A Trip to the Grave Yard

A Trip to the Grave Yard with Mr. Farren

By the time they were digging the sun was but a tiny dot of mauve in the sky, the rain punctured through the veil of warmth left by day with long white trails of mist, the ground turned viscous and glutinous and the great tree that stood witness to that awful deed was stoop as the lowering sun. Mr. Farren, the oldest of the diggers, spat on the ground with every piece of dirt sticking to his dry lips, and just as that he was begging for God’s mercy. His impatience was impeccable and every often he would swear that by his dead wife’s dead mother it’s far to a labor and that it should not have come to this. Mr. Robstone, the youngest of them all, was sitting on the ground by the open grave, hugging his legs in terrible silence and every now and then was trembling awfully as fear slowly creeping and pinching his back. It was known that Mr. Robstone was a coward, and that darkness was his greatest fear but I did not know how fearful he was up ‘till then. The last two young fellows, which their names I do not remember any more, were toiling quietly over the grave, wiping sweat off their chins and foreheads with no apparent expression on their faces. And I, Ms. Lowland, was sitting there on the highest branch of that stoop tree, looking intently on the working men with wide open eyes and a great interest.

“What are you doing?” I asked every once in a while, but Mr. Farren would hush me with another curse and a mercy begging of God. He was quite the talent in cursing, for he drew these colorful images in his innovative word-play. My father, may his soul rest in peace, in spite of his great fondness of Mr. Farren’s company told me numerous times that I should keep my distance of this caddish poor man, and even once removed him with force of our house in accusation that his words were far too strong for a girl at my early age. Poor Mr. Farren never forgot this and frequently used to color my dad with his beautiful color-words. At least that was until my father got sick and the bond between those two grew stronger. In his will my father wrote that I am to be entrusted in the strong and somewhat shaky hands of Mr. Farren and ever since he did a magnificent work in improving his language (it does not mean of course that a funny colorful word weren’t to slip every once in a while, how life would go on without those so many beautiful colors? Black and white can be so dull…).

At this point of time I was usually tending my daily bath and afterward having my evening supper along with Mr. Farren only son, which was not of his own but an orphan, a rather interesting and well educated young fellow that goes by the name of Dervin Sonbersucken, but on this very special occasion I got the notion that there are far more interesting things going on and instead of supplying Mr. Sonbersucken with my most lovely company I jumped on the back of Mr. Farren’s wagon and accompanied him, without his knowledge, to this and here graveyard. When he found me hidden under a yellow stack of straw he colored me ever so gently with very kind words and a nice little slap with the back of his hand (which was nothing but an appropriate educational experience for a sassy young girl such as I and did not hurt a little bit, for Mr. Farren will never hurt me being a kind old fellow as he was). Even though his temper was as grave as an awakening groundhog still he let me accompany him, for the time was late and the road was long.

“So what are you doing?” I asked once again for the God knows how many times, and all I got was an angry muffle of words, which very surprisingly came from one of those young fellows’ mouth and not of my dear old strange bugger. I nudged my shoulder in acceptance and waited to see where all this huff and puff were going at.

My hair blew all around me with this cold and fondling little gust of wind, which also averted the trickling rain to hit my nose rather than hit the back of the shielding tree. My legs, as if by themselves, started darting forward and back, swinging one after the other as my eyes drifted to the black menacing clouds. I could hear them talking to me, telling me funny stories about the vast countries they traveled, the magnificent sights they’ve seen and the huge oceans that lay far in the end of this land. I listened intently to their stories and completely forgot where I was and what was going around, when suddenly the rain stopped and the noise silenced. Looking down I could see this strange bunch taking a large box out of the grave, and dropping it with an echoing thump on the mushy ground. No rotting corpse or a desecrated mummy, not a skeleton of a wretched witch or some plain old body which was laid to rest. Nothing but an ugly looking rusting box.

Mr. Farren hit the lock with his great shovel several times, and also blessed the brown wretched thing of a lock a numerous times, until the ancient rusted mechanism agreed to yield. The box was opened with a shrilling squeak by the masculine hands of those two nameless fellows, and I noticed that young Mr. Robstone was nowhere to be found. The poor kid must have wet his pants half way into the grave and ran all the way back to the village in search for his dear mommy.

Eagerly I jumped of my branch and took my place by the side of now dirty Mr. Farren, and with curious little eyes I waited for a bunny to jump out of the box, or maybe a hip of gold that will pour off it, a giant mountain of sweets or maybe a handful of grateful fairies that will grant us million wishes! But instead there was nothing inside it but some stack of old papers, half torn half crumbling, which seemingly made my dear old Mr. Farren so happy that he jumped up and down along with the others, dancing in the puddles and singing hallelujah. I was bored – what’s so interesting about a stack of papers? But who am I to miss a party when one happened by, so along I joined the merry bunch in dancing and singing and filling our clothes from top to bottom with mud and dirt without a care in the world.

Many years passed since then and now I’m all grown woman with kids of my own. The papers, as later came to my knowledge, were of the possession of some lands in the west that this eccentric old land lord deemed to be buried with him. Of course by the time they were recovered by my merry band the land was already in the possession of some government official who heard or cared nothing about. Still, when I go back to the old gravestone of dear Mr. Farren I think back on that day in the graveyard and recall of the beautiful adventure I had on that special day. I don’t care for the lost opportunity for being rich or famous landlord, I don’t not even care for the lost treasure of million wishes, what I do care for is the image that came to my mind of your Robstone wetting his pants, or the two fellows opening that treasure box, the colorful words of Mr. Farren and the magnificently happy dance in the puddles, for the treasure I found that day was far greater than anything a paper could buy.