She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,1

man who drank himself into the grave next door and dragged her along kicking and screaming so he wouldn’t have to be alone.”

“Daddy didn’t drink.”

“He drank plenty.”

Auntie Jo liked to drink, wine mostly. Auntie Jo assumed everyone drank. If Daddy drank, I never saw him. Momma did, not much, though, not like Auntie Jo.

Daddy’s stone only had his name, birthdate, and the date of his death. Same day as Momma. If my Auntie Jo had her way, he might not have a stone at all. Luckily, it had not been up to Auntie Jo—the guys at the hardware store where Daddy worked all pitched in and paid for both, on account of Momma and Daddy not having put money aside for burials. Both stones were carved from the same slab of black granite. Momma’s shone, having been polished meticulously by Auntie Jo when we arrived. Daddy’s carried a layer of dust and dirt, the surface dull beneath. I’d come back later to clean it, make it shine like Momma’s.

I was four when they died, and the rounded tops of both gravestones had towered over me. Now, though, I was more than a foot taller. I stood up now and smoothed my jeans over knobby knees.

“Where are you going?”

“I wanna go for a walk.”

Auntie Jo frowned. “You should stay and talk to your mother. I’m sure she would like to hear everything that happened in the past year.”

I rolled my eyes again and placed a hand on Momma’s gravestone. “Momma, I’m eight. I have no friends because most kids are dumb. Auntie Jo still won’t let me eat chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, and school is boring. I’ll report back in another year, maybe sooner if something changes with the cookies.”

Auntie Jo waved the hand with the cigarette over her head. “Go. Just don’t wander off too far.”

I gave Daddy’s stone a quick look. I’d come back and talk to him. I just couldn’t do it with Auntie Jo listening in.

Snatching the radio off the blanket, I extended the antenna to full mast, increased the volume, and held the little box out before me as I started up the small hill toward the rest of the cemetery.

Momma and Daddy were buried on the south end of the cemetery under a red maple tree. This time of year, the leaves were fire engine red.

The static broke for a second and I thought I heard Elton John, but then he was gone again. I reached the top of the hill and made a sharp left, careful to stay on the stone pathway and not walk over the graves on either side.

I paused when I reached the mausoleums, all positioned in two neat rows with a stone pathway down the center.

Pittsburgh had a lot of cemeteries. This particular one, All Saints Hollow, was one of the largest.

The mausoleums.

I didn’t much like the mausoleums.

When we drove by a cemetery, Auntie Jo said you’re always supposed to hold your breath the to keep the spirits of the dead from finding you. I’m not sure why this rule didn’t apply when you were actually in the cemetery, but if it applied anywhere, it would be at the mausoleums. The air was still here. I pictured the dead peeking out from the cracks in the stone, bony hands ready to reach out and snatch unsuspecting little boys, pulling us inside those squat structures, never to be seen again.

I drew in a deep breath, pulled the radio to my chest, and ran down the center of the mausoleums, nearly tripping when Steve Perry started to blare from the speaker.

I reached the far end of mausoleum row and blew out the air, the speaker again going back to static. I had no idea why the radio worked in the middle of those buildings, and I didn’t really care. I could find another spot. I wasn’t going back in there.

Looking out over two hundred and seventy acres of rolling hills, I could no longer see Auntie Jo or the red maple.

The cemetery came to an end at a thick tree line. A black metal bench sat beneath the trees, a willow sweeping over the top, a canopy of thin leaves and moss weighted in shadows. Upon that bench sat a girl. About a hundred feet from the girl, a woman in a long white coat stood beside a white SUV on one of the cemetery’s access roads, her hands in her pockets.

It wasn’t hot out, but it wasn’t cold, either, too