started growing things. And I thought I wished I could do that too. I think I fell in love with him right then.”
Then she asked if I’d like another cookie, but I said no, thanks, because I’d had enough flax for one day.
“Jim told me all about what happened, how bad off he was,” Emma said. “He said your brother never gave up on him. Jim thought an awful lot of your brother. He says it’s because of your brother that he’s still alive.”
I think that’s the real reason my dad doesn’t like Jim.
Because Eli’s dead and Jim is still alive.
I became friends with Walter in the graveyard.
I used to stop by Eli’s grave every once in a while, and if nobody was around, I’d sit down and shoot the breeze and catch him up on stuff.
If you spend enough time in a graveyard, you really get to know the place like you do any other neighborhood. Pretty soon you even have your favorite graves. Mine were Beloved Henry, who got kicked by a horse at the age of six and ended up with a smirky little marble lamb, and Amos Pettigrew, who had a creepy carved skull and a badass epitaph:
Here lies AMOS PETTIGREW
As I am now, so shall you be
Prepare for death and follow me
Gee, thanks, Amos,
I used to think, but I visited him anyway. I bet in life he didn’t have many pals.
The most interesting graves were in the old cemetery, which you could get to from the new one by stepping over the fence, which wasn’t hard, since most of it was lying on its side. That’s where the five little Wheeler kids were, and theirs were some of my favorite graves too. I used to go over and sit on the big Wheeler-parent gravestone and look at all those little stones lined up beside it like a row of granite ducklings.
SAFE IN THE ARMS OF THE ANGELS , the big parent stone said.
I wondered what the angels had been doing while whatever happened to the little Wheeler kids was happening, like lightning or bears or bubonic plague. Not doing their guardian-angel thing — that was pretty obvious. Maybe they’d all been goofing off at some celestial harp jam.
I was so wrapped up in blasphemous anti-angel thoughts that when this voice behind me said, “Hi, Danny,” I nearly jumped out of my skin. The first thing I thought was
Zombies!
which goes to show the kind of thing you’re primed for if you’ve spent Halloween at Peter Reilly’s house with the lights out, watching
Night of the Living Dead.
But when I turned around, it was just old weird Walter, in a pair of ratty corduroy pants and geeky high-top sneakers and that haircut that made it look like his head had been chewed by squirrels.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Walter said. “I thought you heard me.”
“You didn’t scare me,” I said. Lying slightly.
“I see you up here a lot,” Walter said. “But I figured you wanted to be alone. Most people in a graveyard want to be left alone. I can leave if you want me to. Do you want me to leave you to be alone?”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “Stick around.”
Walter sat down across from me on Jedediah Kimball, 1857–1904, who was now IN A BETTER PLACE . His corduroys rode up to show white socks and some white hairy leg. You could tell Walter was the type who would never get a tan.
I pointed at all the little Wheeler stones.
“What do you suppose they died of, all at once like that?”
“Diphtheria,” Walter said. “Before inoculations, it sometimes killed eighty percent of children under ten.”
His eyes started doing that back-and-forth thing. I know now that it was the cerebral manipulation of information, but at the time I figured he was having an epileptic fit. I’d heard about epileptic fits, and I knew that if somebody had one, you were supposed to put a stick in their mouth to keep them from biting off their tongue. But just as I started looking around for a good strong stick, Walter started talking again.
“It makes you think,” Walter said. “All the scrambling around and worrying and stuff we do.
Then she asked if I’d like another cookie, but I said no, thanks, because I’d had enough flax for one day.
“Jim told me all about what happened, how bad off he was,” Emma said. “He said your brother never gave up on him. Jim thought an awful lot of your brother. He says it’s because of your brother that he’s still alive.”
I think that’s the real reason my dad doesn’t like Jim.
Because Eli’s dead and Jim is still alive.
I became friends with Walter in the graveyard.
I used to stop by Eli’s grave every once in a while, and if nobody was around, I’d sit down and shoot the breeze and catch him up on stuff.
If you spend enough time in a graveyard, you really get to know the place like you do any other neighborhood. Pretty soon you even have your favorite graves. Mine were Beloved Henry, who got kicked by a horse at the age of six and ended up with a smirky little marble lamb, and Amos Pettigrew, who had a creepy carved skull and a badass epitaph:
Here lies AMOS PETTIGREW
As I am now, so shall you be
Prepare for death and follow me
Gee, thanks, Amos,
I used to think, but I visited him anyway. I bet in life he didn’t have many pals.
The most interesting graves were in the old cemetery, which you could get to from the new one by stepping over the fence, which wasn’t hard, since most of it was lying on its side. That’s where the five little Wheeler kids were, and theirs were some of my favorite graves too. I used to go over and sit on the big Wheeler-parent gravestone and look at all those little stones lined up beside it like a row of granite ducklings.
SAFE IN THE ARMS OF THE ANGELS , the big parent stone said.
I wondered what the angels had been doing while whatever happened to the little Wheeler kids was happening, like lightning or bears or bubonic plague. Not doing their guardian-angel thing — that was pretty obvious. Maybe they’d all been goofing off at some celestial harp jam.
I was so wrapped up in blasphemous anti-angel thoughts that when this voice behind me said, “Hi, Danny,” I nearly jumped out of my skin. The first thing I thought was
Zombies!
which goes to show the kind of thing you’re primed for if you’ve spent Halloween at Peter Reilly’s house with the lights out, watching
Night of the Living Dead.
But when I turned around, it was just old weird Walter, in a pair of ratty corduroy pants and geeky high-top sneakers and that haircut that made it look like his head had been chewed by squirrels.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Walter said. “I thought you heard me.”
“You didn’t scare me,” I said. Lying slightly.
“I see you up here a lot,” Walter said. “But I figured you wanted to be alone. Most people in a graveyard want to be left alone. I can leave if you want me to. Do you want me to leave you to be alone?”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “Stick around.”
Walter sat down across from me on Jedediah Kimball, 1857–1904, who was now IN A BETTER PLACE . His corduroys rode up to show white socks and some white hairy leg. You could tell Walter was the type who would never get a tan.
I pointed at all the little Wheeler stones.
“What do you suppose they died of, all at once like that?”
“Diphtheria,” Walter said. “Before inoculations, it sometimes killed eighty percent of children under ten.”
His eyes started doing that back-and-forth thing. I know now that it was the cerebral manipulation of information, but at the time I figured he was having an epileptic fit. I’d heard about epileptic fits, and I knew that if somebody had one, you were supposed to put a stick in their mouth to keep them from biting off their tongue. But just as I started looking around for a good strong stick, Walter started talking again.
“It makes you think,” Walter said. “All the scrambling around and worrying and stuff we do.
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