The Whippoorwill Trilogy - Sharon Sala Page 0,27

with unshed tears, but her voice was cold, her words hard.

“You do it right, you hear me? You dig it neat and you dig it deep. And you tell me when they take his body up to the hill.”

Eulis nodded. “Yeah, alright. I’ll let you know, right enough. Just don’t scream like that no more. My head’s killing me.”

“No, Eulis. Your headache won’t kill you, but I might if I find any bed bugs in my hair. Why the hell you didn’t take me upstairs to my own bed is beyond me.”

Letty swiped her hands across her eyes, dashing away the tears before they could fall. Damn the world and everyone in it. I will never let myself care—not ever again.

“Bring some hot water to my room. I need to get clean.”

Eulis scrambled to his feet, eyeing his mattress as he looked for his shoes. There weren’t any bed bugs on his mattress. If there had been, they would surely have been chewing on him all this time. Then he looked down at the skin on his arms and amended the thought. When all was said and done, he did look a bit on the charred side, himself. Maybe in a week or two he’d take a bath—just for a change of pace.

“Eulis!”

The screech in her voice set him on the run, his own bath forgotten.

It was Sunday when they laid James Dupree to rest, although the day of the week hardly mattered. Letty was the only mourner, except for Eulis, who was horribly hung over and was leaning on his shovel to keep from falling in the open hole.

The scent of new wood drifted up from the grave as Letty bent down and picked up a handful of dirt. She walked to the opening and looked down. There was a large, dirty hand print on the top of the makeshift casket where the maker had held it in place as he’d hammered in the nails. To Letty, it was a slap in the face reminder that he mattered little to the people of Lizard Flats.

There was a pain in her chest making it difficult to breathe as she opened her fist and let go of the handful of dirt from his grave. Wind caught it, scattering it in a wayward pattern on the top of the coffin. She stood without moving, blind to everything but the emptiness of her life.

Eulis began to fidget. His head was hurting and his legs were weak. He needed a drink and a place to sit down, but out here there was neither. He waited, watching for a sign that Letty was finished, but saw nothing that he could interpret as an ending to what was turning out to be a very bad day. Finally, his misery overcame his reticence.

“Uh… if you was a mind to say some words now… or maybe sing one of your songs, this would be the time to do it,” he said.

Letty lifted her head, and although Eulis didn’t move, he had the urge to take several steps back. She almost looked vicious. He reckoned it was a good thing that the man who’d shot the gambler had gone and killed himself, too, or Letty would be doin’ it for him.

Then something happened that sent chills through Eulis’s body. Letty laughed.

“Sing? You want me to sing?”

Eulis’s stomach rolled.

“I only thought you might—”

“I don’t do anything for free, Eulis Potter, and don’t you forget it. You want a song? It’ll cost you. You want to take me to bed? It’ll cost you. You want to dance with me? It’ll cost you. I get paid for my services. I don’t do anything for free.”

There was anger in her stride as she walked off the hill. Eulis watched her go, making sure she didn’t decide to turn around and attack him when his back was turned. She was already pissed that she’d found bugs in her hair. He’d heard about that more than once. When she was little more than a speck in the distance, he started to fill in the hole, putting back the dirt that he’d removed earlier. And, as always, there was dirt left over, displaced by the single pine box at the bottom of the grave. He mounded it up nice and neat, took the small plain cross that Letty had carried up the hill, tapped it into the dirt at the head of the grave, and followed her back into town.

The wind began to pick up as