Six feet deep, that name sings in the cold earth.
Dylan Thomas
Rory bent down to pick up the last flowers and put them in her basket. Those damn kids, again, and she didn't understand why they did what they did. Suppose at first, she'd tried to understand them, she remembers wondering why and how and trying to stop them. But now, she barely blinks when they come out of nowhere and knock her flowers out of her hand.
She's not a scaredy sort of woman, but she must admit the last time scared her. She tried to speak up,like she always did. She even caught one of the boys, the scrawny one they called Jack, by the arm. He looked down at the old woman with uncertain eyes, as if she might ground him, and yet he might ground her also. Suppose both of these were true...in a way.
But then one of the others, one of the beefier ones had knocked her down on the ground. He'd shoved her hard, leaving a bruise on her frail back. Of course, she cannot see the bruise, but she feels it there. Every time she bends down to put a flower down beside a gravestone, she feels it. She knows what it is and she knows why they do it.
Maybe, in her heart of hearts, she knows why they do it. She sees in their eyes something that she also had in hers. Once, long ago. An evil, a desire to hurt and rebel and go against her elders. She wishes she could tell these kids it's not her they need to go up against. She knows what she is. She's just an old woman leaving flowers for the graves. She has done nothing to them and yet, they do so much to her. But then, they really don't stand much chance against the real ones, the ones they should be fighting.
So, they batter her and they harass her and they knock her basket of flowers out of her frail hands.
They have no respect for the dead, she feels, and that is dangerous. Because you never know when the dead come up and find you.
Except perhaps for the skinny one. Jack. That one seemed like a decent boy, although fat lot of good did it do him. He seemed to have fallen in with the wrong crowd and Rory truly hoped he'd fall back out.
But it was up to him. It was all up to him, to them. She saw him turn back to look at her as she bent down to pick the flowers from the ground. Perhaps they wished to send her away, to force her to stop coming, but she couldn't do that, for these here were to be her bedfellows and she did not want to make ill friends of the dead.
After a while, the boys no longer see the old woman. The one with the flowers. And they rejoice, thinking they've won some sort of small victory, that perhaps they've finally stopped her from coming. All except for Jack.
He knows better than that and he wishes he knew the woman's name, to maybe put a flower on her gravestone. He wonders the graveyard, looking – in vain – at the stones.
So, he leaves flowers on them all and on each one, he asks for forgiveness.
