Category: Santiago Holmes

Most days Santiago would ride the mower through the cemetery with a cooler of Buds. He’d average a beer an hour over the course of the day. He claimed it helped him navigate in and out of the headstones.

He told me once, “your Pap wouldn’t let me do any of the riding mowing the first five or six years I worked for him. He claimed I was a drunk and couldn’t be trusted. Of course, he wasn’t wrong.

“Well, one summer, about ten years back, Pap was sick around Memorial Day Weekend, which is big time here at Mt. Hope. Nothing kept Pap out of work, but he couldn’t keep any food down. Your gram tried to get him to stay home, but he wouldn’t listen to reason. 

“He was so feverish I’m not sure he knew what day of the week it was, or that by Thursday he hadn’t mowed any of the lawn. I’d mowed the parts you do by hand and trimmed most of the stones, but he hadn’t done one inch of the place except the back field, where he always started. That part was empty and straight, so he was able to zigzag across it without doing any damage.

“Anyway, he came in that Thursday in worse shape than any of the other days. Sweat was pouring off of him. I knew he wasn’t doing any work. I tricked him in to heading back to the cottage, telling him your gram needed something or other. Once there, I laid him out on the couch, and let your gram tend to him. At that point, he was too weak to fight me.

“You’ve never in your life heard so many compliments about a lawn. People were ecstatic about the patterns I’d cut through the grass, and how neat and trim everything looked. Keep in mind many of the folks coming in were from military families, so they knew a thing or two about order. I’d overhear them telling Pap they’d never seen the place looking so good.

“Of course Pap got the credit, and that was okay. I knew the job I’d done. I did the whole place: mowing, trimming, and two burials all by myself. I was used to the shaft at that point.

“Well, Pap got better, and that was the end of my riding. I was back doing your work, pushing that heavy mower around the hill and trimming all the headstones.

“Now, we also weren’t getting compliments about the lawn anymore. Your pap likes to stick his nose into it a bit, and play the rebel, but when it comes to that lawn, it’s all up and down in simple rows.

“And that’s fine, but people began to ask about getting some fresh patterns in the lawn. They wanted to know why it didn’t look more like Memorial Day weekend. They were bored with the same ol’ same ol’. Pap did his usual and told them to screw and that this was a cemetery, not a hair salon. You know how he is.

“But I could see it bugged him, and I thought I might be able to help him out. I was tired of the mowing and trimming. Do you know how difficult it is to get the trimming done with a case of Buds on your back? No, I suppose you don’t. Well, they get warm, and that is no way to enjoy a Bud.

“Anyway, I asked Pap why he wouldn’t ever let me do the riding. I told him maybe I could cut some fresh patterns and make the families a little happier. 

“I had the good sense not to tell him I had cut the Memorial Day patterns people were talking so much about. He’d been so sick; he didn’t even realize I had cut the whole place myself.

“Pap said if I could give up the sauce, he might let me ride. That was his constant refrain. At that point I’d been thinking of trying to kick it anyway, so I thought I’d show him. I took a week off to let the shakes run their course, they I spent a week working without a sip during the day.

“Pap was as good as his word, and when I’d proved to him I was sober, he let me do the riding. 

“You ask him today, and I bet he’d tell you it was the worst decision he ever made. I got the mower stuck on a water spigot and ripped it out of the ground. The lower third of the cemetery was flooded before we could get it turned off.

“The next morning, I knocked a granite headstone off its base. I figured Pap would fire me on the spot. I could see the rage in his eyes. He didn’t accept much in the way of screw-ups and isn’t one to be crossed.

“He’s a good man your pap. Once we got the stone back on its base, he took me up to the garage for lunch. He took two ice cold Buds out of the fridge and set them in front of me. He looked me in the eye, and I know he could see the desperation, the need sitting in there.

“But I wouldn’t touch them. Pap pulled back the tab on his beer, the pop running through my entire body. My mouth watered with the hunger, but I still wouldn’t touch the two in front of me.

“Pap took a long pull off the can, smacked his lips and said, ‘that’s a damn fine thing.’ Then he looked me in the eye and said, ‘Santiago, you can’t cut grass worth a damn sober. You better get yourself in the right frame of mind to cut it after lunch.’

“He drained the rest of his beer and went over to the cottage for his lunch. I’ve been doing the riding mowing ever since.”

That was the type of statement Santiago would make. He could steal the sun from the clearest of skies; point out your faults no matter how perfect your performance. It was as though he was not satisfied until you were as miserable as he was.

Yet, when I think back, I could say he was pragmatic in his approach to life. At the time his blunt assessments felt harsh to my delicate ears. He told things as they were, and the truth can feel harsh.

I do think he was just mean; made ornery by the life he’d led. For the longest time I thought it was just that he didn’t like me, but then I came to understand he didn’t talk much to anyone, and when he did, he was rude and offensive.

Santiago worked for my grandfather. He was also drunk most of the time, which meant he didn’t get work done fast, though his attention to detail was amazing. It was fortunate the cemetery’s clientele weren’t in much of a rush, and also too bad they couldn’t admire the work he did on their lawns and flowerbeds.

As afraid of him as I was growing up, I felt bad for him. He always appeared shabby and unkempt. He stank of cheap beer and most mornings last night’s vomit stained the front of his shirt. Sleep crusted the corners of his eyes and he was incapable of conversation until he’d had a cup of Jack Daniels watered down with coffee.

His stink permeated throughout the garage. Pap allowed him to live in the apartment above it, which didn’t help matters. Somehow the smells of gasoline and fresh cut grass couldn’t overpower the stench of Santiago.When I was working for Pap, he’d invite me up for a ‘snap’ or a ‘pop’ after work, but Pap had two rules I had to follow or else he’d skin me. First, I had to work hard every single day. If I didn’t put out my best effort, Pap would know, and I would hear about it. Second, I was under no circumstances to go up to Santiago’s apartment. Not that I wanted to. While I didn’t fear him as I had as a child, I also wasn’t eager to be in an enclosed space with him alone.

            When I was 16, my second summer working for Pap, I buried a high school classmate. LeAnn Matthews had just graduated when she was killed in a horrific automobile accident. She was the prettiest girl in town, let alone the high school. She had a big smile that lit up any room she walked into and warmed those she cast it upon. On top of that, she was a nice person, wiling to talk with anyone, while also appearing interested in what they had to say. 

She was the pride of Berwick; valedictorian of her class, a star in school plays, an All-State performer on three different athletic teams, first chair violin in the school orchestra and overall model student, daughter and human. She was headed to Cornell in the fall, the first resident of Berwick to be accepted into an Ivy League school. There wasn’t a corner of the town she hadn’t put her stamp on, so it was understandable how her death devastated the town.

She’d been headed home from the Boiler Room Bar and Grill when she struck another car head on. The Boiler Room was where all the underage and just-of-age locals went to feel like adults because of its lax ID policies – though the Tortoise had no ID policy, it was too much of a dive, even for desperate under-aged kids.

The chief of police owned the Boiler Room, and with the town’s economy being poor, he felt obligated to bring in as much business as possible. He made a convoluted argument about the more money he brought in providing more in tax revenue for the city, but most folks didn’t pay that close attention, instead preferring to have another place to drown their cares for an hour or two.

LeAnn wasn’t a frequenter of the Boiler Room, but she was there that night to celebrate her high school graduation. She hadn’t had much, but the state blood alcohol limit was 0.0 and she was over that when she got behind the wheel.

As luck would have it, the driver of the car that hit her had also been drinking. His blood alcohol was 0.8. LeAnn was stopped at a stoplight when his car crossed the dividing line, blew through the intersection and slammed her head on. His lack of sobriety was the only reason he survived, she didn’t have a chance.

Burying LeAnn was the first time I stopped and thought about mortality. It hit me hard that someone I knew was lying beneath my feet. By the time of LeAnn’s burial, I’d buried a few dozen people, and while it was strange to get outside of myself and think about standing on top of a body, at this point, I was used to the sensation. 

With LeAnn, I reverted back to the form of my first burial, where I refused to step on the dirt to help press it down. I worked from the edges and strained against the back of my shovel to pack the dirt in. It felt like a desecration to walk on top of someone I had known, but at the same time, I wanted it to be perfect. I felt a certain pride at being one of the last people to care for LeAnn on this earth.

Santiago Holmes grumbled about my performance as he stomped and spat over her grave. I was tempted to hit him with my shovel each time he spit into the dirt covering her, but I knew he wasn’t invested in the making sure the work was perfect. To him it was just a job, to me, even though I hadn’t known LeAnn to talk to beyond the quick ‘hello’ she shared with everyone, it felt personal.

If you give your mind free rein, you can see and hear strange things in cemeteries. I don’t believe in ghosts, and I didn’t back then, but the following summer I returned to work full-time in the cemetery I swear I saw one.

I hadn’t seen LeAnn Matthews’ mother visit her grave the previous summer. When she showed up to prune the flowers at the front of LeAnn’s grave the following summer, I swear I was looking at the ghost of LeAnn. She was the spitting image of LeAnn, though her long hair was grayish-white instead of blonde.

She was an acquaintance of my mother, and I had known her to have short hair and an engaging personality. Now she was hollowed out. As she worked at the stems, I could see the toll grief had taken on her. I had an urge to go to her and try to comfort her by telling her someone who knew her daughter had buried her.

Instead, I stayed back and watched as the July sun beat down on her small back and she tore at the withered petals of the flowers, her body wracked by sobs. In some sense she was a ghost, as the person I had known was nowhere to be seen in the broken woman who floated with grief back to her car.

What always struck me as strange about the experience of burying LeAnn was how I felt indifferent to her death. I hadn’t thought to care about the other people I had buried. I hadn’t known them.

I wanted to do a good job burying LeAnn. I wanted to make it perfect, but I wasn’t sad, or affected in any way by her death. It just was. I think I understood then, at a deeper level I wasn’t aware of, that people die and it’s part of life, so it wasn’t something to get worked up about.

At the same time, I worried about myself, because I didn’t feel anything. I thought, even though I didn’t know LeAnn well, I should feel something about her passing. I felt the weight of it, and by that I mean I felt other people’s sadness and the levity. Yes, this burial was more personal, but I wasn’t sad.

I was afraid I wasn’t a good person. I was scared I wasn’t normal I tried to say something to Santiago Holmes about it the next day, but he shrugged his shoulders and said, “people die, so what?”