Read Online Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish - Free Book Online
Authors: Kris Radish
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meet at the airport?” Katherine asks finally to move them on, because she is in charge of moving the flock, at least for now. “Will you need anything at all?”
Laura wants to leave for the airport right away. She wants to run from her house wearing only what she has on and get to it. She is already seeing vistas across a New Mexico plateau and the mist rising from a stand of tall grass near a Seattle island. She is already holding the hands of her traveling funeral comrades and she wants to see it all, do it all immediately. She cannot wait. She wants to hurry. Somehow, she knows, she’ll figure out how to escape her job, her husband, the cold Chicago spring.
“I want to write while we do this,” she says spontaneously.
“Write?”
“This is going to be remarkable,” Laura says. “Not just for honoring Annie, but also for what will happen to us and what we might discover. So I want to keep some kind of diary, journal, design a movie script—whatever in the hell it turns out to be.”
“She’d love that,” Katherine almost screams. “She’d love the writing part.”
“I have no clue but let me start now. I’ll start with this conversation and see what happens and I will move a truck with my bare hands to get to the airport.”
“Can you do it?” Katherine asks again.
“I can do it, baby.”
Laura does not know how. It will seem impossible in just a few moments, in an hour and for several days and even after the funeral procession has changed direction. But she is certain, totally certain, that she will be at the airport in seven days.
Then the conversation ends quickly because the time is moving from one zone to the next fast and two more women are waiting and Laura Westma needs to go to the bathroom, unpack her groceries, and make plans for a traveling funeral.
One thing at a time. One thing at a time.
7
Laura and Annie
Chicago, Illinois, 1987
----
Annie waited 43.8 minutes before she called. Minutes, all 43.8 of them, that were the longest she had ever spent in her entire life.
Almost as long as the minutes when a man once tried to kill her.
A man she remembers having seen only during a lecture on political activism she was giving at the University of Chicago during her four-month sabbatical in the fall semester. She remembers him because he paced constantly during the lecture, rising and falling in the back of the auditorium like one of those moving targets at a carnival that you get to keep if your quarter lands inside of its head or you pop out its eyes with the air gun.
“How strange,” she remembered telling herself during that lecture and again later when she was safe, when it was over and when one part of her life was forever changed. “Why doesn’t he sit down? He’s driving me crazy.”
Driving her crazy.
And then without knowing who or why or what was happening, strange objects began appearing on her car window and outside her office door where she had been given research space, where students lined up every day to see her for just a few minutes, where she spent so many hours each day she considered moving out of her campus housing unit and sleeping on the ancient office couch.
Rubber knives. A glass of wine. Slippers. Then the notes started.
“I could tell you about killing. I could show you.”
“We know what you really mean.”
“Three times and once times 100 and then the end will flatten us like nothing. You will see.”
At first it was funny but then the phone started ringing when she was in the office at 12:30 A.M . or at 5 A.M . when it should not have been ringing. There would be a voice on the line, a man’s deep cough, a rough whisper, the sounds of something—metal maybe—and then fear rising in her throat as she began to think that maybe none of this was random. Maybe none of this was random at all.
Annie G. Freeman was no campus kid the year she took her four-month sabbatical. She was thirty-eight years old and her two boys came with her and
Laura wants to leave for the airport right away. She wants to run from her house wearing only what she has on and get to it. She is already seeing vistas across a New Mexico plateau and the mist rising from a stand of tall grass near a Seattle island. She is already holding the hands of her traveling funeral comrades and she wants to see it all, do it all immediately. She cannot wait. She wants to hurry. Somehow, she knows, she’ll figure out how to escape her job, her husband, the cold Chicago spring.
“I want to write while we do this,” she says spontaneously.
“Write?”
“This is going to be remarkable,” Laura says. “Not just for honoring Annie, but also for what will happen to us and what we might discover. So I want to keep some kind of diary, journal, design a movie script—whatever in the hell it turns out to be.”
“She’d love that,” Katherine almost screams. “She’d love the writing part.”
“I have no clue but let me start now. I’ll start with this conversation and see what happens and I will move a truck with my bare hands to get to the airport.”
“Can you do it?” Katherine asks again.
“I can do it, baby.”
Laura does not know how. It will seem impossible in just a few moments, in an hour and for several days and even after the funeral procession has changed direction. But she is certain, totally certain, that she will be at the airport in seven days.
Then the conversation ends quickly because the time is moving from one zone to the next fast and two more women are waiting and Laura Westma needs to go to the bathroom, unpack her groceries, and make plans for a traveling funeral.
One thing at a time. One thing at a time.
7
Laura and Annie
Chicago, Illinois, 1987
----
Annie waited 43.8 minutes before she called. Minutes, all 43.8 of them, that were the longest she had ever spent in her entire life.
Almost as long as the minutes when a man once tried to kill her.
A man she remembers having seen only during a lecture on political activism she was giving at the University of Chicago during her four-month sabbatical in the fall semester. She remembers him because he paced constantly during the lecture, rising and falling in the back of the auditorium like one of those moving targets at a carnival that you get to keep if your quarter lands inside of its head or you pop out its eyes with the air gun.
“How strange,” she remembered telling herself during that lecture and again later when she was safe, when it was over and when one part of her life was forever changed. “Why doesn’t he sit down? He’s driving me crazy.”
Driving her crazy.
And then without knowing who or why or what was happening, strange objects began appearing on her car window and outside her office door where she had been given research space, where students lined up every day to see her for just a few minutes, where she spent so many hours each day she considered moving out of her campus housing unit and sleeping on the ancient office couch.
Rubber knives. A glass of wine. Slippers. Then the notes started.
“I could tell you about killing. I could show you.”
“We know what you really mean.”
“Three times and once times 100 and then the end will flatten us like nothing. You will see.”
At first it was funny but then the phone started ringing when she was in the office at 12:30 A.M . or at 5 A.M . when it should not have been ringing. There would be a voice on the line, a man’s deep cough, a rough whisper, the sounds of something—metal maybe—and then fear rising in her throat as she began to think that maybe none of this was random. Maybe none of this was random at all.
Annie G. Freeman was no campus kid the year she took her four-month sabbatical. She was thirty-eight years old and her two boys came with her and
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