He describes one yard as having been raised six feet from the original surface. Masses upon masses of bones accrue. Another texture which emerges from Walker's text is the broken and fragmented. One can almost hear the crack of the wooden coffin as the grave digger jams his shovel through the lid. Human remains are never depicted as whole, coffin wood is strewn about the ground.
Fragmentation appears as the jagged resistance to moisture.
Coffin fragments and brittle bones stay afloat in the sea of marsh-like putrefaction. Not unrelated to this contrast between the rough-edged part and the amorphous almost viscous whole liquified is a texture which seems to finish up the text. This is the texture of shallowness. When Walker looks at a graveyard, he measures the depth of the coffin with his eyes. Four foot below the surface, three feet below the surface, a foot and a half below the surface he tells us.