The Grave Beside My Husband

Brent Dempsey did not look up from his computer screen. I stood at the office window of Oak Rest Cemetery with my envelope in my hand, and I waited for him to finish whatever he was reading, the way you wait on a doctor.

“Can I help you?” he said to the screen.

“I’m Iris Tolbert. I’m here to make my last payment.”

It was the 8th of October, a Thursday, and I had come out on the first Thursday of October for eleven years. Cal died on the 2nd. A stroke, in the machine shed behind our house, on a morning so wet the tractor tires left ruts in the yard. He was 66 years old. He had a wrench in his hand, a half turn from finishing the chain on the bean cutter, and he laid the wrench on the bench before he went down.

I slid the envelope under the little glass window. It held a hundred and twenty dollars in six twenties, because that is what I paid every year. Ten times I had paid it. This was the eleventh and the last.

He slid it back.

“I can’t take this, Mrs. Tolbert.”

“Why not?”

“Space 3 in Lot 14 sold on Tuesday.”

I did not understand him. I stood with my hand flat on the steel counter while the words went past me like a grain truck on the township road.

“Lot 14,” I said. “Space 3. Beside my husband.”

“The system shows that space as available. It showed no contract.” He finally looked at me. He was maybe 38, a soft man in a short-sleeved dress shirt, with a lanyard around his neck and a face that had not slept well. “I’m very sorry. The family paid in full.”

“I have been paying on it for eleven years.”

“Do you have a contract?”

“Chester Pugh wrote it up himself. At the grave, the day we buried Cal.”

“Do you have a copy?”

“No. Chester kept his own records. That’s how he did it.”

He said nothing to that. He looked at the wall clock, and I understood that he was not a cruel man, only a busy one.

I opened my purse and took out the box. It is a Whitman’s Sampler box, the little yellow one, and I have kept it on the shelf over my sewing machine since the first year. I set it on the counter and took off the lid. Inside were ten receipt slips, pink carbon copies, each torn off a booklet, each in Chester Pugh’s square handwriting. Received of Iris Tolbert, $120, on account, Lot 14, Space 3. And a date. And his initials, C.P.

I laid them out in a row on the counter, in order, the way I would lay out a hand of solitaire.

He picked up the last one and held it by the corner.

“These are handwritten,” he said. “They aren’t on association forms. I’m sorry, but they don’t count as a record. The association doesn’t recognize them.”

“Chester Pugh ran this office for 37 years.”

“Mr. Pugh retired in March.”

“Who bought it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“A person bought the ground next to my husband. I’d like to know their name.”