Later that afternoon, with their father gone to the Wolfe house and Sudie sitting by the woodstove reading a Ramona book, Grover decided he’d take care of something that had been bothering him since he’d woken up. He went out back, got their wheelbarrow and a rake from the shed and headed to Riverside. The day had turned colder, and it made the wheels of the wheelbarrow squeak. He was rolling the wheelbarrow up the street when he noticed Clay kicking the soccer ball against the side of his house. In the cold air, it made a ringing sound.
Grover tried to hurry past, but when he sped up, the wheels squealed louder.
“You working in the Bamboo Forest?” Clay asked, running over.
“I’m going over to the cemetery,” Grover said, not stopping.
“Need some help?” Clay asked. “Mama says yard work is my long suit.”
“That’s okay,” Grover said. He was embarrassed that he’d kicked the tapestries at the grave all around last night and didn’t want Clay to see what a mess he’d made.
“Back home I took care of the family plot,” Clay said. “I used to mow and weed-eat the whole thing. I was careful not to nick any of the old gravestones.” He sighed. “I sort of miss taking care of it. Of course I miss that Mama paid me good too.”
“See you,” Grover said and started back up Edgemont, the wheelbarrow still screeching. He glanced back and saw Clay walking slowly back toward his house, his shoulders slumped. Clay halfheartedly kicked a walnut that bounced up the street.
“Now that I think about it,” Grover called to him, “I probably could use some help.”
Clay walked along with him, talking the whole way up the street, past the Bamboo Forest and through the big iron gates of Riverside. When they reached his mother’s grave, Grover was surprised to find that someone had already straightened up. Jessie must’ve come by. The tapestries all seemed to be in one piece.
“I don’t understand,” Grover said, picking up a couple of the smallest weavings. “I kicked these all over the place last night. I thought they’d be smashed to pieces.”
Clay picked one up and tugged on it. “These weavings of yours don’t tear up.” Clay handed it to Grover.
Grover pulled on it, gently at first, then harder.
“Remember that first time I met you?” Clay said. “Kicked the soccer ball right into one you were working on. That ball didn’t hurt your weaving hardly at all. You know why?”
“Bamboo’s strong,” he said. “We did a section in my science class on it back at Bakersville Elementary. They use bamboo in Asian countries to frame houses. They even make big buildings with it. It stands up to earthquakes better, because it’s flexible and strong too. You’ve been framing your weavings with the toughest thing there is. Plus you tie some mean knots to hold ’em together.” Clay talked more about bamboo, as they straightened up a little more around the plot. “Technically bamboo’s a grass. A big old grass, still it’s a grass.”
As Clay helped him pick up and rake around his mother’s plot, Grover remembered the funeral. It had been a clear warm Saturday in early April. The warmest day they’d had so far. Jonquils and bright pink and red azaleas had been in bloom throughout the cemetery. Riverside was so crowded with mourners that people had to park all along Edgemont Road and walk several blocks to the grave. Many were teachers, others were families and students who had gotten to know Grover’s mother during the fifteen years she’d been at Claxton. Some students were now grown men and women and had families of their own. In all the years they’d lived next to the cemetery, never had Grover seen such a crowd. At the center of what must’ve been hundreds of people, Grover and Sudie sat with their father under a tent with other close friends and family.
The urn with their mother’s ashes sat on a small pedestal above a neat square hole Jessie had dug. Sudie sat next to Grover, her face about to crumble as it had crumbled so many times that week. She clutched the tiny silver cylinder attached to a necklace that hung around her neck. Grover had stuffed his in his pocket. Nancy, the Buddhist priest, a friendly woman with warm green eyes and very short gray hair, had given them the cylinders before the funeral, telling them they contained a sprinkling of their mother’s ashes.
During the ceremony Grover worked the Rubik’s cube Jessie had given him, and Sudie leaned against their father and petted Biscuit, who, in the middle of the ceremony, had somehow threaded his way through the crowd and appeared beside Sudie’s chair. Nancy spoke for a while, talking about what a kind, generous and patient person Caroline Johnston had been. Grover guessed that was true. But Nancy didn’t say anything about how unreasonably strict their mother could be, never letting them watch TV on a week night, not letting them leave the table till they’d eaten all their vegetables or not letting them go anywhere till their rooms were picked up. She didn’t mention anything about how every now and then their mother would lose it and scream at them, like whenever Sudie and he argued about whose turn it was to do the dishes or when they left dirty clothes or dirty dishes in the middle of their rooms. Mostly she’d been a good mother. Mostly she’d been a good wife. Mostly she’d been a good counselor. But listening to Nancy praise his mother, Grover felt he was hearing about someone he only vaguely recognized.
“Bamboo sends out these things they call rhizomes underneath the ground,” Clay said as they finished raking up the grave. “Which is how come it spreads so easy.”
“Rhizomes?” Grover asked. Every now and then the Bamboo Forest sent out shoots underneath the fence that miraculously sprouted up several yards into the cemetery. Jessie often had to cut them back. Sometimes Grover would notice a new green shoot sprouting right out of a grave itself.
As they were heading out of the cemetery, the boys passed Jessie, who had a wheelbarrow too. His was piled with broken tree branches that had fallen in last night’s storm.
“Thanks for straightening up Mama’s grave,” Grover said.
Jessie stopped. “I haven’t been over there today, and Matthew’d said he was planning to take today off, so I don’t know who it could’ve been.”
Grover thought about the weaving and the toolbox his father had found this morning. He looked back in the direction of his mother’s grave and felt a tingle travel up his spine.