As I sat in the thicket of traffic waiting to move back past the protest site toward Lake Shore Drive, I nodded off several times. By the time I reached Isaiah Sommers’s house in Avalon Park, I was thick with sleepiness. I was almost twenty minutes late, though. He swallowed his annoyance as best he could, but it wouldn’t do for me to fall asleep in front of him.
II Cash on the Coffin
When did your aunt give the policy to the funeral home?” I shifted on the couch, the heavy plastic covering the upholstery crinkling as I moved.
“On the Wednesday. My uncle passed on the Tuesday. They came for the body in the morning, but before they would collect it, they wanted proof that she could pay for the funeral. Which was scheduled for the Saturday. My mother had gone over to be with my aunt, and she found the policy in Uncle Aaron’s papers just like we knew it would be. He was methodical in everything he did, great and small, and he was methodical in his documents, as well.”
Sommers massaged his neck with his square hands. He was a lathe operator for the Docherty Engineering Works; his neck and shoulder muscles were bunched from leaning over a machine every day. “Then, like I said, when my aunt got to the church on Saturday they told her they weren’t starting the funeral until she came up with the money.”
“So after they took your uncle’s body on Wednesday, the funeral parlor must have called the policy number in to the company, who told them that the policy had already been cashed. What a horrible experience for all of you. Did the funeral director know who the money had been paid to?”
“That’s just my point.” Sommers pounded his fist on his knee. “They said it was to my aunt. And that they wouldn’t do the funeral-well, I told you all that.”