Part 27

     Broken Bells' “October” comes up on shuffle, and I turn it up a bit. As I continue on walking – it's such a great song for walking to – I try and actually sort out the words. I've played this one on dozens of rough mornings, but I still have no idea what it's actually about. “...'til the spark of morning light, and all those searching eyes, do they scald your tender mind? See the stars align and leave you behind...” Even focusing, I'm not sure I'm getting the words all right, the singer has such weird rhythms and pronunciations. Doesn't really matter, it's the atmosphere of the song I really love. “Don't run, don't rush, just flo-o-ow...”
     A low stone wall appears next to me, and I look across it to see the beginning of the old Oak Leaf Cemetery. The late sunlight is filtering between the trees, low on the ground, casting long shadows behind everything. Thank goodness I have spare batteries with me – I'll get some fantastic black and white shots at this time of day. The place looks empty as usual, the joggers and dog-walkers frequent the much-larger St. Mary's Cemetery, with its well-kept paved paths. This one is only a block or two in size, with a slightly-graveled dirt path curling through it. I don't think there are any stones newer than the early 1900s, maybe the 1910s or 1920s, so it's not a place people come to pay respects often, either. All reasons why I've always liked visiting Oak Leaf more than St. Mary's. While the larger, more elaborate sculptures are definitely at St. Mary's, I've always preferred the age-worn look of old slate and marble stones to the highly-polished, crisply-carved granite ones.
     Stepping through the wide gap in the stone wall, I take my headphones out for a minute, and just look and listen and breathe, letting the peacefulness of the place soak in for a long moment. Though the road isn't far behind me, everything feels muted here, like a soft curtain has been drawn closed behind me, leaving me in a place not quite a part of the everyday world outside. I pull out my camera, and switch my iPod to one of my more placid playlists – though I only put one headphone back in, letting the other hang free on its cord so that I can still hear the soft breeze in the leaves around me.
     I don't know the exact location of Calvin's stone – while I found a number-gridded map online, to match the odd jumble of numbers I'd found on a list by his name, I couldn't get the map to load quite correctly. But I recognized some of the names that had numbers not far off from Calvin's, so they must be stones I've seen before. If I just nose around the areas I'm naturally drawn to, I should stumble across it eventually.
     I start a vague circle around the cemetery, heading off to the left to start with. I pause beside a few of my favorite stones, taking pictures in the strong sunlight: An arched stone with an image of clasped hands, a tall pointed pillar of an almost yellow stone with its corners blackened by age, a sculpted urn with something draped over it. I pause at some of the stones with more three-dimensional sculpture to them, taking advantage of the deep shadows. And every stone I pass, I let my eyes skim over the name. Even the tiny little foot stones, half-buried by encroaching grass, I check, kneeling down to tug away grass and roots when needed. I find a few stones marked “Mason”, but these are all the ones unrelated (so far as I can tell) to the ones I know.
     It's amazing, how much color there is in these old white stones... The slate stones, I was never surprised to find the colors in. Some campground we went to when I was a kid had a big open patch of slate nearby, where a mountain had been trimmed to put in a road or something I think. Being kids, my sister and I were always picking up pieces of it to use as chalkboards, and I remember competing to see who could find the most colorful pieces – blobs of purple, rust red, bright orange, on the blue-gray stone. But these marble gravestones have not only the expected greens of moss and aqua of lichen, the brown of dead moss and black of weather-worn stone. There are pinks and soft sages, peaches and ambers, reds and greens and violets in the shadows. One stone, I find has a nearly-smooth back, and I arrange my shot to have it fill up the image as best I can. There's a smooth scalloped indentation near the border, mostly a dark olive-gray but with touches of orange in the deep shadows. The main stone has a slight lavender cast to it, but there are reds and pinks among the dark green mossy areas near the edges. The center lightens almost to white, but then is criss-crossed, almost like someone lightly pulled a large paint brush over it, in a warm light coral. If I'd drawn something like this, I'd be mocked for making such a rainbow stone, but here it is, carved by mankind but painted only by nature.
     While at first I stopped often, camera up and ready, I soon notice the light falling lower down – the tops of some of the higher stones are already in shadow. I should move quicker, if I'm going to find Cal's stone today. Still, I make sure to keep checking the names. Given the Masons apparent wealth, I would expect a larger, more elaborate stone, but then again, they were so rarely in town, and... I don't know, I feel like the death of a young child isn't something you'd want to commemorate with a giant slab of rock, or some grandiose tower. It's such a deep, private sort of loss, I feel like something small but beautiful, tucked away in a corner, would be more fitting.
     I'm walking along a side edge of the cemetery now, and have to keep doubling-back when I've noticed I've missed checking a gravestone. They're not in nice neat lines in this section, but tucked among much larger trees – which, I suppose, might actually be old enough to have been planted when the cemetery opened, or shortly thereafter. The shadows are denser here, and I almost stumble over a couple of short little square markers. There's an area closed in by an ironwork fence, and for a moment my heart leaps, recalling the fence around the Mason place--- but no, I can see from outside the half-collapsed fence, there's a huge monument in the middle with the last name “TEMPLE” emblazoned across it. Not that my Masons would have a family plot like that here anyway... I wonder if they do anywhere?
     On the far side of the fenced-in area is a low spreading shrub of some kind. It looks like it had flowers on it not long ago, there are browned petals on the ground underneath it, but I'm not sure what it actually is. Seems an odd place for it – it's very near a large old locust tree, so much so that its outer branches have to spread to either side around the locust's trunk. I suppose both were much smaller when planted, so long ago.
     Still, to have a big bush like that just outside a family plot? Wouldn't they have planted it inside? Unless this was planted for someone else, not in that plot. I lean down, trying to see beneath the spreading branches of the shrub – which is tricky, since it's the middle of summer, so every inch of branch is totally ensconced in leaves. But there, is that a stone? I kneel down, trying to hold the branches out of my way as I lean in beneath them. The light doesn't really reach down here, so it's fairly dark, and very damp.
     But there's a stone. Shaped like a lamb, only a foot or so long. It's marble, so large portions of it are covered in moss and lichen, and blackened with the long years. The lamb is incredibly detailed, curled up with its legs tucked beneath it, with soft little swirls of wool all over its curved form. I run my fingers softly over it, especially around the edges, trying to find where a name might be... and I find the stone extends forward a little ways, though grass has grown over it. I adjust my position a little, trying to hold the branches out of the way with my shoulders and back, while I reach down to try and clear the flat area of the stone. There's definitely words on it! I wish I'd brought some charcoal and tissue paper with me or something, making a rubbing is usually the way to go with hard-to-read gravestones. But I'm relieved to find that the words are still readable – they were cut much deeper into the stone than usual for marble, or maybe they've just been less harassed by the elements, hidden away like this? My heart pounds as I make out the first word, but I force myself to clear away all the straggling grass and bits of soil before I actually read it all.
     “CALVIN MARCUS MASON,” in arched capital letters, a strong but somewhat unusually serifed font. Below this, the font changes to an italicized one – harder, but not impossible to read. “Son of A. & C. Mason. DIED May 4, 1901. Aged 4 years, 8 mos. 10 days.” There are ornaments all around the borders and between the lines of text, mostly flowers, but also a small angel in the space under the curved name. There are some more lines of text carved below the rest in a much lighter font, maybe even a script, but I can't make it out in this light with such an amount of weathering. I'll have to come back – but for now, I take the best photos I can, hoping that maybe I can lighten the image digitally and make out the details better.
     “Calvin...” I whisper, as I stretch out beside the stone, brushing my fingers gently over the lamb's back, the boy's name. “I wish there was something I could have done for you... I wish I could have spent more time with you, given you some bit of kindness in your life... I know there couldn't have been enough love shown you in your life, even for as short as it was. You deserved better than I think you had. I wish... I wish too many things.” I smile wryly, and kiss my fingertips, then touch them to the cool stone. “I'll come back again to visit you, and make this space a little more beautiful for you. Someone made it beautiful for you when they brought you here, it's only right that it should be that way again. I'll be back again...”
     Crawling out from under the bush (I seem to do an awful lot of crawling through muddy spaces for this family!), I try and arrange the branches to cover the stone a little less. It doesn't really work, but I feel better, knowing I've at least cleared the grass clear of the boy's name. I really will be back – to trim the bush (assuming that's allowed, I'll have to check), to pull back the grass, maybe even clear some of the moss from the stone, if I can do so safely.
     The sun has begun to set, throwing its fiery paint over the white silhouettes of the old stones, as though casting the decaying things into a furnace to be formed again fresh and new in the morning... but no, I wouldn't wish that fate on these crumbling stones. They've been touched by a thousand gentle hands, given tender kisses by women with full hearts, seen a thousand springs and autumns and the world change around them... I couldn't wish such memories erased.