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"I was sorry to hear of it," Mr. Smoans said.
"Yes, we all were," Midge said, looking cautiously around the half-empty chapel. A convulsion of some kind made her whole face shake, and the loose skin on her cheeks made a soft slapping noise.
"Mother," Stewie Two cautioned her.
"Yes, yes, Stewart," she said. To Mr. Smoans, she said, "It's a pity, not all of our children could be here."
Garp, of course, knew that Dopey's strained heart had already quit him, that William was lost in a war, that Cushie was a victim of making babies. Garp guessed he knew, vaguely, where poor Pooh was. To his relief, Bainbridge Percy was not in the family pew.
It was there in the pew of remaining Percys that Garp remembered another day.
"Where do we go after we die?" Cushie Percy once asked her mother. Fat Stew belched and left the kitchen. All the Percy children were there: William, whom a war was waiting for; Dopey, whose heart was gathering fat; Cushie, who could not reproduce, whose vital tubes would tangle; Stewie Two, who turned into aluminum. And only God knows what happened to Pooh. Little Garp was there, too--in the sumptuous country kitchen of the vast, grand Steering family house.
"Well, after death," Midge Steering Percy told the children--little Garp, too--"we all go to a big house, sort of like this one."
"But bigger," Stewie Two said, seriously.
"I hope so," said William, worriedly.
Dopey didn't get what was meant. Pooh was not old enough to talk. Cushie said she didn't believe it--only God knows where she went.
Garp thought of the vast, grand Steering family house--now for sale. He realized that he wanted to buy it.
"Mr. Smoans?" Midge nudged him.
"Uh," Garp said.
"The coffin, Jack," whispered the hearse driver. Stewie Two, bulging beside him, looked seriously toward the enormous casket that now housed the debris of his father.
"We need four," the driver said. "At least four."
"No, I can take one side myself," Garp said.
"Mr. Smoans looks very strong," Midge said. "Not very large, but strong."
"Mother," Stewie Two said.
"Yes, yes, Stewart," she said.
"We need four. That's all there is to it," the driver said.
Garp didn't believe it. He could lift it.
"You two on the other side," he said, "and up she goes."
A frail mutter reached Garp from the mourners at Fat Stew's funeral, aghast at the apparently unmovable casket. But Garp believed in himself. It was just death in there; of course it would be heavy--the weight of his mother, Jenny Fields, the weight of Ernie Holm, and of little Walt (who was the heaviest of all). God knows what they all weighed together, but Garp planted himself on one side of Fat Stew's gray gunboat of a coffin. He was ready.
It was Dean Bodger who volunteered to be the necessary fourth.
"I never thought you'd be here," Bodger whispered to Garp.
"Do you know Mr. Smoans?" Midge asked the dean.
"Smoans, '61," Garp said.
"Oh yes, Smoans, of course," Bodger said. And the catcher of pigeons, the bandy-legged sheriff of the Steering School, lifted his share of the coffin with Garp and the others. Thus they launched Fat Stew into another life. Or into another house, hopefully bigger.
Bodger and Garp trailed behind the stragglers limping and tottering to the cars that would transport them to the Steering cemetery. When the aged audience was no more around them, Bodger took Garp to Buster's Snack and Grill, where they sat over coffee. Bodger apparently accepted that it was Garp's habit to disguise his sex in the evening and change his name during the day.
