Holding Wonder

Peter was extricating me, muttering something about a donkey being better for me since it's braced at all four corners, when I saw it-on the next loop of the road where it topped the rise above us.
"Peter," I said softly, staring at him, "I can see a horse pulling a buggy on the road over there. There's another and another and a hay wagon looking vehicle. Peter, it's a procession of some sort."
Peter straightened my legs and sat down on the ground near me. "Go on," he said, taking my hands.
"There's something on the hay wagon," I said "It looks-it's a coffin, Peter!" The back of my neck chilled.
"A coffin?" Peter was startled, too.
"They're going down the other side of the hill now. There are three buggies and the wagon. They're gone-
"Come on," said Peter, getting up and lifting the bikes, "let's follow them."
"Follow them?" I grabbed my bike and tried to remember which side to mount from-or does that only matter for horses? "Did you see them, too?" "No," he said, flinging himself up onto the bike seat. "But you did. Let's see if you can follow them." And behold! I could ride my bike! All sorts of muscular memories awoke and I forgot the problems of aiming and balancing, and I whizzed-slowly-through the sand at the bottom of a rise, as I followed Peter.
"I don't see them!" I called to Peter's bobbing back, "I guess they're gone."
"Are you looking over there?" he called back.
"Of course I am!" I cried. "Oh!" I murmured. "Uh, of course:" And I looked out over the valley. I noticed one slender column of smoke rising from Davis-Monthan AF Base before my peripheral vision took over.
"Peter," I said, "it is a coffin. I'm right by the wagon. Don't go so fast. You're leaving us behind." Peter dropped back to ride beside me.
"Go on," he said. "What kind of buggies are they?" I stared out over the
valley again, and my bike backed up over a granite knob in the sand and I fell. Peter swung back toward me as I scrambled to my feet.
"Leave the bikes," I said. "Let's walk. They're going slow enough-"
A fine rain had begun. With it came the soft sense of stillness I love so about the rain. Beside me, within my vision, moved the last buggy of the procession, also through a fine rain that was not even heavy enough to make a sound on its faded black top, but its color began to darken and to shine.
There were two people in the buggy, one man driving the single horse, the other man, thin, wrinkled, smelling of musty old age and camphor, huddled in his heavy overcoat, under a laprobe. A fine tremor stirred his knotted hands and his toothless mouth grinned a little to show the pink smoothness of his lower gums.
I lengthened my stride to keep up with the slow moving procession, hearing the gritty grind of the metal tires through the sand. I put out my hand to rest it on the side of the buggy, but drew it back again, afraid I might feel Something. Then I sensed the insistent seep of a voice, soundless, inside my mind.
Seventeen trips to the cemetery-and back again! That's more than anyone else around here can say. I'll see them all underground yet! There-and back! I go there and come back. They all stay!
The rain was heavier. I could feel its gnat-like insistence against my face. The road was swinging around the base of a long, low hill now.
So this is what she came to. Another thought began. She was a pretty little thing. Thought sure some young feller around here would have spoke for her. They say she was bad. Shipped her back from the city to bury her. Women sure had a fit about burying her with their honored dead. Honored dead! Honored because they are dead. Every evil in the book safely underground here in the graveyard. Hope Papa's having a good time. Sure likes funerals.
I reeled away from the buggy. I had walked full tilt into a fence post. Peter grabbed me before I fell.
"Well?" he asked, pushing a limp wet strand of my hair off my forehead.
"I'm okay," I said. "Peter, is there a cemetery around here anywhere? You've hunted these foothills often enough to know."
"A cemetery?" Peter's eyes narrowed. "Well, there are a few graves in a fence corner around here some place. Come on!" We abandoned the road and started across country. As we trudged up one hill and scurried down another, treading our way through cactus and mesquite, I told Peter what I'd seen and heard.
"There!" Peter gestured to the left and we plunged down into a sand wash that walked firmly because the night rain had packed the sand and up the other steep side and topped out onto a small flat. Half a dozen forlorn sunken mounds lay in the corner of two barbed-wire fences meeting. Gray, wordless slabs of weathered wood splintered at the heads of two of them. Small rocks half outlined another.
I looked up at the towering Santa Catalinas and saw Peter. "Move, Peter," I said. "You're standing on a grave. There are dozens of them."
"Where can I stand?" Peter asked.
"In the fence corner," I said. "There's no fence there-only a big rock. Here they come." I moved over to where the procession was coming through the barbed-wire fence, hearing the first. waves of voices breaking over me.
The first buggy
Bad-bad! Rouged, even in her coffin. I should have wiped if off the way I started to. Disgraceful! Why did she have to humiliate me like this by coming back? They've got places in the city for people like her. She was dead to respectability a long time ago. Why did she come back?
The woman pinched her lips together more tightly behind the black veil and thought passionately, Punish her! Punish her! The wages of sin!
The next buggy was passing me now.
Poor child-oh poor child-to come back so unwanted. Please, Lord, cleanse her of all her sins.
There were two women and a man in this buggy.
Good rain. Needed it. Oughta be home getting things done, not trailing after a fancy woman. Good rain for this time of year.
The metal tires gritted past me.
They'll be bringing me out here next. I'm dying! I'm dying! I know. I know. Mama died of the same thing. I'm afraid to tell. All they could do would be to tell me I'll be the next one to come out here. I'm afraid! I'm afraid! I'm crying for myself, not her!
A woman alone was driving the next buggy-a smart shiny vehicle. She was easily controlling the restless horse.
At least she has had someone love her, whether it war good or bad. How many wanted her and had her doesn't matter now. Someone cared about what she did and like the way she looked. Someone loved her.
By now the men had got out of the buggies-all except the old one-and I heard the grating sound as they dragged the coffin from the hayrack. It thumped to an awkward angle against the mound of desert dirt, rocks, caliche and the thin sandy soil of the hillside. It was seized and lowered quickly and urgently to the bottom of the grave. The men got shovels from their vehicles. They took off their coats, hitched their sleeve garters higher and began to fill in the grave.
"Isn't anyone going to pray?" The shocked cry came from the one woman. "Isn't anyone going to pray?" There vas a short, uneasy pause.
"Preacher's prayed over her already," said one of the men. "For her kind, that's enough." The woman stumbled to the half-filled grave and fell to her knees. Maybe I was the only one who heard her. "She loved much-forgive her much."
Peter and I sat warming our hands by cradling our coffee mugs in them. We were in a little hamburger joint halfway back home. Outside the rain purred down, seething on the blacktop road, thrumming insistently on metal somewhere out back. We sat, each busy with his own thoughts, and watched the rain furrow the sandy shoulder of the road. It was an unusual rain for this time of year.
"Well." My voice lifted Peter's eyes from his coffee. He lifted one brow inquiringly. "I have Told All," I went on. "What is your considered opinion?"