Cheyenne, Wyoming

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© 2013 Steven W. Horn. Printed and bound in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the Web—without permission in writing from the publisher. Request for permission should be submitted to Granite Peak Press, P.O. Box 2597, Cheyenne, WY 82003, or email: info@granitepeakpress.com.

Granite Peak Press

www.granitepeakpress.com

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information contained in this book, we assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any inconsistency herein. Any slights of people, places, or organizations are unintentional.

This book is a work of fiction. All references to real people, actual events or places must be read as fiction. The characters in this book are creations of the author’s imagination. The dialogue is invented.

First printing 2013

ISBN: 978-0-9835894-4-0

LCCN: 2013945056

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FOR CARRIE BUCK

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is truly a pleasure to thank the people whose encouragement and assistance made this story a reality.

V.A. Stephens, Peter Decker, Tonya Talbert, and Kristi Cammack all gave their time, expertise, and positive reassurance. Kate Deubert provided me with her extraordinary editorial skills. Tina Lyles-Worthman’s and Rachel Girt’s advice was invaluable. I am indebted to them all.

Special thanks to my daughters, Tiffany, Melissa, and Amanda, for their helpful reviews and enduring support.

I owe the completion of this book and its story to my loving wife, Margaret: a critic, a fan, and a sympathetic ear.

CHAPTER ONE

NO ONE SUPPOSES THAT ALL THE

INDIVIDUALS OF THE

SAME SPECIES ARE CAST IN THE

VERY SAME MOULD.

—CHARLES DARWIN

HIS DEAD SISTER GAZED BACK AT HIM. She was smiling. Sam could not breathe. A cold veil descended over him and the night became silent.

The flashlight’s beam that illuminated her face began to shake. Her long blonde hair spilled over her shoulders, her blue eyes appeared dark behind the thick glasses, and her toothy grin reflected the light’s beam back at him. She was as he remembered her.

Julie had been dead for nearly twenty-five years. She had remained seventeen for a quarter century, and now in 1999 she stared back at him from the darkness, unchanged since 1975 when he was twelve and saw her last. Sam forced a breath and inched the flashlight’s beam upward on the stone marker. The name Genève Defollett was chiseled sharply into the polished red granite. She had been born nine years before Julie, but had also died at the age of seventeen.

The lump in his throat hurt as he swallowed, its corners as sharp as those cut into the stone depicting the American sign language symbol for “I love you” next to Genève’s name. She had also been deaf.

Sam’s heart pounded painfully in his chest; his eardrums kept cadence. But the initial shock of seeing his sister’s likeness on the tombstone began to subside with the realization that he had been mistaken. He was a thousand miles and a lifetime away from his sister’s disappearance. He tried to shake off the coldness that enveloped him, but his eyes refused to be drawn away from the ceramic oval that contained the photograph of Genève Defollett. The resemblance to Julie was frightening.

A twig snapped from the darkness to his left. Instinctively, Sam swung the flashlight’s beam to the black wall of forest that bordered the cemetery. He shone the light in rapid, sweeping arcs against the impenetrable night. He heard the creak of barbed wire being pulled through fence staples as something pushed between the wire strands that separated forest from cemetery. Eye shine, eerie yellow reflections, stared back at him then began to move slowly toward him, flickering on and off at the edge of the flashlight’s beam. Sam’s fear was on the verge of panic as the golden dots became larger and brighter. The dog appeared magically within the shaking funnel of light, trotting slowly toward Sam.

“Elle!” he shouted, the sound of his voice strange and out of place in the dark cemetery. “Jesus, girl, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

The bloodhound, tail waving, greeted him as though he had been gone for days instead of minutes. Drool glistened in long strands from the corners of her mouth.

“How did you get out?” He had left her in the motor home, which he had parked in the small, town park adjacent to the cemetery. Bending over, he scratched her ears and hugged her to his knee. The unmistakable fetid smell of death flared his nostrils. She had rolled on something dead. “Cur bitch. You’re not riding with me,” Sam said, wiping his fingers on his pants.

Once more he shone the light on the ceramic photograph of the girl who could have been his sister’s twin. As troubling as the coincidence was, that’s all it was, he reasoned. Besides, that was not why he was there.

“One more time, Elle, let’s go see it one more time,” he said, stepping around Genève Defollett’s headstone.

Even in darkness, the older section of the cemetery was distinguishable. The giant oaks loomed overhead and the ground heaved around their bases, tilting headstones without reverence. The stones themselves were larger and more varied in style than in the new section. Gray and white were the colors, and none displayed pictures of the dead.

The tombstone he had come to see stood coldly on the dark hillside that sloped sharply toward the tangle of undergrowth and forest at the cemetery’s edge. Just one more time; he had to be sure. In the morning, I’ll come back and take pictures as proof, he said to himself. He shone the light at the face of the massive monument. It too was as he remembered it: Eugene Eris had died on August 4, 1930, and again on January 25, 1932. The two graves were nearly a thousand miles apart. The same epitaph etched deeply into the ashen granite of both headstones, the letters softened by seventy years, lay close to the ground, dead grass partially obscuring the words: “Wellborn Are My Children.”

••••

The telephone receiver was cold against Sam’s ear. He whispered the words of the epitaph again, this time more slowly. They had no meaning. He had repeated the words dozens of times since reading them.

First ring…

The names, the dates, even the identical tombstones could be explained as coincidental, but not the epitaphs.

Second ring…

“Pat, it’s Sam. Sorry to bother you at home.” He turned from the pay phone to see if anyone was watching. The small, town park was dark and deserted. The swings on long chains twisted slowly in the cold breeze blowing from the blackness of the cemetery. Dry leaves fell from the darkness above, clattering against the rusted floor of the merry-go-round. He turned his collar up and huddled close to the phone that hung against the gray cement block wall of the park restroom. The only light shown from the window of his motor home parked in the gravel lot beneath the silver water tower.

“It’s Sam, Sam Dawson…No, I’m okay. Uh,” he held his watch close to his face, “a little after midnight, Iowa time. Sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late…

“Oxford,” he said, looking up, following one of the erector-set legs of the water tower into the blackness above where the town name would appear with the morning sun. “Sort of east central, not too far from Maquoketa, if you know where that is.” He knew Pat did not know. A transplanted New Yorker, Pat had escaped from the publishing industry to start his own small press in Denver. Pat would have been hard pressed to locate Iowa on a map.

“No, I’m fine, really. Something has…” He twisted anxiously toward the teeter-totters, heavy planks over deep depressions in the sandy soil. Shards of green paint, cracked and jagged, heaved upward from the boards’ surface, foreboding even in darkness.

“Well, I…, I had this,” he paused not knowing how to describe what had happened or whether he should tell Pat.

“Uh, tomorrow, I’ll probably head out tomorrow, mid-morning. I should be back in Golden sometime tomorrow night. Pat, I’ve found…” He shook his head and scuffed rocks with his foot toward the dented oil drum that served as the park litter barrel. The word “trash” had been crudely hand-lettered with red paint across the side.

“It’s about fifteen hours. Look, Pat…No, I’m maybe half-finished with this season’s shots…Yes, I know there’s a deadline. But…No, the advance is fine. It’s not about money. I just need to come home. I had this, this…” He paused again. Revelation was the word he was searching for but reluctant to use. “I met a man in the cemetery here today. A caretaker, I think. Look, I’d just be wasting film until I get this figured out. I need my Colorado files, the negative files…

“She’s fine. She stinks. She found something dead tonight and rolled on it. Look, Pat, this guy in the cemetery, the caretaker, I’ve seen him before…Probably a dead squirrel or bird or something, I don’t know. She’s a hound. Who knows why? But I’ve seen him before. I’ve taken his picture… The caretaker…No, not here. It was in Colorado a thousand miles from here…Maybe, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure it’s the same guy…

“A salamander. He looks like an old salamander, flat mouth and beady eyes. All day I tried to remember where I had seen him before. It drove me crazy. It was like a song, the melody playing over and over in my head but I couldn’t remember the name. Then tonight I…, all of a sudden like I’ve been electrocuted or something, one of those eureka moments, a revelation.” There, he said it. “It’s the same guy I saw a couple of years ago when I was working on the Colorado book. I just can’t remember which cemetery, the eastern plains or maybe the San Luis Valley. But I’m sure I have some shots of him in my negative files. I remember taking the pictures…

“Nothing, I don’t think there’s anything you can do. But thanks for asking. I just needed to tell somebody, I guess. Your number was first on the list.” The wind gusted loudly through the invisible tops of the giant oaks that towered above the playground. Dry leaves rained against the coarse concrete wall. T. C. plus J. I., ringed by a heart, was scratched into the paint on the side of the pay phone where Sam took refuge from the swirling debris. “There’s something else, Pat. I found this tombstone…

“No, I haven’t talked to him. The guy’s creepy, he gives me the willies.” Sam gently rubbed his finger across the scratched initials within the heart. “Pat, listen, I found this tombstone that’s even creepier than the salamander guy. I’m certain that I’ve seen the same tombstone before, in Colorado…

“Yeah, yeah, I know, there are only so many designs to choose from. But you’d remember this one. I thought it was unique the first time I saw it. This has, I’m pretty sure, the same name on it and same date of birth as the one in Colorado…I don’t know about date of death…No, I’m sure. I remember the birth date because it was the same month and day as my mother’s, just seventy-some years earlier. It stuck in my mind…Because, it’s a weird name on a weird stone, I remember it from Colorado. But here’s the clincher. It has the same epitaph. What are the chances?” Sam turned restlessly away from the phone.

“No, it’s not like that. It’s not one of the little-lambs-in-heaven or resting-with-God type of quotes. It says “Wellborn Are My Children.” I thought it was odd when I saw it a couple of years ago…I don’t know what it means.

“Coincidence? Pat, are you hearing me? We’re talking same stone, same name, same date, and same epitaph. The only difference is the thousand miles between cemeteries…

“Look, I don’t know why I called you.” Why had he called Pat? Because there was no one else to call, he thought. Divorced, no close friends, obsessed with his career, and only a dog for companionship was the answer. “I guess to tell you that I’m winding up early here. I’ll come back midwinter to get the snow shots. We’ll have to make do with what I have for the dead leaves shots…I won’t let you down. Have I ever let you down? Don’t try to put a guilt trip on me, Pat. We’ll go to press next spring like we planned. And, Pat, one more thing, the advance was a joke. See, I told you I was feeling okay. I just needed to hear your fatherly voice.” Maybe that was it: He needed a father. “I’ll call you when I get back. Goodnight, Pat.”

He stood staring at the silver oil drum, mentally tracing the letters of the word “trash.” A red teardrop descended from the bottom of the S as if the serpentine letter were bleeding. He listened for any movement within. He could not look inside. He had not told Pat about the snake. He had not mentioned how Elle had refused to enter the Winnebago when they returned from the cemetery or of the deafening buzz the large timber rattler had made when Sam opened the motor home door.

CHAPTER TWO

PERMIT THEM TO APPROACH HE CRIES

NOR SCORN THEIR HUMBLE NAME

FOR ’TWAS TO BLESS SUCH SOULS AS THESE

THE LORD OF ANGELS CAME

EPITAPH

—PHYLLIS KIMBALL

THE IOWA ASSIGNMENT WAS PURPOSEful. Sam had grown up with stories of the picturesque, small town of Oxford. It was his mother’s home. Her adoptive parents, the Marshalls, were buried in the Oxford cemetery. It had been a belated pilgrimage, a quest for his roots.

That is what he tried to tell himself, but he knew it was much deeper than that. He was unsure of his motivation because he refused to think about it. But it gnawed at him, a disease that had plagued him for the past ten years. She had been dead that long. He had been too busy to say goodbye. She knew she was dying and, in a way, so did he. Maybe that was the reason for his ignoring her invitation to visit her. It was denial that soon turned into guilt. After all, wasn’t that the real reason he was there? Ten years of penitence and now he sought absolution. He was angered that the sanctity of his mission had been interrupted by his accidental discovery of something that was bound to have a logical explanation, an explanation that lingered just beyond his grasp.

“Damn it, Elle,” the anger in his voice surprising both of them.

The dog’s ears dropped and her soft, golden eyes flashed as she looked away from Sam’s uneaten breakfast. Strands of drool hung from the corners of her mouth.

“Begging is bad enough, but you smell like something dead. Is that your strategy?” he said, flaring his nostrils. “Ruin my appetite with your stench with the hopes of getting my food?” Sam turned from the dog and looked out the window of the motor home. In the half light of dawn the cemetery began to take shape. He knew he was redirecting his anger at Elle. He placed his plate on the floor.

••••

The sunrise shots were usually his favorites. All he ever wanted out of photography was to capture the light in the same way as his eyes. But Eris’s tombstone repeatedly commanded his attention. With enough light to accommodate a longer lens, he had twisted his 300 mm Nikkor into the camera body and focused on the stone, which was still half-shadowed by a giant oak.

The marker appeared to be cast rather than carved. It was a very detailed likeness of a log, perhaps five feet long, complete with knars, knobs, growth rings, and missing chunks of bark. It was laid horizontally atop a more conventional headstone for a total height of over six feet. A stone wedge was buried deep within a crack at one end of the log and a stone single-blade axe with a recurved handle was sunk in the other. The discolorations of time and weather had streaked the monument in ghostly patterns. Green moss clung to the clefts of the north face.

Sam had carefully brought the big lens into focus, adjusting the f-stop to blur the foreground and background. The neatly carved, block letters of the deceased’s family name were sharp under the close scrutiny of the polished lenses. “Eris” it declared for all who passed to remember. In the darkened lower half of the monument, Sam focused the name Eugene centered neatly between the dates June 18, 1852, on the left and January 25, 1932, on the right. There were no other names listed.

The barely distinguishable flowery script of the epitaph near the bottom of the base caused him to tilt the camera downward on its tripod, the epitaph that had beckoned him to the cemetery the night before. Grass had grown up along the edge of the base, partially covering the cursive inscription that undulated gracefully across the stone. The three-inch-high letters spanned two-thirds the width of the base and were almost unreadable through the long lens. He followed them along as he focused, his lips moving while he said the words to himself. “Wellborn are my children,” he said, straightening. “What the hell does that mean?” he said aloud.

“Means nothing,” a voice from behind him said.

Spinning around, Sam came face-to-face with the old caretaker. “Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack,” Sam gasped, suddenly remembering that he had said the same thing to Elle a mere seven hours earlier.

The old man stared at Sam. His watery blue eyes were so pale that the irises seemed to fade gently into the white corners. His pupils were abnormally constricted for the low light of dawn, beady, almost amphibian.

“I’ve read ’em all. They don’t mean nothing. It’s just words,” the old man said, his eyes narrowing. “Sure, they wanted to say something, but most never got the job done. Flaubert said that language is a cracked kettle on which we tap out crude rhythms for bears to dance to while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

Sam raised his eyebrows in surprise at the contradiction between an old man in soiled, custodial clothes who used poor English and yet delivered an accurate quote from Madame Bovary. He studied the old man’s face carefully while he sought the appropriate response. “So, you don’t think that these last statements were true expressions of their lives?”

“No more than they themselves were true expressions of their lives,” he quickly shot back.

The old man almost smiled and his eyes gleamed. “Life,” he said slowly as if sharing some hidden knowledge, “’tis a tale told by an idiot, like the poor actor who frets and struts his hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.”

“Go on,” Sam said calmly while trying to think of which Shakespearean work the old man had just quoted.

“Most people act out their lives as if they were performing in some great play. The true nature of a person can be found under the layers of makeup and wardrobe. The problem is that most people never step out of character long enough for anyone to discover the real person behind the scenes.”

Sam scratched the back of his head. “So, all these people,” he said, waving his hand in a sweeping arc around him, “were impostors who led deceptive lives. Why?” he said, challenging the old man.

“Social harmony,” he smiled as if Sam should have known the answer. “Man by nature is a selfish bastard who’ll do anything to achieve immortality. We’ll even fake our lives in order to get other folks to help us achieve our own self-interests.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed as he looked at him suspiciously. He was uncomfortable continuing the conversation, especially with a total stranger in a cemetery at dawn. They had strayed from the original question concerning epitaphs. “What will your epitaph read?” Sam asked, trying to bring the discussion back with some closure.

“Here lies Fred, you thought I was dead,” he said immediately, having obviously thought about it before.

Sam stared at him, a slight smile on his face, humoring the old man.

His watery, blue eyes flashing, the old man added, “To understand the actual we must contemplate the possible.”

There is definitely something wrong with this man, Sam concluded, not taking his eyes from the figure in front of him. “And my epitaph, any predictions what it might say?”

The old man stared unwaveringly into Sam’s eyes and said, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” With that he turned on his heel and walked away. He had gone only a few feet when he stopped, turned slowly toward Sam, and said, “You favor her,” a flat smile across his salamander mouth. He bowed his head as he turned and walked away.

Sam stared after him, a hundred questions racing through his mind. He wanted to call out for the old man to wait, to demand that he return and explain himself. He stood there silently, feeling helpless, watching the figure slowly weave between the graves. The old man’s head was bowed, his shoulders slumped, and his torso bent forward as he stumbled along. His shuffling gait reminded Sam of a child who has just learned to walk. But he made steady progress, finally disappearing around the base of a grave-studded hill. His dark figure seemed to meld into the background, distinguished only by his motion, a moving blotch of camouflage that grew shorter with each step beyond the hill’s horizon.

When he had disappeared completely, Sam continued to watch the hillside, partially in anticipation of the old man’s return and partially because he did not know what else to do. He had an unsettled, unfulfilled feeling of something important that had been cut short. Sam continued to stare; he was confused and tired. He had slept little after searching the motor home. Everything was coincidental, he reasoned. The explanations were logical; he just hadn’t thought of them yet. Rising repeatedly from the fog of confusion, the porcelain picture of a seventeen-year-old girl surfaced. He was a long way from home and suddenly felt very alone.

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT WAS MORTAL OF THEM RESTS BELOW

UNTIL THIS MORTAL PUT ON IMMORTALITY.

EPITAPH

—ALEXANDER KENNEDY

MIDNIGHT HAD ALWAYS AFFECTED Sam in a peculiar way. Not morning, not evening, it was time teetering on a fulcrum that, he secretly hoped, could go either way. With a foot planted in both worlds, he was momentarily hesitant, superstitious. The green numerals of the dashboard clock caused him to hold his breath. At 12:01 he could breathe again and the fear of uncertainty became the past.

The yellow glow of the log house reflected warmly in the headlights of the motor home. He was home. His trip odometer read 878 miles. It had taken him a little over fourteen hours of nonstop driving from eastern Iowa to the foothills west of Denver. Massaging his stiff neck, he unlocked the side door while Elle made her rounds to urinate on what she considered hers.

The red blinking light of the answering machine in his studio pulsed impatiently. He had finally broken down and purchased it only to satisfy Marcie, his ex-wife. It was probably Pat or Marcie, both wanting something he did not have time to give, but he pushed the play button anyway.

Beep. “Dad, it’s me, Sidney. Can you call me as soon as you get home, please? Mom is being unreasonable again. It’s really important. Love you.”

Beep. “Sam, it’s Marcie. Sidney is under the mistaken belief that you can somehow grant her permission to go to homecoming. God himself doesn’t have that authority. She’s fifteen, for God’s sake. Call me before you talk to her. I mean it, Sam.”

Beep. There was silence except for a faint static sound in the background. After several seconds Sam heard the phone at the other end hang up. He continued to stare at the answering machine, unsure of what to do next as an uneasy feeling swept over him. He looked at his watch. He would call Marcie in the morning.

He began pulling folders from one of two filing cabinets. Most of the files contained only an eight-by-ten-inch contact sheet with most of a roll of 35 mm exposures and a second contact sheet with a few two-and-a-quarter-inch exposures. It was just after 1:00 a.m. when he saw the old man. Sam grabbed the magnifying glass as he moved toward the brighter desk lamp on his rolltop. Surrounded by the light-colored tombstones, the old man seemed to rise from the dark ground; the black-and-white film made no distinction between his clothes and the grass. The old man’s anemic face and snowy crest of hair melded with the stones in a field of markers. His right hand clung to the well-worn shovel that stood upright at his left side. Sam remembered taking the picture because of the cryptic nature of the old man’s presence. A human chameleon, he blended perfectly into his surroundings.

Sam located the corresponding negative from a separate file using the numbers written on the file tab after Cambridge, a small ranching community in southeastern Colorado. This can’t be the same person, he thought as he headed for the darkroom. Old men were a little like babies: They all looked alike, Sam believed. Surely the white hair and custodial clothes were the only common features the two men had.

••••

Sam watched a Steller’s jay hop mechanically along the rail of his deck in the soft light of the Colorado dawn. He needed sleep. Again he fumbled on the table for the magnifying glass. He was tired of thinking, tired of asking himself questions that he could not answer. He inspected the two photos, one from Iowa and the other from Colorado. The old men were identical. “Twins,” he said with a note of finality. “They’ve got to be twins.” It was not unheard of for twins to be engaged in the same profession.

He placed the two photos side by side, Iowa on the left and Colorado on the right. The old men nearly filled the frames of each print. Their white hair, pallid skin, washed-out eyes with dark beady centers set above flaring nostrils, and salamander-like mouths were the same. They were old, but identical. A logical explanation would come, he told himself. There had to be one. It could be the same person. People move. Once a gravedigger, always a gravedigger. “Twins,” he said as if dismissing further debate.

Pushing the Colorado photo away, Sam did a classic double take. He had been so intent on studying the old man that he failed to notice the tombstone in the background. Again he grabbed the magnifying glass. He looked beyond the old man who was framed in the center of the picture to the tombstone with the cast log laid horizontally across the top of the gray rectangle. His jaw muscles tightened. Without taking his eyes from the Colorado photo for fear that it might disappear, he brought the magnifying glass into focus. The name Eris appeared on the face of the stone. He was suddenly wide-awake.

CHAPTER FOUR

WE SHALL SLEEP,

BUT NOT FOREVER.

EPITAPH

—SARAH DOVE

MARCIE, IT’S SAM.” He paused, staring at the coil of air hose that hissed below the pay phone at the corner of the Texaco station. “Pick up if you’re there.” He paused again. “I got your message. I’m in Pueblo. I should be back tomorrow night. I’ll give you a call then and we’ll work this out. Not to worry, okay? I haven’t talked to Sidney, but she’s a big girl. She should take part in the discussion.” He winced at his last statement and wished that he could take it back, somehow delete it from the answering machine. He could see Marcie’s disappointment, her frown and slumped shoulders. He knew she would leave another message on his answering machine, a stored recording designed to instill guilt. “We’ll talk soon,” he added, his voice weak with frustration.

••••

He turned south at La Junta and quickly left the fertile farmlands of the Arkansas River for the rolling hills of the Comanche Grasslands. Cambridge was not on the official Colorado state map. Sam had discovered the tiny community while studying the more detailed Las Animas County map. He often used this technique when searching for possible inclusions to his book on forgotten cemeteries. He had thought it strange that a town would be called Cambridge in an area with such a dominant Hispanic history and culture. But he found that many of the towns were Anglo in name. Kim and Branson lay to the south; Tyrone and Thatcher to the west; and Springfield, Walsh, and Stonington to the east. It was the physical features of the land, the creeks and canyons, that carried the names given them by the original Spanish explorers and Mexican settlers. Vachita Creek, Jesus Canyon, Trinchera Creek, Pinon Canyon, and Tejana Arroyo could have been located in Mexico.

Red dust billowed from behind the motor home into the fading light of southeastern Colorado. Sam could smell the rotting leaves from the dense stands of cotton-woods, willow, and tamarack that lined the valley floor and hung with foreboding over the road in the semidarkness. The red sandstone walls of the canyon were reduced to gently eroding hills a half mile apart at this end of the valley. At the mouth of the canyon where the wider valley funneled into the deep, red cleft cut by the Purgatoire River, a second, smaller canyon intersected from the south. Chacucao Canyon meandered gracefully into the Purgatoire. The oxbows of its tiny stream had cut a fertile green swath from the sandstone mesas above it. It was here, where two steep canyons had come together forming a small, level valley, that the Cambridge settlement had been built.

The cemetery was located above the floodplain on a grassy knoll where Chacucao Creek gently slipped into the Purgatoire. By the time Sam pulled the motor home into the short, grass-lined wheel paths of the lane leading to the cemetery, darkness had settled over the valley floor, a blanket of uniform murkiness with changed perspectives.

Beanee Weenees and a can of Coors satisfied his hunger. Exhaustion had finally taken hold of him in the security of the well-lit motor home. Its thin, aluminum walls served as impenetrable barriers to the darkness beyond. Its yellow, battery-powered lights provided the mental security that Sam hated to admit he needed.

Elle began to snore, normally a source of irritation to Sam who would respond with a thrown tennis shoe or a gentle nudge.

“Stink Dog,” he managed with half-closed eyes, too tired to throw something.

••••

Confusion swirled with the remnants of sleep as Sam sat bolt upright in the narrow bed. From the floor below him a deep, throaty growl poured from Elle’s frozen face. The inside of the motor home was ablaze with a white light that shone through the rear window and bounced from chrome to glass with the intensity of a welder’s arc. The tapping that had awakened him was repeated. It was the unmistakable sound of human flesh stretched over bony knuckles wrapping against the aluminum door of the camper. Sam squinted at his watch. It was 10:15, but 10:15 what? From the opaque blackness on the other side of the windshield, he determined it was still night.

“Easy, girl,” he whispered reassuringly to Elle as he slid from the bed, being careful not to step on her.

Hazy with sleep he opened the door without caution. An even brighter light exploded in his face. Defensively, he threw up his left hand to shield his face.

“Sorry,” said the feminine, yet assertive, voice from behind the flashlight. Turning off the light she said, “Just wondering if everything was all right. I thought you might have had mechanical trouble or something.” She paused then added, “We don’t get many visitors down here.”

Sam had turned his head sideways and was squinting through the halo of retinal after-flashes from the flashlight. He could hear the engine of the vehicle parked behind the motor home. “Everything’s fine,” he managed through a mouth that seemed stuffed with cotton. “Just pulled in for the night,” he added, still straining to make out the woman’s features.

“I didn’t mean to wake you. I was just checking. This is our land.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to trespass. I thought it belonged to the city.”

The pale, white glow of a three-quarter moon reflected softly from the gray felt Stetson atop her head. Its wide, nearly flat brim shadowed her face mysteriously. Sam could see puffs of blonde hair swept upward and tucked under the hat’s brim.

“Cambridge is not much of a city,” she said as if admitting a long-kept secret. “Isn’t even a town,” she added suddenly with a smile, the moon reflecting from a row of perfect, white teeth. “My great-grandfather gave them the ground for the cemetery. We still run cattle all around it. We’ve lost a few head again this year to rustlers.” Looking down nervously, she added “that’s why when we see a strange vehicle…”

“You thought I was a cattle thief?” Sam asked with surprised amusement.

“You just may be one, mister. I don’t know you from Adam,” she said, losing her smile and staring directly up into his face from under the hat’s shadow. “The one thing I do know is that you’re trespassing and I’m missing six yearling heifers.”

Sam suddenly felt defensive, a condition that usually led to anger. He hated being at the receiving end of an accusation. “You’re welcome to search the premises,” he said, stepping to one side of the narrow doorway and extending his arm in a mock gesture of welcome. “Don’t forget the bedroom closet. That’s where I usually keep the cattle I’ve stolen.”

She stared at him, her eyes burning with the desire to meet his sarcasm with an equally caustic response. Instead, she smiled politely and said, “That won’t be necessary. Enjoy your stay here in Cambridge. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“No bother at all. Come back anytime you’re missing livestock,” he called after her as she walked into the glow of headlights behind the camper, her slender frame outlined by the harsh light. She wore snug-fitting blue jeans. A pair of leather gloves hanging from her back pocket flopped rhythmically, accentuating the movement of her hips. Her torso was covered by a short jean jacket that gave her the appearance of having wide shoulders and a narrow midsection. He wished he could have seen her face more clearly.

“Oh, by the way, mister,” she called as she disappeared behind the headlights, “nice boxers!”

Sam quickly looked down. He raised his head slowly, eyes closed, a grimace of embarrassment on his face. In his confusion he had answered the door in his underwear. He was now suddenly aware of the cool night air rushing through the gaping slot in the front of his shorts, which his mother had always referred to as the “worm hole.” Marcie had given them to him as a Valentine gift. White with pink hearts and tiny cupids, the kind you hoped you never were wearing if involved in an accident. “Damn,” he hissed as he shut the door in an attempt to end his humiliation.

••••

The pungent aroma of sage, intertwined with the sweet, wet smell of prairie grasses, added to the dawn’s beauty. Sam held his coffee mug between his hands, savoring the warmth against the crisp morning air. He stared pensively at the orange horizon, studying the land’s features as the jagged landscape slowly, almost magically appeared from the night’s darkness. He felt alone. Elle’s presence helped, but it was not enough. He loved the dawn, even though it made him feel small and insignificant. A tide of memories would wash over him, pushed explosively ahead of the sun. His dead mother was usually the first to arrive. Committed to his work, Sam had immersed himself in it in order to escape the realities of a life gone stale. But at dawn the realities arose with the sun, illuminated, the details bright.

He could trace his disappointment back to when he was still in junior high school. He had just rounded the corner of the block on his bicycle when he saw the police car at the curb in front of his house, the starched and stiff young officer standing on the front porch step, his arms stiffly holding up his mother. His mother’s screams of grief and disbelief still echoed deep within him. She never fully recovered from losing her firstborn child. Four years later his father, who went through the motions of life but never overcame his grief, was eventually consumed by his misery. Officially a heart attack, his mother was convinced he died of a broken heart. After college, after marriage, a few hectic years into his career, his mother had begged him to come home. She was sick and lonely; Sam was the only family she had. Born late in his mother’s life, there had been a special bond between them. She even played her orphan card in a desperate attempt to impart guilt, but Sam was too busy. She died a week later, having never complained about the cancer that consumed her from within. All she had wanted was to say goodbye. He had been too busy. Ten years of regret seemed to rise up in his throat on mornings like this. He sipped his coffee.

Marriage had been the crushing blow. Life is so full of regrets, he thought. Why did it take a lifetime to realize one’s mistakes, to understand the things that should have been said and done? A failed marriage and deep financial debt seemed to be the icing on the cake. That was nine years ago. Now at age thirty-seven, Samuel Theodore Dawson had recovered. And, a miraculous recovery it was. He sipped his coffee and stared blankly through the rising steam.

The headstones stood erect in the dusky light. They appeared cold and stark, uniform in color. Sam silently read the names and dates as he slowly made his way toward the crest of the hill. The names were old: Myra, Emma, Clara, Zode, Brittie, Briann, Nellie, Augusta, Flora, Agnes. And they had been dead a long time: 1908, 1909, 1907. There seemed to be a preponderance of little white lambs lying docilely atop thin, rectangular stones.

“God will grant me eyes and ears,” he read aloud, the flowery script barely legible on the sun-bleached stone of Lorna Wertz, born in 1950 and dead a short sixteen years later.

“I shall be satisfied when I can hear Thy voice and see Thy likeness,” proclaimed Sarah Cawlfield, a seventeen-year-old who died in 1969. “What the hell…,” he said, spilling the remains of his coffee. “Were they vision and hearing impaired too?” He thought of Genève Defollett and his sister who, like Lorna and Sarah, had died as handicapped teenagers.

A cool morning breeze with a hint of fall stole his breath, a giant blowing into the face of an infant. “What’s going on here?” he said, turning around then back again. He felt a flush of fear sweep over him as the hairs on his arms bristled over bumpy gooseflesh at the sudden realization that there were no boys buried beneath him.

CHAPTER FIVE

AFFLICTIONS SO LONG TIME I BORE

PHYSICIANS SKILL IN VAIN

UNTIL GOD WAS PLEASED TO GIVE ME EASE

AND RID ME OF MY PAIN.

EPITAPH

—MARY JOHNSON

THERE WERE OLD MEN WHO HAD LIVED long lives. But there were no boys. Thad Dougherty was eighty-two in February of 1943 and Thomas Pough was just short of ninety when he died in June of 1958.

A light breeze blew cool air down the back of Sam’s neck and he shuddered. I’ve got the heebie-jeebies in a cemetery in broad daylight, he thought. “That’s a first,” he said quietly.

“All is not here for our beloved and blest. Leave ye the sleeper with his God to rest,” the tombstone of Clifford Major, dead in 1949, proclaimed.

“Let not your heart be troubled In my Father’s House are many mansions.” Edith Phillips’ prose was block letters with no punctuation and a stretch for proper capitalization. She had died in 1967 at the age of seventy-eight.

John and Rebecca Anderson had a span of bad luck with their offspring:

Mary died May 3, 1908

Age 3 weeks

Louisa died September 28, 1911

Age 8 months, 2 weeks

Emily died June 15, 1917

Age 7 months, 6 days

All three stones lay flat against the earth, stretching south from the larger, upright monument of their parents. They served as cold reminders of the lives that could have been and the pain of losing a child. Sam inhaled deeply and exhaled with a prolonged sigh. He thought of Sidney and how horrific it would be to lose her, and how his father must have felt after Julie’s death. Sam had wanted to be Joe Average with a house in the suburbs, a station wagon, an adoring wife, and a couple of kids who would revere him. He blamed Marcie, but knew he shared the responsibility for a failed dream. He tossed the remainder of his coffee, which had gone cold, between two graves.

The marker he had traveled so far to see lay at the very top of the grassy knoll, now covered with angular tombstones. The concrete log with axe and wedge lay atop the granite headstone. It was more conspicuous here in the treeless, shortgrass prairie than it was in the lush, oak-covered cemetery of Iowa, he thought. Out of place might be a more accurate assessment. Eastern Colorado was noted for its treeless plains. Colorado in general had never been a significant lumber-producing state. This guy was obviously a lumberjack or a timber baron, he reasoned.

The stone appeared to grow larger as Sam approached. The edges of the block letters that spelled the name Eris were dangerously sharp. Similar to the Iowa stone, the name Eugene was centered between the dates June 18, 1852, and August 4, 1930. The Eugene Eris buried in Iowa had died on January 25, 1932, almost eighteen months after the Colorado Eris.

The sun was fully up when Sam heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. Gravel ricocheting and crunching under rubber popped and cracked in contrast to the mechanical drone of the engine. Sam watched as the pickup slowly climbed the serpentine ribbon of gravel upward from the valley floor toward the cemetery. Its large, green, rounded fender cowls with bulbous headlamps, and tiny cab with a divided windshield dated the old Chevy as late forties.

Turning off the motor drive and light meter of his camera, Sam turned to stare at the inscription at the bottom of the stone one more time: “Wellborn Are My Children.” His jaw muscles rippled as he clenched his teeth in frustration.

The pickup came to a noisy halt at the side of the road next to the cemetery driveway. The door opened slowly as the old man slid from behind the wheel. His white hair contrasted sharply with the brown and red surroundings of the countryside. Even at a distance, Sam could see the salamander-like appearance of the old man’s face. His wide, flat mouth was expressionless as he walked in old-man fashion toward the top of the hill.

“Good morning,” Sam called out as the old man approached him straight-on, still twenty yards away. The salamander did not respond but continued to make his way toward Sam. “Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day,” Sam added cheerfully.

The old man stopped in front of Sam, uncomfortably close. The tiny, black beads in the center of his watery, blue eyes stared directly into Sam’s face. The square chin, sharp nose, and flaring nostrils were the mirror image of, if not the same, features he had noted only two days earlier in eastern Iowa, right down to the janitorial green, heavy cotton trousers and shirt. Sam glanced quickly at the pockets of the old man’s pants. They were clean and showed no soiling. But they were old, and the left pocket displayed the frayed effects of preferential use, just as it did in Iowa.

“Back again?” the old man said through cracked lips rimmed with white beard stubble that held a hint of brown tobacco juice at both corners of his mouth.

Sam did not know how to respond. Back again where? Was the old man referring to Iowa, to this cemetery in particular, or to all cemeteries in general?

“You were here about two years ago,” the old man said, seeing Sam’s confusion.

“Yeah, right,” Sam said with obvious relief. “But I don’t believe we met. I didn’t think anyone noticed me.”

The old man smiled. “We don’t get many visitors to this part of the country, especially ones that take pictures of tombstones. I noticed you,” he stated flatly. As if an afterthought, he added with a smile, “Say, you don’t have any cattle hidden in that camper, do you?”

Sam stared at the old man for a long moment. “News travels fast in a small town,” he said, scratching his head. “Did she mention my underwear too?”

“Hearts,” the old man shot back with a larger smile.

Sam shook his head and looked down.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’ll take close till noon before everybody in town knows about it,” the old man said wryly.

“I guess I offended the lady,” Sam said.

“Good thing. That’ll be the most exciting thing Blair has happen to her all summer.”

“Blair?”

“She’s my grandniece,” the old man said, still smiling. “She’s home for the summer and thinks she’s a range detective.”

“She’s a student somewhere?” Sam asked with a curiosity that was all too obvious.

“Professor,” the old man stated proudly. “She’s up at the university in Boulder. The kid’s got brains. Don’t know why she comes back here every summer. Says she’s doing field research, but my guess is she’s just getting away from the city.”

“This looks like a great place to kick back and escape the pressures of the world,” Sam said.

“Those of us who don’t know any better, think it’s a pretty special place,” the old man said, his salamander eyes still staring studiously at Sam as if waiting for a particular response.

Sam stared back, unable to rationalize the fact that he had just seen the old man in another cemetery a thousand miles away. “Do you work here?” he said suddenly.

“Yep, I’m the caretaker, among other things.”

“My name’s S—”

“Sam Dawson,” the old man interrupted sharply.

The surprised look on Sam’s face begged the obvious question.

The old salamander managed another half-smile. “Even we country folk get to town once in a while. Some of us even been known to go inside a bookstore.” He paused and looked Sam up and down. “I’ll have to admit that you are a mite larger than the photo on the dust jacket indicates.”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name,” Sam said, trying not to show his pride in being recognized.

“Tennyson,” the old man said with an air of pride, “Al Tennyson.”

Sam smiled. “As in Alfred,” he said with a hint of sarcasm.

“Alfred L.,” beamed the amphibian.

Sam chuckled and shook his head. “I should have guessed, coming from a town named Cambridge. Is your middle name really Lord?”

“Don’t know. All I ever got was the initial.”

“Don’t tell me there are a Byron, a Shelley, and a Keats in town too,” Sam said, smiling.

“No Keats,” the old man shot back. “What brings you back?” he said, changing the subject abruptly.

Sam was caught off guard. He had not contemplated an answer to that question. “More pictures,” he said vaguely. “This is one of my favorite cemeteries.”

“That so,” Tennyson said as if playing along. “How come we never saw any pictures of it in your book?”

“We?” Sam questioned.

“The whole darned town! We huddled around that book and examined every picture, looking to see a familiar one.”

Sam scratched the back of his head, a nervous habit he was well aware of. “Guess they got lost on the cutting room floor,” he said apologetically.

The old man stared at him with no sign of understanding. He clearly was waiting for another explanation.

“Editing,” Sam said. “The publishers were unmerciful. They cut some of my favorite shots. We had some knockdown, drag-out battles and I lost most of them.”

“Good,” Tennyson shot back abruptly.

“Excuse me?”

“I said it was good,” the old man growled, his eyes narrowing. “We don’t want reminders of our loved ones appearing in your godforsaken book. It’s commercial and it’s blasphemous,” his voice rising with anger. “The last thing we want is a bunch of souvenir-hunting tourists from the city crawling over our town cemetery.”

Sam stared back in disbelief. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone,” he said softly, not taking his eyes from Tennyson.

The old man had expected an argument and now seemed confused, the wind taken from his sails. “We live way the hell out here because we want to be left alone,” he said in a less threatening tone. “Our father would turn in his grave,” he said, gesturing toward the grave with the log headstone, “if he knew strangers were trampling through his cemetery.”