Epitaph Road by David Patneaude

topped off the hole with dirt. More dirt was added over the years as the bodies decomposed and settled.”
    I glanced at Sunday, giving her a clue: Here comes the part you’re so interested in. “Work crews sank white metal pipes deep below the surface to collect and burn the methane gas from the decaying. If you stand near the pipes, you can see that they extend above the grass fifteen feet or so.”
    â€œBut they look like crosses,” Tia said.
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Somewhere along the way, someone got the idea to attach a horizontal bar to each of them. So now we’ve got flaming grave markers.”
    We reached the monolith. It stood at the closest edge of the field, next to a walkway into the graveyard. Now I could hear the gas burning for sure. I stopped to give the girls a better look. “It’s a monument,” I said. “Thirty feet tall. Carved from black granite, smooth on all five surfaces. Weatherproof displays are imbedded in the stone at eye level, one on each side.”
    â€œDisplays?” Sunday said.
    â€œThe monolith is the one tombstone for the whole gravesite,” I said. “Touch the screen and you can get to the entire list, the names of every person identified before the trucks started rolling — men, boys, infants, a few women.”
    Many of the names were followed by words of remembrance — epitaphs — written by loved ones. My grandfather’s name — Joshua Winters — was on the list. I’d found it many times. After it my grandmother and her children — Dad and Aunt Paige — wrote:
    We watched for you, every breath a prayer,
    while days became shorter and nights became colder
    and hope became heartbreak.
    But only the bear came.
    Dad had told me the story of this bear — the huge tracks through their campsite, the stare-down — or smell-down — across the water, the gift of fish. I sometimes wondered if that same bear was still alive and wandering the hills of the Olympic Peninsula. But I never looked up any facts on bears. I’d rather not know their life expectancy; I’d rather imagine the bear, gray-muzzled now, maybe, cruising the shoreline of that lake for berries, searching along the water’s edge for another free and easy meal.
    The lesson was over. We moved on. Beyond the tombstone, and the wide but low hill of crosses, lay a grass field, fir trees here and there. We circled around the graveyard on our bikes to a spot where there weren’t many people, where a small backstop stood and patches of dirt loosely defined an infield.
    Under one nearby tree, five women and three little girls shared a picnic lunch. Closer to the lake, a dozen or so girls about my age and one boy, probably younger, played soccer. They’d set up red cones on both ends of their little field and arranged brightly colored pieces of clothing to mark the sidelines. Ordinarily, I would have gone over and asked them if I could join in. But I had a challenge to meet.
    I stared at the flames licking out of the tips of the crosses, remembering the times I’d ridden my bike to Epitaph Road at night just to watch the flames light up the sky. They were harder to see in the bright sunlight. “My grandpa’s down there somewhere,” I said. “I like to think those flames are his. Part of them anyway.”
    â€œThe brightest part, probably,” Tia said, and I gave her a look, figuring she was giving me crap. But she smiled, shiny-white against her brown skin. And I got this sudden warm feeling.
    I got off my bike. “You guys ready to show me what you’ve got?”
    Sunday pointed at her impressive bicep. “Say your prayers.” I was thankful for my long-sleeved T-shirt.
    She and Tia carried the bats and two gloves to the backstop. I took my glove and the bag of balls to the mound, fifty or sixty feet out from home plate. While Tia and I played catch, tossing the ball back and