what it was like to be eighteen and in love, and you are a semi-responsible adult who will soon go to college and I will long for the day you asked my permission to spend the night with a trustworthy boy who doesn’t drink and who makes art out of bones’?”
“He makes art out of bones?”
“Animal, not human, and maybe I should have left that out.” She settles onto the arm of the couch and studies me. “You told me when we got here to let you know what I needed. I need this,” I say. “Please.”
She sighs. “Are you really in love?”
“I think so.”
We look at each other for a long time. And then she says, “Go.”
* * *
—
Miah and I drive down Main Road, and neither of us is saying anything because we don’t have to. The weather says it all. Dreary. Wet. Gray. No matter how much he talks about living in the moment, I know he’s feeling it like I am—our time here has run out. I’m telling myself it’s all going to be fine.
Halfway to Rosecroft, he pulls off on the side of the road at a break in the trees and a path that leads into the forest. He digs through the glove compartment and then the center console until he comes up with a ring of keys, shining gold and silver against the bleakness of the day.
He climbs out of the truck and comes around to my side, opens my door. We walk together, hand in hand, fingers entwined, over the damp leaves under the live oaks.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
Several yards later, we arrive at an arched and rusted gate with an old-fashioned lock and a NO TRESPASSING sign. He tries one key after another until he finds the right one.
I say, “What is this place?” The rain is pouring, relentless and resolute, as if it will always fall like this for the rest of our lives. Taking off my fisherman’s cap, I just give in to it, and within seconds I am drenched, head to toe.
“Behavior Cemetery.” He pushes open the gate.
And then I see the graves: flat gray rectangles all in a line, rugged markers that jut up out of the earth, plain headstones covered in moss, carved angels with hands outstretched or folded in prayer.
Miah says to the cemetery and the trees and the sky, “We ask permission of the dead to enter.”
Then we’re inside, the rain falling in a steady, tapping chorus. Some of the graves are covered in flowers, books, dishes, cups, oil lamps.
“There’s a belief that the spirits of the dead stick around, and the only way to keep them from bothering the living is to give them a kind of offering, things that belonged to them when they were alive.” His voice is hushed, as if the dead might hear him. “The lamps are to light their way through the unknown.”
We walk each row, reading the epitaphs, words of love and loss, the names and dates, and sweet, sad lines from Rudyard Kipling and J. M. Barrie and Oscar Wilde.
THIS IS A BRIEF LIFE, BUT IN ITS BREVITY IT OFFERS US SOME SPLENDID MOMENTS, SOME MEANINGFUL ADVENTURES.
SECOND STAR TO THE RIGHT AND STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING.
TO LIVE IS THE RAREST THING IN THE WORLD. MOST PEOPLE EXIST, THAT IS ALL.
At the end of a row, beside her mother, is Claudine Blackwood. SHE REFUSED TO BE BORED CHIEFLY BECAUSE SHE WASN’T BORING. It’s Zelda Fitzgerald.
“I love Zelda too,” I say.
There are names I recognize and names I don’t.
I say, “There are so many stories here that no one outside this island will ever know.”
“All the more reason to write them down.”
We make our way into the African American section of the cemetery, past Clovis and Aurora and Beatrice Samms, their graves covered in flowers. A lantern rests on Clovis’s headstone, the light burning bright in the gloom of the day.
“Who’s in charge of the lantern?”
“Technically, Clovis’s family, but the Park Service keeps an eye on it too. And I check in on it now and then. Make sure it doesn’t go out.”
At the far end of the graveyard is a crumbling stone wall, shoulder height, curved like a half-moon. We climb up on it, and Miah tells me the stories of our adventures so that I’m reliving them from his point of view. He tells me about how he felt the first time I found a shark tooth on my own. He tells