Free And the Hills Opened Up by David Oppegaard

world than Revis Cooke, who harbored the duel sins of greed and arrogance in staggering abundance, Father Lynch did not want to meet him.  Mr. Cooke was enough unpleasantness for anyone to encounter in the skin of one man.
    The stagecoach guards dropped the coffin and conferred with each other in the way of nervous, half-intoxicated men.  Finally, after some heated debate, one of their number was made to go up to the house and knock on the front door.  The metal door was so stout the man’s fist barely made a noise against it, only a soft thud-thud-thud Father Lynch had to tilt his head to hear.  Nothing happened for a moment, but as the man made to knock again the door’s peek-a-boo slot was thrown back and a pair of oil-black eyes appeared.   
    “Yes?”
    “Sorry to bother you, sir, but is Hollis Wells in there with you?”
    The black eyes narrowed. 
    “Yes, he is.  We are tallying accounts.  What do you want?”
    The guard, now much closer to sober, took off his hat and wrung it in his hands.
    “Well, sir, there’s been a difficulty.  We were at the saloon across the road there and one of our men was shot and killed.”
    “I see.  We wondered at the gunfire.”
    The guard nodded.
    “The killer was unprovoked and we’re going to take him to Rawlins in the morning for trial.”
    “That sounds in order.  What do you need Mr. Wells for, at this very minute?”
    “Well, sir, we was wondering what to do with the body.  With Chester’s body.”
    Cooke blinked again from behind his metal door.  Father Lynch wondered what could make a man so given toward the indoors, so fearful of God’s bright firmament.  Was it a love for money alone that could wreak such havoc upon a man?  Or was there a greater twisting inside Cooke which required four walls to keep it at bay?
    “Go ahead and stow the remains in the wagon,” Cooke said.  “I suppose he’ll keep well enough on wheels.”   “No,” Father Lynch called out, stepping toward the house.  “Bring the coffin to the church.  Chester’s first night departed should be spent in the house of God.  I’ll watch over the body.”
    The stagecoach guards startled at the priest’s voice, having forgotten his presence.  Cooke snorted through the door.
    “That’s fine with me, Father.  Now leave us alone.”
    The peek-a-boo bar slammed home.  The guards looked in directionless befuddlement at the priest, a look he’d grown to know all too well.  He raised his hand and lo, they followed.

    Father Lynch had them set the coffin down at the rear of the church, in the standing room behind the pews.  The men stepped back from the coffin, hats in hand, and stared balefully at the floor.  The spirits on their breath had turned hot and sour and their clothes still smelled of the road, like horses and juniper and sweat.  Inside the church, they did not seem like good or bad men.  Just four mortal souls, making their path through the world as best they could.
    “Thank you, gentleman.  You can go back to the saloon.  Your friend should be fine here for the night.”
    The dejected guards mumbled their thanks and went out the door.  Father Lynch made a sign of the cross over the coffin and said the Lord’s Prayer, as much to comfort himself as the dead man.  He’d presided over hundreds of funerals during his career and spent countless nights sitting up with the dead, both with family members and alone.  Many folks were made uneasy by the dead, frightened by the mirror held up to their own eventual future, but Lynch was not.  He’d watched a great many men, women, and children die over the past forty years.  He’d seen the light fade from their eyes and how their chests rose slowly, fell slowly, then ceased to move altogether.  He’d bathed the dead and dressed them in their Sunday finest.  Combed their hair.  Rolled their eyes shut.  He’d felt them stiffen beneath his touch, their bodies seized by the clenched fist of rigor mortis.