Reborn

3

"Look! You see it? It's dead! All of it! Like it's been dead for weeks!"

The afternoon sun was warm on Bill's back as he stared down at Jim's grave. He removed the windbreaker he had thrown over his short-sleeved tunic and collar; he shut out Carol's agitated voice for a moment as he tried to think. She had called him in a state of panic this morning about Jim's grave. He hadn't been able to get a really clear story out of her but had soothed her with the promise that he would come out to Monroe as soon as he could get away from St. F.'s.

The rectangle of grass over Jim's grave was all a dull, dead brown.

Bill resisted an urge to say So what? and tried to tune in to Carol's emotions as she huddled behind him, shielding herself from the grave, as if afraid it would bite her.

"Why is it dead, Bill?" she was saying. "Just give me a good, sane reason why it's dead here on this grave and nowhere else and I promise you I'll never bother you again."

"Maybe they didn't put the sod back right and it dried out," he said.

"Dried out? It poured all day yesterday!"

"Well then, maybe they didn't cut it thick enough and killed the roots. There's a special art to cutting sod properly, you know."

"Okay, fine. But do you really think that they cut it all wrong over Jim's grave and all right on that one over there? They were both buried the same day!"

"Maybe—"

"Christ, Bill! Even if they cut the grass and sprinkled the clippings over his grave, it would still be green now!"

Bill stared at the dead brown blades curling up from the dirt and had to admit Carol was right. This grass was dead! It was as if the life had been sucked right out of it. But how? And why? Why just here in this neat rectangle? Unless someone had poured an herbicide on it. But that didn't make sense. Who would want to do something like that?

And the most disturbing part of the dead patch was the way it didn't quite reach the edges of the replaced sod. The dead grass was confined to a neat, narrow rectangle exactly the size of Jim's coffin lying six feet below. Carol hadn't mentioned it. Maybe she hadn't noticed. Bill wasn't about to point it out to her.

He turned and looked at her, saw her tortured, frightened eyes, and wanted desperately to help her. But how?

"Carol, what do you want me to say?"

Her control began to crack. Her face screwed up and tears began to slide down her cheeks.

"I want you to tell me that he wasn't possessed by the devil and that there's a good reason for the grass over his grave to be dead!" She leaned against him and began to sob. "That's all I want! That's not so much, is it?"

Hesitantly Bill put his arms around her and gently patted her back. It seemed such a wholly inadequate gesture, but it was the best he could do, the most he dared do.

For contact with Carol was sending intensely pleasurable but unwanted sensations racing up and down his body. All those hidden feelings and desires that plagued him in his bed at night were awakening here in the day and beginning to move. He hugged her a moment longer, then, with difficulty, put a little space between them.

"No, it's not much at all to ask," he said, giving her a stern look. "But I'm surprised you have to ask it."

"I know, I know," she said, and lowered her eyes. "But after all the things those awful people said on Sunday, and then to come up here and see this, I… I just cracked a little."

"It is weird," he said, glancing back at the dead grass, "but I'm sure there's a good explanation that doesn't have anything to do with the devil."

"Good. Tell me what it is."

"Let's head back to the car," he said.

He kept a protective arm around her shoulder as he guided her back down the hill toward the drive. He couldn't bring himself to break physical contact with her. Not yet, anyway.

He finally let go when he opened the door for her on the passenger side.

"What do you think?" she said as he started the car.

She was so hungry for an explanation—he wished he had one for her.

"I don't know. I'm not a horticulturist. But surely you of all people know that Jim wasn't possessed by the devil or any of that nonsense. We know he was an atheist, but the idea of Satan was as unacceptable to him as the idea of God."

"But what about the hair on his palms? You heard them out there when they said it. They called it 'the Mark of the Beast.' They said it's a sign that Satan dwells within."

"Jim was a hairy guy. A hairy palm means he was born with hair follicles in an unusual spot, and that's all it means. Nothing more. Probably genetic. If he was really a clone of that Hanley fellow, then I bet Hanley had hairy palms as well."

"Well," Carol said slowly, "Hanley did look pretty hairy in those old photos."

"What'd I tell you? Really, Carol, all that Satan garbage is just that—garbage."

In the ensuing silence he glanced over and saw her shocked expression.

"Bill!" she said. "You're a priest!"

He sighed. "I know I'm a priest. I've spent the last decade studying theology—studying it intensely—and believe me, Carol, no one in the Catholic intellectual community believes in Satan."

She smiled. Sadly.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

" 'Catholic intellectuals,' " she said. "I can hear Jim now."

Bill's throat tightened. "So can I. He'd say, 'That's an oxymoron if I ever heard one.' "

"Oh, God, Bill!" she said, sobbing. "I miss him so!"

"I know you do, Carol," he said, feeling her pain, sharing a part of it. "So keep him alive inside you. Hold on to those memories."