“How’s your back?” Russel asked Jim Bob.
“Fine,” Jim Bob said. “How’s yours?”
“Hurts. I’m using a shovel,” Russel said.
“And you use it so well.”
Russel began digging faster, and as we got close to the box, his digging became more frenzied. I looked over at him once, and what light was on him made him look like a corpse. He was afraid of what we would find down there. His son and his hopes in a box.
I looked over at Jim Bob, and since he was holding the light, I couldn’t make out his features too well, but he seemed more solemn than I’d yet seen him. He was also quiet for a change.
Russet’s shovel scraped the coffin.
We began cleaning the dirt off. and around it. Throwing it up high and over. It was getting to be harder work. The rain was coming down faster and the clods were sticking together and becoming heavy.
“All right,” Jim Bob said, and he jumped down on the coffin with his light and canvas bag. He stepped off the box and found a place to stand between the coffin and the grave wall, and he opened the bag.
“There’s more to tapping these babies than just opening a lid,” Jim Bob said. “They seal these fuckers but good nowadays. You got to have the right tools. Fortunately, I got them.”
He pulled some strange instruments out of the bag and turned to look at Russel. “Whatever’s in here, I don’t want nothing crazy out of you. If it’s your boy, I’m sorry, but you move to cause Dane here trouble, and I’ll wrap this damn tool around your head.”
Russel smiled grimly. “You’ll try… but don’t worry. I haven’t got nothing against Dane anymore.”
“Well, just in case you get something suddenly,” Jim Bob said, “remember what I told you.”
Jim Bob applied the tools to the coffin and in a moment the lid popped up with a whoosh of air, like one of those cans of vacuum-packed peanuts, and there was the body. It was in a hell of a shape. It looked like someone had taken a can opener to it and stitched it up with black cord while drunk. The eye I had shot out was stuffed with what looked like, wax, and it hadn’t been done neatly; the body looked like something out of a monster movie.
“Ain’t much to look at,” Jim Bob said, and he put a hand on Russel’s shoulder.
Russel looked quickly at the face and said, “Hold the light on his right hand.”
Jim Bob did that and Russel picked up the corpse’s right hand and looked at it. “You remember my boy, don’t you Jim Bob?”
“When he was little,” Jim Bob said. “He was blond, wasn’t he?”
“Hair can be dyed… but this isn’t him. Freddy had a cluster of little, pale moles on the back of his right hand that looked like a four-leaf clover… like these.” He let go of the corpse’s hand and held his own in the light. I could see the faint pattern of moles on the back of his powerful hand. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed them before.
“You’re sure?” Jim Bob asked. “More than sure,” Russel said.
I was feeling sick. “From the looks of him,” I said, “you’d think they purposely tried to mess him up.”
“I think that was the idea exactly, sport,” Jim Bob said.
That hadn’t occurred to me seriously, and now that Jim Bob said it, I felt that this whole thing was even deeper than I expected. A conspiracy. Little obstacles all along the way. Maybe they expected the body might get dug up at some point, and wanted to make it hard to identify. And maybe an autopsy on a body that no one is expected to see isn’t performed for points on neatness.
I tossed my shovel out of the hole and climbed out after it. I had had enough. Jim Bob shut the coffin, stood up on it and took my hand and I pulled him up.
Russel followed. His big hand took mine and I yanked him up, and as I did his eyes looked straight at me. I couldn’t tell what was in them, but it wasn’t threatening.
I took my shovel and started throwing the dirt in furiously. Russel grabbed up the other shovel and joined me. Jim Bob held the light.
We threw the dirt in at random, then we found our stride and began shoveling in unison, shovelful per shovelful. We got faster and faster. I could hear Russel grunting beside me and the smell of his sweat and the light rain was on the wind and I began to feel loose, even strangely comfortable. There was nothing I wanted to do more in the world at that moment than cover that hole.
Finally Russel and I had it finished and we patted our shovels on the earth as if by signal.
We looked at each other.
“Anybody ever quits wanting to dig graves around here,” Russel said, “I think we could get a job.”
I grinned. “Probably.”
Lights pinned us against the night and doors slammed and I looked toward the road. I could make out that it was two pickups, and I could see four men getting out of them with baseball bats. They went around in front of the trucks, which they had parked across the road facing us, and stood framed in the lights.
One of them nervously, or perhaps eagerly, tapped his bat against the side of his shoe. He called out, “What’er you fucks doing out here?”
“Paying our respects to Uncle Harvey,” Jim Bob said.
“This time of night?” the voice asked.
“It’s the time of night we get the most sentimental,” Jim Bob said. “What about you boys, you out here for a little batting practice?”
“You might say that,” the voice said.
“That’s kind of what I figured,” Jim Bob said. “Don’t reckon you boys would listen to reason?”
“Sort of doubt it,” the voice said.
“Yeah, well, remember, I gave you your chance.”
One of the men laughed, then they all came toward us and started through the gate.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Simple,” Russel whispered to me, “first asshole within range, you see if you can crease his head with that shovel.”
“It could kill him,” I said.
“Let’s hope so,” Russel said. “Those bats won’t do us much good, I can promise you that.”
“Is there any good reason for this?” Jim Bob asked. “I mean, what have we done to you boys?”
“Not a thing,” the speaker said, and then he rushed Jim Bob with the bat.
Jim Bob was standing slightly in front of us, and he dropped the flashlight and turned in the direction of the grave, I thought to take the blow on his back, but he kept going down and he spun and his leg shot out and caught the first man on the ankle and knocked his feet out from under him and the man hit the ground and the bat went up and fell down heavy end first and struck him between the eyes and the man yelled.
Jim Bob was on his feet then, and the second man was nearly on him and the bat was coming down. Jim Bob went straight to the man and ducked under the bat and the bat waved uselessly over Jim Bob’s shoulder and Jim Bob grabbed the man’s throat with one hand and uppercut him in the balls with the other, then he twisted his hip into him, slipped an arm around his waist, bent, and sent the man flying. Jim Bob didn’t even lose his hat.
Russel stepped forward and faked a shovel blow to the third man’s head and the man brought the bat up to block and Russel dropped the shovel low and hit him in the kneecap. The man barked and went down.
The last man made a run for the trucks. He was nearly in the middle of the road when the Red Bitch came barreling down on him and the lights came on, then the Bitch braked, but the car still hit him and sent him over the hood. He rolled up against the windshield and flipped over on the driver’s side. He tried to stand, I guess, because the door came open, and at the same instant the inside light framed Ann, the door made impact with the man hard enough to make my testicles pull up.
The men from the pickups were down and I hadn’t done anything but hold a shovel.
The man Jim Bob had thrown was trying to get up, so I looped my shovel over casually, not putting much force behind it, and let it come down on his head. It made a nice, comforting ring on contact.
“See you’re still messing with that Jap stuff,” Russel said to Jim Bob.