It's Not Far, but I Don't Know the Way

Kenneth Stuart arrived at the cemetery on a mellow November afternoon that would soon darken. He left the taxi and walked through an open double gate of black iron suspended upon columns of granite. Beyond the gate he came upon a granite chapel of unsteepled, dollhouse Gothic, as available as any telephone booth to anybody with the price. He looked here and there across the landscape. The cemetery rose before him in a series of hills. Stone and iron defined its purpose. The oaks were almost bare, but the firs and the magnolias were green. Kenneth was bareheaded, and he held his face up to the sky. Beneath his left arm he carried a long white box, tied with a gold string. He kept his hands in the pockets of his topcoat.

Behind the chapel he found the caretaker's cottage. It was Queen Anne and cozy and should have been painted white. It was painted instead the sort of depot gray, thick and impregnable, that is preferred by institutions with thrifty trustees. It stood beneath a vast water oak, and about its porch were planted spirea and quince, now bare, dark and dry. Kenneth knocked on the gray door. As he waited, he held before him and regarded, bemused and stilled, the white box and its gold string. It bore the name of a florist, and in gold script the legend "Flowers With Character— (continued on page 191)It's Not Far,(continued from page 93) Send Them By Wire." Oh, Christ, Kenneth whispered, and knocked again. He put the box behind him and stared at the gray door. In a moment he knocked again.

At last the door opened slowly upon a bright, ruddy, small, grinning man with thin gray hair. He was dressed in dark pants, a white shirt, an unbuttoned vest and muddy brogans. He spoke even before the door was fully open.

"I'm sorry to keep you waitin," he said, "but my wife is sick and I was just givin her her medicine." The door was fully open now, and the man stood there blinking in the light, gazing up at Kenneth's face, with a joyful glow shining in his own. "She's got a virus, don't seem to respond to the medicine. The doctor don't know what it is. All doctors know is give pills and send bills. She says it's livin in the cemetery all the time. It finally got to her. But I never minded. At least our neighbors are quiet. Can I help you?"

"I wish to visit the grave of Laura Webster," Kenneth said. He coughed and repeated, "Laura Webster. Can you tell me the way?"

"Come on in," the caretaker said, stepping back with a small bow and an open-palmed flourish. "I'll look her up."

He led the way into the parlor and went to a filing cabinet in a corner. The room was as transplanted European as the chapel. One was reminded of the houses and people in Flaubert and Balzac. It was small and papered in a design of faded roses; the air was dead, still and hot; and the furniture dark, large, bulky and unused.

"What was that name again?" the keeper asked. Told the name once more, he repeated it in a whisper and began a slow study of cards in an open drawer.

Kenneth was unprepared for the sound that came now from another room. He started and looked about him in dismay.

"George," a woman had called. "George!"

Her voice was almost a bellow. She didn't sound sick. George shrugged. His wife bellowed, almost, again, and he smiled and shouted, flinging his head like a neighing horse. "All right, just a minute, honey ... I used to know where everything was," he went on, turning one card, then the next. "But there's so many now, and so many new areas. The city's growing and the cemetery has to grow, too." He turned a card. "You don't get one without the other. They added a whole acre just last year. Three acres added in five years." He turned a card. "Need a computer. Punch a button, out hops the card. But the trus-tees'd never stand for the expense. Hard enough to get em to keep the plumbin repaired." He turned a card. "Last winter the pipes froze and busted, and in the spring the people visitin their dead had to carry water from the chapel for the flowers and shrubs. Trustees didn't have em fixed until July. By then the rains had come, and people didn't need to carry water. That's life. Life in the cemetery."

He turned another card.

"But I must say, the tenants never complain about the plumbin or hold noisy parties on Saturday night."

"George," shouted his wife again. "George, I need you. I can't wait."

"Just a minute, honey," he shouted, and added in a whisper, with a grin of triumph, "So that's what she wants. Can't wait. Just can't wait. Well, anything can wait. You live in a cemetery long enough, you learn that, if you don't learn nothin else. They wait. They ain't goin nowhere. Neither is she. But she can't wait. She's gettin childish. Just like a kid. Wants attention all the time. I remember when she was all laughin, and light as a feather, and pretty and frisky as a kitten. You ought to see her now."

He spoke without sentiment, rather with sour regret, as if he had been robbed. His fingers were short and blunted, the fingernails thick and dark as the shell of a turtle. He moved the cards as if he had never before attempted such a task. Kenneth frowned and shifted upon his feet. "You know our layout?" asked the keeper.

Kenneth shook his head. He watched the cards turn in the old man's fingers with an insane sort of lethargy that was subaqueous, a tranced, unwilled drifting. He frowned and looked away.

"It's so large, can't expect you to know," the caretaker said. "Sometimes I have to guide even the undertakers to the plots. They used to have horses. The horses knew the way."

Kenneth straightened, throwing his head back; his lips parted and his head turned, as if he were listening for a small, remote sound. He looked straight and hard at the old man. His face seemed exposed and nude, it was pale and drawn. "What did you say?" he whispered. "What did you say?"

The keeper stared at him. "What's the matter, man?" he asked. "You feelin all right?"

Kenneth did not explain. He stood waiting, a little stooped and a little older than before. The keeper shrugged and turned back to the cards. "I remember the horses," he said. "My old father was here before me and raised me in this very house. I saw the horses and the hearses. A matched pair of blacks, pulling a black hearse with big glass windows and black draperies and tassels. The horses could smell the new grave. They could smell that raw earth and go straight to it. Don't see no Laura Webster here."

"Oh, my God," Kenneth whispered, shaking his head. "I've given you her maiden name. I mean Laura Webster MacLeish. Mrs. Albert MacLeish."

George dropped the cards into the drawer and turned slowly, as if on a pivot. His eyebrows ascended into his forehead and then descended, and his pale-blue eyes narrowed. "Aha," he said, "I see." He turned back to the cabinet and opened another drawer. His hand fell into it. It seemed empty.

"You a relative?" he asked, staring into the drawer. "A friend?"

I was her lover.

Kenneth's lips stirred, but he did not speak.

"Friend of the family? You know the husband?—the widower?"

Lover—widower—words with the texture of rotted velvet and the odor of sachet and closed parlors. "I was a friend," Kenneth said at last. "An old friend. I was away when she died. I wish to pay my respects. My name is Kenneth Stuart. If there's any problem of identification ..." He reached to the inside of his coat.

"Kenneth Stuart," George said, musing. "Kenneth Stuart. No. Never mind the callin card. You look safe enough."

Out of the drawer, at last, he drew a white card and looked down upon it in profound study. Kenneth frowned and stepped forward. "Why'd you have it in that drawer?" he asked. "Why was it isolated?"

"Oh, that. Well, I had to look it up for some people the other day. I just dropped it back in here and happened to remember where I put it, soon as you said the right name." The keeper was speaking hastily, and now hastily began giving directions, with movements of his hands and head. The driveways were named and the cemetery was laid out in a grid, like a city. It wasn't far. You couldn't miss it. But some of the driveways curved about the hills, and east-west lines sometimes crossed, and so did north-south lines. Sometimes it was tricky, finding your way ...

"George, George," the woman cried, pleading and despairing, as Kenneth closed the door behind him.

&2022; &2022; &2022;

The driveways were cobblestoned. If you listened, with half-closed eyes and a knowing ear, you could hear the iron horseshoes and the ironbound wheels upon the stones, and the muted cries of the drivers, and smell the leather of the harness and the warm musk of the horses, and see, blurred and misted and then suddenly clear, the black tassels swinging from the furled black draperies beyond the windows. The horses knew the way. He shook his head. He had never known the old funerals.

A black car rose out of the rim of earth behind him. Kenneth idly watched its idling approach and was reminded of the cars flowing through the cornfield. It was a tremendous glistening car, a limousine, driven by a chauffeur wearing a visored cap. It swayed upon the turns and the cobblestones, almost lugubrious, not quite; really with the dignity and the poise of a very rich, very large dowager walking her poodle. It sank out of sight like a sounding whale and then rose and approached once more, growing, purring and big-eyed. Behind the driver Kenneth saw a white oval beneath a black bowler hat—that, and nothing more. The faces did not turn to look at the man beside the road. The men went past like German generals on parade, or on trial. The car ascended the next hill and sank again from sight beyond it.

Kenneth walked on, looking at the names of streets, which appeared on small iron rectangles at the intersections. The names, he realized, repeated the names on the military tombstones: Heath to Jernigan, Jernigan to Johnson, Johnson to Abernathy. His destination was Abernathy and Ayers: You couldn't miss it.

He himself now crested the next hill. The black car stood a respectful distance down the hill from its master, who had alighted and seated himself upon a tomb. He rested there sidesaddle, so to speak, his left foot upon the ground, his right leg bent at the edge of the stone, his right foot dangling. His hands were at rest in his lap, and his turned face, beneath the black bowler, gazed eastward, away from the approaching stranger.

Kenneth followed Abernathy to Ayers and there found a great shaft of granite bearing the single name MacLeish. He hesitated, and realized that he was humming, and that throat and tongue were shaping unuttered words. The horse knows the/To carry the sleigh. He bit his tongue to shut off the song and entered the realm of the dead MacLeishes. It contained perhaps 18 gravestones, two of the older ones marking the graves of infants in a distant corner. The grass, even now in November, was neat and green; there were no flowers or shrubs. Kenneth read names and dates engraved in stone; and bending over, his lips moving and his eyes darkening, he read the name he was seeking. He straightened and looked about him. The grave lay between an empty space and the tomb on which the man was seated. Kenneth realized now, with shock and embarrassment, that it, too, belonged to the family: an ancient granite box li-chened and stained, and the graven letters dim and weathered. The man stared east, without moving.

Now what do I do? Kenneth asked himself, quite helpless. If the man had any sensibility, he would now withdraw as quietly and quickly as possible. Yet—yet what if he were a relative? How would Kenneth identify himself, if they should speak? The situation, Kenneth knew, might contain a trace of irony, of graveyard humor. The man sat as still as the stone that supported him. Kenneth turned his back and faced the grave he had come to decorate. How did one place a rose upon a grave? Was there some rite or ritual, in an ancient missal somewhere, intended for his use just now? For a moment he forced his attention upon the mound of grass at his feet; he gazed at single blades, one after the other. They were all blunted by recent cutting, and faintly browned. In an instant he was overwhelmed by cold and darkness. He gripped the white box and bowed his head. This was his terrible, awesome moment of realization. Yet there could be no realization at all. Not by the most fierce effort of will could he acknowledge death. He felt a collapse, a total emptying. Here was nothing. She was nothing. He was nothing. Yet they were immortal. They had to be. He would go now. He stepped back, the white box in his fingers. He had forgotten it. He fumbled with the gold cord. The man spoke.

Kenneth whirled about.

The man was standing, his hands in the pockets of his topcoat. "I didn't know who you would be," he said, "but I knew you'd come, someday, and I'd know you. You kept me waiting a long time, Kenneth Stuart."

He was a stout man, with the stoutness of Scotch whisky and good red meat. He wore splendid shoes and clothing. His chin rested comfortably in a second chin, above a white shirt and a tie of dark blue. His cheeks were rounded and ruddy, his hair black. His eyes, shadowed by the rolled hatbrim, were dark, narrow and cold with loathing. His voice had trembled, wrathful but controlled.

To this man, and to this voice. Kenneth responded stupidly, out of chilled silence. "What did you say?"

"I postponed things, waiting for you. Trips, business deals, parties, everything. First I had to find you. No. First you had to find me."

"What in the devil are you talking about?"

"Now you've found me, and I'm going to kill you."

Kenneth looked down, reflexively, at the bulge of the right hand in the pocket. Did it bulge more than the left? Perhaps it did. He looked about. Nobody was in sight. Even the chauffeur had vanished. He and this man, apparently, were alone in the cemetery, in the universe. Kenneth turned back to him. "For God's sake," he asked, "what're you chattering about?"

"You know what I'm chattering about," the man said, his face growing more flushed, his voice rising. "You know precisely what I'm chattering about."

Kenneth stepped back and realized with panic that he was about to put his foot upon the grave. He leaped forward, holding the box before him. He lowered it, acknowledging what he would have denied, if he could. He had never known her husband; they had never discussed him.

"When I kill you," the man continued, "you'll fall across her grave. Your blood'll spill into her dust. You'll enter her again. Your last act of coition. But she won't know, and you won't know. It'll be a strange sort of fornication, won't it? The fornication of the dead."

Kenneth lowered his head and glared at the man's mockery and rage. "All right, all right, you son of a bitch," he said. "You paid the keeper to call when I came. Did that service come with the price of the funeral?"

The man did not answer. But Kenneth no longer cared. He was tired. The man should get it over with, whatever it was to be. The day had darkened and chilled. The sun shone weak and yellow beyond the limbs of the oaks. "All right," Kenneth said, "what do you want me to do? What are you about?"

"I'm going to be married," the man said, shouting again, the echoes slapping them like hands. "Does that shock you? Perhaps you think I'm being unfaithful. Is that what you thought? But before I married again, I had to see you. Now open your box. Take out your rose. Place it."

"And you'll shoot me in the back."

"Would it matter how I did it, or when?"

The man lowered the revolver to his side. Kenneth, not altogether in obedience or fear, but with slow, gathering, growing knowledge of fate and destiny, untied the gold string, removed it and dropped it to the green grass. His fingers drew the rose from the white tissue paper. He dropped the paper and the box. The rose trembled and swayed on its stem. Kenneth looked at the revolver again and then into the man's eyes. Nothing moved or changed. He turned his back, stepped to the edge of the grave, bent over and laid the rose upon it. He straightened and waited, feeling himself diminish and bend. If this was to be it. then let it be. There was a sort of terror, but it was cold, remote and abstract. He found himself forgetting it, drifting away from it and remembering the woman Laura Webster. He could no longer remember her face. He bowed his head. This was the fearsome loss. He remembered her thighs and her loins. He suddenly wanted her again, savagely, and he cried aloud.

"Yes," the man said, "a reaction. I'd thought you were one of the cold ones. But nobody is really cold. The others behaved a little differently. One of them took a look at my gun and bolted."

Kenneth whirled. The man backed away a step; the revolver was aimed again. "Watch it, Stuart, don't move," he said. "I'm the one who's going to do the killing here." The flesh at his eyes was gathered inward, toward the bridge of his nose, and the lids were low, but the eyes themselves glittered with a killer's amusement. "He ran, stumbling and falling over graves and stones, and I stood here and laughed like hell. I let him go. He wasn't worth killing. Another one—yes, Stuart, and slay where you are. Another one fainted. He didn't even fall on her grave. He fell on the base of that tombstone there, the tombstone of her mother-in-law. He cut his forehead. I left him bleeding there."

"I don't believe you," Kenneth said. "I don't believe a goddamn word of it."

"The third one got down on his knees and begged for his life."

"You're lying. I know you're lying, and you know I know. So shut up, shut up!"

"Somehow mistresses are unfaithful to their lovers only if they take other lovers, but not if they sleep with their husbands. You'd never be jealous of a mere husband, now, would you? But another lover! Think about that, Stuart."

Kenneth swallowed; his throat was so dry that it ached. He remembered her face now: fair, cool and dreaming. His fingers trembled and his eyelids were heavy. He felt stooped and old.

"Stop it," he said. "Just stop it. You're trying to goad me into attacking you. You want to plead self-defense. Can't you do it clean and quick, without an alibi? If you weren't a coward, you could."

The man spoke now of another matter, in a changed voice. He seemed uneasy and perhaps a little hopeful; a note of pleading crept into his tone. The revolver dangled loosely in his stout fingers. "Maybe you can explain this to me," he said. "She was terribly quiet during the last days. Still and silent, on her back, like a corpse. But once, on the next-to-the-last day, she said very distinctly and slowly, 'It's not far, but I don't know the way.' She never moved or spoke again. What'd she mean, Kenneth Stuart?"

Kenneth shook his head.

"She never had any religion, so far as I know. So it must have meant something else. That's all I want of you. Perhaps not this at all." The man raised the revolver and let it fall. "What'd she mean? What?"

Kenneth remembered the song, well enough. Her voice was untrained, but true and rather sweet. In the snow one evening they had sung what words they could remember, and hummed the rest. It was just an old chestnut, a sentimental song that celebrated a day that never was. It had no importance; yet now it did. "I don't know why she said that," he told the man.

"You must know."

"Why do you say that? How would I know?"

The man stirred and licked his lips. His eyes were troubled and his face had grown weary and dark in the darkening day. "Because," he began, and swallowed and wet his lips with his tongue "Because if a man's to be cuckolded, he wants it to be by a real man, a man worthy of his woman and his hatred. You're the only worthy one. The only one worth killing." Again he barked once in laughter. "You'll appreciate the irony, I'm sure. But never mind. You must have been the real one—her real one. The others were accidents, I'm sure, passers-by, pickups, nothings. So you must know why she said what she did. 'It's not far, but I don't know the way.' "

Kenneth looked away. He felt a flush of pleasure. Had there been others? He did not know. But if there had been, it was a joy to be the real one, her real one. Perhaps he could be kind to this man, without harm, now that he had made his confession. "There was a song," Kenneth said, feeling shy and a little absurd. "We tried to remember the words. 'The horse knows the way/To carry the sleigh,/Through the white and drifted snow'—that was about all we could manage. We sang it and hummed it. That was all."

The man himself hummed a bar or two, but scowled and shook his head. "It can't be that simple," he said, disappointed and perhaps insulted. "It can't be."

Kenneth turned away again, in embarrassment, sympathy and disgust. What small things could agitate large men. What large victories could be won with what small arms. He remembered the caretaker's triumph over his wife. He vanquished her at last simply by ignoring her. Kenneth smiled. He and Laura had defeated this man, at last, with a song that children sing in assembly before holidays. He heard a movement and turned back. The man was striding away down the hill, with long, hurried steps, toward the car. His hands were empty. The chauffeur held the back door open. The man reached it, put one foot in, but withdrew it and whirled about to face Kenneth once more. His countenance was quite shadowed, but Kenneth thought he saw the lips twisted and the teeth bared.

"You think I'm the husband, don't you?" he shouted, his head back, the echoes slapping about them again. "You thought I was the husband all the time, didn't you? Well, I may have been, or I may not have been. You'll never know."

He dived into the car. The door closed. In a moment the car purred away, with its slow dowager swayings upon the cobblestones. Kenneth watched it sink once more beyond the rim of earth.