Mopping the horseman’s grave is no fun task. Asa hates his job, yet refuses to quit. His boss doesn’t care, “Leave them to collect in the dirt,” waving his hand lazily from a broken desk chair that no longer swivels. Laughing at something in a magazine he’d stolen from their own waiting room. Asa’s boss sees no reason to clean someone’s grave if they receive no visitors, but Asa thinks ‘Is it the dead’s fault no one visits them?’ So he continues this task. Asa fails in this regard to think of all the apologies he, himself, cannot accept from the living. The silence of the hot yard, only filled with the sounds of cicadas far away, left him to put in headphones most days (the battery would sometimes die). If you were to stand next to Asa as he worked you would hear Duke Ellighton, the sound of the mop hitting the slab, and the humidity hanging around all as different layers. As if you had a spotlight with three different colors of gel. You could choose to listen to them all as separate entities or you could look at them all as a singular new.

Asa rests the mop’s head against the horse, and picks up his bucket to go get water from the pump. He mops the grave only with water, his boss thinks soap could erode the words on the stones faster. Asa thinks his boss is cheap. Humming Isfahan, he begins his journey back from the water pump. The water sloshing Asa’s kneecaps create a wet mark on the right pant leg. Some odd feet back, he stops and takes out the sound. Like most, he strings his headphone’s cords through his shirt in case it gets too muggy in the afternoons, and now they are left dangling; still playing just not in ear. There is a girl in her 20s kneeling on the horseman’s grave. She has taken off her shoes and left them in the grass nearby after seeing the mop. Her long black hair that has been wrapped up multiple times contrasts a simple white dress on her body, and it seems she is mumbling something to the horse. She looks back and notice’s Asa standing with the mop bucket. She gets up, slips on her shoes, and walks over to Asa who is now moving to meet her halfway.

“Thank you for taking care of him.” she says when they become close. “It’s my job.”
“Still–”
“Who are you?”

“His daughter.”
“Why haven’t I seen you before?”

“I got married to a Koi famer and had to move away to the suburbs of Nagoya,” she pauses. “I visit when I can.”
“I’ve worked here five years and never seen you visit.”
“Has it been that long?”

“Since I started, yes.”
“I’ll try to come again soon,”
“What is your name?”
“Asa.”
The woman’s lips creep up to the corners and edges of her wrinkled smile. “That was his name.”
He does not say anything. He does not know what to say—
“Thank you again, Asa.”

The young woman hugs him. Her wet kneecaps touching his, he is unable to hug back with the mop bucket still in hand. She walks away back to her car and as the space grows so do all the little noises. They drown out the sound of her day slippers in the grass. ‘It’s stupid to take off your shoes if you are going to get your other clothes wet.’

He sits with her lingering presence for a minute before moving back to the horseman’s grave and continuing his work. Putting his headphone’s back in, he mops thoroughly. Now barefooted, everyday he mops her father’s spot without shoes. Hoping the married woman will uphold her promise and come again soon. The thought of seeing the woman married to the Koi farmer will shadow Asa’s days for a long time. If not ‘It’s okay,’ he thinks. This is just his work.