The Incremental Graveyard

On their way to the incremental graveyard, Carl noticed Malcolm now had to duck his head to pass under the lowest branch of the crabapple tree. Vulture-like, the boy tried to hide it by slouching.

“My, my, you’re growing,” Carl said. “Stand up straight, people will notice more.”

“Don’t want them to,” Malcolm said. Simultaneously, his sister Evie said, “He doesn’t want them to.” She was two years older than her brother. For her, posture was not an issue. Erect and lovely she was and—already!—off to college: Where had the years gone? Not so long ago, just a little thing grinning she had been, her pointed tongue darting between baby teeth, calling him papa.

“Besides, he’s pulling the wagon,” she said. She mimed stooping over.

True. Though not a heavy burden. In the little red wagon, the same one they had always used for this now and again ritual, the whitewashed stone chosen to mark the newest grave banged and clattered against its companion, the folding Army shovel, as Malcolm pulled it along the uneven ground of their back yard. The stone was marked Jokes.

In his best London tube accent, harkening back to a recent family vacation, Carl said, pointing to a pile of deer droppings: “Mind the crap.” Malcolm danced, narrowly avoiding it. Evie helped Carl navigate his peg leg past it.

“Thanks,” Carl said. Louisa would fuss about a muddy peg marking up the floor. No use adding excrement to the situation.

Without further conversation, they reached the graveyard at the far edge of the lawn. It was shaded by elms and tulip trees girded with a wall of mile-a-minute vines. To the left, a small brook formed a border between the edge of their yard and the neighbor’s, overgrown with a hedge of rose of Sharon and other low, untended shrubs. The graveyard itself was just a row of six white-washed stones of irregular shape, each labeled in child’s writing in indelible marker, though on some the writing had faded.

“Should we start a new row?” Malcolm said. “Over here next to Stories at Bedtime, it gets really wet.”

Carl lifted a pedantic finger. “That’s a vernal pool area, you know,” he said, in a joking manner, knowing they did not care.

And as usual, the children peered at him.

“Nature Show Host next, maybe?” Carl said.

“Not Nature Show Host,’” Malcolm said. “Boring.”

“He’s right, Dad,” Evie said. “Boring. Telling us useless things no one cares about knowing, just to show that you know them.”

“Like the call of the barred owl?” Carl said. He had mentioned hearing an owl many an early morning before the rest of the household awoke, to their utter lack of interest.

“Yes.”

“Or pointing out intrusions of quartz in stone faces along the highway.”

“Yes.”

“Which could indicate the presence of pegmatites, you know.” You’d think kids would be interested in crystals. But no.

“I’m putting it here,” Malcolm said. He positioned the stone a few feet in front of the left-most marker, marked Tickling. The label of the new stone, lettering by Evie, was bold and prominent, an indication of its author’s growing maturity.

“You know,” she said to her brother, “this one might include the nature show comments, come to think of it, since he does it these days just to get a rise out of us.”

“True.”

They peered at Carl. He’d give them no confirmation. He felt queasy and shifted position.

“Can I crack just a few, before?” he asked. “Like a last meal? Warden, I request my mother’s French fries, a raspberry cheese Danish, and a two-week gig at Caroline’s in Manhattan.”

They did not laugh. It had been a long time since they’d laughed at his jokes. At first, it had hurt him, but then he had become hardened to it and continued making the sort of remarks that he knew were funny in a way, but not funny to them. He would chuckle, they would groan. Was that meanness on his part?

Evie opened the little folding shovel. Malcolm spotted Carl while she dug. Soon Evie stopped digging, apparently considering her labor done, and stood aside. Carl leaned over the new grave, a rough square maybe a foot deep and a foot and a half wide.

“A hole fit more for a guppy than an old man’s entire sense of humor,” he said.

It was like all the others. The children had grown and bit by bit their father had been diminished, but the holes had remained the same, as if all discards were alike. Rueful, Carl once again reminded himself of something wise someone had once written somewhere, that a father’s job was to disappear.

“I mean,” Carl said, “it’s not much of a chasm in which to inter a repertoire as vast as mine.”

Ouch. He itched for eloquence but could achieve only chagrin. He wondered if good zingers would come to him in the night, and if, newly unhumored, he would recognize them.

“Can’t you make it a bit larger, Evie?” he said.

“He’s stalling,” Malcolm said.

“I know it,” Evie said. But she dug a bit more.

“We shouldn’t encourage that,” Malcolm said. “Shouldn’t give him ideas about the other things, later, that’ll have to go. You know . . .”

“What’s inevitable is eventually over with,” Evie said. “And then it’s just something in the past. You don’t think about it, how long it took to get there.”

“Don’t you?” Carl said. “Did we bury nostalgia already?”

Evie stopped digging again. “That’ll have to do, Dad,” she said. “I’ve got a yoga class.”

The hole was only slightly deeper and wider than before, and at its bottom was crisscrossed with the tough roots of the nearby shrubs. He did not like it. But then he never did.

“What if the worms laugh?” he said. “The thrips and rove beetles? Will you consider it a failure?”

“Dad, it’s time,” Malcolm said.

“Because maybe I’ve been playing to the wrong audience . . .?”

They helped him to his knees. Not so easy an operation as it used to be since he’d lost his foot, which was the only corporeal piece of him buried yet in the incremental graveyard. After the accident, Carl had talked the hospital into letting him take the severed limb home, signing multiple waivers and promising to keep it in the formaldehyde jar forever, which had all been a ruse. Immediately upon getting it home, they’d wrapped it in plastic and entombed it in a fishing tackle box, and then wrapped that, too, in layers of duct tape and more plastic, and buried it here next to Stories at Bedtime.

Carl was curious what state his ex-extremity was in now, seven years later. And for the first year or two after burying it had eagerly anticipated the excitement and morbid curiosity of his children, particularly Malcolm. He had expected the boy to want to dig it up and see how it had changed. It wasn’t every day, in every family, that a bit of a parent’s body was buried in the backyard. But the children were not curious at all; never once had they asked about it. And the wrappings had been successful, it seemed, inasmuch as no raccoon or skunk or cat or dog had ever excavated it and exposed the neighborhood to scandal. That had been something he had watched for, ready with his signed papers from the hospital in case the police became involved. But the children? No interest. Nary a mention, at least not to him. Carl supposed it might have to do with it being part of Dad; if it had been some other creature’s relic, perhaps they might have been more interested in its decay, its changing states along the way to bonehood. But in this case, it seemed, Evie was utterly and completely right—Dad’s foot was in the past, forgotten, not cared about, no longer of any importance at all. Because it was, well, just Dad.

“Dad?” Evie said, almost gently.

Carl took a breath and leaned forward. This was the unpleasant part. It took some doing. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep one or two of the retches from being audible. Evie had to look away, and Carl thought he detected a frisson of wary interest from his son standing a little behind him, as if the boy were afraid it might splash on his boots. But the interest, if it had been there at all, passed. Carl retched, and retched again, and at last disgorged his sense of humor into the fresh, damp hole.

After a few moments, Evie, shovel ready, asked, “You done?”

“Yup,” Carl said.

Malcolm helped him up. Evie shoveled the earth back into the hole, and Malcolm tamped it down by trodding on it. Evie folded the shovel and put it back in the wagon. She tugged the collar of Carl’s golf shirt. “There,” she said. With a tissue, she wiped a few traces away from the corner of his mouth.

Carl felt like himself. He knew he had been different a few moments before, but now he was yet Carl, still, and would go on, for a little while longer at least, being Carl, albeit shorn of jokes. From now on, there would be that much less to say. He looked into the anticipatory faces of his two children.

“Mom’s got dinner waiting,” Evie said, taking his arm. They made their way back to the house.

“Mind the crap,” Malcolm said, testing.

Not smiling, Carl said, “Oh, thank you.”