Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,18

shucking it out. My back’s hurting and my arms feel made of syrup.

“Which no you siding with?” the old man says.

“No, I don’t talk much.”

“You wanting one of them buckles to wear or you just along for the pleasure of flinging dirt all night?”

“Just here to dig,” I answer, glad when he don’t say nothing more. I got little enough get-go left to spend it gabbing.

I lift the pickax again and I hit something so solid it almost jars the handle from my hands. That jarring goes up my arms and back down my spine bones like I touched an electric fence. I’m figuring it to be a big rock I’ll have to dig out before I can get to the coffin. The thought of tussling with a rock makes me so tired I just want to lay down and quit.

“What is it?” the old man says, and Wesley opens his eyes, watches me take the shovel and scrape dirt to get a better look.

But it’s no rock. It’s a coffin, a coffin made of cast iron. Wesley crunches up nearer the wall so I can get more dirt out, and what I’m thinking is whoever had to tote that coffin had a time of it, because Momma’s cast-iron cooking stove wouldn’t lift lighter, and it took four grown men to move that stove from one side of the kitchen to the other.

“I’d always heard they was a few of them planted in this cemetery,” the old man says, “but I never figured to see one.”

The coffin spries Wesley up some. I dig enough room to the side to set my feet so they’re not on the lid. Rust has sealed it, so I take the flat end of the pickax and crack the lid open like you’d crowbar a stuck window. I about break my pickax handle but it finally gives. I get down low but I can’t lift the lid off by myself.

“You got to help me,” I tell Wesley and he gets down beside me.

It’s no easy thing to do and we both have to step lively in hardly no room to keep the lid from sliding off and landing on our feet. Soon as we get it off, Wesley puts his left hand on his right shoulder, and I’m thinking it’s some kind of salute or something, but then he starts rubbing his arm and shoulder like it’s gone numb on him.

“The Lord Almighty,” the old man says, and Wesley and me step some to the side to get where we can see good too.

Unlike the other one, you can tell this was a man. The bones are most together and there’s even a hank of red hair on his skull. You can tell he’s in a uniform too, raggedy but what’s left of the pants and coat is butternut. I look over at Wesley and he’s seeing nothing but what’s made of metal.

There’s plenty to fill up his eyeballs that way. A belt buckle is there with no more than a skiffing of rust on it. Buttons too, looking to be a half dozen. But that’s not the best thing. What’s best is laying there next to the skeleton, a big old sword and scabbard. Wesley reaches for it. The sword’s rusted in but after a couple of tugs it starts to give. Wesley finally grunts it out. He holds the sword out before him and I can see he’s figuring what it’ll fetch and the grin on his face and the way his eyes light up argue a high price indeed. Then all of a sudden he’s seeing something else, and whatever it is he sees isn’t giving him the notion to smile anymore. He lets the sword slide out his hand and leans back against the wall, his feet still in the coffin. He slides down then, his back against the wall but his bottom half in the coffin, just sitting there like a man in a jon boat. His eyes are still open but there’s no more light in them than the bottom of a coal shaft.

“See if they’s a pulse on him,” the old man says.

I step closer to Wesley, footlogging the coffin so I won’t step on the skeleton. I lay hold of Wesley’s wrist but there’s no more alive there than in his eyes.

I just stand there a minute. All the bad fixes I’ve been in are like being in high cotton compared to where I am now. I