“I intend to tell him,” Josh said. “Trouble is, that’ll likely be the end of it. Like you said, lots of folks have watches, and who’s around to testify to that one being Johnny’s? The boy didn’t have no family and hardly any friends. Just them two dogs, and they’re good as gone too.”
“He went to the sawmill nearly every day of his life,” William said. “Some of them must have known him.”
“He did do that. He was a pest they tried to run off, and when he came back, they ignored him best they could.”
“Still, some of them must have seen that watch.”
“’Course they did. That’s why they figured on robbing him. They saw the watch and they saw the money pouch and then went through the poor boy’s pockets after they’d finished their handiwork on him and took his mama’s locket as well. It’s just a wonder they didn’t open his mouth and check for gold teeth.”
“So tell the sheriff,” William said, and set Louisa down on her feet. Finishing the last of his gin, he gestured to Callie, who studiously ignored him. “That Grant boy is entitled to justice same as any man under this roof. More so, since he was soft in the head and couldn’t defend himself.”
“I agree with you, friend,” Josh said, and after one long last look, he turned his back on the group of young people. “And I will talk to Clayton about it. But the fact is, Wendell Pike’s daddy owns the sawmill and Eddie’s his best friend and Johnny Grant was just an idiot boy who had nothing and no ties and nobody’s going to care much that he’s gone. I reckon he’ll find justice in the end, like the rest of us. Trouble is, he’s going to have to wait till then to get it. Till then, he’s just dead and that’s the end of it.”
“That’s never the end of it, Josh,” William said, adding a goodbye before going to the corner to gather Callie and an ever-widening circle of marbles.
Never the end of it, he thought again when Louisa woke up a few nights later crying for her mama and inconsolable. He would have preferred a knife in the ribs to the child’s pitiful cries, but there was no one to give it to him, so he simply held her until she went back to sleep, a rough and clumsy substitute for someone who had been silken and soft and warm. He slept no more that night but went about the cabin waiting for dawn, from the hearth to the stoop to the stairs, there to listen for the girls’ soft breathing. Place made no difference now, for everywhere was the same — a place without Hannah.
Finally seeing the sky lightening in the east, he made himself think about the coming day. He had chores to do. He had turned the soil in both cornfields but not yet put in the first seed. March was creeping into April and he had not planted a salad garden. He would work on that, turn the old bed near the cabin, work in some leaves and manure, and get the soil ready to set in seed. He could do that; in fact, had to. In spite of his soul rending in two, they still had to eat. The salad garden was nearby, so he could watch the girls playing around the cabin, maybe even set Callie to work with a spade, helping him. With a plan in mind, he turned to breakfast.
The plan worked for half the morning and then went sour. The girls played house on the stoop, bringing out dishes and pans and the churn, and things went well until Callie appeared in the doorway with an armful of linen. Picturing himself washing bedsheets for days, William put a stop to that and set off a string of misbehavior that climaxed with one arm being torn off Louisa’s doll when his back was turned, a crisis no amount of lemon drops could set right. Putting his plow in the toolshed, he rinsed his hands and spent a half hour working with needle and thread. After finally reattaching the severed limb, he hitched up the horse, tidied both girls and himself, and set off down the road for the Methodist church. It was time to visit Mama.
Tying up in front of the church, he lifted the girls out of the wagon and watched them run around to the back as if their mother would be there waiting to welcome them to a picnic or a game of jacks. Instead there would be silence and a stone and that would be their mother for the rest of their lives. William walked around the church slowly, dreading the sight of the stone and the mound of earth, always dreading it, as if each time he saw these terrible objects, Hannah was lost to him anew. Coming to the corner, he braced himself and moved quickly, wanting to get it over with, to let the gouge in his soul bleed a little more until perhaps, one day, it would begin to heal.
He was surprised to find the girls talking not to their mother, as they usually did, but to Henry Cobb. The man was standing on Hannah’s grave, shirtsleeves rolled up, leaning on his shovel. As William reached them, he heard Callie imploring the gravedigger to start lifting the dirt off her mama.
“Hush, Callie,” he said, pulling her up to hold against him. “I’m sorry to see you back at work so soon after just laying Matt Avery to rest last week.”
“Yes, sir,” Henry said, and lifting his shovel in the air, he plunged it into the earth that was Hannah’s grave. William winced slightly, as if the action could hurt her. Turning his mind from his own foolishness, he set Callie down and nodded toward a freshly turned plot in the far corner of the burial ground.
“Who’d you put way down yonder, Henry, in that swampy ground down there? Water stands like the devil there when we get a rainy spell.”
“Yep, I know,” Henry said, reaching around for a flask hanging from his belt. He took a long drink and sighed with satisfaction. “It was that idiot boy that got himself killed over near your place, the one with them dogs.”
“That was a week ago,” William said, and smelling whiskey fumes coming from the man, he reckoned that was what it took to do such a job as covering people with earth. “He’s just now getting buried?”
“Yep. Nobody claimed him, nor any interest in him. Some of the women laid him out for a day or two and waited, but no one turned up to see him or take him, and you can’t wait forever, not with it warming up soon. Millie came by a while ago and we said some words over him and then I got to work.”
“But why’d you put him down there, Henry, away from all the folks and in that soggy ground?”
“What’s the difference?” the gravedigger said, and shrugged. He took a cloth sack off his belt and pulled a piece of cornbread out of it. “Been a long time since breakfast,” he said, and started eating, dropping crumbs on the ground around him. “Nobody’ll be coming to see him, so nobody’s going to get their feet wet. What’s the use of wasting good space on a boy like that, as long as he’s put down good and proper like everybody else? Sorry, William,” he said, and stepped away from Hannah’s grave with his johnnycake. “I didn’t mean no disrespect. Guess I forgot myself for a minute.”
“Guess you did,” William said, wanting to knock the man flat to the ground with his fist. Instead he took the shovel away from Callie, who had started scraping it across the raw earth, and handed it back to the gravedigger. “If it’s all the same to you, Henry, the girls and I would like to visit with their mama for a bit.”
“Sure enough, Will,” the man said, and shoving the rest of the corn cake into his mouth, he threw the shovel over his shoulder and headed for a fat pine tree at the edge of the cemetery.
William kicked the crumbs off the grave and told the girls it was time to say a prayer for their mama and go. Callie questioned the haste of it and Louisa whined. William had in fact planned to stay longer, but the gravedigger was sitting under the old pine watching them, and William felt the intrusion keenly.