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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:
I sat on the tiled floor with my back pressed against the door. My head was in my hands—my hands were covered in blood. My mother’s blood. I looked across the kitchen at her body lying lifeless under the sheet I’d draped over her just moments ago.
“Am I supposed to fucking cry, Mom?” I gritted my teeth. “Is that what comes next—cry my fucking heart out?”
Then when I looked over at my dead sisters, also covered in sheets, I almost did cry. But instead, I concentrated all of my emotions into my teeth, gritting, gritting, gritting, until pain shot through my jaw and raged in my temples.
Slowly, I unclenched my bloody fists.
Slowly, I allowed my breath to steady, to settle in my chest.
Slowly, I rose into a stand; a sliver of golden sunlight penetrated the sheer white curtain on the kitchen window, moving outward across the eggshell-white tile and touching the toe of my left shoe. Was it trying to stop me from going any farther, or was it lighting my way?
I stepped through the light of the new day and went forward—Nothing will stop me. I stood over my mother’s body, looking down specifically at the outline of her shoulder beneath the sheet, but, despite my efforts, still seeing the bright crimson soaking the sheet around her head. How much blood can there be?
I knelt in front of my mother.
“Well, I’m not going to cry,” I told her stubbornly. “And you want to know why? Let me tell you why—I’m not going to cry for you because you had no right. No right to expect that of me.” Tears stung my eyes and prickled my sinuses—gritting, gritting, gritting; the pain in my temples swarmed the top of my head, clouding my vision.
I stood. Tall over my mother. Powerful over my mother. Powerless over my mother.
“I can’t bury you,” I told her matter-of-factly, not looking at her, not looking at my sisters seven feet to the right of her. “I can’t bury you because it’ll take too much time. I’ll lose their trail if I don’t leave now. I’m sorry, but I can’t bury you.”
Unable to stay a second longer lest I certainly cry my fucking heart out, I moved on past her and left the house through the back door, and with me all I took were my weapons and my bloodied hands that would, if things went as planned, soon be covered in the blood of those I was hunting.
“Atticus?” The voice was soft and sweet.
I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder; sweat poured from every pore, dripped from my eyebrows and my chin and my nose and my earlobes.
I felt the weight of the shovel leave my hands…
THAIS & (ATTICUS)
“Let me dig some,” I suggested, insisted, taking the shovel from him carefully.
Jeffrey was standing next to me, ready to pounce on Atticus if he had to, but I gently pushed him back.
“But what if he—” Jeffrey tried to say, but I put up my hand and stopped him.
The three of us had been watching Atticus come apart at the seams, digging ferociously. It worried me to see him in such a state: the way he stabbed violently at the dirt as if he’d wanted to kill it; how his face contorted with pain and anger; the shovelfuls of dirt he tossed behind him carelessly, oblivious to everything around him, it seemed.
(I looked down at the hole I’d dug, the deep hole I’d dug. Thais stood tall over me—she was standing tall over me, I realized. How long have I been digging?)
