Chapter 4: All Souls

I left the truck on a farm road a mile from the Lodge and walked in through the pecan bottoms with the light going.

By dark the cemetery behind the hall was lit from end to end.

Every family in Moravia brings a candle to All Souls, in a red glass jar.

They set it on the grave of anyone they have lost.

I had carried a jar to my mother's every year since I was nine.

From the cedars at the back fence I could see hundreds of small flames.

I lay on my stomach in the dead leaves and looked for my own name.

It was near the front, under the big live oak, in the Lodge's section.

The Lodge had put up the wooden marker it uses until the stone is cut.

It was a pecan board with a brass plate screwed to it.

I could read the plate from sixty yards through my grandfather's field glasses.

ZORA POSPISIL VRANA.

WIFE.

DAUGHTER OF THE LODGE.

Somebody had set a ring of red jars around it.

I did not cry.

The wind was coming from the graves toward me.

I smelled wax and cold dirt and a hundred families' worth of kolaches.

That was luck.

Any wolf in the hall could have had my scent in a breath if it had turned the other way.

The Lodge stayed until the church bell rang eight.

I watched them go down the hill in twos and threes, with babies on their shoulders, wiping their eyes.

Babi went with her arm through a neighbor's.

She did not look toward the cedars.

Frank came last, walking Anton up the hill from the hall with a hand on his back.

Rudy followed with a folding stool and a green thermos.

Frank set Anton down at the marker, patted his shoulder twice and said, loud enough for anyone, "Take your time, son."

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