Three

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Mapping Plots

HERE’S HOW I get by. I bury thoughts I don’t want to deal with deep inside and store them in a place that I pretend looks like my dad’s garage workshop. It’s a real mess in there — half-finished projects abandoned and piled in the corners, workbenches covered in assorted hand tools that rarely make it back to the toolbox, overflowing garbage cans, and bent nails scattered across the floor. But my dad believes that the mess magically disappears whenever he shuts the garage door.

That’s what I have — a garage door. I just have to remember to keep it shut.

Only every once in a while, I accidentally leave the door open. When that happens, nothing is hidden.

Last night, I had the nightmare again. It started and ended the exact same way, no matter how much I wanted to change it.

I am sitting on the front steps eating a popsicle, checking out a scab on my knee. The cement is warm beneath me. I can smell fresh grass. The lawn has just been cut, and my dad rolls his mower to the backyard. A screen door squeaks, and it is Dennis from the brick house beside us. I wave. He has an orange rubber ball.

No!

I’m not going to do this now.

I pull on the garage door with all my might and it slams shut.

This time.

It was Wednesday afternoon again. Another blue-sky day. Merrilee stood waiting by the iron gate in her red plastic bunnies-and-carrots jacket, and as soon as she spotted me, she rifled through her knapsack to show me something.

“Here,” she said, handing me a book.

“Hello, Merrilee,” I replied. “I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

“No time for that,” she said. “Check this out before the Brigade gets here.”

I read the title of her book. To Catch a Bicycle Thief.

“Let me guess. There’s a secret code handwritten on the dedication page.”

“Hurry up and look,” Merrilee said.

Sure enough, there was a penciled list of seven words in the margin. Same funny letter a’s: tortoise, gargoyle, birdbath, cherub, chimes, fountain, dory.

“The last mystery book was fantastic. I could hardly put it down. It led me to this title, which looks just as good.”

I read the blurb on the back cover out loud.

“‘A book with so many plot twists, you’ll be tied up in knots.’”

I liked plot twists.

I opened to chapter 1 and read the first line to her.

“‘The sun made shadows on the face of the moon that were so deep, they could trip an astronaut.’”

Trip-able shadows. I liked that, too.

“Not bad,” I admitted. “Maybe I’ll read it when you’re done.”

She rifled through her knapsack again and pulled out two more library copies of the same book, just as Pascal joined us.

“What do you have there?” he asked.

“Books with the latest code,” said Merrilee.

“Right. The secret code,” Pascal said. “You still don’t know who’s behind this?”

“No. But I’m getting closer. Do you want a copy?”

“To Catch a Bicycle Thief,” Pascal read. Then he flipped to the dedication page that contained the secret code. “Seven words,” he said. “Shouldn’t be that hard.”

“And there are plot twists,” I added.

“Okay, why not. I’m in,” Pascal said.

“Me, too,” I said.

I put my copy into my knapsack. If I woke up from the nightmare again tonight, at least I would have something interesting to read.

“Here they come,” I said, having glanced up to see the Brigade parading across the street from the library, with Creelman in the lead.

As he marched along, Creelman jabbed his cane at a mail truck that had pulled up too close to the crosswalk for his liking.

“Maybe we’re actually going to fix some gravestones today like the sign-up sheet promised,” Pascal said.

“Not likely,” I said when I saw who was pulling up the rear. “Wooster’s holding clipboards.”

“How many more weeks of this?” Pascal lamented.

“Ten,” Merrilee chirped. “But at least now you’ve got something to read as soon as they leave.”

“Oh, sure! Reading’s okay for you,” I said. “But have you noticed that Pascal and I keep getting hit with quizzes?”

“No,” Merrilee said dryly. “I’ve been too busy reading.”

Then we all clammed up because the Brigade had arrived.

“Good afternoon,” Creelman said, but I was sure he didn’t mean it. “Ready for Lesson 3?”

“Are we going to fix gravestones today?” Pascal asked against all odds.

Why? Why did he do that? Pascal knew there was no chance of repairing today. He could see the clipboards as well as I could. Good grief!

Creelman didn’t answer. Instead, he marched over to a nearby stone and pointed to it with his cane.

“Today’s three simple rules,” he announced. “One, you must never repair a grave marker if you don’t know what type of stone it is. Two, you must never repair a grave marker unless you can identify the parts of the stone that you need to repair. Three, you must never repair a grave marker unless you can map out where it is in the cemetery to make a record of what you’ve done.”

Types, parts, maps. I imagined another deadly long afternoon ahead of me.

“This,” Creelman said, tapping a nearby stone, “is sandstone. As you can see, it’s reddish brown. Great for carving, but crumbles over time.” He moved to another stone that was much thinner. “This is slate. It’s blue gray, but it’s brittle and can peel in layers. These two types of stones are found in the oldest parts of our cemetery. They came from nearby quarries.”

“Over there,” he said, waving his cane in the direction of a cluster of whiter stones. “Marble. You already know that marble is soft, so it’s great for sculpture, but erosion takes its toll. Over time, the surface becomes grainy, like sugar. Do you know what that’s called?”

We shook our heads. Even Pascal.

“Sugaring. You’ll also find white bronze, which is really a metal called zinc. Those markers never seem to age. Even lichen stays away. And way over there in the north end, past the first hedgerow, are the granites. Granite is speckled and very hard to carve by hand. Nowadays, lasers are used to etch images into the stone. You’ll find granite in the newer parts of the cemetery.”

I could see the polished pink and black stones in the distance. They were lined up more precisely than the markers in the section we were standing in.

“Where are the white crosses?” Pascal asked.

Creelman stared at him.

“You know, the ones made out of wood, like you see in cowboy movies,” Pascal explained. He held up his two pointer fingers and crossed them, as if he were fending off a vampire.

Merrilee did not look amused, possibly because vampires ran in her family.

“This isn’t a pioneer cemetery,” Creelman growled, “but if you’re really interested, go to Ferndale. Their cemetery has a pioneer section close to three hundred years old.”

Ferndale. I clutched my knapsack. I could not hear their next words because I was struggling to keep my garage door shut.

“Derek! Are you coming?”

I snapped to. The Brigade had moved off to another section, Merrilee in tow. Pascal stood halfway between them and me.

“You okay?” he asked in a voice that told me I looked like death warmed over.

“Sure,” I lied.

But my hair was sticking to my forehead. I fished out my water bottle from my knapsack and took a big swig before we rejoined the Brigade.

“Did you hear that last bit?” Creelman demanded as soon as we caught up.

“No,” I muttered, feeling foolish and sweating all over again.

“I said that there are three basic shapes of gravestones. Upright, flat and obelisk.”

Even as I struggled to pay attention, I glanced around to see if the carved lamb was anywhere near me.

It wasn’t.

“Let’s start with the uprights. The main part is called the tablet. The tablets from our oldest stones usually have some kind of curved top that’s meant to look like a door to the other side.”

Pascal took a step toward one.

Don’t do it, Pascal, I thought as loudly as I could. Don’t do it!

But to no surprise, he couldn’t read my mind. He walked around to the back of a nearby upright grave marker, looking for who knows what behind that door. Creelman ignored him. He was getting good at it.

“The top curved part is called the lunette. These stones also have side pillars, or borders, to frame the door, like you see in churches and temples. At the top of the pillars you’ll see circular finials. The last part is the face of the gravestone. That’s where you’ll find the inscription, the place where the name and dates are recorded.”

“Inscription,” Pascal repeated. “I thought that was when the government forced people to become soldiers.”

“I think you mean conscription,” Merrilee corrected.

“Isn’t that what a doctor fills out on a pad of paper so that you can get medicine at the drugstore?”

“That’s a prescription,” she said, pushing her glasses up and looking away.

One thing about Pascal. He could be counted on to keep my mind off things.

“Moving on,” Creelman said, paying no heed to Pascal with remarkable persistence. “The flat stones that look like tables usually cover an underground family vault, or tomb. Some have chests sitting on the tabletops, but it is a mistake to think that people are placed inside those chests. The chests only mark the site of the tomb below, where everyone’s buried in the ground.”

Pascal walked over to a nearby tabletop for closer inspection.

“Some people think that the horizontal stones were used before we had public cemeteries. You would bury a family member in a field, then place a large stone on top to keep the animals away,” Creelman explained. “They were called wolf stones.”

I looked around again. There were fewer of those than of the door-shaped grave markers, and they all had more than one name on them, just like Creelman said.

“Pop quiz,” Creelman announced. “Who is entombed inside this chest?”

He just told us that no one was, that everyone was buried below in the family vault, but I knew Pascal would steer us in the wrong direction.

Sure enough, Pascal was about to read the names out loud when I cut in.

“No one,” I answered boldly. “They’re buried below.”

Creelman nodded grudgingly, perhaps annoyed that I had rescued Pascal from his latest trap.

“Lastly, the obelisks.” Creelman pointed to the tall pointy columns in the distance. “These were popular in the nineteenth century, when people became fascinated with ancient pharaohs discovered in tombs in Egypt.”

It looked to me as if the obelisks were for those who liked to show off their wealth like the pharaohs did.

“Okay, the last part of today’s lesson is how to read a map,” Creelman said.

On cue, Wooster advanced with his clipboards and handed one to each of us. The clipboards had a map and a second sheet of paper with a list of numbers and blanks to fill out.

“When you record information about the gravestone you are working on, you need to be sure you know where it is located on the map. There can be no mistakes,” Creelman warned, wagging his finger at us.

I studied my map. It marked the boundaries of the cemetery and where the iron gate was located. It showed all the stone walls and paths and major groves of trees. Some sections of the map were marked with area names: Garden of Angels, Garden of Memories, Children’s Garden, Serenity Lookout, Veterans’ Hill and Potter’s Meadow. There was a compass drawn in the corner, pointing which way was north. And the map was filled with clusters of tiny boxes, each box numbered. Every once in a while, there was a box with a pointy top marking an obelisk.

“Turn to the second page,” Creelman ordered. It was the sheet filled with numbers and blanks beside them. “You will spend the rest of the afternoon locating the grave marker for each number. When you find the grave marker, write down the name of the person buried, the year they died, the type of stone and the style of grave marker. Got it?”

Pascal rotated his map around and around, bending his head this way and that. “Which way do I point this map?” he finally asked.

“Here are two facts you can count on,” Creelman said. “Moss always grows on the north side of trees, and gravestones always face west.”

“Always?” Pascal repeated in awe.

Creelman heaved a sigh.

“No. But they mostly face west, and bodies are laid behind the stones, with their heads to the west and their feet to the east. Ministers and priests like to be buried the opposite way, to face their flock.”

“Flock? As in birds?” Pascal asked, turning to me.

I decided to pull a Creelman and ignore Pascal by asking my own question.

“I understand why ministers and priests would want to face members of their church, but why do church members want to face east?” I asked.

“What rises in the east?” Creelman asked, waving his hand toward the eastern part of the cemetery.

From where I stood, I thought the obvious answer was “ghosts,” but I knew enough not to say that out loud.

“Here’s a hint. It’s the only star in our galaxy,” Creelman added.

“Oh,” I said with relief, “the sun!”

“Correct,” Creelman said. “The dawn of a new day.” Then he hesitated. “Are you interested in astronomy?”

“The moon and the stars? Sure,” I said.

I wished I had been wearing last week’s t-shirt, the one about footprints on the moon. Instead, I glanced down and was horrified to see what I had selected. I’d turn back if I were you.

“Have you ever been to a planetarium?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted, somehow feeling as if this was my fault.

Creelman’s face fell as quickly as it had risen. He turned his attention to his cronies, and they nodded toward the iron gate.

I looked at my list. There must have been twenty-five numbers. This was going to take an eternity. Then I wondered how Merrilee was going to get out of it.

The Brigade marched out the gate without a backward glance.

“Well, boys,” Merrilee said brightly. “I believe I have a secret code to solve.”

With that she parked herself beside a nearby obelisk and opened To Catch a Bicycle Thief to a page where she pulled out her Queen of Spades bookmark.

Merrilee annoyed me, but I couldn’t tell if it was because as sure as the sun rises in the east, she would somehow manage to get out of today’s quiz, or that she was already chapters ahead in her book and seemed dead set on solving the mystery novel code before me or Pascal.

I looked at my list again. Maybe if I could cut my work in half, I could catch up to Merrilee in the reading. After all, I was a pretty fast reader myself. And lately, I had plenty of time to kill in the dead of night.

“Hey, Pascal. How about I do the first half of the list, and you do the second half. Then we’ll share answers.”

“Deal,” Pascal said with relief, and off he went.

I gave Merrilee a smug look, but she was already lost in her book.

I spent the rest of the afternoon traipsing back and forth between the rows of gravestones and filling in the blanks. It was tedious and never-ending.

But thankfully, I did not come across the gravestone with the lamb.

The Brigade returned just before quitting time.

“Let’s see your answers,” Creelman demanded.

Pascal and I handed over our clipboards to Wooster and Preeble. I kept an eye on Merrilee to see what she would do, having spent the entire afternoon reading and dead to the world.

Merrilee boldly handed over her clipboard to Creelman.

Then, amazingly, all three members of the Brigade began to mark our answers, Merrilee’s included!

How had she done it? I was certain that she hadn’t moved from that obelisk all afternoon!

Merrilee gave me a small smile as the Brigade handed back our tests.

Pascal and I each got four wrong, three of them from Pascal’s section I might add.

Merrilee got a perfect score.

“Not bad,” Creelman said gruffly to her.

As soon as the Brigade left through the iron gate for the day and was out of earshot, I pounced on Merrilee.

“How’d you do it?” I demanded.

“Simple,” she said. “When I was in the library signing out copies of To Catch a Bicycle Thief, I found the answer sheet in the photocopy room. Creelman must have made copies for Wooster and Preeble, and he left the master list behind.”

“So all you had to do was copy out the answers,” Pascal said. “Awesome.”

“It’s not awesome!” I snapped. “We’re killing ourselves out here, and she keeps getting away with murder.”

“Come on,” Pascal said, looking at his quiz. “It beats getting four wrong. If I had seen that master list, I would have done the same thing.”

“Really?” I said with sarcasm. “Is that your motto?”

“What do you mean?” Pascal asked.

“If I made you a t-shirt, would it read, I’d have done the same thing?”

Pascal grinned. “I’d love that!”

“And if you made a t-shirt for me, what would it say?” Merrilee asked.

I ignored her question. I was still mad at how she had gotten away with cheating.

“You know,” I warned. “You’re not going to have a clue when it comes time to fixing gravestones.”

“Maybe not. But I’ve already solved the first clue in To Catch a Bicycle Thief.”

She dug out her copy and flipped it open.

“Check it out,” she said.

Pascal and I leaned in and read the word she was pointing to.

“The first word in this book’s secret code is ‘tortoise.’” She slid her finger to the word that followed “tortoise.”

Pascal read that word out loud. “‘Trevor.’”

“Not many books would start with the name Trevor,” I said. “Why not do a quick library search on titles with Trevor in them. Then you could cheat the code, too.”

“Already tried it,” Merrilee said, ignoring my attempt at insulting her.

I looked at Merrilee with astonishment.

She shrugged. “When I ducked out to return the master list to the library, I did a quick search.”

I couldn’t believe that I had not seen her leave the cemetery, especially in that red plastic bunnies-and-carrots jacket of hers! Had I just been too busy with the exercise to notice?

No. A more likely explanation was that I was too tired to see things clearly. I hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in ages on account of my nightmares.

“So, this code is not going to lead to another mystery book like the last ones?” Pascal asked.

“No,” Merrilee said.“This one’s different.”