WHEN THE SAINTS COME MARCHIN’ IN

Jenny knew that her Mother’s parents were dead. They had been dead before Margaret was born. Every year, for as long as Jenny could remember, Mother had cut some yellow roses to put on their graves at Decoration Day. She had heard that someday there was to be a day of judgment when all the people who had ever lived would suddenly rise up out of their graves and come to life again.

Mother often mentioned her parents when telling of the things that had happened when
she was little. Jenny wished she could have known them. She wondered if they would have liked her.

“Say, Mother,” Jenny said one morning.

“What do you want, Honey?”

“S’pose all of a sudden all of my grandparents and great grandparents and people of all ages way back to the beginning would become alive and start walking down the road past the house. Would they make a line clear up to the corner?”

“Oh, further than that. It would be a lot of people, you know.”

Jenny could picture them, a great line of men, women, and children walking single file down the road. Most of the men and women would be tall and skinny. They would be dressed in old fashioned clothing. It would be even more exciting than having the men in a coyote hunt walk past. She would stand at the mailbox and wave hello to each person as they passed by. Maybe she would tell them who she was. Maybe there would be someone in the line who looked just like her. There ought to be, out of this many relatives. People were always saying she looked like somebody on one side of the family or the other. Maybe it would take all morning for the people to pass by. Maybe all day, or maybe several days and several nights.

Jenny thought about the man and woman at the end of the line. Even they would be her great great great great great ... how many greats she couldn’t imagine. What would they look like? What would their names be? Why, Adam and Eve, of course.

Sometimes Jenny was overwhelmed by her own thoughts.