The young man eyed the cemetery landscape. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘where is that dirt you’re handing out?’

The old man pointed with his pipe, and the stranger looked and, indeed, by a nearby wall was a sizeable hillock some ten feet long by about three feet high, loam and grass tufts of many shades of tan, brown, and burnt umber.

‘Go look,’ said the old man.

The young man walked slowly over to stand by the mound.

‘Kick it,’ said the old man. ‘See if it’s real.’

The young man kicked, and his face paled.

‘Did you hear that?’ he said.

‘What?’ said the old man, looking somewhere else.

The stranger listened and shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

’Well, now,’ said the old man, knocking out the ashes from his pipe. ‘How much free dirt you need?’

‘I hadn’t thought.’

‘Yes, you have,’ said the old man, ‘or you wouldn’t have driven your lightweight delivery truck up by the gate. I got cat’s ears. Heard your motor just when you stopped. How much?’

’Oh,’ said the young man uneasily. ‘My backyard’s eighty feet by forty. I could use a good inch of topsoil. So…?’

’I’d say,’ said the old man, ‘half of that mound there. Hell, take it. Nobody wants it.’

‘You mean. ’

‘I mean, that mound has been growing and diminishing, diminishing and growing, mixtures up and down, since Grant took Richmond and Sherman reached the sea. There’s Civil dirt there, coffin splinters, satin casket shreds from when Lafayette met the honour guards. Edgar Allan Poe. There’s funeral flowers, blossoms from ten hundred obsequies. Condolence card confetti for Hessian troopers, Parisian gunners who never shipped home. That soil is so laced with bone meal and casket corsages I should charge you to buy the lot. Grab a spade before I do.’