All the Flowers of the Field (Excerpt)

Mr. Kneebone lives on the memorial lawn, and he'll thank you not to call it a graveyard. "Graveyards are for low-class corpses," he'll say, "really not our sort of people at all. Not that they don't need a place of their own, poor souls, where they can feel comfortable among their own type. Nothing wrong with a graveyard for those kinds of people. But this, this is a memorial lawn. It has style and grace. Look at the well-tended grass! See how the hedges are so perfectly trimmed! Admire with me the statuary, how each piece catches and holds the eye!"

Mr. Kneebone, of course, no longer has a nose. But when he tilts his skull back upon his cervical vertibrae, you can just imagine the nose he once had canting sharply up into the air. It's tempting to imagine that nose as an exceedingly long and hooked one, the better to stick it up high.

Despite living on a memorial lawn, Mr. Keebone's memory is missing some pieces. He can't for the afterlife of him tell you which grave marker was his. You can't quite blame him; there are so many, row upon row upon row, displaying names like Pringle, Cruz, Moore, Freund, and Peterson, honorifics like Lieutenant and Ph. D. and Retired, sentiments like "Beloved husband," "Devoted mother," "Gone too soon." But one thing is for sure: not a single marker bears the name "Kneebone." Perhaps, after he forgot the name he wore in life, Mr. Kneebone made himself up a new one, one appropriate to his function and his station. There's nothing like a name for conferring a little gravitas.

In any case, you mustn't ask him about his name, or how he died, or when. Questions like these make him downright furious--and a furious skeleton is a daunting sight....