The Waters of Kronos Read Free Page B

especially toward evening, you could see the living among the dead, someone bending over a grave with love and remembrance, running a lawn mower on the lot, perhaps going with a vase for fresh water or resting on one of the green benches scattered under the trees, contemplating life and death or the peaceful scene.
    And on Decoration Day the whole cemetery would burst into spring, a religious symbol, with even the unclaimed lots trimmed, the hill a flower garden, annual visitors from out of town mingling with townsfolk, shaking hands, renewingacquaintance, talking of the past and present, the dead and the living. A parade would move up from Kronos Street with soldiers and Boy Scouts in uniform, children in gay dresses marching and bands playing. Half the town would be waiting or stream up after. Eventually there would be the sharp crack of salute by the honor guard to their departed brethren in arms, and some speaker droning lazily from the back of Lib Fidler’s wagon and, later, Ducky Harris’s truck.
    But he found none of that up here. With a sense of futility and defeat he started back to the car. Before reaching it he came on a small lane, hardly more than wheel tracks running through an unclosed gate to the north and thence through an open field. It was a relief to follow it, to get away where things were natural and real. He went on half expecting to be called back by the guard but nothing happened.
    Halfway across the field he saw a little old car coming out of the hollow. It stopped when it came abreast. John Donner had a glimpse of axes and a crosscut saw in the back. On the front seat two old men turned faces toward him.
    “You can’t get anyplace down there, mister. This road dead-ends.”
    “Doesn’t the Long Stretch road run in that hollow?” Donner asked.
    “Well, it does and it doesn’t. It’s there where it ain’t bulldozed away. But it’s closed up above by the big steel fence and down below by the water. You can’t get up and you can’t get down.” The old eyes scrutinized him sharply. “You from around here?”
    “Once upon a time. My father was Harry Donner. Maybe you knew him.”
    “Harry Donner! Used to have a store in Unionville before he was a preacher? His father-in-law baptized me. Come to think of it, you mind me of him. Your father, I mean.”
    “I look like my father?” John Donner asked.
    “Well, you do. I ought to know. I buried him. Me and Yuny here. We dug his grave on a cold January morning. Had to build a fire to thaw out the ground.”
    The other old man, whose pipe reeked of black tobacco, took it out of his mouth.
    “What do you think of it up here?” He pointed it toward the cemetery.
    “It’s not like the one in Unionville.”
    “It’s dead,” Yuny said. “Nobody gets buried in it. Nobodydigs a grave from one year to another. It’s dead as a doornail.”
    “You know what he means?” the first old man said. “We used to work in St. John’s graveyard, him and me. We had a bet on which would bury the other fellow. Now they got to bury us someplace else.”
    “Something was always going on down in that cemetery,” Yuny said. “I could tell you a lot of things. Like the time we had to dig two graves in one day and they got Bob Bender and Ike Zerbe to dig the other one. Bob had his bottle along and when Check here and me went over and seen what they dug, we had to go to the preacher. ‘You got to get that straightened out tonight, Parra’ we told him. ‘There ain’t no coffin made’ll ever fit that grave.’ It was hooked like a sickle. Yep, bent like a quarter-moon. But we got to get home, mister. They lock the gate up here at five thirty.”
    “Yes, I can see you’re a Donner now,” the first grave digger said. “You’re the picture of your daddy. He done something to me once I never forgot. I was only a boy from Canal Street and nobody wanted me around. They didn’t make a fuss over kids those days like they do now. Get out, they’d say to me