11 The Cost Of Dying (2/2)

. . . more . . .'

'Oh, are you now going to be telling me what my father deserves or does not?'

'I'm just trying to sell my coffins, sir . . . I haven't sold any all week.'

'Ah you can't expect to sell coffins here in the country, where people live forever, where the air is clean and the food fresh . . . Maybe if you moved to the city you would sell more; people die every day

olubunmi familoni

there, like chickens and dogs – dead on roadsides, on highways, under bridges, inside gutters, in hospital hallways and beds – dead, dead people everywhere, copious coffinless corpses; you'll make a killing, my boy!'

He suddenly claps Faith on the shoulder in ghoulish excitement.

The boy winces, and murmurs, 'I never thought of the city

like that . . .'

'Think big, my dear boy!'

'I'll try,' he says, casually casting the city's corpses from his mind. 'So, which are you buying?'

'This!' the man shouts, patting the plywood coffin.

'Oh,' the boy mutters, crestfallen, disappointed in his own marketing abilities.

'Yes. So how much is it? . . . Now that we can say we're friends, I would expect you to give me a friendly figure, eh.' 'Three-five,' the boy says coldly.

'Three thousand, five hundred! For a coffin!'

'A cheap one – the ”cheapest” we have.'

'That's brazen thieving!'

'That's the price, sir.'

'Okay, what is the last price, my boy?'

'That's the final price, sir; it can't go any lower.'

'You're not even going to bring it down one tiny notch?'

'That's the lowest price, sir – the lowest in this shop.'

'Okay, okay,' he says, plaintively, 'Take it down a little bit and

I'll add something for you, my boy.'

He shows the boy his dirty teeth, and gives him a wink.

The boy, irritated at being repeatedly called the man's ”boy”

in that condescending tone of his, replies, 'I don't take bribe, sir.'

The man, affecting taken offence, exclaims, in his dramatic

high pitch, 'Lord, no! I don't give bribes; it's a tip!'

'I don't take tip. I earn enough money to keep me alive.'

'Ah!' the man cries, now obviously exasperated. 'You're

going to grow old and die in this coffin shop with this kind of att.i.tude.'

'At least I'll have the dignity of being buried decently by my son.'

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The man advances menacingly towards him, 'I have a good mind to walk out of this place and never come back . . . but you're lucky my father is dead, and has to be buried – in a coffin.' 'A cheap one,' Faith mutters.

'What?'

'I said, which one.'

'Three-five my foot!' he barks, kicking the plywood coffin. 'Any local two-bit carpenter can knock this together in seconds . . . I'll give you one thousand now and a balance of one-five when I come for it tomorrow . . . And make sure there's a cross on it! . . . Here –' He tosses some notes on the coffin and leaves in a huff.

'The cross is extra five hundred o!' Faith shouts after him. 'And your balance is three thousand!' He adds, under his breath, 'Greedy old miser.'

He shoves the money into his pocket and returns to his coffin in the dark corner. The warm, gentle pall of sleep soon falls over him, and he sinks under the sweet blackness as the curtains begin to drop on the day.

This time, his dreams are urban, set in the city, the city of plentiful deaths; many dead people everywhere, all around him . . .

* * *

Before the village resurrects the next morning, Faith is on the first bus to the big city, to meet his dead, leaving the coffin shop behind him, locked and forgotten; the poor old man's plywood coffin in a dark corner, empty, crossless.

The miser's money is warm in his pocket – it will be enough to take him to the city of death, and to make his first coffin, his first kill...

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