Potter's Field - 2

There are no ceremonies for the dead here on Hart Island.  Inmates from Rikers Island are assigned burial detail and are ferried over to do the work.  Coffins are stacked -- 150 to a common plot-- in two columns three coffins high. Each finished plot is designated with a white marker.  Infants' coffins are stacked a thousand to a common plot.

What otherwise might have served as an idyllic retreat of meadows, woodlands and sand dunes, Hart holds too many ghosts -- from the sturdy anachronisms that whisper of a more vital time, to the terrifying reality of the Nike bases, to the seemingly boundless fields of the unwanted dead -- to ever be anything more than a sad, sad island.

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