Dinner On The Grounds

In those days, time felt like it moved slower. Mortality still bit at the edges of every soul’s pant leg, forever reminding people that finiteness was inescapable. Wars killed young men. Diseases tore through cities as though their viral development was made of vindictive judgement. Babies died weak and mothers died bloody while trying to bring them into the world.

But it was slow, and in some ways, calm. Long before the interstate came along and cut through the pines as it made its way from Shreveport to Lafayette, those small towns in central Louisiana were mostly forgotten about. Alexandria held a hotel that hosted generals for a spell during the war, and a few are paper mills gave decent employment, but aside from that, hardly anyone cared of the living and dying that happened in the dense bluffs of Pineville, Colfax, Tioga and the like.

Much of the land rested hidden behind those towering trunks of aged brown. They rose from the soil like sentinels, innumerable and enormous, spanning naked upwards forty of fifty feet before revealing their bunchings of green, needle-lined branches. Walking beneath them gave sounds of crunches and shifting dirt, as the individual barb clusters layered upon themselves year after year as they steadily degraded from detritus into topsoil. In September, in the sun, it was cruel and humid. But there beneath the trees, there was relief.

There was a swing set at the edge of the forest near her house. It had been there long before her, and its rusted, faded metal legs told stories of lives that had come and gone, and hinted at things that were lost and not yet appreciated.

Hurricanes would rage along the gulf coast a few hundred miles south, being of little threat to them in the inland hills, instead providing them with moisture filled skies that gave every sunrise and sunset a rosy, orange and purple canvas with which to announce the birth and death of the day. Humidity painted windows grey with dew that gathered in the corners of panes, along the sides of drinking glasses, and at the ends of loose hairs that would cling to exposed skin like roots.

Life was hot, and sticky, and made of simple joys and problems too big for most to do anything with aside from pray.

So they prayed. They prayed in the mornings. They prayed at dinner. They prayed before bed. And they prayed in the cemetery, before work.

That was where they were that day. Once a month, the church members would meet at the grounds just beyond the sanctuary, leaving the white painted walls and wooden pews to enter the hillside that was dotted with stone. Dawn’s pink welcome was still lingering in the sky as the trucks began to nose up to the fence line and the men began to unload tools as the women grabbed cloth for the tables.

Grass grew swiftly in the damp evenings of summer. Weeks would pass between workings, and the green would rise from its fresh cutting until it consumed boots and ankles, leaving an itchiness along pants legs that sat with a person for hours after they’d departed the grounds.

So, they would all tend to the spot. Dozens would gather, month after month, to keep the home of the dead in a visitable state. After work, the preacher would speak of the reality of death but remind them that by their faith, death was not the end. Those bodies were there in that soil, but their everlasting souls were up in the heavenly streets, singing hallelujah to the almighty until the end of time.

She wondered if the dead souls knew they were dead. Or if they simply made it to heaven with no recollection of the flawed realm down below. Maybe finite existence was just a blip, a nap in the continuous elation of everlasting salvation.

Her mother fixed the back of her shirt collar as she tucked it along the waistline of her dress. Doors creaked and slammed with tiredness and familiarity, but none complained. Some were laughing. A thermos lid was unscrewed and the men shared dark, steaming coffee between themselves as they rolled their sleeves and wiped their brows on their wrists.

Her father pinched one nostril beneath his thumb and blew out the other, sending remnants of snuff and drainage down onto the ground by his feet. He wiped his hands on the embroidered handkerchief that dropped from his pocket, softly patted her mother’s back, then set his hat over his thinning hair and made his way through the shadowy coverage of the canopy, out towards the field.

She stood apart from it all, holding a rake that was still just slightly taller than her. A growth spurt had brought her into the hand-me-down clothes of her sister, which were handed down to her. Patches covered wear marks, but that was okay. Old, heavy stitching along the inner portions scratched at her chest. She did not like that but didn’t want to bring it up.”

“These are work clothes. Day clothes. Not church clothes. No need for finery,” her mother had said.

A whistling tune carried along the air and blended with the continuous rustling of the slightly swaying branches and leaves.

Men adjusted their sweat-darkened caps and rested their scythes and sickles on their shoulders. Hands made of creased lines and broad knuckles gripped wooden shafts and began their work without word. No one needed direction or plan, they all simply fanned out like ripples, making their way across the grounds to reach different quadrants that needed attention.

They moved in silence through the plots, dressed in faded white work shirts, and she thought of how they looked like ghosts themselves. She wondered if the dead watched from up above to see what the mortal and dying down below were doing, and if they appreciated their earthly remembrances being beautified. If their souls weren’t there, would they ever even notice if weeds overtook their headstones?

Her mother thumped her arm to pull her from her pensive state. Beds and trunks were emptied. Card tables were unfolded and set in a line, end to end, until they stretched down long enough for the two sides to host the gathering. White cloth was set as covering, with myriad patterned edges meeting in a varied yet unified sheet that left no top exposed.

Minutes passed into a day, and lunch came around just as the smell of cut green filled the air. To her, it was sweet, but also a little rotten. Pails were opened. Temporary nourishment was shared. Drinks were poured from sweating canteens and jugs. Some sang. Some, like her father, sat in silence. He didn’t seem to like the preacher too much. Once, she’d heard him comment about the learned man’s frail fingers, to which her mother had softly snorted and pinched his forearm.

After the break, the women and girls set about shelling peas. Bright spots along the heads of the sprout told her where to place her thumb. Fingers twisted with effort, and the head would snap away, remaining connected by only the spine. She’d pull down, and then slide her thumb through the grooved opening of the pod, pushing individual peas out into the metal bowl in front of her.

They shelled for an hour and her neighbor hummed to herself, and she found herself feeling the sweat collecting on her back and under her arms. All the ice had melted in her drink but it was still cool in her hand.

Thrashes sounded out in rhythm as the men cut away at the growth while the boys wiped dirt and leaves from the headstones, and she watched as she worked. A small headstone was near her, and she knew it was a child’s. Even more so, she’d been there enough to know that it wasn’t marked. Whoever his or her family was, they hadn’t been able to afford such a thing. He or she’d been buried right and Christian-like, but he or she was unknown to her.

“Sumpin chasin’ ye?” her neighbor asked in a rattling, worn down voice.

She flinched slightly. The woman had always scared her. Wrinkles on her face and arms and hands told her she was ninety if she was a day. Cataracts had turned her eyes white and grey. Fewer teeth remained than were missing. The old woman had never been mean or mean spirited, but the droop of her right cheek from the stroke had always made her unpleasant for the girl to behold. Still, she had now spoken to the girl, and it would be rude not to respond.

“Sorry?” she asked.

“Sumpin after ye? Yer mind’s away. Not that shellin’ takes much mind, but still.”

She didn’t know how to answer, and didn’t want to lie, so she chose to say the truth.

“The boys said the unmarked graves walk at night.”

The old woman raised her good eyebrow.

“…Like they don’t know they’re dead. And I felt bad for the little ones that died, if that was true. How sad it would be to be a babe, still crawling and needing your mother, but you were alone in this place. Forever crawling.”

The old woman’s demeanor softened as much as it could, and her bark-like skin lowered along her sunken cheeks. She pushed another bit of peas with her thumb and they fell into the bowl with a sound like raindrops.

Arms raised and swung. Shoulders rotated and heaved. Bowls rattled beneath spoons.

The woman finally spoke.

“That ain’t true, little girl. Pay them boys no mind, they just tryin’ make sense of somethin’ beyond thems ways. Souls and life and death is woman’s work. We carry them portals in us, gatherin’ life in our bellies. And such a thing ain’t meant to be made joking of.”

Her neighbor watched several young boys laugh as they chased one another and pretended to shoot guns in their hands.

“I always made thought that men waged war to kill one another as a way to mock us. They can’t bring life so they mi’swell take it.”

Her ghostly pale eyes settled on the girl, and she felt cold as she looked back at them. Nothing reflected in that milky white, but the woman tried to smile nonetheless.

“Fear not for the dead, little girl. I been sittin’ these grounds for eighty’n’more year. No body walk or crawl here at night. Worst thing that come from being unmarked is being forgotten. But in the end, we’re all forgotten, ain’t we?”

With that, she turned away and began her duties once again, not speaking up a single time after that.

Eventually, the peas were done and ready. By the time the sun had moved to the west and started its descent towards the tops of the tree line, the men were finishing. Scents of ham hovered with notes of steamed vegetables. More songs were lifted up in hymnal chants, and the tables were set.

A metal triangle was pinged to signal it was time to eat. Living souls drifted between the stones, careful not to step over the graves. Dozens gathered and sat at the white, where they feasted for the evening and the preacher spoke impassioned words full of things she did not bother to understand. Mosquitoes arrived at dusk, threatening with itches and disease.

The day was done.

As they loaded their vehicles and cleared the lingering bits of grass from the field, she watched the sunset turn the sky from red to cool fuschia while a group of men began to sing the night’s last song.

They walked nearly single file back to their trucks, blades on their shoulders, heads down and weary.

“Farewell, vain world! I'm going home!

My Savior smiles and bids me come,”

The trees stood silently before her and above her, and she knew that the next time she was there, their green would be turning orange as they prepared to die once again. Her father and mother passed her, hand in hand, and she was surprised to hear him singing beneath his breath.

“And I don’t care to stay here long.”