A Local Gravestone Disappears

The stone was waist-high and rough, and there was a line of blackbirds flashing their red shoulders and beating their wings against the rough surface of its crest. It had been placed thirteen years before when Charlie convinced a brickmason to shape and letter it for him. The mason said there was no point, that she had died half a lifetime ago, but Charlie hadn’t had the right stone then, and now he did, and he stood picking lightly and carefully at some of the lichen on it and cried a little, quietly, until the mason shook his head.

“I don’t normally do letters, it won’t last well.”

Charlie rubbed his nose, took a shaky breath, smiled, and handed the mason his money. The mason took it, sighed, and walked back into the dark of his shop.

-

Every third Thursday was decorating day at the Husk cemetery and Charlie’d walk down the creek by the railroad trestles, listening to the wind fall down the north face like it always did and feeling like it just blew through his head and left his thoughts raw and insane. There was something about that constant wind that made him feel unsettled, like he couldn’t find a calm constant anywhere. In the summer there’d be a din of bugs rubbing their legs and wings, and in the winter poplar trees would creak and pop in the low and constant roar of the wind and he could see through the forest. If it rained, the creek under the trestles would be full and clouded, like chocolate milk, and if it hadn’t rained there might not be a creek at all.

He walked across the last clearing, up to the gate in the fence, and dropped a quarter in the tithe box. Its dented tin sides took the coin and bounced it around until it seemed like the loudest thing, that might not ever settle down. Everything seemed full of motion and clamor.

Every third Thursday he went up the hill to the third row and turned left down it to the fifth stone.

He’d look at it, kick away some dry brown sod in the winter or pull at the tall grass in the summer where the mower didn’t reached into its strange angles. He never knew how to decorate it so he’d try to wave away the blackbirds, kick or pull at the grass, and set out whatever he’d found on the way to decorate with. Dandelions in spring, meadow flowers in summer, a branch of colorful leaves in the fall, some witch hazel or a quartz rock in winter.

This Thursday he went up and turned left and walked to the fifth stone, but it was a white granite obelisk that should’ve been the sixth stone, so he turned and went back to the previous stone but it was the fourth one.

He thought hard, and closed his eyes to recall anything that could bring some sense to the moment. He could see her shaking towels out while he watched from the couch, and he could see the soft summer light in that room of his youth. The pale red of his closed eyelids showed the scene until his eye movements made it blur and fade, and he opened his eyes and she and the old moment were gone again.

Charlie turned back one more time, but the fifth spot was just the grass and the blackbirds and wind falling down the north face and across it. That wind fell straight through his head, burned at every memory and thought, and out, past, and down the hill.