Rosalind Barden
Artwork by Carole Humphreys.

His family moved him to a new home, though he much preferred his old home where he'd dwelled happily for decades on the grassy slope with the mama skunk who'd dig a burrow and where every Spring she, and later her successors, had a litter, the babies cooing and rustling not too far above his decaying coffin. It was sweet and cheered Randall no end.

Not so the cold marble tomb below the grand new cathedral. Why?  But Randall knew why. His family was fond of prestige and the new catacombs supposedly had lots.

With no growth of grass or tunneling of termites or heart beats of newborn skunks to preoccupy him, Randall's spirit wafted from his slot on the marble wall to roam the catacombs pocked with hundreds of other slots to see if his new neighbors were friendly. Much to his disappointment, the other slots had been vacated by their souls, but for a grandly decorated one inhabited by a cardinal who archly stated he was busy "thinking," so couldn't be bothered with Randall.

It took Randall a while to find his old cemetery as his city had changed much since his burial in 1952. Finally, after drifting aboard several buses, alarming the passengers with his sudden breath of cold, he was home again.

Joyfully, he soared past the fountain, across the grassy lawns to his old spot, but, shock! a strange headstone was in place with a strange woman's name on it, and below the earth the strange new woman reclined in her strange spanking new coffin and she dismissed Randall, harshly, with, "I was married forty years – forty years! How do you think I'd want another man taking up my space? Go away. There's cops laid to rest around here. Don't think I won't call them."

He next tried the spinsters and the divorcées, but they all spat back versions of the same. He was briefly gladdened when he came upon a freshly dug, empty grave, only to be evicted within hours when an angry attorney took up residence. Randall thought the children's section might work, he being a grandpa figure they'd want to play with, but discovered the tots were monitored closely by the selfsame spinsters and divorcées who'd given him the heave-ho all over the cemetery. The females darkly suspected he was "up to something." The cops were called; the attorney got involved. 

Randall, not knowing where else to go, returned to crouch at the edge of his once-beloved grave and cry.

The woman, hearing his tears, softened and took pity on him.

"Okay. You can move in. But be warned. My husband never listened to me for forty years. You will listen to me, and I don't mean grunts here and there like you're pretending. No. I will quiz you on what I say and you'd better give the right answers. I have forty years of talking pent up, so I have a lot of words to let out."

Tears of unbridled happiness now for Randall. Sure, his skunks were gone (she'd chased them off – "too stinky"), but a woman at his side would be better. He'd been married forty years too, come to think of it, and didn't recall any serious complaints from his wife, so didn't foresee any problems. Yes, the wife had opted to be buried at sea rather than next to him, but Randall didn't think that had anything to do with him. Just a woman's silliness. Surely, this new woman would get over her talking silliness soon enough. Cozily, he snuggled with her in her spanking new coffin.

The next afternoon, the cardinal, in between chuckles, said archly to Randall, "Ah, women. You see that's why I joined the priesthood."