Under The Tall Oaks - pt.1

It was a sad thing, really, what happened out there in the cemetery on Woodland Road. A love story developing like a Polaroid photo in early summer - sun bleached and dew soaked, a ghost and the cemetery caretaker fall into love. And what hope can the dead and undead share?

***

Jamie had come across the caretaker job in the paper - the paper that someone before him had left sitting on the North Country Cafe’s counter. They had even circled the wanted ad in red ink. It might as well have been a beacon calling out to him. He saw it sitting there, next to the cash register as he paid his bill - coffee stained and crinkled from handling.

‘Mind if I take this?’ he asked a passing waitress.

She shrugged in reply, was gone around the counter with a fresh carafe of coffee before he could look back to her.

He imagined, later in life, that it was some sort of divine intervention that had caused the paper to be left there for him. Or maybe, really truly, just a forgetful patron of the cafe left it after they’d paid their tab. It’s hard to tell where divine intervention and happenstance cross.

The job paid surprisingly well for such a small township. There was barely an interview process, and before he knew it he was handed the keys to a truck stamped with the township’s name on the driver’s door. He was outside all day in the sun with no coworkers to try to befriend or bosses to micromanage him. All alone in the quiet, he felt strongly that he had hit the jackpot. 

Due to the disarray the cemetery had fallen into from lack of care over the years he worked long hours. Due to the fact he didn’t have anywhere else to be, it worked out well.

There’s very little known about where Jamie came from, but one got the feeling that he’d come here to escape whatever his life had consisted of before. He’d appeared into town one day - renting a little cabin off of Rider Road, driving a rusted Chevy and blending effortlessly into the background of the Iron Range. I don’t think the intent was to stay for very long, but, of course, things like that have a way of changing.

As for Ann, there’s no one who can say really why she was there. Her body, yes- that’s easily explained. She was buried, a long time ago, in the back corner of the cemetery where the oak trees shed their leaves in the fall and the deer bedded down in the spring. So tucked away from the rest of the cemetery’s residents, she was forgotten entirely. An admin error no doubt, she didn’t even appear on the cemetery plot layout map. Much the same way the walking path back to her corner of the world became overgrown and unused. The grass growing so thick and tall you’d never know it was there. A sad state of affairs. She was cut off from life and the rest of her eternal neighbors.

But why was she still there? Her essence, that is? Was there unfinished business to attend to? A task still to complete? Or had death simply missed a step? She wasn’t sure. 

Time, both for the alive and the dead, muddies memories. She wasn’t sure anymore how long she had been there in the cemetery, wasn’t sure of the year or the day or even who she had been before getting here. What she did know about herself came in bits and pieces. She could tell you which horses her father owned that were her favorite, the name of the perfume her nanny wore, and what songs she liked most from her record collection. But the vast history of herself was unknown. I’m sure you can imagine how frustrating that would be.

So what does the dead do when they’re forgotten about? Ann mostly laid in the tall grass and daydreamed. An unexpected perk of being stuck there is she had all the time in the world for make-believe. She passed the days quickly that way, inventing different lives and endings for herself. Some of them so real in her mind’s eye she felt content living out her days in her made-up worlds. Death wasn’t so bad when you were good at make-believe.

Jamie didn’t know about Ann, but Ann knew about Jamie. 

She knew about him the moment he stepped foot in the cemetery; almost the second he stepped out of the truck, she was all twisted up inside.

It was love at first sight.

Someone might argue she fell in love so quickly because Jamie was the only boy even remotely Ann’s age who had visited the cemetery for non-funeral related obligations since she’d been there. But, truly, Jamie was the type who could so easily cause others to fall, deeply, into love. 

Well that, and I’d imagine romance works differently for the dead.

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