Unpleasant Places
by Jonathan Penton

Out on my walk, I approach the cemetery from a different direction, tonight. I pass by the main entrance, which is standing wide open. A few yards inside the entrance is a cop car, headed this way. Its brights are on, as is the searchlight mounted next to the driver's window. Well, shit.

I walk past the entrance and the cop car. Driving slowly, it pulls out of the cemetery, shines its searchlight on me for a minute, then drives on past me. I'm now headed down a dead-end street, that terminates next to the pedestrian entrance to the cemetery. A short guardrail and warning signs are at the end of the one-way street, preventing cars from hopping the curb and getting out onto the main road. I can walk to the main road, however.

The cop drives past me and rounds a curve, headed to the end of the dead-end street. I round the curve myself, and am startled to find no cop there. Wondering where he went, I can see more searchlights in the cemetery.

After a few minutes of walking, the cop is behind me again. This time, he pulls up a few feet behind me, trains his searchlight onto me, and follows me for a while.

I'm not sure what cops expect you to do in a situation like that, but I, for one, don't stop walking and don't look back. What am I supposed to do, gaze into the searchlight and shout, "Hi! Can I help you?"

When he realizes I have no intention of stopping or looking back, the cop gets out of his car, turns off his searchlight, and says, "Excuse me, sir?"

I turn around, keep my hands visible by my sides, and smile. The cop is in his mid-twenties, perhaps a year or two younger than me, and has a Marine crewcut with a burr on top.

"Hello, officer," I say.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking a walk."

"Why?"

I'm not sure how to answer that. "Exercise, fresh air, you know."

He nods, suspiciously. "Why are you down here?"

"It's quiet."

"But you're walking past the cemetery."

"Yes."

"That's kind of unusual."

I wonder if I'm supposed to respond to that and smile some more.

"Why are you walking down here?"

"It's a pleasant place to walk. Um, if I may ask, didn't you pass me a minute ago?"

"Yes."

I smile wider, look at the dead-end behind me, and look at him again. I try to figure out how he looped me through a guardrail, then I stop. I smile some more.

"The cemetery is closed at night," he says.

"OK."

"Were you planning on going into the cemetery?"

"No."

"We had a report of kids throwing rocks in the cemetery." I don’t really believe him. I've been walking around in that cemetery four or five nights a week for the better part of a year, and I've never seen any kids, and I certainly don't throw rocks. He seems to want an answer to this, which confuses me, so I say, "OK."

"Where do you live?" he asks.

I respond with the name of my apartment complex, pleased to be asked a question that I knew how to answer. He doesn't seem too interested. He's looking at my right pants pocket, at the outline of my work knife. He's presumably wondering if it's a knife, and if he should talk to me about that. I smile some more. Oddly, he never seems to notice my backpack, which is filled with shit a lot more interesting than rocks or work knives. It's my glasses, I guess. I just look like the quintessential student. The kind of student that takes his books into the graveyard at night.

"OK," he says, "Just stay out of the cemetery."

"OK," I say.

"It's closed at night," he says. I nod, smile, and turn around. Well, now what the fuck do I do? I hop the guardrail, get on the main road, and decide to walk to my P. O. Box, just to kill time. It's not a terribly pleasant experience. First, this is Marietta, GA, and drivers tend to yell epithets at longhairs they see walking down the street. Second, the few other pedestrians who are wandering around at this hour feel compelled to greet me. What's that about? I should have dressed in a button-down shirt and dress pants; people leave me alone then.

I check my mail and sit down to rest. I discover a spider crawling on me. Disgusting; I probably picked up a cop-disease that attracts spiders. Either that, or I had been spending a lot of time lying around in the grass. I should try to remember.

I walk home. I don't dare go back to the cemetery tonight; getting caught there would be hard to explain. Tomorrow night, though.

Jonathan Penton is the overworked editor and publisher of Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.