The Other Cemetery by Roy Dorman

“I drove past the cemetery on the way here and it looked like it could use some work,” said Desmond Atkins to the small group who had assembled to meet him.

Desmond had flown into Raleigh and had picked up a rental car at the airport. It was only about an hour’s drive to his mother’s hometown of Sawyer’s Corners.

Calling the collection of thirty or forty houses and businesses at the crossroads of two county highways a town was being generous. Desmond had never been to Sawyer’s Corners; his mother and father had run away from it to California as teenagers and neither of them had ever gone back.

“That ain’t our cemetery,” answered Marjorie Staten, a second cousin of Desmond’s mother.

She then spit tobacco into a tin coffee can as if to render judgment on either Desmond’s ignorance or the cemetery itself.

“Our cemetery is just outside of town by the church,” said Oliver Smithson, an older man who hadn’t introduced himself, leaving Desmond to guess whether or not he was a relative of his mother’s.

Desmond’s mother, Annie, and his father, Jake, the neighbor boy she had run off to California with, have both been dead for about ten years. Desmond had retired recently after having taught high school English for forty years. He had heard about his mother’s younger sister’s tragic death by way of a distant cousin of his who he had met at a writer’s workshop a few years ago in San Francisco.

The cousin had told Desmond that there was no way he was ever going back to Sawyer’s Corners; not for a wedding, a funeral, or the second coming of Christ.

Desmond was always interested in the possibility of good story material; he had time to write more now than when he was younger, and had decided checking out his parent’s beginnings might prove to be fruitful.

“That cemetery hasn’t had a burial in seventy years,” volunteered Marjorie’s husband, Edgar. “When the last few members of their church up and left town sudden like, the good folks of Sawyer’s Corners burned the church to the ground.”

“Townsfolk raked the ashes and tried to get grass to cover the spot, but it never took,” put in old Oliver. “It’s still bare ground after all these years. What’s that tell ya, huh?”

“Well, I’m interested in history and folklore, so I might go check it out before I head back home,” said Desmond. “Were my parents members of that church?”

“Oh, heck, no,” said Alice Ann, the daughter of the deceased, Esther Simpson, Desmond’s mother’s sister. “That wouldn’t have been allowed.”

“I think that your dad’s folks might have been members, though,” said Oliver. “Before they were made to see the light, that is.”

Listening to the bits and pieces of information that came from these interjections, they seemed to him to be interjections rather than conversations, Desmond thought there could be a wealth of material here for a short story or maybe even a novel.

Those gathered seemed willing to stand in Marjorie’s living room forever, but the awkward silence that grew after Oliver’s last pronouncement was more than Desmond could stand. “I guess I’ll go explore the town a bit before heading over to Ernie’s,” he said. “Thanks for having me; it’s appreciated.”

#

“So, you’re Annie Prescott’s son, are ya?” asked the woman behind the counter at Bell’s General Store. She appeared to be about Desmond’s age, but her hair and clothes made her seem older. “Heard ya was gonna be in town for Esther’s funeral.”

“Yes, I am,” said Desmond, offering his hand across the counter. “I’m Desmond Atkins; Atkins was my father’s name. He and my mother and I lived in San Francisco. They both died some years ago.”

The woman looked at his hand for a second. She then picked up a rag and started cleaning the counter in front of Desmond.

“Oh, yeah, I heard about Jake Atkins, all right,” she finally said without looking up at Desmond. “I’m surprised he married her.”

Desmond was stunned at the woman’s rudeness and he noticed that once again there were cryptic pieces of information being given out without there being a real conversation.

“Just the soda and chips, thanks,” he said, putting a five dollar bill on the counter.

The woman got his change from the register and Desmond walked out the door without another word.

“I can see why they left this place,” he mumbled to himself as he got into his car.

#

As there were no hotels close to Sawyer’s Corners, Desmond had made arrangements over the phone to stay at a neighbor of Marjorie Staten’s. At the time he made the arrangements he thought since he was only going to be there for two days, it would work out fine. Having met a few of the relatives and some of the townsfolk, he was no longer so sure about that.

Ernie Sawyer, a descendant of the original Sawyers, was a widower, lived alone, and had an extra bedroom.

“I heard ya talked to yer sister,” Ernie said out of the blue as they were sitting on the porch after enjoying a bachelor’s dinner of hotdogs and beans.

“What?’ said Desmond.

“Yer sister, Stephanie,” replied Ernie around a huge wad of chewing tobacco. “She told me ya stopped in at the store this afternoon.”

“I don’t have a sister,” said Desmond, raising his voice a little. “I was an only child.”

“You mighta been the only one that Jake and Annie had, I wouldn’t know nothin’ about that, but Stephanie is Jake’s daughter and that makes her yer sister in my book.”

Ernie stared at Desmond as if waiting for him to say something. Desmond thought that while this was the closest thing to a conversation there had been since he had arrived in Sawyer’s Corners, it was a conversation he definitely was going to have trouble keeping up his end of.

When he didn’t say anything, Ernie continued. “I guess ya could say that you and me are kinda brothers too. When Jake left with your mom, leaving Stephanie’s mom pregnant with her, it was hard for her. With all of the tongues waggin’ and people lookin’ the other way when she passed ’em, not long after Stephanie was born, her mom hung herself.

“Stephanie came to live with my family, her mom was my mom’s sister, and we grew up as brother and sister. My mom, rest her soul, often used to say if Stephanie’s mom had been thinkin’, she would have done killed herself before Stephanie was born and spared the rest of us a lot of misery.”

Desmond looked at Ernie in shock. “Please tell me that she didn’t say that in front of a little kid.”

“Sure, she did; it was the truth. We barely had enough to go around as it was, and now we were saddled with another mouth to feed.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Desmond, not caring if he offended Ernie. “No wonder she seemed so hostile when I told her who I was.”

“Ah, that’s just her disposition,” said Ernie sagely, seeming not to care about Desmond’s opinion of how Stephanie had been treated. “She’s always been angry; I wouldn’t take it personal.”

“Did any of you ever think about why Stephanie might have been so angry?” Desmond yelled. “Her life here has probably been a living hell.”

“It weren’t our fault her mom fooled around and got herself preggers with no man to marry her.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t Stephanie’s fault,” answered Desmond.

“Ya know, I sorta expected you to act this way,” said Ernie. “Stephanie said you seemed to be kinda the prissy San Francisco sort. Did Jake and Annie’s son turn out to be a prissy boy? If so, I’m not sure I want ya stayin’ in my house.”

“Don’t worry, you sick old man,” said Desmond. “I won’t be staying in your crappy old house. If I decide to stay for the funeral, and not just drive the hell out of here tonight, I’ll sleep in my car before I’ll spend another minute with you.”

Desmond went in the house to packed his bags. There were still a few hours of daylight left and he thought he’d visit the cemetery he had passed on the way into town.

“And I will sleep in my damn car tonight,” he said aloud, throwing his clothes into the two suitcases he had brought. “Let them think what they want to.”

#

On the way to the cemetery, Desmond thought about the funeral he had come to attend. He had been told over the phone the night he had called to make arrangements that Esther Simpson had been hanging bed sheets on the clothes line one morning and had been hit on the back of the head with a shovel from her own shed.

The motive was assumed to be robbery, and speculation was that it had been done by some stranger who had been passing through Sawyer’s Corners. No one saw or heard anything, and the guilty party was never found.

“Some out-of-towner nobody saw came into Sawyer’s Corners one mornin’, killed our Esther, and left as mysteriously as he came,” was what Marjorie Staten had said.

Now Desmond was thinking it might not have been an out-of-towner who had bashed in Esther’s skull. He thought his relatives and their neighbors could be capable of murder if someone were to step out of line.

#

There were about two dozen gravestones in the cemetery. Some were overturned and some had settled into the earth. The grass was high, a few trees had sprung up here and there, and grasshoppers and other winged insects had the run of the place.

The dates of death that were visible were all before 1950. Desmond did a systematic search and finally came upon a grouping of Atkins markers. There were three stones.

JACOB ATKINS

BORN 1908 – DIED 1945

–

SARAH ATKINS – WIFE

BORN 1910 – DIED 1945

–

DESMOND ATKINS – SON

BORN 1945 – DIED AGED TWO MONTHS

“These were my grandparents on my father’s side,” he said. “Why didn’t Dad or Mom ever mention Dad had a younger brother named Desmond who died as an infant?”

Desmond couldn’t find any more Atkins stones. There were no Prescott stones and he assumed his mother’s family was buried in the cemetery by the church. Our cemetery.

He wondered what had happened in 1945. Was what happened the reason his mother and father had run away to California? They would have been seventeen or eighteen then.

Old Oliver had said Desmond’s grandparents might have belonged to “that” church until “they were made to see the light.” Was 1945 the year when the last members “up and left town sudden like?” Had Jake and Annie left because of what had happened to Desmond’s grandparents and their baby boy? What had the “good folks” of Sawyer’s Corners done in 1945?

Desmond had been squatting down by the markers thinking about all of this and didn’t notice his sister, Stephanie, sneak up on him and then hit him in the back of the head with a shovel. He died instantly.

#

“After we get Esther and that Atkins kid in the ground, we gotta do somethin’ about Stephanie,” said Old Oliver. “She’s never been quite right and she seems to be gettin’ worser.”

“Yep, could be you or me she swings a shovel at next,” said Marjorie. “I told Edgar to sink that rental car in the swamp and he’s doin’ it now. If anybody comes lookin’ for Desmond Atkins, we’ll say he told us he was comin’ and then never showed up.”

“We’ll bury Esther first,” said Oliver. “Then we’ll bury Atkins in the other cemetery – we don’t want him in our cemetery. No marker on his spot, though.”

“Course not,” snorted Marjorie. “We can’t be advertizin’ Stephanie’s been killin’ folks she takes a dislike to, now can we?”

—

Roy Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for over 65 years. At the prompting of an old high school friend, himself a retired English teacher, Roy is now a voracious writer. He has had flash fiction published recently in Black Petals, Yellow Mama, Theme of Absence, Dark Dossier, Near To the Knuckle, Bewildering Stories, Shotgun Honey, and a number of other online and print journals.

Image by digitalprawn