Ora sits in the passenger seat of the truck where they’ve parked it at the edge of the cemetery, her bare legs pulled up under her skirt. Outside, Dale and Frank are positioning the stone for Frank’s boy underneath a walnut tree. They work in the beam of the truck headlights, one with a pick, one with a shovel, digging a space deep enough in the dirt to hold the tombstone upright. Tombstones rise like gray teeth from the earth around them, some crooked and mossy, others newer, adorned with bouquets of plastic flowers and figurines of angels.
After several minutes, Frank tosses his pick aside, and Dale stands the shovel in the dirt. They point, exchange words. Then together they lift the stone from where it waits beneath the tree and struggle to put it into place. They pack dirt around the base, pounding it down first with the back of the shovel and then with their heels. They stand back and look at it together. Then Dale turns away and starts to walk back to the truck, squinting in the beam of the headlights.
He gets into the truck and shuts the door. Outside, Frank has crouched down before the stone, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Dale looks out at him for a moment, then, as if he can’t bear to look anymore, he turns the headlights off.
Ora waits for him to speak. She has given up trying to understand what he is feeling, tonight. She waits, but he doesn’t speak; he simply stares through the windshield into the night.
“Dale,” she says.
He shakes his head.
“No, Dale,” she says. “I want to thank you. And I’m sorry for dragging you into things.”
Dale shakes his head again.
“You’re mad, I know, and I—”
“Not mad,” he interrupts her. “Not mad.”
“No?”
“Not mad.”
“That man out there’s the father of the boy—”
“I know who that man is, Ore. You think I’m a fool?”
Ora blinks at him, fumbling to understand.
“That man out there’s a father,” Dale says. His jaw trembles. “May well be a nigger, but I reckon a father’s grief is a father’s grief.”
Ora hears this and feels an awful knowledge start to burn in her limbs. She swallows, her mouth gone dry. “And what would you know about that?” she asks, combatively, fearfully.
Dale shakes his head.
“Dale?” she demands. She sees a tear run down from the corner of his eye. “Dale? Answer me, Dale!” She pounds his arm with her fist. “What do you know about a father’s grief? What do you know?” But she knows what he knows, and the force of it takes her sight away.
“Ora,” Dale says, reaching for her.
“No!” she cries, pulling away. “Stop it! Stop it!”
“Ora,” he says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He is weeping, and this time when he reaches for her she doesn’t have the energy to resist him.