Free The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry Page B

for everyone else as well. No one wants to be the first to take that step. Eternity is in this one moment, and we are all suspended in it. It is finally Dr. Ward who breaks the spell and steps outside.
    Waves of heat rise off the asphalt driveway, distorting the figures of the people as they step into sunlight, blurring everybody’s edges then, not just Ann’s. It’s as if we were all spirits and the coffin with its dark horizontal lines is the only thing that has any true weight and mass. People move slowly, deliberately, down the steps, their eyes adjusting to the bright sun.
    There is no hearse waiting. Instead the pallbearers have opted to carry the coffin to the graveyard—Beezer, Jay-Jay, and some other young men I don’t recognize, friends of Eva’s, maybe. A few doors down at the Witch House, a group of day-camp kids, preschoolers, is lined up on either side of a thick yellow rope with loops every few feet. Each child holds on to a loop with one hand; some are absently sucking thumbs with the other. A few of the older ones, more used to the buddy system than to the rope, clutch a loop with one hand while holding hands under it, not taking any chances. It would be difficult to walk this way, but they’re not walking now, they’re just standing in line waiting to get inside. I wonder at their teachers, bringing them here to the house of Jonathan Corwin, who was one of the hanging judges, though he was far more skeptical and less committed to the sad practice than were the rest. The kids won’t get it. They’ll think, as I did at their age, that the Witch House is a place where witches lived. If they think of anything, they’ll think of Halloween and candy and what their costumes are going to be for next year. They won’t get the rest of the dark story, which is just as well. Some are sleepy with the heat, distracted, looking for some-The Lace Reader 65
    thing to pull them out of their dazed state. Their eyes catch the coffin as it moves slowly out of the church driveway, and they watch as it bobs down the street, locking onto it, going for a ride with their eyes, unaware that they shouldn’t. They have no frame of reference for death; to them it’s just part of a tour they got tickets for, or perhaps they think we’re like the street performers they’ve seen wandering the town doing skeleton skits, trying to lure you to the Salem Witch Museum or the Witch Dungeon or even one of the haunted houses. We pass the gardens of the Ropes Mansion. The cars are stopped in both directions as we cross Essex Street and head up Cambridge toward Chestnut Street, which was Eva’s favorite street in town. The Whitneys had originally lived on it, before politics drove them down to Washington Square with the rest of the Jeffersonian Republicans. It is Beezer’s intention to turn right on Chestnut Street and pass the old Whitney house before turning up Flint Street and down Warren, then looping back up Cambridge Street again toward the Broad Street graveyard. It’s an idea that sounded good at the time (and would have made Eva happy), but it is far too ambitious. The heat makes it almost impossible. Already I’m exhausted and out of breath. I’m thinking it would be better if they went straight and didn’t make the detour at all. I try to send Beezer that thought, but when the procession gets to Chestnut Street and Hamilton Hall, Beezer steers them right, as planned, and the coffin follows, the back end swinging wide like the stern of a boat. Chestnut Street is decked out for summer with window boxes and flowering planters on the front steps of the old Federal houses. It’s beautiful at any time, but it’s never been the easiest place to walk. The old brick sidewalks are like waves dipping up and down to accommodate the twisted tree roots and frost heaves of the last two centuries. It’s a moment in time, this street, but it’s as uneven as Salem Harbor in a storm tide, and the coffin bobs along as if it were