On a Friday in 1936
Irene Lowe died on a Friday in 1936.
She went out dreaming.
We have decided this, those of us who care. We have decided, as a group, Irene dreamed as she went.
Why not? It’s our story to tell.
And by mid-afternoon on a 1936 Friday, Irene’s dreams ended; she was dead. It would take some time, into the next day’s early hours, before family knew; before Bucky, her boyfriend, would be handcuffed and taken to jail; before his utterances would make it clear Irene was pregnant and the unborn baby, his son or his daughter, was dead, too.
Dead. Dead. And arrested.
Then, Saturday’s mid-afternoon shows up. Irene’s body is unmoved, exactly where she dreamed her last dream is where she remains. To the uniformed policeman whose beat was Hell’s Kitchen and the rat-hole railroad apartments where people tried to live, this did not seem especially odd. Sometimes it just took a while. Sometimes there were more stabbings and beatings unto death in public brawls than the medical examiner’s office could get around to in a single night. And they, public officials, did not move bodies until the coroner had a look.
We have decided that some while back, but still in the thirties, this particular hold up in the normal flow of corpses to the morgue stumbled into some bad press. No one had forgotten the build-up of bodies during the flu pandemic — hardly a dozen years had passed since the horrors of 1918-19. Rumors of uncollected bodies in tenements might set snooping do-gooder types off in some investigative frenzy, not to mention a desire on the part of those less good but rich-off-the-spoils-of-corruption public officials to keep distasteful topics out of their wive’s parlors.
A buffer seemed required; a new wrinkle in proceedure was deemed necessary: ”positive identification by a family member” was the answer. Requiring a family member to I.D. a dead body put the Uncollected Bodies issue one step removed from law enforcement, public employees and, most importantly, elected officials. Of course, there were parameters — officials would not expect a body be left in a rat-hole apartment indefinitely while a brother or cousin traveled in from Kansas. Or Hollywood, California.
How unusual for the narrator to be WE. It adds another mystery to the death.
You have made this reader wonder about several things in these few paragraphs. I want to know why WE know she was dreaming, what about this death spoke murder to the police causing them to arrest the boyfriend who I am guessing is NOT the murderer, and what elected official will become involved?
Yes, this is an interesting case.