Free The Watchman by Davis Grubb Page B

it is there that a man must eat in order to reassure himself of his own aliveness in the presence of somebody else's deadness. The munching, murmuring horde that morning thronged filing through the Mound Hotel dining room in such close-shouldered press that Thomas Peace feared that, at last, they would burst splintering through the plate-glass window in the front and into the shoulders of the crowds which waited their turn in even greater number along the sidewalks. Thoughtlessly, someone had forgotten to take away two chairs and a table in the front. Still and all, the morning was nearly perfect. Mingling modestly among the others, Peace the Undertaker's haggard face showed still a pleased flush of impresario-zeal.
    Good morning. Morning. How are you, Ort Dobey. Morning. Good morning.
    Seeing sometimes the awe-struck pan-flash of decision in someone's face which meant invariably that this or that one had suddenly committed himself to Thomas Peace's ultimate easel.
    Morning, Captain. Morning. Morning, Fizzer. Good morning.

    There had been but one accident to flaw the performance and that had been no real fault of Thomas Peace, The big juke box was the responsibility of his two sons—Davey and Humber—and they that morning had turned its volume down and restocked all of its hundred discs (but one) with suitable hymns and dirges. Consequently, the hushed, whispering room that morning was momentarily shocked to hear the sudden twanging outcry of an Elvis Presley blues. Peace charged through the shoulders and swiftly stilled it. Few would remember it later; some even failed to notice: they were too busy eating. And so nothing was really spoiled.
    Sharp on the stroke of noon the pantomime happily approached its climax. Under an autumn sky of limpid blue the people of Mound County stood tight-clustered across the trimmed, green lawn of Mount Rose Cemetery. His face blanched with grief, Jason Hunnicutt stood by the trench-side of the fresh and ugly wound in the tended, velvet grass. At grave edge he could not keep his eyes away from the struggling twelve black shoe-tops of the pallbearers. He watched the carved bronze box descend, clasped in the clutch of those canvas straps which seemed in mortal contest with the men whose hands gripped them tightly and uneasily: men edgy as if they sensed a competition between themselves and the earth, something rigged and unfair: an event whose decision could be, at best, postponed. When the last drumming spadeful of sod was scattered across the mound the Most Reverend Doctor G. Robert Godd, Minister at the Adena Episcopalian Church and Chaplain at the penitentiary, recited the static monotony of the last rites. There was an instant aftermath of almost frightened stillness. And then, incredibly, someone belched. It was the most honest human utterance made that day. In the shocked silence after no one looked at his neighbor's face. None of them ever knew who had belched. It did not matter. In fact, no one wanted ever to know who it had been who belched. Because, in a sense, that stomach had spoken for each of them there. Humanness returned; the crowd stirred and moved back. Reporters from the Adena and Wheeling papers came forward with their cameras. And, since he had been the doctor who had ushered Cole Blake into life, O. T. Snedeker M.D. stepped forward to pose at graveside holding a dime-store framed baby picture of the dead boy, staring down at it stiffly with an expression of clinical acceptance and mild pro-

    fessional melancholy. The people stood for a spell, then moved away, homeward bound.
    Only Jason stayed by the fresh mound. And presently, lifting his eyes, he saw, far in the distance, the unwelcome ones; the two uninvited: Sheriff Luther Alt and his girl Jill. Jason stooped by the grave, fussed with the wreaths and the flowers, thinking, waiting. After a while he looked up to see the two again. But now there was only one. Far off down the cemetery road, shuffling in the wake of