Albert Leftwich
May 2007
I arrive at the cemetery cradling three bouquets of flowers and a miniature American flag. Hidden among them is a small sledgehammer.
In our bayou towns, we don’t bury our dead six feet under. We bury them above ground because if you dig three feet down, you hit water. The French settlers found out that too much rain would cause coffins to pop out of the ground. The cemetery is laid out on a grid like a small town, a city of the dead, with rows of individual family tombs for those who could afford them flanked by four mausoleums for the less affluent or less pretentious. As in life, so too in death, I think. That’s the kind of thing Uncle Dwight would say. I even think it in his voice.
The sun hovers low over the cane fields across the bayou. Row-upon-row of white-washed tombs cast long shadows. It will be dark in an hour. There are no gates at this small-town graveyard. I’m glad that people still trust each other down here. The groundskeeper knocks off early, by four p.m. Burials are morning affairs. No evening security, no security cameras, no homes nearby. Just a faded sign that the cemetery closes at nightfall. I don’t plan to be here much past that.
I spot just one other visitor, a man facing a vault in another mausoleum. He’s deep in prayer or memories and hasn’t noticed me. I slip behind a set of crypts toward the mausoleum where my family is buried. I’ll bide my time there. Yes, I’m here to visit them. But after I talk to them, tell them that I miss them, maybe tell them what I’m up to, after I’m certain the cemetery is vacant of the living, I’ll pay Nobless a visit.
I grew up here but haven’t lived on the bayou since I left Louisiana after college thirty years ago. I’d visit my parents several times a year when they were alive. Nowadays, I squeeze in a trip to the bayou to check on some vacant land they left me. Whenever I’m in town, I visit the graves of my parents, grandparents, grand-grand-père, and Uncle Dwight. Now that I’ve grown older, I tend to wander the rows looking for connections to my past. I’ve come upon the resting places of aunts and uncles, teachers, and, increasingly, some of my classmates. Some names seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place them. Some I had known, had liked, even had loved. A few, I’ve loathed these long years, like the neighborhood bully who pinned me to the ground one day when I was six. It was the first time I remember feeling powerless and realizing that unjust things happen in this world.
That’s how I stumbled upon Nobless Cheramie’s tomb a year ago. It is a solid stand-alone monstrosity of polished gray granite, about the size of one of those big pre-fab garden sheds. The inscriptions engraved in fine black letters were all lies. Devoted Husband, Loving Father, Business Leader, Pillar of the Community, Member of the Cemetery Board and the Knights of Columbus. It was within eyeshot of my family’s set of vaults. It had been three decades, but I smelled the cigarette smoke on his breath again. My anger welled.
Uncle Dwight had taught social studies at the high school, and he seemed to have a telling quote or relevant proverb for any situation. Here’s one I have obsessed over this past year—Revenge is a dish best served cold.
February 1977
In the church’s vestibule, Father LeGrande removed the white funeral pall from Grand-grand-père Placide’s coffin and we helped a man from the V.F.W. drape an American flag over it. The funeral director guided us as we carried the coffin down the church steps and slid it into the hearse. The cold six-day rain had slowed to a misty drizzle but showed no signs of letting up. The ride to the cemetery was short, no more than ten minutes. The priest had arrived before us and waved my father over.
“Roosevelt, there’s a problem.” He pointed toward a couple of men dressed in coveralls standing under a big oak tree, trying to keep dry. Leaning against the tree were shovels and a sledgehammer. “The grave tenders say that they’re under orders not to open the vault.” The outer granite cover from the vault had been removed but the entrance was still bricked up. Dad and Uncle Dwight walked up to the gravediggers, and I tagged along.
“What’s the problem here?” Dad asked.
The men traded glances before the taller one spoke. “Mr. Nobless, he came out here this morning and got mad that we had already started opening the crypt. He told us to stop until we heard different from him.”
“He has no right. Our family owns three vaults.” My father motioned toward the mourners milling by the priest, waiting for the graveside rites, looking our way, wondering what was happening.
“This is embarrassing!” said Uncle Dwight. “What are we supposed to do? Those people came out here in this crappy weather. The veterans are here. For God’s sake, the old man in the hearse!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Roosevelt. But Mr. Nobless is on the Cemetery Board. He could get us fired.”
Dad asked, “How can I get hold of Nobless?”
“We don’t have a phone out here. I don’t know what to tell you. I guess you could go to his house up at that new subdivision he’s building in Côte Blanche on the east bank. Just past Galjour’s net shop.”
Dad said that he knew where that was and told the gravediggers to stand by until we got back.
Then he told Father LeGrande and the other people that we were going to see Nobless to try to fix it. Dad drove our station wagon. Uncle Dwight rode shotgun. I was in the back seat, brought along because I was twenty and big and it was time for me to stand up for the family, I guess.
“Who is this guy, Nobless?” I asked.
Dad said that Nobless used to work as a derrick man on a drilling crew in the Gulf until he lost a finger on the job. A Thibodeaux lawyer got him a settlement, and Nobless had been buying up small failing businesses on the cheap—a carwash, a snowball stand, a sandwich shop. His latest scheme was a new subdivision. Nobless bought some vacant land at a Sheriff’s auction after the owners couldn’t pay the property taxes. “He’s a vulture. Waiting to swoop in at the smell of other people’s misery.”
A sign at the entrance of Nobless’s new subdivision—Audubon Oaks—advertised seventeen lots for sale. The subdivision’s name alluded to the grand oaks of Audubon Park in the classy Uptown section of New Orleans. But Nobless’s subdivision had but a single blacktop street flanked by overflowing drainage ditches and mostly vacant lots. Only two houses had been built and their yards were swamped.
At a single-story ranch house at the very end of the street, a mailbox shaped like a barn had “Nobless and Celeste Cheramie” printed on it. Behind the house were untamed woods of a variety of trash trees. A Cadillac was parked under the carport. Dad parked on the street and my socks got wet as we scurried up the driveway to avoid what rain we could. We huddled under the eaves and Dad knocked on the door. There was no answer.
“Knock on it again,” said Uncle Dwight. Dad knocked again. Still no answer. Uncle Dwight kicked the door three times. “Open the door, Nobless!”
“Okay, okay,” said a voice from inside. “Meet me under the carport. Let me get a jacket.” Then he added, “Let’s be civil, okay?”
“Come on out, Nobless,” Dad said. “We got to come to an understanding.”
The three of us, wet and cold, waited in the carport. A minute later, Nobless opened the carport door and stepped outside but stayed near the door, as if ready to beat a hasty retreat. He was a scrawny fellow with thick dark hair and an unhappy face made craggy from decades under the Louisiana sun. He looked to be in his fifties, about Dad’s age. He had a cigarette in his hand, held it in an odd way.
“Roosevelt, Let me start by saying I’m sorry about Old Man Placide,” Nobless said to Dad. “I had hoped we could have avoided this problem.” He took a drag from the cigarette, and I saw he was missing his right index finger.
“Shut up,” said Uncle Dwight. “Everyone at the cemetery is standing in the rain, waiting… the family, the priest, the Veterans group. Grand-Grandpère fought in World War I. He got shot at. Got gassed. Won a handful of medals. They’re there to give him a decent military funeral. Twenty-one-gun salute, Taps. He deserved it and you ruined it.”
“I wish it could have turned out differently,” Nobless said. “You know I tried.”
Dad shot back, “Let’s just stop the bullshit, Nobless. We just want to lay the old man to rest. Come down to the cemetery and tell the gravediggers to open the vault.”
Nobless stared at the flooded yard. “I’m afraid it isn’t that simple. I’m sorry about what happened, that it had to come down to this. Roosevelt, you know, I’ve been trying to clear up this whole mess down at that cemetery, about who owes what. I sent you letters asking you to pay for the work we did, but you never as much as replied.”
“Nobless, we don’t owe you nothing,” Dad said. “Me and Daddy, we bought them vaults from Landeche over twenty years ago. Paid him five hundred dollars cash for each one.”
Nobless shook his head. “Landeche fooled you. He took your money and everyone else’s money to build that mausoleum. But he never kept it up. Landeche declared bankruptcy, left town, and left y’all holding the bag.” The smoke from the cigarette wafted up. “It was an eyesore, Dwight. Some of the marble panels fell off and the bare concrete was showing. The weeds were taking over. The cemetery commission was looking for someone to assume operations of it, and I did the right thing by renovating it. I took the risk and saved it. It’s only fair that I get reimbursed for the repairs I made.”
“You wanted us to pay three times more than we paid Landeche! When we bought those tombs, Landeche said they came with perpetual care. You’re the one who needs to follow the contract.”
Nobless shook his head again. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Roosevelt. I think we’re entitled to a return on the investment we made fixing up that mausoleum. I’ll go bankrupt if we don’t get it, and you’ll be right back where you were, with your family buried in a crumbling eyesore.”
“Nobless, you think you’re so damn smart.” Dad sneered and pointed at Nobless’s hand.
“Everybody on the bayou knows that you cut off your own finger to collect a settlement check. You worked all alone up there on the top of the derrick, slinging pipe. No witnesses up there. You figured you could put up with a few days of pain to get rich quick.” Nobless frowned and fumbled with the cigarette. Dad continued, “If you think people talk about you now, wait until word of this gets around. You’ll never sell another lot in this patch of swampland.”
There was a moment’s silence, then the sky trembled from a series of thunderclaps.
“It’s not so easy. It never is,” Nobless said. “Okay, I’ll agree to order them to open the vault if you agree to meet within thirty days to discuss the financial situation.”
“I’m not agreeing to pay you more money after all this!” Dad crossed his arms.
“You’re not agreeing right now that you have to pay anything,” Nobless countered. “I’m just asking you to meet to talk about it, that’s all. Agree to that and I’ll go down to the cemetery so you can put Old Man Placide to rest.”
Dad looked at his watch. “We’re wasting time.” He looked at Uncle Dwight, then turned to me. Our eyes met and, for the first time in my life, I saw my father flinch, powerless. “All right, Nobless. We’ll meet to discuss it. Now, let’s go.”
Nobless cracked a slight grin. “I’ll meet you down there.” He flicked the cigarette into the backyard.
“No,” I said. “Get in your car. We’ll follow you.”
Nobless studied me as though I had been invisible before I spoke up.
The drizzle had stopped by the time we got to the cemetery. Most of the mourners had left. Only Father LeGrande, close family, and the veterans stood by the vault. Nobless gave the order, and the graveyard workers began to strike the brick wall with a sledgehammer. The bricks were loosely mortared and began falling as the workers hammered with a chisel. The sound of a sledge pounding, bricks and chips of mortar falling against the concrete, echoing inside the vault. That’s a sound that sticks with you.
May 2007
The cicadas have begun their eerie late afternoon droning. While I linger, waiting for the last visitor to leave the graveyard, I stand at my great-grandpère’s vault, at the same spot where we interred him that cold, rainy February day thirty years ago. I remember his face. I remember his voice, speaking in French, words I could not understand. I place a miniature American flag in a holder beside the bronze plaque the family got from the V.A.
Private Placide Lefort, US Army
World War I
4 July 1897- 1 February 1977
I walk through the cemetery, up and down rows and rows of tombs. Up closer to the highway near the bayou are the older ones made of simple whitewashed concrete. These souls died in the 1890s, the decade Grand-grandpère was born. Some of these graves are cracked and crumbling.
The whitewash has faded, exposing bare concrete. Decades have passed since anyone has visited them.
The other-worldly buzzing of the cicadas grows louder as dusk approaches. I make my way back toward the mausoleum, studying the names of the dead, the dates they were born, the dates they died. Who is buried with them. Each lived a life with dreams, hopes, fears, and regrets. With each passing year, fewer of the living remember who they were. Who remembers the sound of their voice? They loved, they fought. They left all of that behind. No arguments now, just quiet. The only constant has been that old bayou flowing by, every day of our lives. Flowing before we were here, flowing long after we are gone.
Twilight is a minute away. I’m certain that I’m alone now. I walk up to Nobless’s tomb. I fish out the small sledgehammer from among the flowers. I relish the heft of it in my hands.
Then I hear Uncle Dwight’s voice. I know it’s not him, exactly. But I know it’s him. It was his way of teaching. From the hundreds of proverbs and truisms I heard him quote, this one has surfaced.
I hear it a second time.
He who seeks revenge digs two graves.
The sledgehammer feels heavier in my hand, a burden. I place the flowers at my family’s graves and say a prayer. Then walk through the city of the dead to the bayou side where I hurl the sledgehammer into flowing waters.