Grave Situation (33 page)

“Mama.”

Slowly, his mother’s eyes opened
and rolled toward him. She looked pitiful, he thought, a confused
little old woman. He watched her lips part as she recognized who he
was.

“Herbie.” Her voice sounded tiny,
weak, almost inaudible. Hearing it made him cringe.

“Please.” He gently touched her
forehead. “Don’t try to talk.”

“I…I’m going back to God
now.”

The words alarmed and overwhelmed
him. He felt too much to speak. His eyes became wet.

Seeing her son’s tearful
expression, her own eyes glistened. “Don’t cry, Herbie.” With great
effort, she reached for his arm. Her hand felt skeletal, her
fingertips cold. Their touch made him shiver. “I’ll be all
right.”

Herb’s face began to
crumble.

His mother turned her head on the
pillow, gazing up at the ceiling. A trace of a smile formed on her
lips, a dreamy look in her eyes.

“It’s so beautiful,” she murmured.
“So beau…”

A soft gurgling sound came from her
throat. Her hand released his arm. Then the heart monitor let off a
piercing alarm. The line on the screen went flat.

“Mama.”

Herb stared into his mother’s face.
Her eyes were fixed wide, unblinking. It was an image that would
haunt his dreams for nights on end. As if to rouse her, he touched
her arm.

His voice cracked.
“Mama.”

A red-haired nurse rushed into the
room, breaking the moment. She checked his mother’s vitals, never
lifting her head. Herb watched her, feeling helpless. He began
shaking. No longer able to look at his mother’s face, he turned
away.

All at once, the nurse stopped and
seemed to inhale. She flipped a switch on the heart monitor and the
screen went black. When at last she looked up, her sympathetic
expression said it all. His mother was gone.

“I’m so sorry,” she
whispered.

Herb realized that he wasn’t
prepared for any of this. Suddenly, he felt the exhaustion of many
sleepless nights overtake him. Bending forward, he put his hands
over his face.

“Do you need a moment?” the nurse
asked.

His voice came out as a croak.
“No.”

He rose from the chair,
light-headed.

“I’m done,” he said and
left.

There was no time to wait for the
elevator. He rushed down the stairwell, bursting through the door
at the first floor. In the lobby, he ran wildly past people
startled by his panic. The parking lot outside was slick with rain,
shimmered with puddles.

Herb went around the side of the
hospital, panting and trembling. He leaned against the brick wall
of the building and wept.

He never noticed that the cold rain
had stopped or the break in the cloud cover, revealing a sliver of
moon.

* * *

When Herb opened his eyes again, he
saw a beautiful autumn day. Around him, birds were singing in the
trees. There was a chill in the air, a promise that winter wasn’t
too far off. The sun was bright and patches of clouds flecked the
sky. Fresh-fallen leaves carpeted the grass and the smell of their
decay mingled with wood smoke from nearby houses.

In front of Herb sat a coffin on
top of a lowering device draped with a royal blue skirt that
ruffled under the hint of a breeze. A floral arrangement spread
color across the coffin’s lid.

Slowly, he scanned the small crowd
of mourners gathered there. He stopped and focused on himself as a
young man. His face was sad and empty.

* * *

Herb held a bouquet of flowers in
one hand, while he picked distractedly at the hem of his suit coat
with his other. He knew many of the faces surrounding him.
Parishioners from his mother’s church. Her older sister, Marjorie.
Her two brothers, Pierre and Ray. A handful of cousins, nieces and
nephews. Some of their expressions were broken, others stoic and
unreadable.

As Herb looked at them, he felt the
passage of time, the unforgiveness of age. They all appeared old to
him, graying or balding. Most he hadn’t seen since childhood. Would
he see any of them again?

The graveside service was short and
decorous—his mother’s dying wish. No one revealed that she had
grown up in a small village in Quebec, had married there, and then
migrated shortly afterward to Nova Scotia to start a family farm
with her husband. The details of her death were not mentioned. All
that was spoken was the fact that she had been a devoted Catholic
and had accepted God as her savior.

At the head of the coffin, an
elderly priest in a black chasuble began to read from his Bible. In
unison, the people bowed their heads.

“…
And as Jesus
said unto Martha, ‘I am the resurrection, and the life; he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live;

“’
And whosoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never die…’”

The priest moved forward and
anointed the coffin with holy water.

“May eternal light shine upon her,
O Lord: With Thy Saints forever, because Thou art gracious. Eternal
rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon
her: For evermore with Thy Saints, because Thou art
gracious…”

The coffin began
to descend. Inch by inch it lowered into the ground. Watching,
Herb’s eyes filled with tears. He was barely conscious of the quiet
sobbing that broke out over the crowd.
The
thought of leaving his mother alone in the coldness of the earth
made his heart ache. A nightmare. None of this could be
real.

“…
The Lord be
with you. And with thy spirit. May she rest in peace.
Amen”

With slow steps Herb walked toward
the coffin. For a moment, the world around him disappeared. He
became a little boy again, lying in bed, listening to his mother
read him bedtime stories.

Biting his lip, he tossed the
bouquet on top of the lid.

Abandoned. He felt
abandoned.

The crowd slowly started to
disperse. His mother’s sister and brothers filed past him,
muttering their condolences. As if in valediction, each gently
squeezed his arm and was gone.

Behind him he heard footsteps
rustling through the leaves. He turned around and saw his father.
Despite being in his fifties now, the man still looked rugged.
Barrel chest, broad shoulders. His hair was thin and steel-gray.
Age had brought his skin closer to the bone. His face looked
desiccated, every line and wrinkle brought out by the bright
sunshine. A crosshatch of spider veins stained his cheeks. In his
fierce gaze there seemed a cold indifference to his son’s
sorrow.

He gripped Herb’s arm. “Let’s get
the hell out of here.”

Herb flinched, afraid to move or
speak, weakened by the primal fear his father still invoked. Never
had the impulse been so strong to break free of this place and this
man.

His father’s eyes narrowed to
slits. “I said, let’s get the hell out of here. There’s work to be
done.” He tugged on his son’s arm, pulling him forward. It was at
that moment that Herb smelled the booze. “And don’t make a scene
either.”

* * *

Throat working, Herb snapped out of
the daydream. Once more he stared at the granite marker before
him.

“You should’ve never left me alone
with him,” he brooded softly. “Why did he hate me so much? A
helpless child. I don’t think you realized how badly I suffered at
his hands. The childhood that I lost. The scars I still have to
this day.”

Briefly, Herb touched his
eyes.

“I often wondered how you could’ve
loved a man like him. Did you see someone I never did? I don’t
understand how you could’ve been happy in that home? Were you
afraid of what he might’ve done to you if you left him? Or did you
believe divorce was a sin? How could any loving God not
understand?”

Herb paused for a moment. The tears
in his eyes were not only those of the eighteen-year-old boy who
had lost his mother, but they were also those of the thirty-six
year old man who now saw his life in the same mess as it was
then.

As Herb turned to the empty plot
beside him, a sudden image, like a flashbulb, burst onto his
mind—his father’s head at his feet, stricken eyes gazing up at him,
a stream of blood trickling from his parted lips.

Herb momentarily closed his eyes
against the image. Only then did the tears roll down his face. One
last time he reached down and touched the marker.

“Good-bye, Mama,” he said. “You
won’t see my face in Heaven. No angels will be coming for my soul.
There can be no salvation for me.”

Rising to his feet, he found it
hard to leave. When at last he did, he wiped his eyes and didn’t
look back.

He followed a gravel path that led
to the rear of the cemetery. He took his time, reading inscriptions
and searching for the grave he had come here for. Soon he entered
an area where the headstones were oddly similar—tilted, yellow
slabs that looked ready to fall over. He walked slowly among them.
All he could hear was his breath, the susurrus of his footsteps
through the grass.

Crusts of lichen hid many of the
inscriptions. Pits made other markings barely readable. Looking at
the dates, Herb realized that this was the oldest section of the
cemetery. Some of Acresville’s earliest inhabitants were buried
here.

For all the memories of the living,
there wasn’t a single flower on any of the graves. That struck Herb
as rather sad.

Is this how we all end up
eventually? A forgotten name etched in a stone to mark our short
stint through this world.

He moved into an area of newer
graves and at that moment he saw two caretakers about three hundred
yards ahead of him. Quickly, he retreated behind a nearby maple
tree. He leaned against the trunk, feeling the hard ridges of bark
against his body. His heart began racing.

He peeked around, watching them.
One man was raking a rectangular patch of topsoil in front of an
upright headstone of a carved angel holding a large heart. The
other man was carrying rolls of sod and setting them down next to
the grave. Nearby was a lawn tractor with an attached trailer. In
the trailer sat a portable water tank and more sod.

Herb pressed the binoculars to his
face and trained them on the headstone. He adjusted the center
dial, bringing the inscription into sharper focus.

Hector J. Walsh

Jan. 27, 1942 - May 15,
2010

In God’s Loving Care

His heart beat faster.

That’s him.

He lowered the binoculars and
looked around, trying to orient himself. He wouldn’t have the
luxury of daylight when he returned here, so he needed to memorize
the location of the grave and the easiest way to find it in the
dark.

After he did that, he gave one
final look back to the headstone.

“Well, Mister Walsh,” he
whispered. “I wonder if you had ever believed in the
resurrection?”

36

Acresville, May 19

2:35 p.m.

Allan’s head still pounded.
Shadowed by thoughts of the previous night and Cathy’s funeral
earlier, much of the drive to Acresville went by
unnoticed.

The police station was located on
Preston Street, a small, two-storied structure of brick and glass.
Allan parked in the back and then went inside.

A dispatcher led him to the chief’s
office.

“Lieutenant Stanton.” David rose
from his chair and reached out across the desk to greet him. “I’m
pleased to meet you.”

Allan mustered a smile.
“Likewise.”

Exchanging handshakes, he noticed
David’s firm grip, the smile so wide on his face that it deepened
the crinkles around his eyes.

“Where would you like to
start?”

“With the reports,” Allan replied.
“Has the autopsy results come in?”

David remained standing. “Not yet.
Fitzgerald said he’ll have them to me by the end of the
week.”

“Is the body still in his
care?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’d like to see that and
also speak with Fitzgerald, if I may?”

“I’ll arrange that.” David moved
out from behind the desk and walked toward the door. “I have an
office that you can use during your stay. Come.”

Allan followed him down a tiled
hallway to a room with a desk, fax machine, computer and filing
cabinets. A corner window afforded a view of Preston
Street.

“Everything’s in there,” David
nodded to a storage box on the desk. “I’ll make sure no one bothers
you.”

“Thank you.”

“Any questions, I’ll be in my
office.”

As David left the room, Allan went
to the desk and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Slowly, he pulled the
lid off the box and looked inside at the folders and manila
envelopes. The folders, he knew, contained the reports. The
envelopes would have the photographs.