Shingles

Past the apple trees, where the gravel path ran out, they came to the little markers. The first time, they thought they’d make simple crosses. But then crosses didn’t seem right. So they just used big, smooth, wide shingles. They rose from the dirt, pale and soft. First blooms. Crocuses.

Ella had painted the names on with a stencil and Wynn had driven the shingles in with a mallet. Working together. In death as in life. A joke. They came out here often. It was a part of their weekend walk, most weeks. Past the apple trees, the house hidden by the low hill, here they were. It wasn’t painful anymore, but it wasn’t unpainful either. “Firefly,” “April" (short for April Fool), “Onion.”

Cats. Cats who sure didn’t deserve to be forgotten. So they didn’t forget them. They came out here and remembered. They had been blessed with so many companions over the years. And they never thought of them as property, or even workers. When people would ask Ella if So-and-so was a good mouser, she’d wrinkle her nose like the air suddenly went bad. “She likes to catch mice, yes,” she’d say, unless it was Gent or Playo she was talking about. With the dogs it was a little different. Dogs liked to work. Even after they turned gray, like leaves turning on the tree, they liked to work. Still, they only had their dogs do the work they chose for themselves, if they were of the working inclination.

Bullmoose, whose marker they set beneath the giant oak, loved pulling roots of all things. When Wynn cleared the land east of the house, Bullmoose helped. Real help, not a child’s impeding help that makes a parent proud and exasperated all at once, but real help. He had a passion for pulling. Milady put herself on guard duty after Ella had Beth Anne. She’d patrol the house and watch out the front windows for hours on end. Beth Anne lived a thousand miles from here now. And Milady died a good five years ago.