Keep It Clean and Neat

Andrew enjoyed his job at the cemetery. He had hired on as an assistant groundskeeper after high school, working his way up to the head position in five years. His parents still urged him to go to college, but he was perfectly content to live on the meager wages he earned. Even his friends - the few that still talked to him - never missed an opportunity to tell him he was throwing his life away.

"You're smart enough that you could be a lawyer, a doctor, whatever," they would reason. "Why settle for such an awful job?"

Andrew would always just smile and nod, then politely change the subject. He knew it was useless to tell them about the joy he felt working his muscles in the open air, the pride he felt when he looked across the cemetery at the end of the day and saw the acres of grass he had neatly trimmed and the headstones he had placed in perfectly straight rows. They wouldn't understand the peacefulness of the Zen-like blankness his mind subsided into as he raked leaves into pile after pile and trimmed the encroaching turf back from headstone after headstone. And they most assuredly wouldn't comprehend the sense of accomplishment Andrew felt as he tamped down the last layer of dirt over a fresh grave.

Most people thought he was ghoulish, that he enjoyed being around dead people and that he was all kinds of depraved and maybe even a necrophiliac. Andrew was none of these things. In fact, he didn't even think of the people he buried as people. It wasn't hard to do; he buried caskets without ever seeing the person inside, and even when they put the new crematorium next to the groundskeeper shop and trained him to operate it, the bodies he received were packaged in long cardboard boxes so you never saw them either. You threw the box in the furnace, then came back a few hours later and scooped out the ashes.

One day in August, he met James Englesworth. James was accompanied by the salesman from the funeral home, who had brought him up to pick out a plot for his recently deceased wife. They had already found a suitable plot, but James had apparently insisted on meeting the groundskeeper. Andrew rose to shake his hand as they entered the cramped little office in the shop.

James was a large man with a ruddy complexion and black hair. Andrew thought he looked as though he would be a jovial, pleasant man given other circumstances. Today he walked and talked in a despondent way, slightly hunched over as if something in his chest had been deflated.

After being introduced by the salesman, Andrew asked James what he could do for him, if anything.

James' gaze rose from the ground for the first time since entering the office and looked directly into Andrew's. Andrew felt a cold ball form in the pit of his stomach; despite their warm brown color, James' eyes were the coldest, most disconcerting thing he had ever seen.

"I want to talk to you about Maggie's grave," James finally said, his tone flat and hollow.

"Yes sir?"

"Keep it clean and neat. She never could stand a messy house. She..." His voice broke off, wetness brimmed in his empty eyes.

Andrew promised him he'd make sure the grass was always green and trimmed. Shaking his head in acknowledgment, James left without saying another word.

That Thursday, they held the service for his wife at the gravest. Andrew directed the cars as they parked, then left to work on the opposite side of the cemetery. James stayed at the site long after the service was over, one hand on the casket. As Andrew watched, James kissed the dark stained wood and turned to look at him. He hld his gaze for a long time, then left in a black Lexus.

Once the chairs and pavilion tent had been taken down, Andrew began lowering the casket into the waiting concrete vault. Before the casket made it halfway down the black Lexus returned. Andrew stopped the lowering mechanism as he turned to watch James exit the car. With wooden steps the man approached.

"I just...I forgot..." James broke off, a quiet sob escaping with a quick heave of air. One hand reached out to Andrew, an opal brooch resting in its palm. "It was her mother's, she would've...I mean, could you...."

Andrew understood, but didn't want to. Fitting a handle onto the metal frame, he began to winch the casket back to ground level. Turning away from the risen box, he waited for James to approach it. Instead, the other man held the brooch out to him, eyes silently begging him to take it. Andrew took a half step back before remembering the pit under the coffin behind him. Fingers numb, he somehow managed to grasp the brooch and turn around.

Mrs. Englesworth's casket was a stately, solemn affair with silver trim and handles. Andrew gently touched the lid with his left hand, as if he feared an electric shock. Embarrassed, he shook his head. What was he afraid of? Hadn't he handled hundreds of caskets already? There wasn't anything to this, he just had to push up on the lid and-she lay inside the casket, hands clasped at her waist. The clothes she wore were impeccably clean and straight, he auburn hair brushed evenly to her shoulders, streaked with premature gray. Her skin looked strange, lifelike but hollow somehow, drained. Still, she appeared perfectly capable of sitting up on her own, whether to just smile and take the brooch or lean and bite into his flesh Andrew was unsure. It was a long time before he could force his hand toward her, resting the jewelry on her chest. Closing the lid, he turned to James. Without looking at Andrew or the casket, James shuffled back to his car.

After the dirt had been tamped down and the turf had been replaced, Andrew returned to his work. For some reason, though, his hands shook as the trimmed grass away from headstones, making the edges uneven and taking a couple small nicks out of the stones. He decided to take a break, but it didn't help; his hands still shook. As he tried to calm down, the cemetery seemed hostile to him, the graves and grass stifling. Finally, Andrew gave up for the day and went home, thinking he had come down with some illness. Without appetite, he went straight to bed that night without eating supper, falling into a fitful, dreamless sleep.

Driving to work the next day, Andrew rolled down the window, taking in great breaths of fresh air. Somewhat refreshed, he parked next to the shop and stepped out of his truck. After clocking in, he walked out into the cemetery to inspect the new grass of Mrs. Englesworth's grave. Kneeling, he ran his hand over the turf, feeling somewhere underneath the dead woman was beginning to discolor, the brooch waiting to sink down into her melting flesh. Jerking his hand away, Andrew stood quickly and scanned the cemetery, staring out over the people moldering under his trimmed grass and polished headstones.

          MATTHEW HEUETT