Someone to watch over me

jacket over them lightly?“
    “No, I wouldn’t,“ Robert said in a remarkably gentle tone.
    He was worried about what the floor of the Duesie was going to look like with all that dirty water. And he was in a hurry as well. He wanted to get home and have a further conversation with Mimi about the icehouse’s history.

    Jack got Mary and the Towerton children out into the countryside. He kept glancing back at Joe. The old man’s lips were blue. Mary was right about him being dead. They were part of a long cortege of other vehicles fleeing to Baltimore. But it was slightly more orderly than the rush to Washington had been.
    As they approached a small town about three miles away, Jack spoke quietly to Mary. “You have to bury him here.”
    Mary put her hands to her cheeks. “I can’t do that,“ she whispered. “He wanted to be buried on his own land.“
    “Mrs. Towerton, be sensible. It’s a long way home and very hot. He’ll start to“—Jack was about to say “stink“ but altered the phrase—“disintegrate pretty soon. You don’t want to do that to your children. Bury him here. And when times get better you can have him moved home.”
    Jack found the furniture and coffin maker and gave Mary all his money to pay for the coffin. He had his return train ticket and hadn’t spent the extra on a hotel. He could beg or borrow enough to get a meal or two on his way back to Voorburg. And if he couldn’t, it didn’t matter if he got hungry. Mary needed to bury her grampa. Soon. But would the money be enough to bury him decently? Jack wondered. Would it pay for grave diggers, let alone a marker of some kind?
    They took a short walk with the children while the undertaker and his assistant removed old Joe from the cart. Jack left Mary and her children sitting on a bench in front of the shop and started greeting others who were passing through in their frantic flight from their own government. He explained that a young mother of two little children was leaving Anacostia Flats when her grandfather died on the journey. He pleaded with strangers to contribute what they could. When he returned to fetch Mary, he had another nine dollars and thirty-seven cents that he turned over to her. They went back to the cart.
    “Where’s Grampa?“ Mary’s little boy asked.
    Mary bent down to him, “He’s going to stay here and visit a friend for a few days. We’re going home now.”
    She turned to Jack and shook his hand. “I’ll pay you back somehow. I’ll never forget your help.”
    Jack said, “I’ll see you in Voorburg soon. You know the way from here?”
    She said, “That’s the way we came down here. I remember the route.“ Then Jack took off at a dogtrot to go back to the Anacostia Flats. He was still a reporter.

    Robert had cornered Mimi privately when they got back to Grace and Favor and said, “Tell me everything you remember about the old icehouse.”
    Mimi explained that Miss Flora had died at the start of 1926. The icehouse had been abandoned for a couple of months by then. When Mr. Horatio came to live at Grace and Favor a month later, the icehouse still had a key in the door, but it wasn’t locked.
    “I’d grown girl to woman in the mansion,“ she said, “and I surely missed it. Sometimes I’d walk clear up here from town and just sit and look at it from the woods.“
    “Was the icehouse still unlocked that summer?“
    “I think so. I remember peeking inside. It was a spooky of place, all dark and dry. At Christmas time, I got lonely. I went back up to see the mansion and noticed that the key to the icehouse was gone. I tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge.“
    “So, sometime between February and December of 1926 somebody locked it up?“
    “That’s right.“
    “Did you ever go back to see if it was open again?”
    Mimi looked at him. “Why would I do that? I didn’t like the place. I was glad it was locked up. I really didn’t want to scare myself again.“
    “Did you notice anything else?“
    “Like what?“
    “Scuff marks around the door?“ Robert asked. “Broken plants? Anything strange?“
    “Nothing but that the door was locked,“ Mimi replied. “I gotta catch up with my dusting, Mr. Robert.”

    When Jack returned to camp to see if he could find his suitcase, he was horrified. The place was in flames. There were tanks, and soldiers with sabers setting fire to everything. Those marchers who had stayed behind were being brutally thrown out of their pitiful