He was nobody I’d ever seen before. Close to seventy, somewhat frail-looking even at a distance, yet his back was straight and there was purpose in the way he moved. When he reached the first row of the A Section gravesites, he paused long enough at each to peer at the markers before moving on to the next. Looking for a particular plot, I thought, but not the way somebody does when he’s forgotten the exact location of one he’s visited before. As if he had no idea where the one he wanted was located.
He didn’t find it in A Section. While I raked and piled and bagged, I watched him cross #2 Up Road farther west and search through the B Section rows. The one he was looking for wasn’t there, either. He went uphill next, into F Section above where I was on #1 Crossroad.
Well, I’m what they call a people person. I know a good many of the visitors who come to Shady Oaks, on account of I’ve lived in the Los Alegres area all my life, and I enjoy passing the time of day with folks and offering a helping hand whenever I can. I admit to being a curious fellow, too — some might say nosy, not that that bothers me. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it never did me any harm.
So I tossed the last bag of debris into the back of my pickup and walked up to where the Cemetery Man was moving among the F Section plots. When he reached the near end of a row, I went up to him and smiled and said, “Afternoon. Having trouble finding a plot?”
He turned toward me, and I have to say I felt a little shock when I saw him up close. His cheeks and forehead were crosshatched with deep-cut lines; two that curved down around his mouth looked as if they might have been framed and dug out with a pair of calipers. His eyes were deep-sunk, the pupils shiny-dark with what I’d seen too many times not to recognize as grief and sorrow. The word that came to me when I looked into that face for the first time was “ravaged.”
He said in a thin, raspy voice, “I’ll find it eventually.”
“Maybe I can help. Jim Foley’s my name. Head groundskeeper at Shady Oaks for twenty-two years and counting. I don’t claim to know the names and locations of everyone at rest here, but I do know quite a few. Who is it you’re searching for?”
He hesitated so long I thought he was going to turn away without answering.
Then he said, “Peter J. Anderson,” but I had the feeling he gave the name reluctantly.
“Anderson, Peter Anderson.” The name didn’t ring any bells, not then. “Quite a few Andersons here, as you’d imagine. When did he pass on?”
“Twelve years ago. August eleventh, Two Thousand Two.”
“Member of a large family?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh? You’re not a relative, then?”
“No.”
“Friend of the deceased, or of a family member?”
“No.”
I thought it was funny that he’d be hunting for a stranger’s grave, but I didn’t say so. I said, “Are you sure he’s interred at Shady Oaks?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Well, you know, the quickest way to find out his resting place is to check with Mrs. O’Brien in the administration office. Each plot has a number that can be cross-referenced by name and date—”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll find it on my own. I have time.”
“This is a pretty big cemetery,” I said, “more than two thousand plots and crypts in this part alone—”
“I have time,” he said again.
I thought that was queer, too. But I said, “Yes, sir. Suit yourself. One thing you might want to know: No need to go looking in the sections up on the brow of the hill. That’s the oldest part of Shady Oaks, where most of our founding families are buried; some of the graves date all the way back to Gold Rush days. No new burials up there in more than fifty years.”
“Thank you,” he said, and then he did turn away. And went right on with his search.
It was about time for me to take my afternoon break, but the Cemetery Man was such an odd old duck I didn’t want to leave off keeping an eye on him. I went down and got into my pickup and drove on up to #2 Crossroad, where I had a clear view of him while I did some more raking and bagging.
He must have covered about a third of F Section before I saw him stop and stay stopped in front of a gravesite in the shadow of a big live oak. His body stiffened — I could tell that even from a distance — and he stood there staring at the plot for a minute or so without moving. Then he bowed his head, as if he might be praying, and stood like that for a longer time, must’ve been at least five minutes.
Afterward I watched him walk along #1 Crossroad to where his rental car was parked, and I thought, Well, that’s that. But it wasn’t. He didn’t get in and drive off as I expected him to. Instead he opened the trunk, took out what looked to be a large bouquet of flowers, and headed straight back to F Section.
When he came uphill toward the grave he’d found, I could make out that the flowers were carnations and two or three kinds of lilies — all of them white and all artificial. Each gravesite has metal cups sunk into the ground for flowers and such; the Cemetery Man arranged his bouquet in the one there, stood again for a little time with his head bowed. Then he returned to his car again and this time he did drive on out.
Well, that curiosity of mine got the best of me. Once I was sure he wasn’t coming back, I went to the plot under the big live oak. And when I looked at the headstone above the bunch of artificial flowers, I got my second little surprise of the day.
Why had the old fellow asked for the grave of a man named Peter J. Anderson and then put flowers on a woman’s named Evelyn Brown? The Anderson name might have been a falsehood, I supposed, and he’d been looking for Brown all along, but that didn’t make sense, either. The only possibility I could think of that did make sense was that there was some sort of family connection between the Andersons and the Browns.
It was puzzling, all right, but in a minor sort of way. I had too much work to do to fuss about it. And I figured I’d never know one way or another because I’d never see him again.
Wrong. He was back again next day.
He must’ve come in sometime in the morning, but it wasn’t until around one o’clock that I saw his car parked in the same spot inside the gates, then him a little while later. My assistants and I had a burial to prepare for in the Catholic Cemetery, and some other work to attend to in the northeast quadrant after that, and I took time to eat my brown-bag lunch before I headed over onto the west side. I was on #3 Crossroad, on my way to fix a leaking hose bib on #4 Up Road, when I spotted him.
There’s a long curving row of crypts in a grove of pepper trees on that part of #3 Crossroad, where folks who don’t believe in ground burial inter the ashes of loved ones who have been cremated. That was where the Cemetery Man was, peering at the nameplates on the crypts. He didn’t pay any attention to me as I rolled slowly by. I almost stopped, but my sense of what’s right and proper in dealing with visitors trumped my curiosity and kept me from doing it.
I put new washers in the leaking hose bib, moved a fallen tree limb that was partially blocking #4 Up Road. The Cemetery Man had finished examining the crypts, I saw when I drove back past, and was now up in J Section. Standing before one of the plots just off #3 Up Road — standing the way he had in front of Evelyn Brown’s grave, stiff and still with his head bowed. Evidently he’d found what he was looking for today. After the switch yesterday, I couldn’t help wondering if it was Peter J. Anderson’s resting place or somebody else’s.