i like bloomington.
and "When Pretty Girls Make Graves"

whelp, an end of yearer is in order i guess. let me say this - ant's dad's and brothers' coming to his dorm with him stubbs and me was fun last night, haha and when seth asked how he got the scrapes on his knees and his dad wanted to know, HA! yesterday, thursday, all i did was stay in study take a final with felipe and go to mb's with those guys i'm going with wherever we go (cept the mexican who went home to whisk away lindsay...). had beer beer is good beer is good beer is good say it three times fast "thanks evan!" in ant's room after a walk to kirkwood in running shorts, and after a drunk very pretty girl named julia was running with me in high heels and i thought her boobs were going to come out of her shirt woo. haha for a special bye-bye-bloomington read ant's post, this is for the birds. what am i saying!? i like birds. i do. ant's dad is taking us out to breakfast in a bit here, so if i don't see evan (who is asleep) before he leaves, i'll see him when i see him. i couldn't have asked for a better guy to room out with. it's so hot (just like me) without air-conditioning anymore. hmmm so i'm leaving town today. i'm gonna make a photo album cd of our year soon. this has been the start of a beautiful knowingeachothership. and that, as they say, is that, kids.

--nate

Packing Blankets by the Eels

Today is a lovely day to run
Start up the car with the sun

Packing blankets and dirty sheets
A roomful of dust and a broom to sweep up

All the troubles you and I have seen...

---

if anytime ever, sign the gbook about this---->

oh and did i mention, here's muhhh story; said i'd post it at the end of the semest (even though it still is a WORK-IN-PROGRESS). i have others for later. enjoy this one!!

for Amber Moore

When Pretty Girls Make Graves
By Nate Gowdy
Thanks goes to Pops & Ant

1. Last Day

Why do they plant flowers here? It doesn’t change anything, Annie thought softly, weed whacking around granite monuments upon granite headstones like a champ, flowers in front, or back, or in vases, in front, back, or on top. Endless rows upon rows and uncut sections kept her busy whacking around stones and flowers.

She became a sort of flower goddess, determining in an instant the quick and the dead, leaving this, whacking that—goddess of a micro-world of green around each gravestone. It was about the extent of her reign over anything happening in her life at the moment.

Weed whacking, the grounds crew called it spinning—their professional term. It was the low rung in the hierarchy of jobs at the cemetery, where even pushing a lawn mower conveyed a somewhat higher standing. Some people couldn’t take the monotony dealing with cutting grass one stone upon one stone at a time, preferring to push past the endless rows of gravestones, leaving the fine-tuning to the spinners. It did have a sluggish pace; oozing through one section after another with time to ponder every small part of life.

Initially, she’d had good reasons to take the cemetery job. Her older brother had worked there and recommended it as a good summer job between college semesters. He had promoted it as easy and stress free: you work outside, get a nice tan, and for as little work as you actually do, $7.50 an hour was fine, he’d said.

Although he had been right in everything he told her, it didn’t guarantee anything more. Right now everything in Annie’s life was stalled—everything but her weed whacker. She was stressed and for the first time in a long time, lacking direction. Crossing the gender barrier by working with all male co-workers wasn’t helping matters much. But she had applied and had been hired. At least she had a job for the summer.

The city forced the cemetery to hire women and that’s how Annie had gotten on, but now that she was the only girl on the crew, it was difficult. Weed whacking was a constant, and it gave her time to think about everything she didn’t want to—and, hey, at least she didn’t have to spend the entire day with the mowing crew. Whenever the guys goofed off she had to deal with them and their jokes. All she ever got to hear were their jokes—different from her world of jokes. She liked to take herself pretty seriously, but these men made it hard. The more distant or serious she became, the more fun she presented to them. They were a relatively lively bunch, but she was still struggling to adjust to working in a cemetery.

Annie didn’t fit in and still felt pretty self-conscious. She’d been through a lot recently—what with the break-up and all—and it became even harder to appreciate their humor. Most of the time, she couldn’t even force a smile because generally she just wasn’t able to relate. Sometimes the girl would manage a good mood, other times she felt love, sadness, excitement, disappointment, anger, and numbness all at once and couldn’t settle on how to feel. Sometimes it caught her where it made her almost-smile because she found the whole situation ironic. But girls don’t smile at irony. They cry.

2. The Rain

Week nine had arrived at the cemetery, and it was Friday. It was Annie’s last day working; that is, after the rain finally let up and the sun shone for the afternoon. The rest of the day it had rained, and rain days at the cemetery allowed all the guys’ ghosts to come out to play. Not doing the normal work routine—the weed whacking, mowing, or grave digging—she was captured in the break room with the guys, waiting for the weather to clear.

There were reasons the cemetery department hadn’t wanted any female workers—they just weren’t equipped, and old habits die hard. The cemetery office building where Annie was cramped with them was a picturesque structure, but it was too small. The main office was in front with a nice arched entryway. The work center consisted of two rooms—one with a small overhead door where the mowers and equipment were stored, and a break-maintenance room that had gotten lost years ago. Everything in the room looked like it started new in some dumpster, crude work benches soaked in decades of motor oil and a table to go beside, and scavenged curb-found La-Z-Boys tucked and scattered about. Everything smelled like lawn mowers and fermented grass.

On decent days, everyone sat outside on a long row of planks on the east side of the building. On rain days, the brick and concrete oozed years of grass musk in the air. The thick walls, small entryway and single window gave the break room a real dug-out-the-ground basement feel. These were the days when the crew was to do odd jobs like sharpen mowers and change oil. It still left hours to hunker down on the La-Z-Boys, hangin’ out.

Annie dreaded these dreary days when she was stuck with them even more. It really brought out the shady humor when people had the time to think about it. This morning Mike had started in like every other one of his blasé days. A noticeably short, wiry college guy, he was the ringleader at 7:30 each morning.

“Lonzo, what’s the word of the day?” he’d quip while she tried to rest her eyes, a daily routine of his.

Lonnie was older than Mike was short. He’d look at the joker confrontationally, battling to come up with something.

“Um, hotdogs,” the balding old man had bobbed this particular morning. At 62, with a stare to the ground like he’s drunk, Lonnie staggered around without purpose as if the biggest thing on his mind was how $1.50 gas was too expensive. And hotdogs. The old man loved his hotdogs—counted them in his sleep.

“Lonnie. Hey, Bonzo, what makes a gay picnic?” Mike lurched forward and put it to the old man. “The hotdogs taste like shit!” he knocked.

Everyone in the cemetery came alive. Mike’s wrist slapped itself against his thigh and the guys couldn’t have missed the joke if they tried. It took a second for Annie to get it. Oh, she got it. Sick, she found herself thinking, just sick.

3. Break Room

Hotdog jokes were a local phenomenon at the cemetery, mostly because Lonnie ate them like Ballpark Franks were going out of business. He’d hold the bun in one hand, the dog in the other, and he’d stick the dog in a puddle of mustard. He’d alternate hands with each bite. The man loved his hotdogs.

Mike changed the subject fast, anything to work a crowd. It was Friday morning, and he joked how he’d missed work Monday so he could stay home and read the new Harry Potter novel. It wasn’t his kind of book, but he was the kind of guy to read it to make fun of anyone else reading it. That’s why he was funny. That’s why they thought he was funny.

Annie had read the book, too. Harry’s friend dies at the end. She turned to Stubbs, her only close friend working at the cemetery with her. She’d known him a long time, and she was comfortable with him. If anyone, Stubbs knew what it was to be an outsider. He couldn’t go by his first name Matt any longer because too many kids used to call him fat. Fat Matt they’d call him.

Annie whispered, “I can just see Mike cuddled with his teddies, with his tea and pajamas.”

Mike heard her; he wasn’t the only one. Anything she did or said, the guys all noticed quietly. Even after a whole summer she was something foreign to the group. They still didn’t know what angle to come at her from. They would check her curvature, though, and sometimes she’d give them something, like she would maybe look back a little. She had the most beautiful brown eyes, anyways. They were filled with curious wonder—wonder and something else. No one could tell what that something else was. But most of all they were sad.

“Oh Lord, Mike. Gal’s got you pegged, maan. Tea and pajamas, yes sir, she’s a riot!” Tony the gravedigger piped in. “You were probably throwing pillows at the wall when that kid dies, ha-ha!” The black man fell back into his recliner, recovered and stomped his foot. He was the kind of guy to get high a lot. He couldn’t quit because it wasn’t a habit, he’d reckon to the others. And evidently he’d read Harry Potter, too, to know the ending. Other than that, there wasn’t much to the guy, besides his occupation of the recliner in the break room Annie never got.

The guys usually lumbered into the room as if playing a game of musical chairs with the three recliners. Feet shuffling across dusty floor, she was always left to share a corner at the table with herself.

It was all in fun. They all thought she was alright, of course. They liked her. Even Mike did, but it was hard for her to like herself, and it was even harder for her to like others liking her, too—at least for now it was. Getting over Jake would take more than a sort of camaraderie with these guys. And while she hadn’t initiated it, somehow she felt responsible for the way she felt.

“Yeah, she’s trying a joke, gravedigger. You don’t know how to tell good jokes, Annie,” Mike went on leering. “You’re as funny as I’m tall. That’s a jo…”

Stubbs interrupted, “I’m skinny and attract…”

“Wait, stop interrupting, fat Matt. So what’s the end of your so-called joke, Annie? Finish the joke,” Mike pressed her, meandering his head to the side.

“Ass.” She called him an ass. He was an ass. He already knew that.

”What? Ha-ha, I’m an ass, huh? Well am I at least a charming ass?”

Mike was biting in his sarcasm. She didn’t get it. He was so mean to her. She didn’t get him, that asshole. He thought he was cute. That’s the way his jokes were—they made her feel like crying. Mike got away with murder.

“Man, you need to lighten up,” a grilling voice alleged. “You can’t take a joke, girl.” The Foreman had entered and now faced Annie square, ending Mike’s monopoly on hurting her feelings.

The Foreman, he was a husky man. His stomach could have been used as a shelf. He was hairy. There was a sweater under his unbuttoned janitor’s garment, and he would run a pick through his chest. His stubby fingers pointed urgently, like there was something she couldn’t miss.

“You know that fat chick there in the office? She’s our superintendent. She’s on Weight Watchers…watching her weight go up,” he snickered.

His chin wobbled in tune to his cheeks, Annie saw, and he had the laugh that people of ignorance possess—a loud, painful guffaw that made mothers flinch and children cry.

“Well, anyways, she wants to watch you boys work. It’s not raining out,” the Foreman observed. “The dry spell will only last a little while, but make her happy. She’s hungry and y’all know she has some time till lunch.”

Annie watched from her place against the wall. She’d noticed how usually when the Foreman left a room, Mike would stand up and impersonate the red Kool-Aid jug man. Ah, there he went. Right on cue.

4. Truck Ride

Annie stood up and apathetically followed Lonnie out to the truck, hopping up to the passenger side. Apathetically—she carried herself apathetically. She tried so hard to be aloof, to just do as she was told, so hard that it was the worst act she ever pulled. She climbed into the forest green pick-up with Lonnie and began resting her face against the window.

Lonnie worked for dead people for a living; had for 24 years. He would often mow the short grass in the open field to the back. He just liked riding the mower. He’d fallen asleep on his and hit a tree once. Annie was glad she’d only had a summer’s worth of inexperience under her belt—rather than Lonnie’s quarter of a century.

And the fast food place down the street had only solidified the old man’s passion for processed hotdog. It was usually enough to get him through a day. Not talking to anyone and getting up every morning at all only solidified to him who the girl in the passenger side was. And he saw her short hair. Her calm, rigid shoulders. Her makeup, but not very much. Not enough to impress, anyway.

And since the two of them couldn’t do so much yard work before the rain started up again, Lonnie decided to cruise the aisles between granite headstones upon granite headstones, upon granite headstones. They crept along slowly, country music creating the moment. She climbed out at one point to walk across the lawn and pick up a fallen tree branch and a misplaced flower arrangement to toss into the truck bed. Lonnie would wait to pick her up.

After 10 minutes of more of the same, it was starting to drizzle—their call to pick up where they left off in the break room. Predicting the weather was easier than forecasting Annie’s emotions. She wasn’t taking this the best she could.

5. Lunchtime

When lunchtime came, Annie attempted a nap in her corner while the guys watched The Price is Right. Tony the gravedigger related how he was going to go on “the Depression diet”—only eating food they ate during the Depression. At least he had an excuse. Lonnie already ate mustard sandwiches on his own—when he was out of hotdogs, of course. The local restaurant’s “Sausage Days” week was coming up. He looked forward to that.

In between bites of his sandwich and soda from the machine, Tony the gravedigger shared how, while digging a hole at the side lot, he’d glimpsed a hottie with a nice ass standing in front of a plot. Thinking it was the part-timers rolling up behind him in the pick-up immediately thereafter, he started pumping his arms and directing their attention to the site. Then he righted himself to his rear, only to see a Lincoln Continental—the head of a funeral procession, he had to play that off.

In the next room, the superintendent’s Notorious B.I.G. voice continued on the phone with someone:

“She died,” the superintendent rasped.

“How’d that go?” went the voice on the speakerphone.

“Hell, pretty final I guess.” The superintendent seemed to have to say it with her last breath.

It reminded Annie of when she’d called Stubbs the day after her boyfriend had broken up with her. Stubbs was an always would, always will listen to her kind of guy, but while he was probably more down on himself than she may have ever been, he never let her know that. She’d find another boy, but as for him, his drama consisted of feeling small because of being large.

Stubbs would make Annie feel like her problems were more important, even though he never felt like anyone had thought that about him. And he had always been one to tell her what she wanted to hear.

He’d say, “Oh honey, oh no. It’s not your fault. Anything you do is good. If anyone can make this work, you can.” He hadn’t said all that much. “I really think it’s over. Time to move on, Annie,” was all she heard on the receiving end.

She’d lost him.

“You know?” Stubbs’ voice trailed…

Stubbs was a friend, a very good friend, but he couldn’t understand. Jake had been her boyfriend. Not just another guy.

6. Annie with Jake

To Annie, Jake had been the one person who could understand what she’s saying without her having to say it. The person she enjoyed being with the most. She liked who he was and his perspective on things. In her own words, Jake was the guy she’d always been looking for but had never found.

They were really great friends. It had started that way, and she could tell him how she felt about things as well as she could any friend, even if it involved him.

Together they didn’t do much. They talked a lot and laughed as much. Still at the point where they didn’t know the others’ views or background on everything, they liked figuring each other out, anticipating what the other was going to say, and still finding it original, whether she or he knew it was coming or not. She’d tell him things about herself that no one else could know, so as to make them meaningful.

Jake did little things. They would sit in his car in her driveway for hours talking. And he’d wake her up on Saturday mornings, knocking on her door with a bag of donuts. And she started loving him. And he had been in love with her from the first time he kissed her, or she liked to have thought.

They made up pet names for each other, but most importantly, he called her his and she called him hers.

Of course, she loved him, she would tell herself. And she told him every night on the phone before she went to bed. And she wasn’t lying exactly—she loved loving him. She just hadn’t figured out the difference between loving someone and needing him. He hadn’t either. And as much as she didn’t like to admit it to herself, she couldn’t help but feel like she wasn’t needed anymore. Maybe she was still loved, just no longer needed.

And to her that justified him—she wanted so badly to let him off the hook. He had given her a stability she needed.

They were together because something inside didn’t seem quite right when they weren’t. While college would be a fork in the road for the two graduates, they were going to try distance, because Annie knew if she had opportunities to see him, be with him, and she neglected them, it’d throw her off—like a mental, physical ache that one gets at a, say, funeral. She had thought the mutual respect and love they had for each other was different from anything she’d ever had with anyone else, and it was something that couldn’t be compared to anything else—a release from any other sort of being.

Annie hadn’t realized distance was too much for Jake—that their relationship wasn’t long-term.

7. The Moles

“Hey, Lonzo, what was the word of the day Tuesday?” Mike was always there to break the monotony of Annie’s thoughts. “You forgot it.” He was in college. He thought he was the stuff. She hated him for it.

“Um, moles,” the old man had muttered as he sunk his teeth into the bun.

She had heard their story, the story about how her co-workers couldn’t manage to run a mole over the other day, so Tony the gravedigger had beaten it with a stick four, maybe five, times. From what she gathered, he had taken out all his aggression on the poor innocent creature. They said Tony the gravedigger was in a rage and had a far-off look in his eye.

And Mike had given Tony the gravedigger a hard time about it. He gave everyone a hard time. He had flared, arms flailing, “Have you ever held a mole in your arms and petted it? Have you?” Gaining momentum, “They are the cutest darned critters, and I don’t think, if you’d have ever done that, you could have killed him. You’re just like, ‘Fuck the moles!’ but all I ask is, ‘What about the fucking moles, man?’ What about the fucking moles? They have feelings, too.”

What a rousing speech, ass, all asses, she puzzled, shaking her head—always at a loss of words. She wanted to fit in, but she never quite knew how.

Mike chimed, breaking from the moles story, “When you go down to college, Annie, just remember not to be the kid who stays up all the time in the dorms while the other kids sleep in shifts. And you like boys, right?”

“Yeah,” she admitted, peeved.

“Well, knowing how you like boys, and how we’ll be going to the same school, the key is—the key is to come to the parties at my place. Where I’ll be, and you’ll be, drunk…”

Ass. “Okay, Mike, I think I can handle it.” Ass. What was he trying to be? Funny? Why is he trying to give me a hard time? Annie perplexed over all these things, thrown for anything nice to say.

“If only you were a blonde, Annie. Why are blondes so easy?” He was going to solve this one. He had a look in his eye. Who cares, she deliberated. Who cares, why does it matter? As if girls are lined up to have sex with you anyway, Mike.

“Heather was blonde; she was easy,” Stubbs came up with.

“She doesn’t count, you dolt!” Mike laughed. “Lesbos who worked at the cemetery last summer don’t count. Stubbs, that girl licked the clit. You even wanna know why—she said the dick tastes like shit! I used to have to read my Maxims over her shoulder,” he said. Tony the gravedigger chuckled. It was true.

“Damn dyke,” Mike finished. “I swore I could’ve loved her, though, if…”

I hope they don’t turn me, too, Annie thought to herself, frustrated, dejected, and bitten. Leave it to Mike. Sometimes she thought she could dig up a more civilized person to talk to.

8. A Week Ago

A week ago Jake had broken up with her. A week ago she’d been interviewed on Channel 22 News at six about the grave-robbery of a young soldier. She’d said how outrageous it all was. It was outrageous. In one day. In one day.

She had told the TV cameras, “As sad as seeing funerals everyday is, seeing the mother’s face after the robbery was about the saddest thing you could see.” She had been boy-sad more than grave-robbery sad.

It had been the first grave-robbery at the cemetery. Her first break-up—first time she’d been broken up with. Jake was tired of telling her he loved her. He said that. He had said that.

The mother had visited the cemetery every day—one or two times a day. She was, had been, almost over losing her boy, too.

Jake was dead to her—gone from Annie. She wasn’t supposed to remember him. Not supposed to think about all the good things. It hurt too much. She winced as each hour, each memory, seemed to repeat itself.

They had had differences. Needed space. Different things going for them. “We’re at different points in our lives. I want to know what I’m missing. Need time to figure things out. It’s not that I don’t love you, just that I’m not in-love with you. We’re not ready for a long-term relationship.” He had said those things. She’d been so sure of loving him. She’d pleaded. With him, she’d pleaded. But he was out of control—out of reach.

The funeral had been impressive for a soldier who had died overseas. 300 cars lined themselves next to the lines of granite headstones upon granite headstones, upon granite headstones. One car had come in blasting, “Proud to be an American.”

Annie wondered how many American flags she had mowed down on a daily basis. She massacred flowers and fake flower ornaments all the time—it was unavoidable. All the time. A lady had come by to look at a headstone once. Annie thought it was a massacred one, and it was a good thing it wasn’t, she thought as her apprehension turned cool.

After that funeral, they’d thrown away a truck-load of dead flowers—flowers that had spent too much time in a cemetery.

Working here, Annie had become a cynic. Now when she smelled flowers, she looked around for a coffin. Flowers had smelled so sweet to her before. Now, the smell was too sickly-sweet. Not a smell of life at all but only a scent to mask decay; to memorialize a death of someone, something. Jake often gave her flowers. The other day she got to smell a pretty one. No coffin. Just Jake.

9. Break Room Pt. 2

Lunchtime had come and gone and before they knew it, it was 1:00—two more hours of “work.” The only thing that counteracted the guys ’ lesbian talk was the pitter-patter of the downpour outside, briefly interrupted by the sound of the ice cream man driving by in the road across the fence. It always got Annie when she was at a cemetery and she heard the ice cream man making his rounds in a neighborhood. But on a rainy day; he was a persistent ice cream man. She had used to envy the kids who got a bigger scoop than her. Her first date was ice cream. A place called Curly Cone. She had her favorite flavor and found out his. Lately she felt like her scoop was smaller than usual, or even nonexistent.

“Chicks dig peppermint ice cream on the first date,” Mike said out loud. “Eh, and never call Chinese chicks Oriental—rugs are Oriental, not girls.” Mike’s wisdom never ceased to amaze her.

“Com’ on, four o’clock!” Lonnie hollered, his way of pushing things forward.

“Lonnie’s right,” Tony the gravedigger agreed.

All the while, the Foreman had been quiet in the far corner, balancing a cup of coffee on his stomach. He spoke up, “I was wondering…how many sections you boys spun?”

Mike witted, bigly, “Foreman, can’t you tell? We knocked out the whole damn cemetery yesterday. In one day we did.”

Stubbs told the truth, “We did six, Foreman.”

“Aw, yer no fun, Tubbs. Ha-ha, why’d you give us away, maan?” Tony the gravedigger wailed.

“Thanks, Tubbs, I mean Stubbs. Just kidding, kid,” the Foreman said firmly. “You can finish the mowing and spinning tomorrow when it’s nice out. For now, you boys can go put that one soldier boy’s urn up in the mausoleum where it’ll be safe.”

“They got it back?” Tony the gravedigger asked.

“Yeah, they did. The authorities recovered it from the dad’s place a hundred miles away, matter-of-fact. It’s a long story. And I don’t know it, so don’t ask,” the Foreman explained.

“That’s interesting,” Mike cringed.

“Thas good,” Tony the gravedigger chipped in. “But why couldn’t he have left it alone? Let it go. He’s in the ground already. Why couldn’t he leave him be…let him rest in peace, maan.”

10. The Mausoleum

Annie tagged along to the mausoleum; they didn’t make her do anything really. Pretty girls don’t make graves, they’d say. She didn’t feel pretty. Mike had the urn in his hands, looking it over. Like a dog sniffing.

“Temporary…perpetual…security urn…” he kept reading, stumbling upon the fine print. He was reading it to her—his nerve was impressive. He was standing there making fun, saying, “This thing’s el cheapo, Annie. No doubt about it. This piece of crap is it—it’s all he gets, after all he’s been through? Huh, must’ve spent the whole wad on the military funeral.”

And he read on and on and on, making it a big deal and all of a sudden Lonnie faced him, wide-eyed. He drew a line across his neck.

“The family’s standing behind you,” he mouthed at a snail's pace, “with a video camera, kid.”

Mike fired a look behind him. To his relief there was no family, no video camera. It was Lonnie’s kind of a joke. Annie almost smiled. She didn’t let herself. Not here. Not with these guys. Interaction was a bitch—more than a fear of death so close, more than a fear of love, more than her.

She knew she was bitchy. That is only to say, she didn’t have the time to reevaluate her priorities, and letting people in could confuse her order and plan. Her colors—they didn’t show. She wasn’t sure she would recognize them if they did.

And maybe she should have said things about herself, but she saw the guys going nuts about trivial things and she’d want to say something like, “Yeah, that was the day my bird died,” because it was on her mind. She knew it was stupid. It's just she remembered looking at the one that was still alive and feeling worse for it, because it was all alone.

And up on the lift, Tony the gravedigger told Stubbs to be forewarned, because when they opened the vault, the smell—horrific. Smelled the way people do when they’re dead. A lone body had been interred in the same crypt earlier in the year—in a welfare casket none-the-less. Meaning, the corpse was placed in a cardboard-esque fiberglass casket with a washcloth draped over the top. Rust streaks running down the side panels caused by draining bodily fluids. The casket was cheap enough bodies could easily fall out of them when loading. It was true; Tony the gravedigger had informed all of them awhile ago.

Annie felt lonely most of the time. She didn’t know what to make of her feelings, of herself, of this, most of the time. She was hurting.

11. Spinning

Why do they plant them here? Placing flowers around a headstone is not going to bring someone back to life, Annie thought, weed whacking around granite monuments upon granite headstones like a champ, flowers in front, flowers in vases and on top of. Two hours were left at the cemetery. She’d be leaving a summer’s worth of memories worth leaving behind. Weed whacking was the only constant.

A John Deere buzz was all she had, but it wasn’t enough to drown out the thoughts she’d been thinking ever since—ever since her loss. She wished it would. The tears of sweat made tracks on her tan face, sliding gently down and hanging at her jaw line, often falling before she caught them with her shirt sleeve.

It may have been just a little gesture, but Lonnie, who had worked at the cemetery the longest, walked out with a weed whacker. He called it a spinner—his professional term.

“What are you doing?” she said, puzzled.

“Just thought I’d give you an extra hand,” Lonnie said. He could tell she wasn’t mad, just a little disbelieving. He’d worked there longer than she’d been alive. “And I’m trying to be charming.” He smiled an awkward smile, reevaluating what he had just said.

“Well, it isn’t working,” Annie replied.

“You know, most girls…” he started to say, fumbling for his punch line, “are turned on by my John Deere instrument. How’s that for charming?” No response from Annie.

He started to help her. He’d noticed her working hard—the other guys not helping her; pretending they were still putting away the forest green truck up the main drive at the shed. He’d taken it upon himself.

She envisioned him, she didn’t know why, as an old veteran, one of the best, marching out to help her—her cutting grass side by side with him. She was maybe making it more than it was, but it was nice of the old man; despite the off-color comments. It was unheard of for guys like him to ever come out and work alongside the part-timers. She doubted he’d spun in the summer for many, many years. He was always on his mower.

After a good 20-minute run at it, they finished up. They’d cut a few sections faster than she had all summer. Lonnie leaned his weed whacker on a stone. He took a hotdog out of a plastic baggy in his safety vest pocket; ever since the mower accident he wore safety gear—glasses, safety vest, jeans, the works. He took a bite. He knew something was up with the girl.

“All of these guys out here, they like you. They wouldn’t let anyone fuck with you. They’re on the same side as you.” He bit into his treat as other guys would take a deep drag on a cigarette, contemplating his next move. “Just go with it, Annie. That’s what I think.” He shrugged, realizing maybe it wasn’t his place.

“I don’t always believe in that.” And Annie had an idea of what he meant, but no one at the cemetery, with the exception of Stubbs and now old Lonnie, had done very much in the way of making her feel comfortable.

Lonnie looked at her sweat-smeared face and mistook her beads of sweat for tears.

“Oh now don’t be crying about it, Annie. It ain’t that bad.”

“Crying? Oh no, that’s sweat. Why would I cry? Over these guys? They aren’t worth my tears.”

After the last sentence escaped her mouth, Annie suddenly regretted what she had said. A sense of betrayal came over her, as if Lonnie embodied every one of the guys she had spent the last nine weeks with. And almost as instantly as she felt the initial regret, a new thought emerged. She wondered how many times she’d cried over Jake.

Maybe she wasn’t the world’s own optimist. Confused, a little dejected and even more embarrassed for misdiagnosing her emotional state, Lonnie trudged away.

And it suddenly occurred to Annie to reach out to the old man, an almost-friend. Just like squeeze his arm or something. Something to thank him for the effort, she sighed, it was pretty big of him.

12. Afternoon

It was almost time to clock out. “Com’ on, Friday,” as Lonnie always said. Off duty for the final hour of work, Annie had been sleeping in the backseat of the truck since—since the guys had been calling her sleeping beauty earlier. She barely recalled it. While she lay dormant they had trickled the hose on her some, too. She faintly remembered that.

She’d had a bad dream. She still missed Jake and was happy to wake up. She squinted in the dense, heavy sunlight, her jeans and t-shirt sticking to her 18-year-old body, feeling the warmth of the moment.

By now her co-workers had assembled around the long row of planks on the back east side of the building, a few of them in lawn chairs, Foreman on the hood of his car, the hood sagging. They smoked and drank their spiked 7-Eleven Big Gulps. Tony the gravedigger was pissed he’d been rear-ended in the parking lot at the gas station. Annie was still coming to.

“Well, if you didn’t have your pants down, bright eyes,” the Foreman said.

Mike sprang forth, “Ha-ha, once I woke up after I’d passed out at a party without any pants on and not knowing what to do I started crying.” Mike had more, “But in every drunk story that’s good, the person has to break down crying ‘cuz he’s so dicked up.”

“And if there’s ever anything that’s on your mind but you don’t want to be a jerk, you’ll probably do so by calling her when you’re drunk. She’ll say to you over the phone, ‘Oh you’re just drunk.’ And you have to say back, ‘And dead-fucking serious!’” Stubbs, one of the guys, continued. He took a swig of his Big Gulp and gulped.

Annie rolled her eyes.

“Got a joke, got a joke…” Mike proposed, his hands telling the crew they should listen. He raised an eyebrow. He was sharp and concise, ready to fire away.

“Bear walks into a bar. Bartender asks, ‘What’ll it be?” Bear says, ‘Gin…and tonic.’ Bartender says, ‘O.K., but what’s with the long pause?’ The bear looks down and waves, ‘I was born with them.’”

She didn’t get it at first. She could never get jokes at first. It always took her longer.

They were drunk and laughing, and then she laughed. She laughed. They didn’t make fun of her for it. It made them feel good even just to make her smile. To bring a little bit of light to her eyes was even more.

Mike reverted back to hotdogs for some reason. He always did, discussed how there is a difference between good hotdogs and bad hotdogs. Lonnie couldn’t think of any difference, but the mention of hotdogs always brought a little bit of light to his lazy eyes.

Annie knew this one.

“Good hotdogs don’t have a record,” she said.

The others looked at her awe-inspired—at her eyes, dancing in playful opposition.

“What would we have done this summer without you, Annie?” Lonnie beamed.

She made a pass, “You would’ve made short jokes about Mike.”

“Yeah, but those get old,” Mike spoke up, amused.

“You’re so drunk, Mike,” she smirked.

“No, I’m not. So there. You girl.”

“Why yes you are—how else do you explain us getting along?”

13. End of Day

They wound up the afternoon talking cemeteries, and Mike, Stubbs, the Foreman, Tony, and Lonnie tried explaining to Annie how she would go to college and wouldn’t dig another hole. Pretty girls aren’t ones for making graves, they’d say. Only in the summer. At the cemetery.

Finally 3:57 came upon them—time to line up at the time clock. Before punching out, Tony the gravedigger put some change in the hospital’s pop tabs box for donations. He insisted Lonnie add to the collection, too. Lonnie was the kind of guy, and just shifty enough, he would go to every stone in the cemetery where people left money laying on the stones and he’d take it. Dead people didn’t need money.

They clocked out in a hurry, as if the superintendent would eat them if they didn’t leave soon enough. It was just what they did. A few of the guys hung around with good spirits outside. These guys got to share their selves on a daily basis on the graveyard shift. She heard Stubbs’ voice go back and forth between a story of “the last time I was there they were out of lasagna, the Olive Garden was out of lasagna, bullshit!” and a fascinated argument over the difference between the Flintstones’ and the Jetsons’ cars. He held the older guys’ attention. Mike was the only one not in on it. He sat on a granite headstone and seemed to gaze in her direction as the girl’s hips swayed towards her car, making her exit.

The rain was gone for the day and the sun’s rays began to peak between tree branches, reflecting off granite headstones and the standing water in the gravel parking lot. Annie’s car was surrounded by a puddle. The grounds crew enjoyed that. She could act like she appreciated it, too, she guessed.

Honestly, could this week get any worse? she thought.

She maneuvered around the deep puddle, tiptoeing through its muddy edges and lunging across the diameter of it while leaning without grace into her car. On cue, all the guys clapped.

Once in the car, she heard a faint ringing coming from deep within her purse resting on the passenger side floor. It was her cell phone. She didn’t often get calls, but next year at college she thought she’d need it to call Jake, her then-boyfriend. Instead she had placed her mother in the position of recipient of her free nights and weekend minutes. She pulled the phone from her purse. The sunlight was probably fucking with her, but she thought the name on her display screen said Mike.

That joker, she thought. Mike often called people to get them fishing for their cell phones, only for them to realize it was him from across the room making the phony call. She looked his way and he looked back, and she noticed he had no phone in hand. She looked back at the phone again and realized it wasn’t Mike at all, but rather Jake’s number. For awhile there, it had almost seemed to her that he was that soldier who’d been buried too early—stolen away from a plot that she had been caring for only a week ago. She’d been so sure he wasn’t coming back.

And somehow she knew what he wanted. He'd want to give her flowers. They'd be beautiful, freshly cut, prolonging their death in a crystal vase, and they'd smell just as well. Annie wasn't sure if that's what she needed. Because once cut, flowers begin to die. They wilt away, they shrivel. Losing petals, stems drying while the color slowly fades. As much as she wanted to take him back, if even because flowers in a cemetery are beautiful, she knew better.

She closed the phone, let it down gently into the seat next to her. It was time to put this one to rest.

The End

...THANKS THANKS THANKS to anyone (oyer and katie r and marla and amber and cwclass and and and...) who has helped get this story under way... even fixed a typo here and there and that junk.

questions, comments, just liked the story?! please mention it sometime (guestbook for example - leave one)!!!!! it took a long time to write even if there's the room for improvement thing. thanks for reading all!

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