Afterwards

A short ride in the van, then the eight of us there in the heat—white shirtsleeves sticking, the women’s gloves off—fanning our faces. The workers had set up a big blue tent to help us at graveside tolerate the sun, which was brutal all afternoon as if stationed above us, though it moved limb to limb through two huge, covering elms. The long processional of neighbors, friends, the town’s elderly, her beauty-shop patrons, her club’s notables. . . The world is full of prayers arrived at from afterwards, he said. Look up through the trees—the hands, the leaves curled as in self-control or quietly hurting, or now open, flat-palmed, many-fine-veined, and whether from heat or sadness, waving.