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Three strangers loitered near my family’s gravesite. One of them, a gnarled Hispanic man, stooped over a crooked wooden cane and kicked clods of loose dirt onto the graves. He dredged up a wad of thick phlegm and spat upon the names carved into the headstone: Henry Kilgore and his two sons, William and Michael.
When I approached, the old man’s coal-black eyes bored into me, as though he recognized something familiar in my face. He leveled a finger first at me, then at the graves, and began to shudder. A frightful keening emanated from his taut lips as he chanted an evil-sounding invocation to the spirits.
All I recognized was the word “Kilgore.”
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