“There once was a man who came here every day . . . ”

These words came from the mouth of an extremely tall, slouched man leaning against a shovel firmly planted in the ground. His height border-lined on the monstrous, and his limbs were slender and stick-like; his hands poking from the sleeve of his frayed, black, wool jacket, with long, gnarled fingers ended with nails jagged and charcoal with dirt. His hair nearly did not exist on the top of his head, but from the back, the stringy, graying, yellowish-orange bundle draped down over his shoulders, though. Above his lip and nestled on his chin was a scraggly bush of dark, gray strands, as well. His face was wrinkled, his eyes were sunken, and his eyebrows were comically bushy — this was a picture of someone who undoubtedly lived an eccentric and unique life.

“ . . . He walked the graveyard like a zombie, or a sleepwalker, weaving between the stones and statues . . . “

This classic image was speaking to another man, who appeared much younger and less anachronistic. The other man had short, cropped black-brown hair, and fair, unblemished, Spanish skin. He was three-fifths as tall as the shovel-holder, and significantly bulkier; he wore a heavy, blue, denim coat that either made him look more muscular than he was, or hid his true, Herculean physique. His gaze was intently absent, entirely focused on other things than what was going on around him. His black eyes, shadowed under thick brows, refused to meet anything anywhere in the vicinity of the talking scarecrow.

“ . . . Nobody really knew who he was here to visit, what cliientéle he came to inspect . . . “

He needs a top hat, thought the silent, Hispanic man, swirling the saliva in his mouth around in boredom. ’S cold. “Eh, maybe we should dig this hole, hombre?” he suggested, shifting in his posture and swinging the shovel he had in his hands up to his right shoulder. As he moved, the crunch of the white snow sounded underneath his boots. The first man cast no side-long glance at the other, seeming to acknowledge his presence even less than the other did his; his head continued to be tilted upward and his barely-visible, squinting slits for eyes proceeded to not stop examining the cloudless, empty, blue sky.

“ . . . Some say he was the widower of a beautiful maiden, unjustly taken by premature death in disease; yet others, they say he was a ghost, or demon, or devil. People say a lot, and I dun’ really pay no mind . . . “

The row of headstones they stood before stretched left and right, up and down the white field, for as far as they eye could see; many, many more selfsame rows criss-crossed around them — it was a very, very large cemetery. Beneath the thin layer of snow, grass could be seen poking out, complaining that it had been a sudden and unpredicted snowstorm, loudly. Right now, however, the temperature was a frosty zero degrees Celsius, as was the trend for the dead-middle of Winter, so the grass would have to suffer and wait for it to get warmer for the snow to melt. In the far distance, northward, a pine forest rose out of the landscape; to the south, a red-and-black brick building stood proudly. The cemetery was located on a rolling hill, so the effect of the whole panorama was spectacularly dramatic and well-noted by the locals as the scene to be at on a mystical night with a pale, red, whole moon — if you were into that kind of thing, of course.

“ . . . They called him Walker, because all he did was walk, carefully and slowly, stepping respectfully around the graves. That’s somethin’ I can ‘preciate, there, too: a man who knows not to tread on the Dead. The whole time he walked, though, he store at ‘is feet, too, not at nobody’s final resting place . . . “

It was a varied and eclectic showcase of graves. Some were marked by simple, rounded tombstones, while Greek and Latin crosses lorded over other gravesites. At the peak of the hill, where it was the highest up, a monumental, angelic woman stood guard over the whole place, with wings splayed out in full glory and her body poised defiantly; chest stuck out, back arched, arms bent and in one hand gripped a sword, the other a Holy Bible. The marble-gray lady was draped in a Roman toga, with bare feet and bracers strapped to her forearm. Around her head, a crown of thorny roses sat, cutting into her stone flesh. The statue had been built ages ago, thus it was weather-worn, eroded by the winds and rains of the past. This was her Kingdom, the land of stone shapes of every shape and size, cracked and overgrown with weeds.

“ . . . . On one par-tic-u-lar o-ccasion, they say, he knelt down and prayed at the feet of Our Lady Death — which is what they call ‘er over there on the hill — for one whole night, during the Harvest Moon. All kinda sounds like a folk tale, I s’pose, eh?”

The old scarecrow let out a raspy chuckle and spat out a black chunk of tobacco onto the ground. “C’mon, now, José, let us dig ourselves a hole,” he instructed, stretching his back then hefting his shovel. “Alright, jefe,” agreed the stronger man. They both began to plant the head of their tools into the ground, wrenching it in with their feet and strength, tossing aside mounds of snow, grass and dirt. In the short span of three-quarters of an hour, they had constructed a square pit of approximately six-by-three-by-six, at the foot of a small, simple, rectangular gravestone. The letters, intricately inscribed on the marker, were:

Marcus Redford O’Briarfield