Before I left him that day, he gave me, written out in a shaky hand, the recipe for his elixir against the suspicion. ‘Sooner or later, it’ll be back,’ he told me. Twenty years have passed since then, and I’ve long ago misplaced that scrap of paper. But every year at Halloween, I wear a blossom of the witch hazel in honor of Boyle, and oddly enough, it’s beginning to catch on.”
Little Digs
Lisa L. Hannett
Three generations are buried on Wheeler land, starting with Great-Grandaddy Winston, the only one to live up to the surname. A far-traveler, he was. Crossed seven county lines to reach Napanee, carting a new wife, her faith in the old gods, and a wagonload of beehives along with him. Winston named his first and only child Queenie, back when he still held high hopes for honey riches, but slipped into the habit of calling her Teenie when she grew no bigger than his bank account.
After planting her Pops in the first mound out back, Teenie took root on the homestead, settling it and the household accounts. Had such a knack for numbers, in fact, she saved up for a pesticide rig that kept the larder well-stocked, the fields bug-free and her son in a job for life. In her seventy-odd years, she never took no man’s name, nor his hand in wedlock. But, on one occasion at least, she invited him into her bed—and kicked him back out again long, long before she birthed that plane-loving heir of hers.
Nowadays, Queenie surveys her property upwards from the wormside of mound number two, while her boy most often sees it from the clouds. When Buddy Wheeler brings that Piper Cub of his in for a landing, stinking of diesel and creosote, his own daughter Bets teases him something merciless. Poking and prodding, she checks him for extra limbs, sudden chemical-spawned tentacles, or indiglo skin. If he minds, he sure doesn’t show it: Bets’ daddy knows how to take a joke. He’s open-minded. He gets the bigger picture. Always has.
Winging hither and yon in that biplane of his, Buddy’s seen far beyond the confines of this hand-me-down property, this cornbread county. Way farther than Bets or her Mamma ever did.
Once upon a time, before Queenie had wheeled groundwards, Buddy used to haw on the harmonica between harvests. Even gathered a decent following—or so he says—at honkytonks here, there, and everywhere, thanks to the unique style of bluegrass he played. Tunes whined extra soulful against that ugly set of metal teeth he wore, temporary inserts he kept in permanent on account of the sharp glint they gave off, the steel shine they lent his smile.
“These chompers of mine’s worth their weight in twenties,” Bets’ daddy used to say, especially when whiskey-soaked, too numb to fly anywheres much less lift a blues-harp to his lips. Thick-tongued, he’d toy with the bridge, running the blunt tip along silver valleys and peaks. “They’s the brightest map outta here, understand? The trustiest, most valuable map…”
Mesmerized, baby-girl Bets had watched the thing wiggle in and out of his mouth. She’d read about touch-maps them Artick injuns used, little sculptures that looked every bit like her daddy’s teeth, except they were whittled hunks of wood. Those carvings’ dips and whorls, Bets later learned, were landscapes shrunk small, coastlines and mountain ranges tucked in pockets or carried inside seal-fur mitts. Portable 3D worlds, in other words, and more reliable than paper or memory. At high noon or moon-dark, travelers could run fingers over them cracks and bumps to get their bearings, certain they’d never be led astray.
Now standing on the back porch her Nanna Teenie built, Bets hefts a shovel and looks out on the hummocked land Great-Grandaddy Winston claimed. Releasing a pent breath, she pats her back pocket for the hundredth time that morning, feels the folded paper’s reassuring crinkle. Guts all a-flutter, she sends a silent prayer to the gods. Thanking any and all of them for blurring Daddy’s sights with clouds and moonshine, filling his mouth with them precious silver directions. Asking—not begging, she’s too reasonable for that—any and all of them to look kindly on her venture, to reward her for putting herself out there, putting on a brave show. Gods favor the bold, she tells herself, hoping their invisible eyes have already turned her way. Hoping they’ll approve. Hoping they won’t leave her stranded.
More than halfway through spring, the ground’s still almost hard as it was in mid-January. The last shaded knolls of snow finally sank about a week ago, leaving patches of grit on winter-squashed grass in the backyard. Filth gathers like crumbled shadows under the boundary’s split timber fences. Weathered barriers divide dirt for the living from that for the dead, keeping ever-fallow acres separate from budding maples and crabapple trees, and from planting-fields in the back forty beyond.
In the distance, a range of low mountains gently curves across the horizon. Each graystone peak is bare and blunt as a molar. Six or seven of the things are pressed close together, so’s the ridge as a whole looks to Bets like a broken set of dentures. Closer to home, between the rusted swing-set she used to ride for hours—failing to muster enough courage to leap off the seat at its highest point, to wind up and let go, to fly—and the ploughed rows waiting for the new season’s crop, three soft hillocks push their swollen bellies out of the earth.
Until last autumn there’d only been the two big ones on the left, bulging side by side, reminding Bets of that joke about Dolly Parton lying in the bathtub. “Islands in the Stream.” Now that the third’s been added, a much smaller mound they barely got covered in burlap before the blizzards set in, she thinks the trio looks more like a giant snowman got drunk and toppled over, his soft noggin slumped to the right. It was a hasty job, building that grave, but Mamma only became more pig-headed when upset, less inclined to listen to—much less heed—anyone else’s advice. She’d wanted that soil piled high while the body was still warm, understand? It wasn’t skimping if it meant getting her own way. Hell no it wasn’t. Just get the burial over and done.
Don’t cut no spirit ditch round the site, she’d said to the teamsters Daddy had booked for the job ages ago. Waste of time. Any soul what can scrape its way free from all this ain’t going to trip up on a little ol’ channel in the ground. Don’t be too precious with the backhoe; the hole ain’t got to be perfect, just deep. Y’all know the drill. Speaking of which: don’t fetch no auger for this dig, no concrete, none of them posts neither, nor them two-by-fours, nor them planks. Why fuss with tombs or chambers when already we’re sinking a case of good steel down there? How many coffins does one corpse need, anyways? This ain’t ancient Egypt and sure as hell ain’t no pharaohs round here. Waste of good money, that’s all this burial business is, a waste of good goddamn cash. Go’on and bulldoze the dirt back where it were scooped from; we’ll tamp it ourselves later on. Nope, nope. Don’t bother stacking no cairn over the whole shebang. Our goats can’t graze on no goddamn heap of stones.
When it came time, Mamma wanted the mess of death scrubbed clean out her house, swept from the yard, put in its place. Out of sight, out of mind.
Red Lucifer’ll trade his pitchfork for a halo, Bets knows, before the old lady ever admits she might or should have done otherwise.
There’s a whiff of clay in the breeze this morning, damp leaves and workable mud. Bets tucks the legs of her baggy overalls into knee-high rubber boots. Zips her acid-wash jacket up to the chin. Sucks in cool air, breathes it out warm. It’s too early yet for the sun to offer much in the way of heat, but already it’s squint-making, bright as the bell-song luring folk down the lane to church.