There was no response.
Then I glimpsed movement in the trees, past the skeletal remains of the old cabin that had burnt to the ground, and I took my binoculars from my backpack. I saw Esra first, toting a shovel over his shoulder, and then Jeffrey standing off to one side, his face hidden by tree limbs.
“Is it them?” Thais whispered.
I nodded, and that bad feeling settled deep in my gut.
53
ATTICUS
I raised my hands in the air to show Esra who we were—I could see Miss Mary pointed right at us.
“Is everything okay?” I called out, and Esra lowered the shotgun.
I took Thais by the hand and we made our way over.
“Grandma June is dead,” Jeffrey said. He sat on the ground next to a wooden casket with his legs out in front of him, his back hunched over. He sniffled and dragged his fingers covered in dirt across his eyes, leaving a streak over one eyelid.
Thais sat down next to him. She draped an arm around him, pulled his body close. He was shoeless, his manly feet crusted with dried mud. His blue jeans and T-shirt were damp.
“I’m so sorry, Jeffrey.”
Jeffrey sobbed into the crook of her neck; his strong fingers grasped her shirt. She stroked his bristly head.
Esra set his shotgun down against the tree, barrel up, and took up his shovel again.
I shoved off my backpack and moved in right away to take over.
“No thank ya,” Esra said in his rough whiskey voice. “June was my wife, and ima bury her m’self, ya hear me?” Then he mumbled, “Always makin’ more work for me, that old woman. I tell you wut, when I kick the bucket and find her in Heaven, ima give her a ass whoopin’. Dead and still makin’ my life a livin’ hell.”
Thais and I exchanged a look—He needs help, her look said—I’ll figure it out, mine said back.
Esra was out of his mind to think he could dig a hole by himself large enough to fit a casket.
“Jeffrey told us June wasn’t feeling well,” Thais said as Esra went back to digging.
“No,” Jeffrey argued, raised his head from her shoulder, “I said she was just tired. She wasn’t sick. Just tired. She told me she was just tired, Thais. Grandma June don’t lie.”
“I know, Jeffrey.” She patted his back. “I’m sorry; I meant to say you told us she was tired.”
Jeffrey accepted her apology, laid his head back on her shoulder.
“I know you feel like it’s your responsibility to bury your wife yourself,” I spoke up, “but there’s no shame in letting others at least help dig the grave.”
“I ain’t ashamed,” Esra countered; he heaved the spade into the dirt, stopped to catch his rattled breath. “I just don’t need no help.”
“I tried to dig for my grandpa, but he hit me over the head with his gloves. So, I don’t dig.”
Esra stabbed the wet ground with the spade once more; sweat dripped off the tip of his elongated nose; his upper body swayed unsteadily on the bony, bowed legs that supported it, and he looked faint.
Thais and I exchanged another look—Okay, okay, mine told her.
I moved around in front of Esra and stepped through the soft mound of loose dirt already extracted. I crouched and dropped my hands between my legs.
Esra heaved the spade into the dirt again and it nearly toppled him over. He used the shovel to hold up his weight; his tussock of white hair gleamed in the sunlight; he was drenched in sweat; his hair and the top of his leathery head dusted in a fine layer of dirt.
“Esra,” I said, “all of us here cared for June—you and your wife helped Thais and me a great deal, and Jeffrey here loved her very much. It would be an honor if you’d share the responsibility of laying her to rest.” I put up my hands then, palms forward. “Just with the digging, though,” I added. “We understand if you want to put the casket in the ground by yourself.”
Esra wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a dirty, wet smear. He pooched out his rubbery old lips in contemplation. “If yens really want to help dig my June’s grave,” he said, still with a hint of pride, “then I guess that’d be all right.” His long, gnarled finger shot up then; he narrowed his eyes wreathed by white eyelashes and thick white eyebrows and pointed at each of us in turns. “But ima tellin’ yens, if ya try to lift the casket too, ima give ya lead soup fer lunch.”
I nodded rapidly.
“What’s lead soup, Grandpa?” Jeffrey asked.
No one answered.
Esra handed the shovel to me and I began digging straightaway.
THAIS
“Did you make the casket?” I asked Esra; I encouraged him to sit down beside me.
“I sure did,” Esra answered.
He sat down, caught his breath, his jagged shoulders slumped over. “Got one fer myself, too, and fer Jeffrey. Made ‘em a few years ago. June was on my back about ‘em: ‘I cain’t be buried like that,’ she’d gripe. ‘Ain’t nobody gonna toss my body in no godforsaken hole. You better make me a proper casket, Esra, or I cain’t rest when I’m dead. Ima come back and haunt you if you don’t put me in a casket.’” He shook his head. “Damn woman would, too. Like one of them polzergeists or sumthin’. So, I made us all a casket.” He caught his breath; his skeletal shoulders rose and fell underneath the blue plaid shirt he wore.
I ran my palm over the top of the lid. There was nothing decorative about June’s casket, but it clearly took a man of expert woodworking skill to have built it. Every piece fit together seamlessly, and had been sanded to smooth perfection.
“It’s very pretty,” I said.
Jeffrey went around the other side of the casket and smoothed both of his palms across the lid, too. Then he poked the tip of his index finger into the indentions where the head of the nails securing the lid to the base had been hammered in along the edges. He glanced at Esra in a watchful manner, then his hand fell into his pants pocket.
“This must be where Jeffrey got all the sandpaper,” I said to Esra, more for distraction than conversation—Jeffrey was up to something.
“I gave him some sandpaper—he said yens were makin’ him a rowboat?”
“Oh, yes—Atticus is,” I answered right away. “Well, a canoe, actually. Atticus is almost as good at woodworking as you are.” I glanced at Atticus, and he smiled, but never stopped shoveling dirt; only a few minutes had passed and already the hole was twice the size it was when he’d started.
“A good skill to have,” Esra croaked. “Maybe’n he could get started makin’ yens a casket—probably need one sooner than later.” He wiped his forehead of sweat again.
I swallowed uncomfortably at his comment.
I glanced at Jeffrey and saw a green stump of chalk wedged between his fingers. I smiled to myself, knowing what he was about to do with it. Then I turned my full attention to Esra, letting Jeffrey have his moment with his grandmother as he scribbled something on the side of her casket. Don’t let Esra see you, Jeffrey.
ATTICUS
While Thais talked with Esra, I continued to dig. And the deeper the hole, the more painful the memory: