by R. R. Irvine
“There were no signs,” Martin said.
“The people around here don’t have to be told,” Broadbent answered.
“Are you asking us to leave?” Traveler asked.
He nodded at Traveler’s sling. “If you want to sue, it’s fine by me. My lawyer’s Jess Moyle. Talk to him.”
“We didn’t know your son,” Traveler said, “and we don’t understand what happened.”
“We’re burying Mahlon at noon. Afterward, we’ll be having friends in for something to eat. If you have anything else to say, you can join us then. Two o’clock.”
“Maybe it would be better if we paid our respects at the funeral,” Martin said.
A muscle pulsated in Broadbent’s cheek. He took a step closer to Martin. “I can’t keep you out of the cemetery, but my boys over there”—he nodded toward Lowell and Hubert—“they’re both churchgoers and can recite the prophet, Brigham Young, as well as I. ‘Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you; and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you, for he will suffer their cries no longer.’ So my advice to you Travelers is to keep your distance. Besides which, my Mahlon would want only Saints burying him.”
29
WITH MARTIN driving, the Travelers continued south on Richards Road, past a mile of grazing cattle and alfalfa fields, until the asphalt dead-ended into Ellsworth Road. There, they turned right and headed west. The farms in that direction were smaller, with houses every quarter of a mile or so. When the farms ran out a couple of miles later, the road began to wind up through a narrow canyon. From the top, they could see the Pavant Mountains in the distance, dominated by ten-thousand-foot Pioneer Peak.
Going downhill, Ellsworth Road turned into a single, un-paved lane.
Martin skidded the Cherokee to a stop. “Let me see that map.”
The motel’s handout featured the Cowdery Cottages well out of scale, along with small crude glyphs representing the Parowan Cafe, Pavant Feed and Seed, Higbee’s Drug Store, and Fishlake Hardware.
“According to this, Ellsworth should take us right to the cemetery,” Martin said.
“We’ve got more than an hour before the funeral.”
“I want time to look for relatives,” Martin said. “The Broadbents aren’t going to be happy to see us, but I still want to take a look.”
A hundred yards farther on, the road passed by an abandoned gypsum quarry. After that, the surface diminished into deep, uneven ruts.
Martin slipped the Jeep into four-wheel drive and stomped on the accelerator. At twenty miles an hour, the Cherokee sounded like it was shaking to pieces.
“I’m trading this in on something Japanese as soon as we get back to Salt Lake.”
When they reached a railroad crossing sign, Martin stopped again to consult the map. “That’s the old Denver and Rio Grande right of way. The cemetery should be over the next rise.”
******
A four-foot iron fence with spear-point pickets surrounded Cowdery Junction’s cemetery. A windowless caretaker’s shed stood to one side of the double iron gates, which were barely wide enough to admit a hearse. There was no road as such leading into the graveyard, only tire tracks worn into the shaggy grass.
Martin parked across the street in front of a prewar bungalow where a small girl was playing ball with her dog. The moment Traveler stepped out of the Jeep, the dog, a black and white border collie, abandoned its ball and rushed to greet him, wagging its tail furiously. When he knelt to pat the animal, it collapsed onto its back, exposing its stomach for scratching.
“Janie doesn’t like everybody,” the child said.
“Is she named after you?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“What’s your name?”
The girl clutched her ball and backed up a couple of steps. “I’m not supposed to say.”
Her tone of voice brought the dog to its feet, snarling but under control. It moved between Traveler and the girl.
“She’s a good protector,” he said.
The girl retreated onto her front porch. She had to call the dog to join her.
Traveler and his father checked the caretaker’s shed and found it empty. A hand-printed sign had been tacked to the weathered door: BROADBENT FUNERAL, NOON IN THE COTTONWOOD GROVE SECTION.
The cemetery gates stood open.
“When we get there,” Traveler said, “we’ll stay in the trees.”
“Keep an eye out for lost Travelers,” Martin said as he started forward, head down, checking tombstones.
Traveler followed in his wake.
“ ‘I’ve paid my debt and so must you,’ ” Martin read off after they’d gone fifty yards or so.
“Just follow the tire tracks,” Traveler said. “They ought to lead us to the cottonwoods.”
Martin ambled along in the general direction of the tire marks, past rows of headstones facing east. He didn’t stop until he reached a headstone inscribed with a finger pointing toward heaven. “Listen to this. ‘As I am now, so you must be. Prepare for death and follow me.’ ”
Traveler was trying to get his father moving again, when he heard the sound of an approaching car. As soon as Traveler moved out of the tire tracks, a gray Pontiac sedan pulled alongside and stopped. Dr. Parley Sorenson got out, as did the woman with him.
“This is my mother,” he said. “Ruth Sorenson. She wanted to meet you two.”
She reminded Traveler of his mother, thin and energetic-looking, with black hair. In his mother’s case, each gray hair had been plucked out the moment it appeared until finally she’d resorted to dye rather than risk baldness.
“How did you find us?” he asked.
Her smile accentuated a good sixty-five years of wrinkles.
“In a town this size, everybody knows where a pair like you are.”
“When I hear things like that,” Martin said, “I long for the good old days. When people knew their neighbors.”
“The old days weren’t what they’re cracked up to be,” she answered. “I ought to know. I’m old enough to remember them.” She pointed a finger at Martin. “So are you.”
He spread his hands, both denying and accepting her comment at the same time.
“I’d better go park the car before the others start arriving,” Sorenson said.
“You go ahead,” she told him. “We’ve got plenty of time to pay our respects.”
As soon as the Pontiac disappeared around a stand of cedars, Ruth Sorenson started walking away. “We’ll cut through the old section. It saves time when you’re on foot.”
Martin fell into step beside her. Traveler stayed close behind.
“I delivered a baby boy last night,” she said. “Parley tried to get there in time to help, but he didn’t make it. We’re keeping count, my son and I. As of now, I’ve got a five-to-one delivery lead on him. Last night, though, I would have felt better if he’d been with me. Mrs. Hickman lost her first child, so this time around she had to stay in bed the last six weeks. Everything worked out in the end, and God showed His hand. A new life born to cancel out Mahlon Broadbent being called home.”
She slowed to glance over her shoulder. “I don’t blame you for what happened, young man. Mahlon was a wild one as a boy. He never did change much, though you’d think a man of fifty-six would know better than to try to run someone down.”
“Tell us about him,” Traveler said.
“He wasn’t one of mine. I’m two years past retirement now, but I was too young for nursing when he came along. Some of the Broadbent grandchildren belong to me, though. Now, if you were asking about them . . .”
“Do you remember a German prisoner named Karl Falke?”
“My husband took a liking to you two, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Ernie’s not one for strangers, though now that I see you for myself, I think he was right about you two. He said if I didn’t help, you were the kind who keep stirring things up until they get what they want. Besides, Ernie figures it’s probably a good
thing finding that lost man. Maybe that’s because Ernie was lost, too, when he came back from Germany.”
She stopped at a tombstone whose inscription read, ALBERT WILLEY, SERVED IN THE GREAT WAR. Like all the other headstones, Willey’s marker faced east.
“I was like everybody else during the war,” she said. “Germans were evil; they were the enemy. Even when I passed them working in the fields harvesting our crops I still thought of them that way. Then the shooting happened and the wounded started coming into the hospital. Seeing them then, I realized they were only young men in pain.”
“Your husband originally thought Karl Falke was among the six from Cowdery Junction who died,” Martin said.
“Those were hectic days. Government men were swarming all over the place, swearing everybody to secrecy. It was wasted effort as far as I could see. Nobody ever came around asking questions, not even the newspapers, until you showed up fifty years later. I can’t see any reason to keep quiet now.”
She knelt to pull a handful of weeds from around the gravestone. “There aren’t any Willeys left around here to do it for him. Too bad he’s not a Broadbent. They pride themselves in taking care of their graves.”
Martin joined her. When the stone was neatly edged, the woman sprang to her feet. Martin groaned up after her.
“When the camp guards brought in those other six boys, they all had the same symptoms,” she said once they were on the move again. “They had burning sensations in their stomachs, if I remember correctly. They were weak and nauseated. Their extremities were ice cold, their pulse rates very slow.” She wet her lips. “Their tongues were brown. I remember that distinctly.”
“You have an exceptional memory,” Martin said.
“That’s because I went over it with my son in the car on the way over here. He agrees with me, that it was probably some kind of poison. Old Doc Snow thought the same thing fifty years ago, for all the good it did him. He treated the symptoms. They seemed to get better. We got them up and out of bed and suddenly they were all dead. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.”
“You mentioned camp guards,” Traveler said. “Does the name Maw mean anything to you?”
“You’re in luck there. Old George Maw is still alive and kicking. You’ll find him and his wife, Dottie, out on Talmage Road.”
A magpie landed on a tombstone and squawked at them. A second bird took up the cry from the branch of a nearby sumac.
“All right,” Martin called to the birds, “we’re leaving.”
“It’s not us.” She pointed out a gray striped cat that was crouched beneath a bushy dogwood.
“Salt Lake’s too big for magpies these days,” Martin said. “When I was a boy, I used to see them all the time. That cat better watch it or they’ll pick him bald. You’re lucky to live in a place like this, where nothing changes.”
“Sometimes I feel the same way, but we’re old, aren’t we? Our young people, though, they don’t stay. They head for the cities.”
Martin took a deep breath. “You don’t get fresh air like this in Salt Lake. It’s times like now I envy my forefathers and the simple life they led.”
She took Martin’s arm. “When I catch myself saying things like that, I read the stones. Come on. I’ll show you.”
She changed direction and headed for a large Utah juniper tree. In the shade beneath it stood a double tombstone. On one side the inscription read HAROLD HILL, DIED 25 OCT. 1887, 1 DAY OLD. The other half said, EMMA HILL, DIED 8 NOV. 1887, 2 WEEKS OLD.
“Your memories of the bygone times are false,” Ruth Sorenson said. “Life was harsh. There were no wonder drugs, no antibiotics. Half the people died in childhood.”
She led the way around the double stone and showed them the verse on the other side.
Gone before us
Oh our children
To the better land.
Vainly wait we
For others in
Your places to stand.
“That’s the great reminder,” she said. “The good old days are only in our imagination.”
30
THE HEARSE was gone, the mourners departed, and the coffin lowered into the ground but yet to be covered when Traveler and his father emerged from the cover provided by a thick stand of cottonwoods. The burial had taken place in the northeast corner of the cemetery, where a low iron fence separated the Broadbents from the rest of the dead. Their tract, half an acre Traveler guessed, had been planted with box elder trees along the two sides that marked the cemetery’s outer boundary. The grass was freshly mown.
He and his father stepped over the metal railing and began walking the perimeter. Near one of the box elders, out of direct line of sight with the open grave, a headstone lay facedown. When Traveler turned it over, bugs and white larvae wiggled for cover. The inscription, BRIGHAM BROADBENT, 1851-1911, was so timeworn it was barely more than scratch marks on the rough dirty granite.
“He was born the same year Brigham Young sent out Saints to secure the boundaries of his State of Deseret,” Martin said. “I don’t want my marker falling into disrepair like this one.”
He grabbed hold of the stone and raised it upright. A broken edge kept it from standing on its own. “Give me a hand, Moroni. We’ll have to wedge it into the ground if we want it to stay put.”
“Where does it go?”
Martin left his son holding the stone and got down on his hands and knees to run his hands over the lawn. There were two subtile indentations where coffins had collapsed below ground. There was no exposed soil to show to which plot the headstone belonged.
“All men are grass,” Martin said softly.
“That stone has been lying here a long time.”
“That’s no excuse for losing track of a man’s tombstone.” Martin rose to his feet and began a search pattern. “There must be another loose marker around here someplace.”
Traveler walked all the way to the cemetery’s boundary and back again, looking for signs of vandalism. He found nothing suspicious and no sign of another gravestone.
“There are still plenty of Broadbents alive and kicking,” Martin told him. “Look for yourself. All the other graves are well tended, so why aren’t they taking care of these two?”
“Maybe the stone got stolen. Maybe they lost track of their relatives. Maybe—”
“Yeah, I know,” Martin said. “Maybe they’ve got an extra body on their hands.”
Traveler studied the indentations again. “It could be an Indian grave, maybe even someone too poor to buy a plot who decided to slip one of their kin in among the Broadbents.”
Martin shook his head. “One of us had better drive up to the county seat and check the records for a body count.”
“It’s Saturday,” Traveler said.
“I don’t like waiting until Monday.” His father, placing one foot against the other, measured both imprints. “When I get to the Richfield, I’ll call BYU and stir up some archaeologists. I’ll tell them I’ve discovered some unmarked pioneer graves.”
“They won’t work Sundays.”
Martin grinned. “They will if I tell them it’s one of Brigham Young’s missing relatives.”
“They won’t believe you.”
“Probably not. But they won’t dare take the chance, either.”
“We’d better make certain there isn’t another explanation before you go running off to BYU.”
“Mahlon came after us,” Martin said. “That means he was anxious about something. This may be it.”
They started back toward the car, following the tire tracks instead of Ruth Sorenson’s shortcut. When they reached the cemetery’s entrance, the gates were shut and padlocked. Traveler was about to help his father over the iron fence when Janie, the border collie, came charging across the street toward them, chasing a ball. The ball rolled under a gap at the bottom of the gate, hit a sprinkler, and careened away. The dog squeezed through the iron pickets, retrieved the ball, but tried to get out farthe
r along the fence, at a point where chicken wire was covering a missing picket.
“Come, Janie,” the little girl called from her front walk.
Janie dropped the ball and started digging frantically at the base of the chicken wire. The girl came running but stopped well short of the cemetery fence. Her proximity started the dog howling.
Traveler squatted down and patted his thigh. “Come on, girl.”
The dog paid no attention.
“I think you can squeeze through the pickets and catch your dog,” Martin told the girl.
She shook her head. “Ghosts.”
“You’re right.”
Martin signaled to his son. They backed away from the fence until the girl felt safe enough to reach through the pickets and pull her dog out.
As soon as Janie and the girl had retreated to the sanctuary of their front porch, Traveler helped his father over the fence.
31
TRAVELER AND Martin returned to the motel and asked the manager, a man named Frank Cheney, to put through a call to Sheriff Woodruff in Salina.
“It’s the weekend,” Cheney said. “It may take me a little while to find him. I’ll ring your room as soon as I get through.”
For a moment, Traveler considered looking for a pay phone, but then decided security didn’t matter. Everybody in town already knew his business.
“We’re in a hurry,” Martin said and handed the man a ten-dollar bill.
The phone was ringing by the time they reached their room. As soon as Traveler picked it up, the sheriff said, “My friends know I don’t like being called out on weekends.”
“All we need is information.” Traveler angled the phone away from his ear so his father could listen in.
Woodruff sighed. “Let’s hear it.”
Traveler explained about the two graves with a single headstone.