Come Sit By Me by Thomas Hoobler

to fill it with trash that littered the grounds. This included beer bottles, condoms, and a variety of other crap that kids who’d been parking there had left behind.
    The old man apparently had nothing better to do, so he walked around with me. “It’s a shame the way people have no respect for the dead,” he said. I just grunted because I was bending over to pick up a beer can.
    â€œThink about it,” Flegel went on. “Underneath our feet are the bodies of those who lived here over the past 200 years, now at rest and waiting for the resurrection.”
    â€œDo you think it’ll come soon?” I asked, just being a smart-ass.
    He ignored the smart-ass part and took me seriously. “That day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father,” he replied. I could tell he was quoting from the Bible. Sounded like Look Homeward, Angel , too.
    â€œThat reminds me,” I said, “do you know anything about the person who is buried under that angel?” I pointed to the stone statue.
    â€œSally’s angel?” he said. “I’m an old man, but she was before my time.”
    â€œShe was a sinner, people say,” I suggested, hoping to get him going.
    â€œAs are we all.”
    â€œSo why put an angel over her grave?”
    â€œHave you read what it says on the pedestal?”
    I thought about it. “A fallen angel may rise again,” I replied.
    â€œIt gives hope to us all.”
    â€œBut why her? Who paid for the angel?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter, really,” he told me with a smile. “A charitable person. A person with love in their heart.”
    This guy was a pain in the ass. “Or maybe somebody who felt guilty at the way she was treated,” I said.
    â€œI guess you have heard the stories,” he said with a chuckle. “You know, there was another boy from the high school who asked me about Sally,” he said.
    â€œWhen was that?” I asked. All of a sudden, the old man had become interesting.
    He thought about it. “I’m not sure. Time seems to pass differently when you grow older. Not recently.”
    â€œLast year?”
    â€œPerhaps.” Great. Now that I wanted him to tell me something, his memory failed.
    â€œIt wasn’t the boy who killed all those people at the high school, was it?” I asked.
    â€œWasn’t that a terrible thing?” he said. “But I can’t recall. I didn’t connect this boy with that other one. He did seem concerned about death, though. But that was because someone he knew had died.”
    â€œHis grandmother?”
    â€œPerhaps. Yes, I think that was it. She had been the only person who really loved him, or so he felt. I’m sure it wasn’t true. Many people love us, even those we don’t suspect.”
    â€œSure.” Colleen Donnelly, for example .
    â€œAs I recall, he had felt his grandmother should be buried here. In that crypt over there, as a matter of fact.”
    â€œThe Crapper crypt.” That name just wouldn’t quit sounding funny.
    But the pastor never cracked a smile. “He felt his grandmother had some right to be there, but she was not a family member. And there wasn’t much space left. The bodies there are not buried, you know. They’re interred above ground in stone caskets.”
    â€œHe felt his grandmother was a member of that family.” I said.
    The pastor nodded. “But she wasn’t. Indeed the space was needed not long after that when the shooting at the school took place. One of the victims was interred there.”
    â€œSharon Craft,” I said.
    â€œYes. Did you know her?”
    â€œNo, I never met her.”
    â€œWere you the one who disturbed the crypt?” His face suddenly changed, looking sad as he realized what a sinner he’d been talking to.
    â€œNo, no. I just…happened to be here after the cemetery