According to my guess, Jim and Jeaney and the cemetery were about ten
rods in, or maybe not more than eight. Anyway, I says to Peterson, and
he agreed with me, that there wasn't any use for a funeral. I says: “God
A'mighty buried 'em to suit himself.” It looked like he didn't think
much of the way Canada Center did its burying, seeing the cemetery was
took in and buried over again. Peterson and me thought the same on that
point. And we put up the white stone, sort of on top of things, that
maybe you've noticed, and lumped the folk in the cemetery together, and
put their names on it, and a general epitaph; but not being strong
on the dates, we left them out mostly. We put Jeaney Merimy with her
family, but Canada Center was singularly united against letting Jim in.
“You puts his name on no stone with me or mine,” says Merimy, and
I'm not saying but what he was right. Yes, sir; Merimy had feelings,
naturally. But it seemed to me when a man was a hundred and fifty feet
underground, more or less, there ought to be some charity; and maybe I
had a weakness for Jim, though my wife wouldn't hear of him, on account
of his drinks, which were slippery things. Anyway, I takes a chisel
and a mallet, and I picks out a boulder on the slide a decent ways from
Canada Center's monument, and I cuts in it, “Jim Hawks”; and then I cuts
in it an epitaph that I made myself, and it's there yet:
HERE LIES JIM HAWKS, KILLED BY ROCKS.
HE DIDN'T ACT THE WAY HE OUGHT.
THAT'S ALL I'll SAY OF JIM.
HERE HE LIES, WHAT'S LEFT OF HIM.
And I thought that stated the facts, though the second line didn't
rhyme really even. Speaking generally, Tioba appeared to have dropped
on things about the right time, and that being so, why not let it pass,
granting Merimy had a right to his feelings?
Now, neither Sheriff Hall nor the extra woman showed up in the valley
any more, so it seemed likely they had heard of Tioba falling, and
agreed Jim wouldn't be any good, if they could find him. It was two
weeks more before I saw the sheriff, him driving through, going over to
Helder's. I saw him get out of his buggy to see the monument, and I went
up after, and led him over to show Jim's epitaph, which I took to be a
good epitaph, except the second line.
Now, what do you think he did? Why, he busted out a-haw-hawing
ridiculous, and it made me mad.
“Shut up!” says I. “What's ailing you?”
“Haw-haw!” says he. “Jim ain't there! He's gone down the road.”
“I believe you're a blamed liar,” says I; and the sheriff sobered up,
being mad himself, and he told me this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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