Scattered Graves

looking for some kind of list that Bryce and
Rikki thought Jefferies had,’’ he said.
Diane nodded. ‘‘It’s what Pendleton said they were
looking for. I have no idea what kind of list or what
it looks like.’’
‘‘Anybody asked Rikki?’’ he said.
‘‘Not yet,’’ said Diane. ‘‘We will later.’’
‘‘She went through the books, too,’’ said Izzy. He
pointed to scraps of paper littering the floor. ‘‘There’s
bookmarks, envelopes, pieces of paper. I think what
Rikki did was shake everything to see what fell out.’’ ‘‘It seems that way, doesn’t it?’’ said Diane, looking
at the papers. She picked up a torn envelope and ex
amined it. There was only half of Jefferies’ address on
it. The return address had been on the other half.
Apparently he tore it for a quick bookmark. ‘‘I’ve been flipping through the books,’’ said Izzy.
‘‘I was thinking that if there is some list, he may have
written it inside a book on one of them blank pages.’’ ‘‘That’s a good idea,’’ agreed Diane. And a lot of work, she thought. But she didn’t know any other way
to go through them except one by one.
‘‘Lot of books here,’’ said Izzy. ‘‘You think he read
all these?’’
Diane picked one up: Aristotle’s Poetics . She looked
at the spine and at the edges of the pages. ‘‘No one’s
read this one.’’ She looked at the title page. From
Rebecca with love. Diane wondered if that was a girl
friend. She examined a couple more: a biography of—
who else?—Alexander the Great, and Sun Tzu’s The
Art of War , both signed by A. Houten To my favorite
student. Both had bent spines and pages that had been
turned. ‘‘Somebody read these.’’
‘‘Lot of different kinds of books here,’’ said Izzy.
‘‘I don’t read much. Mainly the sports pages of the
newspaper. Evie reads sometimes. Daniel was the
reader in our house. Sometimes I pick up a book he’s
read and I read a page or two just to have something
in my mind that was in his.’’ He sighed and looked
around at the books. ‘‘A lot of people’s thoughts in
here.’’
‘‘Yes, there are.’’ She noticed that Jefferies had
leather-bound copies of the Hundred Greatest Books ,
history books, a lot of books on war, biographies—a
fairly wide variety.
‘‘I thumbed through something by Shakespeare,’’
said Izzy. ‘‘ Hamlet , I think. Saw several phrases I’d
heard before.’’
‘‘Shakespeare is one of the most quoted of writers,’’
said Diane. She pulled a chair out and sat down. ‘‘ ‘To be or not to be’—you hear that one a lot.
What does it mean exactly?’’ said Izzy, opening a vol
ume of Hamlet and pointing to a soliloquy. ‘‘Hamlet’s life isn’t going well, and he’s contemplat
ing suicide,’’ said Diane.
‘‘I kind of thought that,’’ he said.
She took the book and looked at the passage. ‘‘He’s wondering if it is better to struggle on and
‘suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ or
to end them and sleep. Sleep means death,’’ she said. ‘‘But he worries that if he kills himself, what happens after that might be worse—‘for in the sleep of death
what dreams may come.’ ’’
Izzy was silent for a moment. ‘‘I can relate to that,’’
he said.
‘‘That’s one of the reasons Shakespeare is so often
quoted. He hit upon truths people can relate to today
just as they did in his time,’’ said Diane.
Izzy Wallace was the last person she thought she
would ever be discussing Shakespeare with. ‘‘You and me’s suffered the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune, haven’t we?’’ he said.
‘‘There’s no greater suffering to be had than losing
a child,’’ said Diane.
‘‘No. There’s not,’’ he said. ‘‘That is for sure.’’ It was an unexpected confidence from Izzy, and
Diane didn’t know where to go with it.
‘‘Did you ever think about it?’’ he said.
Diane knew what he meant. She wasn’t sure how
to answer.
‘‘I never wanted to die. I just wanted to stop hurt
ing,’’ she said.
Izzy nodded his head. ‘‘I hear you there.’’ Diane looked up to see David in the doorway. He
had several photographs in his hand.
‘‘Hey, Diane. Did Izzy tell you what we found in
the photographs?’’ he asked.
‘‘No. We were discussing Shakespeare,’’ she said. David looked from one to the other. ‘‘Oh,’’ he said,
as if that didn’t quite compute.
Diane smiled. ‘‘What