It’s the headstones he can’t read that bother Jimmy. Uncle Rick started preaching at the Lutheran church before he was born, so Jimmy’s used to the cemetery. Mostly. He’s been mowing the church grounds since he turned twelve. An exhilarating prospect, it seemed, the ability to operate machinery without any grown-ups looking over his shoulder. Uncle Rick and Aunt Eliza never give him any peace at anything else. It’s always wash your hands or help can these pickles or have you finished your homework? He wonders if his parents were like that when they were still alive, but he can’t remember.
He drags the mower from the shed. He pulls a cord, and the mower starts with a wheezy cough. It would be better if he had a riding mower, he thinks as he begins his circuit of the churchyard. If he did, he wouldn’t feel the chill of walking over someone’s grave. With his parents’ graves, he stands to the side and pushes the mower way over, bending his body in a funny arc to avoid stepping on them. But he can’t do it like that for every plot; it’d take all weekend to mow.
No, other than his parents, Jimmy walks all over the dead every Saturday. Ordinarily it’s no big deal. The somber, shiny headstones don’t seem to mind, and the big fancy pillars almost seem to like having the unruly grass tamed and in order. But a few of the really old ones, the thin flaking slabs with indiscernible markings on them, the ones that encourage dead-looking weeds to flower and bloom nearby, those don’t like it at all. A chill shoots through his heel, up his leg, and grips his heart with icy fingers each time he walks on one of those.
His friend Bo says it’s because witches are buried in the ancient graves. Jimmy doesn’t think that’s right. Weren’t witches forbidden from hallowed ground? Something like that. Thinking of Bo makes him suddenly appear, as usual, and Jimmy lets the mower die. Locust song rises to fill the silence.
“Ho, Bo,” he says, grinning.
Bo waves and stuffs his hands in his overall pockets. He is chewing a piece of wheat, even though there are no wheat fields in town anymore. Not since—Jimmy screws up his face, trying to remember what Ms. Taylor said in a history lesson—not since the Depression or some crazy long time ago. It’s all about corn anymore.
“Whatcha doin’, Jimmy?” Bo asks amiably. He is a simple boy, who would be in special ed classes if he went to school, which he doesn’t. Now he thinks about it, Jimmy is sure he’s never run into Bo outside the churchyard. Bo always asks questions to which the answer seems ridiculously obvious.
“Mowin’,” Jimmy replies. “The old ’uns are angry today. They been grabbin’ my heartstrings something fierce.” He likes that word - heartstrings. He imagines his heart tied up with loose shoelaces when he says it.
Bo nods wisely and squints toward the older section of graves. “They ain’t happy with you,” he says. “They figured with all the racket you make you’d take the time to figure out who they is.”
Jimmy frowns. He is never sure if he should respond to Bo’s fantasy world, or just stay quiet. “I dunno,” he says finally, “how they expect me to do that. Not like there’s a map. All the records got destroyed in a fire before I was born.”
“Pah!” says Bo. “You talk to ’em, of course. You talk to me, don’t you?”
He saunters away without waiting for an answer. By the time Jimmy has thought of something to say to that, Bo has disappeared behind a tree. He shakes his head. Bo is always appearing and vanishing. He’s a strange boy and he never knows how to end conversations politely.
Jimmy starts up the mower again. The other grave he doesn’t walk on is a tiny square on the ground. It has the name Bo Morley on it, 1906. He thinks it’s cool that someone in 1906 had the same name as his friend. He leans way, way over and pushes the machine in front.
