John the junk man was huge. He was the biggest man in the entire county. At 6’5″ and 350 lbs., he was bigger than any professional wrestler on television and every offensive lineman in the AFL or NFL. This massive beast of a man could manhandle a 400-pound, 400-cubic-inch engine out of a car by himself. However, today the operative word for John is “was.” He killed his wife and himself five days ago.
At sixteen years of age, this was the twelfth time I served as a pallbearer, but never for a giant. Every other time I served in this capacity, the deceased was substantially smaller; in some cases, they were half his size. At their funerals, I knew if I lost my grip, I could count on five other pallbearers to hold tight until I recovered. Today I had less confidence in my grip and the strength of the other coffin carriers.
Although it was subzero, I knew my hands would sweat, my grip would slip, and John and his casket would slide away. My only hope was that we weren’t going up or down the stairs when it happened.
***
The first time I met John was ten years earlier, when our 1953 deluxe green Pontiac Chieftain dropped its muffler in the middle of Main Street. After yelling a litany of profanities, my father pointed at the street and grumbled, “Get the muffler and put it in the trunk.” As I rocketed out the door, my father held up a pair of work gloves and shouted. “Here! You’re gonna need these.”
I whizzed back to my dad, took the gloves, and darted towards the muffler. I remember thinking, It’s not cold. Why did he have me get the gloves? I don’t need gloves. Now, nobody ever accused me of having a brain, so I tucked the gloves in my back pocket and reached down for the muffler. I received an instant education. My hand sizzled as soon as I touched the hot metal. To reinforce my lesson, Dad chuckled, “Dumbass. Now you know why I gave you those gloves. Maybe next time you’ll learn your old man isn’t as dumb as you think.” Unfortunately, that lesson would not be learned for another twenty years—when I had children of my own.
Dad drove to the cemetery for wrecked and worn-out cars, the Mulberry Grove Salvage Yard, and he parked next to the front gate. Even before we stepped out of the Pontiac, I gawked in wonderment and pictured welding numerous makes and models of cars together to create a supercar. Deep into my hillbilly dream, I didn’t hear the three-legged German Shepard close on me. When the dog was ten feet away, he began barking. It sounded exactly like you’d expect a three-legged junkyard dog to sound: vicious, authoritative, and pissed off at life for only giving him three legs. Although a ten-foot tall chained-link fence separated us, I still kept my distance from the dog.
I looked down to see if the frightful hound made me wet my pants. Nope! Still dry.
Dad faced the office trailer, grabbed the gate, and thundered louder than the dog, “John! The dog!”
When I heard a shrill whistle from inside the trailer, the dog stopped barking, and his tail wagged. I immediately focused on the trailer as my dad opened the gate. John the junk man stepped out onto the meshed-steel platform and steps. “What do you need?”
Ten years before, John was about 100 pounds lighter, sported a rich black beard, and was dressed in a pair of grease-covered overalls. Other than at his funeral, every time I saw John, he wore that same pair of gray overalls.
“I need a muffler for my Pontiac,” replied Dad.
“For your ’53 Pontiac?”
Dad grabbed me by the collar and forced me through the gate, “Yeah. Do you have one?”
John scratched his beard. “I’ve got a ’52 Pontiac about three rows back. That year should fit your ’53. Do you need some tools?”
“Please. How much for the muffler?”
“That’ll cost $3 if I have one. If you need baling wire, it’ll cost fifty cents more.”
“The muffler price is right, but I’ll only pay a quarter for the baling wire,” grunted Dad. “John, we both know you only paid fifty cents for an entire roll of wire.”
“Okay, a quarter it is,” said John as he spit in his palm and extended his hand.
“Deal!” bellowed my old man as he spit in his hand, gripped John’s hand firmly, and gave it a single shake. The unwritten contract had been sealed with a little spit and a resounding, “Deal!” Although nothing was ever documented, the implied contract called for my father to assume liability for any injury incurred on the property while collecting and installing any salvage parts. Furthermore, my father would be entitled to another like or similar used part if said part was deemed defective or unusable. I don’t know if they ever resolved who would be liable if the three-legged dog bit someone inside the fence.
After several trips to the junkyard (we drove many rust-covered shit-buckets that needed constant repair), Dad would trust me to forage for parts on my own. I got to know John, his wife, and their six children; five boys and one daughter, Jenny. The boys were younger than me, but Jenny and I were the same age. You can only imagine the number of times John and my dad would finish a half pint of cheap whiskey (usually on cold winter days after collecting parts) and try to match us up for dates.
When I was 14, John’s wife, Grace, died of lung cancer. I was a pallbearer at the saddest funeral I’ve ever attended. John was so beside himself that he never bothered to wear a suit. Imagine if you will, six children younger than me crying and suffering from such intense sorrow that they could not look anyone in the face. In a grief-stricken rotation, one or two children would run out of tears, and the others would contribute an outburst of tearful despair.
On this day, anguish ran rampant. There was not a dry eye in the church, at the cemetery, or at home. The younger children cried on and off for the next month.
***
Six months after Grace died, John married Brenda. His heart couldn’t take his children growing up without a mother, and Brenda seemed to admire his children. It was as if Brenda swooped down on John the same way a vulture would swoop down on spoiled, week-old entrails. She seemed determined to finish-off every morsel of guts and self-respect John had in his body. If Grace was saintly, then Brenda was evil reincarnate.
Almost immediately, Brenda would not allow the three-legged dog to come into the house, and she gave John an ultimatum, “Either the dog goes, or I go!” It wasn’t as if the dog lived at their house, but John allowed the dog to come inside when it was below 20°F. On one subzero night, the dog froze to death. As soon as John came home with news of his dog passing, Brenda wagged her bony index finger at him, “Don’t you say one damned word!”
John loved the three-legged dog and silently resented Brenda for the dog’s death, but he rationalized that the dog was less important than giving his children a mother.
As time went on, Brenda was less and less accommodating to the children. Harsh words and verbal skirmishes were becoming more and more commonplace between Jenny and Brenda. Often, John came home during their battles and was placed in the unenviable position of refereeing their clashes. In most cases, John couldn’t tame these lionesses, so he settled for a tie. One woman pouted in the living room, and the other brooded in the bedroom. At least they stopped fighting, but regardless of what he told himself, he created a volcano of emotion that could erupt at any moment.
As time marched on, Brenda did her best to make it seem like Jenny was just another troubled teenager who had no respect for any form of authority. She made a convincing argument to the family physician that Jenny was suicidal and might kill herself at any moment. In order to make her case complete, Brenda forced John to see the doctor with her. Just as they were walking out the door, Jenny confessed that the source of her erratic behavior was that she was pregnant.
Within weeks, Jenny moved to the Saint Elizabeth’s Home for Unwed Mothers. Her environment became less toxic and more structured. She became the lead singer in the St. Elizabeth’s Choir.
With the demise of John’s daughter, Brenda became more caring and sensitive. At first, she treated John with more respect and befriended the boys; the three youngest even called her mom. However, Brenda reverted back to her former self—a shrewish exhibitionist who had little respect for John and the boys. She would stay out late and frequent sleazy bars on the south side of Indianapolis. At least one night a week, she did not bother to come home until after dawn. When John questioned her on her nocturnal trysts, she would ridicule him: calling him physically repulsive, mocking his gentle disposition, and firing insult after insult, covering every demeaning thing she could think of; the whole while stripping every ounce of humanity from his colossal body.
Rumors overflowed in Mulberry Grove about Brenda. It was widespread knowledge that she routinely danced naked from the waist down on bar tops throughout central Indiana. Still, John continued with his sham marriage, hoping one day she would change her habits and become a respectable and loving wife.
John fell into the doldrums of gloom and depression. He sank so low that the possibility of recovery was unfathomable. Finally, it all came to a head. It had to. On New Year’s Eve, John got “mean drunk” at a party held at Dot’s—the tavern my dad ran. After Brenda started flirting and tugging her dress higher and higher on her thigh, John told her to keep her bits and pieces under wraps. Being the domineering harlot she was known to be, Brenda took his words as a personal challenge. She climbed up on the bar, dropped her skirt and slip, peeled off her underwear, and gyrated for everyone in the barroom to see. Few people noticed as John took a .38 Special out of his pants pocket and shot Brenda five times with the fifth bullet embedded in her brain. Her lifeless body dropped in front of the bar. John took a sip of his whiskey and sat on the floor next to Brenda. “I told you not to do that.” He huffed twice, gulped the last of his whiskey, then he placed the weapon to his temple and killed himself.
A murder and a following suicide have seldom delighted anyone, but it happens.
***
It took Mr. MacMillian, the funeral director, two days to find a casket and suit big enough to fit Big John, but he did. For the next three days, John had an open-casket showing. Thousands of people came to the mortuary to pay their last respects. I know it sounds cruel, but nobody used the standard funeral line, “He looks so natural,” at his showing. The only way to make John look natural would have been to dress him in his greasy gray overalls and place a big gob of axle grease over the entry wound in the side of his head.
On the morning of the burial, Mr. MacMillian and I were thinking along the same lines. It snowed three inches the previous night, so he had two of his employees act as additional pallbearers before we placed the oversized casket into the hearse.
The funeral procession went off as expected. John was lowered into the ground with little commotion and a great deal of caution and tears.
Nobody remembers what happened to Brenda. At Jenny’s insistence, her stepmother was not to be buried anywhere near the family plot. Brenda was gone, and nobody seemed to care. Her name was never spoken in the presence of John’s children.
Jenny had a baby daughter, and they are currently living in Denver, Colorado. John’s brother, James, took over the Salvage Yard, adopted the five boys, and raised them without a wife of his own.
Since the funeral, I have never returned to the Mulberry Grove Salvage Yard. It’s just too damned sad.