The woods skirted all the backyards on the street, from Joshua's down. To the children they seemed endless. The paths changed sometimes from one year to the next, and once or twice in a season one of them rediscovered the Tree Fort, or the rotting stump, or the overgrown jungle gym.
Once, in the summer of Molly Garrett's last year alive, the three of them went exploring deeper than they had before, all along the chain-link fence of the psychiatric hospital to the very end of the woods. What they found there--they never saw it until they were almost on top of it--was a gate in the fence, held shut by a heavy chain, and a small red brick enclosure beyond it. It was just a low wall, a square with one arch on the near side, like a little church with no roof.
The children pressed their faces against the fence, trying to read a dark metal plaque next to the doorway. It was too far to read, except for "St. Michael's Church" across the top. They looked at each other, and Tandar began to climb the gate, which was too tall. It swung a little, though, and Molly Garrett forced her way through the gap, and the boys followed her.
The wall was low enough to see over, with a lot of bricks missing around the top. Here stood the first church in the township, the plaque said, in 1730, before the Revolutionary War. It burned down in 1813, and the little wall was left here as a memorial. There were graves inside it, two graves with stones, but the whole field beyond it--on the hospital grounds--was full of unmarked burials.
Molly Garrett stood in the doorway for a moment. The space inside was hardly bigger than her living room, with grass all around, even two trees growing inside. Two mossy grey stones lay flat in the center, side by side, big as beds almost.
SAMUEL TUCKER, said the first stone; it was cracked across the middle. The children had to read half by touch, kneeling on the surface, exploring the cool stone with their fingers to find letters barely detectable. His Wife, ELIZABETH, said the second, born in 1788. They couldn't make out anything more.
"This is too hard," said Molly Garrett.
"We should make a rubbing," Joshua said, still trying to read the first stone.
Tandar stood looking across the field. "Do you think the whole field is really graves? I've seen people walk across it."
"There are graves everywhere," said Joshua. "You're probably on one right now. The whole world is probably graves."
"That's not true."
"Everybody has to be buried someplace."