Digging Carl

Uncle Carl died two years ago. The police found him at the foot of his front steps, harder than a carp, the morning paper in its prophylactic bag still clutched tightly in his cold, dead hand, one house shoe laying askew amongst the pansies.

Carl had been a dentist his entire adult life, never married, no kids. Kept to himself by all reports. Drove a 1999 Buick LeSabre. His funeral was quick, tasteful, though sparsely attended.

Immediately after his burial rumors began circulating among certain distant relations who, for whatever reason, chose not to attend the service, that perhaps Carl wasn't really dead. They hadn't seen the body themselves so it was possible this was just a ruse. That would explain, they argued, why Carl didn't leave them a damned dime. They especially were interested in the big white house Carl owned. Thought it should, by all rights, belong to them. They and their lawyers descended on the funeral home one cold January day, demanding that Carl be disinterred so they could assess his condition for themselves. They were aware that the president of the facility was on vacation that day and hoped the vice-president could help but he said it was beyond his legal means.

Violence ensued.

After bailing them out we told them that they could have simply come and seen Carl when he was lying in state. They called it "the big lie".

They then went to court, arguing that the six-feet-deep state was preventing them from the entitlement they so richly deserved. After sixty unsuccessful and expensive attempts they abandoned the legal fight and we all finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Then news came that Carl's body was dug up and stolen one night. No one knows who did it but from time to time a photo of Carl's corpse appears in an anonymous GoFundMe page, posed next to a photogenic dog, who is routinely described as "desperately sick and needs your money for surgery". (Though once it was an elephant with a rare disorder called "missing spine".) Sometimes Carl wears a yarmulke and is named "Faivish Finklemann", sometimes he's sporting a beehive hairdo and a pink feather boa, going by the name "Fibonacci Sequins", but it's Carl.

It's terrible how a group of ignorant, greedy people are so ethically and morally bereft that they'll insistently use the remains of an assumed dead man, one which no doubt gets slightly more redolent with each passing day, to make a few easy bucks from those with little to share, but welcome to Putin's America.

=Lefty=