Lawn Of The Dead

The dead arrive from the medical examiner wrapped in a white sheet, zipped into a body bag. Buck checks for pacemakers, which need to be removed (the batteries will explode in the heat), and any jewelry or metal that the county employee may have missed. When the body is bloated in decay because it was not discovered promptly, Buck leaves it in the bag and waves a metal detector above it.

They always come with a golden identification tag, an inch long, that he hangs on one of the machine's switches before he starts the burn. Turned on, the crematorium sounds like a commercial jet engine. Unless there's a special request, everyone goes in a cheap, thin, cardboard coffin. It takes about three hours for the fire to consume skin, then fat, then muscle tissue.

The obese burn faster; the extra fat adds fuel. "It's the same as any kitchen grease fire," Buck says.

After the fire, the bones remain, white and brittle, on the crematorium's rack. Large bones, such as femurs, retain their shapes, whereas the ribs and bits of skull collapse in on themselves. Buck scrapes the bones into a container and deposits them into a processing unit, where steel blades grind the remains into gray ash.

All that's left are the nonhuman bits and pieces — fake limbs and metal plates and some things that aren't instantly recognizable — which are tossed in a white plastic bucket next to the processor. Andrew Loos points to one long, looped piece of metal. "That came out of someone's spine, I think," he notes with enthusiasm.

The fire sterilizes these pieces. Twice since Buck has worked at Heartland, a man has come to retrieve them. Buck doesn't know what the man did with the things he took. "He came recommended from another funeral home, that's all I know," Buck says. "To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure what the guy's name is."

When, after 30 days, nobody has claimed the ashes, Loos takes them to Brooking Cemetery. Should a relative ever arrive, he will at least be able to say what happened to the deceased.

"Sometimes a neighbor will find somebody after they've passed away, and sometimes you'll have a poor family member that really can't afford burial, and sometimes you'll see a family member that just doesn't want to pay for a funeral service, even though you know very well they've got the money," Loos says. "But the people we scatter are the ones that don't have anybody."

There's really no reason that he has to scatter anyone at all. He could just as easily deposit them in the trash or stack the small brown cardboard boxes in the back of a closet. It's unlikely anyone will come looking.

"Doing that would just seem so sad. To just stick them somewhere. It would be mournful," Liz says. "There has to be more to a person than that."

He chose Brooking because he knows the place will be there for a long time to come.

Brooking Cemetery is a few blocks from Heartland Cremation, deep among the Raytown ranch homes and two-story middle-class houses.

Like funeral homes, most cemeteries are family businesses. Or they used to be.

"Corporations are coming in and buying too many things now," Russ Pence says. This is the closest thing to a philosophical statement that you're likely to hear from Brooking's caretaker. "This cemetery is run by a board of directors, and they're all direct descendants of the man who started this place."

Pence parks his pickup next to a small stone fence within the cemetery's walls. He points to a large marker, gray with age.

"That tall white one, that's him. Albert Brookings. There's another place around Troost that's a Confederate cemetery, and it's named by [Confederate Gen.] Nathan Bedford Forrest. That's owned by a corporation now."

Brooking cemetery has been here for more than 150 years, the cottonwood tree in its center probably a century longer. It stands a few yards from a black columbarium no more than 4 feet tall and 6 feet long, its peak the tallest point in Brooking and, for that matter, for at least half a mile beyond in any direction.

Loos says this is the spot where he spreads the ashes when no one comes to claim them.

Brooking has always been a place where the losers have come. Because it's been kept in the family, Pence says, it's cheaper to bury here than in, say, Forest Hill Cemetery on Troost, where tombstones memorialize Hallmark founder Joyce Hall and Kansas City politician Tom Pendergast and names that now appear on city street signs. Behind the cottonwood at Brooking is an unmarked patch of grass where Pence doesn't want to dig because it's where paupers were buried during the Great Depression. In the 1930s, caretakers kept records that left things too vague for his taste: Walk three strides to the east of the cottonwood tree and John Smith is buried here.