The city sued him a month later.

Mr. Davis waged the legal fight for the next four years, running up thousands of dollars in legal fees. At one point, he even ran for mayor, but lost. In 2012, a Circuit Court judge found in favor of the city and ordered Mr. Davis to move his wife’s remains to a “properly licensed and approved cemetery.” But the grave remained undisturbed as the case made it through the appeals process.

The neighbors, though admitting that it is a little weird, have gotten used to the grave site up the road. “It’s his wife,” said Margaret Garner, 56. “He’s got the right.”

But at least according to the courts, he does not.

Over the weekend, after his denial at the Supreme Court had attracted national news media attention, he was contacted by twin brothers from Southern California: one a screenwriter, the other the director of an organization dedicated to producing a new translation of the Bible.

The brothers encouraged Mr. Davis to protect his grave site by turning his house into a church, and they even created a Web site advertising the brand-new Stevenson Bible Church, a “family-oriented Bible-believing church: baptisms, weddings, on-site cemetery.” Services were scheduled for every Sunday morning at 10, and Mr. Davis was referred to as the pastor.

He was not sold on the idea.

On Friday, Mr. Davis was back in court, and while he warned of “an incident” if the city came onto his property, he suggested a compromise: he would dig up the coffin, cremate his wife’s remains and put the urn with her ashes back in the grave. In her dying days, Mrs. Davis had said she was afraid of cremation, Mr. Davis said. But a lot of time has passed since then. “If she saw herself as she is now, I know she would not mind,” he said.

Mr. Edmiston acknowledged that there was no law against tombstones or the placement of ashes, but he insisted that the coffin and the vault be removed. So if Mr. Davis fully complies with the city’s order, the yard will end up looking exactly as it does now, only with an urn rather than a coffin underneath.

This may raise the question as to what the whole fight was about. But Mr. Davis has no doubts.

“There was never any couple in love like us,” he said. “We was meant to be together.”