Visit After Hours | Eddie Roth Reader

Visit after hours (2024)

A young man, maybe in his late 20s, stood inside the cemetery’s open front gate as I pulled up in my rental car. I arrived five minutes before closing. I looked at him sheepishly, and then gestured with an apology shrug; palms turned up. He motioned to me, walked toward my car, pantomiming the turning of a window crank. He wore charcoal wool trousers, black shiny loafers, white broadcloth shirt sleeves and a dark tie. He had been looking at his phone. I could see he wore a badge on his shirt pocket that said “Superintendent.” I opened my window.

“Good evening, sir,” he said. “Take all the time you need.”

I travel for sales calls to Boone City once or twice a year. Sometimes, I arrange to fly in early to Boone City from my home in Port De Lys, and drive the 70 miles from Boone to Midland, my dad’s hometown, and the place where I was born, too, and where he is buried. This is the fifth time I have visited my father’s grave in the 23 years since his funeral. All but one visit has come in the last 10 years. I stop at the cemetery, and then turn right around and return to Boone to prepare for my appointments. I never stay in Midland. There’s no one there, other than my father, on whom I might call, no family or old friends of family from my father’s time, at least none of whom I am aware or whom I would feel comfortable calling. The drive between the cities is mostly through pastureland. It is beautiful, and it offers more than an hour each way to think. Once I start to close in on Midland, even today, running late, I get off the highway and take a street route to the cemetery that brings me past the few monuments for which I still have a vague childhood remembrance: the old Hanneke stadium where Midland’s minor league baseball teams played, the house on Baxter Avenue where my dad grew up, the apartment house on Cecil Street where we had lived when I was a small child, and the Pancake House, where I have distant memories of a few special Sunday breakfasts.

I feel lighthearted, sometimes even excited, during the drive to Midland. You could say it’s the closest I can get to being in a frame of mind of reunion, even though, of course, I am not going to see my father. Still, I let myself feel a sense of celebration, and I daydream about the passing scenery, imagining that it provides practical proof of time that has stood still since before his death, that it shows things that haven’t changed, or that haven’t changed much, since my father’s time. As I approach the places of his birth and childhood, I am certain I will come across even more fragments of yesterdays on which my father had set his eyes, and made a part of his own daydreams: the stand of cedar trees on the parkway running through town, the school and firehouse in his neighborhood, the old sign with the flashing arrow on the used car lot nearby.

I put on the car radio. It had been tuned to an AM station out of Jeffersonville. The spotty reception was further clouded by crackling, popping, clicking sounds of what apparently was a broadcast of old recordings of big band dance music. Between songs, the announcer, a woman, welcomed listeners to the program, which she called “Swing Time.” Today she said she would be featuring rare recordings of “territory bands.” These were regional orchestras, she explained, bands that never hit the big time but that were popular and had devoted followings as they barnstormed around the Old Midwest playing high school, college and country club dances. I smiled as I listened. This was the music of my father’s youth. He loved to dance, which he sometimes would do in the kitchen and with enthusiasm, if not particularly well. My brothers and sisters and I loved it. My mother didn’t like it as much, but she loved my father and would allow him to reel her in. The lady announcer introduced a recording by a band called the Harold Untermeyer Orchestra, a lively tune called Big Trouble. I imagined my father as a young man, before he met my mother, dancing with some pretty girl by the band stand. The announcer spoke with a slow, confident, cheerful drawl, her voice having the raspy sound of a long-time cigarette smoker. She sounded like my father’s mother. So much so that I desperately tried to hand tune the radio, while still concentrating on driving, to keep her voice above the static before, alas, she and the station faded away.

It upsets me to think about it, but I barely remember my father’s voice. I remember things he said, though, and the kinds of things he would say. But after all these years I cannot play back in my mind the sound – the actual sound – of his voice saying these words or any words, nor can I recall except vaguely and fleetingly how his face looked or his mouth moved when he was speaking. The closest thing to the sound of my father’s voice I still can summon are murmurs that capture the lull of his baritone, as though I am hearing him speaking with my mother, and they are in the kitchen and I am drifting off to sleep, under the covers, in my bedroom upstairs, immediately above them.

There are a small number of sayings or expressions I recall my father imparting to us, such as “no two windchimes make the same sound.”

“Some clang,” he would say. “Some make a hollow wooden sound. Some ring with the clarity of a finely wrought bell. But no two chimes hanging from a front porch, sounding in a breeze, have precisely the same tone. Each is distinct.” I am not sure what prompted him to make this observation, or whether it is accurate, but I remember him saying it.

My father was an educated man whose demeanor was low key but leavened with a surprising theatrical bent. It would reveal itself only occasionally, and only at home, and never in public or to others, outside of the family. He especially appreciated the comic arts. He relished seeing the best stand-up comedians on the late-night talk shows, the more inventive and off beat the better. He would speak of them knowledgeably to us kids – explaining what made Hack Donaldson so funny, how Sean Richards could engage in borderline crazy talk and turn it into brilliant humor.

I can recall from childhood a comic bit that he, himself, had devised. Periodically he would bring it up and practice it and try to refine it. It was never very good. We could tell it was not very good, even as small children. But we also could tell it was odd and it showed a lot of commitment. Not only did the bit involve him telling a story, it would have him physically act the story out. This playful strangeness made it memorable and, we thought, conferred on it some kind of merit – something akin to an honorable mention in a talent show.

“Kids,” he would say in a stage voice, “did I ever tell you the story about the man who was so deep in thought that he would walk down the street with his face pointing down?” And, so, my father would assume the facial affect of a man deep in thought, walking in place, his chin drawn down to his chest, his eyes looking down at his feet.

“This man was so preoccupied,” my father continued, “he never looked where he was going. As you might expect, inevitably and before long, he would collide with some hazard along the sidewalk. He would bump his head – crashing into a streetlamp, a barber pole, a mailbox, even the corner of a building! The collision could be so violent that it would knock whatever thought the man had been thinking right out of his head!”

With that, my father would slapstick an imaginary collision that included an exaggerated aftershock and shaking of his head, after which he would wear a bewildered look on his face and point an index finger to his forehead, signaling a loss of his train of thought.

“One day, after one of these accidents, the man was determined to recover the thought he had lost. A logical way to do so, he reasoned, would be to try and reverse the process that had interrupted his thinking: He would try to walk backward from the point of impact, to retrace his steps in reverse, only this time avoiding distracting thoughts and paying close attention to his surroundings, looking back and forth over both shoulders, minding where he was going.”

This reverse process my father would mimic, too, deliberately stepping in place, looking back over each shoulder in an exaggerated fashion.

“Well, to the man’s utter surprise and amazement, the idea he had lost in the most recent collision fully returned to his consciousness! And then another idea returned, and then a third!”

And, with that, to signal the man’s surprise and amazement, my father would loudly smack himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand, shaking himself up once again. This time, though, the impact knocked him out of character. He would turn to us, his audience, breaking the fourth wall, and return to his normal voice and serious face, and he would say: “Who are you? Where am I?”

That was it. It never really worked. It was silly but not very funny. Still, he would laugh and laugh. Which made it fun. We would laugh, too. It so tickled him.

My father otherwise tends to come to mind less frequently. These few memories crowd out others as time goes on. I feel bad about this. He missed so much. Now, he is in my thoughts less and less. I don’t think there is anything to be done about it.

There is another odd memory, a puzzling incident and lesson from my father, one that stands out mainly because I otherwise have so few detailed memories of time with him.

I had spent a few years of my childhood as a cub scout and, briefly, a boy scout. Scouting meant outings in which fathers were expected to be active, working and playing alongside the boys. My father had not done scouting as a child and was not an outdoorsman. He didn’t hunt or fish or change the oil in his car himself or rebuild the lawn mower engine. He liked to read. But he also liked to build model airplanes and had gone to summer camp in New Hampshire as a boy and he could swim and canoe and was a strong tennis player and a low handicap golfer. He also was a good sport, willing to join in.

One summer, when I was about 12, all of the boys from my troop had been invited to a council-wide jamboree at a rustic private camp that was called “Martagone” and owned by a prominent Port De Lys family. It was a day outing, and my father had signed on to bring me.

The campsite was situated at the end of a long gravel road off the paved highway, in a rural county about 90 miles from Port De Lys. My dad and I pulled up to the clearing to find a busy crowd of men and boys setting up lean-to shelters and folding tables with jugs of “bug juice” for the boys. Half hidden in the back of an old International Travelall, were ice chests full of beer for the men. The staging ground for activities was a permanent, open shelter covered by a corrugated metal roof set on creosoted wooden poles over a poured concrete floor.

The dads came in all shapes and sizes. My father was fit, and confident. But he also was reserved. I recall an instance when, goofing around with some of the other boys, I saw my father standing alone, somewhat awkwardly. I grabbed a frisbee and started a game of toss with him, in which some of the other boys and another dad joined.

Late in the day, as the men and boys lined up for dinner, a couple of the dads were cooking and serving hot dogs and hamburgers from two large grills. One, the father of a scout from another troop, had been loud throughout the day, holding and nursing a canned beverage from a paper bag. As the day wore on, he slowed down. He licked his lips and moved his mouth as he stared at the grill, as though talking to himself, pushing hot dogs on and off a part of the cooking grate that had no coals beneath it, doing his unsteady, lubricated best to appear to be cooking and not fall into the fire. His eyes were red. He spoke with a guttural accent. He straightened his posture as he caught sight of my father. His bleary eyes focused and brightened. The man smiled a wide grin, raised his closed right hand above his shoulder, and pointed his finger toward my dad. Then, at the top of his voice, he said and repeated, and repeated, “Herr Totengräber? Herr Totengräber? Herr Totengräber?” The man then laughed and wheezed, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and laughed and wheezed, doubling over and choking with laughter.

The outburst silenced conversation in the chow line. The men and boys stared at the man, then turned to my dad. My father’s ears reddened for the briefest moment. He then walked and looked past the man, completely ignoring him, coolly proceeding through the line, as though nothing had happened. We joined two other fathers and their sons at a picnic table and sat and ate a dinner of hot dogs, ridged potato chips and baked beans.

The incident was bizarre, but I was more curious than troubled by it. I have wondered over the years if it had something to do with my family being one of few Jewish families in our Port De Lys suburb, although being Jewish had not otherwise caused trouble for me or my family.

“‘Totengräber’ means gravedigger in German,” my father said on the ride home. “‘Herr’ means mister. The man called me ‘Mr. Gravedigger.’”

“Dad, why did he call you that?” I asked.

“He was drunk, and a fool.” My father was silent for more than a moment and glanced over at me with a serious, man-to-man expression. “Never allow yourself to be drawn in by drunk or foolish people,” he said.

He never mentioned anything to my mother, at least not that she could remember. He must have had more thoughts on the matter. I wish I could talk to him about them. Other things, too.

I have reasonable excuses for allowing so many years to pass after my father’s death and funeral before my next visit to the cemetery. For one, my family had no tradition of visiting the dead. I’m not even sure where my mother’s people are buried. For another, I was only 17 years old when my father died. He died suddenly. He had a stroke and fell to the ground while working in the garden. He died on the spot at age 42. It just took me more than a few years to consider the possibilities of a visit. Distance had something to do with the delay, too. My father’s family’s burial place is in an old city neighborhood in Midland, near where he was born and grew up, and where his father and mother had, too. It’s also where my brothers and sisters and I were born and had lived when we were very young. We moved to Port De Lys -- the "old smokestack city" -- when I was five. That’s about 300 miles across two states from Midland. We didn’t sustain any connection with Midland after moving to Port De Lys, my dad being an only child, his parents long since deceased, his having been sent away to boarding high school, then gone to college in Maine, and his not having remained in touch with childhood friends. We had an old photo album my father kept with pictures taken on a trip he made out west, one summer, with an attractive and lively looking group of college friends. He might have sat and gone through the album with us, telling us about the trip, explaining who these friends were, but I don’t recall any details. We never met any of these friends.

My mother had not gone to my father’s parents’ funerals. They had died one year apart, when my siblings and I were very small children. He had gone to the funerals by himself. I’m not sure why, maybe it was too expensive for everyone to go, and someone had to stay home with us kids. Still, my mother knew of his family’s grave site and that there was a plot for him there. She had his remains sent ahead to Midland. I believe they were shipped by airplane, but I was not sure, and I always wondered about that. Did they move him in the heavy casket of polished wood? Or was the casket covered with cardboard so it would not get scuffed or otherwise damaged? Or was he shipped in some other kind of container and then moved to a casket when he arrived in Midland? Was he handled behind the scenes with reverence or at least solemnity? Or was moving the remains of the civilian dead an everyday thing for air freight handlers such that my father was treated pretty much the same as any other cargo?

My mother and my brothers and sisters and I piled in the station wagon, and my mother drove us all to Midland for the funeral. Fewer than 20 people, including us, were in attendance. My dad wouldn’t have minded the small turn out. We didn’t mind either. We spent the night at a suburban motel that had a nice swimming pool with a diving board. We had dinner in a family restaurant next door to the motel. Hamburgers, French fries, and Pepsi. We had an ice cream sundae for dessert. We sat in a nice, bright booth, right by a window. My father would have approved, indeed, had been glad we didn’t stay or eat at an expensive place. My mom gave us four quarters for the jukebox.

The Beth Emeth (House of Truth) Cemetery, while situated in what had been one of the city’s most affluent residential districts, is surrounded by blocks in bleak decline since the time of my father’s death. Some large old houses still were standing among the vacant lots, although they were in disrepair. The contrast with the cemetery’s immaculately kept turf and gravesites made it look like a guarded oasis, surrounded by a short, moss-covered granite wall topped with a tall ornamental iron fence.

My mother is not Jewish. She never remarried. She had been raised a Quaker, but I never knew her to go to a meeting. She told me that the ancestors of some of the most prominent Jewish families in America were buried at the cemetery where my father and his family were buried, and as I grew older I could recognize grand family names marking graves there, names that, sure enough, had appeared along the rooflines of downtown department stores, or on labels of couture, millinery, and footwear, or in lobbies of Wall Street finance firms, or plaques denoting benefactors of universities and hospitals.

The cemetery is compact, jam-packed with a clutter of monuments, sculptures, mausoleums, obelisks, and stones. It is served by a single, one-way drive winding through it. Other than at my father’s funeral, I have never seen another visitor there. Yet it is perfectly kept. My father’s family gravesite is at the far end of the cemetery, maybe 30 steps up a hill from the curb where I parked the car. The site is set on high ground, overlooking much of the cemetery. It has a plain monument at its center and is shaded by a large tree. I imagined the view and ancient shade tree to be amenities, a reflection of social prominence, but if they reflected such prominence, it was a prominence that never interested my father and of which he never spoke.

Sometimes public places, spaces, and markers, when first experienced as a child, seem vast, larger than life, but then on return visits, as the child matures, these places take on a decidedly finite scale, and even might become surprisingly, even disappointingly small. Such can be the case with big league ballparks whose playing fields seem boundless to a youngster and grow smaller and more reasonably sized as the child grows up. That has not been my experience with Beth Emeth cemetery. I had on each visit fully retained the mysteriously compressed but still fulsome scale I observed and recall from first seeing it as a teenager at my father’s funeral.

As I walk up the manicured hill, I carefully step a narrow, marked path between the back-to-back rows of stone markers to keep my shoes from encroaching on any of the densely set graves. I see a stone recognizing a Medal of Honor recipient from World War II. I have recalled it from earlier visits, including that the gallant and intrepid interred had survived the war. I could see stones engraved simply with the word “Infant.” I looked around and was reminded how almost none of the graves mark the resting places of persons who had died later than the 1960s. My father seemed to be one of very few arrivals from the 1990s. I could feel my heart as I drew closer to his grave. He lay next to his mother, with his father next to her. Everything was quiet, as it always had been. Everything was still, as I knew it would be. The flat markers are engraved with the familiar names from my father’s family, and the years of their births and deaths. They looked the same, just as I remembered them. There were a few colored leaves that had fallen on and covered part of my father’s marker, which I gently removed and put to the side. The early evening air was warm and close for mid-October. The only thing that seemed different from prior visits was that the large oak tree rained acorns. A wave of acorns suddenly would fall from branches, thick as hail, but only for a few moments. But then a second time, and just before I left, a third. You could hear the falling acorns volley against the grave markers and tombstones.

On prior visits I would carry pebbles with me in my pocket to the cemetery. I would set a pebble on each of my family members’ grave markers, in keeping with the Jewish tradition, as a sign the dead had been remembered and were loved and missed, that someone had paid them a visit. I would put two on my father’s. I didn’t have pebbles for today’s visit. I regretted this. As a weak substitute, I gathered some of the acorns and configured them in the shape of a heart on my father’s grave, but not on my grandparents’, great uncles’ or aunts’, nor my great-grandparents’ or great-great grandparents’ graves.

I spent a total of 15 minutes at the family gravesite. Even with the implausible anticipation and unformed expectancy I carried with me on the way to these visits, once I got to the cemetery, I didn’t have much to say or think to myself. The passage of 10 minutes seemed to be a long time. But I stayed five minutes longer. “Here I am!” was the only sentiment that came to my mind. The extra minutes and seconds went by slowly. I stood still, looked around and loitered because if there were feelings to hurt, I wouldn’t want to hurt them by leaving so quickly. I felt vaguely disappointed, sad, and then slightly annoyed with myself, for being disappointed and sad, for thinking there might be more to this than there had been.

This was a recurring experience in my visits in recent years. I knew, though, that over the months that followed the emptiness would fade and I steadily would regain sentiments of renewed visitation, that at some point I would be back. For the moment, I took heart in knowing what I had not missed. I had nearly reached the same age as my father at the time of his death, and I too was married to a woman whom I loved and admired and whose company I enjoyed. We had two children of our own, a son and a daughter, our daughter being the elder and a teen I have been thinking would be interested and whom I might bring with me on the next visit to Midland in hopes the Pancake House would remain in business until then and we might enjoy a special breakfast together there.

It was time to go.

I said “Good bye, Dad, folks. I love you.” I said these words out loud, in a quiet voice, but not in a whisper. I didn’t just “think” these words, or only say them in my head. I spoke them. It is a strange sensation to speak as though someone is present and conscious of our speaking when in fact someone is not there. No one is there. It is different from the ordinary and familiar running monologue in one’s head that sometimes breaks through and becomes talking aloud to one’s self. There, the someone to whom the words are directed is present. That someone is you. Occasionally, we might direct spoken words to an inanimate object, such as saying goodbye aloud to a beloved summer cabin by a lake at the end of a season, knowing that we might never return.

The sound of an utterance spoken aloud to the dead, alone, though, is different. Breaking the silence of a cemetery, such words, like the dead themselves, have a spectral quality. I could not be certain I actually had spoken these words as I left my father’s grave. I had intended to say them. It is possible that I just said the words in my head, although I am confident I actually heard myself saying them. Such words, when uttered or just imagined, dissolve or are absorbed by the air so quickly. It is as though they are muffled by an imposed near-silence, such as the near-silence that is so strictly enforced by a heavy snowfall.

I turned and looked back, once, as I walked away. I didn’t stop, though. I just slowed and glanced over my shoulder in the direction of my father’s grave. I felt no new connection as I continued down the hill. It was dusk as I reached the cemetery exit. A light was on inside the gatehouse, in what I imagined was the superintendent’s office. No doubt he had been waiting for me to leave so he could lock up behind me. I hadn’t kept him long. He might be looking over his mowing and maintenance schedule. Maybe he was preparing for an upcoming trustees’ meeting. He had left the gate open.

("Visit after hours" by Eddie Roth first was published in July 2024 here in The Eddie Roth Reader.)