Keohane, G. - Solomon's Grave

He and Elizabeth had been friends in school as long as each could remember. She was an only child, like himself, and they found a kinship in that. As they grew older, their relationship shifted slowly, comfortably, to something more. In many ways they were symbiotic. Nathan was never one for spontaneity. He preferred to plan things out, research the best movie or place to visit before stepping out the door. Elizabeth, on the other hand, enjoyed walking into the Showcase Cinemas and buying a ticket for a film she knew nothing about, on the lookout for something new to jump out at me , as she liked to put it.

He often recalled one particular Saturday during their senior year of high school. Elizabeth drove them in her ten-year old Subaru to the annual Woodstock Fair in Connecticut. She noticed a small sign at the side of the highway, Quilt Museum, Next Exit , and turned off the highway. Much to Nathan’s initial chagrin, they spent the next hour searching the back roads for the museum. It turned out to be an oversized barn in the back of an elderly woman’s yard. The woman was small but full of an excited energy. She gave them a tour of the barn, lighted by a single bare bulb and whatever sunlight streamed through the wide barn door. Nathan and Elizabeth learned the history of every quilt that hung from the walls and beams. The museum was started, the old woman explained, as a way of breaking the routine of her solitude after her husband died, and of sharing her work—all of the quilts were her own—with as many people as possible before she was gone from this world. Eventually, they said their goodbyes and continued on toward Woodstock. But the fair’s crowds and noise couldn’t compete with the simple quiet of that barn. Without Elizabeth’s impulsiveness, Nathan would never have known that lonely women existed, or shared her life for those couple of hours. Nor would he have experienced so many other memories of his teenage years.

With Elizabeth. Always with her.

There was only one aspect of their lives they did not share, try as he might to do so. Elizabeth was not a practicing Christian, though her family belonged to Saint Malachy’s. They’d attended mass, though irregularly, until two weeks before her thirteenth birthday when her father died in a car accident on the way home from work. After the funeral, she and her mother stopped going to church, except for an occasional Christmas or Easter service. Nathan never wanted to push, wanted to live his life in his faith and hope to draw her to the Lord with whatever light he could offer. Casual invitations to attend services at Hillcrest Baptist were always declined.

Six months before that fateful evening prior to his return to the university, her mother had died of a cerebral aneurysm, ten years to the month after her father’s death. Nathan noticed a growing distance in Elizabeth’s voice during the funeral, when talking on the phone from school and in person during that final summer.

As he packed his bags, Elizabeth watching quietly from his desk chair, Nathan had felt a sudden urgency to ask her to attend services with him the next day, before he left for school. She’d become cold, and with too much conviction for Nathan to write off as merely an angry outburst said, “There is no God. There never has been, never will be. Don’t be so naïve, Nate.”

He’d been stunned into silence. He finished packing, trying to think of how to respond. No words came. Even now, whether it was her avid declaration of the nonexistence of God, or the fact that she had called him naïve, that had hit him the hardest, he didn’t know. Perhaps both. The night had ended early, both knowing a hurt had been done but neither knowing what to do about it. Something had fallen between them, an expanse too vast to be bridged. Though he never stopped praying for her, after a couple of unreturned phone calls from his dormitory, he simply stopped calling.

He tried dating on and off with schoolmates, but nothing ever came of it. The link, the comfortable connection he’d always felt with Elizabeth, wasn’t there. Without her influence, his life became a map clearly laid out and always predictable. He threw himself into the final preparations for his Masters of Divinity, and his life of ministry. Tried to let time be the salve which would keep the hurt and memories at bay. Moving to Florida was a shock in itself, a turn in the road that made him begin to think he would be OK. A chance to make his own path, his own changes.

Now, suddenly, he was back home to stay. It didn’t feel like a step backwards. It had been his choice to accept. He could have stayed in Florida, far away in the sun and heat. He chose to come home, and would build his life here.

In order to change the subject from past to present, Nathan told his parents of the twenty-three hour bus ride the day before, leaving out details of his night terrors. When he finally stood and said goodbye, the mood in the Dinneck kitchen was decidedly lighter. For that, at least, he was grateful.

He’d worry about Elizabeth, and his father’s sudden lack of faith, later.

Chapter Eight

Greenwood Street was a long, tree-lined avenue on the far western edge of town, one block from the church. Nathan walked with a forced casualness, keeping pace beside Ralph Hayden who stepped with strong, but achingly slow, confidence. The church’s property abutted a small section of woods separating it from the older town cemetery. It was a warm day for mid-September, almost eighty, and he enjoyed the green tree shadows as they flashed over them. Cooler weather would be coming soon, thankfully. A refreshing change from Florida’s year-round heat. For now, Nathan walked to the entrance of the cemetery with his sport coat draped over his shoulder, hooked by the two fingers of his right hand. Hayden was good company, not offering unnecessary small talk and expecting none in return.

The cemetery looked ancient. The surrounding wall, most likely the original laid down as pasture demarcations in the late eighteen-hundreds, consisted of moss-laden stones, interspersed with a dangerous mix of blueberry bushes and poison ivy vines. The stones themselves were chipped and darkened with age. Hayden muttered, “Here we are,” as they entered through a narrow break in the wall leading to a gravel drive.

Like the wall, the nearest headstones were stained with time, chipped in corners. Some leaned precariously to one side. Many of the graves in this area bore the name “Dreyfus.” A hundred years ago, when the family owned most of this land, they likely had exclusive use of this place for their own interment.

Considering its age, Nathan was impressed with the cemetery’s upkeep. He made a mental note to comment on this when they met Tarretti. According to Hayden, the groundskeeper had worked here for over a quarter century, almost as long as his own tenure. The man lived, and spent most of his time, at the newer property near the center of town. On Wednesdays and Fridays he did the rounds at the older graveyards and so asked them to meet him here.

“He’s a stickler for routine,” Hayden had said this morning before leaving. “You’ll find it easier to work around his schedule than the other way around.”

A rusting white Chevy Blazer was parked near the entrance in a small shady lot tucked fifty yards from the road. Vincent Tarretti ambled toward them.

“Reverend Hayden.” The groundskeeper was probably in his early- to mid-fifties, Nathan guessed. His long blonde hair had slight gray tinting around the temples and a peppering in his thin beard. He had the tanned, weather-worn skin of someone who spent most of his time outdoors.

“Vincent, always a pleasure.” Hayden gestured to Nathan. “May I introduce my able young protégé, Nathan Dinneck.”