Norman tells us it’s a matter of faith. We will be sorely tested, like Job, and yet we must believe. We will be pushed to the brink, and we will return in full glory. His own brother was shot in a club years ago. The diggers came from the Garden to his funeral in Charles County, Maryland, with their shovels, then cut a hole in the earth by hand, like gravediggers did before machinery—the chink, chink of metal on dirt sounding like a hymn. They dug the hole and laid his body in. As sad as it was, it was an unbelievably joyful moment. His brother took wing and was truly free.

_He breathes in your ear and gives second life. _

Now his phone rings. It’s Darrell, who’s spending his annual week in the mountains, away from everything, but he still feels compelled to call: Is it all right there? And Norman sits with his engine idling, Praise 104 on the radio, laughing a little with Darrell, taking in the lay of the land, when two women approach, and knock on his window.

They want to lodge a complaint. Norman nearly jumps right out of the truck, and they lead him up to their father’s grave site in Section 65. Their daddy’s name is Bill Morant, a Vietnam War vet who died about ten years ago, and these are his daughters, women who seem to be in their thirties, named Linda and Kathy. They show Norman that the black paint once filling his carved name on the headstone has washed away, which troubles them. Their eyes seem puffy from crying.

Though every headstone is eventually washed clean of its paint by the elements, from the torrential rains brought by the storms that take down the trees, though every soldier eventually reverts to these rows of marble blankness, the sisters want their father’s name painted back on his headstone. Norman talks to them for the next twenty minutes, not about the marker but about their father.

One of the daughters relates a story about how General Westmoreland showed up at an event that their uncle once attended and, recognizing their uncle’s last name on his tag, came forward and said of their father that he was a good soldier. General Westmoreland, of all people! Didn’t even know Daddy had met the man. The daughters are smiling as they tell the story, but then one’s eyes turn moist again, and so does her sister’s. They both would really like something done about the gravestone. They insist he be remembered this way.

Everything in the Garden is bathed in tangerine light again. In the distance, another burial: the diggers doing this work in our name now, because we’ve handed them our shovel, paid them a wage, asked them to bear witness in our stead. There is nothing particularly beautiful about what they do, and despite the solemnity of this sacred ground, the prosaic fact of their work persists: They dig in dirt and mud, burying thousands upon thousands of dead bodies, limbs, remains.

Norman has now pulled out a small notepad and is jotting down a quick note with the number of Bill Morant’s grave, Bill Morant who was once a living man, who was a good soldier, who was loved by his daughters, who was buried with pomp and, at least in Norman’s mind, found final release and was forgiven. Blessed is the righteous man; he shall be delivered.

When it comes time to say good-bye, Norman doesn’t offer condolences or weak platitudes. He looks both sisters in the eye and in that calm, unwavering voice of his, says, “We’ll get you a new headstone out here. It’s the least we can do.”

michael paterniti is a _ gq correspondent._