cut from the novel

Cut from Chapter 5:
The thing about a cemetery was that it was eventless, Carl thought. You could put flowers down or plant an ornamental bush, but this was only a change in the landscape. He’d spent some time in cemeteries, even before he became interested in the afterlife, because of their importance to a historian, and he’d noticed the tendency of some families, to want to furnish the gravesite as if it were truly a house, or at least a room. Flowers, stuffed animals, photos, flags.
Once in a cemetery in Columbus he’d come across a woman sleeping on a man’s grave, her arm draped around the flat-to-the-ground headstone. Her husband’s or her lover’s. The grave was not too old, for the sod lines still showed in the grass. The woman’s eyelids flickered, and she breathed slowly and regularly. At the time, it had seemed to him extreme, and pitiful. He’d backed away, afraid that she’d awake and he’d have to face her bizarre grief.
Some of the old graves in the Logan Cemetery, behind the Logan High School, were like tiny stone houses, family enclosures. The doors of these were always locked, of course, and so he’d never seen inside. But who knew what might be in there—an armchair, a barbecue grill, a photo album, a set of Dickens.
A classic case of Carl thinking too much.