The story of January Thaw

 Just in case you can't read it, the stone, very clearly, says this:

We Shall Meet Again (beneath clasped hands)

Jennie

wife of 

Gerrit Van Engen

born

Sept. 15,1899

Died 

Dec. 6, 1920

One early morning 17 years ago I was out in the Doon cemetery and literally bumped into this stone. I think I'm safe in saying that most Van Engens in the neighborhood wouldn't know the story behind her early death (at 21 years), but in an instant I was sure I did because Frederick Manfred, the novelist, had this way of disguising names, especially of those people he wanted to commend, as he did a cousin of his, Gerrit Van Engen. The entire Van Engen clan he renamed Van Engleking (or something similar).

So named, Gerrit Van Engleking, a marvelous ball player who could have played in the bigs if he'd been able to play on Sunday (according to his novelist cousin), was as handy with women as he was with a baseball. In the novel The Secret Place (also titled The Man Who Looked Like the Prince of Wales), this Gerrit, who cannot keep his hankering to home, gets two young women pregnant. Both die--one of shame (she refuses to acknowledge her pregnancy), the other in childbirth.

And now you might just see where this is going--or where the whole story I've been posting (including the last two installments, initially, in the wrong order) originates. The Secret Place didn't win Manfred any bright and shiny literary awards, but it made me think I could write. No single piece of writing was so significant in developing my desire to sit here and watch the words appear on the screen before me than Frederick Manfred's The Secret Place. 

Why? Because I told myself I somehow knew these characters. Not literally, of course, but emotionally. I grew up in a church that made a practice of public shaming for sexually active men and (mostly) women. I remember the young woman who stood in the front of the church, alone, and confessed her sin. I wasn't much more than a child. Somewhere in my own consciousness, I knew Jennie Van Engen.

Quite by accident, I noticed the stone and realized, oddly enough, that in all likelihood, I may well have been, right then and there, the only person on earth who knew Jennie's story. I knew her because I knew him--Frederick Manfred, whose grave stands no more a stone's throw away.

And that proximity made me wonder what might happen on some moonlit night up on the hill above Doon, Iowa, when the residents of the town's graveyard appeared to chat, to visit, to have coffee with each other, citizens of the Doon cemetery spirit world. 

That's the story of the story. Once my imagination invested itself in the scenario, I wrote a number of other stories drawn from an imaginary cemetery, put them together in a collection named Up the Hill: Folk Tales from the Grave (available on Amazon, just click here :)).

I'm so sorry about getting the order wrong. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep the blog up without resorting to some fiction, so I picked out "January Thaw" because right now, along with the DAHM winter book club, we're reading Lord Grizzly, Manfred's most celebrated novel, the story of Hugh Glass and his remarkable will to live. 

But that's another story. Hope you enjoyed "January Thaw."