After about five or six blows, my hand went numb. It took a few seconds to realize that I wasn’t even holding onto the crowbar anymore, yet it was staying upright. Junior had managed to pound it almost an inch into the seam in the coffin lid. He kept at it, bringing the hammer down and grunting every time it smashed into the crowbar.
“All right, open wide for daddy,” Junior said as he straddled the coffin, crowbar between his legs, and grabbed the tool with both hands. “You like it, don’t you?” He screamed this last part out as he wrenched the crowbar forward, then back. It gave a little, but not much.
“You know you want it!” Junior kept screaming and spitting blood, but I guess the coffin wasn’t in the mood for sweet talk. That crowbar didn’t budge. After a moment, Junior said, “Bert, get your ass down here.” He looked at me, disgusted. “Unlike like the Amazing Human Noodle over here, I need somebody with a little weight, a little fucking strength.”
“You got it,” Bert said, and slid into the grave. Junior hopped off the coffin and told me to get on it. “Sit down, put your back against the wall, and push at it with your feet. Me and Bert’ll pull.” He positioned Bert at the head of the coffin and stood next to him. I braced my boots against the crowbar, spread my arms, put my hands flat against the dripping mud wall behind me, and got ready to push. On the other side of the bar, Bert wrapped his left hand over my boots. Then Junior encircled Bert’s hand with both of his fists, interlocking his fingers. “Now, when I give the signal, we’re gonna pop this old girl open.” He winked. “And that’s a goddamn promise.”
Maybe it was Bert. Maybe it was my legs. Maybe the coffin finally just succumbed to Junior’s romance. I don’t know. Whatever it was, when Junior shrieked, “NOW!” I kicked out as hard as I could and they jerked backward on that crowbar. I heard a deep, satisfying crack. The crowbar suddenly flopped over toward the Sawyer brothers, and they tumbled into the mire at the bottom of the grave. I looked down to see a long, ragged crack running between my legs, up toward my ass. This made me vaguely uncomfortable and I scooted off the top of the coffin right quick.
“Yes!” Fat Ernst shouted, clenching both fists.
And suddenly, only one thing became real. The buckle was close now, close enough to smell, close enough to taste, close enough to touch. All of our aches and pains and blisters, the rain, the mud, all of it faded into the background, became unimportant. Junior worked the crowbar around in the crack, slamming it back and forth like a mandesperately trying to churn smooth butter out of cheese. The opening got wider and he worked the crowbar down the coffin, trying to crack the lid in half lengthwise.
The whole lid split right in half. The bottom half wouldn’t open much because at least three feet of the coffin was still buried under the mud wall, but Junior pried open the top half enough that he could force his fingers inside and pull. It swung open with a groan from the mud-caked hinges, but it was open, by God, a quarter of the lid pried up and waiting.
Nobody said anything. Fat Ernst lowered the lantern down into the hole and Junior grabbed it, held it over the open part of the coffin. Bert stood at the head and I stepped closer, joining Junior along the side of the casket. Junior tilted the lantern sideways to get light into the ruptured coffin. “Huh,” he said. “I guess these things leak.”
The coffin was full of black water.
“Who gives a fuck,” Fat Ernst hissed down at us, on his knees at the edge of the dike. His hands kept fluttering around, as if he were a puppeteer and could control us by manipulating the strings. It didn’t work though; nobody in the grave moved. “Holy fuck, just reach in there and grab it!”
“I ain’t sticking my hand in there.” I thought this was one of the most intelligent things Junior had ever said.
Fat Ernst nearly had a fit. “If I woulda known that I hired a bunch of pussies …” He gritted his teeth. “Just reach in there and grab it!” he shouted, high and shrill, with one pudgy finger stabbing violently toward the coffin. “Hey, boy!” The stabbing finger found me. “You. You reach in there and grab it. Do it, and … and I’ll double your share.”
Well, there was no way I was going to stick my hand in there, not for any amount. Before I could say anything, Bert shrugged, said, “No big deal,” and reached into the black water, holding his cast away from the coffin. His eyes rolled back and crossed as he felt around inside the flooded coffin.
“Good job there, Bert. Glad at least one of you has a set of balls,” Fat Ernst shouted happily. “Keep going, boy, you’ll know it when you find it.”
Bert pulled his hand out of the coffin and we all tensed. But he merely inspected a glob of fatty tissue curled in his palm. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, sniffed it, decided it wasn’t important, and flung it away. Then, without hesitation, he plunged his arm back in there, concentration etched into his face.
“Find anything?” Junior asked.
Bert shook his head. “Old Earl didn’t make it in here in one piece, did he?” he called up at Fat Ernst.
“No, no, he didn’t,” Fat Ernst said. “Thanks to you knuckleheads, he ended up in the ditch.” He chuckled. “He wasn’t exactly in the best of shape when they fished him out.”
I couldn’t help myself and asked, “What’s it feel like, Bert?”
He thought hard for a moment, the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, like a pink, blind animal that’s cautiously testing the wind before venturing out of its burrow. “Gooshy,” he said finally. He pulled his arm out one more time, but this time he was clutching a black cowboy boot full of water. He tipped the boot up, pouring the water into the mud around our feet. “He’s … he’s all mixed up.”
“You just keep going there, Bert. It’s in there. I know it,” Fat Ernst said.
Bert jammed his arm back into the water, felt around for a minute, then reached in deeper, until he was practically bent over double, water up to his shoulder. He grunted, trying to push his arm farther. His eyes narrowed. “I think I got it!” Bert dragged a dripping pair of jeans and a thick leather belt out of the coffin. Sure enough, that gold and diamond belt buckle was clutched in his left hand.
But it was the worms that caught my attention.
Two of them, both as plump as Fat Ernst’s cigars, hung off of his left forearm, twisting and undulating, slowly chewing into the soft flesh up near the elbow. I don’t think Bert actually felt the wormson his skin until he saw them, but when he finally did see them, he freaked. He shrieked and scrambled backward, kicking away from the coffin, and dropped the jeans and the buckle into the mud. Junior went after him, trying to help.
“Get the fucking buckle!” Fat Ernst screamed.
While Junior was busy pinning Bert’s left arm in the mud and grabbing at the worms, I scuttled over and managed to grab the buckle, a heavy goddamn thing, before Bert’s kicking legs drove it even deeper into the muck.
“Oh, thank Christ!” Fat Ernst breathed. “Give it to me.” He reached out toward me, leaning closer.
“Little fuckers!” Junior hissed through clenched teeth, a squirming worm between his fingers. He flicked it into the mud and stomped on it. Bert yanked the undulating second worm out of his left arm and wiped it on his cast.
“Give it to me!” Fat Ernst was really reaching now, still on his knees but leaning way over the edge, stretching his arm out to me. I turned to him, an automatic response, and lifted the buckle toward his hand.