Stephen Hunter - Black Light

The site in the photo seemed to be on a ridge too. Could he make out other ridges behind it, all the way to the trees? He could not. The background was lost in blur, as the dots became nonsense. He saw that the key had to be the trees, now gone for whatever reason. His daddy lay under a big tree. Maybe one hundred yards behind it was another tree. And that smudge in the dots, was that a tree? If so, that meant three trees in a rough line heading—in which direction? Couldn’t say.

Hey, boys, help me. Help the one among you who should have been with you, help him.

But the dead were silent.

Feeling lost and a complete failure, he took another step to leave the ridge and find another, when in his far peripheral vision some anomaly registered. He turned to track it down and saw nothing. He turned back, moving, and again there came a signal from his subconscious that something should be noted.

Were the dead speaking in some odd way?

Come on, boys, tell me. Give me your message.

No, nothing, only silence. Far off, the sound of a power mower. Above, a jet glinting high in the sky, a commercial job leaving a fat contrail. A white car in the distance.

Duane Peck’s, of course. Keeping watch.

Duane, who are you working for?

Someday soon, we may have to have a discussion with you.

He turned again: another strangeness assailed him.

He tried to sift through it. What was he feeling or noticing? It seemed only to come when he moved and in his peripheral, as if in focusing on it, it went away. He set out to duplicate the phenomenon.

He stepped, turning, trying to keep his eyes focused straight ahead and his mind emptied. Nothing. Did it again. Nothing. Felt like an idiot.

Did it the third time.

Now he had it. Far off, in the orthodox line of gravestones, was a gap. No, not a gap, an irregularity. One stone was slightly out of line. Why would that be?

He sighted on it and walked. It was 150 yards away.

Mason.

Mason, what’s your goddamned problem? You a fuckup, Mason? You a mama’s boy, you think the rules don’t ever apply to you? That’s how a sergeant would talk to a man out of formation. Why are you buried about a foot to the right of Shidlovsky and Donohue? Isn’t Murphy pissed, you moving in on his territory?

Was it a mistake or—

A tree.

It was gone now, but when poor Mason went into the earth back in 1899 with a Spanish Mauser bullet in his heart, a giant tree must have been right here on this spot, and so they made a slight adjustment. Later the tree died, but Mason stayed out of whack until eternity.

Bob took the picture out.

If he looked hard, he could force himself to believe that if this was the spot for the tree, and since this spot was quite close to the boundary of the cemetery, then maybe this was the third tree in the line.

He looked again at the picture. What time of day was the picture taken? He ransacked through forty long years of memories, putting aside much that was not pleasant, and a little that was, and at last he remembered a formidable presence named Miss Connie rushing him through breakfast and dressing him because his mother kept breaking down. That put the funeral in the morning, before noon in any case. Figuring then that the photographer would have moved until the sun was behind him, and that it would have been reasonably low, Bob guessed that the photographer was facing west, his back to the east. So if this was the last tree, then the other two in the rough line would be to the east.

He orientated himself that way and saw only crosses. But he took off his blue denim shirt and draped it on Mason. He didn’t think Mason would mind. Then he turned to the east and began to walk the line.

He found the second gap fifty yards beyond and rushed ahead. But where the first one should be, according to his reading of the photo, he found nothing, except a damned sidewalk that led to a little park of what appeared to be abstract statuary a little bit farther out. The rows were nice and even. He looked, uncomprehending how such a huge tree, had there been one, wouldn’t have thrown the lines of graves out of whack. What the hell was wrong?

He looked more carefully at the picture.

Sidewalk, he thought. Where the hell is it going?

He found it, walked to the little garden. Some Confederate thing? No, dammit, Vietnam. The county had erected a little memento mori to the boys of Nam, a plaque, inscribed with words like honor and duty and sacrifice and of course the names. He looked, then looked away. He knew Harrison, and Marlow, he knew Jefferson too, though Jefferson was black. Jefferson was AirCav, right, a brother of the Black Horse? What about Simpson? Straight-leg grunt, draft bait, caught a booby when he was down to days until DEROS, the town’s favorite hard-luck story.

Now Bob’s head ached and he couldn’t deal with the problem anymore. He turned to leave, and as if in giving up, he got it.

The tree comes down for whatever reason, but it was so imposing that its very presence had intimidated the gravediggers, so they’d never gotten near to it. And when it came down, that’s where they build their garden to the Vietnam War dead, and that’s where they build the sidewalk. So that would make his dad’s now hidden grave somewhere along the sidewalk, probably to the right of it. He thought it made sense too. If some guys were exchanging gravestones that probably weighed two hundred to three hundred pounds apiece late at night, they’d need a wheelbarrow or cart and the sidewalk would be helpful. He walked a bit until he reached a halfway point and then just turned west. He saw nothing, then moved up and back and at last up a bit more. He was on a ridge. He could see two gaps in the line before him to the west, one of the tombstones by the farthest gap the blue of his shirt.

“Hey.”

He turned. It was Russ.

“Those old records were miserable, but I got at least thirteen names. Man, it’s amazing the records that place keeps.”

Bob looked to his immediate right.

“I bet one of them says Jacob Finley.”

Russ dug out his paper, looked them over and then said, “Yeah. Jacob Finley. Fifth Arkansas Light Infantry.”

Bob looked at the grave marker, limestone corrupted by the passage of time, untended, leaning ever so slightly to the right.

He knelt and put a hand on the cold stone.

Hello, old man , he thought. I’ve come. It’s time .

This time it was easy. They went back to the County Coroner’s and refiled the exhumation papers for poor Jacob Finley, according to them Bob’s long-lost cousin. No lies had to be told regarding the reasons for changing the request, because, the first paperwork already in order, nobody in the Coroner’s Office particularly cared. Sam wasn’t even necessary. A few phone calls later and all the mechanisms of the day before were reinstalled.

Mr. Coggins and his two boys were luckier this time. The grave site, being accessible off that helpful sidewalk, was now approachable by backhoe, and Mr. Coggins was an expert with the machine. In less than an hour he excavated the coffin, and just as the machine uncovered the box, Dr. Phillips showed up.

“How did you find him?” he asked.

Bob explained.

“Well, maybe you’re right and maybe not.” He went and looked as the quickly erected tackle drew the box from the ground.

“I will say this, that’s a metal casket, circa the fifties. Do you remember the funeral home?”

Bob said no and then a name shot into his memory like a flare out of the void.

“Devilin’s,” he said.

“Yep,” said the doctor. “And your father’s name was Earl Swagger.”

“Yes sir.”

“That’s what it says here. That’s him. Okay, boys, load it into the hearse and we’ll be off.”