After 40 years, the Whispering Oaks Cemetery still looked the same, despite the few additions. The caretaker was always kept busy, pulling weeds, nursing flowers, trimming the grass, pruning bushes, raking, and dusting off each and every headstone, so it looked more like a garden than a graveyard.
It was late April, and the daisies were in full bloom, adding life among the dead.
Morris Parrot, so old he could now no longer remember his age, stood at the cemetery gate with one hand brushing the iron bars. In the other, he held a single sunflower. He visited every day. But this morning, he had an instinct to arrive hours before the usual visiting time.
The caretaker met Morris at the gate, holding a bulging garbage bag full of wilted bouquets and battered objects left at the headstones.
“Morning,” said the caretaker, Dan. He was middle-aged and usually a bright, friendly man. “You’re earlier than you’ve been in 40 years. What’s the occasion?”
Morris ran his hand against the bars that had never before withheld him.
“You’ve been a good man these past few years, Dan, and I have a feeling this will be my last visit..”
“Your last? What do you mean?” Dan asked blankly.
Once Morris was let through the gate, he put a feeble arm on Dan’s shoulder and steered him to the headstone that Morris visited daily.
Wilma Faux Parrot
1921– 1951
Dan knew this headstone well. Every week he threw away seven wilted flowers, all different, that had been left there.
Dan shifted his feet. “I don’t understand, Mr. Parrot, why this is your last visit? Was Wilma your wife?”
“Is my wife,” Morris corrected. “although you’re right to not understand my ways. Sometimes my instincts turn out to be correct.” Morris knelt down, not without help, and lay the sunflower on the ground. The first rays of sun in the east were peeking out over the mountains, illuminating the leaves in the trees.
Dan nodded and wondered if he should leave Morris in peace, but the old man was still taking advantage of his company.
“Would you like to know why I come here every day, Daniel?”
Dan eagerly agreed, threw down his garbage bag, and sat next to Morris.
Morris began, “When I was 28, during the war, I was seriously injured on our bomber ship.” He traced long scars on his neck and on his arms for Dan’s benefit. “I spent weeks in the hospital recovering, and it was there that I first met my Wilma.”
“So, she was injured–” Dan interrupted. Morris shook his head. “No, no. Wilma was 22. She was a nurse, of course. Quite a beauty, too. I declare! Nearly every soldier under her care fell in love with her!” he chuckled. “And I did too, of course. After the war ended, I sought her out and we courted for years.”
“Years?” Dan asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Three years. She was 25 when we married, I remember. She was the most beautiful bride... I can still see her auburn hair in her permanent and her rosy cheeks. She had blue eyes, too.”
Dan agreed. “I’m sure she was very beautiful.” He waited for Morris to continue, but there was a moment’s silence before he did.
“Yes...very beautiful. And very kind. She died 5 years later. We had only been married for a few short years, happy as they were.”
Dan ducked his head and mumbled an apology. Morris waved it away. “Yes, I too am sorry. She was pregnant with our first child and died after giving birth.”
Several silent, painful moments passed, and then Dan asked, “But Mr. Parrot, you never mentioned why you visit her every day.”
Morris looked up in surprise, but then remembered. “Oh, yes. On the night she died, I was trying to nurse my Wilma back to health. She was very weak, pale, and sick with the fever. She had lost a lot of blood from the birthing. She began to drift off, and, afraid I was losing her, I tried to revive her. She began mumbling loads of nonsense...but her last words to me were, ‘Don’t leave me, Morris.’”
“Was that nonsense?” said Dan, “She was the one leaving you, after all.”
Morris shrugged. “Whether nonsense or not, I promised I would never leave her. And until I die, I will never break that promise. I haven’t missed a single day here in forty years.” And then Morris lay down next to his wife’s headstone and stroked it.
Touched, Dan left Morris and his wife in peace.
An hour later, after he had finished his cleaning duties, he noticed that Morris was still lying on the grass. Approaching him, Dan realized that Morris was right–it was indeed his last visit. With tears in his eyes, Dan called the Funeral Home.
Still laying at his wife’s grave, Morris Parrot had kept his promise until his last breath.
The small man stepped into the building, feeling the gentle, cool air drying his sweat from the heat of the day. His skin was pale, and his ashen hair was balding. He wore an everyday office suit; Washington Black, with a plain burgundy tie and a clean white shirt. He had evidently primped himself up for the occasion he had arrived for.
The man, Randall, had his face wiped of expression. His movements implied peace and impassiveness. Randall looked around the organized room until his eyes fell on the mortician bent over his desk, scribbling casually. The mortician was hefty, with rosy cheeks and pudgy hands, but his eyes had grown accustomed to looking on in sympathy – which was the exact affection he showed when he looked up. He smiled understandingly and motioned for Randall to sit in the folding chair facing him.
“Who is the deceased?” he asked, rifling through a paper or two. Randall shrugged. “My wife,”
The mortician paused, turning the pen over in his hands. “What’s her name?” he urged.
Randall shifted in his seat. “Odette… Macintosh,” As the mortician wrote these things down, Randall mumbled to himself, “…she is so beautiful. Everyone loved her. She is so young and beautiful.”
The mortician nodded. “I’m sure,” he said. Randall sat up straighter.
“She needs to have the best.” He started, “She deserves the best of everything you have. The cost doesn’t matter.”
The mortician nodded amiably. “Of course,” The mortician began questioning on important material.
Randall lowered his voice. “…She’s so young. She’s so beautiful. She deserves the best of everything you have.”
The mortician stood up and shook Randall’s hand, assuring him of the best funeral arrangements they could provide. “We’ll be by within the hour.”
The mortician walked Randall to the door. Randall was still expressionless, and ignored the blast of heat he felt as he pushed open the door. As he made his way to his sleek red Chevrolet Corvette, the paunchy mortician inquired from behind, “When did your wife die?”
Randall seemed to evade the question, but really he fell into a reflective silence. Only after opening the door to his car and putting one foot inside did he answer.
“Tomorrow,”
The sun was high overhead, baking the dry earth with an abundance of calidity. My bonnet was soaked with perspiration, and my stay and petticoat were also drenched.
I wondered when my next bath would be. Mother said I could upgrade my bathing days, but I asked myself if that meant I would only get three per month.
I shook my head and continued on with my work with stiff, sensitive limbs. My knuckles were dry and cracked; dried blood coating my blisters. I still had not developed those calluses that Mother promised.
Weed after weed I pulled, digging into the hot, rocky soil with my uneven fingernails. I daydreamed of jumping into the well of cool, clean water. I ached for rain or snowflakes to replace this preposterous heat. But I knew that I had to clean up the abandoned garden before Mother and I would officially move into this coffee house. She was in ‘aberration’ over this garden. So I wiped away the sweat trickling into eyes and kept digging.
It was early evening before I finally finished. I collapsed on the ground, rather melodramatically, and nursed my aching fingers. All seventeen woven baskets were stuffed with perennial, aggravating weeds.
My stomach clenched painfully. I had eaten a small breakfast of leathery green beans and one overripe potato. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining a table loaded with roast duck, gravy, curried eggs, apricot stew, pheasant with mushrooms, sweet corn, and warm apple cider. For a moment I hoped it was beginning November, but I reminded myself that I was stuck in pestering mid-July. No Thanksgiving for several more months.
A sigh escaped me right as Mother came out onto the back porch and spotted me sprawled on the dirt and debris. “Luscinda!” she scolded in a brusque voice. I scrambled to my feet and gathered up all my baskets. Mother examined my hands as well as the back of my dress, then pursed her lips. She gathered up my baskets into her arms and went back inside, leaving me standing there, grimy and exhausted.
I went to the well and hauled a bucketful of drinking water. It was tepid rather than cold, but I didn’t mind. I gulped some down with a ladle then dumped the rest over my head. Dripping, I went back to my spot on the dirt to allow myself to dry in the sun. My apron, undergarments, gown, and stay were filthy, anyways. Maybe Mother would do the washing sometime tomorrow. Meanwhile I could borrow some extra clothing from her.
I stared out over our new, weed-free land. Only the soil and rocks remained. Except—
I squinted. A stick, perhaps as long as my arm and as wide, was poking out at an unrefined angle. I groaned and crawled over to it. It was carved and polished like a Mayan staff, with minuscule pictures and foreign inscriptions. I tried to remember if I had ever noticed it, but my memory was blank. How had I not noticed it while I was working?
I grasped the end of the staff and pulled with all my remaining strength. I could sense the earth loosening up around it. I yanked it again and again, twisting it and pushing it forward until, finally, it was freed and shot into the air. I caught it, awkwardly, and analyzed it. The bottom surface had a rusted latch. I bit my lip and dug my fingernail into the cracks, trying to open it. It didn’t take long for the lid to come off in my hands. The staff must have been hollow.
I shook the staff, holding my hand under it. A skinny, tinted vial settled in my palm. I threw the hollow staff aside and twisted off the lid as easily as if it had just been oiled. I tipped the vial and watched the drops of blood fall onto my fingers. Blood?
I swallowed painfully and put the lid back on. What was this? I turned the vial over in my hands and caught the scrawled note pasted at the bottom. Cure - 2012
