Ghost
in the Graveyard
by Tim Waggoner
You approach the black wrought-iron
gate which stretches between two squat red-brick structures
that remind you of stunted turrets. The metal sign bolted
to the brick of the turret on your left reads WEST BRANCH
BURIAL GROUND. You've been coming to this place now and
again since you were a child, over fifty years, and you
wonder why you've never noticed this sign before.
You've only been
outside the air-conditioned comfort of your Camry for a
few seconds, and even though internally your body is still
cool, your skin is beginning to react to the heavy, moist
August heat. You feel a strange, almost numbing sensation
as sweat begins to build, as if your nerve endings are in
shock from the sudden transition from cool to hot as hell.
You don't plan to be here long, you tell yourself. It shouldn't
be so bad.
You reach out
and grip one of the gate's bars. It's hot and slick in your
hand and you realize that its not metal you're touching,
but rather black paint covering the metal. Something else
you never noticed before.
You peer through
the gate and see that the grounds are as well kept as ever
-- the grass neatly trimmed, no broken tree limbs or leaves
in sight. You have no idea who takes such good care of the
place; you've never seen anyone working here. Perhaps, your
imagination offers, the place looks after itself.
The gate isn't
locked; as far as you know it never has been. You push your
way inside easily, the gate moving smooth and silent, well
made, well maintained, perhaps both. You step into the graveyard
-- or is it cemetery? You always get the two confused. Burial
ground, then. After all, that's what it said on the sign,
right? You step into the burial ground and regard the rows
of headstones. The markers are smaller than in more modern
cemeteries, certainly smaller than in the one you just left.
And while there may be less space between each stone, there's
more between each row.
You don't want
to look at the headstones, not yet, so you turn and look
at the historical marker, set on a pole on the other side
of the wall. You've never really read it before, only ever
gave it a passing glance. You wonder why the marker faces
inward instead of outward, so folks driving by might see
it and be tempted to stop and take a look. Perhaps so they
won't be tempted? Then why have a marker at all? You read,
for the first time, the marker in its entirety.
West Branch Quaker
Burial Ground. Erected 1948 in memory of Samuel and Anna
Jay Jones. The wall contains brick from the Friends meeting
house which stood across the road in active service from
1804 to 1906.
You're surprised.
A Quaker meeting house stood across the street? For a hundred
and two years? You crane your neck so you can look around
the sign. All that rests across the country road now are
small, nondescript houses that wouldn't be out of place
in any suburb. You wonder how you could live your entire
childhood here, just down the road, and never know about
the old meeting house. You wonder what happened in 1906
that spelled the church's end. Fire? Age? Or perhaps its
members simply grew old and passed away, and their progeny
moved elsewhere. You know of no other Quaker churches in
the area.
You turn away
from the sign, and look at the simple gray wooden building
in the far left corner of the burial ground. You stride
toward it, the summer heat finally starting to get to you.
This isn't the proper atmosphere for a graveyard, you think.
It should be overcast, gloomy, with a hint of a chill in
the air. You wipe sweat from your forehead with the back
of your hand, but there's too much and some drips on the
lenses of your sunglasses. You consider wiping the glasses
off, but decide instead to remove them. You carry them in
your right hand as you near the building, as if to underscore
to yourself the fact that you don't intend to stay here
long, otherwise you'd put them in your shirt pocket, right?
The trees --
you're not sure what they are, oak, elm -- seem to droop
in the heat, their leaves limp and dry. The treetops sway
in a breeze which doesn't reach down this far. Or maybe
there isn't a breeze and the trees are swaying all by themselves,
your imagination whispers. You half expect to feel a tingle
along your spine at the idea, as you would have when you
were a child. But you feel nothing. From somewhere off in
the distance comes the lazy thrum of cicadas.
You continue
toward the building, careful to avoid stepping on any graves,
not wishing to give someone in the past a shiver, you tell
yourself jokingly. The building is a simple structure, four
walls and a sloping roof, constructed from rough, weather-beaten
logs. There are two windows, unadorned, no curtains, plain
white-painted wood for frames. The left has a crack in one
of its panes. All you can see through the glass is blackness,
as if the building were filled with solid shadow. But you
know it's just a trick of the light.
The wood of the
featureless gray door is beginning to come apart in tiny
threads, as if it were woven of some sort of strange cloth.
Another historical marker here, this one affixed to the
side of the building.
1804 Quaker Meeting
House.
To commemorate
the first church erected in Baker Township, Poss County,
OH. This log replica was constructed in 1972 by the Baker
Township 4-H Club and the Greenfield area camp fire girls.
This sign you
have read before. You read it aloud to your twin nephews
the first time you brought them here, over twenty years
ago. They couldn't have been more than four, and both were
scared of going into the meeting house, so you went in first,
to check for ghosts, you said. The boys looked at you, eyes
wide with equal measures of fear and delight. And after
you came out and pronounced "No ghosts," in a solemn voice,
they repeated the phrase in awe and wonder. They walked
around the rest of the day saying "No ghosts" to everyone
they saw.
The boys graduated
college a while back, and you don't get to see them that
much, mostly just during special occasions, like today.
They looked so grown up this morning, you barely recognized
them. You know it's a cliché, but you still can't
help wondering where the time got to. Maybe it came here,
you think. After all, time has to go somewhere when it dies.
Why not here?
You grip the
rusty metal handle and shove open the door. It doesn't give
easily, and you know it's been a long time since anyone's
been in here. You step inside the meeting house -- no, the
replica -- and find that despite the heat outside, the stale
air in here is almost cool.
There's enough
light filtering in from the windows to see by, not that
there's much to look at. A half dozen crude benches made
of split logs for seats and lengths of two by fours for
legs. A lectern up front. The floor is covered with a scattering
of dust, dirt and twigs. You look upward, half expecting
to see a bat or two hanging from the crossbeams, but you
don't. Just a small black paper wasps' nest, dry and fragile.
You wonder if
anyone has actually ever used this meeting hall to hold
a service, or if it's nothing more than a kind of graveyard
tourist attraction. Perhaps the spirits who used to attend
church across the street now come here to worship, or whatever
it is the dead do. Or perhaps this isn't really a replica
at all. Perhaps this is the hall from across the street.
Perhaps this is where it came after it was no longer needed.
Your imagination
again. This is just a project some 4-H kids thought up,
or more likely some adult in charge of them. So what if
the shadows huddled in the corners seem too thick, too dark?
They're just shadows. You walk outside and pull the door
closed behind you.
You step around
to the side of the building, and there, next to the chain
link fence that serves as a rear wall for the burial ground
is an old tree -- an oak? And resting at the base of the
tree, propped against the trunk, are three small headstones,
their surfaces smooth and blurred by time and the elements,
whatever legends they once contained lost forever. The stone
is a bright green; moss, perhaps, or some sort of mildew.
You wonder why
the headstones are here. Were they placed out of the way
by whoever -- or whatever, your imagination whispers --
takes care of the burial ground? Did they fall naturally,
or were they knocked over by kids? You and your friends
never pushed over any of the stones during the times you
played here. You always thought it was because your parents
taught you it was wrong to vandalize property. Now you wonder
if it wasn't simply because you were afraid.
Maybe, your imagination
supplies, the bodies whose resting place the stones marked
had gone to dust. And with no one to stand over, the stones
fell, their purpose gone. Maybe the tree is some sort of
marker itself, a monument to the headstones' decades, perhaps
centuries, of watchful service.
And maybe it's
just a tree. You move on, walking along the fence, not ready
to look at the graves just yet. Less than two dozen feet
from the meeting house, the grass gives way to a circle
of bare earth. Another broken headstone lies face down in
the circle, and you realize that it's been jammed into a
hole, one big enough for a good-sized dog to go down. A
groundhog hole, most likely. You've seen groundhogs in here
before. One of your childhood friends, Eric Groves, used
to say the groundhogs fed on the bodies buried here. You
were always too smart to believe him, but every now and
then you couldn't help wondering.
You ask yourself
why didn't whoever it is that keeps the grass trimmed so
neatly fill in the hole with dirt rather than block it with
a headstone? The latter action seems completely out of character
for someone who otherwise takes such good care of the place.
Probably some kid's idea of a joke. You consider removing
the stone and placing it over against the tree with the
others, but you decide against it, telling yourself it's
too damn hot.
You walk past
the hole, thinking of the fun Eric Groves would have had
making up stories about it to scare everyone. You wonder
where Eric is now. Last you heard, he was a chemical engineer
living in Texas. But that was years ago.
You think of
all the things you and your friends used to do here. You
would race weaving in and out among the gravestones, tell
ghost stories to try to scare one another, and when it was
dark -- or rather dusk, for none of you would dare stay
here once the sun was all the way down -- you'd catch lightning
bugs or better yet, play ghost in the graveyard.
You're not even
sure you can remember the rules of the game. It was some
version of tag, except the person who was it was the ghost,
and whenever the ghost touched someone, that kid had to
fall down and lie still, eyes closed. The last person to
be touched was the new ghost. Or something like that. It
was really fun to play in full darkness, you recall, because
it was harder to tag people, plus you ran the risk of tripping
over the "dead" bodies. But playing in a real graveyard
gave the game a special thrill that more than made up for
playing at dusk.
At the time you
used to wonder if the spirits in the graves you ran laughing
and shouting over were angry at the disturbance. Now you
think they probably miss it. You know you sure do.
Jesus, but you
feel old.
You stop beneath
a tree -- an elm? -- and wipe your forehead again, but all
you do is smear sweat around. You gave up smoking when you
were twenty-one, but you wish you had a cigarette now, even
though smoking would probably just make you feel hotter.
You wished you had a cigarette this morning, too, when you
watched your father's coffin being lowered into a grave
in a much larger and nicer cemetery on the other side of
town. You tell yourself Dad's death was a blessing, that
at least it freed him from the cancer. And even though you
feel selfish for this -- after all, it's your father you
should be mourning -- you can't help feeling that your childhood
was buried along with him.
Your mother died
six years ago of congestive heart failure, and now your
father's gone too. You are officially, and irrevocably an
adult now. An aging adult with an ex-wife, no kids, and
nothing really standing between you and the long descent
into the same sort of hole that your father was planted
in today.
Is that why you
came here after the reception at your sister's place? To
say good-bye to your childhood? Maybe.
You step out
of the shade and walk toward the nearest row of gravestones.
You begin reading names and dates. John Hoover 1760-1813,
Sarah Burkett (Beloved Wife and Mother) 1767-1843, Absalom
Mast 1869-1908. Well, at least you stand a good chance of
living longer than these folk. That's something to feel
good about, isn't it?
You move on a
few rows. The headstones here are smaller and made out chalk-
white stone. The legends are at once simpler and more ornate:
Wm. S. Pearson, died 1871, 5 Mon., 12 Day, Aged 37 Y. Another
row over and the faces of the stones are soft and blank,
scoured by year after year of wind, rain and snow. You know
just how they feel.
Despite the fact
that you're wearing dress slacks, you lower yourself to
the neatly trimmed grass and sit cross-legged on the hot
ground, facing the blank stones. You wonder if some years
hence -- not as many as you'd like -- your nephews will
come come here after your funeral to say good-bye to a piece
of their childhood. You wish you'd made more time for them
when they were young, done more things with them. But it's
too late now.
As you sit and
sweat, you fancy you see letters forming on the blank gray-white
face of the stone in front of you, as if rising upward through
murky water. Letters that form a familiar name. But it's
just your imagination again. There are no letters, no name.
Just featureless stone.
You stand, your
knees protesting in a way they wouldn't have ten years ago.
Time to leave. You've got a long drive back to the city,
back to an empty condo and a boring job. Back to what passes
for your life.
And as you start
to go, you feel a cold breeze brush the back of your neck,
its sigh a dry whisper in your ear which seems to say, Tag,
you're it.
And the hell
of it is, you know you are.
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