THE WIDOW’S GRIEVANCE by Mary Kuryla
Apologies to one and all for distressing you with this testimony. I, Lottie Ulrich, me, the wife of Ernest Zax Ulrich, whose Body lay beside the hole they’d only days ago dug. Exhuming is what we were at. Pulling out E.Z. from where he’d been laid. “The Heated Temperatures is what accounted for the dropping of the Body in the earth without delay,” they said. This was on Wednesday, June 2, 1926.
The exhuming was at my bequest. “Bring E.Z. up,” I said. I meant no disregard to the officiating doctor, man by the name Leander Divish. Announcing the dead is among one of his duties, my husband now included.
It was Dr. Divish told me how Bic O’Hare had come by with the news that E.Z. lay unconscious on the floor of the clubhouse and needed his attentions. “However, upon arrival to the scene,” Dr. Divish said, “I found Ulrich had expired.” He declared Heart Attack the cause of death.
Heart Attack? E.Z. but thirty-six this birthday. Little taken to drink nor tobacco. Look before you leap, that was E.Z. Why, the man would look before he took a baby to dangle on his knee for fear of calamity.
Imagine my surprise when E.Z. left at that late hour to pay his compliments to the gentlemen at the clubhouse. I told him not to go. “You saw what they got hidden out in the east woods,” I said. “Don’t fool thinking you got wits to play such knowledge to your favor.”
Three of us now stood around the hole, me, the doctor, and County Coroner Shirtrun – E.Z. and I knew him better in his other profession as taxidermist. “Cat to fowl, chose your eyeballs wisely.” E.Z. would have smiled if he’d been there. Wrapped up in potato sacking was all they’d done for the Body. I recall looking up at the others and saying, “Just how in a devil did they think they could get away with it?”
One of those to whom I referred was the esteemed gentleman, Mr. Severin. He had kindly volunteered the use of his motorcar and driver for transporting the Body, and we went along with it to the Court House. Whereupon our arrival, the local people gathered round our car in a most speculative attitude.
In the Court House at flood level sat Mr. Severin, the learned attorney Martin and that fool Bic, all locked together in a transportable cage loaned out from the county next just for such circumstances. When I thought of how they must begrudge me for their trouble, I resolved to send over soup.
There is no denying the day it happened, hot already, had turned sweltering. On these sorts of days I take to the chair on our porch, sitting still and quiet as the empty cradle beside me, listening to the lake lapping a little against the shore. That kind of Heated Temperature calls for quick preservation. On that point the esteemed gentlemen were unvarnished in their estimations. I suppose that is also why the gentlemen felt it prudent to fill the Body chock full of Embalmer Fluid before putting it in the ground.
County Coroner Shirtrun has made the request to open up the Body and have a look around for cause of death. What I do not understand is how you autopsy a body already full of Embalmer Fluid enough to kill you? I have stewed enough carcasses to know. When an animal has got a sickness, it rots through, turns to lump, everything, wounds even. Even old wounds. Embalmer Fluid is a stew no different, is it not?
If anybody were continent of this fact it would be County Coroner Shirtrun. He Embalmed the Body in the first place. As I understand it, after the doctor announced E.Z. dead, the esteemed gentlemen summoned Simp Wills up from his rowboat on Crooked Lake to make an identify of the Body in the clubhouse. Wills saying, “My God, that’s E.Z.!”
The esteemed gentlemen proceeded to then haul the Body to Shirtrun’s house to have it emptied. The stink by this time likely to be mighty. While Shirtrun went about his business, I gather the esteemed gentlemen started digging the hole – such was their hurry – and soon laid the Body to rest.
Yet questions simmer like pots on a flame. Why was Simp Wills brought all the way up from Crooked Lake for an identify of E.Z. instead of his wife, me, sitting the porch, not a property line away, calling distance no less? The quick and fast Embalming of the Body – don’t they need permission from next of kin? My apologies to one and all, but should I not have been consulted as to the burying of my husband?
Please understand. I mean no disrespect to the esteemed gentlemen and their families – among the finest in the state. These gentlemen would not have been charter members of the Huron Outing Club if they were one inch less. I recall the club bylaws from memory as the members have often called upon me to transcribe records of import owing to my superior penmanship. Incorporated in 1917 by two Methodist ministers, the charter limits the Outing Club membership to ten. To join, men must be members of a Protestant Church, practice temperance, and have a common interest in conservation and sportsmanship.
If they had good reason for what they did, I’m prepared to believe the answers (soon as I hear some). Only how can they be anticipated to think, esteemed gentlemen, locked up as they are like animals? Under other circumstances I would have made soup from a recipe of foreign origins and had it delivered to their cage but I have long ceased making soup.
I might add that two of the club’s most prominent members were at the clubhouse during the time of the incident. They were: Stephan S. Severin of Severin Motor Co., Detroit, and James G. Martin, Attorney at Law. The third man present was Bickford O’Hare. He’s nothing but the club’s caretaker.
We are not strangers, these gentlemen and I. On occasion Mr. Martin, who is running for mayor of Detroit, even paid a visit to sample my soup. Mr. Martin stepping up to our porch only to miss the step altogether, turning to empty his stomach on my bed of pansies. From behind his initialed white kerchief saying, “I’ve room now for your famed soup, Madam.” Once inside my kitchen, he pulled me down upon his lap, the center risen and desirous. His breath soaked with whiskey. One kiss only, that’s all I permitted.
Beside the grave hole, Coroner Shirtrun’s shoe was pressing on E.Z.’s finger. The finger folding back into the black soil. Upon my mention, Shirtrun stepped off it. That’s when I took the opportunity to say, “Cat to fowl, chose your eyeballs wisely,” and it eased things up, our friendship going back further than property lines.
Property lines, not friendship, is all E.Z. had in common with the esteemed gentlemen. Our land borders the east boundary of the Outing Club. With only the one road between us, E.Z. traversed it regular enough to come in contact with the club’s members.
Putting out fires was E.Z.’s trade. What kind of conversation does that make in a room full of gentlemen and their wit? It was my dear father who saw to my education. E.Z., on the other hand, never getting enough school for it to interfere with his animal instincts – how else do you explain walking into fires instead of running away from them as the rest of us do? I quote from a recent commendation: To Ernest Zax Ulrich, who, in the face of rising fire threat, exhibited intrepidness and skill in the wielding of an axe.
It must have been Bic, the caretaker, who made E.Z. welcome that night at the clubhouse, which is nothing more than a fancied shack with a stove and icebox under a shed roof. Midnight and E.Z. had not returned home. I walked to Bic’s house to ask of my husband. Sitting there smoking on his porch, in spite of the hour, Bic looked out at the darkness in the trees, not at me, before saying, “E.Z. got thumped on the head.”
I said, “What?”
“Knocked, hit, banged, E.Z., on the head,” Bic said, thumping a hand hard at his own skull.
“Bic, you fool, I said what because I could not believe my ears.”
“Was a bottle of whiskey,” Bic said.
“Whiskey!”
“Must of hurt some.”
It wasn’t just what Bic said. Something wasn’t right in how he said it, like he was carrying around something he could not find a place to set down. I took the steps up to his porch, which is pitched higher than most, sort of like Bic. “How bad?”
Bic shrugged and flipped over his pipe and banged it against the side of his wood chair and the embers poured down to his boot heel.
“Where is he, Bic?”
Bic shook his head and stood up. I always forget how tall he is. All that height just seems squandered on him. Even so I pushed my hand up against his chest.
“You tell me.”
“What do I know, Lottie Ulrich? I’m a fool, by your opinion.”
“I have never heard the sentiment contradicted.”
“You might find that Mr. Severin and Mr. Martin don’t say that.”
“So long as you run whiskey up from their stillery in the east woods yonder, they’ll say – ”
Bic lifted me by my shoulders so I couldn’t feel the floor beneath me. “Hold your tongue, Madam. It’s you which is the fool. You who can’t see just how small you are to them. You who will regret stirring up more damage than your husband done already.”
“What has E.Z. done?”
“E.Z. ought to have stuck to putting out fires,” he said, “not igniting them.”
I felt his spit all over my face that’s how close he had me. His hands let go and I dropped a long way because there wasn’t porch beneath me any longer.
When I did stand upright from the dirt, I saw that he had gone indoors. I ran back up the steps and commenced to banging on the locked door with everything I had, saying, “Where is E.Z.? What have you done with E.Z.?”
I heard it click. Heard it like the deer sometime do before you even cock the rifle. Now, the only marksmanship that comes close to mine in this part of the world is Bic’s. He can’t always hit in the heart, like I am well known to do, but he usually hits something. I took the steps back down off the porch and moved off.
But the next day, and at subsequent hearings, Bic testified differently than what he told me that night. He testified instead that E.Z. had struck his head on the sink when he fell to the floor. Bic had stopped all talk of bottles and whiskey.
What then, you ask, could E.Z. and I have in common? Why love of the hunt. E.Z. tracked the wild things and I was the shooter. “You aim,” E.Z. liked to say. “You don’t miss.” We favored the opossum, though I never put a bullet in one with young. On top of her back that’s how she carries them. First always to see our kill was Shirtrun. Our last, a wildcat, is still in his house, awaiting eyeballs. E.Z. and I had been tracking the thing along the property line bordering the club’s land and our land. That’s when we came upon a man I can’t say I knew. Though I didn’t get much of a look. E.Z. was already shooting and the man, he was running. Lucky for him E.Z. was firing.
The man’s stool had fallen beside a percolating device. “That’s a stillery!” E.Z. said.
“On Huron Outing Club’s land,” I made point of saying. “Not ours.”
I saw the relief in his eyes as he took me up in his arms and kissed me with all Passion. But when E.Z. stopped kissing, he looked over at the stillery again and said, “Isn’t this a marvel? Sheriff Smythe will agree.”
“This is none of your concern, E.Z.”
“I should say it is. Manufacturing of spirits is a crime against every alcohol prohibition law I know of.”
“E.Z., do you suppose you lost that wildcat before we come upon this distraction or because of it? I know you’ll be looking for something to blame.”
“Who says I lost the wildcat?”
E.Z. did catch the cat’s track again, and I shot the animal dead.
This is what that Bic O’Hare testified at the inquest: “Ulrich weren’t feeling sharp and had gone in the clubhouse kitchen for a drink of water. Not a minute later he toppled to the floor.”
It’s how Bic first said to me what he said about the whiskey bottle then changed his story at the inquest that puts that day hunting wildcat with E.Z. now in mind. Not just now but then, too, as I turned away from Bic’s porch that night and stepped back into the surrounding woods. That day hunting wildcat set out in front of me like E.Z.’s backside when he’s tracking, leading me through the faint sounds of moonless woods.
In time I came upon the house of County Coroner Shirtrun (his property also borders the Outing Club land but on the western line), who was then still just Shirtrun to me. Me banging at his door. Shirtrun opening it, hanging from his neck a white apron with a yellowish stain across the front that smelled of floral and carapace. Me thinking, where is E.Z.? Is he hurt badly? But only saying, “You set up the wildcat?”
Shirtrun saying, “You can have him, but without the eyes. I’m still waiting on them from Detroit Taxidermy.”
“Well, I regret to bother you at this hour.”
Him saying, “It’s no bother, Lottie Ulrich,” stopping still a moment to look out at me standing out in the darkness. “You have heard about E.Z?”
“I have been told that he was struck by a bottle of whiskey but I am no closer to his whereabouts.” Shirtrun told me then that he had been asked but a few hours before by two of the esteemed gentleman to Embalm the dead Body of E.Z. Ulrich.
I came awake inside Shirtrun’s house by virtue of the salts. Shirtrun down on one knee, waving the jar under my nose. He must have carried me inside and set me on the chair. The light strange in the room, waxy with gas lamps instead of the electrical we all have grown accustomed to. A long flat table with channels on either side, pails hanging off to catch. On a lone shelf above the table was the wildcat, mounted now and leaping eyeless into space.
“Lottie,” Shirtrun said, leaning back, screwing the cap back on the salts, “I believed you knew.”
“Of course you did,” I said. “He’s not here?”
“No, they took the Body with them in order to put it in the ground. Owing to the Temperatures.”
“Is it in the ground now?”
He looked down and shook his head. “I only know they dug a hole. Where, I don’t know.”
I do not recall how things went after that, but next I remember, I’m out in the night again, running through the woods and tripping over roots and striking my head against the trunk of a tree on my way to the town cemetery. Looking there, and elsewhere, for E.Z.’s Body, but that night I never did find it.
Bic further testified at the inquest that after E.Z. toppled to the floor, the esteemed gentleman Mr. Martin tried without success to revive my husband. Also assisting was Mr. Severin, who noted, “E.Z. had a weak purse.” I believe what the gentleman had meant to say was pulse, weak pulse.
Early morning light gave contour to the pines. Otherwise I might have walked right past the stillery. The stillery all but undone across the floor of needles. Someone had gone and chopped it up by axe. I recalled what Bic had said in the night, “E.Z. ought to have stuck to putting out fires, not igniting them.” E.Z. used his axe for just such purpose when called upon by our Fire Chief to create a firebreak in the trees. By the looks of the chopped-up stillery, Passion had gotten the better of E.Z. again.
Passion ruled E.Z. Reason being slow to take hold. That is, with the exception of our baby. Never sleeping, our little baby. Remaining calm with him, so calm, that’s what E.Z. excelled at, never once giving over to temper. Our baby, he never was strong. Why, even dozing off seemed to take more out of him than lying wake, eyes studying the darkness rising up the nursery wall.
Across from me now sits the good judge, beside him the six members of the jury, watching as the judicators educe the evidence and testimony. Now the esteemed gentlemen are led into the courtroom by County Sheriff Smythe, and I cannot help but marvel at all these men assembled on my behalf!
They pass by me with gentlemanly nods before taking their seats.
Up to now E.Z. had not dared to cross the threshold of the nursery. When he finally did have a mind to come in for our baby, I took aim. That was more than two years ago, and even now I cannot comprehend what business my rifle had in a baby’s nursery. Hit that man in the heart.
“Citing foul play, the Ulrich widow has cause to bring this matter to court,” says the good judge. The first issue at hand is the autopsy. Whether or not to proceed with it.
Is there any hiding such a wound from autopsy? Did Shirtrun see it when he plied his trade with the Body? Did he know it was me that shot him? Could it be anyone else? My signature is a shot straight in the heart. A heart shot being the preferred one for mounting an animal so as to preserve facial features.
Even a shot in the heart didn’t stop E.Z. “You have got to give him up,” he said, coming in for our baby, still coming in, blood running through his fingers pressing against his heart, hand reaching out for our baby. “It’s time, Charlotte. He’s been gone past three weeks now. It’s time for him to return to where he came.”
How the courtroom becomes unsettled when I request – insist – that no autopsy be performed.
E.Z. survived my shot to the heart because this time, this one time, I was off. The bullet imbedding instead in the meat beneath the collared bone. I fixed up E.Z. best I might but that bullet stayed lodged. Should he perform autopsy, Shirtrun would know it was my gun that made the wound on E.Z., having removed my bullets from every one of my kills.
The judge has taken to chastising me now. “Ulrich widow,” he says, “this is not your parlor room. Such precocity will not be endured in my courtroom.” He turned to Shirtrun. “Coroner, you are now ordered to perform the autopsy.”
Now and again E.Z. asking me, “Lottie, what will you put on the stone?”
“Just give him a proper burial,” I tell the good judge though he has not granted me leave to speak. “That’s all I’m asking. That it’s done proper.” I look up at the man. I say, “It’s time.”
I pass Sheriff Smythe as I am led from the stand and he takes his place upon it. I hear him make the following testimony, “Yesterday, I discovered an intact and functioning still on Ulrich land.”
Everyone looking at me now. Me not hiding my surprise.
Someone has caused me to appear guilty of bootlegging!
I take council.
“That stillery belongs to the members of the Huron Outing Club,” I say. “I know this because E.Z. axed it in pieces, which doubtless prompted an altercation between him and its members that night.”
I am advised to dismiss my charges of foul play against the defendants. I do so on the condition that I am cleared of all connection to the stillery. All charges are dismissed.
Nevertheless, the esteemed gentlemen want their names cleared. The judge orders the impaneled jury to hear the testimony of Coroner Shirtrun whose autopsy found no evidence of foul play. By unanimous vote, the jury reaches the verdict that Ernest Zax Ulrich died of unknown causes. The defendants, Severin, Martin and O’Hare, cleared of all suspicion, their good names reinstated, express their condolences to the widow.
“What will you put on the stone?” E.Z. eternally patient for my answer.
I will put this on the stone: Michael Montgomery Ulrich, born to Ernest Zax Ulrich and Charlotte Leigh Ulrich on July 16, 1923. Died September 31, 1924.
This testimony made in good faith by Charlotte Ulrich, in the Township of Onaway, in the state of Michigan.
For Public Record.
Mary Kuryla has had short stories in Alligator Juniper, The New Orleans Review, The Greensboro Review, and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses XXIII. This is her second appearance in Alaska Quarterly Review.