Monuments to men and women are as old as civilization itself. Elaborately decorated cemeteries and burial grounds can be found on all continents; the sacredness and mystery of death are common bonds linking all civilizations of all ages. At times graves are desecrated by the cruel, the mean, the greedy, or religious opponents, depending on circumstances. In our times, the law decrees that burial grounds of ancient tribes of Native Americans may not be disturbed. Graveyard vandals are punished for their deeds...usually. Yet, I have recently heard that one of the best cemeteries in my old college town of Terre Haute has been violated. To think of it saddens, even upsets me. I haven't visited there in twenty years, but it was the most fascinating real-life monument to death I'd ever seen.
On a Sunday night at the end of March, spring break was too far in the past; the end of the semester was too far in the future. The cool, drizzly weather that had settled in for the whole weekend threatened to last through the week at a time when all of us in the dorm were ready for sunshine, shorts, and sandals. Certainly, my friends and I on the fifth floor of Burford Hall, clinging to the last hours of the weekend, were in no mood to study; we'd had enough of it through the dreary afternoon. Several of us lay around the cross lounge, some draped over the couches, some slouching in chairs, some stretched out on the floor. We were tired of eating; grease spotted pizza boxes balanced unsteadily on the rim of the wastebasket and looked as lifeless and spent as all of us. Empty Coke cans littered the floor and table. The ashtrays overflowed. At such times college students are not tired but bored, and with the best part of the evening still ahead of us, that time between ten o'clock and dawn the next day, we were bound to think of something to do to avoid returning to psychology, algebra, history, or, heaven forbid, going to bed. Drinking was out--no one had a supply on hand, most of us were too young to buy, and even those old enough were out of luck on Sunday night. It was in this boredom that we stooped to telling ghost stories, which offered little more excitement than reading textbooks but required much less effort.
Growing bored, I momentarily considered going to bed when Jody, winking at some of the older girls, mentioned "Old Stiffy."
Naturally, such a name as that sparked our attention. Those of us who were freshmen still had much to learn from the upperclasswomen. Jody was twenty-one and knew just about everything useful--where all the streets in Terre Haute led, which bars did not card, which professors to take and which to avoid. She sometimes did, on Friday and Saturday nights, buy beer for the rest of us. The adventure she led us on that night was far more innocent, far more childish, and far more fun. We followed her blindly on a sort of ghost story field trip.
"They call him Stiffy Green," was about all she'd say," and he's famous around here. Do you want to come?"
Several of the sophomores urged us on. "It's great...you HAVE to see it..." Most of the girls had better sense than to get dressed and go out that late so stayed behind to study or sleep. Three of my closest friends, Debb, Cathy, and Marla, and I followed Jody down the elevator, out into the mist, and across campus to the parking lot where she parked her blue '66 Chevy bomb. Jody answered none of our questions about where we were going or who this Stiffy Green guy was but just smirked and told us to wait and see. We were all the more fascinated. Through downtown Terre Haute and down Ohio Street to the old affluent neighborhood with the big houses we drove, radio blasting, wipers screeching, and the heater putting forth no more than a faint hint of warmth against the damp, cold night. On the edge of town we were stopped by flashing railroad lights, Jody's car alone on the dark highway.
"It's an omen," Debb grumbled characteristically. "We shouldn't go. Where in the hell are we going, Jody?"
"Highland Lawn Cemetery..."
"Forget it," Debb protested. Cathy and I just sat huddled in the massive back seat. Marla, sitting in the middle with her legs crossed, pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it with all the elegance of Joan Crawford in a glamor scene. I looked out the foggy window at the blackness. I was way too old to be spooked by such things as graves and cemeteries...still...it was dark. I'd never in my nineteen years been in a graveyard at night. I felt a panic sweep over me. I fumbled in my own pocket for a cigarette and asked Marla for a light. I didn't want anybody to know I was scared.
Jody, humming "BBB Benny and the jets..." slowed the car and then turned. Before us her headlights illuminated a massive iron gate in the middle of a medieval stone wall. The black gates, surely a hundred feet high, were spread wide open as if welcoming a dragon slayer of the dark ages home to his castle.
"Damn, Jody," cried Debb. "We can't go in there. The cops will be after us..."
"There aren't any cops," Jody laughed, stopping long enough for all of us to get a good look. I tossed the cigarette out the window. Jody steered the car through the gates and then turned onto a narrow, drive that wound around ornate stone mausoleums, bushy pines, and tall, black, gnarled old trees. Nobody but Jody spoke. "Let's see, I think it's...this way...wait, no the next lane...yeah...there's that big cross sticking up." We wound further into the cemetery, slowly, like a funeral procession. Jody slowed even more, swerved slightly toward the edge of the road, and turned off the engine, which continued chugging...as if it knew it might have to make a quick escape.
"Come on," urged Jody, opening the door with a creak. I have a flashlight in the trunk. None of us budged except Marla, who lit another cigarette.
"Like hell," muttered Debb. Again, Cathy and I remained silent, and Marla let out a loud, smoke-laced sigh. She looked around as easily as if she were at a drive-in movie, but Cathy sat lifeless and pale as a chunk of limestone. I felt comfort in knowing Debb and Cathy were spooked, too, but I didn't want Marla to think I was a coward. Jody slammed the trunk and returned to the open car door, shining the light on various extravagant and grotesque old tombstones. The people in this place all had a lot of money...at least at one time. These were not the modest "headstones" or "markers" my parents had purchased for my grandparents. These reached up high into the thick air and
contained elaborate verses carved in gothic letters, not just names and from-to dates.
I watched Jody step slowly to the stone mausoleum in front of us, saw its green brass handled and hinges decorating sealed doors with long, cloudy, rectangular windows, a haunted mansion in miniature.
"We see," finally Cathy uttered. "Let's go." The braces on her teeth glistened in a flash of light, making even her look ghoulish.
"No," Jody protested. "You can't see it unless you get out and look in this window. Come on. She grinned a sinister grin and held the flashlight under her chin, giving her plump face a ghostly glow.
"All right, dammit," said Debb, stepping out of the car. "Let's get this over with so we can go home."
Cathy slowly opened her door, the door on the side of the mausoleum, and Marla, a cigarette in one hand and a Coke in the other, calmly climbed over her to join Debb and Jody. "Come on," she muttered. It's just a cemetery." She looked more interested and less bored.
Cathy slid almost imperceptably toward the door, and suddenly the idea of being left alone in the car struck me with a panic I hadn't felt since I was a kid and my brother tormented me with stories of restless corpses buried in our basement. In one swoop, I slid myself across the back seat, grabbed Cathy's arm, and stepped out at the same time she did. The two of us, huddled together like feeble old ladies, followed Debb, all of us inching and tripping our way up the cracked sidewalk uprooted by ancient snaky maple roots. Debb peered though the cloudy glass of the tomb, shrieked and jumped back, and then, curiously, stopped. She took the flashlight from Jody and shined it in. "Look at this!" Marla took a drag of cigarette and looked.
I didn't think I could. Still clinging to Cathy's arm, I half led her and half let her lead me closer and closer to the brass door. Nineteen or not, I'd never been more scared in my life. This was the stuff of nightmares. What kind of bloody, headless body would be hanging on a meat hook in there? What kind of deranged, rotting corpse would throw open the doors and drag us all through the very gates of hell? Age has little effect on panic.
I forced myself to look. Two glowing eyes burned through the darkness, and my knees gave way. Suddenly in the distance, a frog croaked and Cathy screamed, bolting for the car. Sprinting wildly after her, I suddenly felt a rip across my shin bone and tumbled to the ground. The pain in my leg jolted me back to reality; I looked up to see the water faucet I had tripped over. Jody and Marla came and helped me up and led me back to the car. Debb and Cathy had already made it back all right on their own.
"What is IN there?" I asked, blotting my bleeding leg with the extra fabric of my bell bottom jeans. "What were those eyes?"
"Didn't you see the dog?" Debb asked. "It's a stuffed bull dog, just sitting there looking up at where the dead guy is walled in."
I had seen enough of Stiffy Green for that cold, gothic night in March. Later I returned many times...usually in daylight...to see what really was a small greenish gray bull dog placed in the corner of the mausoleum as if he were waiting for his master to awake and take him out for a walk. He was indeed stiff and green; it was a fitting name.
Recently, I read in an alumni magazine that the famous Stiffy Green, known to generations of college students, is, essentially, no more. The article reported that the little dog has been moved to a museum, placed on display for all manner of people of any age to view at any respectable hour. The mystique is gone. To think that Stiffy Green no longer sits in that family tomb is unconscionable. Who knows. Who's to say the absence of the dog hasn't cast eternal gloom and longing onto that dog loving family in the tomb? Maybe, just maybe, the little bulldog, once happy in death, now suffers silently in the loneliness of the sterile museum. And something of that college culture, the best and silliest kind of college culture, has been lost. People and dogs should be allowed to rest in peace.
