Bring me the light, he said.

Come and get it.

Goddamn, can’t you do anything?

I don’t want to see. Come and get it.

Silence. The soft sough of the windy rain in the trees. He said something indecipherable and clambered up out of the grave all gummed with mud and his claycovered boots outsized and clownish and crossed between the stones, a grotesque figure halfcomic here in this township of the dead. He wordlessly took the light and descended again into the grave. When the spade struck the casket this time she stopped her ears with the flat of her hands but she could still hear the wrench when the lid came free.

Nothing for some time. Then he came up to the gravestone and hunkered there in the rain. There was a ragged sound to his breathing but she couldn’t tell if he was crying or just out of breath.

What we thought?

Yes. Worse. The son of a bitch—

She leant forward abruptly and stopped his mouth hard with the palm of her hand and they just sat there, his dark face like rainwashed stone and his wide frightened eyes burning palely out of the dark.



On the last mild morning of an impending winter and on what was one of the last peaceful days of his life, Fenton Breeceame out of his undertaking establishment and stood for a moment on the edge of his manicured lawn just breathing deeply the morning air. He looked about and there was reassurance in all he saw on this December morning in the year of our Lord nineteen-fifty-one. Past the glass sign that told in gothic script breece funeral home he could see the intersection of Oak and Maple, and on opposing corners there were three churches. The Centre Church of Christ, the Cumberland Presbyterian, the First Methodist. He had stood so as a child with his father’s hand clasping his own and he had no reason to doubt it would always be so.

The trees had bared and even as he stood listening to the distant sounds of commerce from the town a few last gold maple leaves drifted with the breeze. Winter was coming. He exulted in this knowledge, there was something warm and comforting about it. He’d live in his own cozy rooms, venturing out only when he had to, as comfortable as Badger from Wind in the Willows. He’d see few people, and most of them would not see him back, business was always good in the winter, old folks were always going to sleep and just not waking up.

Here in this land of Duck Head overalls and felt hats he was a model of sartorial elegance. He wore a fawncolored topcoat over a tan gabardine suit with a matching vest buttoned over his wellfed belly and an offwhite shirt with a green tie of iridescent watermarked silk. He wore a brown Stetson with a rolled brim and a flat crown, and he carried an umbrella though there was no cloud in sight.

He looked at his watch. It was time for his morning coffee break. He figured he’d take it at the Bellystretcher Café this morning, and he leisurely ambled that way. Townfolk he met nodded formally to him. Sometimes if they were women whoappealed to him in some way and whose death he anticipated with relish he’d tip the Stetson and watch their eyes skitter away to somewhere else and they’d hurriedly walk on.

Folks were always doing that. Their eyes would sidle away to study intently something they hadn’t noticed a moment before. They had been known to cross the street to avoid meeting him. Some loathsome bird. His penguinlike waddle, some dark and unlovely bird of paradise. He’d smile his one-size-fits-all smile. That’s all right, he would think.