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Bethlehem Jog-sweat streaking down her back, under the hot sling of the halter top, she pauses where she never has before, at the black canopy of pine and oak that shields Bethlehem Cemetery, Established 1845, from her century. The morning air heavy as the overnight news, the only sound the tinny critch-critch of a drum set riffing through the earbuds she’s looped across her shoulder. Until she cuts her iPod off, floats free of its slim white tether, the bark she sails in swinging under the black canopy and out, into the narrow channel of this dusty Styx. Tottering slabs, broken slabs of limestone. Of slate. And granite. The uniform ones, the ones at careful intervals, mark families, some as nameless as the prehistoric dead, two names prominent after all those many years. And she thinks, even in the graveyard folks still try to make a name for themselves. Here, bounded in marble, are the Cunninghams, there the Jacksons, 1892 a hard year for the Cunninghams.
Four plain stones mark four children gone, two in that awful year alone. In the Jackson plot, a single marker for a double loss: Twin Daughters Born and Died June 13. From her silent bark, she watches the silent Cunninghams and Jacksons, corseted, frock-coated, black-draped to the ankles. They stand where mother and father sleep their sleep, Gone but not forgotten. At rest with Jesus now, and listen to the hopeful words, to the hollow drumming of tossed earth, as earth meets earth. . . .
She floats back under the canopy, past the dissolving headstones, the anemic Our Lord’s candles, the ice-white destroying angels feasting on the hewn logs that circle Bethlehem like ancient city limit signs. Back into the hot sun and smog, where clocks still tick off the century. She feels her runner’s heart finally wound down to this dull, this miraculous quotidian pace. Feels the descent of the tiny replication of herself that has been waiting for its time since before all worlds.
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