Free Grounded by Kate Klise Page B

had poison ivy and Mother told you a MILLION TIMES not to scratch it, but you just couldn’t help yourself? That’s what this feels like.
    Folks are giving him $50 and $100 without blinking. Even Aunt Josie loaned him money. I don’t know what I’m expecting Mr. Clem to do next, but it seems that he’s doing it at every turn. He’s like that two-headed snake in the Traveling Reptile Museum, and all you can do is wait and watch to see what he does next.
    Well, I’ll fill you in on everything in my next letter.
    Love,
Daralynn
     
    P.S. I keep forgetting to tell you all about this thing I invented called a Living Funeral. The idea’s really catching on. People seem to like the idea of celebrating life before they die. It’s a way to say nice things to important people in your life before you—or they—die.
    That night I had a dream about getting a postcard from Daddy. It was addressed just to me, which never happened in real life. Daddy always addressed his postcards to The Oakland Family. In my dream I was so happy to get that postcard, I was flying!
    The only bad part was that the postcard was written in a language I didn’t understand. And I couldn’t find anyone to read it to me.

Sixteen
Aubrey Bryant Leaves a Legacy
    Weirdly enough, Mr. Aubrey Bryant died three days later.
    “I can scarcely believe it,” Aunt Josie whispered. She’d called me at the beauty parlor. It was obvious she’d been crying.
    “He hadn’t even gone to his ball game yet this summer, had he?” I asked quietly into the phone.
    Mr. Bryant’s claim to fame was that every year he took the Greyhound bus by himself up to St. Louis for a Cardinals’ baseball game. He was one of Aunt Josie’s more energetic gentlemen.
    “No,” Aunt Josie said, sniffling. “Didn’t even get to go to his ball game.”
    “How’d he die?” I asked. But before I could hear the answer, Mother grabbed the phone from me.
    “ Who died?” she barked into the phone.
    I couldn’t hear Aunt Josie, but I could guess from Mother where the conversation was going.
    “And you’re going to let him be cremated , are you?” Mother said. “All right then. Do as you will.” She hung up the phone without saying good-bye.
    “Mother,” I leaped in recklessly, “ lots of folks are cremated these days. Maybe not in Digginsville, but in big cities where there’s not enough room to bury everyone.”
    (The Encyclopedia Britannica had been very informative.)
    “It’s not a crime,” I added.
    “Well, it should be,” Mother stated. Her face was red and squished with anger. “Jesus told us to care for the dead, not to burn them. Cremation is pagan. It’s an insult to God. A body can’t be resurrected if it’s not buried in God’s holy earth.”
    “Not everybody feels that way,” I reported. “In some religions, they believe embalming, like they do over at the funeral home, is an abuse of the corpse.”
    “ Who believes that?” Mother demanded.
    “Uh, I can’t remember,” I said, backing down. Iwas pretty sure it was Jewish people and Muslims, but that wasn’t going to help this argument any.
    “Christian people burn trash, not bodies,” Mother said in her best lecturing voice.
    I knew what she was thinking. This was the second cremation in Digginsville, but the first of anyone we’d known. Maybe cremation really was the way of the future.
    “At least Mr. Bryant had a nice life over at Aunt Josie’s,” I said.
    No response from Mother.
    “I bet he left Aunt Josie a little pocket change,” I said in a singsongy voice, knowing this would elicit a response.
    “ That you can be sure of,” Mother snorted. The discussion ended when her next customer arrived for a tint and perm.
    Everyone knew the tradition at The Summer Sunset Retirement Home for Distinguished Gentlemen. Residents paid whatever they felt appropriate for lodging and meals at Aunt Josie’s. And when they died, they were expected to leave a “legacy,” otherwise known as a