Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,16

closer to the stone. “I figure a officer killed during the war would for sure be buried in his uniform.”

I get the shovel and pickax in my right hand and lean them toward Wesley.

“Your turn,” I say.

“I was thinking you could get it started good and then I’d take over,” he says.

“I’ll do most of it,” I say, “but I ain’t doing it all.”

Wesley sees I aim not to budge and reaches for the pickax. He does it in a careless kind of way and the pickax’s spike end clangs against the shovel blade. A dog starts barking down at the caretaker’s place and I’m ready to make a run for the truck but Wesley shushes me.

“Give it a minute,” he says.

We stand there still as the stones around us. No light inside the shack comes on, and the dog shuts up directly.

“We’re okay,” Wesley says, and he starts breaking ground with the pickax. He’s working in fourth gear and I know he’s wanting this done quick as I do.

“I’ll loosen the dirt and you shovel it away,” Wesley gasps, veins sticking out on his neck like there’s a noose around it. “We can get it out faster that way.”

Funny you didn’t think of that till it was your turn to dig, I’m thinking, but that dog has set loose the fear in me more than any time since we drove up. I take the shovel and we’re making the dirt fly, Wesley doing more work in fifteen minutes than he’s done in twelve years on the road crew. And me staying right with him, both of us going so hard it’s not till we hear a growl that we turn around and see we’re not alone.

“What are you boys up to?” the old man asks, waggling his shotgun at us. The dog is haunched up beside him, big and bristly and looking like it’s just waiting for the word to pour its teeth into us.

“I said, what are you boys up to?” the old man asks us again.

What kind of answer to give that question is as far beyond me as the moon up above. For a few moments it’s beyond Wesley as well but soon enough he opens his mouth, working up some words like you’d work up a good spit of tobacco.

“We didn’t know there to be a law against it,” Wesley says, which is about the stupidest thing he could have come up with.

The old man chuckles.

“They’s several, and you’re going to be learning all of them soon as I get the sheriff up here.”

I’m thinking to make a run for it before that, take my chances with the dog and the old man’s aim if he decides to shoot, because to my way of thinking time in the jailhouse would be worse than anything that dog or old man could do to me.

“You ain’t needing to call the sheriff,” Wesley says.

Wesley steps out of the two-foot hole we’ve dug, gets up closer to the old man. The dog growls deep down in its throat, a sound that says don’t wander no closer unless you want to limp out of this graveyard. Wesley pays the dog some mind and doesn’t go any nearer.

“Why is that?” the old man says. “What you offering to make me think I don’t need to call the law?”

“I got a ten-dollar bill in my wallet that has your name on it,” Wesley says, and I almost laugh at the sass of him. We have a shotgun leveled at us and Wesley’s trying to lowball the fellow.

“You got to do better than that,” the old man says.

“Twenty then,” Wesley says. “God’s truth that’s all the money I got on me.”

The old man ponders the offer a moment.

“Give me the money,” he says.

Wesley gets his billfold out, tilts it so the old man can’t see nothing but the twenty he pulls out. He reaches the bill to the old man.

“You can’t tell nobody about this,” Wesley says. “None but us three knows a thing of it.”

“Who am I going to spread it to?” the old man says. “In case you’d not noticed, my neighbors ain’t much for conversing.”

The old man looks the twenty over careful, like he’s figuring it to be counterfeit. Then he folds the bill and puts it in his front pocket.

“Course you could double that easy enough,” Wesley says, “not do a thing more than let us dig here a while longer.”

The old man takes in Wesley’s offer but doesn’t