They number one hundred and forty-four thousand
They number one hundred and forty-four thousand
They number one hundred and forty-four thousand
Oh, turn some ransomed one home.
The song was easily learned, and Clarissa sang along as she trudged down the hollow. Her voice grew louder, the giant’s, fainter. By the time she reached the turnpike, a rutted silver scar leading into a gloom only deepened by the distant lights of Tobaccoville, the giant and his drum and his voice had melted away as if they had never been, and any trace of “Budded Rose” was temporarily lost in the rattle and snarl of a pulpwood truck labouring up the grade. Clarissa held the squirming cat tighter as she stepped forward and stood, proud and ready, in the middle of the road. Standing straight, no need to wait. She listened to nothing, squinted into the glow of the headlamps cresting the hill.
On Hallowed Ground by Debra Hyde
It would probably surprise you to learn that a graveyard sits smackdab in the middle of a small New England city. You’d never know, to drive by on either one of the two highways that skirts Hartford. But it’s there, nestled between the Gold Building and a massive urban church, shadowed by the Travelers tower, first phallic symbol of this old Puritan outpost.
If you were to wander into the cemetery – the Ancient Burial Ground, as it’s called – you’d find tombstones as old as Hartford’s first residents and as young as American Federalism. And if you felt you were being watched as you strolled the grounds, it might be the angel-heads staring at you from their timeless perches atop their tombstones, visages like some happy-faced renaissance sun met with a pirate’s skull, then morphed into something only director Tim Burton would love.
And if you still felt yourself being watched – well, maybe the street culture’s checking you out. Maybe the beady, withdrawal-plagued eyes of a street person, just waking up under the cemetery hedges, have spied you out. Or maybe it’s the disaffected gaze of folks just outside the grounds, people curious enough to watch you because you’re new to their tired old routine of watching and waiting for the Q bus. Then again, maybe you hit it lucky and found a group of overexcited schoolchildren, field-tripping their way through Connecticut history.
But chances are, you won’t find Mark or Ramona there. They already had their moment in the sun – well, under moon, really – and they’re not likely to repeat their offence. Not after narrowly escaping the watchful eye of the HPD.
It started with Mark. A lover of trivia, he stumbled across the fact that Hartford’s founder, one Thomas Hooker, Puritan minister and pioneer, probably was not actually buried at the tombstone that honoured him. As a humble pilgrim, Hooker didn’t believe in frills, and because a tombstone was as frilly to him as a lace collar, he swore off the concept of hallowed ground. So the man’s buried somewhere in there, Mark realized, but he could be next to an illustrious lawyer, a poor pilgrim, or a very early-American slave.
Unlike Hooker, Mark believed in hallowed things, but only for the sake of sacrilege. He lived in an arrested state of punkhood and still looked for new ways to transgress against the status quo, especially now that the status quo included former drinking buddies who had long ago settled down to lawns, kids, and SUVs. How to transgress, however, had become problematic with age and he was always on the prowl.
Ironically, Mark’s idea came to him during one day during a boring jack-off. In a brief mental epiphany – the best of which always happened when it involved his dick – the word sex led to hooker, which led to Thomas Hooker. That was followed by the vision of Ramona’s face, followed by his familiarity with her tight ass, followed by a quick tension, a long release, and a thick glob of come which oozed onto his belly.
Knowing a good idea when he had one, Mark dipped his fingers into this creamery-thick pool, then reached for his nightstand phone and put his goopy fingers to dialling Ramona.
“Hey, baby,” she cooed when she recognized Mark’s voice.
“How about dinner and a trick?” Mark inquired.
“It’ll cost you,” she warned.
“It always does.” His voice sounded like a shrug of the shoulders.
Dinner was a hoot. On the surface, they looked like a stylish couple consuming peasant chicken and micro-brewed beer at City Steam. Men would think Mark lucky to have such a doe-eyed, lush-haired, pouting-lipped beauty while women would ruffle territorially. But when the hordes on the happy-hour make looked closely, they would see a hint of masculinity where none should have existed and an aggressive glint in eyes that should’ve shown demure and inviting. Which suited Mark just fine. He liked freaking the mundanes.
But not Ramona. “This place is a fucking meat market,” she complained.
“That’s how straight men cruise, Sugar.”
“Pigs!” she decided before amending her judgment with a present company aside codicil.
Mark simply smiled. He loved Ramona’s feisty ways and if the straight men and women around them found themselves challenged by her presence, all the better. He had known Ramona for four years and, while he had never had the pleasure of meeting the Juan that once was, he’d seen enough of the remnants of Juan to make him adore Ramona all the more. That his relationship with Ramona always included a cash-and-carry exchange only made her more attractive to him. After all, how many straight men could say they forked over good cash for a piece of tight ass and to fund a favourite fuck-buddy’s lifelong dream of gender reassignment?
“I don’t like this place,” Ramona protested. As she glowered her way through coffee and dessert, Mark reminded her that the day she got her pussy was the day she’d have to start living straight.
“After all, how much of gay society’s going to be there for you when you give up your dick?” he asked.
Ramona huffed and feigned indifference but Mark knew that beneath her haughty veneer sat an appreciative girl. No matter what she threw his way – fuck fees, bills for her hormone treatments, conflicting schedules due to her slavish clients, even the occasional temper tantrum – he stood by her without complaint. She knew he had earned the right to be her Sugar Daddy, even if he was wrong about her gay friends.
As they left the restaurant, Mark remarked, “Time is money.” To which Ramona answered, “So what do you have in mind?”
Mark smiled slyly. “You’ll see.” He took her by the arm and briskly walked her down Main Street. When they passed Asylum Street and the parking garage that sat on that block, she knew they weren’t about to leave the city. As they breezed past the Gold Building, she started to complain, “Slow down. It’s hard in these heels.”
Mark chuckled. “I’ll get you off your feet soon enough.”
When they rounded the corner of Gold Street and headed into the Ancient Burial Ground, Ramona crossed herself as she said, “You fucking pervert.”
“Not yet, I’m not.”
Slow dining had afforded Mark and Ramona with the cover of dark and with the city now void of activity, the burial ground afforded them some privacy. Mark took Ramona deep into the cemetery, past the back of the old church, and practically centre square to the burial ground’s Main Street entrance. Had he done so during daylight, they would’ve never escaped notice, the spot was so public, but now, at night, only the occasional glint of a streetlight through the trees cast any light.
Darkness didn’t keep Mark from knowing where he was and what he wanted. He had Ramona kneel before the tombstone of his choice, and, as he unzipped his pants and freed his dick he read, “In memory of the Rev. Thomas Hooker who in 1636 with his assistant Mr Stone removed to Hartford with about 100 persons where he planted ye First Church in Connecticut. An eloquent, able and faithful Minister of Christ, He died July 7th, 1647.”