When death arrived in Shallow Creek, it surfaced in the soil. The snow had peeled back in Spring like a coquettish debutante showing off her bruises, revealing ghastly yellow rectangles where the ground soured over plots of the buried dead. April rains came and went. Soon after were the familiar mists of May, sliding over town like a beaded curtain but failing to wash it clean, leaving behind the same fuming face of Devil’s Gorge and filthy gutters outside Jack’s. The dead rectangles of grass at St. Mary’s were only the latest in a long series of blights upon the town, and, like all others, they refused to leave, even when the sun grew warm and the soil softened from fresh rain.
It was the time of year that Jed Sherman, groundskeeper of St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, anticipated the longer
