The Reason by William Sirls
His cell phone rang, and he took it out of his pocket. It was Kaitlyn. She hadn’t called him in over three months, and as surprised as he was—as much as he really needed to talk to her—he knew he couldn’t. Nothing could interrupt him now. He had to find the grave.
The phone quit ringing, and he put his hands back in his pockets while quickening his pace down another row, and then yet another, aggressively scanning names on what had to have been over a hundred headstones.
He couldn’t remember where it was. Maybe he’d purposefully forgotten it, part of his effort to banish the memories of that torturous winter . . .
Zach’s eyes swept over the balance of the cemetery and he felt completely lost. An overwhelming sea of headstones, dead grass, and patches of dirt sprawled in all directions.
“Needle in a haystack,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Gingerly, he sat down on the cleanest half of what looked like one of the cemetery’s original cement benches. Part of the seat’s back had crumbled to the ground, and the rest of the bench was nothing more than a nasty collection of bird droppings and stress cracks.
He could hear someone talking.
To his left, halfway up a shaggy hillside, an elderly man with flowing white hair was on one knee, removing dead flowers from a pot at the head of a tombstone. The grave appeared to be one of only a few receiving any form of regular maintenance. Probably because he’s doing it himself.
Zach thought the old man seemed familiar as he watched him gently tilt the flowerpot upside down, remove a handkerchief from his breast pocket, and wipe the outside of the pot clean. The man then opened a cardboard floral box and carefully arranged an assortment of flowers in the pot before neatly centering it back at the head of the tombstone.
He scanned the grounds again and noticed that they were the only two people in the entire cemetery. He looked back at the man, who now appeared to be talking to the grave. I wonder if anyone is listening, he thought.
Zach glanced again at his watch, conceding defeat, and decided to head back to the car. There were simply too many graves. He brushed off the seat of his pants and turned to walk back to his car when it caught his eye—a cross.
About five hundred feet away, the top portion of a metal cross jutted up over the edge of one of the cemetery’s many small and unkempt hills. Zach quickly stood on top of the bench, causing a softball-sized chunk of its edge to collapse, but it didn’t matter. He had to get a better look at the cross. He shaded his eyes as the early afternoon sun glistened off it.
He wanted to touch it, be near it, just like the one at St. Thomas. Not later, but right away.
Zach jumped off the bench and walked quickly, trampling directly across the tops of several graves as his eyes never left the cross. Hurry, he thought. Get there.
He picked up his pace, becoming increasingly filled with a new sense of energy and purpose as to why he had come to the cemetery. There was no doubt the answer was ahead.
The more he focused on the cross, the more he was drawn to it. The more he was drawn to it, the faster he went—faster and faster, closer and closer—until in the end, he was running.
His coat was restricting his arms, and he unbuttoned it as he ran. He freed his right arm and lowered his head like a halfback, picking up more speed as his coat waved off his back and left arm like a thick cape. The cross was getting closer.
Zach dropped his coat behind him, free, faster now.
The reason—the purpose he was there—was getting closer. He cut across into the next row of headstones, hoping to shorten the distance, when his left foot banked awkwardly off the edge of a partially buried flowerpot. A horrific bolt of pain shot up his leg, throwing him flat on his chest, directly on top of a grave. He bit his tongue, and the wind was knocked out of him.
You have to be kidding me, he thought, turning over, searching for air that his lungs couldn’t take in. He tried again for a shot of air, and he managed a small breath, followed by a deeper one. Slowly, he sat up, doing a mental body check. Nothing broken. Just bruised.
Way to go, Norman—you’ve totally lost it. This is insane. Running? Why?
He thought about the word insane and how frighteningly well it described his thoughts and feelings over the last couple of days. Very little of it made sense to him. He shivered, glanced back to see where his coat landed, and saw it spread out across the top of a grave several rows down. He looked over his shoulder at the cross, still strangely distant. What religious taboo had he committed by running across the tops of all those graves?
He leaned back again on his elbow, took another deep breath, and caught the name on the tombstone only a foot or so from his face.
“Pardon the intrusion, Andrew Hood,” he said.
He brushed his hair back from his eyes with the heel of his hand. “And hello there, Robert and Karen Thomas,” he added, reading the two names that shared a single headstone directly across from him. He wondered what happened to them. They’d died the same day.
“Needle in a haystack,” he said again, looking around at all the headstones. “I’m sorry, Amy. Please forgive me for not being able to find you.”
Somewhere within these grounds was the body of his dead sister. Not that she likely looked the way he remembered. After all of these years, he imagined she was nothing more than bones and dust inside the pink dress she was buried in.
The funeral.
He could still see the emotionless expression on his father’s face as Drake Norman looked at his dead daughter, too young to be wearing makeup. Her curly brown hair splayed out across a small satin pillow.
And then there was the stare.
He remembered his father’s arms crossed and the peculiar tilt of his head. That stare stayed fixed on Zach long after Amy’s casket was closed for the last time. And it said many terrible things that words could never convey. You failed. She was your responsibility, Zachary. How could you let it happen?
He’d never forget it.
Zach swallowed hard and rose, brushing off the grass. He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes.
“I am so sorry, Dad,” he said. “I am so sorry, Amy. Please, please forgive me.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Zach.”
He instantly recognized the voice. He slowly opened his eyes, and the carpenter was standing four graves down, the tip of the cross glimmering directly behind him in the distance.
Zach nodded. “I knew it. I knew you would be here.”
Kenneth stepped closer, walking slowly yet purposefully around the back of the headstones before cutting back to the side of the grave he sat on.
Zach crossed his arms and looked into his eyes. “I’ve been thinking quite a bit about you. That was some nifty work with that cross yesterday.”
Kenneth nodded.
Zach looked away. “I have a feeling that one was just for me.”
“Maybe it was, Zach.”
Zach lowered his chin. “I tried to find out who you are. I called your employer to get some background on you. They wouldn’t give out any information.”
“That’s not important,” Kenneth said. “But, Zach, you need to know that what happened to Amy wasn’t your fault.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Zach stared at him for a long moment. “Who are you, man?” he whispered.
“I am—”
“It was my fault,” Zach said sternly, his whisper evaporating. “It was all my fault.”
“Says who?” Kenneth asked. “Your father? Don’t you think it’s time to let it go?”
Zach’s hands clenched into fists. He could see her flowing hair behind that window—outside that room. He knew it was all his fault. Hadn’t he relived it over and over in his dreams? “She wanted in so badly. I couldn’t open that window.”
The carpenter remained quiet.
Zach continued, his voice weakening and his fists starting to shake. “I kicked it, I punched it . . .
Kenneth was perfectly still. “Yes, you did.”
“How do you even know what I’m talking about?” Zach asked defensively. “How did you know my sister’s name? Tell me. Please tell me.”
Kenneth didn’t respond.
I’m losing it, totally losing it. Here I am, spilling my guts to a carpenter . . . But that wasn’t true. There was something special about the man. Something that let him see everything, know everything. You could see it in his eyes. Zach combed his hair back with his fingers and crossed his arms. “I just want the nightmare to stop.”
“I know it hurts,” Kenneth said, stepping to the foot of the grave to face the headstone. “But we both know it’s not only a dream but a memory—an instant replay that has been torturing you for a long, long time.”
“It isn’t fair,” Zach said. He could still see her small hands pressed against the window like it was happening now, right before him. “I was supposed to be watching her. It should have been me.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Zach.”
“The carpet—it was so cold.”
“It wasn’t carpet. It was snow.”
“I was trapped.”
“No, you weren’t, Zach. She was trapped.”
“No!” Zach yelled. “I couldn’t open the window!”
“It was ice you couldn’t break.”
Zach looked quickly at the carpenter. How does he know?
“Do you remember the ice?” Kenneth asked softly.
“Yes! It wouldn’t break!”
“It was a foot thick, Zach.”
“I couldn’t break it!”
“You were a boy, Zach. Twelve.”
“I should be here, not her,” he said, his hand pointing in a circle around the cemetery. “Why couldn’t it have been me? Amy never hurt anyone.”
“It wasn’t your time, Zach. It was Amy’s time.”
Amy’s time?
Zach covered his face with his hands. The carpenter’s answer was just a little too cliché. It made Amy’s life sound like an expiring gallon of milk, like it was stamped with some predetermined date that was never up for negotiation.
“You’re wrong,” Zach said, pressing the heel of his palm against his forehead. “Amy had on brand-new skates. It was the first time she’d worn them . . .” He closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Take your time,” Kenneth said.
“I saved money from my paper route to buy her white figure skates for Christmas. She had always worn my old black hockey skates. She never complained about them; it’s just that all of her friends had the white ones—the pretty ones. I couldn’t wait to give them to her, so I gave them to her early, and we went out to the lake. You should have seen her. She was so happy.”
“Yes, she was,” Kenneth whispered.
He paused over the carpenter’s strange remark, but by now he was too immersed in the story to stop. He had to get it out. “I heard the ice break, the only place it was so thin—the only place. Every other place it was rock solid. She fell straight through the ice—I mean straight through . . . and the current . . . it took her farther, and then . . .”
“Zach,” Kenneth said.
Zach’s breathing was fast and rapid. He wanted to cry, but he didn’t remember the last time he had—maybe he’d forgotten how. “Her face—I could see it under there, under the ice. I tried so hard. She was looking up at me, clawing at the ice. I couldn’t—I tried everything—I just couldn’t break it.” He lowered his head, staring down at his hands, shaking violently.
“Everything happens for a reason, Zach. Every single thing.”
“Reason?” he said. He was suddenly welling with hate, and he fixed his resentment on Kenneth. “What reason could there possibly be for Amy to die? Tell me why an innocent, ten-yearold little girl falls through the ice and drowns. Please tell me that.”
Kenneth stepped around the grave but remained silent.
“Tell me!” the doctor yelled at the top of his lungs, the me echoing through the cemetery.
“Why don’t you tell me something?” Kenneth whispered, touching Zach’s shoulder and pointing in the direction of the cross with his other hand. “Tell me what you feel when you look at that.”
“The cross?” he asked. The hate seemed to drain out of him, leaving him hollow, weak.
“Tell me what you think about when you look at it. Tell me what you feel.”
Zach hesitated for a moment, needing to understand why he suddenly felt so peaceful. He thought about the carpenter’s question and then answered, “Oddly calm. But I’m so confused. No, more like bewildered. It makes me think about the cross yesterday, at the Lindys’ church, and you. I’ve gone over it dozens of times in my mind, man. It’s insanity. I went back to St. Thomas this morning. Just to look at it. It’s impossible, any which way I try to explain it.”
Kenneth lowered his hand from the doctor’s shoulder and said, “You know what, Zach? You don’t have to understand everything, and you don’t have to be the one who is always in control.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Listen for a second,” Kenneth said. “Truly listen. You don’t have to understand everything, and you don’t always have to be the one who is in control.”
“Why not?”
“Because, regardless of how you feel, and what you think you’ve experienced, you can’t—and you aren’t.”
Zach shook his head and thought, Who in the world is this guy? “I don’t understand you, man. I’m not even close to understanding.”
The carpenter grinned in a way Zach wasn’t sure he liked— but maybe it didn’t really matter, because this was just another weird day in a series of weird days.
“What are you looking for here at the cemetery, Zach?” Kenneth asked. “Why are you here?”
“I guess I’m looking for Amy’s grave.”
“Why?”
He started to say something and then stopped. He finally looked at Kenneth. “I’m really not sure. I can’t find the grave anyhow, and I have—”
“How would you feel if I told you Mr. Hood isn’t dead?” Kenneth pointed to the grave beside them.
“What?” Zach said in irritation, reading the man’s name on the granite headstone. “That’s his grave.”
“Let me try that again,” the carpenter said. “Would you understand or believe me if I told you that Amy was more alive than ever?”
“No,” Zach said, unable to block the memories—the police yelling and pointing, ordering people to stand back; the whining, whirring sound of the chain saw opening up a square in the ice; the frogmen pushing Amy’s lifeless body out through the hole in the ice and onto the frozen lake like a stillborn baby.
“No?” Kenneth asked. “Why not?”
“No,” he repeated, trying to block out the figure skates, the wet clothes, the matted hair, and the strange, practically light-blue color of his sister’s face. “It’s impossible. I saw her.” He shook his head and pinched his temples. “Much as I wish I hadn’t.”
“Let me try another one, then,” Kenneth said, squatting down into a catcher’s position and tugging out a few blades of dead grass from the grave. “Would you believe it if someone told you that a cross cut in half by a bolt of lightning could look like new in a matter of moments?”
Zach studied the carpenter suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. “That’s not fair.”
“Why not? Did it happen, or did it not?”
“Normally I would say that it’s impossible, but in this case I know it happened. I was there.”
“But Amy being more alive than ever is impossible? What’s the difference?”
“I just told you,” Zach said. “I saw it. I saw the cross only a few minutes before and after it happened. Seeing is believing.”
“Zach,” Kenneth said quickly, “if you told someone what happened yesterday with the cross, what would they say to you?”
“But you understand why they’d think your story was a little tough to swallow.”
“Of course,” Zach said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that it happened. I saw it with my own two eyes.”
“Tell me, then,” Kenneth said, putting his hand on Zach’s shoulder again and giving it a little squeeze, “how would you tell someone they should trust what you say—to believe—to only believe without seeing?”
“I don’t know,” Zach said. “I guess I’d tell them that they have to take my word for it. They’d just have to believe what I say.”
“They’d have to believe you?”
“I guess they wouldn’t have to. I’d hope that they chose to.”
“There you go!” Kenneth said, taking his hand off Zach’s shoulder and stepping around the back of the grave as if to leave.
“W-What?” Zach said, wishing he had never come to the cemetery but feeling, somehow, like the carpenter was abandoning him. “Where are you going?”
Kenneth let out a little laugh. “I have some errands to run. I still have to get my costume for Saturday.”
“Saturday?”
“The harvest party at the church,” Kenneth said cheerfully. He clapped his hands together and leaned over slightly to put his hands on the top edge of Andrew Hood’s headstone. “Believing is a choice, Zach. You can’t force somebody to do it. Does that make sense?”
Zach nodded in agreement.
“Amy is more alive than ever. More alive than you could ever imagine.”
Zach stared into his eyes. There was no shade of dishonesty in the man. No sense of ego or anything bad he could identify at all. He swallowed hard. “I want to believe that, Kenneth. I really do.”
The carpenter smiled. “Tough to swallow? Kind of like how people might respond if you tell them about the cross?”
Zach looked around the cemetery again. “Something like that. Yes.”
“I have a quick question,” Kenneth said, holding his hands out. “What do you call believing without seeing? What do you call it when you make the choice to believe—the choice to let everything else go that you thought you knew and just believe?”