As she waved her hands wildly off the steering wheel, Veronica explained that she had built an amusement park in the space her parents had once lived. The long rainy drive from the airport had unraveled her past scheme recently come true. Turnoff was soon, estate not far off the interstate. She’d mentioned there was a famous cemetery along the way, but this was nothing like what I expected. We weren’t driving by Woodworn, we were driving through it. Almost poetically, it was a valley of graves. The eight lane highway split the plots, tall mounds on either side. There were more people trudging through the mud and rain over the graves of loves ones than I thought there’d be—some stared blankly at the cars, upright, seated; some visitors walked and walked along the direction of the cars, blank, animated. In recent years, they’d installed railings at the peak. It was just high and muddy enough to persuade window-shoppers into making a final purchase, no matter the brutality of facing 80 mph speeding vehicles instead of the somehow gentler ocean. The slow-moving procession of traffic allowed close inspection of the acres-wide cemetery. I said I wanted to walk through it later. She replied, “North or South End?” You couldn’t cross the road at any part; the cemetery had been officially split in ‘74 when the roadmap was drawn. Two exits went directly into the middle; all other entrances were located on the perimeter.
We drove off the exit right past the valley, and turned to her desolate park. It was first a farmhouse, then a bright blue tarp stretching like a red carpet to the old previously-rented rides. Veronica had taken it upon herself to restore pick-up-and-go amusement park rides, which really meant she had spent most of her parents’ estate to let fifteen visitors per year on two of the nine rides that actually worked. Well, worked safely. Safely enough. The gas-powered tilt-a-whirl was the main attraction, along with the carousel with an original Wurlitzer organ. The old music roll pumped out Smile, Smile, Smile in the pouring rain, and I hopped off early onto the path back to the house. The cemetery was in walking distance. In the dark, it’d begun to look like a cliffside city, a negative print of Santorini or just a cobbled sponge of lights.
The North End (closest to Veronica’s park) contained the highest hill. And what a hill it was, definitive proof that the land beneath had been unnaturally flattened. There was a side road that ran parallel to the interstate and up round the hill. I attempted to summit, but was not a car with traction, and halfway up the slope slid backwards down, flat down into the mud and the valley. It was longer than the ascent, and the eight lane road became six, four, three, two, one from the mud caking on my hair to the gravel tearing it out. Pitch black night and reflections swelled headlights to the entirety of my vision. Cemetery soil was sweet through the leg that should have pointed the other direction. I thought of a good name for Veronica’s roadside attraction. Too good to die with. I tore fingernails hauling to the edge of North End. Old Jayne’s sun and moon headstone lined up with my left and right, left and right, until I reached her. I flipped over and splayed limb from limb across her plot. You couldn’t see the stars with all this traffic, but I couldn’t see anything anyway. I bled into the earth, and the earth bled into me. Round and round, it was familiar. As the waxen night darkened, I slowly closed my eyes and sunk, the ocean of cars a peaceful reminder. Veronica needed to know. I needed to share. She already knew. She needed to know. I breathed the answer—it was quiet and constant.