Paul T.

Evans About 5800 words

2819 Indianola Ave. First Serial Rights
Columbus, OH 43202-2359 © 2010 by Paul T. Evans
USA
(614) 387-4480
cold.type.rules@gmail.com

WHERE THE ACTION IS

By

PAUL T. EVANS

I.

WHEN THE LAST OF the three shots cracked into the November sky, Sylvia

Fessenden feared she might lose her battle to suppress her giggles.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched six seven solemn old men

outside the cemetery gate and across the street. All seriousness and all

purpose, three times they racked their rifles in unison, aimed them skyward,

and fired. Clouds of blue smoke burst above them, and the echoes tumbled

like bowling pins through the trees’ leafless branches.

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Sylvia glanced over at her husband, Aaron. His complexion, always

ruddy, had reddened even further, and his mouth was such a tight line that

his lips had almost disappeared into his brown, gray-flecked beard.

His lips still clenched tight, Aaron Fessenden’s eyes never left the flag-

draped coffin beside the rectangular open grave several feet in front of him.

He and Sylvia stood with other mourners, the coffin and catafalque crowning

the open end of the Ω.

What the hell would Charles think about this? he asked himself. Like

his wife beside him, his thoughts about the ceremony were far from

reverent. His thoughts about the man they were burying, however, were

totally respectful.

Rutledge Cemetery was silent. The last of the echoes faded, like

thunder from a faraway storm. A pale sun, barely luminous, futilely tried to

poke through the solid white cloud cover above them.

The first long, drawn-out notes of “Taps” sounded. Puzzled, both he

and Sylvia looked all around the cemetery for the bugler. He suppressed a

laugh—barely—when he saw the briefcase-sized boom box at the American

Legion chaplain’s feet. Charles Talley—sent on his final journey by a

compact disk.

Both his and Sylvia’s solemnity began crumbling when the American

Legion chaplain intoned his prayer, squinting through thick lenses—forget

Coke-bottle glasses, Aaron was thinking, this character is wearing airplane

windows—at the small book in his gloved hands. “We gather here today to

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honor”—he glanced at a small card stuck between the book’s pages

—“Charles Rathbone Talley, our fallen comrade,” the man orated, “who has

left us, and has reported to the High Commander.” He spoke the words as

seriously as a judge pronouncing a death sentence. Guilt at wanting to laugh

came and went quickly. Glancing over the box’s curved, Stars-and-Stripes-

bedecked lid, he saw that the young Congregational minister standing next

to the chaplain seemed on the verge of mirth as well.

The riflemen had marched silently from across the street, rifles slung

over their shoulders, back to the cemetery. Once more they were

Doughboys marching through French and German burghs whose names they

could neither spell nor pronounce. Now they faced one another, three to a

side, across the coffin. Wordlessly and fluidly, they lifted the flag and held it

tautly over the coffin.

Beside him, Sylvia wrenched a laugh from her throat, squelching it by

the three or four dry coughs she forced. Aaron took his right hand from his

blue The North Face fleece coat and slipped it into her left. He looked the

question, What is it?, in her direction.

She pointed with her head, inching it forward so slightly that only he

could see it. Following her gaze, he understood, and dug his teeth into his

lower lip to avoid succumbing to the contagious laughter.

The cobblestone road leading from the gates of Rutledge Cemetery

was behind the final resting place of Charles Talley. As the rifle-bearing

octogenarians returned, they marched past a white pickup truck parked at

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the base of an eagle-topped flagpole. A young man in forest-green coveralls

and mud-spattered work boots stepped down from the driver’s seat, a

cigarette thrust into one corner of his mouth.

Sylvia had the perfect view of the absurd juxtaposition. The six men

meticulously and conscientiously executed each of the thirteen folds that

turned the flag into a thick, star-bedecked triangle. Behind them, with an air

of impatience, the groundskeeper reached the flagpole in two bounding

steps. Quickly, he hauled down the flag, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it

on the passenger seat of the truck.

THE URGE TO LAUGH ENDED after the pastor led the group in the Lord’s Prayer, and,

with a nod, turned the mortal remains of Charles Talley over to the funeral

director and the grounds crew. His mouth dry, Aaron swallowed around the

lump that was growing in his throat. Sylvia’s hand in his, he turned from the

grave.

“All the little old men get to you?” Aaron said, trying to sound casual.

She noted the hoarseness, but decided to ignore it. “With their gun salute

and the flag-folding? Was that why you were about to break up?”

Sylvia smiled, showing her teeth. “That, and the guy with the pickup

truck. I’m glad those Legion old men didn’t see him!”

“Too wrapped up in what they were doing,” Aaron suggested. “They

live for this—they get out of the house, get to play soldier again. The trick is

to get them before happy hour at the American Legion.”

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Sylvia, pie-faced and fair-skinned, smiled and rolled her green eyes.

Even after nine years of marriage, the mannerism charmed him. She wore

her titian hair to her jaw, and shaggy bangs covered the top of her forehead.

Releasing his hand, she pointed to something ahead of them. “What is

that?”

The largest monument in Rutledge Cemetery soared several feet

above them. Made of gray-white granite, the shaft was wide as a tree trunk.

Prominent bas relief capital letters just above the plinth spelled out the name

BLANCHARD. Above this, and below a Masonic emblem, stood the words:

SPENCER L. BLANCHARD
BORN OCT 17 1821
DIED DEC 4 1868
“THE MEMORY OF THE JUST IS BLESSED”

At the very top of the monument, looming above them like a stone

bloodthirsty Moloch, sat the statue of a balding man with muttonchops, his

long coat open to reveal a many-buttoned vest with dangling pince-nez

spectacles and watch chain. The man sat in a high-backed, high-armed chair

that made Aaron think of the Lincoln Memorial.

“You mean Spence here?” Aaron said offhandedly.

“Uh—yeah,” she said. “Who is this?”

“He was a banker, and a very rich one. He didn’t invent anything, and

he didn’t write any books, but he had lots of money.” Aaron looked up again

at the monument. “And he left enough money to build this thing for himself.

Like one of the Egyptian pharaohs.”

“Aaron?”

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Both Aaron and Sylvia turned. A plump woman walked toward

Blanchard’s kitschy monument. She dabbed tears from one eye with a

crumpled Kleenex, but she was smiling. Her wavy hair, dirty blonde and tied

back in a ponytail, was flecked with gray, and hung to the middle of her

back. Aaron immediately recognized her as a fellow 1981 graduate of

Bakersville High School. But who is this? Aaron seldom visited social-

networking Websites, and had not visited Bakersville, Indiana since his

father’s funeral five years previously.

The woman perceived his unease. Discreetly slipping the tissue into a

trash can behind her, she smiled broadly, revealing even white teeth. Aaron

saw dimples that enhanced high cheekbones. She drew breath to say

something, but Aaron spoke first.

“Cheryl Jett?” Aaron said, grateful that he remembered her name

before she introduced herself. Next to him, Sylvia noted that his pleasure

didn’t seem at all strained, and concern rippled through her.

“Yes!” she said, except I’m Cheryl Binder now.” She and Aaron took a

few steps toward each other and embraced. Sylvia counted ten or fifteen

seconds before they moved apart a little, and she said nothing as her

husband kissed Cheryl Binder on the cheek before they broke physical

contact completely.

Both of them turned slightly toward Sylvia, but then Aaron turned in

Cheryl’s direction. “Binder, eh? You and Jake—you’re still together after all

this time! That’s great!”

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“Not exactly,” said Cheryl, looking toward the ground. “Jake and I

divorced five years ago. He and Jake, Jr. are living out in California.” She

tried to sound offhand about this, but she was not successful.

“That’s too bad,” said Aaron, empathetically. He chuckled. “I’ll never

forget the Junior Class Talent Show.” To Sylvia, he said, “She and Jake won

first prize by doing ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ as Porky and Petunia

Pig.” He took Cheryl’s elbow and turned her Sylvia’s way. “This is my wife,

Sylvia. Sylvia, this is Cheryl Binder. She graduated from Bakersville High

with me.”

The two women clasped right hands. Sylvia hoped that Cheryl would

attribute the coldness of her grip to the late autumn weather.

“I was just introducing Sylvia to Spence,” Aaron said, pointing once

again at the looming monument. “Jesus, this thing used to give me

nightmares when I was a kid!”

“I’m not used to seeing him without one of those orange traffic cones

on his head,” said Cheryl. She turned toward Sylvia. “Kids would steal those

cones from where they were doing street repairs, and put one on his head.”

“We didn’t always,” said Aaron, over-righteously. “Sometimes we used

them as soccer goals.” Cheryl started smiling again, but her cheerfulness

crumpled when she saw the quiet cluster of activity around the new grave.

Intentionally, she had kept her back to that part of the cemetery.

She looked at the dead grass for a moment, and then raised her head.

“I still can’t believe he’s dead,” she said, more to herself.

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“He wasn’t a young man,” said Aaron, simply and in a comforting tone.

“He had just turned fifty when I took my first English class from him.” He put

his hands back in his pockets, so the women wouldn’t notice he was counting

on his fingers. “He was eighty-two when he died.”

“I’m starting to get cold,” said Sylvia, madly trying to telegraph a silent

message to her husband.

“Yeah, same here,” he admitted, like a child confessing to eating the

last cookie in the jar. To Cheryl, he said, “Is Pooler’s Luncheonette still

around?”

IN THE CAFÉ, CHERYL sat back in a tall-backed wooden booth and faced her

erstwhile classmate and his wife across a chipped Formica table. Except for

the elderly waitress behind the lunch counter, they were the only ones at

Pooler’s this late afternoon.

The Fessendens and Cheryl sat in a booth by a picture window. Their

profiles were parallel to the inactivity of Blanchard Street outside. In the

forty-five minutes they had been there, Aaron counted two cars on the

street. The only people he saw were two women who came out of the James

County Clerk’s Office across the street to light cigarettes. Aaron was

dismayed to see so many vacant storefronts lining both sides of the street.

After a few minutes of conversation, Sylvia warmed up to Cheryl.

Cheryl and Aaron made sure that she was not excluded from the

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conversation. Sylvia did not want to sit idly at the table while Cheryl and

Aaron traded anecdotes and updates about people she had never met.

Realizing this, Cheryl drew Sylvia into the conversation. She spoke

proudly about her job teaching third grade at Bakersville Elementary School,

and about the literacy project she co-founded with the just-buried Charles

Talley. In turn, Sylvia described how she was trying to balance her full-time

job as a nurse practitioner at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in West

Lafayette with her night classes at the Purdue University College of

Pharmacy. Aaron related several stories about his paralegal job at a small

estate-planning law firm, and described his endless inner battle about

whether to attempt a law school education.

“It’s amazing,” said Sylvia, holding her coffee mug with both hands,

“that Aaron would drop everything and come here for your teacher’s funeral.

He doesn’t talk about Bakersville much, and when he does, he seldom says

anything positive. But when he read Mr. Talley’s obituary online, he called

off work and insisted we just had to drive here for the funeral.”

“Charles took risks no other teacher would, even now,” said Aaron. “I

remember his short story class. He said your average short story or novel

usually had at least one conflict—man versus nature, man versus himself,

man versus another man, or man versus society. He brought in a projector

and showed us Deliverance, because he said that was a novel that combined

all these.”

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“He got in such big trouble about that!” Cheryl said. She held her

forkful of cherry pie midway between her plate and her mouth. “Parents

flocked to the school board meeting demanding that he be fired. He came to

the meeting, and he didn’t mince any words. The board asked why he would

show such a movie to his class.”

“And he stood up,” Aaron continued the story, “and he said, ‘Because I

wanted my class to know that Deliverance was about more than butt-

fucking.’” Sylvia looked astonished. “The silence in that room was absolute,

just like the middle of nuclear winter. The Bakersville Journal wouldn’t print

the remarks intact; I forget what they ended up using in the story. Long and

short, Charles kept his job.”

“The military honors couldn’t have been his idea,” Cheryl said. “He

was a clerk typist when he was in the Army, and he was stateside the entire

time. During the Vietnam War, when students of his dodged the draft and

moved to Canada, he loaned them money to get started there.”

“Great man,” Aaron said, earnestly. “I know he was in his eighties, but

I can’t believe he’s gone. Was it a long illness?”

“Just the opposite,” said Cheryl. “He was at Krebs’ Newsstand last

Sunday. He had just paid for his New York Times, gave the cashier this funny

look, and fell over dead. I think it was a stroke.”

“After he retired, did he stay active?” asked Sylvia.

“Oh, yeah!” said Cheryl. “He taught a GED class in the basement of

the Presbyterian church every week. The last eight years before he retired,

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he taught reading and writing classes at the State Pen two nights a week. I

used to kid him and say, ‘Now tell me the truth, Charles. Are you really an

inmate, and teaching at the high school is some kind of work-release job for

you?’”

All three of them laughed. Still laughing, Aaron ostentatiously clutched

the left side of his chest. “Did he keep on doing this when he started to talk,

or when you gave him something to read?”

Sylvia looked at her husband, baffled. Her confusion increased when

Sylvia nodded vigorously, her face creased in laughter.

“What’s funny about that?” Sylvia asked. She tried to keep the

accusatory tone from her voice.

“Charles nearly died from a heart attack about a year and a half before

we took his class as sophomores,” Aaron explained. “Before the heart

attack, he had been a chain-smoker. I heard he smoked about two packs of

Lucky Strikes, unfiltered, every day. The heart attack was a wakeup call for

him—he never smoked again after that. But, he never lost that mannerism.

Whenever someone gave him something to read, or before he began talking,

he used to reach for the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket. My brother told

me about Charles’ first day back after he recovered. He picked up a piece of

chalk to write on the board, and then tried to smoke it.”

Cheryl looked at the square Dr. Pepper clock above the counter. “I

have two cats that will be clawing up the furniture if I don’t get home and

feed them,” she said, scooting out of the booth. She turned to Aaron.

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“We’re having a wake for Charles at Farmer Ralph’s tonight, starting at 10

tonight. Think you can make it?”

“How many people you expecting?” Aaron asked.

“I had about 15 people say ‘yes’ on Facebook,” said Cheryl. “Probably

more people have RSVP’d since then.”

“Yeah, I’ll be there. What time?”

“Ten-thirty,” said Cheryl. “I think. Can you give me your cell phone

number? I’m not sure if it’s 10:30 or 11.”

He took out a fountain pen, and scribbled the number on a piece he

had torn from his paper placemat. “Here it is,” he said. He chuckled. “It’ll

be the first time I’ve been at Farmer Ralph’s and actually be old enough to

drink.”

ii

“YOU’RE MORE THAN WELCOME to come,” Aaron told his wife, his voice muffled. She

lay on the king-sized bedspread in their Stanberry Hotel room, paging

through the latest issue of Redbook. She glanced over the magazine at her

husband, who pulled a Purdue University sweatshirt down over his oxford.

Facing the bed, the television set, its volume turned quite low, showed a

rerun of One Tree Hill.

“No, I just want to go to sleep,” said Cheryl. “I’d feel like a fifth

wheel.”

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“You wouldn’t be,” he tried to assure her. His shirttails dangling, he

looked around the room until he found a pair of faded blue jeans draped over

a chair near the TV. He stepped into them. “A lot of these people never left

Bakersville, so I’d be as much out of place as you would.” He patted his full

beard. “They probably won’t recognize me with this. In high school, I tried

to grow a beard. The best I could manage was to look like Shaggy from the

Scooby-Doo cartoons.” Ruefully, he looked at the slight, but noticeable,

convexity above the jeans’ waistline. “I was also built like Shaggy during

high school,” he said. “You wanted to add that bay window to our living

room,” he reminded her. He patted his stomach. “This is the only bay

window we can afford right now, sweetheart.”

“Did you ever date Cheryl?” Sylvia asked, closing Redbook and placing

it on the night table, atop the Gideon Bible.

“God, no!” Aaron said, looking around the room for his shoes. “She ran

with the more popular kids. Yes, we were in school together starting in

kindergarten. We played in the same sandbox together, but that was about

it. We weren’t enemies—just moved in different circles.”

“Oh, okay,” said Sylvia, feeling both reassured and foolish.

Aaron smiled, as if at a private reverie. Sylvia saw it. “What?” she

asked.

“It’s been almost thirty years, so no harm in telling you. Cheryl was

the first mature woman I ever saw naked.”

“But you said you never dated her.”

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“I never did. It was during the graduation party at Dr. Leslie’s A-frame.

(His son graduated with us, he’s teaching neurosurgery at Columbia now.)

He built the A-frame near a quarry, and by the side of the water was a big

tree with a tire swing. We were all pretty drunk—first thing when we got out

there, we raided the liquor cabinet. And we were all taking turns on the tire

swing. Cheryl swung way out over the water, and she lost her grip on the

rope. I remember she clawed at the air for a second, and then she fell in

with this big SPLASH.”

Sylvia’s mouth formed an O. She looked at her husband, urging him

with a slight nod to continue his story.

“Her head popped out of the water about a minute later, and she

stepped onto the grass, and she was completely drenched, but she was

laughing her head off. She gave us this ‘What the hell?’ look and stripped

everything off, and went back into the water. Nobody else followed her lead,

but the guys enjoyed the view.”

“I bet,” said Sylvia. “So did she run around naked for the rest of the

party?”

“I think someone went in the house and got her a bathrobe, and she

wore that until her clothes dried off.” Aaron smiled again. “It did put an end

to all the rumors that she stuffed her bra.”

“Are you taking a cab to Farmer Ralph’s?” asked Sylvia, pointedly

ignoring her husband’s last statement. “Or are you taking one back?”

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“I’m walking over there. It’s about a five-minute walk. And if I get too

drunk, I’ll take a cab. It’s not worth risking a public-intox charge and a night

in the clink.”

“Can you leave your cell phone?” Sylvia asked. “I need to make some

calls, and don’t want to pay the room charge.”

“Don’t you have yours?”

“I forgot to bring the damn charger,” she admitted, a little mad at

herself. “The battery died while we were with Cheryl in that diner.”

“Sure, you can borrow mine,” he said. As he put on his heavy coat, he

reached into a fleece-lined pocket and took out the small silver phone. “Just

put it on the charger before you go to sleep.” Walking over to the bed, he

bent over her and kissed her forehead. “Don’t wait up.”

“And don’t expect me to be in the mood if you come back drunk,” she

countered, watching him buckle his belt.

iii

SYLVIA HAD NOT SLEPT. She finished reading her magazine, and had been

watching Book TV when Aaron’s cell phone rang. It was the most annoying

ringtone in his repertoire—“The Mexican Hat Dance”—and it represented an

incoming text message.

Scowling, she lifted up the phone from its charger. On the small

screen, black letters spelled out:

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Cheryl here. In case I 4get 2tellU: After Farmer R closes U & I shd go2
the place where the action is.

Where the action is? Sylvia wondered just what that meant. In the

diner, she had picked up no secret jargon, and she had looked earnestly for

any knowing looks or inside jokes to pass between her husband and his

classmate. What did this mean?

She looked at the digital clock on the night table. The red integers

showed 1:30. The bartender would be announcing last call around 2.

Lifting herself out of bed, she dressed quickly in sweat pants and

Indiana University Hoosiers T-shirt, hurriedly sliding sockless feet into her

tennis shoes.

Making sure she had the room’s key card and the cell phone, Sylvia

stepped into the hotel corridor, silent except for the tandem humming of the

Pepsi machine and ice dispenser at the head of the stairs. Walking toward

the elevator, she decided that she would not confront her husband and

Cheryl. She trusted Aaron enough at this point to still believe the text

message was an innocent “in” joke. If there was something else involved,

she wanted to see it for herself. She would catch them in the act, when

neither one could deny. Only one letter separates trust from tryst, her

mother reminded her on the eve of her wedding to Aaron.

She wrapped her overcoat tightly around her body when she stepped

onto the sidewalk outside the Stanberry Hotel. A bored young man, whom

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she supposed was the desk clerk, leaned against the hotel’s façade, smoking

a cigarette. “Which way to Farmer Ralph’s?”

He gestured down the street with the hand that held the cigarette.

“Go down there two blocks, and you’ll see a jewelry store on the corner.

Turn right, and walk up Blanchard Street for a block. It’ll be on your right.

You better hurry—they’re gonna announce last call before long.”

SHE FOLLOWED THE CLERK’S directions, and stood across the street from Farmer

Ralph’s. An old Mountain Dew sign (“It’ll tickle yore innards!”) overhung the

sidewalk in front of the bar, and a Miller High Life neon sign glowing in the

front window was the brightest point of light in the bar. Feeling both guilty

and justified, she shrank into the darkest corner of the front door of

Schneider’s Clothiers, the tailor shop directly across the street from the bar.

Inside Farmer Ralph’s, a woman was karaoke-singing Kim Carnes’ “Bette

Davis Eyes,” and making it sound like a dirge.

Sylvia was shivering by the time the bartender turned on the bar’s

bright lights, and patrons began to leave, some of them walking, some of

them staggering. Some left alone, and several left in pairs, and four men

about Aaron’s age stumbled from the front door together, arms around

shoulders.

The tungsten streetlamp cast a wide orange spotlight onto Blanchard

Street, so the silhouettes leaving the bar soon took on distinctness and

shape. She saw Aaron leaving. He was alone, and a little unsteady on his

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feet. Maybe he was a little tipsy, Sylvia decided, but he was not shit-faced,

and he seemed completely capable of walking under his own power.

And he did walk. He raised his hand in farewell to several of the

departing customers, and briefly embraced a man and his female companion

before the couple walked away in an opposite direction. Aaron pushed up

the sleeve of his coat, peered at his watch, and then jammed his hands into

his pockets and walked up Blanchard, away from the closing bar.

His wife cupped her hands around her mouth and warmed her hands

with her breath. She watched Aaron’s retreating figure and waited for him to

pass a fire hydrant two blocks in the distance before she, too, stepped out

onto the street.

She did not know Bakersville well enough to know his destination. The

storefronts he passed were all darkened, and more than half of them were

vacant, with long-faded FOR RENT or FOR SALE signs in their front windows.

No lights shone in the windows of the houses he passed. The traffic lights

now blinked—Blanchard Street yellow, its cross streets red.

Sylvia fell back a little when her husband passed by St. Paul’s

Methodist Church. His form was illuminated in the cone of light from the

building’s display board (CH CH. WHAT IS MISSING? YOU ARE!! read its

message.)

Bakersville was so quiet that she imagined she could hear all of her

husband’s footsteps as he walked for three blocks, and then made a turn.

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He seemed to know exactly where he was going, and seemed neither to

dread nor urgently anticipate reaching his destination.

Sylvia almost expected him to walk up to the porch of one of the

darkened houses, try discreetly to rap with the knocker, and be furtively

admitted. She steeled herself for the confrontation that would follow. She

wondered which house he would visit. She had no idea where Cheryl lived,

or why she hadn’t closed up Farmer Ralph’s along with the rest of her

classmates and those who had gathered in Charles Talley’s honor.

When Aaron did slow his pace, his final destination wrung an

involuntary gasp from Sylvia, still a block away. Trailing him had been easy,

because he had not looked back at any point during his walk.

Aaron stopped in front of Rutledge Cemetery.

iv

AARON STOOD BY THE closed gates, looking at his feet and idly kicking around the

dead leaves scattered on the sidewalk. He kept his hands in his pockets, and

Sylvia silently chided him for forgetting his gloves, and managed to laugh at

herself for this.

A second shape approached the cemetery gate. This must be Cheryl,

Sylvia thought with dismay. Moving a little closer, she silently crossed the

cobblestone street and stood in the darkened yard of the house across from

the entrance.

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It was Cheryl Binder. Cheryl and her husband embraced, a little longer

than they had after the burial. Aaron released her without a kiss.

“Did you try the gate?” Cheryl asked.

“No, but I don’t see any lock on it,” said Aaron. They spoke in near

stage whispers, but the street was so quiet that Sylvia could understand

every word perfectly.

Cheryl nudged the gate, and Sylvia watched both of them jump a little

when it creaked shrilly as it opened. “Christ, sounds like something from

The Addams Family,” said Aaron. With a chivalrous flourish of the arm, he

beckoned Cheryl to precede him.

When Cheryl entered the cemetery with Aaron, Sylvia tiptoed across

the street and stood in the open gate. The two of them walked up the

cemetery’s small road, and she noticed they both looked fleetingly toward

the fresh mound of Charles Talley’s grave. Did they make a pact in high

school they’d only do it on his grave? Sylvia wondered, shuddering at the

thought.

Sylvia heard her husband speak, and Cheryl’s laughter rippled across

the tombstones. “Brad Hartley told me once,” she heard Aaron say, “about

that grave there.” He pointed to a tall tombstone, a square pillar with a

stone pyramid capping it. “He swore on a stack of Bibles that when the old

guy died, they took that top off, stuffed his body in there, and put the top

back on.”

“And you believed him?” Cheryl said, still laughing.

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“His dad was a funeral director. Plus, he said, ‘Forget about swearing

on a stack of Bibles. I swear on a stack of Playboys.’ And when you’re

eleven years old, that’s serious business!”

Aaron and Cheryl stopped in front of the maudlin statue that marked

the final resting place of Spencer Blanchard, he of the bottomless pockets

and equally bottomless ego. Even in death, he towered above mere mortals

of flesh and blood.

Cheryl took out her cell phone and pushed one of its small keys.

Lighting its screen, she cast the square beam around the ground until she

bent down and picked up something, which she kept in a clenched fist.

“Lemme use that,” said Aaron. She handed him the phone, and he

used the limited brightness of its screen to find something on the ground.

Like Cheryl, he kept it in his fist once he found it.

“You first?” said Aaron.

First for what? Sylvia wondered. Guess I’ll know in a minute.

“Ladies first,” said Aaron, indicating the plinth of the statue.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said. Sylvia suspected Cheryl was

rolling her eyes. Cheryl stepped away from Aaron’s side and walked toward

the grave. She strode toward the statue, and disappeared behind it.

Sylvia wondered if they were going to take turns urinating on

Blanchard’s grave—was that some rite of passage for Bakersville kids?

Cheryl returned from behind the statue in less than ten seconds, walked

around it, disappeared behind it again.

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Evans—Where the Action Is, p. 22

“Okay, that’s seven,” Aaron called out. (Sylvia hadn’t even thought to

count the number of times Cheryl circled the monument.) Cheryl stood by

his side again, and held up whatever she had taken from the ground. She

extended her arm like an archer, sighted down it. “C’mon!” he encouraged.

“Just pretend you’re pitching for girls’ softball again!”

She held her arm steady, like a sniper. Then she reared back,

extended the arm behind her, and threw with all her might. There was a

slight chink sound as stone struck stone. “Got him!” she said. “Did you see

it? Did it happen?” She was bouncing up and down like a child on Christmas

morning.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I saw something move, but it was a

shadow. I think it was a tree branch.” He flexed his muscles. “My turn.”

He repeated the same insane ritual, walking around the base of

Blanchard’s tombstone seven times. Cheryl watched him, and Sylvia

suspected she was counting the times around the statue on her fingers

inside her pockets.

“Here goes nothing!” Aaron said cheerfully, as he rejoined Cheryl. He

threw his rock—it had to be a rock—toward the statue. He hit it, but he had

not aimed as conscientiously as Cheryl had.

“Nothing moved,” Cheryl said firmly. Aaron looked a little let down. “I

knew it wouldn’t, but I still had to try.” He sighed. “Jack O’Riley and I did

this when we were about fifteen, and I swear it moved. Jack saw it, too. Of

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Evans—Where the Action Is, p. 23

course, we had been smoking pot and drinking Night Train in here just before

we did it. It was a miracle we even came close to hitting the statue.”

Even though Sylvia was sure this was not the prelude to sex, she

decided to confront the two. “What in the hell is this about?” she asked. Her

voice was firm, but not shrill. Both Aaron and Cheryl jumped. They were

startled, not guilty.

“Can we get out of the cold first?” asked Cheryl. “There’s a great all-

night restaurant over by the hospital, and—“

“No!” Sylvia said firmly. “You’ll explain it to me right here, right now.

And there better be a damn good explanation.”

Aaron seemed embarrassed. “Charles wrote a weekly column in the

newspaper about Bakersville history,” he said. “He did a four-part article

about the life of Spencer Blanchard, and thought about publishing it as a

book.”

“Get to the point,” Sylvia said crossly.

“There was something that he didn’t publish in his column,” Cheryl

said, picking up the story. “He told me this on the q.t. Ever since

Blanchard’s family put that tombstone up there, there’s been this rumor that

if you walked around the base of the monument seven times, and then threw

a rock at the statue, his finger would move if you hit the statue.” Cheryl

couldn’t meet Sylvia’s eyes. “I never tried it, until tonight. I heard stories

from my brothers about the finger moving. When I was still in grade school,

they told me they saw his finger move.”

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Evans—Where the Action Is, p. 24

“And I’d only tried it when I was drunk,” Aaron added. “And it’s not the

type of thing you check out in broad daylight when you’re an adult. That’s

why we waited until after the bars closed.”

Sylvia was somewhat soothed by this explanation. As if by silent

agreement, the three of them walked toward the gates to Rutledge

Cemetery. They left the company of the dead behind.

“But what was that text about ‘where the action is’?” Sylvia asked.

“What the hell was that all about?”

“We were talking about Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories in class,” Cheryl

explained. “And we got off on this tangent about burial and about

cemeteries.”

“Probably after we read ‘The Premature Burial,’” Aaron suggested.

Continuing, Cheryl said, “Charles told the class that he had already

paid for his plot here,” she said, pointing behind her at Rutledge Cemetery.

None of the three of them looked back at the cemetery. “He said he wanted

to be buried here ‘because that’s where all the action is.’”

“What?” Sylvia said, uncomprehending.

“All the founders of the city, all the early movers and shakers, quite a

few veterans, from the War of 1812 up to Desert Storm, are buried there,”

said Aaron. “So he said this was ‘where all the action is.’” He laughed. “If

you’d been with me at Farmer Ralph’s tonight, you’d see he was right. This

place definitely has more action!”

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Evans—Where the Action Is, p. 25

Sylvia dared a final glance at the cemetery. There was no moon, but

the outline of Spencer Blanchard’s posthumous monument to himself was

distinctly visible against the night sky. “When you hit that poor bastard with

the rock,” she asked brightly, “I wonder what finger he raised.”

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