Free Blameless in Abaddon by James Morrow

couldn’t find it. Three times he circumnavigated the cemetery. His hip throbbed: hardly a surprise, his current acid-phosphatase level being a whopping 12.0, according to Blumenberg. He lobbed a 20-mg Roxanol tablet into his mouth and chewed. It tasted chalky and sour. A minute later he spotted a ramshackle brick building covered with Virginia creepers, and—sure enough—a few yards away a funeral was in progress. Two dozen mourners in dark clothing stood around an open grave, its head marked by a granite tombstone, its perimeter decorated with lilies and gardenias.
    The pelvic pain faded, supplanted by a mild opium high. He parked, got out, and limped toward the crowd. The grass around the grave was weed infested and unevenly clipped, a disgrace by the standards of Celestial City USA. No one greeted him. Every face looked unfamiliar. When had Corinne acquired these mysterious friends? Where had she been keeping these auxiliary relatives?
    He peered into the hole. The casket was half normal size. His first thought was that one of Corinne’s pets had died without his knowledge, and her friends had decided to begin the ceremony by covering its little corpse with a layer of earth, after which a hearse bearing her body would arrive and then she herself would be interred. Or else they’d
already
buried Corinne, beneath her pet, and he—the damn fool—had missed it.
    He looked at the tombstone, BRANDON APPLEYARD . 1992–1999. I MISS YOU SO MUCH . . . ALL MY LOVE, MOMMY . “Excuse me,” he said, brushing the sleeve of a stout woman in a print dress who appeared more bored than bereaved. “I’m Corinne’s wife. Husband, I mean. Was. Martin Candle.”
    The woman absently kicked the flowers with the tip of her shoe. “Wife? What?”
    He pointed to the brick building. “They told me . . . the lawnmower shed. My wife’s getting buried today.”
    â€œThat’s where they keep the backhoe.”
    â€œThey keep the backhoe in the lawnmower shed?”
    â€œNo, that
building
is where they keep the backhoe. You know, to dig the graves.”
    â€œDon’t they use shovels?”
    â€œNope, a backhoe—this is the twentieth century.” The woman gestured toward the rising sun. A lobe of flesh jiggled from her upper arm like a rooster’s wattle. “The lawnmower shed’s in that direction, quarter mile or so.”
    â€œIt’s awful about the boy.”
    â€œSpina bifida. I’m his great-aunt. We’re waiting for his mother. The father bailed out two years ago. Couldn’t deal with having a sick kid.”
    â€œHow irresponsible,” said Martin automatically, wondering how he might go about redressing such knavery in his courtroom.
    â€œI never met the jerk. You aren’t him, are you?”
    â€œOh, no.”
    â€œIf you ask me, Brandon’s better off with the Lord. Spina bifida, right? Boy couldn’t walk, brain damaged by hydrocephalus, not to mention the constant pain. Turn around. Quarter of a mile.”
    â€œThanks.”
    Martin faced east and started away, hobbling past the ranks of glossy granite stones. He realized that a necropolis, like any other city, had enclaves. To his right lay a wealthy neighborhood—Republicans, he mused—with tombs that were veritable houses. To his left, a blue-collar district. Ahead: a Korean section, the markers carved with incomprehensible glyphs.
    A slender woman wearing black pumps and a dark gray business suit rushed toward him, her mourning veil pulled back over her head, revealing an oval, tear-streaked face. Her eyes were red rimmed and unusually large, the eyes of a cartoon rabbit.
    â€œAre you the mother?” asked Martin, leaning breathlessly against a poplar tree.
    The woman stopped running and blinked. “What?”
    â€œBrandon’s mother—that’s you, right?”
    â€œMy therapist said it would be good if I