It’s an odd story.  A story my father used to tell.  Said he first heard it from an old man who used to live in the East Bottoms.  No telling where he heard it from.  It’s about this guy that shows up in this little town.  First person who can remember seeing him is the undertaker.  Come to think about it, I suppose the undertaker was the only one who ever saw him.

He was this odd fellow.  Short.  Didn’t really make eye contact.  Not completely.  It was as if he was always looking around for something else.  Something that he might’ve lost a long time ago and was always hoping it would show up.  Maybe where he least expected it.  Someplace where he had never been.

He walks into the undertaker’s and says he wants to buy 532 caskets.  532.  In all sizes.  Says he’s willing to pay twice for what each one is worth.  Now that was a lot of money.  Cash in advance for the first one, and then cash in advance for each one after that.  So the undertaker says he would.  Because, like I said, it was a lot of money.

532.  It’s such an odd amount.  It was odd, but at the same time it was almost familiar.  And then it occurs to him.  It’s the town’s population.  And so he checks it.  But it wasn’t.  Not exactly.  But then the undertaker gets to thinking about it, and he starts thinking about everybody that’s moved in and moved away since the last census.  Everybody that had been born.  Everybody who had died.  Because it wasn’t a very big town, after all.  And the amount he came up with was right at 532.  Close enough that he just couldn’t be sure.  After all, there was really no way to count some of the families out in the Wilderness.  And the more he got to thinking about it, the more he was sure that it was the entire population of the town.  Everybody.  Every man, woman, and child.

But he makes the first casket just the same.  After all, it had been paid for.  Took him about a day.  It wasn’t fancy.  Mostly just a box.  Lined the inside with cloth, but nothing special.  If the stranger would’ve wanted special, he probably would’ve gone somewhere else.

But you see, here’s the thing.  The minute he gets it done, someone dies.  And when he gets the next one done, someone else dies.  In fact, every time he gets one finished, someone else shoves off.  Of course, the undertaker didn’t put it together at first.  I mean, people die.  But after about the third one, he starts to figure it out.  After all, not that many people die.  Not every day.

And every time he finishes a casket, the stranger shows up and pays for another.  And another.  And another.  But the undertaker keeps making the caskets just the same.  He does this for about a year and a half.  Steady.  Until the only casket left to make is his own.  Like clockwork, the stranger shows up and pays him to make that one, too.  And, of course, he makes it.