Graveyard: A Story

We present here another scene from the life of the fictional Israeli military governor Colonel Kranzdorf, who has previously appeared in Mosaic here.

In this story, set around the year 1980, Kranzdorf visits Arlington National Cemetery, where, since the American Civil War, soldiers who honorably served the United States have been laid to rest. The site of the cemetery once belonged to the family of Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army, whose wife, Mary Anna Custis Lee, was a descendant of Martha Washington. Thus, the site evokes the deepest memories of the American republic, the troubled history of its Civil War; and from the beginning of its current use, the site has been dedicated by the remains of the servicemen who gave their lives for its enduring freedom to the union of the United States.—The Editors

In spite of Daisy’s recommendation he and Esther kept the Ford. She’d cautioned them, first, never to stop for hitchhikers on either side of the Mason-Dixon Line—there were maniacs in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Also she’d warned against entering the South displaying New York plates. They must switch in D.C. for another Hertz car, one licensed in Virginia. Really? Yes, really—more than a century after the Civil War, she’d let them know, and more than a decade after segregation was ended at the point of U.S. Army bayonets many whites in the South continued hating Yankees, especially race-mixing Jewish Yankees. But the Israelis had taken a liking to the Ford, and when the colonel said he’d rather keep it Esther didn’t object.