Unbury Carol(28)

Kirk stared as the strange, hatless man limped out of his store empty-handed.

Back on the planked walk, Smoke entered a tavern. Inside, the locals watched him walk.

“Got any matches here?”

“Sure we do. You wanna get a beer with them, though.”

“Can’t just get a box?”

“Gotta get a beer with it.”

“Let me think about that.”

The bartender addressed someone else and Smoke turned and limped back to the door. Two men talking at a table paused to watch him pass. Maybe they’d heard of him. A lot of people had.

It wasn’t until Smoke was upon his horse again and riding, heading north, that the bartender noted the missing matches from their container.

By then Smoke was gone, his voice a singsong rhyme.

    Moxie Moxie Moxie moo,

I’m coming, coming, after you…





While Farrah was returning home from mailing her telegram to James Moxie (a thing she could hardly believe she did and a thing she wasn’t sure why she did, except for a feeling that he should know), her husband, Clyde, was battling a hangover the enthusiastic way: He was already drinking at the Lamb’s Wool. But despite the liquor, and what he hoped it might do for himself, all he could think of was the story Farrah had told him late last night: finding her lady’s body in the cellar of the Evers home. It was unsettling, of course, though Clyde guessed most of that was because of the manner in which it was told. He’d never known someone to cry as much as his wife had the night before.

Clyde, lifting a glass from the wood bar, sipped.

“It’s a bit early, even for you, Clyde,” the bartender, Bill, said.

Clyde looked over his shoulder to the otherwise empty tavern, as if expecting backup and finding none.

“I had something of a long night. Long morning, too.”

As Clyde set his glass back upon the bar, the saloon doors swung in and Hank James and Lucas Morgan entered. Clyde knew they were gravediggers at the Manders Funeral Home, and he’d spoken with both more than once; drunk nights, as music played, brief conversations about death in dim lighting. Today, though, their figures reminded him only of Farrah, for Farrah’s lady died and Farrah’s lady would be buried no doubt in a grave dug by these men.

“Hello, Bill,” Lucas said, sitting a stool away from Clyde. He turned and tipped his hat to Clyde, and Clyde nodded in return. Hank followed his fellow digger. The pair did not order, but Bill provided them with glasses of whiskey anyway.

“You’ve had a workload, I’d say,” Bill said, folding his arms. “Enough graves for a season, I’d say.”

Hank nodded.

“That we have. The Illness. More digging these past two weeks than my shoulders care to tell you.”

“Could have dug a hole to Albert’s Port!” Lucas said, and the three men smiled.

Soon their conversation became meaningless sounds and syllables for Clyde, and his thoughts returned once again to Farrah and her story. The events she described came coupled with a bad low feeling in his chest and belly, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. Was there anything exactly wrong with a man keeping his wife in the cellar after finding her dead? Would Farrah have preferred the bedroom?

She was glowing, Clyde. She shone.

Farrah kept saying that. All night she kept saying that.

“Bill,” he called.

Bill refilled his glass.

“This is your third already, Clyde,” Bill said, meaning no harm by it.

Hank and Lucas turned to look at Clyde and Lucas said, “By goodness, there’s a real drinker there. Three already and we haven’t even made it to work yet.”

They raised their glasses and Clyde did, too, and the three cheered. Hank called what it was they cheered—to the end of the Illness—and as their glasses touched Clyde thought of the empty bottle of whiskey on the counter in the kitchen at home. He thought of Farrah drinking from it and Farrah using it to punctuate the story that bothered her so.

After a sip from the fresh drink, Clyde wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and felt at peace for the first time all day. Sure, Farrah was upset, but not because there was something foul about Carol’s being in the cellar; Farrah was grieving and nothing more.

“Have you heard, Bill, that Carol Evers passed?”

Clyde looked up to Lucas after the gravedigger spoke, and he listened as the three men talked about how young she was and whether or not it was the Illness that got her. Bill had heard the news from a man who’d been in even earlier than Clyde. Bill also said he thought the Illness had left Harrows and Lucas and Hank said they’d hoped the same thing, but thirty-eight years only did seem a little young for so vibrant a woman as Carol Evers. So maybe. Then Clyde told them. He didn’t think there was anything wrong in telling them. The gravediggers were talking about her death and how Mister Evers must feel and without waiting for a right place to insert what he wanted to say, Clyde just told them.

“He’s keeping her in the cellar.”

The gravediggers turned to him. Bill stopped drying a glass.

“It’s what I heard. Yeah. Her body is in the cellar. Waiting to be buried, I suppose.”

He waited for a response. In that moment, drunk as he was, he understood that he wanted to know what these two men thought of what he’d told them. He wanted to know if two professional gravediggers thought it was as strange as Farrah did.