A False Dawn

TWENTY-ONE

The next morning I drove to the Volusia County Cemetery, a potter’s field. I parked and stood under a lone water oak tree and waited for the crew to finish. A blackbird alighted on one of the limbs not far above my head. There were only two men, the backhoe operator and a man with a shovel. When the grave was deep enough, the men slid the wooden coffin out from a county truck.

They held opposite sides and carried it like carrying a junk sofa to the curb for pick up. They lowered it by hand, then I heard one of them say, “Hold it! On three. One…two…three.” The coffin dropped the hole with a two thuds, body against wood.

“Show some respect!” I yelled, stepping from the water oak. The man working the shovel stopped and stood erect. He was tall, well over six feet, Viking stock with dirty blonde hair gelled in a flattop. He held the shovel with one hand, resting it against his wide shoulder. The other man, light-skinned black and overweight, shirttail hanging out, climbed on the backhoe and turned over the diesel, ignoring me.

I stepped to the open grave and looked at the pine box at the bottom of the hole.

“What are you doing? The casket could splinter.”

“Don’t matter,” said the man with the shovel. “They’s nobodies.” He lit a cigarette. He inhaled the smoke, flipped an ash into the grave and said, “Ashes to ashes.”

“Her grave isn’t your ash tray!”

“You related to her?”

“I didn’t have a lot of time to get to know her.”

“Fuckin’ nut.” He shoveled in dirt.

The man on the backhoe shrugged his shoulders and began scrapping the dirt in the grave. The man with the shovel was angry, tossing in dirt like someone covering up a hole that didn’t produce buried treasure.

Within a few minutes they were done. Eighteen years of life covered in twenty minutes of work. The man with the shovel tossed his cigarette into the grave and covered it up with dirt.

I grabbed the wooden end of the shovel with one hand, catching him off guard. “Dig it out!”

“Kiss my ass!” he shouted above the noise from the backhoe. He jerked the shovel out of my hand and swung the blade at my head. It missed my nose by inches, the grit and sand spraying my eyes, blinding for a moment. He hit me with the wooden handle. The blow landed on my jaw. There was the instant taste of blood in my mouth.

The backhoe man turned off the diesel and shouted. “Bust his ass, Lonnie!”

The blackbird sounded right above me. I dove in the opposite direction of the man’s shadow. Dropping, spinning and tackling him to the ground. We rolled across the fresh grave, the grit of sand in my nose and mouth. He swung at my face. I smelled stale cigarette smoke, sweat, and beer though the man’s pores. I closed one eye to focus. I hit him hard on the jaw. The sound was like sheet rock smacked with a hammer. He flayed at my head, a gurgling sound coming from his throat. The man on the backhoe slid out of his seat. I picked up the shovel and held it like a baseball bat.

“Don’t take another step!” I ordered. The man lying across the grave tried to stand. He was dazed. His threats sounding synthesized, as if the weak voice was coming from an animated character. I heard, “Gonna bury you.”

“Pack up your backhoe, get in your truck and leave. Now!” My head pounded.

The black man loaded the backhoe on a flatbed behind the pickup truck.

“Come on, Lonnie,” he said. “Leave this crazy shit in the graveyard.” The man called Lonnie limped to the truck. He pulled himself in the cab and slammed the door. A half-minute later they were gone.

I was alone in a field without flowers. What do you say at a funeral that no one attends? Nothing but the sound of a blackbird in the lone water oak. The hot sun licked the back of my neck.

I knelt in the dirt staring at a county-issued cross at the head of a fresh grave. I smoothed out the warm soil with my trembling hands and looked up at the water oak.

The blackbird was silent.