He was breathing hard. He passed his hand over his forehead.
"Heavy," she agreed. She blew out her breath, with a slight smile.
All the little things she did horrified him so. His blood almost turned cold at that.
They picked a place for it against the wall. She used the sharp toe of her shoe to test several, kicking and prodding at them, before settling on it. "I think this is about the best. It's a little less compact here."
He picked up a piece of rotting, discarded timber, broke it over his upthrust knee to obtain a sharp point.
"You're not going to do it with that, are you? It would take you the live-long night!" There was almost a hint of risibility in her voice, inconceivable as that was to him.
He drove it into the hard-packed floor, and it promptly broke a second time, proving its worthlessness.
"It'll take a shovel," she said. "Nothing else will do."
"There's none down here."
"There's none anywhere in the house. We'll have to bring one in." She started up the steps. He remained standing there. She turned at their top and beckoned him. "I'll go out and get it," she said. "You're kind of shaky yet, I can see that. Don't stay down there while I'm gone, it'll make you worse. Wait upstairs for me."
He followed her up, closed the cellar door after him.
She put on her poke bonnet, threw a shawl over her shoulders, as if it were the merest domestic errand she were going upon.
"Do you think it's prudent ?" he said.
"People buy shovels, you know. There need be no harm in that. It's all in the way you carry it off."
She went toward the outside door, and he trailed behind her.
She turned to him there. "Keep your courage up, honey." She held his chin fast, kissed him on the lips.
He'd never known a kiss could be such a gruesome thing before.
"Stay up here, away from it," she counselled. "And don't go back to that liquor." She was like a conscientious mother giving a small boy last minute injunctions, putting him on his good behavior, before leaving him to himself.
The door closed, and he watched her for a moment through its pane. Saw her go down the front walk, just like any bustling little matron on a housewifely errand. She was even diligently stroking her mittens on as she turned up the road and went from sight.
He was left alone with his dead.
He sought the nearest room at hand, not the one in which it had happened, and collapsed into a chair, and huddled there inert, his face pressed inward against its back, and waited for her to return.
It seemed hours before she did. And it must, in truth, have been the better part of one.
She brought it in with her. She was carrying it openly--but then how else was she to have carried it? Its bit was wrapped in brown paper, tied with a string. The stick protruded unconcealed.
"Was I long?"
"Forever," he groaned.
"I deliberately went out of my way," she explained. "I didn't want to buy it too near here, where we're known by sight."
"It was a mistake to get it at all, don't you think?"
She gave him a confident smirk. "Not in the way I did it. I did not ask to buy a shovel at all. It was his advice that I buy one. What I asked was what implement he could suggest my using to cultivate in the space behind our house, whether a spade or a rake. I was dubious of a shovel; it took all his persuasion to convince me." She wagged her head cocksurely.
And she could stand there and dicker; he thought, incredulous.
He took it from her.
"Shall I come down with you?" she offered, carefully removing her bonnet with both hands, replacing the pins in it, and setting it down meticulously so that its shape would not suffer.
"No," he said in a stifled voice. To have had her watch him would have been an added horror, for some reason, that he could not have borne. "I'll let you know when--I've done."
She gave him helpful last minute instructions. "Mark it off first. You know, how long and how wide you'll want it. With the tip of the shovel. That'll keep you from doing more work than is needful."
His silent answer to this was the reflex of retching.
He closed the door after him, went down the steps.
The lamp was still burning where they'd left it before.
He turned it up higher. Then that was too bright, it showed him too much; he quickly moderated it a little.
He'd never dug a grave before.
He marked it off first, as she'd told him. He drove the shovel into the marked-off space and left it, standing upright of its own weight. He rolled his shirt sleeves up out of the way.
Then he took up the shovel and began.
The digging part was not so bad. It was behind him, out of sight, while he was at it. Horror, though it did not disappear altogether, was kept to a minimum. It might have been just a necessary trench or pit he was digging.
But then when he was through--
It took him some moments to work himself up to the necessary pitch of resoluteness. Then suddenly he walked rapidly over to it, from the far side of the cellar, where he'd withdrawn and kept his back to it in the interim.
He dragged the rug over, placed it even with the waiting cavity's edge. Then, taking a restraining hold along its exposed flap, he pushed the rounded part from him. It unrolled and emptied itself into the trough, with no more than a sodden thump. Then he drew it up. It came back to him again facilely unweighted. An arm flung up for a moment, but quickly dropped back again.
He avoided looking into it. He stepped around it to the other side, where the mound of disinterred fill was, and, holding his face averted, began to push and scrape that down into it with the back of the shovel.
Then when at last he had to look, to see how far he had progressed, the worst was over. There was no longer any face down there to confront him. There was just a fragmentary midsection seeming to float there on the surface, as it were; peering through the surrounding film of earth.
Then that went, presently.
"And all God's work has come to this," passed through his mind.
He had to tramp and stamp on it, at the end, to firm it down. That part was bad too.
He kept it up far longer than was needful. As if to keep what lay under from ever coming out again. He almost seemed to be doing a jig of fear and despair, unable to quit of his own volition.
He looked up suddenly.
She was standing there at head of the steps watching him.
"How did you know just when?" he panted, haggard.
"I came down twice to see how far along you were. I went back again without disturbing you. I thought perhaps you'd best be left alone." She looked at him inscrutably. "I didn't think you'd be able to go through with it to the finish. But you did, didn't you?" Whether that was praise or not, he couldn't tell.
He kicked the shovel out of his path, tottered up the steps toward her.
He fell before he'd quite reached her. Or rather, let himself fall. He lay there, extended on the step, face buried in one arm, and sobbed a little.
She bent over toward him. Her hand came down upon his shoulder, consolingly.
"There, now. It's over. It's done. There's nothing more to worry about."
"I've killed a man," he said smotheredly. "I've killed a man. God has forbidden that."
She gave a curt, humorless snuff of laughter. "Soldiers in a battle kill them by the tens and never give it a second thought. They even give them medals for it."
She plucked at him by the arm, until he had found his feet again, stood beside her.
"Come, let's get out of here."
She stepped down there a moment to get the lamp, which he had forgotten, bring it with her, put it out. Then she closed the door after the two of them. She brushed her fingertips off fastidiously, against each other; no doubt from having touched the lamp. Or perhaps--
She put her arm comfortingly about his waist, as she rejoined him. "Come upstairs to bed. You're worn out. It's nearly ten o'clock, did you know that? You've been down there four full hours."
"You mean--?" He didn't think he'd heard her aright. "Sleep here in this same house tonight ?"