Grave Images

by Jenny Goebel

  Later, when I stood behind Ms. Tennyson’s desk, the sky-blue pencil sparkling in my red-hot hands, I told Ms. Tennyson I just couldn’t help myself. And it was the truth. The sight of that pencil had started a flame in my stomach that couldn’t be extinguished until it was mine.

  That night, as punishment, Mimi made me copy the Tenth Commandment one hundred times. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not covet … When I’d finished, I asked Mimi why she didn’t make me copy the commandment that says you shouldn’t steal. Then I shut up real quick, thinking maybe she’d make me write it a hundred times, too. But she didn’t. She just said, “Bernie, you’re not a thief. Covet is the same as want. And want is what got you into this mess.”

  For all of Mimi’s hope and my hard laboring, copying down the Tenth Commandment all those years ago hadn’t done a lick of good. My wanting or coveting (take your pick) seemed only to have worsened since then. And, like the backyard being drenched by the storm, my heart was flooding with it. This time, my sights weren’t on a silly, little blue pencil. They were set on seeing the woman’s portrait again.

  I tried over and over to get the woman’s image copied from my memory onto a page in my sketch pad. It wasn’t exactly like using a hammer and chisel, but I thought the practice had to be good for me anyway. I even tried looking at my drawing of Mama, thinking that since the two of them looked so similar, it might help. But it didn’t.

  I couldn’t get anything about the sketch right. I pressed too hard with the lead. Then I erased like mad until I tore a hole in the paper. I couldn’t get any depth to show in her eyes. And the shallow groove above her upper lip, that was giving me a heck of a time, too. If I couldn’t even re-create the portrait on paper, how would I ever succeed on stone?

  I was smudging the lines of a coil of hair with my finger when, around 3:00 PM, the gray-and-black clouds finally cleared like mourners from a funeral. My room brightened, and I stood from my sketch and went to the window. As I was peering down, the carriage house door swung open and an overcoat-clad Mr. Stein stole away into the soggy backyard. He shrank back from the peek-a-boo sunlight and then quickly slinked through the puddles, around the garage, and out of sight.

  Seeing my chance, I raced from my room, down the steps, and out the front door just in time to see him turning the corner down the block. Then, smiling at my good fortune, I turned to head back through the showroom entrance and out to the carriage house. I wasn’t gonna let Mr. Stein’s unwilling behavior keep me from the portrait a minute longer.

  I was used to having wants, but the force of this one was beyond anything I could understand. Way beyond normal. Even for me. Sure, I wanted to study the portrait closely — check out the depth of the markings and such. And I really wanted to learn a skill that would make me more useful to my family. But there was also something about the way the portrait seemed to be pulling me to it — something odd and perhaps a little frightening … If I hadn’t been wasting my time trying to figure out why I was feeling so anxious, maybe I would’ve noticed Mr. Finley before I nearly knocked him clear out of the den.

  “Oh dear, I’m sorry,” Mr. Finley said, trying to recover from the blow I’d dealt him with my shoulder. Mr. Finley was one of those people who felt the need to apologize even when he was the one being trampled. He delivered our mail — always with a whistle and a smile. I thought he must’ve been delivering a package, otherwise he’d have put the mail in the box out front, but then I recognized the redness of his nose and the drippy, watery eyes — and in mid-July, we were nowhere near cold and flu season.

  “Awww, Mr. Finley,” I said. “What happened?”

  Mr. Finley lost it then — as so many grievers do — having held it together until the very moment he needed his composure to answer a simple question. He dropped to a chair next to Mimi’s desk and pulled out a handkerchief. Then he started sobbing so uncontrollably I didn’t quite know what to do. “Wait right here,” I said. “I’ll go get Mimi.”

  He lifted his head from the red-and-white hankie and grabbed me by the wrist. “I just want something small. Something to remember her by.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Honest, Mr. Finley. I’ll be right back.”

  But Mr. Finley didn’t let go. “Maybe something with a picture, so when I visit her grave, I can remember my pretty wife’s smiling face,” he said.

  “All right, Mr. Finley,” I said. Then the need to let out a mighty, honking blow must’ve taken over him, for next thing I knew, I was free, and Mr. Finley had his nose wrapped up in the hankie again.

  I made a dash for the kitchen but never made it. As soon as I reached the entrance to the corridor, Dad was calling me back. I turned around. To my surprise, Dad’s large frame was there kneeling right beside Mr. Finley and speaking softly — so quietly, I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.

  First Mr. Stein, and now this? Dad was dealing with people more these days than I’d ever seen him. What was he gonna do next, start delivering muffins with Mimi? I’d much rather he just hurry up the stairs to see Mama.

  “Bernie, I want you to take Mr. Finley home. Help him find a photograph of his wife, and then bring it back here. And, if you can, see if you can get Mr. Finley to rest for a spell. He could use some time to get through this.”

  I glanced behind me toward the kitchen where Mimi likely hadn’t heard a word, and then out the window toward the emptier-than-empty carriage house, and finally at Mr. Finley with his sad, sorrowful eyes. I remembered all the times those eyes had looked twinkly instead of tearful, and I walked back over.

  Even though my heart still yanked me toward the carriage house, and even though I was concerned with what might’ve been left on Mr. Finley’s hand after he’d been holding the hankie, I wrapped my fingers around his. “C’mon, Mr. Finley. Stand up,” I said. “I’ll get you home.” I knew it’s what Mimi would’ve done, and if I was trying to help out more, it was the type of thing I had to do, too.

  My peek at the portrait would wait.

  I led Mr. Finley out the front door and took a look around. “Did you walk here, Mr. Finley?” I asked.

  Mr. Finley sniffled and nodded his head.

  “Okay, then. We’ll just have to walk you back. Whereabouts do you live, anyway?”

  “Benton Street.”

  Benton Street was all the way across Stratwood. “Well, we better get started.”

  I hurried Mr. Finley along as much as you can hurry anyone whose tether has just been cut from the world. I think he might’ve floated off altogether like a lost balloon if I hadn’t been holding on to his arm.

  Then, as if I needed anything else to add to this ordeal, halfway to Benton Street, we ran into Michael Romano. He was coming up the sidewalk on a pogo stick. A pogo stick! It was thin and silver and Michael was wearing a bright-red helmet. He looked ridiculous, of course — like a giant cherry lollipop springing into the sky. I hadn’t seen him since the day he leaped out from behind the gray monument, and I was none too happy to see him again.

  “Hiya, Bernie!” he said as the stick hit the ground and he was catapulted back into the air. I had to softly nudge Mr. Finley aside so that we wouldn’t both be clobbered.

  “Watch where you’re going!” I scolded.

  Michael continued boinging right by like nothing had happened. Normally, I’d chase him down, or at least toss a handful of pebbles in his path and see how well he could bounce on those, but I had Mr. Finley to tend to. I glanced over, and Mr. Finley had a frightfully dazed look on his face. He was living through a nightmare already, and I was sure Michael and his pogo stick hadn’t helped the matter any. “C’mon,” I said, gently tugging on his arm.

  When we finally arrived at Mr. Finley’s home, I helped him carry a stack of rubber-banded shoe boxes down from the attic. An old grandfather clock tick-tocked the minutes away as we sat in silence in his front room while he looked through the photographs. My legs were well and stuck to the plastic sheet covering the couch, and I’d c
ounted thirty-four liver spots on Mr. Finley’s skin by the time he dropped the hankie for good. No more sobbing. Riffling through the boxes of old photographs seemed to have brought back some of his composure.

  “When did it happen?” I asked, curious but hoping not to send him over the edge again.

  Mourners aren’t exactly predictable. Sometimes they pop into Alpine Monuments the very day their loved one passes. Sometimes it takes months. Time doesn’t make much difference. Either way, picking out a memorial seems to rub most of them raw.

  Mr. Finley looked up at me like he was so lost in his memories, he’d forgotten I was there. “Three days ago. In the evening,” he said steadily enough. I nodded and then calculated in my head. That was when the storm had begun, the day Mr. Stein had arrived at Stratwood.

  “My missus loved the rain,” Mr. Finley continued. “I thought she’d fallen asleep listening to it, but she never moved out of her chair.” Mr. Finley looked through the shutters at an empty rocker on the front porch. He looked at it like he could still see his wife sitting in it. I shuddered. Maybe he could.

  “I’m real sorry, Mr. Finley,” I said.

  “Here, this is the one.” He handed me a photo of a chipper-looking woman with short, curly gray hair.

  “This is a nice pic,” I told him. “She looks real happy.”

  “Doesn’t she, now? Always did.”

  And that’s what did it.

  Not me asking questions, but the thought of his lovely wife and how happy she was sent Mr. Finley into another fit of weeping. Not sure what else to do, I patted him on the shoulder and quickly left with the picture tucked safely in my back pocket.

  I stopped once I was outside on the screened-in front porch. I ran my hand across the smooth wooden arm of the rocking chair and peered back inside. Mr. Finley was crumpled. No longer on a mission to find the perfect photograph, the memories the boxes held seemed to be adding to the heaviness of his heart. There wasn’t any more I could do for him, except hope a monument would bring him some small comfort.

  As I walked down the cement steps, a car door opened across the street and Mrs. Evans stepped out. She carried a care basket from Sacred Heart Parish. I didn’t have to see inside the wicker basket to know what was there: a small arrangement of cut flowers, a spiral-cut ham, a loaf of corn bread, and a jar of fresh honey. But Mrs. Evans brought more care with her than just what was in the basket.

  She saw me coming down the steps and she waved. I looked away, pretending not to have noticed, and walked quickly in the opposite direction. Seeing her here like this, about to go inside and do for Mr. Finley what I couldn’t, brought back too much of my own pain.

  I’d held Mr. Finley’s hand, and I’d led him by the arm, but Mrs. Evans would let him pour out his tears and suffering on her shoulder, and then she’d fill him back up inside with soft smiles and warm hugs. Next, she’d suddenly remember a funny story about a time Mrs. Finley did something clever or cute, and she’d help Mr. Finley find a way to laugh through his tears. She did it for all the parishioners who’d lost someone close to them. I’d seen it in my own home too recently to stick around and watch it play out all over again.

  IT WAS SUPPER TIME WHEN I GOT BACK. THE SHADOWS WERE long on the ground and distorted from the falling sun. Somehow the day had turned into as big a muddle as our rain-soaked backyard.

  With Mrs. Finley’s photo in my back pocket, I set a dinner tray down in front of the carriage house. I expected Mr. Stein to ignore my knocking at first, and I wasn’t wrong. But I also knew the storm was over, and I could stand there banging away all night if necessary. Finally the door did swing open, and it happened so quickly, it caught me off guard. I didn’t have a chance to say anything before Mr. Stein was bending over in front of me and grabbing his tray off the paver.

  I couldn’t hurdle him. Never was much of a high jumper, or I might’ve tried. Instead, when he stood up, I put my hand on the door, thinking I could prevent him from shutting it in my face. He saw my hand. He saw me. But he starting pushing the door closed with his foot, nonetheless.

  “Now wait a minute,” I said. “I have a photo for you.”

  Mr. Stein’s cement-colored eyes weren’t dart-y today. They glanced down at his dinner and then pointed straight at me. “Put it on the tray,” he said. His face wasn’t angry or even teasing. If anything, he just looked bored.

  “Can I at least see the portrait?” Now that I’d finally gotten his attention, I had to give it another shot.

  Mr. Stein’s eyes widened. Somehow the question seemed to surprise him more than I thought it should. “What portrait, Bernie?” he said slowly, concentrating on my face.

  “The woman’s, of course. The one you showed Dad and me the day you came here.”

  Mr. Stein’s eyes shrank back to their regular, old, squinty size. He seemed — I don’t know — disappointed or something. “No,” he said. Then a gleam entered his expression as he bared his teeth and somehow half smiled, half sneered at me. He turned and walked with the tray in his hands, leaving the door wide open behind him.

  He’d done it on purpose. Not letting me in when I’d wanted, and now daring me to follow. Which I did, of course. I stepped inside the carriage house, my heart quickening thanks either to the nearness of the portrait or Mr. Stein’s odd behavior.

  Mr. Stein set the tray on the worktable and then turned back to face me. The shadows, heavier with each passing moment, seemed to claw at me from the corners of the room. With one hand Mr. Stein opened his overcoat, and my eyes again caught sight of the iron tools peeking out of his inside pocket.

  “These are much more interesting than her portrait, don’t you think?” Mr. Stein said. “Without them the granite would still just be a piece of rock.”

  My voice caught in my throat as he pointed to the hammer and chisel like a peddler hawking his goods. The tools were discolored in a way I hadn’t noticed before, with dappled patterns of blue and black and purple. Again, I knew there was no reason for them to frighten me so, but I was petrified. Frozen in place.

  “Did you know that during the Middle Ages, iron tools were cooked and roasted in bone dust to harden their edges? What went into the darkness of the smithy was a mystery, and more than one blacksmith was burned alive as a witch or wizard.” A smile lifted and twisted on Mr. Stein’s face. “These tools are … special, Bernie. They’re very well preserved for their age, don’t you think?”

  His lower jaw jutted back and forth. His teeth grinded. What I thought had been a nervous tic before, he now used to emphasize his point. He stopped only to say, “Ground bones, Bernie. That’s what they used,” and then he made more of that god-awful grating noise.

  Finally, I thought I understood what was happening. He remembered how the tools had frightened me the first time I’d spied them, and now he was using them to toy with me. He was trying to scare me off so I’d leave him alone about the woman’s portrait. No way, but I did feel slightly flattered. I thought this meant he saw me as competition and was worried I’d put him out of a job if I learned to etch properly.

  “Here’s the photo,” I said, fixing my voice to sound disinterested and not in the slightest bit afraid. I held the picture out to Mr. Stein with Mrs. Finley’s face smiling back at me. “Just a small portrait will do.”

  Mr. Stein grinned and then snatched it from my hands. “Thank you, Bernie, for delivering this fine meal, and Mrs. Finley’s photograph.”

  It wasn’t until I was back outside, with the setting sun, that I realized I’d held the picture turned away from him the entire time. Now I was scared. Something wasn’t right about all this. Instead of going to the kitchen to pick up Mama’s tray, I headed to the garage. It took an entire minute of me waving my arms and shouting like a madwoman before Dad finally noticed and took the earplugs out of his ears. “DID YOU TELL MR. STEIN ABOUT THE JOB THAT CAME IN?” I screamed over the sandblasting machine.

  “WHAT?” Dad screamed back.

  “MRS. FINLEY? DID YOU TE
LL MR. STEIN ABOUT HER PORTRAIT YET?”

  Dad shook his head no, and right away shoved the earplugs back in.

  How could that be? If Dad hadn’t said anything, how had Mr. Stein known the photo was of Mrs. Finley before he’d even had a chance to look at it? How had he known about Mrs. Finley at all?

  I remembered the weird feeling I had the moment Mr. Stein walked through the door of Alpine Monuments — the feeling that there was something off about him. I’d been ignoring it since. Wanting to see the portrait and learn about hand-etchings had somehow pushed it aside, but it was back, and powerfully so.

  “Dad,” I said. “There’s something not right about Mr. Stein …” But since he had the entire world shut out, and me with it, I might as well have been talking to myself.

  I had a downright horrid dream that night. A large black smelting pot sat in the corner of a darkened room with liquid fire spurting from its lips. A rod of iron glowed as it was lifted from the flame and then pounded flat between a cold iron hammer and an anvil. Beneath the clatter of metal clashing, I thought I heard the sound of bones being scraped and ground into a fine white powder. Or perhaps it was merely a lingering memory of Mr. Stein’s teeth grinding. Either way, I awoke startled, cursing our guest for putting that image in my head.

  I sat up in bed. In the dim light, the walls of my room looked gray rather than the sea-foam green they were actually painted. Carefully, but with trembling fingers, I took a rolled-up piece of paper from the drawer in my nightstand and spread it flat over my lap. It was a sketch of Mama. Well, actually of Mama and me. I hadn’t drawn it myself, but I liked it the most, and it was the reason I’d started sketching in the first place. And I was glad I had. There is something about art that gives you hope, and when you try it yourself, sweet relief.

  Mama looked so happy in the sketch, and I needed the reminder that she was capable of it. That someday she might show that sort of heartiness again. As I looked over the sketch, my racing heart slowed. It calmed me, took me away from the bad dream, and carried me back to one of my most favorite days, a day about six months before Thomas was born.