Mr._Grampis

he Grave Summary | Detailed Summary The protagonist in The Grave is a girl named Miranda who, as the story progresses, discovers a link between her adult life and a childhood memory. The story begins with a briefly recounted history of Miranda's grandparents. Her grandfather, who has been dead more than thirty years, has been moved from his grave twice. Each time his widow moves she uproots his grave and reburies him close to her, hoping one day that they will be buried side by side. The first move was to Louisiana and the second move was to Texas. The narrator states that the grandmother's constant relocation makes it seem as though she is searching out her own burial place. In Texas the grandmother sets up a small cemetery in a corner of her farm. Over the years the family connection grows and relations migrate from Kentucky to settle in Texas. The cemetery contains about twenty graves. After the grandmother's death, some of the farmland is to be sold for the benefit of the children. The cemetery happens to be located in the area to be sold. For this reason, the graves must be dug up and moved to a public cemetery. In the public cemetery, the grandmother and grandfather are buried side-by-side, just as the grandmother had wished. The family cemetery is an abandoned garden with tangled rose bushes, ragged cedar trees and cypress. The grave spots lay open and empty. The protagonist explains that when she and her brother Paul were young they would hunt small game together. The protagonist describes a memory of when she was nine and her brother was twelve. They stumble upon the gravesites during a hunting expedition. On this hot day, the two carefully place their rifles against a fence as they explore the open grave pits. For Miranda this is mysterious place. The graves smell like sweetness and corruption. Filled with wonderment, Miranda climbs into the pit where her grandfather once rested. She finds a tiny silver carved dove that is no bigger than a hazelnut. She runs out of the pit to show her brother Paul. Paul has found treasure also. He shows Miranda a gold ring that is intricately engraved with flowers and vines. The siblings trade their treasures. Miranda wears the ring. It fits perfectly on her thumb. They decide they should leave; they are aware that the land has been sold and they are not supposed to be there. They pick up their rifles and continue their hunting expedition. On these trips Miranda always obeys Paul's instructions about how to handle her gun, how to wait for the right time to shoot, and how to stand properly so that the gun does not go off by mistake. Miranda hardly ever hits a mark. She has no proper sense of hunting. When Paul makes a kill he wanted to be certain of it. Miranda always claims any game they shoot when firing at the same time. Paul is sick of this. He often claims the first game they see as his, allocating the second to Miranda. As Miranda admires her ring this day, she loses interest in shooting. She also feels suddenly uncomfortable in her usual tomboy clothes of overalls, a blue shirt, and thick brown sandals. Miranda's attire was scandalous throughout the countryside. It is 1903. Her father has been criticized for letting his girls dress like boys. Miranda's big sister Maria is the most independent and fearless of all the children. She can ride a horse astride with nothing but a rope knotted around the horse's nose. The children grew up without their mother and now, with their grandmother gone, the family is getting run down. Miranda's father has money problems. The grandmother had discriminated against him in her will. Some neighbours relish this with vicious satisfaction. Miranda knows all this because she would meet the old women that had admired her grandmother. They would tell her she should be ashamed of herself because it goes against the scriptures to dress the way she does. During these encounters Miranda does fell ashamed. She is being raised to believe that it is rude and ill bred to shock anyone. Still, Miranda has faith in her father's judgement. He allows her to wear tomboy clothes on the farm in order to save her dresses for school. This sense of thriftiness is in both his and Miranda's nature. The ring Miranda finds turns her against her tomboy clothes. She longs to go back to the farmhouse, take a bath and put on a fancy dress. The ring makes her long for luxury and a grand way of living that she has not experienced but has heard stories about as part of a legend of her family's past wealth. Miranda lags behind Paul, who is still hunting. She wants to take off for home without telling him. But he would never do this to her, so instead she catches up with him to tell him she is going home. As Miranda approaches her bother a rabbit leaps in front of him. Miranda lets him have the kill without dispute. He kills it in one shot. He leans over the rabbit and examines the wound, a shot through the head. Paul takes out his bowie knife and starts skinning the animal. Miranda recalls her uncle Jimbilly, who knew how to prepare skins to make fur coats for her dolls. Both of the children knell over the dead rabbit. Paul notices its oddly bloated belly and says it is pregnant. Paul cuts the animal's stomach open to release the babies. He pulls off the thin scarlet veil that covers each bunny. Their blind faces are almost featureless. Miranda is used to the sight of dead animals. But she is filled with both pity and delight for the eight baby rabbits. She sees blood running over them and trembles although she is not sure why. Miranda wants to see and know everything about this experience. The memory of her former ignorance fades in this moment. Her brother may have seen this before, now she knows what he knows. It is partly the intuition in her mind and body that has prepared her for this moment, in a manner ever so gradual that she has been unaware of a change happening. Paul says that the babies were ready to be born. Miranda says that she knows this and refuses to take the skin from the dead animal. Paul buries the babies in their mother's body. He wraps the skin around the rabbit and carries it to a sage bush to hide it away. He tells Miranda not to tell anyone because he will get in trouble. He tells her, as he always does, that he is leading her into things she should not do. Miranda did not tell. She did not want to tell anyone. The disturbing image of that day was burned into her mind for the next few days. But finally it sank deep into her mind behind other memories. For the next twenty years Miranda does not think about the event. She only remembers it as the day she and her brother found treasure in the grave pits. But one day as she walks through the market of a strange city in a strange country, the memory leaps back. A street vendor notices Miranda's glazed over, horrified look. He offers her a tray of sugar candies that are shaped like baby animals and smell like vanilla. It is a hot day in the market and the smells of raw flesh and wilted flowers that surround the vendors reminds Miranda of that same smell of sweetness and corruption she smelled at the grave pits. For the first time in years she remembers what her brother's face looked like in childhood. In her vision she sees him standing in the blazing sunshine with a pleased sober smile in his eyes, as he turns the silver dove around in his hands.