Tag: Tiny Tale

Teddy got tired of throwing stones at a tree and called out: “Ya wanna go get some flags?” Without answering, I started through the woods towards the cemetery. It was the Saturday after Memorial Day. Janet said it was going to rain cats and dogs on Sunday. Sisters always say things like that. Teddy and I would have just said it was going to rain a lot. However you said it, the flags were going to get all wet and would probably get thrown out. So why not let us kids have some? After all, people take down Halloween and Christmas decorations, so what’s the difference? That’s the way we saw it, but the caretaker didn’t. The year before, he had ambushed us in his pickup. “What are you boys doing with those flags?”

“We thought it’d be OK to take them now,” I said.

“Yeah, well, it’s not. Put them in the truck.”

Teddy held up a blue flag with a cool insignia, a real prize. “Can I keep this one?”

“Put it in the truck!”

Our Lady of Mercy was a big woman, a little over 60 acres. Freight trains ran just beyond her left side. Grandmom said the trains carried the souls of the dead away. Sometimes in bed at night, I could hear the trains rumbling over the tracks and wondered where all those souls were going. Maybe one way was to heaven and the other way was to hell.

The gate at the south end was locked, but a section of chain-link fence torn away from a post was just wide enough for our skinny bodies to squeeze through. Red, white and blue waved all over the land of free flags. Teddy and I began running all over the place, snatching up stars-and-stripes and being careful not to step on any graves. No kid needs that kind of bad luck. Neither of us found one of those blue flags with the cool insignia, and, boy, did we ever look. Teddy still simmered a little over the one he lost.

The south end was also where the little kids were buried. Tall trees, growing just outside the fence, shaded small plots on either side of the gate. It was the creepiest part of the cemetery, so we never left without giving it a good going-over. Since the only legitimate way into the cemetery was the north gate, the kids lay at the far end of anyone else’s sympathy. But in our own way, in the way we marveled at their brief life and sudden death, we, at least, mourned them.

One shiny granite slab jumped out.

Gabriela “Gabby” Minelski

Born: February 2, 1960

Died: April 25, 1962 

“Hey Teddy, check this out. This little girl just died.”

Except for the new kid’s, the stones looked neglected and sad. It didn’t look like anyone ever visited. No flowers, no flags. But a kid wouldn’t want flowers. Better to leave a toy. But there weren’t any toys either. Someone would probably swipe them. Probably one of us.

Out of nowhere, a picture of Gabby down there in the dark popped into my head, her hair mussed and knotted, and her eyes full of ants. I have a good imagination . . . too good, and sometimes the pictures in my head give me the jeebies.

“Our Angel” was all one stone said, and this:

Born: November 9, 1952

Died: November 12, 1952

“Jeez,” I said, “this kid only lived three days.”

A layer of fuzzy moss that Teddy said looked like green hair covered the top of “Our Angel’s” gravestone, and smack-dab in the middle was a black acorn. That one threw us for a loop. It couldn’t have fallen from a tree without bouncing off and onto the ground. Maybe a squirrel stashed it there for later and forgot about it. He might have spent half the winter wondering, “Now, where did I leave that acorn?”

I told you I have a good imagination. “Someday that imagination of yours is gonna get you in trouble,” my mother told me, but so far, so good.

Another grave had two names, a boy and a girl, born one day, dead two weeks later. Teddy wondered if they were in the same coffin, or if one was on top of the other. “It would be better if they were in the same coffin,” I said. “Their mom and dad could save some money that way.”

“It’d be better if they were in the same coffin, anyway,” Teddy said. “Then they could play together in heaven.”

It was OK for Teddy to say that, being only 7 years old and all. Of course, if they weren’t baptized, the dead kids couldn’t get into heaven. Limbo was the best they could do. I didn’t like to think about that. It didn’t seem fair. It wasn’t their fault, after all. But, even though limbo wasn’t as good as heaven, it was a heck of a sight better than purgatory or hell.

One small grave lay at the far end, separate from the rest. Henry Liddle — 4 years old. Maybe Henry was one of those quiet kids who preferred his own company. A crouching angel with sad eyes and a chipped nose prayed over Henry. The stone was a little cockeyed, as if the angel’s grief had become too big a burden and knocked the whole thing out of kilter. The granite on Henry’s marker was stained with green moss, too.

“Well, I got my flags,” I said, turning my back on little Henry. “I’m getting outta here.” It was when I reached the hole in the fence that I saw Teddy crouching behind the angel with the chipped nose. “C’mon,” I yelled back, “I don’t want that guy to catch us again.”

On the way home, I asked Teddy how many flags he had.

“Five.”

“I thought you got six, like me?”

“Nah,” he said, “I only took five.”