Joe's Bar and Grill

Tale 4 Digging Up the Past

Freddy was a regular before I took over the bar. He is not the sharpest marble in the bag. To say the least, he is a bit naïve and gullible. He is also our resident conspiracy theorist. Every bar has one and we would not trade Freddy for any of them.

It was a Saturday when Freddy came in dressed in his Sunday finery.

"Going to a wedding Freddy?".

"Naaw, just came from a funeral."

"Hope it wasn't a loved one?"

Freddy went all thoughtful as if I had proposed something really complicated. "You know, I mean, it wasn't family, but loved one — I'm not really sure."

"This sounds like a free beer story," I assured him. He sat down and I plopped down his usual beer in front of him and asked, "So Freddy, how can you not know whether or not you just buried a loved one?"

"Well, she was my high school sweetheart, but I hadn't seen her in years. She was too young to have died. She wasn't even thirty."

"I'm so sorry Freddy," I sympathized. Freddy just stared at his beer. Freddy was deserving of the beer, but the story wasn't; so, I tried prying deeper. "I'm curious. Did you take your wife with you to the funeral?" 

"Couldn't. There was something I had to do that I didn't want her to know about."

Now the story was showing promise. Did he plan on kissing the corpse? With Freddy, anything was possible. He was known to act very irrationally sometimes and always without consideration of the consequences. I prodded, "Do tell."

"Carol was my high school sweetheart. I'm not sure what she ever saw in me. She was way out of my league – a straight 'A' student and gorgeous too. So, it didn't surprise me when she broke it off when she went away to college. She was sweet about it, but we both knew we had separate lives to live. It still hurt and in the back of my mind I was hoping we might get back together someday.

"I heard she got engaged to some rich guy back east and I figured that was the end of it. Shortly after that I started dating Sally. She was no Carol, but we were probably more compatible and marrying her seemed a lot more likely. 

"Sally and I dated for over three years. I'd just about forgotten about Carol when the week before I was going to propose to Sally, I got a letter from Carol." Freddy took a long swig from his beer and stared off into space.

Freddy's mind has a tendency to wander. I worried that he might have forgotten he was in the middle of a story so I prodded again, "The letter? What did it say, Freddy?"

"I don't know," he said as if further explanation was not required. Then, looking around the bar he realized it was required and said, "I never opened it." He gave me an earnest what-should-I-have-done look and explained, "The letter must have been an attempt to get back together and I didn't want to be tempted by it. I was about to propose to Sally. If I tried to get back with Carol, she would probably just break it off again. So, I never opened the letter. That was years ago.

"When I heard about Carol's death, I remembered I still had the unopened letter. I figured the right thing to do was to give it back to her. I would slip it into her coffin when no one was looking. That is why I didn't want Sally at the funeral. She didn't know about the letter and I didn't want her to find out about it."

I was not surprised by Freddy's explanation. He was the type. You know, really into dramatic gestures. "So, mission accomplished?" I asked.

"Sort of," he took a sip of beer. "It was a closed casket funeral. So, I went to the grave site and waited till after they'd lowered the coffin, everyone had left, and they began to fill in the grave. I ran over and quickly threw the envelope into the hole and watched them cover it up.

"I guess that story was worth a beer," I said.

"Not for me," Freddy asserted. "I'd gladly pay for this beer and a hundred more to know what was in that letter!"

I smiled and began wiping down the bar. Freddy's regrets were also no surprise. Freddy was not only the type to make dramatic gestures, he was also the type to act rashly and end up regretting it.

Freddy didn't come in on Sunday, but his friend Frank did so I asked him about Freddy.

"Didn't you hear?" Frank asked. "Freddy got arrested. Strangest thing, they got him for desecrating a grave or grave robbery or some such nonsense. They caught him in the cemetery trying to dig up his old girlfriend. Can you believe it?"