Quoted By:
You tell the clerk you'll be happy to stay, for you do not think your father would have let anyone but his own kin put him in the earth. Besides, it's not as if you have anything better to do. Gran is probably still asleep (the last funeral she attended was her husband's) and you've already arranged for another fisherman to check your traps for the day, a service provided for those in mourning.
So, with shovel in hand, you follow the clerk to the churchyard and then to the small plot he points out to you with his finger and the flicking of his hand. The yard sits on a little bluff that overlooks the road, and is high enough to see the coastline below and the great expanse of the sea. If you stand still you can almost hear the waves and when the wind blows right it brings with it the ocean spray. You must remember to thank the portly old priest for reserving this spot, you know your father would have liked it. That thought then brings up others and then the tears come which you thought you could hold till you were private, which you had been holding all through his illness.
You wipe them away quickly when you spot the hearty figure of your oldest friend, Gordon, coming down the road, a basket of fresh fruit on his strong shoulder and the ever simple grin on his plump face. He waves to you when he sees you, and asks whether you needed any help, already mounting the stone steps up to the yard before you can answer. He tells you to "give the spade here, Jan boy", Jan being the utterance in his child's mouth of your Christian name, John, which he has never quite outgrown.
You surrender the shovel to him, knowing his nature and his strength more equal to the task than your own, for God put the brawn of two men in Gordon's body, and half the greed of one in his heart. There's no gentler giant in all the kingdom. Even now, he begins to sob as freely as a child, as the thought of what he digs dawns fully upon him.
You try and change the subject to the basket of fruit. And as quick as weather comes the grin again, and the talk of his sweetheart, Mabel, buoys his spirit to its usual lofty height. Mabel is the daughter of one of the fishwives, and the two make a cunning pair. Her mother is a widow, but it is rumored that Mabel was born too late to be her fathers. You have never liked her, but endure her for Gordon's sake, in whom she has found a willing slave. The fruit is intended for Mabel, of course, which Gordon himself had plucked, on her command, from the fruit trees on the western fields. This makes you stand at attention, for those fruit trees belong to the lord himself.
You decide to:
>Not get involved, this is Gordon's bed and he must lie in it
>Scold Gordon and try to make him see light about Mabel
>Force Gordon to return the fruit to the lord, lest he be punished
>Write-in
