Somehow the cemetery seemed more like an unfinished housing tract than a graveyard. Over half the plots were empty. That's because the people slated for those places were still living. Occasionally, on Sunday afternoons, some people would drive up with their families to check out their future resting places. Gazing out over the grounds from the stone base already erected on the spot, Hmmm, nice view from here, flowers of the season, good fresh air, lawn looks well cared for, even got sprinklers. And no wild dogs to get at the offerings.
But above all, they'd be impressed by the bright, healthy atmosphere. Satisfied, they'd sit down on a bench to eat their box lunches, and then return home to the day-to-day bustle of their lives.
Mornings and evenings the caretaker would rake the gravel walkways. Then he'd chase away any kids who might have their eyes on the carp in the central pond. And as if that wasn't enough, three times a day – at nine, twelve, and six – a music-box rendition of "Old Black Joe" would be piped from speakers around the grounds. The Rat could never figure out what possible meaning there could be in playing music, although he had to admit that "Old Black Joe" playing to a deserted graveyard at six o'clock in the waning light was definitely something to experience.
At six-thirty, the caretaker would return by bus to the realm below, and total silence would fall over the necropolis. Then the couples would begin arriving to make out in their cars. Come summer, the cars would be literally lined up through the woods.
The cemetery thus held a place of profound significance in the Rat's adolescent years. Even in high school before he could drive, the Rat was ferrying girls up the incline by the stream on the back of a 250-cc bike. Always staring up at the same street lamps, he'd had himself a whole string of girls. Like so many scents briefly enjoyed before they wafted away. So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanished.
Turn around, and death had put down roots beneath each plot across the extensive grounds. Occasionally, the Rat would take these girls by the hand and wander about on the gravel paths of this pretentious cemetery. All those different names, dates, deaths, each backed with a past life, were like shrubs in an arboretum, spaced out equidistantly as far as the eye could see. No gently swaying breezes for them, no fragrances, no touch of a hand reaching through the darkness. They who seemed like trees lost to time. They to whom no thoughts occurred, nor would ever have words to get them across. They'd left all that to those who still had some living to do. He and his girl would head back to the woods, holding each other tight. And all around there'd be the sea breeze, the leafy scent of the trees, the sounds of crickets, everything of this world that went on living.
"Was I asleep long?" she asked.
"Nah," said the Rat. "No time at all."
9
It was another rerun of the same old day. One you almost had to dog-ear to keep from getting it mixed up with the rest.
All day long it smelled like autumn. I finished work at the usual time, but when I got home there was no sign of the twins. I tumbled onto the bed still wearing my socks, and lounged about smoking a cigarette. I tried thinking of different things, but nothing came to mind. I sighed, sat up in bed, and stared a while at the white blank of the opposite wall. I didn't have the vaguest idea of what to do – I couldn't keep staring at the wall forever, I told myself. But even that admonition didn't work. A faculty advisor reviewing a graduation thesis would have had the perfect comment: you write well, you argue clearly, but you don't have anything to say.
That pretty well summed it up. The first chance to be alone in a long time, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with myself.
It's so strange. For years and years I'd lived all by myself, and I'd managed well enough, hadn't I? Why wouldn't it all come back to me? You don't forget twenty-four years just like that. I felt as if I was in the middle of looking for something, but had lost track of what it was I'd been trying to find.
What was it now? A bottle opener? An old letter, a receipt, something to clean my ears with?
On the verge of utter distraction, I reached for my bedside Kant, and what should fall out from between the pages but a note. Written in the twins' script, it read, "Gone to the golf course." That's when I really started to worry. Hadn't I warned them never to go onto the golf course without me?
* * *
A golf course can be a risky place in the early evening for those who aren't aware of the dangers. Who knows when a golf ball might come flying out of nowhere?
I slipped on my tennis shoes, wrapped a sweatshirt around my shoulders on my way out of the apartment, and climbed over the chainlink fence onto the course. Over a gentle rise, past the twelfth hole, past the rest house, through some woods, I walked and walked. The setting sun spilled across the turf from between the trees along the western fringe. In a dumbbell-shaped sand trap I found an empty coffee-cream cookie box, obviously left there by the twins. I crumpled it up and crammed it into my pocket, taking the trouble to erase our three sets of footprints even though it meant falling further behind. Then I crossed a small wooden footbridge over a brook before finally encountering the twins on a nearby hill. They were sitting sideby-side midway up an outdoor escalator built into the slope on the far side of the hill, thoroughly absorbed in a game of backgammon.
"Didn't I tell you two it was dangerous to come here on your own?"
"The sunset was so beautiful," pleaded one of them.
We walked down the escalator, and stretched ourselves out on a knoll covered with susuki grass for a clear view of the sunset. The view was gorgeous.
"You shouldn't leave trash in the sand traps, you know," I scolded.
"Sorry," the two of them apologized.
"A long time ago, I got hurt in a sandbox. Back when I was in elementary school." I showed them the tip of my left index finger where you could still make out a tiny white thread of a scar a third of an inch long. "Somebody'd buried a broken pop bottle."
The two of them nodded.
"Of course, no one gets cut on an empty cookie box. But still, you mustn't leave things lying around in the sand. Sandy places are sacred and not to be defiled."
"We understand," said one of them.
"We'll be more careful," said the other. "Got any other scars?"
"Well, now that you ask..." And I proceeded to show the two of them every scar on my body. A regular catalog of scars. First, my left eye, where I got hit by the ball in a soccer match. To this day, I still have a small scar on my retina. Then there's my nose, again thanks to soccer. I was going to head the ball, when I met up with another player's teeth on the upswing. And seven stitches in my lower lip. A fall from a bicycle, trying to veer out of the way of a truck. Then there's that chipped tooth...
There we lay, all three of us on the cool turf, listening to the rustling of the susuki tassels in the breeze.