Scientists say that human tears come in two varieties. Most tears are the result of physical pain or sharp, if transient, emotional distress. These tears are dilute, mildly salty, and cleansing. However, some tears originate in deep and unremitting grief. These tears are alkali and corrosive. They don’t cleanse but destroy.
Judd jogged at the outskirts of town. In the old days, people didn’t like to live next to cemeteries and so those places were founded on the edges of the village, a few hundred yards from the houses scattered around the settlement’s perimeter. For this reason, there was a graveyard just outside city limits, a fenced tract of old stones and tilting obelisks bounded by a creek flowing though a shallow wooded grove. The cemetery was Catholic with a plinth at its center supporting a terra cotta sculpture of the crucifixion. When he jogged the route from his home in the nearby neighborhood, Judd made a loop through the graves, around the place where Jesus was nailed to the cross. Most of the stones were old and illegible; the graveyard was always empty – for most of the dead, even their mourners were now gone themselves.
One night, Judd was delayed at work, meeting with some customers of his firm. He didn’t get home until after dark on a cold winter night. He slipped on his jogging clothes and tennis shoes and set out for his run.
The streets were empty and the sidewalks had been cleared of snow. His path wasn’t slippery, at least, if a runner knew where to put his feet. The alleys and backyards were drifted and the little huts of the garages seemed desolate in the cold, dark night. A few intersections were lit by yellow streetlamps, showing empty crossroads slick with ice that cars had polished onto the asphalt. At the edge of town, Judd saw that someone was working in a shed next to his house. A man wearing a hood stooped over a grey metal machine that whirred faintly – a motorized blade was stirring on the steel worktable. The man stood in a pool of light, his head hidden under the hood, yellow hands fumbling with something in front of him. A radio sang out in the garage, tuned to a Classic Rock station.
Judd turned the corner at the end of the block where the path led into the cemetery. The gate was open as always – death extends its welcome to all. He trotted down the narrow lane between the old stones leaning this way and that among the low, crescent-shaped drifts of snow. It was cold among the tombs and the wind blew ice particles into Judd’s eyes so that they smarted. He circled Jesus’ bland anguish and, then, jogged pn the footpath leading along the ravine where the creek, mostly frozen, whispered where its ice was broken and the water black. A crow sitting on a bush cried out.
Someone was crouched on a terrace among shattered branches and toppled tree limbs that floods had borne onto the river bank. The figure was turned away from Judd. He saw that the figure’s shoulders were trembling with some deep and relentless sorrow. Below the trail, the ice was divided and an oily torrent flowed between embankments of snow. Judd was concerned that the person might be planning to hurl herself into the frigid water. He stopped and looked down to the woman squatting next to the stream. When he called-out to her, she didn’t turn to look up at him.
It was completely silent except for the crow’s baffled caw. Although the figure seemed to be sobbing convulsively, she made no sound. Judd slid down the bank to stand by her side. The crouching woman didn’t seem to notice him. Little avalanches of snow skidded down the hillside and clumped around the woman’s ankles.
Judd said something and, then, touched the woman’s shoulder. She turned her head up toward him and he saw that she had no face. The front of her head was bald and white as an egg.
Then, he was running along the path above the creek, no longer jogging but sprinting. His breath sounded like a saw blade in his throat. Judd passed through the gate and, ahead of him, saw the shed where the anonymous man was bent over his handiwork. The radio sounded louder now. He could hear words echoing through the icy darkness.
It was bright in the shed. Tools hung on the walls and there were parts of motors on a folding table. Judd cried out to the man who ignored him. The radio continued its indifferent song. When Judd tapped the man’s elbow, he turned to the jogger. Then, Judd saw that the man’s face was missing and that the front of his head was featureless, like a globe of the earth from which all the seas and lands and words have been erased.
After Lafcadio Hearn
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