“Moses, are you still going to Belmopan with me tomorrow?” I asked. “I’ve already rented a car.”
“I wanted to,” Moses said, “but I have to go to a funeral in the morning in a little village just west of the Belize Zoo. The service is at ten o’clock and the burial is at ten thirty.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “We’ll catch the funeral service, then eat lunch and do our business afterwards.”
On the way to the funeral he told me about his Uncle Arturo.
“Uncle Art always was a mean man,” Moses said. “He harassed my Auntie Dora and treated her real bad. Six years ago, he slipped on the wet tiles when he was taking a shower and cracked his head and died.”
“Are they just getting around to burying him?” I asked.
“Naw. They had a funeral service and started carrying him to the graveyard. When they walked into the cemetery the casket banged up against a gatepost and it woke him up. He was just in a coma. After that, everybody called him Lazarus, like the man in the Bible that Jesus raised from the dead. This time he died of a heart attack.”
At the funeral service, the minister said a lot of nice things about Lazarus, but Moses told me they weren’t true. I admit that I didn’t see any tears or hear any weeping.
We started the walk to the graveyard—six pall bearers carrying the casket with the widow leading the way. As we turned to go into the cemetery, she stopped and turned around.
“Be careful,” Auntie Dora said to the pall bearers, “Watch out for the gatepost.”
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