Solomon's Grave

Then what?

It was a question he’d asked himself on and off for years, a question his predecessors over the centuries must have asked themselves. A question, he knew, that could never be answered. The Lord didn’t play to lose. It wasn’t His style.

He walked around the base of the statue, below the angels’ dispassionate faces. The grave was, in fact, a crypt built nearly a hundred years ago. It was the only one in this corner of the property. Even so, its nature wasn’t immediately obvious. Vincent wiped a stray hair from his face and looked at the name on the placard. There was no one named John Solomon buried here, save for the legacy of his famous namesake. The groundskeeper thought it was a foolish name to use, too much a beacon to those in pursuit of the treasure.

He thought again of the impending doom that had settled on his heart lately. Change always set him on edge, made him look for the menace behind every new face in town. All this time, and no one overtly paid any attention to this distant corner of this forgotten cemetery.

Until now.

Even so, he needed to be careful. Such an isolated life, even one as self-imposed as his, brought with it too much of his own imagination. At some point, however, his time would run out. Vincent Tarretti was caught in the midst of a cat and mouse game played over the millennia. He didn’t plan on being the one to finally lose. God wouldn’t abandon him. Every change around him promised danger, but there was always hope.

Diligence Always, was his motto. It had to be. In this morning’s case, much could be implied in the changing of the guard at the neighboring church. The old minister’s departure, local boy Dinneck beating the odds and getting such a position.

Maybe.

Vincent squatted and picked up a broken piece of branch, probably fallen in the heavy winds of the night before. He walked to the far wall and tossed it over, then hefted his trash bag and moved slowly back toward the entrance.

Chapter Nine

Late Saturday night. Nathan laid the pen down on the paper and pinched the bridge of his nose. Hayden had turned in at his usual time, leaving him to work on tomorrow’s sermon in peace. Nathan wanted it to be special. Hard enough starting out in a new parish, but his entrance here had to assert his role as spiritual leader over that of little Nate Dinneck come home to roost. His thoughts wandered between the story of the prodigal son, or perhaps Jesus’ return to his own hometown. Of course, in the latter tale, the Lord was not accepted, and in the end the people were worse off for it.

No, no. Comparing himself to God? Bad idea. He picked up the pen and crossed off that section of his notes.

Over the past few days his concentration had been pulled by the memory of the angels he’d seen over the gravesite on Wednesday. He wished they’d walked the grounds more that morning, gotten closer so he could be certain of what he’d seen. Tarretti seemed to have cut the meeting short after Nathan’s reaction. The caretaker had sensed his thoughts, or so it appeared at the time.

In retrospect, after three days and nights without nightmares, Nathan understood what was happening. First-day jitters. He still couldn’t remember being in Greenwood Street Cemetery, even as a child, but he must have seen the statues before. A brief glimpse walking through the woods, or passing the graveyard in winter when the sheltering leaves had fallen.

The week had been busy, traveling with Hayden to the homes of parishioners unable to leave their houses for services. They moved room to room at both Lakeside Hospital and Saint Vincent’s in Worcester, following the list provided by the administration of Baptist and unaffiliated Christian patients. The Commonwealth had recently passed a law prohibiting hospitals from disclosing patients’ religious affiliations, but Hayden was a very persuasive man when he wanted to be. Besides, most of the staff thought it such a ludicrous law they usually ignored it.

It had been an educational and pleasant few days. Hayden wasn’t much of a talker, but like on their walk in the cemetery, Nathan never felt uneasy with his silences. The old man projected a calm and assurance that was contagious.

He looked back at the paper, considered readdressing Jesus’ homecoming with less emphasis on the comparison to his own situation.

An image of the stone angels came so clearly to his mind again that he had to blink, concentrate to see the hand-written words on the page. An itch in his brain, a feeling like something forgotten. He couldn’t continue like this. He needed to clear the air, somehow dispel any lingering flotsam from his old dreams. Clear his mind for what was most important.

Tomorrow, or more likely Monday if he could find a few moments of down time, he’d return to the cemetery. If anyone saw him, he could say he returned to admire more of the stonework. In a way, that was true.

With this resolve, he found his concentration returning. He picked up the pen and began to write.

Chapter Ten

There were moments, sometimes entire days, when Vincent Tarretti had doubts about his calling. Times when he made the mistake of looking at his life, with its lack of any substantiality, since leaving California. Every day he woke up, got out of bed, showered, ate breakfast and read the Worcester Telegram. He would then set out to work tending the grounds in the cemetery with Johnson following faithfully behind him. Vincent talked to the dog as he would any human being, and recognized the fact that many in town thought he was a bit daft because of it.

Maybe he was. A man doesn’t isolate himself from the rest of the world, guarding something of such significance, and not get a little nutty. One night, a few years ago, he rented a popular movie called A Beautiful Mind. The concept of a man so lost in his own hallucinations—supported by the fact that this was a true story—had terrified him. Was this what he’d been doing all his life? Was there nothing in Solomon’s grave but a long dead body of a real man?

That moment had been especially difficult. Until he’d fallen to his knees and asked God for some kind of clarity in his mind, praying until he could barely keep himself awake. He felt a little better after that.

Then, as now, he understood the answer that God put into his heart. Since coming to Hillcrest decades before, hiding even from other people of faith, he’d not attended church services. He’d not sat among those who also believed with all their hearts and souls. The Sunday after watching the film, he drove aimlessly among the neighboring towns. He passed a small, non-denominational church tucked among the trees in the town of Boylston, when something settled on his heart. He turned the car around and pulled into the parking lot, joining the small crowd filing into the rows of seats. Many realized he was a newcomer and greeted him warmly. Vincent was skittish, as he always was whenever someone offered him too much attention. In the past, he’d never known whether they were being friendly or if he’d been discovered, if the smiling old woman offering her hand was ready to cut his throat for the relic buried under his adopted hometown.

That first morning he had sat in the back of the church. By the time the service was over, he had felt the Spirit renewed within him, suddenly proud of his calling beyond words. He wasn’t crazy. Yes, his situation was like none other save that of his predecessors, but if he was nuts for following God so blindly, then so were all these fine people. None of them seemed daft to him. Though he continued to avoid the churches in his own town—he doubted anyone in Hillcrest even knew he was a Christian— since that first Sunday, he never missed a service in Boylston. This morning had been no exception; another inspiring service, another chance to remind himself that, though he worked and lived by himself, he was never alone.

Lonely, yes, sometimes achingly so, but never alone.

Prior to his arrival as caretaker, Vincent Tarretti had not been so lonely. As a child, he’d been dragged to church, sat listening to the ranting preacher talk about redemption. Mostly he concentrated on the raven-haired Melissa Alvaraz sitting with her family in the front pew.

During his junior year of high school, Vincent, who at the time insisted on “either Vinnie or Mister Tarretti, there ain’t nothing in between,” learned to his delight that Melissa spent those same Sundays thinking about him. They were soon inseparable. The relationship was purely platonic at first, a mutual evangelical upbringing having at least some effect on their behavior. But after two years, they could no longer restrain