Reverend Mooney was to conduct the service, and I was to read from the fourth chapter of Ephesians: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” I saw some of the business types exchange looks at that, as though Mr. Harrigan hadn’t shown them a great deal of kindness, or much in the way of forgiveness, either.

He wanted three hymns: “Abide With Me,” “The Old Rugged Cross,” and “In the Garden.” He wanted Reverend Mooney’s homily to last no more than ten minutes, and the Rev finished in just eight, ahead of schedule and, I believe, a personal best. Mostly the Rev just listed all the stuff Mr. Harrigan had done for Harlow, like paying to refurbish the Eureka Grange and fix up the Royal River covered bridge. He also put the fund drive for the community swimming pool over the top, the Rev said, but refused the naming privilege that went with it.

The Rev didn’t say why, but I knew. Mr. Harrigan said that allowing people to name things after you was not only absurd but undignified and ephemeral. In fifty years, he said, or even twenty, you were just a name on a plaque that everyone ignored.

Once I had done my scriptural duty, I sat in the front row with Dad, looking at the coffin with the vases of lilies at its head and foot. Mr. Harrigan’s nose stuck up like the prow of a ship. I told myself not to look at it, not to think it was funny or horrible (or both), but to remember him as he’d been. Good advice, but my eyes kept wandering back.

When the Rev finished his short talk, he raised his palm-down hand to the assembled mourners and gave the benediction. Once that was done, he said, “Those of you who would like to say a final word of goodbye may now approach the coffin.”

There was a rustle of clothes and a murmur of voices as people stood. Virginia Hatlen began to play the organ very softly, and I realized—with a strange feeling I couldn’t name then but would years later come to identify as surrealism—that it was a medley of country songs, including Ferlin Husky’s “Wings of a Dove,” Dwight Yoakam’s “I Sang Dixie,” and of course “Stand By Your Man.” So Mr. Harrigan had even left instructions for the exit music, and I thought, good for him. A line was forming, the locals in their sport coats and khakis interspersed with the New York types in suits and fancy shoes.

“What about you, Craig?” Dad murmured. “Want a last look, or are you good?”

I wanted more than that, but I couldn’t tell him. The same way I couldn’t tell him how bad I felt. It had come home to me now. It didn’t happen while I was reading the scripture, as I’d read so many other things for him, but while I was sitting and looking at his nose sticking up. Realizing that his coffin was a ship, and it was going to take him on his final voyage. One that went down into the dark. I wanted to cry, and I did cry, but later, in private. I sure didn’t want to do it here, among strangers.

“Yes, but I want to be at the end of the line. I want to be last.”

My dad, God bless him, didn’t ask me why. He just squeezed my shoulder and got into line. I went back to the vestibule, a bit uncomfortable in a sport jacket that was getting tight around the shoulders because I’d finally started to grow. When the end of the line was halfway down the main aisle and I was sure no one else was going to join it, I got behind a couple of suited guys who were talking in low tones about—wouldn’t you know it—Amazon stock.

By the time I got to the coffin, the music had stopped. The pulpit was empty. Virginia Hatlen had probably sneaked out back to have a cigarette, and the Rev would be in the vestry, taking off his robe and combing what remained of his hair. There were a few people in the vestibule, murmuring in low voices, but here in the church it was just me and Mr. Harrigan, as it had been on so many afternoons at his big house on the hill, with its views that were good but not touristy.

He was wearing a charcoal gray suit I’d never seen before. The funeral guy had rouged him a little so he’d look healthy, except healthy people don’t lie in coffins with their eyes shut and the last few minutes of daylight shining on their dead faces before they go into the earth forever. His hands were folded, making me think of the way they’d been folded when I came into his living room only days before. He looked like a life-sized doll, and I hated seeing him that way. I didn’t want to stay. I wanted fresh air. I wanted to be with my father. I wanted to go home. But I had something to do first, and I had to do it right away, because Reverend Mooney could come back from the vestry at any time.

I reached into the inside pocket of my sport coat and brought out Mr. Harrigan’s phone. The last time I’d been with him—alive, I mean, not slumped in his chair or looking like a doll in an expensive box—he’d said he was glad I’d convinced him to keep the phone. He’d said it was a good companion when he couldn’t sleep at night. The phone was password-protected—as I’ve said, he was a fast learner once something really grabbed his interest—but I knew what the password was: pirate1. I had opened it in my bedroom the night before the funeral, and had gone to the notes function. I wanted to leave him a message.

I thought about saying I love you, but that would have been wrong. I had liked him, certainly, but I’d also been a bit leery of him. I didn’t think he loved me, either. I don’t think Mr. Harrigan ever loved anyone, unless it was the mother who had raised him after his dad left (I had done my research). In the end, the note I typed was this: Working for you was a privilege. Thank you for the cards, and for the scratch-off tickets. I will miss you.

I lifted the lapel of his suit coat, trying not to touch the unbreathing surface of his chest beneath his crisp white shirt . . . but my knuckles brushed it for just a moment, and I can feel that to this day. It was hard, like wood. I tucked the phone into his inside pocket, then stepped away. Just in time, too. Reverend Mooney came out of the side door, adjusting his tie.

“Saying goodbye, Craig?”

“Yes.”

“Good. The right thing to do.” He slipped an arm around my shoulders and guided me away from the coffin. “You had a relationship with him that I’m sure a great many people would envy. Why don’t you go outside now and join your father? And if you want to do me a favor, tell Mr. Rafferty and the other pallbearers that we’ll be ready for them in just a few minutes.”

Another man had appeared in the door to the vestry, hands clasped before him. You only had to look at his black suit and white carnation to know he was a funeral parlor guy. I supposed it was his job to close the lid of the coffin and make sure it was latched down tight. A terror of death came over me at the sight of him, and I was glad to leave that place and go out into the sunshine. I didn’t tell Dad I needed a hug, but he must have seen it, because he wrapped his arms around me.

Don’t die, I thought. Please, Dad, don’t die.

* * *

The service at Elm Cemetery was better, because it was shorter and because it was outside. Mr. Harrigan’s business manager, Charles “Chick” Rafferty, spoke briefly about his client’s various philanthropies, then got a little laugh when he talked about how he, Rafferty, had had to put up with Mr. Harrigan’s “questionable taste in music.” That was really the only human touch Mr. Rafferty managed. He said he’d worked “for and with” Mr. Harrigan for thirty years, and I had no reason to doubt him, but he didn’t seem to know much about Mr. Harrigan’s human side, other than his “questionable taste” for singers like Jim Reeves, Patty Loveless, and Henson Cargill.