The Gravediggers of Champagne County: A Novel (The Graveyard Series Book 1)

By Elizabeth Evans Kirk

The dead are the best listeners. 16-year-old Violet Chance thinks so, anyway. Which is why she spends most of her time in the graveyard, concocting elaborate stories of the departed, attending the funerals of strangers, and even impersonating the dead.

After an unspeakable family trauma forces her into the safe arms of God’s Acre, the mystical town cemetery, she forges an unlikely friendship with Albert, the reclusive, old gravedigger—a haunted loner who prefers to spend his days six feet under, but whose fascinating stories about the buried enchant and captivate Violet’s imagination. That is, until the dead start telling her stories of their own, and what a lively bunch of storytellers they prove to be.

The Gravediggers of Champagne County is a rare coming-of-age tale about a curious girl tormented by the things she’s seen, haunted by the secrets she keeps, and the graveyard that won’t let them stay buried for long. A gritty and touching story about tragedy and loss, and the unbreakable bonds of love and trust that can be forged even in the darkest moments. Set in the sleepy, small-town of Champagne County, the cast of charming characters (living and dead) simply dazzle against a rich graveyard setting so gripping it’s sure to live on long after the last page has been read.

ELIZABETH EVANS KIRK had a successful PR career before quitting her job and moving to Los Angeles to pursue writing full-time, where she wrote The Gravediggers of Champagne County in a cemetery in Hollywood. She currently lives with her husband and her pug in California.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elizabeth Evans Kirk
• Release date: Oct 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370240708

Elizabeth Evans Kirk

ELIZABETH EVANS KIRK had a successful PR career before quitting her job and moving to Los Angeles to pursue writing full-time, where she wrote THE GRAVEDIGGERS OF CHAMPAGNE COUNTY in a cemetery in Hollywood. She currently lives with her husband and her pug in California.

Book preview

THE GRAVEDIGGERS OF

CHAMPAGNE

COUNTY

ELIZABETH EVANS KIRK

To the only boy I’ve ever loved.

And the only one worth dedicating a book to.

Andy. Always.

CHAPTER ONE

The graveyard. A place I can catch my breath and collect my thoughts. Because no one else is. Breathing or thinking, I mean. I’ve been coming here for a while now. Since I got out of the hospital. Sometimes I walk between the headstones, noticing first names, birth and death dates, inscriptions. Especially inscriptions— someone’s life whittled down to a single sentence. And someone else’s sentence, for that matter. It just seems like so much can be learned from someone’s grave. Almost everything, really. In my opinion, anyway.

There is a grave for Sam, and I wonder what he had at 17. His inscription simply reads he had it all. Or Norah, who was our darling. I wonder whose darling she was.

I spend a lot of time writing under this oak tree. The Mulhollands, Vernon and Minnie, keep me company. I wonder what their lives must’ve been like. They died a few days apart. Lived 144 years between the both of them. A long life, by any account.

I prefer the stillness of the cemetery to just about any other place in the world. Except on Tuesdays when the gardeners weed-eat around the headstones, or on days when there’s a fresh body to find space for, and then I look forward to my conversations with Albert. Albert is the gravedigger. We met a few weeks ago. Of course, I had to be forceful and strike up a conversation. Albert isn’t one for small talk. Or anything with a pulse, really. Neither am I.

I watched him for several hours, forearms bulging as he heaved the shovel up over his shoulders and then jammed it back into the dirt. His grey uniform unzipped and tied around his waist, exposing a damp undershirt stained with the remains of the day’s work on it, his black skin glistening in the sun. I noticed the beads of sweat that swung violently off the tip of his nose. And I noticed that he hummed the same tune whenever he was digging – nothing I could name, but eerily familiar. I wondered what it must be like to dig graves for a living. Even more, I envied him. To be able to spend your life amongst the dead, there’s a certain poetic appeal to it. I waited patiently for my time to strike, and then when he was finished, packing up his tools and pulling up his work bib, I walked over and introduced myself.

I’m Violet. I stuck out my hand with urgency. He wiped his brow with his forearm and continued passed me.

I know, he said, his voice had a rumble to it. He kept his eyes low, and he staggered a bit when he walked. But he walked with purpose, and humility. The kind that comes with working in close proximity to the dead, or dirt, or both.  

I didn’t say anything, but a weird noise rose from the back of my throat. A combination of nerves and shock, I guess. I mean, the man digs graves for a living and somehow he knows my name. Seemed a little too Poe-ish for my comfort.

I seen you around sometimes. Ain’t that hard to figure out if you pay attention. He said, answering my gurgle-question.

He sort of smirked, maybe at his own cleverness, or maybe at me, but kept his brisk pace.

I followed closely behind him. Frantic for a conversation, I blurted out the only thing I could think of that wasn’t a gurgle.

You dig good graves!

You dig good graves, Violet? Really?

He stopped and turned. I noticed the scar on his neck before I noticed the name on his uniform. It gave him a menacing look that I wasn’t sure matched the softness behind his eyes, but it was enough to make me take a step back.

What’d you say? his eyes squinted with interest.

"Uh, heh, I said, you dig good graves, AL-BERT." Reading the name off the patch embroidered on the left side of his burly chest.

He grunted as he turned back around and continued his hurried pace. I skipped a little to keep up.

Where you headed? I begged.

Lyle Richardson.

Lyle was the town’s favorite barber. He was 91, and still working. Until the morning before when his wife couldn’t wake him for his daily eggs and coffee.

I walked beside him to his next assignment, even though I could feel the draft from his cold shoulder. That might bother some people, but I just figured Albert didn’t know enough about me yet. I’m a little rough around the edges, sure. But I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about that. One of the perks of spending a lot of time around dead people. You learn to accept yourself, because we’re all just going to be 6-feet under and boiled down to a few shitty words, eventually. And it won’t say anything about your crippling insecurities or how brilliant you were at small talk or anything of any real significance anyway.

We walked for a bit, only the rattling of Albert’s pickax and shovel between us, until we reached Lyle’s plot. I waited for him to say something, but he never did. So I just sat and watched as he precisely measured the blocks of grass, and one by one stacked them on the tarp pulled taut over the neighboring space. When he was finished prepping for his dig, he looked over and nodded. I knew then that Albert and I would be friends.

That day seemed different than others.

I spend most of my days down in the hollow of the cemetery, where the oldest graves are. Also known as Section X. For the most part, that means I’m left alone more. No one visiting graves that are more than 100 years old. Lucky to find a soul that even has any distant relations to these people. A lot of civil war soldiers, young infants that died of some preventable disease, young women I can only assume were taken by child birth, and lots and lots of old people. Their names are of particular interest to me. Names like Constance Helm, F. H. Plaistridge, June Waters, John Cricket, Curtis Thimble, Elmer Bean. You get the picture. There’s loads of material for the timidest of imaginations. Lucky for me, I’m blessed with more curiosity than my mother (and my biology teacher) know what to do with. Just skimming the stones for a few minutes creates a menagerie of characters that will entertain me for the rest of the afternoon. June Waters, for instance, birthdate 1843, no death date, and her inscription reads A beautiful flower. I imagine she sips mint juleps and says things like "Oh, Rhett, you ah a devil, ahren’t you?" Or Elmer Bean. He takes his whiskey in the study. He puffs his pipe and lets the smoke curl from both sides of his mouth as he pensively concludes that Dickens latest chapters might just be his best.

Each of them unique, and just as much my friends as the few I have in real life.

I didn’t see Albert again for a few days. He doesn’t do much digging in the hollow. Sometimes there is the random new plot that will pop up, someone unrelated to everyone, decides they’d rather spend the rest of forever at the bottom of a hollow surrounded by complete strangers that never saw an automobile or made a telephone call. I don’t blame them. I’d do the same. The less I know, the more removed from people and family and society, the better. Why do you think I spend so much time in the cemetery? The dead are the best listeners.

I haven’t met very many people here. I mean, I come across a few stragglers. People who have wondered down from a grave they’ve been visiting. A few have even made small talk with me. And by small talk, I mean, they tell me more about themselves and their life stories than I’d ever care to know and I just cross my arms, squint my eyes, and nod my head. Other than the dead, I am the best listener I know. And finally, they ask me about myself. To be polite, mind you. Not because they actually care to know. Doesn’t really matter, I don’t tell them anything anyway. Nothing true, at least. Sometimes I take on the persona of one of the dead. One time I was Ofelia Oaram. Born and raised in Leon, West Virginia, on the banks of the Kanawha River. My father just sold a screenplay to Paramount for a significant amount of money. That was the most interesting I could come up with on the spot. The stories have gotten better, and more elaborate with time.

Albert is the only one who knows my real name. I guess I like it that way. I can only assume that what he tells me is true about himself, as well. I’ve never seen him outside the cemetery. In fact, I don’t ever ask him about his home life. I like to think of him as Albert, the gravedigger. That outside of this cemetery he just sort of evaporates and then reappears when another hole needs dug. Does that make me a bad person? Couldn’t tell ya. Like I said, I don’t spend much time critiquing myself. I don’t think any of us have much use for it. Either way, me and Albert like each other. And we find that stories are the most interesting part of anyone’s life. But unlike me, Albert doesn’t make up stories about the people in these graves. He actually knows the real stories. It took a while before he had warmed up enough to tell me one. But boy, was it worth it.

CHAPTER TWO

It was raining that day. As I held an umbrella over him while he dug from 4 feet below, he told me the story of a boy that’s stuck with him for nearly 40 years. If you must know, that’s how long Albert has been working at God’s Acre. That’s what they call this place. He was a young man when he began, 18, summer of 1958. He said he needed the money and he passed a sign that said that the undertaker was hiring. He was the only one to apply, so they gave him the job on the spot. I guess being ok around dead people has its perks.

Things seem like they’ve worked out for him. At least from what I can see. Loners, people who work on the periphery of society, they get a bad rap. But it’s only because they don’t understand the benefits. No one understands what it’s like to never have to ask permission to stay out late, or have no one to call and check in with. For those that think that’s a miserable existence don’t understand the essence of what I’m talking about. I’m talking about freedom. Other than being dead, it’s the ultimate sense of carelessness. Now, that doesn’t mean that you don’t care. About people, or things, or your job. Quite the opposite, actually. Small talk and ass-kissing can take up so much of your time that you rarely have time to really care about anything. Or feel anything. Like the deep emotions of what it’s like to hear a crow croak in the early fog here, from atop a dead fern. Or the feeling of flying when your windows are rolled down, going 90, listening to The Drifters on repeat for hours. (Yeah, I’m 16 and like The Drifters. Sue me.) No one to tell you that’s annoying, or redundant, or weird. It’s a freedom from caring about anything other than what you want to care about.

And often times, it’s the stuff that no one else pays attention to that we, the outliers, care about the most. Now, I won’t be as dramatic as to call us the underlings or the misfits or any other term that makes us seem lowly and insignificant. If I could, I’d come up with superhero names for us. Because, essentially, that’s what we are. Feeling and hearing and seeing are super powers. If you don’t believe me, pay attention the next time someone passes you in the hallway, or checks you out at the grocery store, or sits beside you on the bus. Make eye contact? Rarely. Asks probing questions that aren’t canned niceties that have never served a purpose? Not likely. Remember you or anything about you the next time you see them? Never. See what I mean? If you have a skill that is a commodity in society, well, that, my friends, is a special power. Add super to it if it makes you feel good.

Anyway, back to that story Albert told me. The quality of which only an outlier could truly harness. Because it wasn’t what Albert said that made it remarkable. It’s what he didn’t say that left your head spinning. He said it with such subtlety and poise that you didn’t really understand what he was saying at first. Another power of the outlier. They don’t ask to be heard or seen. You know the saying, takes one to know one? Well, that’s true with Albert. If you aren’t one, you would miss all of the clues that make his story great. Like the way his head would sort of twitch to one side when he would say the boy’s name. Or the way he would lean on his shovel and look up with his eyes closed in between remembering and telling. Even when he was talking, in the middle of the tale, the corner of his mouth would seem to wince with pain at the very memory of it. Now, it could all be for effect, you know. But, something about it seemed genuine. One of my super powers is my sensitive bullshit meter. I can sense it from a mile away. Another reason I spend so much time in the cemetery. Death, the one thing you can’t bullshit your way through. Or out of.

The boy was young, 12. And he loved baseball. Not that it matters, but so does Albert. Love baseball, I mean. If there is a Dodgers game on, he’s listening (and cussing) to it. Anyway, back to the boy. He would practice for hours every day. Alone in the back of his house, which coincidentally was made out of concrete blocks. Not the nice kind, the kind that’s painted chalky white and chips when you hit it. He would throw a baseball at the same spot, until that one spot was rubbed smooth and even the concrete beneath it had given way to his discipline. Or boredom. Either way, he’d bent matter at his will. Another super power.

I don’t know how Albert came to know the story, but he told it with such conviction that you just sort of thought it’d always been there. Inside him, just below the surface. Carrying it with him in his pocket like a stone.  It was always suspicious to me if someone told a story and didn’t have some semblance of empathy for the situation in which he’s telling about. For me, I don’t have to live it to know what it’s like to have a dream and have to stare at the shittiness of reality while holding the magnitude of your dream within the same thought. Two opposing thoughts within the same mind. Hello, super power, anyone? Ok, I’m done, I promise. Anyway, you can’t ask Albert to finish the story, or pick up where he left off. You just kind of have to show up, and patiently wait it out. For weeks after that first story,