A crew of six or eight had been assigned to each, and they worked with such intensity that none looked up, even for approval, when Michael passed. She felt a strange thrill of pride in walking with him as an equal. She gladly let him hold her hand and lead the way. It wasn’t a matter of power: he was heading the way she would have gone herself. Through the open door of the church, the drunken dancing had dwindled down to writhing on the floor. The bodies rippled wall to wall, like the surface of a stream. Michael and Iris went on by and through the cemetery gate, to the grove of firs where the deep-etched stones no longer held the years in place. Still she felt the weight of generations, though they didn’t clutch her heart. As long as she and Michael walked together, all the horrors were on the other side. They came out onto the meadow ledge, where the high grass shimmered in the cliff-top breeze. A frog and a rabbit leaped out of the path, as if they had been in league together. The crickets played over and over a one-note song.
