53
ATTICUS
I raised my hands in the air to show Esra who we were—I could see Miss Mary pointed right at us.
“Is everything okay?” I called out, and Esra lowered the shotgun.
I took Thais by the hand and we made our way over.
“Grandma June is dead,” Jeffrey said. He sat on the ground next to a wooden casket with his legs out in front of him, his back hunched over. He sniffled and dragged his fingers covered in dirt across his eyes, leaving a streak over one eyelid.
Thais sat down next to him. She draped an arm around him, pulled his body close. He was shoeless, his manly feet crusted with dried mud. His blue jeans and T-shirt were damp.
“I’m so sorry, Jeffrey.”
Jeffrey sobbed into the crook of her neck; his strong fingers grasped her shirt. She stroked his bristly head.
Esra set his shotgun down against the tree, barrel up, and took up his shovel again.
I shoved off my backpack and moved in right away to take over.
“No thank ya,” Esra said in his rough whiskey voice. “June was my wife, and ima bury her m’self, ya hear me?” Then he mumbled, “Always makin’ more work for me, that old woman. I tell you wut, when I kick the bucket and find her in Heaven, ima give her a ass whoopin’. Dead and still makin’ my life a livin’ hell.”
Thais and I exchanged a look—He needs help, her look said—I’ll figure it out, mine said back.
Esra was out of his mind to think he could dig a hole by himself large enough to fit a casket.
“Jeffrey told us June wasn’t feeling well,” Thais said as Esra went back to digging.
“No,” Jeffrey argued, raised his head from her shoulder, “I said she was just tired. She wasn’t sick. Just tired. She told me she was just tired, Thais. Grandma June don’t lie.”
“I know, Jeffrey.” She patted his back. “I’m sorry; I meant to say you told us she was tired.”
Jeffrey accepted her apology, laid his head back on her shoulder.
“I know you feel like it’s your responsibility to bury your wife yourself,” I spoke up, “but there’s no shame in letting others at least help dig the grave.”
“I ain’t ashamed,” Esra countered; he heaved the spade into the dirt, stopped to catch his rattled breath. “I just don’t need no help.”
“I tried to dig for my grandpa, but he hit me over the head with his gloves. So, I don’t dig.”
Esra stabbed the wet ground with the spade once more; sweat dripped off the tip of his elongated nose; his upper body swayed unsteadily on the bony, bowed legs that supported it, and he looked faint.
Thais and I exchanged another look—Okay, okay, mine told her.
I moved around in front of Esra and stepped through the soft mound of loose dirt already extracted. I crouched and dropped my hands between my legs.
Esra heaved the spade into the dirt again and it nearly toppled him over. He used the shovel to hold up his weight; his tussock of white hair gleamed in the sunlight; he was drenched in sweat; his hair and the top of his leathery head dusted in a fine layer of dirt.
“Esra,” I said, “all of us here cared for June—you and your wife helped Thais and me a great deal, and Jeffrey here loved her very much. It would be an honor if you’d share the responsibility of laying her to rest.” I put up my hands then, palms forward. “Just with the digging, though,” I added. “We understand if you want to put the casket in the ground by yourself.”
Esra wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a dirty, wet smear. He pooched out his rubbery old lips in contemplation. “If yens really want to help dig my June’s grave,” he said, still with a hint of pride, “then I guess that’d be all right.” His long, gnarled finger shot up then; he narrowed his eyes wreathed by white eyelashes and thick white eyebrows and pointed at each of us in turns. “But ima tellin’ yens, if ya try to lift the casket too, ima give ya lead soup fer lunch.”
I nodded rapidly.
“What’s lead soup, Grandpa?” Jeffrey asked.
No one answered.
Esra handed the shovel to me and I began digging straightaway.
THAIS
“Did you make the casket?” I asked Esra; I encouraged him to sit down beside me.
“I sure did,” Esra answered.
He sat down, caught his breath, his jagged shoulders slumped over. “Got one fer myself, too, and fer Jeffrey. Made ‘em a few years ago. June was on my back about ‘em: ‘I cain’t be buried like that,’ she’d gripe. ‘Ain’t nobody gonna toss my body in no godforsaken hole. You better make me a proper casket, Esra, or I cain’t rest when I’m dead. Ima come back and haunt you if you don’t put me in a casket.’” He shook his head. “Damn woman would, too. Like one of them polzergeists or sumthin’. So, I made us all a casket.” He caught his breath; his skeletal shoulders rose and fell underneath the blue plaid shirt he wore.
I ran my palm over the top of the lid. There was nothing decorative about June’s casket, but it clearly took a man of expert woodworking skill to have built it. Every piece fit together seamlessly, and had been sanded to smooth perfection.
“It’s very pretty,” I said.
Jeffrey went around the other side of the casket and smoothed both of his palms across the lid, too. Then he poked the tip of his index finger into the indentions where the head of the nails securing the lid to the base had been hammered in along the edges. He glanced at Esra in a watchful manner, then his hand fell into his pants pocket.
“This must be where Jeffrey got all the sandpaper,” I said to Esra, more for distraction than conversation—Jeffrey was up to something.
“I gave him some sandpaper—he said yens were makin’ him a rowboat?”
“Oh, yes—Atticus is,” I answered right away. “Well, a canoe, actually. Atticus is almost as good at woodworking as you are.” I glanced at Atticus, and he smiled, but never stopped shoveling dirt; only a few minutes had passed and already the hole was twice the size it was when he’d started.
“A good skill to have,” Esra croaked. “Maybe’n he could get started makin’ yens a casket—probably need one sooner than later.” He wiped his forehead of sweat again.
I swallowed uncomfortably at his comment.
I glanced at Jeffrey and saw a green stump of chalk wedged between his fingers. I smiled to myself, knowing what he was about to do with it. Then I turned my full attention to Esra, letting Jeffrey have his moment with his grandmother as he scribbled something on the side of her casket. Don’t let Esra see you, Jeffrey.
ATTICUS
While Thais talked with Esra, I continued to dig. And the deeper the hole, the more painful the memory:
I sat on the tiled floor with my back pressed against the door. My head was in my hands—my hands were covered in blood. My mother’s blood. I looked across the kitchen at her body lying lifeless under the sheet I’d draped over her just moments ago.
“Am I supposed to fucking cry, Mom?” I gritted my teeth. “Is that what comes next—cry my fucking heart out?”
Then when I looked over at my dead sisters, also covered in sheets, I almost did cry. But instead, I concentrated all of my emotions into my teeth, gritting, gritting, gritting, until pain shot through my jaw and raged in my temples.
Slowly, I unclenched my bloody fists.
Slowly, I allowed my breath to steady, to settle in my chest.
Slowly, I rose into a stand; a sliver of golden sunlight penetrated the sheer white curtain on the kitchen window, moving outward across the eggshell-white tile and touching the toe of my left shoe. Was it trying to stop me from going any farther, or was it lighting my way?
I stepped through the light of the new day and went forward—Nothing will stop me. I stood over my mother’s body, looking down specifically at the outline of her shoulder beneath the sheet, but, despite my efforts, still seeing the bright crimson soaking the sheet around her head. How much blood can there be?
I knelt in front of my mother.
“Well, I’m not going to cry,” I told her stubbornly. “And you want to know why? Let me tell you why—I’m not going to cry for you because you had no right. No right to expect that of me.” Tears stung my eyes and prickled my sinuses—gritting, gritting, gritting; the pain in my temples swarmed the top of my head, clouding my vision.
I stood. Tall over my mother. Powerful over my mother. Powerless over my mother.
“I can’t bury you,” I told her matter-of-factly, not looking at her, not looking at my sisters seven feet to the right of her. “I can’t bury you because it’ll take too much time. I’ll lose their trail if I don’t leave now. I’m sorry, but I can’t bury you.”
Unable to stay a second longer lest I certainly cry my fucking heart out, I moved on past her and left the house through the back door, and with me all I took were my weapons and my bloodied hands that would, if things went as planned, soon be covered in the blood of those I was hunting.
“Atticus?” The voice was soft and sweet.
I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder; sweat poured from every pore, dripped from my eyebrows and my chin and my nose and my earlobes.
I felt the weight of the shovel leave my hands…
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
“Let me dig some,” I suggested, insisted, taking the shovel from him carefully.
Jeffrey was standing next to me, ready to pounce on Atticus if he had to, but I gently pushed him back.
“But what if he—” Jeffrey tried to say, but I put up my hand and stopped him.
The three of us had been watching Atticus come apart at the seams, digging ferociously. It worried me to see him in such a state: the way he stabbed violently at the dirt as if he’d wanted to kill it; how his face contorted with pain and anger; the shovelfuls of dirt he tossed behind him carelessly, oblivious to everything around him, it seemed.
(I looked down at the hole I’d dug, the deep hole I’d dug. Thais stood tall over me—she was standing tall over me, I realized. How long have I been digging?)
Atticus braced his hands on the ground and heaved himself out of the hole.
“I could use a glass of water,” he said, lightheartedly, slapping the dirt from the palms of his hands; his palms were blistered and bleeding.
“Jeffrey,” Esra called out, “go up a get the man some water.” He pointed a long, gnarled finger toward the treehouse. “Bring a whole gallon—I could use some m’self.”
“No, I stay here,” Jeffrey argued, crossing his arms petulantly. “He might hurt Thais. I stay here, Grandpa.”
(I lowered my head, and my shoulders fell. I would never hurt her…)
“No, it’s okay,” I insisted. “He’s not going to hurt anybody, Jeffrey. I promise. Please go get some water, all right?”
Jeffrey’s eyes moved between Atticus and me in contemplation, and then he took off toward the treehouse.
“Better resolve them issues,” Esra warned, as Atticus took a seat on the ground beside him.
I began to dig, but I kept my ears open to what was going on with Atticus.
“We all have issues to resolve,” Atticus said; he stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt and wiped his face with it. “I don’t suppose mine are any worse than yours or anyone else’s.”
“Maybe not,” Esra said, “but how bad mine or anyone else’s are really ain’t got no bearing on your own. Mine cain’t really affect ya. But yours can kill ya if ya let ‘em.”
Atticus dropped his soiled shirt on the ground. He sat with his forearms propped on his knees, his body hunched over.
“I know,” he told Esra, his voice distant.
The almost-silence stretched between us, the only sounds were the shovel stabbing the earth, the shuffling of dirt onto the spade, the dirt falling onto a sizeable mound. How could he have dug so much in such a short time? I was beside myself; I had only been digging less than a minute and already I hated it.
Jeffrey came running back with a gallon milk jug of not-so-clear water. We all drank until the jug emptied.
“How’d you manage to cut the wood so precisely for the casket?” Atticus asked Esra.
“’Lectric saw.”
I noticed Atticus’ interest grow.
“I got a solar panel on the roof.” Esra pointed toward the treehouse again. “Only use it when I really need it.”
Atticus nodded.
“Ya need to borrow it for that canoe yer makin’?” Esra offered.
“It’s not a canoe, Grandpa—it’s a rowboat.”
No one corrected Jeffrey.
Atticus shook his head at Esra. “Nah; I’m making a dugout—no straight-cut pieces needed, but I appreciate the offer.”
“Won’t that take a while?” said Esra.
“Yeah,” Atticus said, “but I like the work.”
“Good distraction, ain’t it?”
“It is. But I just like doing it.” Then he glanced at me and smiled. “Got all the distraction I need,” he added.
I continued to dig, felt a blush warm my face.
“Y’know,” Esra said, “I don’t really miss ‘lectricity so much—never really did. Me and my June, we had this decent little house on a hill before thangs went to shit, and we didn’t never have no fancy air conditioner. We just opened the windows most of the time, ‘cept when it got real hot, and then we’d blow ‘dem fans—used ‘lectricity fer the fans but that was it. Heated the house with a wood stove in the winter; my June cooked on gas and we ain’t never had no use fer a microwave”—his weathered old face scrunched up with disapproval—“Dem damn things were made fer lazy people. Besides, I ain’t never ate nothin’ that came out of a microwave that didn’t taste like rubbery shit.”
Atticus smiled.
“I like microwaves,” Jeffrey stated. “My daddy used to make me Hot Pockets. I liked the pepperoni.”
I offered Jeffrey a smile of acknowledgment from across the short distance, my back hunched over, my hands gripping the shovel as I continued to dig.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss having electricity,” Atticus said. “But I’ve grown used to not having it, that’s for sure. Stopped flipping useless light switches when I passed them years ago—electricity was like a phantom limb for me for a while: it still felt like it was there and my brain sure as hell refused to let it go.” He reached behind him and scratched the back of his neck.
Esra nodded, wiped his face with his palm, smearing more dirt and sweat.
“Only thing I miss ‘bout ‘lectricity,” said Esra, “was watchin’ the local news in the mornin’, sittin’ at the kitchen table with my June and cup o’coffee and the local news and weather playin’ on the TV—never cared much for the sports.”
“I miss goin’ to the movies on Tuesdays with my dad,” Jeffrey put in. “He always took me to the movies on Tuesdays. Daddy never worked on Tuesdays. It was the best day of the week!”
Atticus and I glanced at one another, putting the same piece into the puzzle: So that’s why Tuesdays were so important to Jeffrey.
“If I had to choose what I miss most about electricity,” Atticus said, “it would have to be—well honestly, I don’t miss any one thing more than anything else. I think if I could choose, I’d take it all. Everything. Working light switches, television, microwaves, central heat and air—all or none.”
No one could argue with that.
“What about you, love?” Atticus looked over at me; I was drenched in sweat. “What do you miss most about electricity?”
I stopped digging, propped my arms on the shovel’s handle with the spade stuck in the dirt. I wiped sweat from my forehead and looked up thoughtfully.
“Music,” I answered. “I would love to have music to dance and sing along to.” I came out of the reverie briefly. “My mother and my sister and I would sing to the radio every morning in the car on the way to school. And on the weekends our mother would be cleaning the house, and she’d turn on the stereo in the living room and the volume up real loud, and she’d sing her heart out as she cleaned.” I stopped to let the memory run its course; the smile never left my face. “Sometimes me and Sosie would join in—Momma would sing into the broom handle like she was on stage with a spotlight beaming down on her. Me and Sosie were her backup singers, and we’d all dance and it was a lot of fun.”
I looked up to see everyone looking at me, especially Jeffrey, whose smile had split his face to show his teeth; and he wrung his awkward fingers together on his lap.
I finally went back to digging.
When Atticus insisted I had been digging long enough and it was time for him to take over again, Jeffrey stepped in.
“No, it’s my turn,” Jeffrey said, taking the shovel from my hands. “I’ll dig for Thais.”
Once the grave had been dug, Esra demanded that we leave him to the rest, and that was what we did.
Jeffrey took Atticus and me to the treehouse and played host, brought out glasses filled with pink lemonade, and plastic plates lined with crackers and dry Ramen noodles and slices of raw potato with the skin still on them.
“Grandma June can’t make you lunch anymore,” Jeffrey said as he handed me a plate, “so I do it now, okay?”
“Thank you, Jeffrey. This looks delicious.”
Jeffrey disappeared inside his bedroom at one point. “I’m going to find it for you Thais!” he shouted from the other side of the wall.
“What are you looking for?” I shouted back.
“It’s a surprise!”
The pounding of Jeffrey’s heavy footsteps lumbering across the floor, and the shuffling of items in a drawer and maybe a few boxes was all we heard of him for a while. Until Jeffrey cursed.
“God-dang it! It’s lost!”
I startled when a sharp bang! sounded and the photographs hanging on the wall in the living room rattled on their hooks.
“DANG IT!”
Bang! Bang! Jeffrey’s hand hit the wall a few more times in frustration.
He gave up after a while.
“I’ll find your surprise later. I promise.” Jeffrey was smiling again when he came out of the room.
“I know you will, Jeffrey,” I said with confidence. “Just be patient.”
Still, we waited a long time for Esra, becoming impatient.
“We probably shouldn’t have let him try to do it himself,” I said, growing concerned by Esra’s absence.
Atticus shook his head, nibbled a cracker. “No, the man wanted to bury his wife. We have to respect that, no matter how much help he might need.”
“How’d he get her in the casket to that spot anyway?” I wondered.
“Grandma June died down there,” Jeffrey spoke up. “Grandpa said she knowed she was gonna die, said she went down there in the night when Grandpa was sleeping and she died on the ground by the tree.” He stopped to chew and swallow a cracker, wiping stray crumbs from his lips with the edge of his hand. “I miss my Grandma June.”
Then he cried again, out of the blue—his emotions often came and went like summertime popup showers. I started to set my plate aside and go over to comfort him, but before the bottom of the plate touched the table, Jeffrey’s tears had already dried up. He stuffed another cracker in his mouth and chewed cheerily, as if he’d never been crying.
Esra finally made his way back to the treehouse, and it was dark when Atticus and I finally headed for home.
“I’ll come tomorrow on Tuesday. Sorry I missed today.”
“It’s okay, Jeffrey.” I bent to place a kiss to his cheek. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Esra gave Atticus another baggie of bullets before we set out.
“I never want to be buried in a box,” I told Atticus when we were home. I was lying atop his chest; he squeezed me in the fold of his arm.
I raised my head, leaving the lulling sound of his heartbeat for a moment so he could see the gravity in my eyes.
ATTICUS
“When I die, Atticus,” she went on, “I want you to wrap me in a sheet—(I flinched)—from head to toe, front to back, and maybe tie a flowered vine around my head. But promise me you won’t put me in a box like June.”
“Why’s that?” I stroked her hair.
“I want to be laid right into the cold ground so that I can feel the soil all around me, suffocating me, taking my breath from me and the pain from my heart, the same way your arms do when you hold me at night.” She looked into my eyes, and I looked back into hers; I brought up my other arm and wrapped them both tightly around her; I kissed her chin, her lips, her soul. “When I die,” she continued, “I want to feel like you’re still there with me, holding me, just like you are now.”
My hands smoothed across her back, up her arms and over her shoulders until they found her cheeks where I stopped and held them. I peered deeply into Thais’ eyes.
“When you die,” I whispered, “you won’t need the soil to hold you, Thais, because I’ll be right there next to you holding you myself.”