The Marker

The Marker

It was a tall thin, gray marker tucked away in the front corner of the cemetery. It wasn't much different from many of the grave markers in the oldest part of the cemetery. But ever since he first saw it, he was drawn back to it.

Again and again he visited it without any idea of why.

John Danzeg was a banker in the small village of Hobart, just south of Lima Ohio. If you had asked his neighbors to describe him they would have said he was a practical man, not given to fanciful thinking. But there he was standing in a cemetery, where not a single one of his relatives was buried, on a Saturday morning looking at a grave marker he couldn't even read.

He watched the tufts of crabgrass flutter in the breeze. He saw cracks forged by the freezing and thawing of so many snows, the holes board by long dead beetles, and he saw a glossy spider web engineered into the largest of the cracks near the ground on its right side.

The old man's hands were gnarled and stamped through with the evidence of his hard life. Small nicks and scared peppered the spaces between the wrinkles and the larger scars. He pushed and twisted the blade of his pocket knife in an attempt to widen one of the letters he was carving. The dull old blade slipped. As it ratcheted across the weathered face of the hardwood it caught in a craves and snapped off, cutting the old man's hand.

He didn't take any notice of the wound or even wipe the blood away. It ran slowly down the heel of his hand and dripped onto the ground.

The light was fading and soon the dark it would force him to stop. He would sleep in the great room of the log house, next to the fire. He would not bath nor undress, but simply lie down on the straw mat and cover himself with his one ragged wool blanket. In the morning return to his work.

At first John had stopped to look at two large marble monuments that stood just

inside the front gate. They had been erected by a man named Ezra Wright for his wife and himself. Tall and beautiful, each had a six-sided Georgia marble base that held a column of red granite. Each showed the birth and death dates of Ezra and his wife.

John had paused at them for only a minute. On this Saturday it wasn't them that had brought him back here, but this small undistinguished looking wooden marker, hidden among the weeds at the back corner of the churchyard. He ran his hands across the top, then its face. He felt the warn away ridges that had once been letters and tried to make out with his touch what he couldn't with his eyes.

The old man woke early the next day. He was stiff and sore and getting up was

difficult. He rekindled the fire and fixed himself a pot of coffee and a slice of stale bread. He looked down at his injured hand. He flexed his fingers and when he was satisfied it worked well enough he finished the last of the coffee and walked outside.

He sat down on a small three-cornered stool near the doorway. He had made the

stool from a tree he had planted behind the log house. He had come with him from Pennsylvania when he brought his five children west after their mother died of the fever.

The tree lived only fifteen years but it had grown well enough to yield sufficient wood for the stool, for the table inside and a little more. It was a piece of it he now carved. It had slowly air dried in the rafters above the fireplace and it was stone hard. It had taken so much effort to fashion the first short word that he wondered if he had enough strength left in his old body to finish the job.

He ran a weary finger across the carving. It was cut deep into the heart of the board. As he gazed at it, its meaning cut just as deeply into his own heart.

John's fingers traveled back and forth across the remains of what had been the first word on the marker. It must have been important to whoever carved it because, after so much wear, its remains were still faintly visible. He could tell there had been six lines carved into the gray wood. Each one had contained but a single word. The first letter of the first word had been a "B". and the first letter in the second line was still recognizable as a "J". He ran his fingers along each word. There was a "z" in the third line and that word ended in a "g".

Time and weather had erased so much of the other letters they were unreadable. Even so he felt a strange sense of familiarity with them.

The summer sun was hot and had climbed high into the sky when, on the tenth day, he finally finished his carving. The end of his work brought only a dull ache to his soul. All the while the carving had occupied his entire mind, but now the weight of what had happened crushed his spirit. He dropped his knife. It disappeared into the marigolds that grew near the porch.

He closed his eyes and leaned back. His arms and back ached. There would be

plenty of time for digging the grave, it would be so small. He would have this one last night with the little one.

A breeze caused the candle to flicker. Even though the child was long past hearing the story his grandfather would tell, the old man would tell it anyway. He sat by the fire, pulled the tiny cradle near and began. He looked down at the small bundle and spoke in a whisper. He told it of the ocean voyage he had taken to get to this country and of the hope he had felt. He spoke of the beautiful girl he had met in New York, of their marriage, and their five children. A far-off sadness clouded his voice as he spoke of her death and of his move to the Ohio territory.

He told it how he had managed to rear the children and how they had married and moved away. He told it of its aunts and uncles and of the marriage of its mother and father. There was a sadness to his voice as he told of its mother's death the day it was born, and of its father's grief that had driven him away.

In the end the old man's voice trailed off and he stopped in mid-sentence. He sat

there by the cradle long after the candle had burned down and the fire had gone out.

John bent down and pulled the weeds and crabgrass away from the base of the

marker. He grasped the top with both hands and straightened it. Then he wedged several field stones against the back to keep it straight. A car crept slowly by. He watched it for a minute, dusted off his hands and walked to his car to get the flowers.

As the rays of the sun warmed his face the old man rose from his chair. He carefully picked up the bundle and went outside. He pulled his shovel from its resting place near the front door and stepped off the porch. He walked slowly to the rise near the stump of the tree, placed the bundle on it, and mechanically began digging. After he had finished he returned for the last time to his log house. He turned and whispered a last good-by to his beloved little John.

John Danzeg laid the flowers on the grass in front of the marker. The sight of the

flowers eased the sadness that had overtaken him. Another day, even though he didn't know why, he would bring more flowers. He thought that he might even plant some there this Fall. Maybe marigolds. John had always liked marigolds.

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