As if i remember. All of sixty years ago! It was '35 and my father'd been dead for eight years.

His plot was way hence so we trooped over only occasionally to pay respects.
I had no respect to give but it's hard not to follow along with a group of ten. I'd stand there looking at a grave with all the other kids and my mother, who was like a saint, saying blessings and sending good, unearned prayers up to him, him who beat her and us kids as often as he would stumble through the door. I made up silly words to mumble while we sung out the Lord's prayer and didn't even feel guilty or sad.

There he was, in a field, in a box, past, past other boxes, way in the corner where some lucky poor could bury their dead. My mother knew the gardener and she managed to square away the plot with a promise of i don't know what. Where he died? Here, close to this field here, froze to death trying to get home from the moonshiners.

It was his grave i suppose, it didn't really matter to me.