle to the front pew where they would be seated as it was reserved for his family. As they glided down the aisle, their faces properly turned towards the ground in mourning, heads turned towards them and away from the person they were talking to.

Ben chanced a look up as they passed the last couple of pews and at the third pew to the end saw a face, one who looked at him, not with curiosity or sympathy, but with pleasure. To soon he turned away before he fully took in her face.

He sat next to his mother, trying not to think about the hush that had come over the crowd as they walked forward. The noise level had dropped dramatically and now it seemed as if the church had a loud gas leak, air flowing quickly and softly, mingled with carefully chosen words, creating the hiss. His father picked up an aging bible off of the pew and flipped through trying to find the passage that he had ordered to be said during the funerary speech. His mother held a program which was all white, a symbol of death (though now-a-days it was considered purity.) It had a picture of his grandfather on the front in color and on the inside a brief biography of his life, his successors (the family sitting in the front pews) and on the right inside were the lyrics to his favorite hymn which would be played last during the speech.

The priest walked in and Ben swore that his man was as old as his grandfather was. His many wrinkles made the stout man look slightly like a bulldog, though the rounded edges made him look more approachable. In his hands he held a large bible, in which many pages were book marked by post-its and dog eared by importance. The single red strip, meant to be the bookmark, lay outside, serving no purpose. Its end was extremely frayed.

His father stood up and touched Ben on his shoulder and had him flinching. Without a word again, they both stood up and so did many members of the crowd from the church. All men. The pallbearers all walked down the aisle to the casket. The lid was carefully shut and after each man got a grip on the metal bars surrounding it, it was lifted and brought to the front of the church, resting in front of the altar. The lid was opened again.

The act was purely for tradition. There was technically no need to have the lid open during the speech. The lid would act as a muffler to the ears of his grandfather, but seeing as he had already “moved on” the ears would not hear the sentimental filled words or see the sorrowful faces of those in attendance. Ben was sure that he wouldn’t want to see or hear it on any account. His grandfather, though strict, lived a happy life, and in recent years, Ben’s heart had seemed to lighten up whenever his grandfather had stepped off of the train in Boston for family holidays. Not once had they traveled to North Crossing, the excuse always being his father’s job. Not that it seemed to matter anymore.

The priest climbed the steps, placed the bible down and after pulling his glasses out of God knows where, began to peruse the pages, looking for the properly marked page to begin the speech. He coughed once when it was found and all attention, except those of a considerably young age, turned upon him.