The Gravedigger’s Dirge
There was a small town which lay on the boarder of
Nowhere USA, right before you got the fringes of
society. The town had a population which was just
small enough to have it considered a “small town” by
official standards. The exact number was unknown as
nobody ever bothered with an official census. Whenever
there was a town meeting, the townsfolk would simply
take a vote on how many people there probably were
(nothing too far fetched) taking into account the
recent deaths and births. It was not necessary to
count those who left the town; there were none.
Passers through the town opted to not stay more than a
few days, for fear that they would become so dull that
the rest of America would no longer acknowledge their
existence.
There were not many things the town was known for. It
did not turn out doctors, lawyers or even circus
performers. The only thing the townsfolk could ever
seem to do well was die. What little tourism the town
received was of middle-aged couples who had heard of
the infamous Nowhere Deaths, as they were called, and
opted to bring their children or grandchildren and
their cameras in hopes of seeing one. The town
leadership had even organized the set up of stands
which sold postcards with pictures of people clutching
their hearts and backfliping over bars or hedges or
doing pirouettes on their heads; of people caroming
off various surfaces like a flesh colored bouncy-ball.
The person in town who had the most to do was the
resident Gravedigger although he had earned the title
Gravemaster because, yes, he really was that good at
what he did. The townsfolk had a saying, you see; "If
you die well, than you must be buried well." If "well"
meant, in this case, "extremely ridiculous to watch,"
and the second "well" meant "in a well dug grave" then
what follows will make quite perfect sense. In order
to accommodate this saying, this motto, the town
treasury department scraped together enough funds to
get a person to dig the best graves possible, because
these people used their last breaths to put on a good
show and, by God, they were going to get some
recognition for it! But who would they train? By
unanimous decision by the town council, the resident
funereal parlor owner was chosen, who had never dug
graves but, the council figured, was already well
acquainted with the whole deathly business.
Up until the moment when this funeral director was
chosen, he was somewhat less known, though not
entirely as, like many things in Nowhere, there was
only one of each profession. The townsfolk first
invested a few bucks in some Kerosene and matches and
set fire to his business and then offered him a job
while he was watching it burn down. It was never
dwelled on why they didn't just ask him in the first
place. They supposed that a man needed less motivation
to start a new profession when his previous one had
just been turned to ash. The townsfolk offered their
words of care, clapped him on the back and handed him
his shovel.
"Better get workin'," they said. And he did.
The ex-director started digging the very next day.
Even though there was no one to bury, he dug anyway.
Perhaps to escape from reality or perhaps to try to
get to China. The people who came by to watch their
pet project at work could tell that they had picked
the right man; he was very good at digging. Although
the man had never dug a grave before, he had dug
plenty of smaller holes while he worked on the
railroad tracks long ago when life meant something.
And what was a grave but a bunch of holes pilled on
top of each other into a larger one? The man never
complained except when they called him by his title.
So they just stuck with his last name.
       "It’s not ‘Digger’ or ‘Gravemaster’; it’s just
Graves. Just call me Graves or I’ll kill you with my
shovel," he said. And they did.
Everyday, Graves would carry his tools out to a small
tract of dirt just outside of town and he would dig
graves till midday. Part of the budget was for
gravedigger training but, unfortunately, there were no
other diggers for miles. As you may have guessed, the
townsfolk had not planned this out too well. The best
that anyone could come up with was to have the school
geometry teacher come out to the dirt field and
comment on the angles of that day’s grave as it was
dug and offer the occasional advise, not on digging
techniques but rather on the grave itself.
"That corner is too obtuse/acute. It's not deep
enough. You call that a rectangle?'
Graves responded at first with an "OK" or a "Sure",
but soon he stopped responding vocally, and only shot
harsh glares at her. If he spotted a budding flower by
the digging site, he would bring down his shovel hard,
separating the bud from it’s stem, and toss it into
the grave, muttering to himself quietly:
“Here lies the school math teacher. Taken to fill a
grave. Her purpose has been served.”
The days went by uneventfully. Several people died in
interesting ways. One performed a little dance number
reminisce of Singing in the Rain with a knife through
his chest. A lady pulled off a triple salchow after
being clipped by a passing truck. All these people
were buried in Graves' graves and, although they were
nice, they never warranted much more than a muttered
comment. The townspeople soon grieved at the loss of
their spent money, all $23.50 of it.
I don't know if you've ever tried digging a grave, but
it's slightly less boring than digging a regular hole.
At least when you're digging a grave, you can think
about what will eventually be in it; what type of
person, their life, their death (The death part being
quite interesting around Nowhere). Even so, Graves
soon ran out of things to think about and because
having nothing to think about is quite painful, he
thought for a way to spend his digging time. In fact,
just thinking about what to think about killed quite a
bit of time and kept him happy for about three work
days. This of course ended when he settled on what to
do. That something was singing. It was a song he had
learned when he was a railroad worker. The lines were
sung in unison to synchronize the workers. One
movement of hammering or shoveling was done for each
line. The occasional person who would pass by the
practice yard would hear the words echoing out of a
hole in the ground and see a shovelful of dirt fly
from it every line. It was a dry tune; dry as the dirt
he dug through:
Pick an' a shovel
Are so heavy
Heavy as lead
Heavy as lead
Pickin' an' shovelin'
Pickin' an' shovelin'
'Til I'm dead
'Til I'm dead
After the singing started, there were noticeable
changes in the quality of Graves' work. The geometry
teacher had no more comments (snide or otherwise) to
say anymore and, in fact, measured the angles to be
closer to 90 degrees than ever before. Rumor spread,
and soon Graves had become sort of a celebrity. The
funereal services now brought spectators who did not
even know the deceased (they were barely even part of
the service anymore). Admirers fawned over him at
every turn, begging him for trade secrets. They
probably would have tried to rip off his garments as
collectors items if he had not had the common sense to
bring his shovel to the service in case the grave
needed touching up at the last minute. More than once,
someone had to be forcibly removed from the grave
itself.
"I just wanted to try it out..." was their most common
response.
"Step a little closer and you'll get your own much
quicker." Graves would reply. Three were seriously
injured after stepping a little closer and were all
carted away while begging to be finished off. Graves
suppressed his rage, focusing on the flowers provided
by the florist’s shop. He could only imagine cutting
off their blossoms and burying them. Graves slowly
began to lose the grip on his sanity.
"Soon they will be plotting each other’s demise in
their sleep for their birthday gifts. Madness..."
Graves did not know where to go or what to do when he
got there. All the same, he decided it was time to
leave. So he tied his shovel to his back and stuck his
trowel into his belt. He wrote a hasty note and nailed
it to the door of his shack. It said simply, "Bye," as
he was not one to waste words. He would have said
"goodbye" but recalled that his time here was not good
at all. As well, "farewell" was too cheerful. He
checked his tie and the rest of his suit. All of it
was coated in a fine layer of mud. He had been wearing
it since the day that his business had burned down. It
even had the faintest smell of ash. He walked down the
main road as quietly as possible, encountering not a
soul. He passed by a planters box filled with colorful
tulips. In two quick swipes, their flowers lay upon
the sidewalk.
“Off with their heads,” he whispered.
He stepped onto the road with the setting sun behind
him and walked. As he walked, he watched his shadow
grow longer and the light grow dim. No cars passed
him. Although he did not know his destination, he felt
a great weight lift from him. Ten seconds later, he
realized that his shovel had fallen from its straps.
After picking it back up and readjusting it, he felt
about the same as he did when he left; as if he had
just escaped from an asylum for the insane. Graves
walked until it was dark. So dark that it made no
difference if his eyes were open or not so he let them
drift shut.
Graves bumped into something which snapped him from
his reverie. It was a person. A man in fact, who had a
shovel in his hand and was busily digging in the
earth.
"Oh, sorry." Graves said, almost to himself.
The man said nothing but he seemed to be humming a
familiar tune. Graves was about to ask him what he was
doing so late at night but the other man spoke first.
"Digging."
Graves was about to ask what but he looked down and
saw that it was a grave. How he had bumped into this
guy while he was working four feet down was beyond
him.
"Who is it for?'
The man in the grave said something almost inaudible.
It sounded like “you” but Graves was unsure of who had
uttered it and so he was unsure of how to feel.
The man climbed from the grave and stood before
Graves. He was crying.
"Don't kill me."
Graves raised his hands to show he meant no harm but
the man grabbed his right arm and raised his shovel
like a sword.
"Would you like a free trial?'
And then, he cut of Graves' head off with one deft
stroke.
Graves' eyes flew open; he was still walking. His arms
felt sore as if he had walked all night on his hands.
His legs burned as well so he stopped for a rest. He
turned around to see his progress. He saw no sign of
Nowhere but there behind him was a line of perfectly
dug graves. He checked his shovel to find that it had
fresh dirt on it. Dirt and something wet and slimy.
All this was, of course, odd to him, but he resisted
the urge to just walk away. He strode toward the first
grave and peered into it.
It wasn’t empty. There was something which lay dead
center at the bottom, surrounded by red stained
flowers. Graves turned quickly and felt the blood rush
from his face. He jabbed his shovel into the earth,
intent of covering any evidence of malice which may
have remained on its blade. Why? There was nobody
around.
“I’ll bury it,” he said aloud to the early morning
fog.
So, he rested the blade against the ground and stamped
on it. Lifting the shovel, he tossed the dirt over his
shoulder without looking. Then he did it again, more
vigorously this time. Faster now, he began to sweat,
his palms burned, his ears ached. He shut his eyes
tightly. He clenched his teeth but words poured out
and he listened to his own dirge as he sang it.
Pick an' a shovel
Are so heavy
Heavy as lead
Heavy as lead
Pickin' an' shovelin'
Pickin' an' shovelin'
Bury the dead
Bury the deadn