Unbury Carol(97)

He’d removed the rocks and earth from her dress only minutes ago, just prior to pulling in to the funeral home. What had weighed her down, what had given Dwight some piece of mind, was now scattered just beyond the evergreens that framed the head of the drive.

Without the weight…could Carol rise again?

But Carol was on her back. Thank the sky, Carol was on her back.

The diggers lifted her out of the coach and Dwight saw some of the dirt from the Trail fall from her shoulders. Norman watched from the top of the funeral home steps.

This would be a bad time, Carol, Dwight thought. Please, for me…

Manders was explaining more about the casket, its uniqueness, its beauty, its weight. The diggers were discussing the best way to move her. Manders said he’d never seen a Bellafonte exactly like it. The diggers said it was gonna take eight men, or four horses. Manders said— Everything was escalating too fast for Dwight.

Fresh sunlight painted the half-circle drive a bright orange.

So many details.

The dirt in the wrinkles of the knuckles of the diggers’ fingers.

A smudge at the bottom of the right lens of Manders’s glasses.

Each pebble of the drive.

Every blade of grass.

The rise and fall of Carol’s chest.

“Manders!” Dwight yelled, reaching for the director.

“What is it?”

Did she look dead? Or did she look like she was sleeping? Like she could easily open her eyes and say, Him…

Dwight searched his mind, frantic for something to say.

“Is the casket…is it…is it good enough?”

“It’s a casket worthy of a queen,” Manders said, his final words on the Bellafonte.

Dwight needed to sit down. He wanted to curl up on the stone steps. He wanted to leap up into the driver’s box and ride until the legs of the steeds turned to dust.

This was the apex: the unfairness of life; the part of his plan he couldn’t control; the final pass before Carol would be forever underground, beyond the reach of suspicion, beyond the guns of the lawmen.

Beyond the guns of the outlaws and triggermen, too.

“Look here at this lid, Mister Evers.” Hank the gravedigger might have been trying to distract Dwight. To ease the horror of seeing his wife in such a way. “It’s solid cebil wood, the strongest in any forest on earth. It’d take a small explosion to pry it open again.”

Dwight faced the digger.

“What…what did you say?”

Hank repeated himself.

Dwight smiled as a wave of calm carried him toward something more peaceful.

Yes, of course, the casket had been a gift…

“You can see for yourself,” Hank said, “no dirt is going to scratch this lid.”

…a gift…

“If you don’t mind,” Dwight said, hiding his growing confidence, “I’d just as soon get her safely inside. I’m not a man of prolonged emotion, beleaguered as I am…”

“Go on inside,” Manders said kindly. “Go into the office and Hank will bring you a glass of water. Let us take care of moving her for you.”

Dwight adopted one of the many faces he’d rehearsed.

“That’d be nice,” he said. “Water.”

“Lucas,” Manders said. “Bring a shot of whiskey for the gentleman, too.”

The diggers walked Dwight inside. In that moment he felt himself free falling; a man whose entire future lay in the slippery hands of other men. But he did not mind; Dwight willingly fell. The belief he now held of who had sent the casket bolstered his sense of justice: He had numbers; somebody on his side.

It’d take a small explosion to pry it open again.

The shape-shifting stranger was helping him. Again.

In that moment, madly, Dwight didn’t even care if they caught him.

In the office Hank pulled out a chair for him and Lucas came in with the whiskey. Hank brought him water. Dwight sat and smiled, feeling himself on freedom’s front porch, and drank the alcohol from the small glass.

“Thank you,” he said.

Outside the office, in the parlor, Manders and Norman lifted Carol carefully from the stretcher and set her within the Bellafonte. She was as radiant as the box. The director leaned forward and studied her closely. Not only was there no sign of foul play, but Carol looked cleaner than anybody who’d ever been carried through the front doors of the Manders Funeral Home. He looked once to Norman and saw awe in the makeup man’s face. They did not speak, but both might have said she looked to be living. Without considering how silly it might appear, Manders removed a small hand mirror from his pocket and, checking the parlor door once, placed it just below her nose, keeping it there a full twenty seconds before bringing it to the blooming daylight coming through the open front doors.

There was no mark, no fog, and Manders nodded, assured that lifeless lungs meant Missus Carol Evers was indeed deserving of a burial.

Manders closed the lid and felt great relief. He had nothing foul to report to the sheriff.

He entered the office.

“Mister Evers,” Manders spoke as gently as he would to a child who had lost both parents to consumption. “We can begin.”…



* * *



—

…Moxie carried her body through the forest.