Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [101]
Some people have brought flowers, which they throw into the grave. Alice doesn’t like that; she thinks it looks like litter. She manages to stay focused on her anger until Uncle Eddie’s surprise makes his appearance: a bagpiper standing on the green grass rise above them. Oh, no, she thinks, there is nothing more mournful than bagpipes. But what he plays is not mournful. It is a rollicking march; it is joyful and raucous and fast and alive. You could follow this song into battle or through the gates of hell.
As Alice listens to the piper she knows that she wants real dirt and real shovels; as real as this music, as real as the coffin that contains what is left of her father.
In the silence that follows, there’s a kind of rush to get out of the cemetery, with friends and relatives leading the way to the cars. Mrs. Grover and Mrs. Piantowski and Mrs. Minty are already back at the house with Sally and Ginny from The Bird Sisters, putting together the collation. The night before, Uncle Eddie and Mr. Grover and Henry supervised the gathering of all the neighborhood picnic tables and folding chairs. Food has been pouring in for days.
The promise of that food, and maybe even a good stiff drink, or simply getting away from the land of the dead and back to the land of the living, has put a spring in the step of most everyone who turns away from the grave to head to their cars.
The piper has left the rise and is walking through the woods that border the graveyard. Now he is playing a dirge, now he is playing an ending, not a beginning, gathering their tears and their sorrow into song.
Alice wants to stay until they fill in the grave, but there is not a shovel in sight. Angie is preoccupied with some family friends who can’t come back to the house and are saying their good-byes now. Alice scans the graveyard looking for the actual tools of the trade or even a pair of gravediggers. Instead, she finally spots a small backhoe tucked discreetly out of sight behind some trees and an older man in overalls patiently smoking a cigarette, waiting for them to leave so he can finish his job.
That’s when she sees him: a young man in uniform standing too far away to have heard the service, but focused intently on her father’s grave. He somehow manages to look ramrod straight and broken at the same time. Before she even has time to think, to formulate words, she is running toward him.
He backs away from her, holding his hands out in front of him to keep her from coming closer.
“Are you Travis Boyd?”
He looks at Alice for a long, uncomfortable moment. Alice is taking in the circles under his eyes, the way his dress uniform hangs too loosely on his frame, the tremor in his hands as he tries to figure out what to do with them.
“You are, aren’t you?”
He looks at the ground.
“You knew my dad, didn’t you? You were in his unit.”
He nods, not lifting his head.
“You were with him when—”
He begins to back away from her, still looking down.
“Wait. Don’t go.”
He turns and begins to limp up the slope toward the drive where his rental car is parked. Alice runs to catch up with him. He keeps her at bay with a sharp gesture. She stops as he continues toward the car.
“Please. You were the last person to—”
He stops. She can hear that he is struggling for breath from this quick walk and realizes that he is probably in pain.
“We’ve been trying to reach you. My mother wanted to write