Their shadows flitted from headstone to headstone, giggling in the leaves. And in the night there weren’t even the shadows. They were children, I didn’t know them, they were having so much fun. They didn’t even notice what state they lived in, Virginia, Wisconsin, who cared? Well, maybe Ziggy did. But he would have been the only one. Siggy and Kijra they just flitted from headstone to headstone, giggling.
I used to play … what was it called again. It had a special name. Hags. That’s it. We played Hags. It stood for Hide and Go seek. Me and Liz and Stu, and Jane and Brad. Almost everyday, out in our three front yards. And back yards too, only I don’t know if we went in Liz and Stu’s back yard ever.
Their backyard was totally enclosed. It seems like it had a wall around it. A vine covered stone wall, but I’m not sure. There was only one or two ways to get in back there; either through the door to the wall, or through the Challenor’s house, and there was a grandfather clock in their house. We passed it on the way sneaking through. It was a big deal. I know, because Jane said, “That’s their grandfather clock. It chimes real loud!” and her big eyes got round and wide, and she stuck her face in mine. It was a dark face. She was half Cherokee. Her mom sunbathed nude. On the roof.
“The pilots kept circling!” somebody said, and then they laughed. It was probably Brad. And I smiled along, pretending I knew why they laughed.
And in Hags, you covered your eyes by that big tree in Brad and Jane’s front yard, you put your forehead up against the bark, it was really thick, and when you had counted to a hundred (which I couldn’t do) you had to yell “All ee all ee all come freedom!”
“No! You don’t shout All ee all ee all come freedom, it’s free, dummy! And you didn’t count to a hundred, you only counted to ten!”
It was Stu. And he had stood there monitoring me counting. He was thin, had dark hair and wore black glasses. He was tall.
“I can see you,” I said, “So I found you. You’re not hiding.”
“I’m not going to hide until you learn to count to a hundred and say free not freedom.”
“I did count to a hundred.”
“No. You counted to ten. Ten is not a hundred.”
Brad came out of the bushes from in front of his house.
“I can see you too, I found you too.”
“I told you,” Brad said, “Ten is not the same as a hundred.”
“Yes it is, it’s ten tens.”
“You have to go through each one of them. I showed you this.”
And they counted to a hundred again, both Brad and Stu, and brad was half Cherokee too, but for some reason I never thought of him that way. Just Jane. Because she had long hair, and besides, she was the one who kept bragging about it.
But how would they have got to the graveyard. They never lived near one.
