by Laura Briggs
Only Con hesitated to move, one hand still clutching the baseball bat, the other resting against the monument.
By the time he decided to follow the others it was too late. A hand clamped onto his shoulder. He didn’t resist as he was pinned to the ground, a pair of cuffs fastened over his wrists. The scuffle of the other kids’ shoes had died away, metal clanging in the distance as they jumped a back fence somewhere.
A long night had followed, first at the police station where he managed to protect his friends’ identities for reasons even he couldn’t explain. Then at home, where his parents were enraged by both the vandalism and the thousands of dollars it was likely to cost them.
“What if we can’t afford it?” his mother worried, her voice drifting from his parents’ closed bedroom door.
Con lay fully clothed on his bed, restless and sore from the night’s events. Was it the girl that made him shoulder all the blame—or was she just the reason he participated in the first place? No answer came as he turned on his side, staring into the darkness.
Waking at noon, he heard voices conversing downstairs, his parents and a man, one whose gruff tones seemed vaguely familiar in his sleep blurred state.
Still dressed in his rumpled clothes from yesterday, he trailed down the stairs to find them seated in the dining room. Con had seen him before.
The town’s stone mason, an older man whose business shared a gravel lot with the tire store. Dark skin was faintly lined with age and silver hair was cropped short beneath the flat wool cap he often wore. He offered Con a short nod from the other side of the table, busy showing Con’s father something on a piece of paper.
“There you are.” Con’s mother rose, her expression less tense than last night. Taking his arm, she gave it a firm squeeze as she steered him around the table. “Conrad, you know William Sawyer. He works for the county sometimes.”
“Sure,” he said, a sense of foreboding creeping over him with the words.
“Mr. Sawyer will be repairing the headstones,” his father explained. Pulling the reading glasses from his face, he offered his son a pointed look. “You’ll be helping him.”
“Wait—what?” Con’s eyes widened, glancing between his parents and Sawyer’s calm expression. “But I don’t…couldn’t I just pay for it?” he finished, hand clenching the frayed material of his shirt in a frustrated gesture.
“Never be able to afford it,” the stone carver said, shaking his head. “You’ll have to work it off.”
His whole summer had just been commandeered. After all, it would take more than a few days to repair however many stones they had smashed. Eight? Ten? He couldn’t remember, though the details had been repeated many times at the police station.
“Shop opens at seven every day, ‘cept on Sundays,” Sawyer told him, ignoring the despair that must have been written on his face. “Bring your lunch if you can—break lasts half an hour.”
“I just—” he rubbed the back of his neck, at a loss for how quickly this was moving “This doesn’t seem right.” He glanced at his parents again. “It wasn’t even my idea. There were five of us.”
“Then turn them in,” his mother pleaded, voice dropping slightly.
“I can’t.” He felt trapped, his thoughts spinning faster than he could keep up. “You can’t expect me to betray friends.”
“Should’ve run faster then,” Sawyer advised, thumping him on the shoulder.
Resentment coursed through the teenager, though he recognized a glimmer of good humor in the mason’s face.
“See you Monday,” the older man told him, lifting his cap in parting.
Sawyer’s shop smelled of concrete and chalk, the odor reaching him as he wheeled his bike up to the doorway. The floors were freshly swept, the tools carefully organized on the walls and benches. Blocks of stone formed a wall, along with crates that looked ready for shipping.
“Ever worked with tools before, Taggart?” the stone carver asked, emerging from the back room with a coffee mug in hand. He wore the same faded cap as before, a navy apron covering his khakis and button-down shirt.
“Shop class,” Con shrugged, wondering if that counted. “I made a canoe.” Not a working one, he failed to add. Or so the teacher’s marks led him to believe, discouraging any test runs for the finished project.
“Close enough,” the mason chuckled. “We’ll see how you get on with the basics first.”
The basics turned out to be mending some of the broken headstones with screws and a can of carpenter’s glue. One of them—the sculpted lamb his bat collided with—was beyond saving and would have to be duplicated from scratch.
For the other nine, Sawyer held out hope for repair. “Those friends of yours have a mighty powerful swing,” the mason observed dryly. They were reassembling a headstone with a memento mori in the form of a grinning, winged skull. “Don’t suppose they’re on the baseball team?” he guessed with a side glance at his new apprentice.
“No sports,” Con answered. “We try to avoid clichés.” Something Marcus had said once, that sounded much less impressive coming from Con’s stilted tone.
“Rebels, then.” If Sawyer was making fun of him, it was hard to tell. The craftsman’s expression was inscrutable as he joined cracks together, seamlessly forming a set of initials. “Had my own wild streak as a boy back in North Dakota. Stole a car once.” A grin cracked his features at the sight of Con’s shock. “Well, could be joyriding is more like it. My cousin’s old jalopy was part mine on account I handled all its maintenance. That said, he didn’t want no one else driving it without his supervision.” He paused a moment, coating the edge of his brush in glue. “Christmas of ‘56 came a freeze like you wouldn’t believe. Whole county was a layer of ice and snow. Me and the other boys, we sneaked that car outta the garage and spun donuts with it on the pond.”
“You could have crashed through,” Con said, amazed anyone would try it.
But then, winter freezes in Sylvan Spring were seldom enough to yield ice skating, much less a stunt like the one Sawyer described.
“Sure could have. Guess the Lord had my back that day.” Sawyer stepped away to examine their work thus far, whistling under his breath. “Good job, Taggart. You’ll pull your weight around here yet.”
And he did, though for a while it was more piecing and gluing, along with such tasks as sweeping up and cleaning the tools.
Sawyer was precise in the care for his carving equipment. “You can judge a craftsman by the condition of his tools. A serious one, he’ll never let the rust take hold or dull the blades with bad storage.”
He learned to clean the steel files with special brushes, to wrap them spaced apart in canvas rolls. Sometimes he would pick up supplies from the hardware store or arrange the shipping for one of Sawyer’s out-of-state commissions. In between all this, he practiced sketching the lamb engraving, an exercise meant to prepare him for the carving stage.
“Gotta get to know it, think about it from all the angles,” Sawyer told him, tacking the photographs of the original monument to a cork board on the wall. It was a plain enough tomb, the only inscription being OUR LETTIE. No last name and no clue as to when its occupant might have lived, a common trait for nineteenth-century stones, apparently.
Leafing through manuals on gravestone carving became as routine as studying for an exam. In one of these, in a section concerning gravestone symbolism, Con made a discovery that caused his stomach to lurch.
“Children’s graves,” he said, his tone semi-accusing as he glanced up. “That’s what the books says the lamb carving is used for—infants mostly.”
The mason was quiet, contemplating the slab of stone in front of him. After a moment, he said, “Could be right. No way to know for sure, without the proper dates and all.”
Con was stunned, staring at the manual with a sense of regret stronger than the moment he first shattered the monument. With a sigh, his instructor placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t matter whose it was, son,” he urged
gently. “Not so long as we do our best to honor them with a new marker.”
Words that weighed heavy on his conscience as he began to practice shaping the stone, soaking it down with a spray bottle to search for cracks and fissures and then taking his first tentative ping! ping! with the chisel and mallet. It was difficult with only the air-powered hammer to aid him, modern machinery and lasers being foreign objects to Sawyer’s shop. He was too eager with the mallet as well, his chisel digging deep and leaving blemishes that made his instructor shake his head with disapproval.
“Remember, you’re making art, not pounding nails,” Sawyer told him as they used a file to smooth the flaws away.
“When did you learn to carve?” he asked the older man, thinking some allowance might be made for both age and inexperience.
“About your age, I guess. My dad and granddad were both in the trade, and it just seemed natural I carry on the tradition. Looks like it’ll stop with me, though.” The carver rarely mentioned family, though it was common knowledge that he was a widower. No children were referenced, only nephews and nieces. He still wore a wedding band. His wife’s picture remained in the leather wallet he sometimes pulled bills from to send Con for supplies at the hardware store. He showed Con her headstone when they began to reset some of the repaired markers at the cemetery.
A simple dove in flight was etched into the marble, the epitaph reading, ‘Long did she suffer in sickness on earth; now her gentle soul rises to meet the Redeemer.’
“Cancer,” he explained, one hand resting against the stone. “Harriet weren’t the kind to complain, though. Just not in her nature.” Those were his only words on the subject, undoubtedly a painful one. Instead, he talked about his boyhood in North Dakota, of his first time to carve a tombstone on his own. “Didn’t know the fella it was for,” he admitted as they packed gravel around the newly entrenched stone. “But I heard he wasn’t a Christian and felt a sadness for it. Carving the lost soul’s monument is a different matter altogether from carving the believer’s.”
Con knew nothing about the owner of the lamb stone, other than the symbolism listed in the book. Frustrating at first, the project began to consume his thoughts until he found himself sketching or making notes on it even when he wasn’t at the workshop. For someone who slept through art class, it was suddenly his chief interest, and he even stopped caring that Marcus’s group had abandoned him after that night in the cemetery.
His fingers grew slowly attuned to the craft as if he were learning to play an instrument. Chisel and mallet traced the ridges and curves in the stone like a bow running over violin strings. He felt as if the tools were an extension of himself, shaping his thoughts into reality on the blank canvas of the stone.
“Not bad, Taggart,” the carver told him, examining the lamb’s raised outline, the letters engraved boldly below.
Con thought he detected a stronger emotion beneath the concession, something akin to the pride of a teacher reviewing his pupil’s progress.
When he had polished and sealed it, they set its foundation among the other rows in the burial ground. Sunlight bathed the etchings to show a skill that surprised its creator, whose accomplishment was tinged with a sense of emptiness now that it was finally done.
It was August by then, roughly a week before classes were scheduled to start.
Returning to the shop, Con began the ritual of sweeping and tool care when Sawyer told him, “Reckon your debts been paid, then. You’ll, uh, not be needing to come in tomorrow.” His voice was gruff as usual, but the tone one of calm as he stowed a sack of gravel in the corner.
Con stood still, fingers gripping the broom handle. “I could stay,” he said after a moment, sounding more like a question than an offer. Muscles tensed as he waited for the answer.
“Can’t afford a full-time assistant,” the older man said, wiping his hands on a rag from the work bench. “You’d earn more sacking stuff down at the grocery store.”
Con’s glance roamed the shop with its collection of archaic tools and gravestone patterns pinned to the walls like a collage. Some were his—the sketches of the lamb design and the rubbings he’d taken of the original stone’s lettering to make stencils. “I’m not really interested in the grocery business. You know, as a career.”
Sawyer’s lined features cracked slowly into a smile of understanding. “All right then,” he said. “Come in after school next week.”
Con reached to seal the bargain with a handshake.
The Lesley headstones might be a coincidence; the photograph in the newspaper was a sign. Con saw it almost as soon as he fetched his morning mail. A thank you card from a customer in Birmingham, an inquiry from a potential client somewhere much further away. And the latest issue of The County Times, the headline story devoted to the upcoming festival.
Images from last year’s event were spread across the front page. Game booths and vendor’s tents filled the town square, as a garish-looking banner danced overhead like something from a Renaissance fair married to a Scottish Games celebration.
He started to turn the page and then paused as an idea came to him. Pulling open a drawer in the work bench, he fished a magnifying glass from its jumbled contents. When he placed it over the photograph, a murmur of interest escaped his lips.
Slowly, his gaze traveled to the paper fastened to the corkboard, to the crayon rubbing made by the writer, her strokes bold and sure compared to his wife’s gentler chalk ones. Instinct had told him to throw it away, that he would never call the number scrawled at the bottom.
But instinct, it seemed, had been wrong.
10
“My granddaddy used to say it was weeds that grew on the graves of the wicked, and flowers on those of the good. That’s the kind of superstitious talk folks learn as children and forget to leave behind as they grow.” The woman who spoke these words was closer to a hundred than ninety in terms of appearance. Lipstick smudged the puckered mouth, a vintage shade that hinted at a time before lines had creased her face. Gray hair was kept in a tidy knot, a strand of pearls visible above the collar of a silk blouse. Bony fingers tugged the necklace, her eyes fixed on Jenna with a shrewd gleam from across the patio table. “Folklore’s in our blood here,” she said. “Faith, too, though some might argue it’s not always the right balance.”
They had been talking for nearly an hour, Jenna finding the Maudell residence as soon as she left the historical society. A big Victorian house on a lot just off Main Street, it bore a touch of the gothic in its ornamental turret and steeple. The paint was flecking away in places, a crack visible in the trim above the bay window.
The door was answered by an ample figure in nurse’s scrubs, her features lined with middle-age and a sense of authority. She heard Jenna’s explanation with a surprised smile, her accent a strong Southern flavor when she spoke.
“Is Mrs. Maudell expecting you?” she asked, waving Jenna through a dark foyer into a living space that was crowded with antique furniture and oil paintings. Mahogany stairs led to the upper story, where faded wallpaper was peeling away from the hall.
“We’ve never met,” Jenna admitted. “I was hoping to speak with her about some research I’m doing for a manuscript. It concerns forgotten cemeteries—”
“Pour her some tea, Mollie,” a quivering voice instructed from somewhere close by.
Glancing in its direction, the nurse had hesitated only a second before she motioned for Jenna to follow her through a set of open double doors. There, on the flower garden’s patio, Josephine Maudell waited expectantly.
“You are someone from the newspaper,” the older woman surmised, looking Jenna over with vague interest. “They called last week, wanting to send someone about the festival.” Before her was spread a tea service, bone white china with tiny pink roses to decorate the rims.
“Miss Cade is an author,” the secretary corrected, filling one of the cups to set before Jenna. “She’s researching a book about cemeteries.”
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br /> A raised eyebrow greeted this news. “And wonders that I’m not yet part of one, no doubt.” The woman chuckled, leaning forward. “I may be the oldest native of this town, Miss Cade, but that’s not what makes me special. It’s my habit of saving pieces from the past that sets me apart from any of my neighbors. “
“Yes, I know,” Jenna said. She took a sip from the steaming brew, finding it bitter. “They told me about you at the historical society. I was hoping you could tell me about the town’s Civil War history.”
Josephine nodded, a faint jerk of the head. “I used to be chairwoman there. Did they tell you that? Oh, I suppose most have forgotten, but I did quite a bit for them.” Without warning, she changed the subject. “What do you think of my flower garden? It’s as old as most things I have, older than some. The roses were cultivated by my husband’s ancestor back in the 1880s.”
“It’s a beautiful arrangement,” Jenna told her, recognizing some of the varieties from gardens she toured in Annapolis. Most of the plants were dormant in the fall chill, but the section of asters blossomed in glorious shades of red, pink, purple, and blue. There were toad lilies that resembled orchids and a vine-like clematis snaked around the trellis.
“Prize-winning peonies,” Josephine continued, stretching a shaky hand towards plants clustered beside the porch railing. “My husband bred them especially. His hobby, once he retired from banking.” She fell silent with this mention of her spouse, fingers stroking the china cup by her hand. Her thoughts were now somewhere else entirely, a blankness haunting her expression.
Behind them, the nurse gave a tiny cough and a nod in Jenna’s direction, as if giving permission to move things back on track.
“Mrs. Maudell,” Jenna began as she set aside her cup. “I wanted to ask you about the old cemetery. The one in the woods.”
