Night Watch

dad pinched it off me when he come out of prison, but it was my spoon,” said Nobby persistently. “That means a lot to a kid, your own spoon.”
    “Come to that, he was the first person to make me a sergeant,” said Colon. “Got busted again, of course, but I knew I could do it again then. He was a good copper.”
    “He bought a pie off me, first week I was starting out,” said Dibbler. “Ate it all . Didn’t spit out anything .”
    There was more silence.
    After a while Sergeant Colon cleared his throat, a general signal to indicate that some sort of appropriate moment was now over. There was a relaxation of muscles all around.
    “Y’know, we ought to come up here one day with a billhook and clear this lot up a bit,” said the sergeant.
    “You always say that, Sarge, every year,” said Nobby as they walked away. “And we never do.”
    “If I had a dollar for every copper’s funeral I’ve attended up here,” said Colon, “I’d have…nineteen dollars and fifty pence.”
    “Fifty pence?” said Nobby.
    “That was when Corporal Hildebiddle woke up just in time and banged on the lid,” said Colon. “That was before your time, o’course. Everyone said it was an amazin’ recovery.”
    “Mr. Sergeant?”
    The three men turned. Coming toward them in a high-speed sidle was the black-clad, skinny figure of Legitimate First, the cemetery’s resident gravedigger.
    Colon sighed. “Yes, Leggie?” he said.
    “Good morrow, sweet—” the gravedigger began, but Sergeant Colon waved a finger at him.
    “Stop that right now,” he said. “You know you’ve been warned before. None of that ‘comic gravedigger’ stuff. It’s not funny and it’s not clever. Just say what you’ve got to say. No silly bits.”
    Leggie looked crestfallen.
    “Well, good sirs—”
    “Leggie, I’ve known you for years,” said Colon wearily. “Just try , will you?”
    “The deacon wants them graves dug up, Fred,” said Leggie, in a sulky voice. “It’s more’n been thirty years. Long past time they was in the crypts—”
    “No,” said Fred Colon.
    “But I’ve got a nice shelf for ’em down there, Fred,” Leggie pleaded. “Right up near the front. We need the space , Fred! It’s standing room only in here, and that’s the truth! Even the worms have to go in single file! Right up near the front, Fred, where I can chat to ’em when I’m having my tea. How about that?”
    The Watchmen and Dibbler shared a glance. Most people in the city had been into Leggie’s crypts, if only for a dare. And it had come as a shock to most of them to realize that solemn burial was not for eternity but only for a handful of years, so that, in Leggie’s words, “my little wriggly helpers” could do their work. After that, the last last resting place was the crypts and an entry in the huge ledgers.
    Leggie lived down there in the crypts. As he said, he was the only one who did, and he liked the company.
    Leggie was generally considered weird, but conscientiously so.
    “This isn’t your idea, right?” said Fred Colon.
    Leggie looked down at his feet.
    “The new deacon’s a bit, well, new,” he said. “You know…keen. Making changes.”
    “You told him why they’re not being dug up?” said Nobby.
    “He said that’s just ancient history,” said Leggie. “He says we all have to put the past behind us.”
    “An’ did you tell him he should take it up with Vetinari?” said Nobby.
    “Yes, and he said he was sure his lordship was a forward-thinking man who wouldn’t cling to relics of the past,” said Leggie.
    “Sounds like he is new,” said Dibbler.
    “Yeah,” said Nobby. “An’ not likely to get old. It’s okay, Leggie, you can say you’ve asked us.”
    The gravedigger looked relieved.
    “Thanks, Nobby,” he said. “And I’d just like to say that when your time comes, gents, you’ll be on a good shelf with a view. I’ve put your names down in my ledger for them as comes after me.”
    “Well, that’s, er, very kind of you, Leggie,” said Colon, wondering if it was. Because of pressures of space, bones in the crypt were stored by size, not by owner. There were rooms of ribs. There were avenues of femurs. And shelf after shelf of skulls up near the entrance, of course, because a crypt without a lot of skulls wasn’t a proper crypt at all. If some of the religions were right and there really was bodily resurrection one day, Fred mused, there was going to be an awful lot of confusion and