Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,14

Instead we follow the fence up a hill through some trees, a pickax and shovel in my hands and nothing in Wesley’s but a plastic garbage bag. It’s late October and the air has that rinsed-clean feel. There’s leaves that have fallen and acorns and they crackle under my feet, each one sounding loud as a .22 to me. I catch a whiff of a woodstove and find the glow of the porch light.

“You ain’t worried none about that caretaker?” I say.

“Hell no. He’s near eighty years old. He’s probably been asleep since seven o’clock.”

“He’d not have a fire going if he was asleep.”

“That old man ain’t going to bother us none,” Wesley says, saying it like just his saying so makes it final.

We’re soon moving amongst the stones, the moon brighter now that we’re in the open. Its light lays down all silvery on the granite and marble, on the ground itself. It’s quieter here, no more acorns and leaves, just cushiony grass like on a golf course. But it’s too quiet, in a spooky kind of way. Because you know folks are here, hundreds of them, and not a one will say ever a word more on this earth. The only sound is Wesley’s breathing and grunting. We’ve walked no more than a half mile and he’s already laboring. A car comes up the road, headlights sweeping over a few tombstones as it takes the curve. It doesn’t slow down but heads on toward Marshall.

“I got to catch my breath,” Wesley says, and we stop a minute. We’re on a ridge now, and I can see a whole passel of stars spilled out over the sky. As clear a night as you can get, and I reckon it’s easy enough for God to see me from up there. That thought bothers me some, but it’s a lot easier to have a conscience about something if you figure it all the way right or all the way wrong. Doing what we’re doing is a sin for sure, but not taking care of the woman who birthed and raised you is a worse one. That’s what I tell myself anyway.

“It’s not much farther,” Wesley says, saying it more for his own benefit than for me. He shakes his shoulders like a plow horse getting the trace chains more comfortable and walks down the yonder side of the hill until he comes to where a little Confederate flag is planted by a marble tombstone.

“Kind of them Daughters of the Confederacy biddies to sight-map the spot for us,” Wesley says.

He pulls up the flag and throws it behind the stone like it was no more than a weed. He flicks his cigarette lighter and says the words out loud like I can’t read them for myself.

“Lieutenant Gerald Ross Witherspoon. North Carolina Twenty-fifth. Born November 12, 1820. Died January 20, 1890.”

“Dug up October 23, 2007,” Wesley adds, and gives a good snort. He lights a cigarette and sets himself down by the grave. “You best get to it. We got all night but not an hour more.”

“What about you?” I say. “I ain’t doing all this digging alone.”

“We’d just get in the other’s way doing it as a team,” Wesley says, then takes a big suck on his cigarette. “Don’t fret, son. I’ll spell you directly.”

I lift my pickax and go to it. Yesterday’s rain had left some sog and squish in the ground so the first dirt breaks easy as wet sawdust. I get the shovel and scoop what I’ve loosed on the grass.

“People will know it’s been dug,” I say, pausing to gain back my breath.

And that’s a new thought for me, because somehow up to now I’d had it figured if they didn’t catch us in the graveyard we’d be home free. But two big holes are bound to have the law looking for those that dug them.

“And we’ll be long gone when they do,” Wesley says.

“You’re not worried about it?” I say, because all of a sudden I am. Somebody could see the truck coming or going. We could drop something and in the dark not even know we’d left it behind.

“No,” Wesley says. “The law will figure it for some of them voodoo devil worshippers. They’ll not think to trouble upstanding citizens like us about it.”

Wesley flares his lighter and lights another cigarette.

“We best get back to it,” he says, nodding at the pickax in my hand.

“Don’t seem to be no we to it,” I say.

“Like I said,