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JOSEPH CARL’S MAMA wanted him buried alongside his daddy, but folks wouldn’t have it. They gave her two days to mourn her son, and today he’ll be buried at the crossroad into town so the comings and goings of all the many travelers will keep his spirit from rising up. Maybe folks want this, for Joseph Carl to be buried where the dirt piled on top of him will be trampled and trodden each and every day, because they believe he’s evil for what he did, or maybe, like me, they know he didn’t do any of those things. Like me, they know someone else hurt Dale and that someone is likely here among us, and so now they’re the evil ones for wanting Joseph Carl dead, for thinking his dying would make their lives good again. They want the comings and goings to keep Joseph Carl’s spirit at rest so they don’t have to fear they’ll one day get their own comeuppance.
As he did the day Joseph Carl was hanged, Daddy pushes us to the front of the crowd. Already he’s been drinking, though the chill of early morning still hangs in the air. He bumps up against people as he forces his way through, the smell of whiskey poured from a jar parting folks as much as Daddy’s hands and arms. Sheriff Irlene, wearing a long beige overcoat, her husband’s black boots peeking out from under her skirt as she moves among the onlookers, motions to two of her men and points in our direction. The men navigate the crowd, saying excuse me and pardon me as they go. They stand nearby, one on each side of Daddy, Juna, and me, maybe to protect Daddy from himself or maybe to protect the other folks.
Overhead, the sky has opened up, lifted high. And the sun is bright like only it can be on an autumn day. The chill in the air should awaken folks. It usually makes a man walk a bit livelier, stand a bit taller. Instead folks huddle against the cold, pull blankets around their shoulders, hug themselves but not others. There isn’t a single Baine among the crowd, not even Joseph Carl’s mama. There are men again holding shotguns at the ready to keep the family away.
“Bury him upside down,” someone shouts as four men appear, a slender pine box hoisted onto their shoulders.
“You all mind yourselves,” Sheriff Irlene calls out, waving a finger across the crowd. The men carrying the pine box keep coming. “We’ll have a Christian burial,” she says.
All the folks who came from across Kentucky and across the country have gone on home. They left behind trampled grass, piles of charred wood from their fires, empty longneck bottles. A few of the newspapermen have stayed and stand together at a safe distance from the crowd. One of the fellows taps his tablet with the blunt end of a pencil. He flips it around and starts to scribble on his lined paper when another fellow and yet another hollers out for Joseph Carl to be buried upside down.
When we settle at the front of the crowd, Sheriff Irlene’s men matching us step for step, Juna and I stand together, our shoulders touching, our heads bowed. I wrap my arm around her, want her to be happy, feel she is loved, because I’m afraid now of what she’ll do next. She liked the sight of Joseph Carl lying there on that table, the life gone from him. It made her smile and use her hands in the most tender of ways. I’m afraid she’ll want to do it again.
Like the gallows pounded together with threepenny nails, the box the men carry smells of freshly cut, sweet pine. Daddy staggers around the narrow, deep hole cut into the ground, sometimes swaying so close that one of Sheriff Irlene’s men must grab onto Daddy’s coat sleeve and yank him back to right. The men surely used picks along with their shovels to dig a hole so deep as this one. They’ll have hit limestone and broken through to be sure Joseph Carl is buried good and deep.
“Flip him,” another voice shouts and then another.
They want Joseph Carl buried upside down so if his spirit does awaken and try to claw its way out, it’ll find itself upside down and, as such, claw deeper into the ground.
“Turn him. Flip him.”
Sheriff Irlene continues calling out that there is no need for such things. She smiles each time she must say it and looks from the crowd to the newspapermen still standing together near the trees. They are all scribbling now and talking among themselves, likely wondering what is to be gained by burying a man upside down.