Just like yesterday afternoon I lay my shovel down, slump myself against the old birch and I pull my hat over my eyes. By the time I wake up it’s past midnight and that little girl is back at the tombstone at the other end of the cemetery. I can light up a cigar and hack my lungs out, but she isn’t bothered by me at all. Or maybe she’s in her own world. I should go home, though I don’t. No one is waiting for me there, anyway. And it wouldn’t be right to leave her alone, either. Even if it’s raining, she comes around all alone. It’s not proper for a young woman to be by herself in a graveyard on a highway. Not safe for her and just not normal.

     Not that I understand what the hell the world has gone to. For 40 years I used to farm peas and carrots and we only got a tv when my boy was born. Always had the outhouse and my wife always did the wash by hand, and the preserves too. Damn, she was something. For all the stuff I can do I just marvelled at how she could slave over the stove with her hair pinned up, hours and hours counting cups of sugar and salt and water. Blessed Jean left this world too soon, but said at least she could pass with her house clean. She wouldn’t be embarrassed when the people came for the funeral. I left for the city after that. She was practical, and made sense, and without her the house, the farm…nothing was really alive anymore.

     And look at the women here! Jean wouldn’t be able to survive the city. This girl is no more than eighteen but has more makeup than Jean when she was laid out. She looks like a scrawny kitten that was tossed around in a frying pan too long-does she realise how she looks? She has a tea party dress that the little ‘uns used to wear back home for special town gatherings, except funeral black. Those tight leggings she has on are stripped yellow and black but they’re ripped all over like she’s been fighting viciously. She’s also noticeably lanky like a scarecrow but short like a piglet.

     She sighs deeply and rolls around on the plot. Sometimes, she looks at the stars. I wonder what she’s even thinking about? Does she not have a home to go to and just spends her nights here? Well, she doesn’t sleep here. Just lays before the headstone that is worn away from age. Maybe she just hates her parents. Maybe she’s thinking. The plot is too old for her to have known the occupant personally. The world is so full of noise. She’d loose all credibility if she had those annoying headphones on. Out of curiosity, I checked the records for the plot and it belongs to one Earl P. Fitzpatrick, and the date is beyond her great-great-grandfather. He was the community hero who ran the orphanage since he was twenty-three, and did so until he died when he was seventy-two. Did the usual things and then he was buried here with a cheap stone provided by the state.

     She barrel rolls back over and yanks up a fistful of earth and sniffs it so close to her nose she got dirty. Why the hell does she do this every night? Every night she sniffs the earth and every morning I go and fill in the little handfuls she’d upset. Yeah, it’s a bother to make sure I fix up that area before I start everything else I have to do. I’d never tell my boss about her though-the old coot would call the cops and have her dragged home. It wouldn’t do any good. Plus, he’d know that I’m just a good-for-nothing lazy gravedigger who naps on the clock.  

     Does she know that she’s as much a part of my life as my job is?