last call

It was a late October afternoon. The sky was thick with grey clouds. The mountain foliage had turned – dark oranges, rusted reds, muted browns. The tour buses, bicycle groups, motorcycles were gone. Rain speckled our windshield then vanished under a sudden break of sun. Chris and I followed the hearse from the funeral home in Northfield, Massachusetts, to the crematory in Troy, New Hampshire. Inside a cardboard box lay my father-in-law. A traveling salesman, Richard J. Vielmetti was making his final call.

We wound along many of the same roads Richard traveled decade after decade, his Ford pick-up loaded with Raleigh home products or homemade ice cream or vacuums or donuts. Lettered on a side panel: “Everyone gets a break. One leg at a time.” Route 9, Route 119, Route 12. Humble Main Street storefronts, peeling churches, hooded teens on undersized dirt bikes, gravel roads broken up with double-wides. His kind of towns.

Daughters, nieces and nephews, he took them all on his sales calls, tried to teach them the trade. His disorganization and bumbling was his charm. The plastic sleeves of vacuum parts flew out from boxes, his truck a jumble of vacuum bags and hoses and attachments. I’d lose my head if it wasn’t screwed onto my shoulders, he'd say. At one home, he absent-mindedly snapped a tablecloth into his briefcase and headed for the door, taking the setting with him. He still made the sale. And the next one, and the one after that. Fallen leaves swirled up from beneath the hearse and washed over our hood. Thank god stories don't fit into urns.