Graveyard Work

The first time I saw my grandmother lay one down, I was nine years old and I was not supposed to be awake.

It was November. She went out after midnight with a linen cloth folded under her arm and three nails in her apron pocket, and she did not take the lantern. I followed her down the lane as far as the churchyard wall. She did not go in. She went round to the north side, where the dike is lower and nobody cuts the grass, and she knelt outside it and dug with her hands.

I heard her speak to the hole in the ground the way you speak to a dog that will not stay. Low, and not kind, and not angry either.

Then I heard iron on stone. Three times.

When she stood up, she did not turn around. She said, "Go home, Hazel. Another way than the one you came."

I have never known how she knew I was there. I went home across the wet field and lay in bed with my boots still on, and in the morning she gave me bread with salt on it before she let me speak.