The Blue Train To Heaven, Page 3

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  So our coffins stood side by side in the field waiting for Mr. Ashong’s entourage. He came down High Street lying on a pallet on the back of the best fire truck in Ghana. Police Motorcycles screamed on each side of him. His wife followed behind in a long black car. A Geegaw rode on its hood like a sentry. A few knuckleheads who didn’t move out of the way fast enough had their heads knotted by young men carrying sapling branches. They parked the fire truck directly in front of the coffins. Some kind of hydraulic device lifted Mr. Ashong’s pallet and tilted him just so. He was strapped in and wrapped tightly in white sheets and did not slide out—although his little purple slippers slipped down from the sheets. He looked like a mummy with purple feet and a head like a horse’s. The crowd hushed as they watched Mr. Ashong look from one coffin to the next like a man watching tennis. I noticed a slight frown as he looked more at mine. Adodo my chief carpenter touched my shoulder. I told him to remember our ace in the hole.

  Suddenly Mr. Ashong let out a small sickly laugh in the direction of my Geegaw coffin. He stopped suddenly because a pain hit him in his chest. His mouth was twisted like a cat’s half grinning and half snarling. But he managed to nod toward my Geegaw and shake his head wearily from side to side. The crowd took over as if on cue reading Mr. Ashong’s thoughts. Their laughter was loud and raucous—so much so it made the feathered Geegaws flutter.

  “Who can be buried in something that’s going to take up half of Mt Olivet Cemetery?” someone shouted

  I raised my hands to hush them. I turned directly to Mr. Ashong.

  “It is not meant to bury souls in the ground. This coffin is for bearing one straight up to Heaven.”

  On the signal of Heaven Adodo pressed a small button the size of a kola nut and my coffin dipped its beak. Its long wings fluttered up and down. The wings beat faster and faster and dipped lower and lower flattening Dede NuNu’s domed Basilica like someone patting a cake. Adodo aimed a wand at the Geegaw and it turned and moved down the field with wings flapping more rapidly. One wheel touched a small boulder and the Geegaw coffin turned slightltly as if to head into the crowd. Adodo aimed the wand closer to the Geegaws ass and it went back straight on course. Soon the wheels were bobbing and bouncing over the ground as it slowly lifted in the air. Mr. Ashong looked like a man leading a chorus of opened mouths as he and the crowd stared at the Geegaw taking flight. As it flew a few feathered Geegaws took notice and began to trail behind it. Soon the trees and church steeples were unburdened with Geegaws. They were all flying behind the flying coffin. The whole sky was black with mechanical Geegaw and feathered Geegaw.

  “Can it stay up in Heaven forever,” someone called out.

  Well I don’t know if that question cursed the coffin or if it was the heavy beating of Geegaw wings, that sucked the air away but the coffin fell into the Volta River. Behind it the Geegaws fell also. They drowned and washed away.

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  Dede NuNu repaired the dome on the Basilica coffin and Mr. Ashong was buried in it a week later. I managed to hold onto my business after spending a week in jail for polluting the Volta—not that it wasn’t already full of old French Citroens and newspapers that poked fun of the government. To thank me for ridding Ghana of horrible Geegaws, Mr. Ashong gave me a smaller parcel of land so I can continue burying folks with dignity. And for some reason one Geegaw lands in Accra once a year--struts for a few days up and down the path the coffin took and then dives into the Volta.

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  About the Author

  Charles W. Harvey is a native Houstonian and a graduate of the University of Houston. He has studied fiction under the guidance of Rosellen Brown and Chitra Divakaruni at U of H. He has studied poetry under Joyce James and Cynthia MacDonald. In 1987, Charles was a 1st place prize recipient of PEN/Discovery for Cheeseburger, which went on to be published in the Ontario Review. In 1989 Charles Harvey was awarded the Cultural Arts Council of Houston Grant for Writers and Artists. Also in 1989 he was a finalist in the MacDonald's Literary Achievement Awards. Charles has been published in Soulfires, Story Magazine SHADE, High Infidelity, The James White Review, and others. He is the author of the novels The Butterfly Killer and Promise Goodday. He is also the author of several story and poetry collections.

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  Bark Too

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  Odd Voices in Love

  The Butterfly Killer - A Novel

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