It doesn’t seem possible, does it? she said. In a space this size. Thirty thousand was the figure I heard.

They have a legal right to this ground. There are twenty-four thousand of them. They resent that tombstone. It’s undemocratic.

She’d first read the plaque on the obelisk as a child, in the ’60s. Parishioners had built it with local limestone in 1826 to commemorate the loss of their minister, who had died “in the thirtieth year of his age.” In Ellen’s girlhood and teenage years, the thing had been just another neighbourhood feature, something to throw snowballs at (two points if you hit the point of the top spire, one if you hit the stone orb below it), joke about (the more or less phallic shape, the word “erected” on the plaque), or climb on (every few years, somebody fell off the upper pedestal and broke an arm or got a concussion). Now she guessed she could see what the man was talking about: all the headstones were long gone, pulled from the earth like broken teeth over a century back, while this monument remained, towering over the park and its invisibly crammed, stacked dead.

I can move items with my mind, the man said. I do it at the kitchen table. If I stare hard enough, I can move this tombstone. I will need to get the angle correct. It’s weighing down the dead. Once I move it, I will then dissolve it. I dissolve items.

Couldn’t you dissolve something else? — she amplified her tone of banter to get through to him — the Revenue Canada building? Kingston Pen? This park takes a lot of hits.

His face was dark under the hat brim. The dead want this tombstone moved and dissolved, he said. This is not what I would choose to do with my evening.

Sure is a cold one, she said. For some moments, he stared at her.

Well, good luck to you, she told him. I mean, I can see your point. I’ll have to head across now. Stay warm now. She tugged some slack into the hose and began a slide-step over to the far boards, skirting the freshly soaked places.

And I can tell, he called out to her back, if someone is a good person! I look at them and I know their life!

She turned to him with a grin — who could resist such an offer?

If it was an offer. So, then, what am I?

She met his intent, eyeless stare. She’d never, even lonely or hurt, found it hard to meet a stare. She bore no guilt.

You are a good person.

She smiled again. Thank you. You stay warm.

Third night of flooding, 2 a.m. Plenty of work in the corners and along the boards, where the ice always grew rucked and pebbled. The middle of the shinny rink was still sunken and would take another thousand litres from the hose. But both rinks would be ready by morning.