Cold Wind

17

The funeral for Earl Alden took place at the Twelve Sleep County Cemetery on a warm still morning. It was a small affair.

Joe wore his dark suit and stood with Marybeth, April, and Lucy in the sun. As the Rev. Maury Brown read the eulogy about a man he’d never met, Joe felt a drip of sweat snake down his spine beneath his shirt. He looked up and took in the scene around them.

The cemetery took up ten acres on the top of a hill west of Saddlestring. From where they stood, he could see the cottonwood-choked river below them, the town itself, and the Eagle Mountain Club perched on a bluff on the other side of the river. Insects burred in the turf, and while he was looking, a big grasshopper landed on the top of the casket with a thump. The air was ripe with pollen and the dank smell of dug-up dirt. A massive granite monument had been delivered to the site on a pallet. It was nearly as high as the large tarped mound of fresh dirt it sat next to.

Missy stood across from the casket and the hole in the ground. Small and black and veiled, she was flanked by Marcus Hand on one side and Sheriff McLanahan on the other. After the funeral, she’d be returned home on bail. A small knot of ranch hands and construction workers from the Thunderhead Ranch stood together apart from the other mourners. Joe wondered if they were there to pay their respects or to find out when and if they’d get their last paychecks.

He didn’t hear much of what Rev. Brown said. Instead, he observed Missy. Her veil hid her face and he couldn’t tell if she was crying, she seemed so still.

When the Rev. Brown turned to her and cued her to toss a handful of dirt on the casket that had been poised over the hole, Joe heard Missy say, “No thank you.”

On their way down a dirt pathway to the parking lot, Marybeth said how odd it was to attend the funeral for a man she barely knew, and she wondered aloud why members of Earl’s extended family hadn’t shown up.

Joe shrugged, wondering the same thing himself.

“I’d like to know how much that monument set Missy back,” Joe said. “It’ll be the tallest thing in the cemetery now.”

April and Lucy argued about where they wanted to go eat since it was Saturday and lunch out had been the incentive offered to attend the funeral.

“I couldn’t tell,” he said. “Was your mother crying?”

“Who knows?”

Joe reached out and found Marybeth’s hand and squeezed it. As he did, he heard a motor start up in the parking lot.

He looked up to see a boxy old-model yellow van back out of a space unnecessarily fast and race away.

“Who was that?” Marybeth asked Joe.

“I’m not sure. I thought I saw two people in the front, but I couldn’t see their faces.”

“I wonder if they were coming to the funeral and got here late. It would have been nice to have a few more mourners.”

“Yup,” Joe said, watching the van descend over the hill as if it were being chased by bees.