This is a new years story in three acts ...print and read at leisure

 

Dead Awful

Act one

We have been working graves on the gulf coast for two weeks now. The coast in winter can be surprisingly warm with temperatures reaching the 60’s and even 70’s.

 Last week we had miserable wind and cold rain but this week has been picture perfect blue with bright sun and warm zephyrs of breeze filtering inland  from the Gulf. .

The salt air sparkles   .It drifts through the trees and picks up the musky fragrances of   yew, cypress and the oil of Lebanese cedar making ones nostrils to flare and drink in its vigorous aroma of oil, wood, sun and salt air.

By noon the sun reaches its zenith  .Its light penetrates through the palms and cuts slashes of canary   yellow across   the backs of the black gravediggers who toil the soft sandy loam in waist deep pits . . . . .

  They work steadily and silently each one raising and lowering his pick in tandem providing perfect muffled rhythm to the sweet serenade of Cardinal and Bullfinch overhead

Gray and grizzled the black men work the graves expertly; one wears a tattered tweed coat and the other a collarless white shirt and stained waist jacket. Pick and shovel, they work the ground, exposing the corbelled  walls of the ancient crypts. .  

 . Scene two

Like most mornings it’s quiet here. Our clients; who are asleep for a century or more never seem to mind. Here, there is no sound of commerce, no noise of traffic, no quarrel against time. Here, it seems most everyone has time…lots of it and luckily for us some more so than others.

 

Every morning we hear the scrape of the mud pan and the calls for “Mo” mortar.

The mud man wipes his brow then labors with his rake and shovel turning the mass of coarse sand and hydraulic lime into the sticky alchemical cheese called mortar.

When nicely turned its ready. Then he covers it with wet burlap until it’s called for.  

Above the birdsong and the scrape of the pan comes the distant play of the trucks radio Some 30’s Bessie Smith comes lamenting through the palms.

“Wa-dah  “Wa-dah  round mah do ,   

Wa –dah , Wa-dah round mah do .

 

 Her Blues   resonates with the land here, everyone these seasons had “Wadah “not only by  “the do” but also in many cases through “ the do” and even overtop the house.

The storms, wicked and menacing as they were ; are natural to this land 

. Since all mother nature is doing is trying to do is  reclaim what once was hers for millions of  years ,. .. .

Katrina efforts were  no exception . Her  message  was so powerful that it affected the living and the dead ; and  so that’s why we are here 

 

Katrina’s power toppled trees leaving granite mausoleums  smashed like pumpkins ,

The falling limbs tore open graves and allowed the wind and the water to carry off  the dead  in absurd little crafts   made of the flotsam of nature .

Little  bones could be seen floating by   balled  together with eelgrass , molded clothing  branches ,sticks ,plastic and  the rotten remains of coffins

The larger bones of course  would sink and scatter with the tidal  surge.

Incoherent jumbles would be discovered in the trunks of trees. resting on paths .or waiting for a ride near the parking lot ..

 

What damage the storms didn’t do, vines from the roots of overgrown Jasmine and Magnolia did .

Strangling the ground,  these powerful vines  snake their way around statuary and pry open crypt covers  with the slightest of ease .

Coming in after them were the ever present colonies of rats ,feral cats ,and the slow moving armadillo  who made their homes into comfy  dens  by digging  out the bones and scattering them about  like  unwanted toys in a Childs nursery .

 

Since mother nature finds uses  for everything, it is not uncommon to find holiday homes of birds nests ,squirrel  nests , fox holes , and crab holes that  have  all been cleverly  done up  with tibias, pieces of rib and  or a clavicle or two.

Hauntingly beautiful  the homes are prolific ; they dwell in the shade of the Spanish moss  that hangs  so eerily from gnarly live oaks , Winters white sun  filters through its tangled nets   casting  web like shadows  over the  tombs and white sand ..

Wild English and Confederate rose abound  everywhere as do Carolina Jasmine and honey suckle .

Tombstones of  white marble ,lean  or are toppled , and even some are encased in trees that have grown around them

.Obelisks ,  broken collums,,and monoliths  dot the horizon  and a tall Victorian spiked  fence  or wrought iron  separates the living from the dead ,in this wild garden of  40 acres. .

Stone by stone , and bone by bone we attempt at putting them all back ; but like the wind

some are gone  to eternity. .