Chapter 23: The Stone

The attorney general's order came down on Thursday, and the crane came up the hill on Friday.

The iron fence had been opened for it. The grass was already cut to mud by the tires.

Sixty people had stood here in black the first time. Now there were two hundred, and most of them held cameras.

I wore jeans and a green coat, and I stood a yard from the stone with my hands in my pockets.

Pearl was beside me in her church coat, carrying a thermos, with a new bandage on her wrist from the cardiac clinic.

"I brought tea," she said. "Nobody should watch this without tea."

"Thank you."

"I also brought the trowel."

I laughed so hard that a reporter turned around.

Anson stood a step behind us, and I could feel him at my back.

A man from the state in a hard hat read the order into a bullhorn.

"By order of the court, the grave of Wynne Sedgwick is to be opened and its contents examined," he said.

"The marker is to be removed."

The men set the straps, and the engine rumbled.

The casket came up out of the earth slowly, gleaming and black, with mud sliding off its lid.

A hush ran across the hill.

It rose off the straps like a box of cotton, exactly as the old man had said.

He was standing at the front of the crowd in his cap, and he put his hand over his mouth.

The state's examiner stepped up with a pry bar and a camera.

He worked the lid for a minute, and then it lifted.

Inside, on white satin, lay a single folded child's blanket.

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