“Yeah,” Purn Davies called out, “the media all wanted you to be crazier than a loon and out offing folk. They sure didn’t want to report that you weren’t crazy. Then, though, they got your daddy.”
“I’m glad they finally did,” Sally called.
“Don’t you worry none about your daddy, Sally,” Gus Eisner yelled. “His face has been shown more times than the president’s. They’ll get him.”
“Yeah,” Hunker Dawson yelled. “Once the media get their hooks in him all right and proper, they’ll forget everything else. They always do. It’s always the grossest story of the day for them.”
“I sure hope so,” she yelled back.
“My wife, Arlene, was wavering on her rocker,” Hunker shouted matter-of-factly, tugging on his old suspenders. “Wavering for years before she passed over.”
Purn Davies yelled, “Hunker means she was a mite off in her upper works.”
“These things happen,” she said, but probably not loud enough for them to hear her.
The four old men had suspended their card game and were all looking at Sally. Even when she turned away, she knew they were watching her as she walked down that beautiful wooden sidewalk, the railing all fresh white paint, toward Amabel’s cottage. She saw Velma Eisner, Gus’s wife, and waved to her. Velma didn’t see her, just kept walking, her head down, headed for Purn Davies’s general store.
Amabel’s cottage looked fresh as spring, with newly planted beds of purple iris, white peonies, yellow crocus, and orange poppies, all perfectly arranged and tended. She looked around and saw flower boxes and small gardens filled with fresh flowers. Lots and lots of orange poppies and yellow daffodils. What a beautiful town. All the citizens took pride in how their houses looked, how their gardens looked. Every short sidewalk was well swept.
She wondered if The Cove now had a sister Victorian city in England.
She thought about what James had said about all those missing people. She knew the direction of his thoughts, but she wouldn’t accept it.
She just couldn’t. It was outrageous. She stepped onto Amabel’s small porch and knocked on the door.
No answer.
She knocked again and called out.
Her aunt wasn’t home. Well, she’d doubtless be back soon.
Sally knew where she wanted to go, had to go.
She stood in the center of the cemetery. It was laid out like a wheel, with the very oldest graves in the very cen-
ter. It was as well tended as the town. The grass v/as freshly mowed, giving off that wonderful grass scent. She laid her hand lightly on top of a marble headstone that read:
ELIJAH BATTERY
BEST BARTENDER IN OREGON
DIED JULY 2, 1897
81 RIPE YEARS
The lettering grooves had been carefully dug out and smoothed again. She looked at other headstones, some incredibly ornate, others that had begun as wooden crosses and had obviously been replaced many times. Those that hadn’t weathered well had been replaced.
Was nothing in this town overlooked? Was everything to be perfect, including every headstone?
She walked out from the center of the cemetery. Naturally, the headstones became newer. She finished with the 1920’s, the 1930’s, the 1940’s, all the way into the 1980’s. The planners of the cemetery had been very precise indeed, working outward from the middle so that if you wanted to be buried here in the 1990’s, you’d be nearly to the boundaries.
She found Bobby Nettro’s grave, on the fourth circle out from the center. It was perfectly tended.
As far as she could tell, they’d kept to this wheel plan since the beginning. There were so many graves now. She imagined that when the first townspeople decided to put the cemetery here they’d considered the plot of ground they were setting aside to be immense. Well, it wasn’t. There was little space left, since the west side of the cemetery was bounded by the cliffs, and the east and north were bounded by the church and someone’s cottage. The south nearly ran into the single path that led along the cliff.
She walked to the western edge of the cemetery. The graves here were new, as well tended as the others. She leaned down to look at the headstones. There were names, dates of birth and death, but nothing else. Nothing clever, nothing personal, nothing about being a super husband, father, wife, mother. Just the bare information.