Snowtime

“That’s one of the few advantages of being married to a minister. In the middle of the afternoon he can just steal away and minister to his wife’s needs. And, God knows, I needed you today, Keith.” Ada rolled out of bed and stretched in a square of sun.

“Get away from the window, honey. Someone might see you.” Keith motioned with his arm.

“Who’ll see me? The dead? Are you afraid those seventy-two dead people in that broken-down old cemetery out there will rise up, grow new eyes in their bony sockets and see your naked wife?” Ada shimmied in front of the window. “Or do you think one of the ninety-six parishioners in your little church is hiding under the window? Yoohoo, hello, come on in, you old lecher!” Ada opened the window and leaned out.

Keith leaped out of bed, put on his robe and closed the window. “Sometimes I think you’re slightly crazy, Ada.”

“Slightly? Wrong.  In the three years we’ve been in this God-forsaken village, I’ve gone completely crazy.” Ada snuggled into his robe. “But that’s all right, honey. You’ll keep me out of the loony bin so long as you come to me each day and make me feel this way.”

Keith rested his chin on his wife’s head and looked out over the cemetery. The broken, thin grave markers planted at random on the hillside were almost covered by heavy brown leaves. He’d have to rake soon. Some day soon he’d take a whole morning or afternoon and catch all the leaves in great piles. No one in the village cared about the old cemetery on the hill anymore. No one had been buried there in years. The dead of Haran preferred to rest in larger, more up-to-date plots in Athens or Chillicothe or Zanesville. Once the Reverend Keith Newman had to travel as far as Columbus to perform a funeral service.