But we had no time to speculate. Pete grabbed the shovel and started stabbing with it and the dirt began to fly. The dirt hadn’t been packed down too well and Pete was able to dig it out in big scoopfuls. When his arms got tired, I took the shovel from him and then he took it back when I got tired, and then he was hip high and still going like convulsions when he struck wood. We could hear Jimmy in there then, kicking and hollering, and the first thing Pete did was take the hammer and chisel and knock in an air hole on top where it might do some good. Then he pried open the lid and Jimmy sprung up like there’d been a chain attached from the lid to his belt. His hair, what little he had left of it, was fair stood on end and his eyes looked as if they’d never seen sky before. He gulped twice before he could say a thing, his throat working and his shoulders heaving like he was trying to swallow an egg.
“Take it easy,” Pete said.
“What happened?” Jimmy said. “Where am I?”
“Somebody tucked you into a coffin and you near suffocated, if not for us,” Pete said.
Jimmy jumped up then and looked around at the headstones and the carven angels and I guess it was a mighty discomforting feeling for him. He started trembling as if his bones were coming loose and he took hold of Pete and said,
“G-get me out of here. P-please get me out of here.”
We did that, of course, but it wasn’t easy either. First we had to close up the coffin and fill in the grave again and make it look innocent. Then we had to get Jimmy out of there via the back way. Then Pete had the bright idea that with all the town looking for him, Jimmy wouldn’t be very safe again in the woods (for didn’t some mysterious stranger creep up behind him before and sock him on the head and, for some unknown reason, try to secretly bury him under another man’s name?) and that the only safe place would be in my hayloft.
So we smuggled him up into there and put a horse blanket over him. Then we went back to the Dooley House. Most of the men were still out on the chase and Dooley in his white apron was sitting on the porch smoking a cheroot.
“They found him yet?” Pete asked as we came up there and leaned on the bannister.
“Nope,” Dooley said, savoring his cheroot.
“Think they will?”
“He couldn’t of got far.”
“How’d he get out?”
“Sheriff says he must’ve been working on them bars for some time.”
“Say,” Pete said, rubbing his chin as if he had just thought of it, “I noticed they buried Dink O’Day today.”
“Yep. He passed on a few days ago. Had a fit, Mattick said. They was in here taking a drink to his soul when the team strayed off, but they found it. Mattick said it was just like Dink to do that,” Dooley said with a chuckle.
We strayed away then and Pete was in a cloud of thought; I could tell because he’d become so profoundly still. I gave him his head and didn’t say anything. Sometimes, when he thought enough, it could come useful. We wandered along the road in that manner of quiet, him profound and me respectful. Every so often some men sped past on horseback pounding up the dust. The dust hung in the air, settling back like something very old. What with the men scouring the woods and back roads for Jimmy the town was most quiet, the sun hot and yellow on the houses. Just a few old men were sitting by watching things.
“First of all,” Pete said, breaking his spell, “you’ve got to feel as I do, which means to have a low opinion of Jack Mattick.”
“I’ve never thought much about him,” I said.
“Well he’s a nasty-tempered, foul-brained, whiskey-blooded son of a turtle. None of his friends are dainty I can tell you.”
“Why do you suppose he was burying a box full of rocks?”
“We’re going to inquire into that.”
“How?”
“You meet me tonight at the crossroads and we’ll see.”
“Why tonight?”
“It’s always better to do these things in the dark.”
“What things?”
“Looking around.”
“Say, you’re not going to go fooling around up at Jack Mattick’s are you?” I asked.
“You just meet me, Gascius,” he said. “Ten o’clock, at the crossroads.”
I wasn’t so cheered by the prospect, you can be sure. But I was being devoured by curiosity about what had happened to Eddie Larsen and why Jack Mattick should want to have buried an empty box. I think that next to the ague, curiosity is the most devilish affliction a body can be stung with; it’s the most humanizing thing next to being born and can’t be resisted so far as I know. So I spent the rest of the day in a state of collapsed resistance and later that night, after sneaking some food and water up to Jimmy in the loft, set off to meet Pete. He was there at the crossroads, as he said he’d be. The men were sitting on Dooley’s porch under the bug-swarmed lamps, looking all tired and sour.
“Well,” I said to Pete.
“They’re in a state of mutters,” he said, “ ’cause they haven’t found him yet. Eddie Larsen’s father is still shouting two hundred dollars for Jimmy.”
“I thought you’d got that off your mind.”
“I have. But I can’t very well get it out of my head, can I? Come on, let’s go.”
Mattick’s place was off in the back near the marsh. It wasn’t much of a place, sort of run down and not very good soil, and folks wondered how he made any living from it. The truth was he was something of a dubious character who associated in Shantytown a lot and it was probably true that he made a lot of money that he shouldn’t have. Nobody in Shantytown ever worked, but they always had money, so you can figure it out.
We went off of the road and through the night-webbed trees, hearing the silly crickets peep-peeping all around us and they gave me the impression of black little lights not fit for human eyes to see. We struck a path and followed it till it ran out, then pushed through the hawthorn that bunched around outside Mattick’s. There was a half moon just up and it gave us enough light to see where we were going. We came out next to the house — it was little more than a cabin with a porch covered by a slanted roof. There was a light going in one window, but otherwise the house was dark and no sound coming from it.
I was of a mind to tell Pete that this was futile and ill-advised and sure to touch off some bad luck, but it would have been like trying to explain to a dead dog. I followed him over towards the shed. It stood a good ways from the house, past the well and some cords of wood. Pete got the door opened and we went inside. There was a window and the moon gave a little light through it. There wasn’t very much to the shed. It had an earthen floor and there was a shelf of cider jugs, some full, some not, and an assortment of tools laying handy about and a harness and a barrel in the corner covered up by what looked like canvas.
“Doesn’t appear to be much here,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Pete said, but not convinced, I could tell. “Let’s have a look into that barrel.” He went to it and pushed away the canvas. The pale film of moonlight fell right onto the barrel and so we were able to have a good look. And we looked and we saw and I wish I had never done it, because it was something I knew I’d never forget. I was old enough to join the army for the last year of the War, going as bugler in a New York regiment, and I saw some service in Virginia and saw some dead men in a field once, but I never saw anything that looked like Dink O’Day looked that night in the barrel.