Hide and Seek

Most seemed to have died in the mid-to-late 1800s. A lot of them were

women, and young.

"Childbirth," she said.

"Lydia, wife of John Pritchett. She died in childbed December

thirtieth, 1876, in the twenty-third year of her age. Sarah, daughter

of Mr. Jonathan Clagg, wife to William Lesley, who died thirteenth of

June 1856, in the eighteenth year of her age. That one too, maybe."

There was one that made us laugh. E//sha Bowman. Died March 21st,

1865. Aged 33 yrs, 1m, 14d. He believed that nothing but the success

of the Democratic Party would ever save this Union. There was some

good carving on the headstone.

I lit another match and looked it over. A skeleton inside a circle

described by a snake swallowing its own tail. The skeleton was

grinning. In one hand it held an apple, in the other an hourglass.

Beneath, two bats. Above, two seraphim. Pretty elaborate, I

thought,

After a while I found one I liked even better. Here lies the body of

Bill Trumbell, it read, dead in 1829. Been here and gone. Had a good

time.

Strange how even laughter has a hush to it in a place like that at

night. You talk as though there's somebody around. And maybe there

is. A hundred-year parade of mourners, for one thing, some of them

standing there just as you are now in the moonlight, thinking about the

past and loved ones gone. The aura of last rights given among simple

people who still believed in god and the devil and the Democrats.

And the people underground.

Dead of poison and measles and gunshot wounds and hard birthing. The

restless dead. You can hear them in the rustling leaves, see them in

the leaning slabs of stone.

"A virgin. Look."

I walked to where she was.

The stone was down, fallen heavily against the smaller one beside it.

Casey was bending low, a match about to burn her fingertips. I blew it

out and lit another.

We read the inscription. Here lyes the remains of Elizabeth Cotton,

Daughter of the Reverend Samuel Cotton late of Sandwich