Which meant Lucas was near gone. Sweet mercy. Sweet, blessed mercy—the roots in that broth Waits prepared had given the child a little peace as he slipped into the hardest part of his passing. Mayhaps the soup had eased the boy’s pain, because Lucas hadn’t fussed after that one time telling his mama that he hurt so bad all over. Titus could only hope as Roman raised the lantern.
“Keep hol’t of him, you two,” he whispered, his voice cracking and the tears starting to stream there in the dark. “Here, put your hand there, Roman. An’ you’ll be sartin to feel … feel when he’s … took his last air.”
When he got the words said, the breath caught in Amanda’s throat. But she let him lift her trembling hand and lay it on her boy’s chest, right there beside Roman’s. This little boy, so short on earthly days, now passing on, cradled here in the arms of his pap and mam.
Every now and then, he could hear Amanda’s gut-wrenching wail.
It made the hair stand on the back of Scratch’s neck.
But he gritted his teeth, swabbed the raw end of his nose, and kept on digging.
“Ain’t it deep enough yet, Mr. Bass?” asked Hoyt Bingham as he stood on the rim of that grave they had begun gouging out of the hard, flintlike ground forty yards south of the Burwell wagon. Yonder aways on their back trail coming to Soda Springs.
“We’re goin’ down far as it takes to keep that boy from gettin’ dug up.”
He watched how the dozen or so men on the rim of the grave looked at one another, then stared into the dark, the light from four lanterns positioned on the ground at their feet radiating upward to illuminate only the lower half of their faces, that soft light causing everything from their cheekbones up to disappear in shadow.
“Dug up?” one of the sodbusters asked.
“Wolves.” Titus plunged the shovel into the ground and scraped it forward in the dark. He was working by feel now. The light from those lanterns no longer reached the bottom of the short rectangle just big enough for one man to turn around in. Dark at the bottom where the old man sweated as he pried loose more and more of the dirt he wanted to lay on top of that little boy’s body.
“Maybe you been in there long enough.”
He recognized Sweete’s voice and looked up. “I ain’t tired, Shadrach.”
Sweete went to one knee beside the grave and gazed down at him with his own red eyes. “I know you ain’t, Titus. Just—I wanted to have a hand in digging some of this grave too.”
For a moment he stared up at his friend’s long, sad face. Then nodded. “I’ll leave the shovel down in the hole for you.”
Shad reached out with his long arm and seized Bass’s wrist, boosting him up to the prairie just as the dozen others nervously stepped aside at the rustle of footsteps coming through the sagebrush. Into the gentle yellow glow of those lanterns stepped a big shadow, followed by those two Indian dogs that had kept a long vigil over the boy’s last hours. Roman stopped within their silent circle, swallowed deep, and arched back his shoulders. An hour ago Titus wouldn’t have put money on Burwell ever rising from that foul-smelling pallet again. He had looked as defeated as any man could be, his shoulders hunched over, quaking as he held Amanda, who was holding Lucas. Rocking them both: his dead, towheaded boy and that grieving, wailing mother. Moaning as he rocked them both in the cradle of his arms. Rocking and moaning with some wordless pain leaching out of his pores the way a clay pitcher sweats in the summer. Slow, so slow, drop by drop—that pain leaching out of him so slow.
The sight of the three had been more than Titus could take. He had to do something with his own private grief. So he had tramped off into the dark, where Waits eventually found him, held her husband as he cried in silence, not daring to allow the wounded animal that was shrieking inside him to have its voice just yet. And when he sensed that he had it all shaken out for the moment, she dried his tears with the wide sleeve of her calico dress and he had walked back into the light with her. Pulling out that shovel Roman kept in the possum belly slung beneath the wagon, he had grabbed up one of those lanterns brought to the death watch and stepped into the dark alone.
Come tomorrow morning when the rest of them were gone over the horizon and nothing was left of the train but a dusty smudge in the sky, he would remain here on the back trail and hide the grave. Build a big damn fire to kill the scent. Turn a few inches of topsoil after the limbs had gone to embers. And no wolf, no coyote, no poor Digger son of a bitch would ever know his grandson was buried there. Blood of his blood, bone of his bone, left there to rest in peace in this nameless, unmarked corner of the wilderness between what had been and what was to be.
“What’s that?” Roman asked the moment he dropped into the hole and the racket of hammers arose out of the silence of that chill, desert night like a disembodied poltergeist. Rhythmic, hauntingly rhythmic.
“I give Rankin and Winston two of those wood boxes my ship’s biscuits come in,” Bingham explained to his friend, who stared up at the eerie lamplight on their faces from the bottom of the hole. “Goodell had him two more.”
“Ship’s biscuits?” Burwell repeated, not understanding.
Bingham bit his lower lip a minute, then continued. “We figured it was the best thing we could come up with for a box, Row.”
“A box for my … my … for him?”
“Yes, we’re makin’ him a coffin,” Iverson said. “Winston took one side outta each box and they was laying ’em together, nailing ’em into a real nice coffin, Row.”
Ammons nodded his head, “It’s gonna work out real nice, Row—ain’t nothing gonna get in to your boy.”
Then they all saw how that image slapped Roman across the jaw as hard as a hickory-boned fist. His eyes scrunched up and his chin started to quake. Then it wasn’t but a heartbeat before that tremble started to work its way down through the rest of him until he was shaking as he stood in that dark hole. Slowly he sank down the long handle of that farmer’s shovel, gripping it for support until he landed at the bottom of the small hole with a grunt … and began to moan once more.
“Row,” Bingham pleaded as he leaned over the edge of the grave.
But Titus pulled the man back and knelt so he could look down on the grieving father. “Son, whyn’t you come on out now an’ lemme finish this up for the boy,” he said quietly, his voice having a hint of an echo as the words fell into the hollow grave.
“That you, Titus?”
“It’s me.”
Roman’s words drifted up from the dark, weak and plaintive, “How’s a man, a man ever s’posed to bear up under this?”
At first he swallowed, then said, “I ain’t for sure, Roman. Can’t claim to ever goin’ through what’s eatin’ a hole away at your heart right now. Fierce as my own heart screams in pain right now, I don’t have no idee how yours must be.”
“It’s like my legs won’t stand when I think of … of him.”
“But, you’re gonna have to stand, Roman,” Titus explained. “Amanda gonna be countin’ on you for that. Hold her up when it comes time we gotta put that li’l body down in this hole.”
“I-I don’t—”
“What about them other’ns? Three of the most likely young’uns a pa would ever want to light up his life. What about them three, Roman?”
“I didn’t figure on—”
“You tell me, son—would your boy, Lucas, want you an’ his mama to give up an’ die right here when you’re so close to where you was takin’ him?”
“Don’t have no way of knowing—”
“Lucas wants his folks to carry on,” Titus advised. “Lucas wants you both to be strong for each other. Say your words over his buryin’ spot. Then wipe your tears an’ get on down the trail another day.”