Wisecracking Across America - 35. Chapter 35

Wednesday, June 16, 1999

Unlike my father's grave, which we found pretty quickly with my mother's help, Tom's dad's plot was harder to locate. For one thing, its across the country from most of his family, so there was hardly anyone to guide us. For another, even Tom, his mother, and sister had only been there once.

"Why so far away?" I asked, not that distance alone kept me from my relations.

"It's where my mother was born. Where she'll be buried."

It was also on a beautiful green hill, at least in summer. In winter, Pennsylvania's kinda brown. Still, in order to find the hill, first we had to find Tom's relatives.

"Gerd's my mother's brother's wife."

"Got it," I said, though I kept pronouncing it Gird.

"It's G, like in Gerry," Tom repeated, convenient, 'cause that was also Tom's mother's brother's name. (I think I'm getting this right: there's a chance Gerd is Tom's father's sister and Gerry his brother-in-law. But what the hell; it's not my family.)

Anyway, Gerd was still alive, though Gerry---actually spelled Jerry---wasn't. And Gerd's sister, Caroline---pronounced Carolyn---still lived in the tiny west Pennsylvania town where Tom's grandmother Naomi had spent her life. After she married, Gerd moved some distance away, but she was conveniently visiting Caroline that week, so we wouldn't have to drive all over the state just to find out where Tom's father was buried.

"There's only one cemetery anyway," Gerd soon told us. At least, she started to. Caroline interrupted

"That's not exactly true..."

"Well, there's only one big one."

How many graveyards did a town as small as Sligo, population 798, really need? Still, even in the big one, there were old and new parts.

But we didn't get there immediately. We couldn't just walk in, say, "Hi, Gerd. Hi Caroline. Where's the body? (Hey! This is Tom's father we're talking about!) Sorry---Where's the cemetery? So for a while, we had to visit.

This was complicated by the dog: she had to stay outside. And we couldn't simply tie her to a tree because the neighbors had dogs. Caged dogs. "Oh, yeah, you don't want to be around when they get loose," Caroline warned. But caged dogs bark, and when we looped Tom's pet to a convenient fence---to keep away her from the cages---she barked back. All this noise upset Caroline, afraid what the neighbors might think.

Hell, they're the ones who owned pit bulls.

So I stayed in the yard, mostly walking the dog along a tiny stream, while Tom caught up with his aunts. "Caroline's not really a relative," he later insisted. "She's just my mother's brother's wife's sister."

See, that's where my family differs from his. With my relatives, if someone marries somebody who's even a third cousin, then gets divorced, then marries someone totally unrelated, not only do we all stay in touch with that third cousin's ex-spouse, but the third cousin's ex-spouse's new spouse is even invited to weddings. It doesn't matter if we like these people. We all want to stay in contact, so we can talk about them.

But it's just as well I stayed outside, because in the little time I was in the house, I wasn't very good at Pennsylvania small talk. And I have an inbred reputation for getting stones to speak. "Even when you were all kids," my mother told us, "my friends always mentioned how you'd talk politely with them on the phone." Their children would simply shout, "Ma! It's for you!" then walk away.

But talking with Gerd and Caroline was like having a conversation with the British husband of one of my closest friends. The first time she introduced us, I talked and he listened. "What do you think?" she asked immediately afterwards.

"I think we're all going out again tomorrow night. And I'm going to sit there until that blighter says something."

In the face of rampant American hospitality, he'd barely opened his mouth.

So I could either babble about travel to Gerd and Caroline, or we could all sit politely in silence. In the living room. In rural Pennsylvania. In the eastern United States. On the North American Continent. Just west of the Atlantic. South of the moon.

I was happier outside, by the rust-colored stream. Which sidestepped another problem: I wasn't gonna drink that stuff.

When it came time to leave, I did go inside again to say goodbye, quickly feeling like the most rabid of dogs, presented to nuns. And spotting one of Caroline's husband's hunting trophies, next to his overloaded rifle cabinet, didn't ease anything: it was a wall-mounted deer head, arrow still piercing its neck.

"You have a nice time?" I asked Tom, safely back in the truck.

"Yeah."

"Get directions to the cemetery?"

"Uh-huh."

I'd have to teach him how to talk again.

But we had more immediate problems: though Sligo has only one main crossroads, and only one big cemetery, we still got lost trying to find it.

"We've gone too far," Tom finally decided.

"You think?"

"Jesus, I don't know."

He'd mainly been there summers, staying with his grandmother when he was a kid. Before he'd done any kind of driving.

So we went back. Then circled. Then saw his grandmother's old house---and her store (she sold children's clothes). Then we re-passed Caroline's.

"Should we go back in?" I asked.

"No. It's got to be here somewhere. How lost can we be?"

Eventually, we found it, on the pretty green hill. Overlooking forests, and fields, and probably bears. At least, we found the cemetery. We still had to find Tom's dad.

"There's the old section," Tom quickly pointed out. "I remember that. And there's my grandmother and her family."

We stopped for a moment to read headstones.

"Nice," I said.

"But my dad's in the new section," Tom went on. "With my cousins." We walked towards that. "It should be right here."

Only it wasn't.

And with just eight-hundred people in town, you wouldn't think there'd be so many dead. Though maybe, like Tom's mother and Gerd, they'd all spent their lives other places. Still, another problem was, even if there were a million people buried, there didn't seem to be. It was one of those modern cemeteries: the new section had ground-level memorial plaques, not headstones. And spotting them was complicated by the fact no one had recently trimmed the weeds.

Plus, it was getting dark, though not because it was late---it was threatening to rain. Still, you don't want to rush anyone in a cemetery. You'll only regret it. So Tom looked. And I looked. And finally we discovered his dad.

"I see," Tom said. "That's the old tree."

We'd been counting from the not-quite-old one.

Once Tom found his father, I let him quietly pay respects and went to walk the dog. She'd been penned in the truck so she wouldn't pay her own kind of respects. Or go off chasing deer, even without a bow and arrow. Eventually, Tom joined me and we piled back in the pick-up. He didn't want to talk especially, which was no surprise. But it did seem all was right in the world. And the next one.

154 miles