My first time working for my new employer, I had yet to see a day of sun since the Mississippi. The train had arrived in a cloud of low-hanging, foul black soot that matched the smiling mouths of some fellow patrons I tipped my head to along the way. What had been a normal blend of city English at St. Louis, sprawled out into tongues I barely understood during the wagon ride between trains Independence and Kansas City where I boarded the true train to the West. What once were quaint stations became barely more than cattle shelters with benches while postal service hooks on water towers cast shadows on our brief respites.

My employer, a Mr. Asher, retrieved me the night before and seized my letters of employment and reference as I settled into a straw and horsehair filled mattress on a floor in his attic room, dreaming of my exciting new life in this great land of promised “Manifest Destiny.”

It was a photoshoot for a family back east, somewhere near Philadelphia. In the adjacent room, the undertaker and his wife set to work while we set up the front room. “I’ve never seen a dead body before,” I confided in a whisper.

“Why’s that?” The undertaker hesitated beside me, encouraging me.

Having grown up in the North I’d never thought it strange. “All of my grandparents departed prior to my birth. I never quite had the opportunity, I guess,” I responded.

He laughed as I unloaded flowers from our wagon, trying to avoid the piles of horse manure accumulating outside the door near the hitching post. I arranged the marigolds and chrysanthemums and watched him.

We too were watched. As we worked, the deceased’s sister caught a glimpse of us as she scowled at the lower floors. The undertaker excused himself after adjusting the wooden table once more in relation to the door and fireplace. “Body can’t get too hot – we need to prevent too much airflow while still keeping it cold. Embalming fluids ain’t magic.”

I studied him. “Why are you not using Mr. Gates’s name?”

He passed me a sympathetic tobacco-stained smile. “Well, because Mr. Gates isn’t there anymore. It’s just the form he used to be in.” His voice had a drawl.

I blinked and stared. “What do you mean? He’s still Mr. Gates.”

The undertaker laughed and shook his head. “No, no. That’s what he used to be. Now, Mr. Gates is any number of things, depending.”

After a pause, I looked toward the body in the other room and asked, ”How did Mr. Gates die?”

He coughed and looked away. “Heard there was some kind of accident…”

A clatter behind me signaled it was time to hurry back to work. I returned to finish setting up the room for the deceased’s family and the photographer. As my employer approached, he shoved a written list and a small dish with incense into my hands as they emerged from his coat. “I’ll need you to follow the instructions during the exposure to get this right. They need a picture with the smoke rising out of the chest of Mr. Gates. This means that you will need to hide under the table. When we start the exposure move your arm and the dish out while the incense is burning. This is important for the family back home and the lawyer.”

I hurried through the remaining tasks of staging and arranging the painted backdrop. A painted canvas provided the bucolic outdoor scene the relatives expect behind a false window prop. “We want to make sure the family back east think he went in the easiest, most peaceful of ways.” In reality, howling winds ripped through the canyons while bands of cold rain left the town outside with muddy streets. This year would have a shorter growing season than last. But the wealthy Mr. Gates could afford to paint a lie in death for those that mourn without knowing the truth.

After the eighth black lace tablecloth, a strange sound, such that I could only imagine as a leaking clogged bellow came from the other room. I jumped and ran to the door, “whatever is..?”

There was Mr. Gates. Or rather what was him. He lay in the oiled wooden box fashioned by a cabinet maker, so much fancier than what I’d imagined. The maker’s brand burned into the small outer side to be seen by none after today.

“Told you, it’s not him.” The undertaker walked in from the opposing side of the room, seeing my presence. “Couldn’t wait?”

“I heard a strange sound and thought something had happened. It was loud and I…” I continued to stare at the thing that was no longer Mr. Gates.

“Dead bodies make sounds. Part of the process. I can delay the demands of death long enough for photographs and women, but not forever.” He wrung his hands with a lotion and powder before adjusting the hair on Mr. Gates’s head and adding a bible and rosary to his hands.

“I can help with that if you want to bring him into the parlor room. We’re getting ready to start.” I looked back through the door I left cracked as my employer began taking test shots with the other assistant and running to develop each one.

He nodded and grabbed the carpenter and his son to help move the box to the table. In the final test exposures, we surrounded Mr. Gates’s body with potted flowers inside the casket and placed a bouquet under his hands. I  stared at this empty vessel. This decaying thing. No longer human.

With the curtains drawn to the correct brightness, the two women in all black with an occasional white ruffle entered the room. His widow, her veil drawn over her face, a shade I’d never before seen, lotioned and powdered her hands before slipping on black gloves near a bowl of water at the corner of the room near the stairs. The sister, her lips pursed, insisted that the prayer benches be moved against the table so they could kneel with the late husband and brother. Each had large crosses to hold. They dabbed their dry eyes with black lace handkerchiefs, holding that position for several minutes. Their free hands braced their entire bodies with the armrest of the prayer benches for the exposure’s duration against the random gunshot and other stray sounds from outside.

After several exposures, we began the narrative photograph with special instructions. What was so important that the women weren’t to know I was under the table? I lit a small piece of wood with one of the candles and dropped it in an incense dish, retreating. As I crouched beneath the table cloth, I covered it with my hand until I knew it was time. As my employer told the widow and sister to bow their heads, I reached my hand out from under the cloth, holding the smoke under the corpse’s chest.

As we cleaned up and left the room set up for the wake, I heard the photographer mention, “You did good work today.”

“Thank you, Mr. Asher,” I nodded while packing equipment into the wagon.

“Do you think those women are actually sad that the man’s dead?” He laughed back at me. “They’re getting a lot of money since his will reads ‘Upon proof that my spirit has left my body’…”

“What’d Mr. Gates die from?”

“Having too much money and not enough good common sense.” He grinned.

“I’m not sure someone actually dies from that.” I protested as he winked.

“This is a frontier town. I’m only involved if there’s been a birth, a death, or a marriage. We see plenty of that and a little of some at the same time.” With that he clicked his tongue and shook the reins, encouraging the horses to go.

Turning to look back, I watched the house where I learned the difference between a human and a corpse disappear into the distance. Looking at the darkening eastern horizon, my childhood home and everything I knew – all now lifetimes away.