The Graveyard Shift
The Graveyard Shift
by Sean Fitzpatrick
by Sean Fitzpatrick
“Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen
but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers;
they hold up Adam’s profession.” -Hamlet Act V, Scene 1
The haunted evening, christened Hallows Eve,
frowned on the face of forest, field, and fen;
but crowned the riddled, undulating head
of a well-nourished cemetery plot
that spread in vaporous affinity.
The graveyard was all gorged with bones and stones –
its soil both fat and sick with too much dead.
The headstones, leaned with age and cracked with time
and greened with lichen, slumped in hundreds there;
all weather-worn to anonymity.
A thousand nameless relics hewn from rock;
too old to be memorials of men;
they sprawled about in senile stupors there,
forgetful of the dust and clay they marked.
A few gaunt trees grew trembling with the wind,
and shook like fingers on a skeleton.
The rusting ruin of an iron fence,
with ancient purpose, struggled round the yard;
and in its side a straggling gateway yawned,
through which a whistling worthy wheeled a cart
that rambled down the crooked, grave-strewn ground.
The rumbling cart was rattling with rude gear –
picks, spades, and earth-encrusted instruments –
and laden down besides with a long box,
(the type where men lie once life has been lived).
And rough they jostled – coffin, tools, and cart –
before the dusty man who trod behind,
whose coming told he was a gravedigger –
an undertaker, come to ply his trade
in that spot of romantic wretchedness.
He clamored to a vacant site, stopped short,
and dumped his wares. He slid the coffin down,
stripped up his sleeves, and spat on his flat hands.
Then, grasping his device of diggery,
he, with a skillful slice, began to dig.
His boot pressed on the lug of his good spade
and made the blade sink deep. The wooden haft
was wrenched then pulled and opened up the earth.
The digger bent his back above his work
and, even as he whistled out an air,
he filled the air with heavy clods he heaved.
The shovel edge cut deep a narrow hole,
till that gravedigger dug a handsome grave:
with corners measured six by three by six,
all ready to receive its mortal meal.
But then, before the coffin took its bed,
the whistling undertaker opened it.
The mask within glowed blue in deathly hue
beneath the glowing moon’s one cloudy eye.
“Good e’en, dead sir,” the digger softly spoke,
“If dead indeed you be.” This said, he paused
to make provision, born of age-old fears,
in case the corpse should prove no corpse at all.
A thread he fastened to the dead man’s wrist;
the other end was fastened to a bell.
“But just you sound,” said he, “the death-watch knell,
and I will dig to exhumify you.”
This done, he shut the lid and lowered down
the coffin, corpse, and cautionary cord;
and buried them with cheerful decency
there in that morbidly indecent yard.
The bell he hung above the mound with care;
the string snaked to the casket underground.
Then down the undertaker plumped his rump,
to keep good watch on that, his graveyard shift.
He brushed the dirt from his black hands and grinned;
for he had something packed beneath his coat
that pledged to make of him a happy man,
if happiness and hunger are adverse.
The gravedigger produced a pungent pouch
that wafted scents of gravy on the breeze.
Produced as well was a great skin of ale,
which joined the wallet and its hearty smells.
Then from this bundle the gravedigger freed
a roasted leg of mutton, bread and cheese,
a knuckle of smoked ham, and five boiled eggs:
a feast to blunt a whetted appetite,
which appetite the undertaker had.
He stuffed a burlap napkin underneath
his grizzled jaws, which quivered with delight
at the mere prospect of the stout repast,
and hovered over the good grub he brought.
The keen gravedigger knew not where to start
on such a banquet fine, but then he thought,
“First things come first,” and so his feasting eyes
looked till they looked their fill, and then he stooped
and hoisted the brown brew to wet his pipe
and cleaned a passage for the splendid meal.
But then – a gentle clang fell on his ears.
The poised gravedigger paused above his spread;
his empty stomach filled with butterflies;
his eyes shot to the bell in disbelief
He knew he heard too true.
The bell had rung!
It wobbled weakly on the grounded line,
and tinkled tiny taps that begged for aid.
“My first dead ringer!” said he, scrambling up.
He seized his hefty shovel with a will.
Then how the freshly broken earth took wing!
Quick scooped and strewn with rasp and scrape and slap!
Down dug the undertaker! Down he dug,
and dug with speed that he had never known.
Still down he dug, and down, and deeper still;
still flinging dull dirt to the starry sky;
and still the bell rang in his ringing ears.
Then thumped the thud of hollow wood beneath
the driving edge of the gravedigger’s spade.
With pry and pull and churning, sliding earth,
the casket resurrected from the deep
and pitched upon its side. A crowbar flashed
and ripped the lid free, coffin-nails and all!
The undertaker plunged into the box
to pull the man out who had rung the bell;
but he within slumped forward rigidly.
He fell into the undertaker’s arms,
and just as dead as he had been before.
The faint clang broke the silence once again,
and jingled with the wind that moved its tongue.
The undertaker smote his thigh and laughed.
“A fool indeed to be fooled by the breeze!”
The bell laughed gently with his coarse guffaw,
as there it swayed and rattled in the draft.
So he replaced the corpse within the box;
and he refilled the gap in the terrain
and hid the hill he had uprooted there;
and laid the coffin and its occupant
down in the earth again. Then down sat he,
his occupation to resume at once.
The ham made eyes at him. The mutton flushed.
The brown ale begged for his attentive touch;
so that gravedigger fondled the fat pouch,
and laid it to his lips.
But there it stopped.
A thin, metallic sound intoned again,
and brought disruption to the graveyard feast.
With moistened finger thrust into the air;
the digger found the wind had died away;
and so he shook his head and stared aghast.
For, this time, wind was not the culprit hand
that made the bell sing out with ringing notes.
The rope was tugging down beneath the dirt
and being tugged from somewhere underneath!
Held in thick awe, the hungry man slouched there,
and eyed the twitching twine most narrowly –
that lifeline from the land of goblin-ghosts,
that danced before the undertaker’s face,
and summoned him away from his buffet.
“Saved by the bell,” he said with patient shrug,
abandoning his long-awaited meal.
He shoved his shovel deep beneath the ground;
then up shot sprays of earth as down he dug.
Great clouds of sod sprung from the working wedge,
as down the undertaker worked his way;
and dug the grave for a third time that night;
and dug as the bell rang out overhead;
and dug to save the one-thought-dead who rang.
Soon wood resounded underneath the steel,
and then the coffin lid was cleared away.
Off came that lid with urgent, helping hands
Disclosing there a corpse, who was still dead.
But though his wrist was stilled and stiff in death,
the string was jerking hard and rang the bell.
The gravedigger scratched underneath his cap
and puzzled long at this predicament,
until he spied beneath the body’s arm
a shuffling shadow that was scuffling there.
The gravedigger poked at it with his spade,
which brought the stowaway into full sight:
a rat it was that gnawed and yanked the cord,
by accident interred with the dead man.
The digger chuckled, leaning on his spade.
Then to the rat he said, “That’s fair enough!
I buried you alive, and so you rang,
and so I free you with apologies.
Off with you now, and creep not into crates
that bear the cargo and design of this.”
With that, he plucked the rat up by the tail
and sent it scurrying into the gloom,
before he clapped the coffin closed again,
and set himself to cover it anew.
In time, the pile was pounded down and flat
and ceased again to be the earthen mound
the good gravedigger had made and remade
above that restless grave. And then thought he,
“This night of strange alarums and mishaps
can still become a night of comforts dear
by those sweet things that pledge to feed me well.”
and so, with slap of spade and clap of palms,
a fervent face was turned towards the fare
expecting the gravedigger’s need to eat.
And so he seated himself carefully
to taste, at last, the longed-for food and drink.
Again, the beer prepared to wash away
the dust and dirt that chokes a thirsty throat –
the marks of hard work and a hungry man.
He raised the skin to take a swig.
Ding-Dong!
The bell! He jumped! Ding-dong! Again the bell!
He struggled to his feet. Again it rang!
The undertaker trembled in his boots,
and backed away a step or two. Ding-dong!
The bell was ringing with a desperate voice;
and wrenched hard by the wildly wrenching wire!
“Alive or dead,” the staggered digger said,
“You’re in good hands; for mine, good sir, can dig!
So be it wind or rat or devil trick,
I’ll do my duty with these hands and dig!”
He grasped his shovel by its earth-stained shaft
and swung one leg across the troubled tomb,
while on the bell pealed out with spasmic might.
Then, yet again, the blade plunged deep in dirt
and made it fly. The shovel swooped and cut
and carved the tired turf. The earth gave way
beneath the slicing tool that burrowed on
and bore its master down. With every jab
the bell tolled louder, as in agony,
as if to beg the digger to dig quick,
and dig to save the wakened soul below!
The shovel plumbed those wormy depths until
the muffled cough of wood came dull and low.
And then, with earthy grind and grunt and groan,
the coffin re-emerged beneath the moon.
The screaming bell still clamored hard and shrill
above the undertaker’s toiling limbs,
that tore the top away with sturdy strength
to rescue he who rang with life renewed.
But when he reached the object of his dig,
that digger clutched his whirling, wheeling head;
for there the corpse stretched, dead as dead could be.
The gravedigger froze hard in stony shock,
then melted to the far side of the hole;
and as he moved, the bell was pulled and rang!
The digger leapt out from the grave he dug
and, with that leap, the bell shrieked yet again!
And it was then the undertaker found
that in between the last alarm and this,
the twine had somehow been ensnared around
and tangled in his boot; and so it was
that his own motions made the clapper swing
and, quite mistakenly, made the bell cry.
He snatched the string away with growl and snort
and strung it smartly in its proper place.
Then down went cover, casket, corpse, and clay,
while up went hopes that they would rest in peace.
The job done, the gravedigger mopped his brows
and stumped along to his neglected feast.
He threw his body down with thankful sigh
beside the ale-skin which was waiting there.
For if he needed anything that night,
it was a drink.
But it was not to be.
A noise intruded like a thunderbolt.
A noise the digger wished he did not hear;
a noise that he had heard before that night,
and wished that he had never heard; the bell!
The bell was ting-a-linging yet again!
How this could be defied the scope of mind,
or so the delver thought as there he sat
and rubbed his ears and rummaged through his brains,
all to the monotone tune of the bell.
But there was no doubt that it rang again,
set into action by the buried string.
“In all my long years of morticianry,
I have not known a stranger burial,”
the undertaker said beneath his breath.
His eyes then traveled from the bobbing bell
to those delightful dainties laying near;
Enticing as delicious odalisques.
The bell’s vibrations sounded louder still
with that appeal that had proved false before.
And so he paused. He weighed the ringing bell
against his stomach that rang out as well,
and tied it all together with the facts:
he had been thrice duped by the bell that night.
Could not this be another empty plea,
just as the wind and rat and boot had been?
Should he dig out that grave for a fifth time
just to find out he was fooled again? But, then –
what if this ring was genuinely rung?
What if the dead man had indeed come to?
Would he just turn a deaf ear to the din
and eat without a care? And so he paused.
The bell rang faster. Thoughts raced through his head.
The bell rang feebly, suddenly. And then –
the gravedigger laid hand on spade. He stood.
He swung his tool. He pierced the earth. He dug.
The undertaker undertook the task!
He took himself down underneath the ground,
where he had taken the supposed dead man.
Far down he dug with sweep and spurt of soil,
and excavated down towards the spot
from whence came that cold clangor of a call.
His shovel dumped the dirt beside the pit
which widened as the pile alongside grew.
Again the stroke of steel on wood below;
again the coffin was unearthed and cleared;
again the gravedigger removed the lid
and peered inside. Again he saw the face –
but now he saw that face stare back at him
and fled was all the lifelessness it had!
The hand within, instead of lying dead,
was gripped tight on the graveyard-watch bell-pull.
Those limbs, which had been motionless before,
were weakly shaking in the box with fear.
The undertaker caught him by the arms
and drew him out. Then holding up his frame,
he hauled the man out of the hole he dug
and laid him in a heap next to the grave.
So there the man lay, gasping out the dust,
and gulping in the air; quite overwhelmed
for having such a rude awakening.
While that one spluttered, coughed, and choked his fill,
the other stood quite flummoxed over him,
not knowing what to think or say or do.
(The truth was that the undertaker felt
far more at ease with dead folks rather than
with those who lived.) But, with a thought, he grinned.
He grabbed the skin of ale and proffered it
unto the man whose funeral it was,
who took it gratefully and took a pull.
“Look here,” said the gravedigger with a wink,
“You’ve had a close one, that you have, good sir.
How do you feel?” The man looked up at him
and answered, “Hungry.” That was all he said,
But more he did not need to say.
At once
the undertaker spread a kingly feast
before him and invited him to eat.
Then, while that man rejoiced and broke his fast,
and ate with blessings in between his bites,
the good gravedigger drank his beer and laughed.