Cold Falls the Rain

From the window in her room upstairs, the girl had a near perfect view of the little churchyard just across the way. She could easily see over its iron-spiked and rusted fencing and count the gravestones if she wished, right up to the ones that disappeared around the corner of the old church building. Most days, she could also see the little gravedigger. Most days, rain or shine, if there was work to be done, he would be the one to do it. Rain or shine, a stooped little man with a stooped and shuffling gate and a grim disposition as palpably cold as the earth he shifted. There he would be, cigarette in his mouth and shovel in his hand...digging, digging away.

Most days, the girl could see another figure out there as well. Most days, rain or shine, as constant as the gravedigger, though perhaps not so little and possessing neither stooped and shuffling gate nor grim disposition of palpable coldness. He was aways sans cigarette and always sans shovel, standing so still and so thin...and always at the same solemn gravestone.

That day it rained. That day it poured down, cold droplets falling so hard and so fast they formed an icy shroud to choke the twisty little trees that lined the churchyard’s iron-spiked and rusted fencing. The bitter, blackened sky above clapped and roared its thunder, sounding quite like great drumbeats of war up there in the heavens, drumbeats so close and so loud they set the windowpanes to rattling and reverberated deeply through the bones of both the living and the dead alike.

Despite the elements, despite the rain veiled air and bruised black heavens and the shivering, shuddering cold, still the girl could see the churchyard. That day, when she looked out through the rain, she could see someone there digging, digging away. But it was not the gravedigger. Not that day.

The girl watched. The figure was one she recognized. This figure was the same as he who stood so still and so thin in the same spot by the same grave very nearly every day. Though still sans cigarette, he was not sans shovel and, if she was not mistaken, he was digging away at the very grave by which he always stood.

The girl watched. She watched the figure dig deeper and deeper until his head disappeared and all that could be seen of him was the spade. Up it came to add cold earth to a heavy rising heap, down again for another bite. She watched as the figure eventually scrambled his way up and out of the hole, as he moved his way through the gravestones, through the ghostly veil of rain. She watched as he stopped, as he stooped to grab at something on the gravel-earth ground, something she could not see from her window. She watched as he dragged the thing, a heavy thing, back to the deep of the hole he had dug. She watched as he pushed the thing in.

Without a word, the girl rose from her seat at her desk by the window and drifted her way down rickety stairs. She pulled on her ragged woolen coat with its ragged patches at its ragged elbows, and ventured out into the rain. Into the cold, cold rain.

The figure did not notice her at first. He was far too busy muttering to himself, all shivering thinness and shuddering focus as he tossed shovelfuls of muddy gravel-earth back into the deepness of the hole. The girl, saying nothing, merely stood still and silent as any ghost between crumbling gravestones torn and pockmarked by shrapnel all those many years ago.

The figure stopped his shoveling when finally he saw her there. Rather a young man he was, thin lipped and hollow cheeked, with sunken, red-rimmed eyes that burned like dying blue embers in the ashen paleness of his face. He wore no cap against the chill and his hair, drenched and darkened by the rain, plastered flat against his forehead. He pushed it back with a bone white hand.

“I’ve seen you before,” the girl said.

He nodded. “And I’ve seen you.”

“You’re not the gravedigger.”

The young man had water running down his face, trailing icy tears that dripped from a smooth-shaven chin. He wiped at his thin nose with the thin cuff of his thin, rain-soaked sleeve. “No, I’m not.”

“Then why are you doing his job?”

“Well...he can’t exactly do it anymore. Look.”

She did, drifting close to allow her eyes to follow the young man’s gesture and gaze down into the yawning dark of the grave. A motionless pair of legs lay twisted and tangled atop a semi-unearthed coffin far below, the torso attached to them mostly obscured by shovelfuls of mud. The girl said nothing.

“He found the locket,” the young man said beside her. “Shouldn’t of kept it, but I couldn’t help myself. Must’ve fallen out of my pocket.... He found it, but he’s not going to tell anybody. And neither are you.”

Still the girl said nothing.

The young man was watching her, his blueish lips trembling in silent shivers. He hunched his shoulders against the cold, rendering him stooped and vulture-like. When he spoke again, his voice was almost gentle. “Do you want to run?”

“Would it do me any good?”

He sneezed. “Maybe. All this rain...I think I’m drowning. You might just make it back to your little house over there, if you try.”

“And then?”

“Your father isn’t home, is he? Nah, he probably got blown up or shot or something.”

“Yes,” the girl said. “He never got a gravestone. He was never found.”

The young man nodded, gazing soberly at her through eyes half-focused and foggy blue. “Sorry to hear it. Sorry you’re all alone...you and your ma.”

The girl eyed him steadily. “If I don’t run, will you let her be?”

“Course.” He sneezed again and shivered with a violence to match the chill of so dark a day. “Wasn’t made for the cold, me.... Could you...that is, would you mind terribly...getting in? In the hole, I mean. I could try to push you, but...I’d rather not.” He drew his feeble excuse for a coat tighter about his narrow shoulders, sniffling and hugging his skinny arms to his chest for what little good it did him. “Sorry if it’s an inconvenience.”

The girl was expressionless. “Dying is something of an inconvenience.”

The young man, seeming surprised by the bluntness of her reply, choked on something akin to laughter, though it shifted quickly into a bout of thick and sickly coughing. “Can’t argue,” he gasped when finally the fit seeped away. “Dying must be sodding awful. Sure, I’ll find out for myself someday.... But not yet. S’your turn now. Come on.”

The girl hesitated. She knew that she should try to run. She knew that she should try to scream, but...she did not want to. Besides, who was there to hear her over the drumming, roaring thunder? Over the racing, pounding rain? Who except her poor mother?

“Come on, love. Do it for your ma.”

The girl did as she was told. The young man—quite the gentleman, really—offered her his hand and helped to lower her into the dark and muddy hole with the gravedigger, with the coffin. The grave was deep, much deeper than she was tall. She gazed up at the young man from down there below, blinking raindrops from her eyes and waiting patiently for him to begin filling the hole.

“You always stand at this same grave,” she said. “Why?”

“Because it’s Marianne,” said he, taking the gravedigger’s shovel to hand and preparing to finish his work. “She was not yet ten, you know.”

The girl nodded. “And the locket was hers.”

“Yes.” He tossed a shovelful of mud at the girl’s feet and sneezed so hard he staggered. “Excuse me...” Another shovelful.

“Why did you take her life away?”

The young man hesitated. He shivered so violently now that he could barely keep any earth on the spade. “I would tell you if I knew. Selfish of me, I do know that.... Very selfish.” He made to send down another shovelful, but lost his grip on the rain-slick handle. The shovel slid and scraped its way over the grave’s edge, falling to land in the girl’s ready hands.

“Sorry! So sorry.” The young man was almost stammering, embarrassed by his own clumsiness. “Might I have that back, please?”

“Certainly.” The girl raised the implement up out of the hole spade first. The young man bent down to wrap thin, trembling fingers around the shaft and tried to lift the thing away, but the girl’s grip held fast. The young man looked surprised. Confused. Almost hurt by her defiance.

“Please?” he said, his voice betraying his uncertainty. “For...for Ma?” The growling sky above gave a wild clap of thunder, startling the young man most terribly and causing him to cast his fearful gaze heavenward, as if he expected to see a legion of angels descending upon him in all their fury. It was then that the girl gave a sharp tug on the shovel, bringing the young man tumbling down into the dark of the hole with her...with her and with the twisted legs of the gravedigger and with the resting coffin of Little Marianne.

The young man gave a weak, half-strangled cry that shattered like glass as he crashed down hard at the girl’s feet. He lay there helpless in the mud and wet, coughing and wheezing and, the girl realized, weeping uncontrollably. After a moment, she took pity on him, and knelt down beside him in the over-crowded grave.

“Hush, now,” she said, helping to turn him onto his back and stroking his sodden hair from his face. “Hush and lie still.”

He could not be still for his shivering, but he did try, bless him. The young man’s wide and haunted eyes, so ancient and yet so youthful, sought the girl’s and conveyed the very thing that he had been suspecting all along. His pale fingers caught and plucked at her sleeve, like those of a fearful child seeking solace from its mother.

“Is it my turn after all?” he murmured.

The girl nodded.

“Will I see Marianne?”

“I don’t know,” she said, all gentleness and sympathy. “Do you wish to see her?”

“I...I don’t know.”

The girl made no reply. Leaning over him, she pressed her lips against the young man’s brow, against skin so cold...and soon to be colder. It was a blessing he did not deserve, but for a man so condemned as he it seemed the very least she could do.

Using the shovel to aid her, the girl climbed her way up and out of the muddy grave. She stood there at its edge for a time, looking down upon the young man, upon the gravedigger, upon Marianne.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

The young man was staring skyward, blind and broken and almost empty. The rain pooled silver in his cloudy eyes, mixing with his tears and tracing pale tracks through the mud on his face and in his hair. His voice when he spoke was soft, barely above a whisper. “No.”

“That’s fine,” the girl said. “Neither was Marianne.”

She took a shovelful of earth and tossed it into the hole.