The Lesson

A Grave Is an Empty Field

The next morning early, Loring woke up, ate one piece of toast with the tiniest bit of butter and jam, drank one cup of tea, and set out for the cemetery. She was getting older. She had now, in fact, outlived her husband by five years. It was not clear that she would continue living, or that she would keep her health. Yet to Loring, there was simply the ongoing process of days, the rituals she had made and kept. She loved her husband. He had died. His body was there, in the cemetery, and so she would go there. She would. As much as she might be permitted, she would be close to him. That she was embarked on this idea, regarding the boy, quite literally the way one embarks upon the sea in a coracle, made no difference. She visited her husband in his death in the grass, and sat by the tree day in day out. She had learned the shape of the bark on the near trees. Even the clouds that came and went there, they were familiar to her, and she might have greeted them by name, if she had cared to. Of course, she did no such thing.

Out of the house, she went, taking with her a stick, an old Basque stick. Although Loring did not know it, the end would unscrew to provide a defensive point. Basque shepherds used them for, well, I have never heard a truly good reason why Basque shepherds needed a fancy sword-cane. I suppose it enlivened things, up there in the high pastures. With this accoutrement, Loring set forth.