Chapter 2

The hand on Joe's wrist did not let go.

The cloth stayed bunched in his fist.

Over the open grave, sixty dark coats had gone still.

Delphine pulled him half a step back and bent to his ear.

"You do not know what you are saying, Joseph."

Joe kept his eyes on the coffin.

"I know hands," he said.

His voice did not shake. That was the strange part.

Somebody in the front row leaned into somebody else.

A woman in a green coat put a hand over her mouth.

"Grandpa wore that ring every day," Joe said.

"On his right hand. He never took it off. Not once, not ever."

Delphine straightened and smoothed her scarf.

"He is eleven," she said to the row.

"He is angry. He was not raised right."

"He came here to make a scene."

Nobody answered her.

Delphine's pearls rose and fell once.

The grave smelled of wet earth and cut grass.

Somewhere below the bluff a boat engine turned over.

Near the headstone, a heavyset man in a dark coat had come on duty and stayed.

The county sheriff.

His hat was in his hand. His eyes were on the cloth.

At the back, a thin man in a gray overcoat held a leather folder under his arm.

The family lawyer.

He had not opened the folder all morning.

Joe did not turn around.

"He gave me the dates," he said.

"The Fourth of July. My birthday. The morning we rowed past the jetty."

"I remember hands, and I remember dates."

"He remembers what suits him," Delphine said.

"Whatever the boy says, the county has a certificate. Signed by a doctor."

The cloth flapped once and lay still.

Then Opal Poole came forward.

Her canvas bag hung open at her hip.

One hand was still inside it.

The four pallbearers stood at the rails.

None of them lifted them.

Joe's grip did not change.

"Ma'am," Opal said. "I keep a log."

Delphine's head turned slowly.

"You were dismissed."

"I was dismissed on the twelfth," Opal said.

"I saw him on the eleventh."

She said it flat, the way a nurse reads a chart.

The murmur ran the whole row.

"Put that away," Delphine said.

Opal did not put it away.

She drew out a spiral notebook, the cover worn soft at the corners.

Her face still had not got its color back.

She had been shut out of that house and had told no one.

Then Harlan Meeks stepped out of the crowd.

Gray suit. Gray face.

The man who buried the town's dead.

He stopped beside the pallbearers and would not look at the coffin.

Delphine looked from the notebook to the mortician to the boy.

"Give me my husband's grave."

Joe held the cloth.

He was still holding it when Opal opened the log.