The view from the second floor of the yellow brick house at the corner of Clark and Irving Park extends east and south across 14 and a half bucolic acres. The lot is filled with elms, cottonwoods, mulberries, flowering cherries, trees of heaven, and ranks of stone obelisks, like some miniature Egypt among the foliage. It’s a backyard that’s also a graveyard. Thirteen cemeteries in Chicago have caretaker’s residences on their grounds, but this 2,000-square-foot brick Victorian at Wunder’s Cemetery is perhaps the most conspicuous, sitting on prime real estate at a major intersection walking distance from Wrigley Field. Three bedrooms, two baths, hardwood floors, natural light–and the caretakers have always gotten it all rent free.
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One day this past spring I paid a visit to Wunder’s to see if Nyhart was still around, but instead found Bob Wells crossing the distance between the garage and the house. Wells, like Nyhart, is a tall, burly man. He has a wide, big-featured face, with a thick yellow mustache and matching bushes for brows. He moves and talks as slowly as a southerner and his hands are thick like a contractor’s. Maybe because I’d taken him by surprise, he seemed a little taciturn. When I asked him what had happened to Nyhart, he just loomed for a second, his expression blank.
“He died.”
A vessel the size of a refrigerator box rests beside a conical mound of orange brown earth next to the grave. Called a vault, it’s made of concrete and weighs 1,800 pounds. Soon it will go in the hole, hoisted by a homemade aluminum contraption with block and tackle dangling from a central point, the whole thing on four wheels like a garment rack. No one knows who built this machine, but it predates Digger. After the funeral party arrives, the coffin will be lowered into the vault, like a set of Chinese boxes.
On the 309, on the 309
Wells also has assistance from Bill Law, Valerie Stodden’s cousin. Law is in his late 40s, with a healthy paunch and wire-rimmed glasses. He’s been on disability for the last six years or so, ever since he injured his back making deliveries for a furniture company. “I’m a full-time volunteer,” he says. Adept with machinery, Law also tinkers in the garage with whatever equipment Wunder’s can afford to maintain. The 45-year-old International Harvester tractor, for instance. Or the Deines Marty-J commercial lawn mower, designed specifically for maneuvering in tight spaces. The backhoe, however, is over his head.
