222
DON ZACHARIA
in
the distance we see some boys playing football in a field. A
single engine plane passes overhead. Some squirrels dart about.
The girls spread their roses up and down the grave and Pete throws
the licorice about, giving Loie the last piece.
"Some grave," I say.
"Which way is her head?" Pete asks.
"Facing up."
"No. I mean, which end is it at?"
"I don't know. I would guess at the high side. Why?"
"Because if it is there, Loie is standing on her head. Loie,
you're standing on Mommy's head."
Loie looks up, startled, and moves to one side.
"Let's go exploring," Pete says to Loie.
We watch them skip down the hill. Loie is ahead and Pete
ducks behind one of those massive tombstones. In a moment, Loie
turns. There are some people watching. "Peter," Loie says,
"I
know
you~re
someplace." He looks back at us and holds a finger to
his lips. Loie starts back up the hill. "Come out, come out, wher–
ever you are... Come out, come out, wherever you are," she sings
out.
Peter leaps from behind the tombstone, arms outstretched,
lips puckered, eyes turned back, and in his lowest, scariest voice,
"I am a vampire looking for blood ..." They both break up into
giggles and hand in hand start down the hill again.
I sit down on the grass and turn my face to the sun, enjoying
its warmth. HI did something rather childish," my twelve-year-old
daughter tells me. "I wrote Mother a letter this morning. I would
like to bury it here--maybe up there where there's some loose
dirt." She points to a spot below the tree above the grave. Squint–
ing, I nod all right.
"Hey," Peter shouts up the hill; he and Loie are studying a
tombstone, "there's someone who's three hundred and twenty
years old."
Susan digs a hole out using her hands. Reaching into her
pants pocket, she pulls out a folded note, places it into the hole,
covers it back with some dirt, smoothes it out and throws some
rocks over it_
On the way back home, Peter tells Loie a story about a little
