I stared at the closed door. There was a guy who wanted to kill himself with the means and motive outside. How did Frankie expect minimum wage me to keep an eye on him? I turned to look at him through the window. The man stood in front of a mound of settling dirt. In profile, I saw his hands clasped in front of him. His head was down.
“Don’t do it, dude,” I said. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but I figured I needed to say it. I needed some sort of confirmation that I didn’t want this guy to kill himself. There would be no way to get out there in time, even if I moved as soon as I saw him move. And what if he went to his car just to drive away? What if I went out and started yelling and he looked at me like I was being a jackass? The man wasn’t moving and I relaxed a little. Frankie was just trying to play it safe. That was all. I pulled a stool over and sat.
I wondered what the guy did. He was probably single, lived alone. He probably had a crappy job, too. Maybe he worked at the movie theater and picked up after all the high school kids on Friday nights. More than once I’d sat in a seat surrounded by the distinct aroma of come and it made me feel for the guy, if he did work there. I also wondered how people got away with that.
So he lived alone and worked a crappy minimum wage job. What about his family? Did they live in town, too? Probably not. If they did, he could’ve holed up there. I continued to stare.
On the television, a newswoman interrupted with a weather update. A storm, the blonde in a tight red dress said, was coming. It’d hit within the hour. Good. It’d clear the guy out. Unless he was into horror movies. A suicide in the rain would be something perfect and gory like that.
Most of me hoped he wouldn’t do anything. Most. Part of me wanted him to. Maybe not all the way, but at least start to so I could stop him. Even if I couldn’t get to him, I could distract him until I did get there. That’s what I could do. Then I’d need to call the cops. The local news would find out. I’d be interviewed. Screw driving the tractor, that would single-handedly be the best thing to happen in the graveyard all summer. Maybe all decade.
I could see the headlines. Home for summer, local man saves another. Virgin mary School Alumnus a Hero. No time for panic for local man. A grave situation at Mount Olive Cemetery. The newspapers would be all over it. The New York stations would probably send someone out. I could be on the five o’clock news. I’d be a hero.
