Cruel Purpose
Hannah Frueh
The boys across the bay were known for mischief. They wandered the docks and littered unmanned boats with drunken bottles. In daylight hours they received praise from businessmen, friends of their fathers, and lined up to take their places in apprenticeships just as I had done decades ago. Back then it was not the sons of wealthy men that concerned us, but poorer souls than I.
What I cannot remember now, old and worn, is what compelled me to become an undertaker. I had not held lifelong ambitions to cradle the hopes of the bereaved once a mortal lives came to their end. I had been unprepared for the weight with which mourners present their trinkets; a mothers beloved brooch or a fathers watch, still ticking with time he hadn’t lived to see. Experience had been my only teacher, of how to lay a head upon its final pillow or when to paint a woman’s lips with rouge she saved for Sundays.
There are no young men who are moved by the same intangible thing that compelled me to live among the dead. The things I’d learned then, the protections from grave robbing, are no longer of value for the robbers are not the same.
There are men who seek from desperation and those who are desperate in their seeking. When the lands became fertile and the docks filled with ships, we saw no more of the poor men I prepared for. It was their children that grew restless, devoted to themselves and eager to find even a cruel purpose. They seek to end their want; to find feeling or power.
Funeral mounds were unearthed, coffins broken and pale faces staring up to God. Precious tokens of lives well-lived were stolen, greedy hands refusing to leave so much as a coin upon their eyes. I used to believe that poverty was the thing that changed men, just as the moon turns wolves and water. I know now that avarice is the serpent.
The bodies I have cared for are no longer allowed their virtue. Gilded in gold beneath fine tilled earth, they have not found peace. No trick or veil can hide a diamond upon the ear, no glove can shroud their silver. The boys take as though they are searching for skipping stones, gleeful in their macabre delights. They laugh upon the craggy shore, twirling rings and lockets. They are but toys to be exchanged for something new, something their own.
I am an old man and can change little in this broken world. I am no minister who can turn young sinners from their ways, begging for repentance. They have not come to be my apprentices, my students. I cannot instill in them the respect each departed soul is due. My work is with the dead, of the dead, when all want is past fulfillment. It was their want I sought to end.
The formaldehyde in my cabinet is meant to embalm, to keep dead men living; tonight it has made young men die. I’d taken it to the shore once I’d heard the digging of their shovels, their laughter desecrating stillness and memory. It did not take much poison decanted in their beer bottles, half-finished upon the shore, to make them ghosts.
Their want had been their weakness in life as much as in death, seeking release with their lips upon each fermented bottle. Their bodies choked and bled, struggling, unaware even as I lifted them back into their wooden boat. My confession is this: I have always taken care to bury the dead.
I towed the boat back across the bay they’d crossed and downed their bodies, heavy with judgement, where water and its creatures could take as they themselves had done. I will not let other restless sons cross the bay, riding on their fathers ships and tailcoats. The formalin will burn the dock as it did their throats, the missing a mistake lost to the night.
The grave is quiet now, still and sleeping. I spoon earth back over the last-robbed casket like sugar in tea, giving rest to those who cannot earn it themselves, and watch the ships across the bay ablaze in the night.
About the Author
Hannah Frueh is an author born and raised in the Midwestern United States. Her childhood dreams included being an astronaut, marine biologist, and painter. Once she settled on writing, she realized she could pretend to be all of the above. She now lives in Los Angeles with her partner (and most beloved beta reader), pet fish, and imagination.
