Sticking Together
Late one November afternoon, we stood before the gates of Woodlawn Cemetery on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. We entered and came upon a quaint gatekeeper’s cottage with a uniformed guard inside. He took his job very seriously. He demanded to know where we were going. We told him our destination: an Irish pub on Katonah Avenue. Cutting across the cemetery to the gates on East 233rd Street would be the most direct route. He gave us a stern look, then a warning: “All right, if you wanna play it that way you gotta stick together. Don’t stray from the road. You gotta make quick time now because the gates close at 4:30. If you don’t make it by then, you’ll be locked in. And you don’t want to be locked in. You get me?” We got him.
In failing light, we hastened down a tree-lined cemetery lane past subdivisions of imposing mausoleums. It was shade on top of shade. We stuck together, not straying from the pavement. Not a soul was to be seen until, in the sunless heart of the graveyard, we came upon a middle-aged man standing next to an Oldsmobile sedan. He was wearing a Mets cap. Just beyond the car a sign said, “Danger Sharp Curve.”
The man was visibly shaking. “It’s my wife,” he explained. “She wanted to take some pictures, over there.” He pointed toward a dark grove of spruce trees. “I told her no, we’re supposed to stick together—that’s what the guard at the gate said—but she wouldn’t listen. Have you seen her?” No, we said, we hadn’t seen her.
“She needs to get back right now!” the man continued. “A few minutes ago, one of those guards came by in a black SUV. The thing had Jersey plates! He told me I better start heading for the gates or I’d be sorry. I think he had a gun on him. I tried to tell him about my wife but he just drove off.” We felt bad for the man and told him we would keep an eye out for his wife. We resumed our journey toward the exit.
We didn’t get far. Truth be told, we couldn’t bear the thought of anybody being locked in this place after dark. So despite the risks, we decided to enter the uncharted and rapidly darkening backcountry of the cemetery—to look for the lost wife.
Soon enough we had troubles of our own. One’s sense of direction is quickly overturned in the gray dusk where all monuments look the same. At some point, we passed the grave of Herman Melville and his family. No time to dawdle. We kept going. A few minutes later, we passed the Melville family grave again. We took this as a bad sign but kept going. The third time we passed the Melville family grave we knew we were finished.
That’s when we heard it. Far, far away, a lone car-horn sounded—Honk! Honk! Honk!—followed by the plaintive bellowing of a name—“Sylvia! Sylvia!” Then more honking, more plaintive bellowing, but fainter, fainter still, till one last mournful “Sylvia!” drifted like a weary ghost among the lonesome tombstones. We headed in the direction of that last cry.
We found the paved lane and soon spotted the northeast cemetery gates. They were still open. We could see the lights of traffic going by on 233rd Street. Not a minute to spare. We hurried toward the exit. That’s when we saw it: a black SUV with Jersey plates. It was parked next to the gate. When we walked by, the driver’s window rolled down. A uniformed cemetery guard peered out. He looked angry at the world and wanted to have a word with us.
Hoping to deflect his wrath, we tried to be helpful. We told him, “There’s some guy back in the cemetery who can’t find his wife.” It only made him angrier. To soothe things over, we tried to make polite chitchat: “So do many people get lost in the cemetery?” That did it.
“What, are you kidding me?! Those idiots get lost all the time. When they come into the cemetery I tell them, I tell everybody—EVERYBODY!—You gotta stick together! Don’t stray from the road! And you gotta get outta those gates by 4:30 p.m.! For crissakes, there’s four hundred acres of cemetery out there! Stick together, people, STICK TOGETHER! But do they listen?! NOOOO! It’s like I tell my wife when we’re in K-Mart: We gotta stick together! But does she listen? NOOOO! She wanders off! Then she wonders why I’m all pissed off when I find her! It’s not like I didn’t tell her! And it ain’t like I got nuthin’ better to do than run around K-Mart looking for my idiot wife!”
“So what happens when somebody gets lost in the cemetery?”
“Whaddya think?! We gotta go look for those idiots! Yeah, us! Me and the other guards! We’re here 24/7, ya know! It’s a big place and we got a lotta things we gotta do! Plenty of things we gotta do! Sometimes it takes an hour to find those lost idiots! And ya know what’s happening while we’re doing that?! WE’RE NOT DOING THE THINGS WE GOTTA DO!”
We did not want to keep this fellow from doing the things he had to do. We bid him adieu and hurried for the gates. As we stepped out onto the street, we heard a voice booming at us from inside the cemetery gates: “You people have a good night! You hear me?! And always stick together!”
©John P. O’Grady
Originally appeared in The Mountain Eagle on December 18, 2020
