The burial grounds, with their lush, green grass, freckled with hundreds of crooked gravestones, stretched out behind the chapel and mortuary and rose up over the small hill. An apple tree stood at the very top of the hill, silhouetted against a sky ablaze with a melting sun. Limping and heaving, Abel made his way back down the narrow, cobbled pathway that meandered through the middle of the grounds. His lower back ached from having just dug the O’Hara grave, and the walk back down from the hill had been taken very slowly. He stopped for a breather halfway down and leaned on the shovel, singing his favorite folk song:
“Yeah, I’m goin’ down, sir
Way, way down
Gonna sing this song
Deep, deep down in the ground”
He looked around at the tombstones on either side of the path, mumbling the lyrics over and over again. A fat crow landed on a gravestone within spitting distance and gave Abel an obnoxious caw.
“Don’t like your tone, bird.”
The crow cawed again.
“Caw, yourself,” Abel shouted, and winced as a bolt of pain shot up from his leg into his hip. Damn leg was getting worse. Pain was spreading.
“What a pretty sight you’ve turned into, Abel, you crippled bastard,” Abel grumbled. “Stinking gammy leg, screwball eye, back all twisted up. Becoming a stinking horror story cripple.” He spat and winced again. “That stinking car crash left me a mangled-up bag of scarred skin and broken bones,” he told the crow, who craned its head and let out an hysterical sounding barrage of caws. Abel swung his shovel at the bird and watched it launch into the sky in a scurry of feathers and more mocking caws.
He faced back the way he’d come. Abel easily spotted the apple tree and the fresh mound of dirt next to it. He shook his head, a seething grimace on his face. “Took me two hours to dig that stinking hole. Tomorrow, I got to shovel it all back again.”
He wiped sweat from his forehead using his sleeve and continued walking down the hill. At the bottom, where the yard straightened out for a hundred meters, he stopped and looked up at the large white statue of Mother Mary, holding a blanket-covered baby in her arms.
Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.
Abel looked up from the engraved scripture at the statue’s base and glanced at the area behind it. The graves here were smaller than the others, decorated with flowers, candles. Some with cuddle toys. He skimmed the children’s graves. One grave in particular caught his eye.
“Gonna sing this song, deep, deep down in the ground.”
Abel approached the small wrought iron fence that separated the graveyard from the churchyard and mortuary. The gate squeaked as he slipped inside. He leaned the shovel against the fence, hobbled down three broad, concrete steps and stopped between the two buildings.
“Keep your watch, old man,” he said, looking at the mortuary. Somewhere in there, Mr. O’Hara’s body laid in the darkness of one of the five fridges.
“Don’t have my keys anyway.” Truth be told, Abel didn’t feel like stealing from the dead man anymore. Not today. What he felt like doing was going home and opening the bottle of Old Smuggler whiskey waiting for him in his otherwise empty cupboard.
“Stinking watch is broken anyway,” he said, giving the building a dismissive wave. Abel started walking to the exit at the end of the path. Then…
Tick-tick-tick.
He stopped.
“Huh?” he muttered, looking back at the mortuary. He heard it as clear as that mean old crow’s caw.
“Losing my marbles.”
He shook his head and limped off a little faster than usual.
3.