Jeb, My Love

The dirty soccer ball flew over the wall into the Confederate cemetery. 

"Well?" said Jimmy, after a little while. "You gonna go an' get it, or what, Bobby T?"

"Huh? No way! I ain't goin' in there," said Bobby T, shaking his head. 

"You's the one done kicked it in there! We cain't keep playin' without a ball."

"I ain't goin' in no boneyard! You can go!"  

"I ain't the one done kicked it in, why should I be the one who goes an' gets it out?" 

"I'll get it," said Macy, interrupting the bickering boys. "If you all is scaredy cats."

She walked away from the cluster of children and along the high walls of the cemetery where the branches of the large, black oaks fanned out their limbs. It was late summer and the golden sun was low in the sky. It was getting on towards eight in the evening.

Macy suspiciously eyed the chain on the cemetery gate hanging through the bars like a necklace with a padlock for a pendent. Pulling the gate back and forth, she managed to create enough of a gap at the bottom for a skinny nine-year-old with brown pigtails and freckles like herself to crawl through. 

Inside the graveyard, she stood up and brushed off the bits of grass and gravel stuck to her knobby knees. 

The tall, weathered-white gravestones were lined up in straight lines, like a set of blank dominos, or teeth. Judging by the weeds clamouring around the bases of the stones, the groundskeepers only did the most basic of mowing and clipping between the rows, and left the rest to nature and the insects. 

"If you are a lookin' for your ball, young Miss, you're five rows short!" called a voice. 

Macy halted, then went further up the gravelly central path, counting.

At row five she stopped. The soccer ball was leaning up against one of the gravestones only a few feet away. 

Picking it up, she looked around, shading her eyes. 

"Where are you?" she called.

"If we are aimin' for absolute accuracy, you are standin' on me."

Macy looked down and saw only her canvas sneakers and grass. "Huh?"

She heard a laugh from somewhere. A deep, gentle laugh that had nothing mocking in it, but was more delighted than anything. She turned left, then right, attempting to locate the sound. "Come on, where are you really? Quit makin' fun."

"Don't I get a thank you for helpin' find your very intriguin,' if rather poorly-tended, ball?" 

Macy cocked her hip and set the soccer ball against it in a posture of childish annoyance. The sonorous laugher rang out again. 

"You are welcome to read my visiting card, young Miss. It's the headstone your ball came 'a bouncin' up against."

Macy took a step back and peered at the stone. "Jebediah M. Witherspoon.  1832 - 1863. 4th Cavalry," she read aloud.

"At your service." 

"You're makin' that up! I may be a kid, but I ain't stupid. Where are you REALLY?"

All Macy heard as a reply was a laugh that gently faded into the sounds of the evening wind picking up and roaring in the waving leaves of the surrounding oaks.  Macy shook her head, kicked the back ball over the wall, and went to rejoin her friends.

A few days later, Macy returned to the cemetery and found the headstone again.

"Mr Witherspoon? Hello? Mr. Witherspoon?"