The Waters of Kronos Read Free

ST. JOHN’S , the last of the group, his grandfather’s church, St. John’s Lutheran. There certainly had been a lot of Lutherans around here, most of them ruled over by Pap-pa. And now the man himself lay among them, his strong tongue silenced, his humorous mind at peace, his tireless form still.
    Leaving his coat and hat in the car, the visitor walked over to the cemetery gatehouse. A guard looked up the names he mentioned, made notes on a card, then set briskly off with him in tow. It was like an army cemetery, the visitor noted, spread like a huge fan, the whole mechanically designed and executed, with graves very close together, each headed by a small marker exactly like its neighbor’s, all precise and impersonal as the tiers of an outdoor auditorium, which it resembled.
    They passed silently through the maze. Each white stone bore its number, name and year of birth and death. Nothing more. The guard consulted his card from time to time and stopped presently at white stones no different from all the rest. John Donner looked down and saw the lettering:
    Elijah S. Morgan
    1827–1899
    738
    “This is the first grave you asked for,” the guard said briefly. “I’ll wait till you’re ready and take you to the next.”
    “If you don’t mind,” the visitor said, “I’d rather be alone.”
    “Just as you say. I’m instructed to follow your wishes. You’ll note every grave is numbered. I’ve jotted down the numbers of the people you asked for. Most of them are right around here, but some are elsewhere. If you follow the numbers, you shouldn’t have too much trouble.” He handed the visitor the penciled card, then marched back the way he had come.
    John Donner waited till the sound of footsteps had died out on the grass. He looked back to the stone.
    So this was where Pap-pa was finally put to rest, with no more of a marker than anyone else, he who had baptized eleven thousand souls, worn out twelve horses, ruled three congregations and two wives. The second wife lying beside him, Palmyra H. Morgan, No. 739, had outlived him butshe had not been mother to his children or grandmother to John Donner. His real Grandmother Morgan he had never seen. Where was she now? Mary Scarlett Morgan, 1828–1867, almost lost in the shuffle, five or six graves away from her spouse, and yet she had borne all his children, dying at thirty-nine from a fall at a picnic. Her daguerreotype showed the strongest face of the family with deep-set eyes like a female Cromwell. Her grandson recalled that this was the second time her body had been moved, the first only a year or two after interment, when the monument was erected. The grave diggers had come to Pap-pa in excitement. Four men could hardly lift the coffin, they said. They were sure the body had turned to stone. They wanted permission to open the coffin. But Pap-pa had been adamant and refused.
    About him now, nearer than his first wife, lay her sisters and brothers-in-law, clergymen like himself. Here were two who had never married, Rosemary Scarlett, who, his mother told him, could recite Shakespeare by the page. She had entertained for her father when he was in the legislature at Harrisburg, and died of consumption at eighteen. Her sister, Teresa, the poetess, lived to be eighty-four, a teacher who took her school on a daily walk and more than onceheld up a hissing gander helpless by the neck till her charges were past. Her tomb down in the old Unionville cemetery had read “A lover of children.” The Scarletts were known for their epitaphs. The Rev. Timothy Scarlett, D.D., L.L.D., had on his late stone “He spoke and taught as one having authority, fervent in the spirit of the Lord,” while the stone of his brother, the Rev. Howard Scarlett, D.D., Ph.D., read “A scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, he brought forth out of his treasury things old and new.” Their wives, who outlived them, had no epitaphs.
    Now where was his Great-Grandfather Scarlett, a captain