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arms.
Dunning said something to Doris. Her reply didn’t seem to please him. The distance was too great
to read his expression, but he was wagging a finger at her as he spoke. She listened, shook her head,
turned, and went inside. He stood there a moment or two, then took off his hat and slapped it against
his leg.
All interesting—and instructive of the relationship—but no help otherwise. Not what I was
looking for.
I got that the following day. I had decided to make only two reconnaissance passes that Sunday,
feeling that, even in a dark brown rental unit that almost faded into the landscape, more would be
risking notice. I saw nothing on the first one and figured he was probably in for the day, and why not?
The weather had turned gray and drizzly. He was probably watching sports on TV with the rest of the
boarders, all of them smoking up a storm in the parlor.
But I was wrong. Just as I turned onto Witcham for my second pass, I saw him walking toward
downtown, today dressed in blue jeans, a windbreaker, and a wide-brimmed waterproof hat. I drove
past him and parked on Main Street about a block up from the garage he used. Twenty minutes later I
was following him out of town to the west. Traffic was light, and I kept well back.
His destination turned out to be Longview Cemetery, two miles past the Derry Drive-In. He
stopped at a flower stand across from it, and as I drove by, I saw him buying two baskets of fall
flowers from an old lady who held a big black umbrella over both of them during the transaction. I
watched in my rearview mirror as he put the flowers on the passenger seat of his car, got back in, and
drove up the cemetery’s access road.
I turned around and drove back to Longview. This was taking a risk, but I had to chance it, because
this looked good. The parking lot was empty except for two pickups loaded with groundkeeping
equipment under tarps and a dinged-up old payloader that looked like war surplus. No sign of
Dunning’s Pontiac. I drove across the lot toward the gravel lane leading into the cemetery itself,
which was huge, sprawling over as many as a dozen hilly acres.
In the cemetery proper, smaller lanes split off from the main one. Groundfog was rising up from
the dips and valleys, and the drizzle was thickening into rain. Not a good day for visiting the dear
departed, all in all, and Dunning had the place to himself. His Pontiac, parked halfway up a hill on
one of the feeder lanes, was easy to spot. He was placing the flower baskets before two side-by-side
graves. His parents’, I assumed, but I didn’t really care. I turned my car around and left him to it.
By the time I got back to my Harris Avenue apartment, that fall’s first hard rain was pounding the
city. Downtown, the canal would be roaring, and the peculiar thrumming that came up through the
concrete in the Low Town would be more noticeable than ever. Indian summer seemed to be over. I
didn’t care about that, either. I opened my notebook, flipped almost to the end before I found a blank
page, and wrote October 5 th , 3:45 PM, Dunning to Longview Cem, puts flowers on parents’ (?) graves. Rain.
I had what I wanted.