XI
A CAR IN THE WOODS
Nate trudged up the incline through thick underbrush. The wild growth looked cool from the house, but hiking in them became a chore. The sound of a creek that ran parallel to the road acted as his compact. He couldn't always see the creek, but the gurgling shallow water rushing across the rock bottom would help him find his way back to the farm.
According to Hannah, it was common long ago for large estates to have a private cemetery. They agreed that Nathan Freedman was probably buried in such a place, somewhere on the land. A long shot, but one worth taking.
Deciding it best not to tell his grandparents, Nate snuck out after breakfast to search the woods for a long forgotten overgrown cemetery.
With a stick he fashioned into a staff, he probed the ground for any remnant of a burial site. But an hour into the search and he had uncovered nothing. Anything that looked like a vine covered fence, or a grave marker, erect or fallen, he investigated. From where he stood above and away from the creek, he could see that the land flowing beneath the canopy of trees. In the groves of maples, oaks, and evergreens, a carpet of leaves and fallen branches littered the ground. The thinning undergrowth made him think it would be a better choice for a search, but he would have to find another way to keep his bearing. The trees would probably muffle the sound of running water.
With this new plan in mind, he turned and headed back to the farm. He'd worn cargo pants and a long sleeved shirt to protect against insect bites, scratches from thorny vines, and the threat of poison ivy. It all work to make him miserable, hot and sweaty though. Already he missed the feel of air co...
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...t was beautiful out here. Maybe these people hadn't realized they were on private land. Or maybe they realized it, so had picked the odd parking spot.
Spotting something on the passenger seat, Nate continued to peer inside. What looked to be the sleeve of an airline ticket had been left open. This person had recently taking a flight on the same airline as he. Nate squinted against the glare off the glass to get a better look at the flight number. Flight 417. Whoa, Nate straightened and immediately froze. Beside his own reflection in the car window, a second reflection loomed behind him. Nate wondered if that warning about object being closer than they looked applied to the window as well. Because if so, he was in big trouble. He stood as still as he could, the way he heard you should if you were ever stupid enough to be hiking in the woods and ran into a bear.
Ever take a midnight train to Georgia? No, well ever drive through Georgia? When driving through Georgia on State Road 49, there is a little town called Andersonville that is very easy to miss. To many it is just another town. Yet this town has its own trail. The Andersonville Trail is a small brown dirt road that leads visitors to the Andersonville National Historic Site (Roberts xi). This National Historic Site looks like a “well- tended” national cemetery. On closer examination, this cemetery is nothing like Arlington (Roberts xi). “In this national cemetery, the marble headstones are so close together, they almost touch. The markers appear to be one long head...
Olds’ use of nature-related similes allows the reader a greater understanding of man’s worst invention—war. In describing the unburied bodies of the dead, Olds writes “they lay on the soil / some of them wrapped in dark cloth / bound with rope like the tree’s ball of roots / when it waits to be planted.” Uprooted from life but not yet planted in the ground for their eternal rest, the bodies resemble the gnarled nest of exposed tree roots. Tied up and brought under the dominion of man, the otherwise sprawling roots form a crown of thorns, just as the men die in a conflict
Results, by a single cursory document, came out from Republican Alley. In early October of 1991 “eleven bodies had been found” (Kutz 1994). When excavation ceased, due to community and political complications, more than four hundred men, women and children were exhumed from the oldest cemetery containing African Americans in the United States.
When walking the grounds of the Lewisburg Cemetery, two distinct sections emerge: an older section closest
Together they worked until the two holes were one and the same. When the depression was the size of a small dishpan, Nel’s twig broke. With a gesture of disgust she threw the pieces into the hole they had made. Sula threw hers in too. Nel saw a bottle cap and tossed it in as well. Each then looked around for more debris to throw into the hole: paper, bits of glass, butts of cigarettes, until all the small defiling things they could find were collected there. Carefully they replaced the soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass. Neither one had spoken a word. (Morrison 58-59)
The cemetery my grandfather is buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in the New York City area. It’s filled with people of all backgrounds and nationalities that came to the city and surrounding area. It has become home to many people as it was created in 1917 and it’s still active to this day, showing exactly one hundred years of progression. The location of the cemetery’s first plots is important to begin with, because New York City is an urban and central hub for lots of the world, the cemetery being outside the city in Westchester County is done on purpose. A cemetery can be a somewhat depressing sight, so it’s placed away from everyone and where they will only see it if they travel out to. It creates a separation between “us and them” (233). Because of the large number of residents from New York City are buried there, the cemetery’s origins start the progressive story of how it grew. The beginning of the cemetery tells a great deal about who was living there at the time. The original tombstones had all of the last names seemed to be
Let’s examine the short story of “Killings” by Andre Dubus. The story begins on a warm August day with the burial of Matt and Ruth Fowler’s youngest son Frank. Frank was only twenty-one: “twenty-one years, eight months, and four days” (Dubus, “Killings” 107). Attending the funeral were Matt, his wife Ruth, their eldest son Steve, his wife, their middle daughter Cathleen and her husband. Frank was buried in a cemetery on a hill in Massachusetts overlooking the Merrimack. Across from the cemetery is an “apple orchard with symmetrically planted trees going up a hill” (107), a symbol of how nice and serene the cemetery actually is and the peace Frank now has. Matt’s family is extremely distraught over the murder of their youngest son/brother, so much to make comments of wanting to kill the killer themselves, “I should kill him” (107), stated the oldest son Steve, while walking from the grave site along side his father Matt. This comment is considered a fore-shadow to what is to come in the thought process of the family members.
3. Chapter 1, page 5, #3: “Moving through the soaked, coarse grass I began to examine each one closely, and finally identified the tree I was looking for by means of certain small scars rising along its trunk, and by a limb extending over the river, and another thinner limb growing near it.
"Robert waited—holding his breath—thinking they were going to be buried alive. But the heaving stopped at last and it appeared that whatever was going to collapse had done so." (Findley, 122)
At first glance, Buried Child seems as a typical Middle American family. Dodges one-track alcoholic mind, Halie’s pestering personality and Tilden’s distant relationship with his father all seems relatively typical of an elderly Middle America family. However, this is far from being the truth.
To begin in “South”, Trethewey alludes to a battlefield where the bodies of African-American soldiers are left to decompose. “Unburied until earth’s green sheet pulled over them, unmarked by any headstones.” (46) This is the only time in the collection that the speaker ever refers to an unmarked grave. This is significant as these men were intentionally left to decompose and in the present, there is nothing to serve as a reminder to them, to the sacrifices which they made. Because of this we do not remember them, and they are lost to history. The bodies are left for such a long period of time that the earth, which moves extremely slowly, has to take action and bury the dead. This same idea is articulated within “Providence” where there is “a swamp where graves had been.” (42) This is significant as it is a callback to an image seen at the beginning of the collection in “Theories of Time and Space.” In this poem, there is a man-made beach that is referred to “26 miles of sand dumped on the mangrove swamp” (1). If the reader remembers this line it brings up the idea of a person purposely dumping sand on these graves, erasing them from sight and therefore from
He stands a long time at the meeting of the two roads and looks down one path as far as he can but it disappears in the ‘undergrowth’ as it takes a bend
When the storm was over he set out to find his great-grandfathers farm. He found some of the old foundation and the carved name on a tree and knew he was on the family compound of his dreams not terribly far from his soon to be home in the Hemlock tree.
through the landscape with a cold that ached in the bones. Every blade of grass was held
Many sands had the tree known; many green neighbors had come and gone, yet the tree remained. The mighty roots had endured such whips and scorns as had been cast upon it, but the old tree had survived, a pillar of twisted iron and horn against the now sickly sky. In the waning light of evening, the tree waited.