The ground opens when I force the spade down. Rain’s fallen for three days now, and I only need to lean back, letting the shaft pivot and lift the earth. The muddy ground mimics an infant’s suck. The light from my headlamp shines across the ever deepening hole, glinting off worms and grubs as they work their way back into the sludge. I cut with another thrust.
My lifeline, a rope knotted every eighteen inches, rises from the hole and snakes to the base of my father’s monument where it’s tied. From there, the monument continues upward past the epitaph, toward its zenith, a marbled lion with full mane. An appropriate level of gaudiness for the arrogant bastard. No less grotesque, monuments and mausoleums erected for others of the Chadwicke brood litter this quarter-acre.
I torque my back, cut down again, and wince as my naked palm finally crack along the ridgeline of my hand.
The night’s cold and holds a mist, a fog that condenses on my skin, rolls down my nose, down the cleft of my lip. I wipe my brow and smile at the searchlights dancing across the clouded sky. Faint sounds, whispers from the Ramsey county fair not a mile away, carry across the cemetery. My memories alight—eating blue and pink cotton candy, riding plastic horses going up and down and around, and nuzzling my stoic father who sits upright as a metal box lifts us into the sky.
I shake the rainwater from my face and cut again. The spade bites down only inches. Finally. I level the spade and scrape across the top of the casket. When only a dusting of earth remains, I slip my hand into the ground, guide it along the edge of his box until I’ve unbuckled all the clasps. I kneel on the lid at the foot of his casket, and the hinges moan as I lift the top.
My father’s hands rest upon one another, and my own shake before committing to the task. I uncross his hands and look to his finger. My father’s crested ring, buried without thought or consideration for his son, the queen. I slide the ring until it reaches an impasse at his knuckle, so I go for the pruning shears in the back pocket of my jeans.
My father and I hold hands for the first time. I stroke his finger and am struck by the tenderness of his flesh. Then I slowly squeeze the handle of the shears. Pressure builds in my jaw, and I’d swear to hearing my teeth cracking and splintering.
Afterwards, I sit back and recline against the dirt wall of his crypt. I turn the ring over in my hands, reimagining new meaning in each groove of the lion’s mane. I’ve collected all that’s worth salvaging, so I shut the box, seal his body away.
My heart races and my breath whistles through my smile as I toss the spade onto the grass above. Then with my hands secured around the knotted rope, I make my vertical walk out of the hole.
As I fill the pit with earth, I look again toward the searching lights, the glow of the county fair, listen to the distant sound of laughing, discern a scream, half-terror and half-delight, and I’m struck by a numbness that overtakes my body. I begin thinking once again of the cotton candy, the texture of the sugar grain, of how it sits on the tongue and dissolves, leaving only a fleeting taste.
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Daniel Plunkett is a graduate of Georgia College & State University, located in Milledgeville, Georgia. He currently teaches in the Writing & Linguistics Department at Georgia Southern University.
Photo: Daniel Lincoln
