The Vendors

THE VENDORS

The vendors are all old men, pushing brightly painted carts through the cemetery with

Metal bells announcing ice cream and snow cones.

We are crowded around the grave, the pastor leading hymns, women singing, eyes closed.

It is hot, the sun beading my forehead with sweat.

A young girl is captivated by the rituals for the dead. She stares.

They sing, ¨If we live for God, we die for God.¨

A son leans against another grave, with a cement cross supporting him, and cries.

The first time I came here, the public cemetery in Chalchuapa,

A drunk and maybe homeless man ran up to me. I was with two friends from Seattle,

Showing them around my new home in El Salvador, and we were sharing a can of soda.

¨The can,¨ he yelled, and thinking he was thirsty, I offered him a drink.

¨No,¨ he said, impatient, and explained he wanted the can to recycle for cash.

Poverty, I thought.

My friends and I walked on, a little shaken but pretending

To be stronger than the moment.

We are young still, and we think we can overcome things like that with convictions.

I would like to.

I think about death, how this must have been like my grandma´s funeral in Kansas.

The pastor talks of the end of times, dust to dust, death as a celebration of life in Christ

And a little girl walks to buy a snow cone. The old man unwraps the block of ice from the cloth

Shaves it, and transferring the ice to the Styrofoam cup, his big hands drop the ice.

He starts again, the ice melting on the sidewalk.

Cherry syrup, chocolate ice cream, sodas,

The kids eat it all, the people file out

The pastor tired, sweating, done now.

And as the young men shovel dirt on a bright Sunday morning, burying their uncle or

Grandfather or father,

The bells of ice cream and snow cones sing on,

Death forgotten.