Making Way

Michael Canavan

On September 26, 2012, the remains of 80 homeless adults and children were moved from a cemetery at the former Onondaga County Poorhouse grounds to a new resting spot at the Loomis Hill Cemetery to make way for renovations of a new building at Onondaga Community College. This is a fictional account in the point of view of one of the displaced. 

And how did he come to be here? One minute Patrick is lost in the contemplation of a hundred different options he could have taken over some past decision and the next minute, he’s here at the edge of this field looking at one special cardboard box out of thirty-six similar boxes. In the end it’s either take action or don’t until the choice is out of your hands.

This box is pale blue with a white cover. The others are white or tan, all about the same size. Beyond the boxes, the field is littered with holes like a shelled battlefield. No survivors, just two men eating sandwiches and staring down the road as though waiting for instruction. In the other direction, stands the Poorhouse, and beyond that, the lake that once fed salt vats that provided Patrick his employment. Times changed and Patrick didn’t- the subject of one hundred contemplations.

  The writing on the top of the blue box is illegible. He was never much for reading. He can read his name, alright, and some of the smaller words, but the world of letters is indefinite and foreign, much like the boxes, the holes, the two men.

Now they’re loading the boxes into a van; a gleaming white modern thing with smooth lines. The workers lift them one at a time, matching the writing on the box covers with a sheet on a clipboard, and place them in the van. When they reach for the blue box, Patrick shouts, “Leave me where I belong!” They don’t listen. They pick it up to place it with the others, but the grass was wet and the bottom rips, spilling ashes and bones onto the ground. Someone once told him that the remains would weigh about 23 pounds. Patrick collapses, as eternal as ether, as venerate as a vacuum. Take action or don’t. The sleeper runs, but cannot move forward.

And how did he come to be here? He stands at the edge of the cenotaph, watching the men place the boxes into a long, rectangular trench. And there they stand, incorporeal, crowded together like abandoned tourists slowly awakening to the swindle. With each shovel of dirt, they fade from sight, the unquiet sleepers in the silent earth.

And how did he come to be standing in two places at once? One minute Patrick is lost in the contemplation of covert interment, the next, he stands facing the gleaming new renovation of the old County Poorhouse. Patrick struggles to read the letters above the entrance of the Hall of Extended Learning.