William Royden

Sarah.

December 7, 1985.

He stood over the grave for a minute, with his eyes closed.

He told me that he had been beside this grave twice before in the past, and it had given him a feeling he could not explain.

Now, as he stood over it again, he said the feeling was the same.

He did not elaborate.

He knew nothing about who was buried here, only that he suspected it was an infant.

I kept silent.

Finally, he moved away.

kept staring at that one name on the stone, as if he were unable to make sense of the letters.

As we left the cemetery, the wind picked up, and it became noticeably colder.

And that simple and natural autumnal change in temperature made me, for some reason, very afraid.

I very much wanted to be away from town, or at least back at my grandfather's house, having never met this man or taken his money.

We walked from the cemetery all the way to Cotton Elementary School on Cedar Road.

Cording never told me the reasoning for his changes in direction.

He would wait until he had a sense of where he wanted to go and then just go.

Traffic and people passed us without noticing us.

Cording very intentionally never made eye contact with a single person.

He restlessly circled Cotton Elementary, which I attended from grades one through six.

There was no one else on the grounds.