Ciravolo stood beneath an umbrella in the gray, diffused light of a drizzly afternoon. She visits Jonny each Sunday in this Mansfield cemetery. He has no marker, so she finds him by looking for the empty space between tombstones she recognizes. The marker next to his belongs to a man named Frank. She won't forget this because that is her son's name. She only got to spend a few moments there. The thunder, at first a distant rumbling, grew near. She trudged through the wet grass and mud back to her car.
A couple of weeks later, she met Bristow in Broken Bow to visit the cemetery where they would like Jonny to be moved. Only they don't have a spare six grand lying around. For now, it seems to Jonny's sister as though his bones are restless, not permanently interred in Mansfield, nor destined imminently for Broken Bow. Ciravolo feels the same way: Anxious, unsettled, as if Jonny can't rest yet, and neither can she. Too much about his death remains a mystery. Too much about his death still burdens her with guilt she carries like a heavy stone.
Courtesy Jennifer Ciravolo
Jonny Holden (far left, in overalls) with his grandmother Catherine Ciravolo in the nursing home.
Courtesy Jennifer Ciravolo
Jonny and his sister, Jennifer Ciravolo.
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Bristow peered out at her through the windshield in a Mexican-food restaurant parking lot in nearby Idabel and wiped tears from her eyes. "I don't want Jennifer to blame herself." She shouldn't, she says. She did so much for him, even while raising four boys all alone like that.
Ciravolo pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She picked up the habit again after Jonny died. She lit one, drew the smoke deep into her lungs and stared out into some interminable distance, past the auction barn across the street.
"God says, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay,'" Bristow said. "We don't want to wait that long."
Contributions to help pay the costs of relocating Jonny Holden's grave can be made to the Justice for Jonny fund at local Bank of America branches.
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