1989

November 26th
Late afternoon

Just south of East Worthy, about three miles, lies a cemetery in a small fenced-in field. Actually, the cemetery cannot be distinguished from the surrounding fields except by the rectangles of wire that make a rusted graph around the stone markers. Several short piney bushes stand unceremoniously among the stones, but they too could have been the natural growth of any field in central Ohio. Not that the cemetery is uncared for. It is trim and neat. Plain. Not pretty.
      Originally, this field had received only the remains of the congregation of Elmgrove Mennonite Church, which stands two miles up Township Road 112. Beyond the Christian King Farm. Solemn men in black hats dug the first grave in 1849. Most of the burying came at the turn of the century and then on into the 1920's and 30's. From the congregation. But now the church does not oppose anyone--Mennonite or no--who asks to be buried there. Some of the stones are newer, but only if a man stops his car and unhooks the loop of wire on the tilting metal gate, only if a man stands close to the various granite shapes, can he distinguish what is old and older, recent, or new. It is called the Kauffman cemetery.
      On this late November afternoon the rusted fence glittered in a graph of light. The temperature had dropped all over west-central Ohio and the fog that had hung in the sky during the day was in the process of encrusting weed and wire, piney bush, and a shimmering stand of trees across the field.
      Ned Leighty's three dark horses hoisted their thick nostrils over the fence, watching a man as he broke the crystal on the wire loop and scraped the gate against the post's brambles, a brittle bittersweet . They watched him walk to the far corner and lean down. They snorted clouds of white when he bent his knees and made a sound at a stone. At its base he placed a black shape. They could not understand the sound or the reasons, but their soft eyes saw the ice and the black rectangle and the man moving.
      "I did it, Dad. I did it. I told you I would. Do you hear me? I was there and I told them." He rubbed his bare hand over the top of the stone as if he were stroking an animal. Then he leaned his head against it. The horses broke the delicate weeds beneath their feet and tossed their liquid manes, for the man's sound was different--loud, calling. Then he took up again the black shape and opened it and spread it wide over the icy grass. The darkest horse watched him move fast, away toward the gate. But then the man turned back. His feet shattered the weeds and his coat snagged against the hard arm of a bush as he ran.
      "No, no, no," he cried at the stone, slinging into the air something that had fallen onto the black shape--a small ice-green bough had broken under its own weight and clung to the papery leaves between the black covers. He shut the book and brushed over it again with his hand. Then he stood, fast, shuffling away, through the gate, latching the loop, opening a door.
     Inside the shining shape sat another.
     A head turned and a face in green bent toward the man. And the horses’ round eyes followed until the shapes had disappeared over the rise in the road at the next farm.