WE had no purpose the next day, which again dawned sunny and crisp. I went out for a run right after I got up, and I saw Tolliver trotting down the street in the opposite direction when I was almost back at the motel. After I’d showered, and he’d returned and cleaned up, we ate at a different diner.

About midmorning, I was so bored I got Tolliver to take me out to the older cemetery, the one I’d noticed the morning I’d found Teenie. I found it with my other sense, instead of asking for directions. This cemetery had graves over a hundred and fifty years old—well established, at least in American terms. The presence of so many old dead produced a constant, mellow reverberation, almost soothing; like giant ancient drums in the distance. Though the grounds were well tended, in the oldest section I spied a few overturned headstones with writing that time had obscured. These stones would belong to families who had died out; there were no living descendants to tend the plots. I amused myself by going from grave to grave, reaching deep to pull from each collection of bones what information I could garner. The glimpses I caught of these faces were often blurred or obscured, as if the dead themselves had forgotten who they’d been. Every now and then I saw the features clearly, heard a name, caught a longer glimpse of death in the past.

“Childbirth,” I called to Tolliver, who was sitting half-in half-out of the car while he worked a crossword puzzle.

“Another one,” he said, hardly raising his eyes from the page. It was the third childbirth death I’d found.

“Kind of scary.” I stepped to the next grave. Since this was simply to pass the time and keep in practice, I’d left my shoes on. It was a nippy day, and I didn’t want to catch a cold, especially since I was just messing around. “You know, Tolliver, men didn’t used to die of heart attacks.”

“That so?”

“That’s what I heard on the news the other day. Oh! This guy was crushed by a tree he was cutting down.”

Tolliver didn’t bother to look up. “Um,” he said, so I gathered he wasn’t listening. I moved to my right. “Asthma attack,” I muttered. “Blood poisoning from a knife cut. Scarlet fever. Smallpox. Flu. Pneumonia.” I shook my head. So many of these things could be cured, or at least eased, now. I couldn’t fathom people who longed for the past. They weren’t thinking about the absence of antibiotics, that was for sure.

The next grave was one of the oldest. The tombstone had broken in half, and someone had tried to set it back together. I couldn’t read the name.

“Hey, gunshot wound,” I called to Tolliver.