THE FORGOTTEN DEAD

Earl Ray got up early to meet Danny Hogan. He had called Hogan in response to newspaper for 1.5 acres of land for the low price of $2200.00. What he had thought to be a missing zero typo was in fact the price. He figured he had to get a jump on the competition. His sister had upgraded to a house and had given him a third hand doublewide, all he needed was a place to put it, but all the real estate agencies wanted a minimum of $15,000.00 for that amount of land and he didn’t have the cash, credit or collateral to secure a deal. He was about to give up when he happened across the ad and called. A man answered on the first ring. He hadn’t given any details over the phone just directions on how to get there and when to meet him. It was a definite “must see”.
Earl Ray followed route 20 and turned down into a small trailer park and drove until the gravel ran into dirt. In the middle of the plush green field he spotted a truck matching the description Danny had given over the phone and pulled up alongside it. Danny was white haired man in his early seventies. He got out and they shook hands.
“Well this is it, any questions?”
“How much of this land do you own?”
He motioned with a gnarled pointer. “From the edge of the road all the way back there to the tree line”.
“Why are there no trailers back here”? His nearest neighbor was a good hundred yards away.
His question was answered when he scanned the plush, landscape to see the rusty, ivy covered, iron archway that read Oak Grove Cemetery . This would either sit at the back of his home or face it depending on which side of the road he put his trailer. Mr. Hogan sensed his apprehension.
“That’s the old cemetery where the black folks used to bury their dead. Many of the relatives had the graves relocated down the road to Restlawn. There are still a few graves left but mostly weeds and gophers ”.
This is was why the price was so low. Most people didn’t want to live near the dead.
Hogan continued his sales pitch. “My mother use to say it’s not the dead but the living you got to worry about”.
Earl Ray shook his head in agreement.
“I’ll take it”.
If he had choices living next door to overgrown graves wouldn’t be his idea of a place to live but he didn’t have a choices.
Within the week Earl Ray had his house in place and everything moved in and what he didn’t want he loaded onto the back of the truck. An old busted box spring, a floor model TV that no longer worked and two garbage bags full of his old clothes. With what he thought to be one of his brightest ideas to save on time and money he drove to the back of the cemetery and unloaded the junk.
The air back here was heavy. He got the sense that even before the cemetery was left to ruin this area was neglected. No one had visited or brought flowers. Perhaps no one had even attended the graveside service. This is where Earl Ray dumped his garbage; among the graves of the forgotten.
A small part of his conscience had nagged him and told him that what he did was wrong hot shower a six pack and a two hour video of scenes from his favorite porn starlet had cleared his mind of any wrongdoing. He had drifted off into a deep sleep only to be awakened by the sound of whispering and someone outside shuffling around the trailer. He looked out the e blinds catching a glimpse of someone turning the corner. He grabbed the .38 he kept in the bedside table and the large army spotlight he kept by the door and stepped out into the night just in time to spot another as he rounded the house on the left side. He cocked the gun and followed. The high powered beam caught four figures in its light. All were wearing the old articles of clothing he had discarded. While one flannel shirt or pair of jeans all looked alike there was no mistaking the red green and blue checkered sweater he had received six Christmases ago, or the day glow yellow King Construction t-shirt that had the name; his name on the back of it. When he focused his eyes on the figures 30 yards in front of him what he saw next gave him instant head to toe chills. The clothes weren’t being worn by teen pranksters or homeless, vagrants, they weren’t being ‘worn’ at all. Earl Ray blinked repeatedly hoping for the sake of his sanity that his eyes were deceiving him. Every shirt and pant ensemble stood on its own accord like hung on an invisible mannequin. Even the old busted straw cowboy hat sat atop a head that wasn’t there. The gun trembling in his hand he raised it to fire but before he could get a shot off they were upon him. A powder blue leisure suit and paint covered overalls drug him into the mass of weeds and crumbled tombstones.
The Sheriff’s department found earl ray two weeks later at the back of Oak Grove laid on an old broken box spring under a mound of clothes. The advanced stage of decomposition and the myriads of teeming maggots had made identification impossible but the old floor model Zenith with a fluorescent yellow shirt hanging askew over its top that read earl ray in black had oddly enough acted as a makeshift headstone marking his place among the discarded and the forgotten dead.