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The tears that come out of me for the next hour, my head bent down over the kitchen table, would flood the Hope River Patience stays withfor the little girls, but for everyone, and not just the victims of this fire, but all the victims of all the fires, all the victims of this hard, hard life

When Blum comes in from the barn, his eyes are red too

44

Graveyard

I’ve not been feeling well and I know Isaac notices He has even begun cooking and cleaning the house Soarden and weed, even if it isn’t needed, just to sit with the plants So up at the sky, just to feel the co has been burned out of row back

Despite all the ht if people did as right and played by the rules, all would be well, but life, I’ve learned, doesn’t work that way, and death and pain coood or not

It has been a week of funerals On Saturday ent to Clarence Mitchell’s service at the Saved by Faith Baptist Church I couldn’t stop crying When I went up to Lucy Mitchell, instead of easing her grief, I bawled on her shoulder; it was that bad

Willa’s girls are staying with Mrs Stenger, and she told me in private, "I’ht to an orphanage, but they have no family and I have o to the Bowlin boy’s meh Patience invited us to join the ain at Livia’s birth, and Blum didn’t know him at all

While the Hesters are at the Hazel Patch chapel, I walk out behind the barn to look at the graveyard where Bluht in all, each seven feet deep Next to the eraves with tiny wood crosses

The first cross is for the premature baby that was left in a cardboard box at o, when I didn’t understand how such things could happen Now I know Life is cruel

The second is for the baby Patience lost before she inia, the one she delivered preo, when she was sixteen (There are no rerave, but the midwife needed a place to remember)

The third cross is for the baby Patiencea thunderstorm and then birthed on the kitchen floor

All the victims of the fire who have no family plots will be buried in this place tomorrow Captain Wolfe, Drake Trustler, the colored homeless man John Doe, Willa Hucknell, Alfred Hucknell, and the baby, but Patience has also convinced the Hazel Patch folks and the Bishop brothers that Beef and Nate Bowlin belong here too, with the other heroes of the Hope River Wildfire When the , she’s very convincing

Blun, to be mounted on two cedar posts, that will read, HOPE MEMORIAL CEMETERY

May 9, 1935