When Life Backs You Into a Corner You Bark Back.

1

Sanctuary Gardens, Green Reef

Behind Martha, Jerry’s phone beeped again. A woman in the opposite row of mourners frowned and leveled a look in his direction.

Jerry sighed again. “Blocked. That’s the fifth one.”

Martha rubbed her thumb against her skirt as she did when annoyed. “Could you at least set that thing to vibrate mode?” she whispered without fully turning.

She kept her eyes on the priest and the wind blowing against the Banyan tree branches, its roar almost drowning out the priest’s words. His white robe fluttered one way, like an oversized flag, the silk hugging his round calves. He seemed like he didn’t skip leg day. Martha had never seen a priest, or was this a shaman? Built like this.

He cupped the urn of ashes between his hands, his head angled up, eyes closed as he chanted what Martha supposed was a prayer. To whom she didn’t know.

George was a weird guy. She’d known him since college, but wished she’d known this spiritual side of him before his death. Or maybe not. Now that she thought about it, Martha vaguely remembered his ramblings about “finding the light” after a trip to South America. And she, like the dozens of times George had come to her with a newly discovered life wisdom, tuned him out.

The shaman stopped the chanting, his eyes closed but focused on something in the sky as if he saw through those wrinkled eyelids.

“You think I’d make a good priest?” Jerry, the company’s head of engineering, if you could call it that, stood behind Martha, arms crossed, staring at the shaman.

Andrell, his intern and cousin, whispered back a raspy reply, louder than whispers should be. “No.”

“Yeah, I think so too, I’d make a great priest. I’ll add that to my list.”

The priest unscrewed the urn’s lid and walked towards the small group of mourners, none with tears. Arthur, George’s older brother, stood at the front, a tuft of his salt and pepper hair rustling in the wind, brushing against the Ray-Ban glasses that hid his eyes.

“The creator makes, and the creator takes.” The shaman yelled, startling Martha out of her thoughts. At the front, a young woman standing next to Arthur flinched. Martha wasn’t sure, but the woman was likely George’s niece; she knew he had one. And, judging by how close her shoulders were to Arthur’s towering figure, she must be.

The shaman dipped a hand into the urn and took out a handful of the dead man’s ashes. Martha frowned; she’d not seen that before.

“What on earth…” Jerry muttered behind her.

The shaman threw the ashes at the first row of mourners’ heads. Arthur didn’t react. The niece recoiled, covering her mouth with her elbow.