The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

Pamela Blackwood Justice

from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

He had not been able to sleep, as usual. Even after a day that had started before sunup and ended in the dark as well, a day that had pitted his muscles against five hundred tons of soil, or so it seemed. Judging from the dull ache in his lower back, the soil had won. He had twisted into every position imaginable in bed to ease the pain, curled in like a spider and straightened out flat like a board, and nothing had helped. He had even considered waking Callie and having her walk on his back like she did sometimes when it was knotting up on him, but it seemed a selfish thing to do, like recalling an angel from heaven to earth. In the long run, it would have made no difference anyway. It was the state of his bed, not his back, that kept him awake for hours each night. No matter how he twisted and turned and shifted, half of his bed was still empty.

He finally left it, pulled on clothes, and made his way to the door without even lighting a candle. The faint glow from the dying fire gave him enough light to find the heavy wooden bolt, and he lifted it and opened the cabin door without making a sound. Once outside, seated on the stone stoop and breathing in the night air, he felt better. He was in the outside world now, the world of infinity. Hannah’s new world.

He looked toward heaven, where the preacher said she was, and then looked east, where he knew for a fact she was, at least the part of her he had known on earth. If she were coming home, some evil voice whispered, this is where she would appear to him, stepping out of the forest just beyond the corncrib. Tonight, with his back throbbing, his muscles taut with exhaustion, and his brain unable to rest, William gave in to the wickedness, and his mind set to work. Hannah was coming home again.

She would find her way out of the grave somehow. That was not his concern. Once freed, she would shake off the soil (for his mind insisted on this grisly detail, proof of the evil in it) and start for home. She would walk the three miles from the cemetery, unaffected by the darkness and the cold, her bare feet treading on sticks, and soon she would reach the edge of the forest, where the senseless separation would end.

At this point in the fantasy, the details varied. Sometimes she was holding the baby boy who had died with her, cradling him to her chest against the chill of night and smiling because they’d been blessed with another child. Other times she was alone as she stepped from the forest, always pausing a moment beside the corncrib to catch William’s eye, always smiling at the joy of reunion. Then she would come quickly to him and the nightmare would be over.

Some nights William could see her there as clearly as the creamy moon above. He knew it was evil, twisted thinking to imagine her back in a body no longer fit to house a soul, but most nights he couldn’t help himself. Tonight he found, with some irritation, that he had the opposite problem. He could not lose himself in the fantasy due to a riot of barking dogs.

He had not given much thought to the racket at first. Since he’d taken to sitting on the stoop at night and thinking about Hannah, he had grown accustomed to hearing dogs barking all around him, at treed possums or the full moon or at some specter of their own creation. It was the lone barkers that he loved, the lonely call into the night of one creature facing the universe, alone. He thought to them across the pine forests and the freshly turned earth, Yes, you’re right, that’s exactly how it feels, and it seemed to him that at least in that, he had some company.

Tonight was different. The barking was closer, maybe a quarter mile down the road, and it was savage. He held his mind still for a moment and listened. This time it was no midnight loner but what sounded like several hounds working themselves into a frenzy. What made it queer was that’s how it had started, just a few moments after he’d seated himself on the stoop. Not with the usual traveling frenzy that either grew or diminished in volume according to the movements of some prey, but a sudden outburst, beginning and continuing in one spot. William thought he was catching voices mingled in with the barking when he heard a sound coming from inside the cabin. Pushing the door behind him open, he heard disembodied sobs, growing louder as Callie made her way down from the sleeping loft.

He pushed himself up from the stoop, brushed his hands together and then against his breeches. When he called Callie’s name, the sobbing grew louder and he could hear her bare feet, slapping on each step, hurrying to get to him. Fearful that she would stumble in the dark, he went inside and met her halfway up. Scooping her up into his arms, he returned to the stoop.

It was not a nightmare this time, although they had been common enough since her mother had died. This time he could see the problem right away. In one hand she was clutching a hair ribbon. One of the pigtails he had so inexpertly braided a few hours earlier had come undone.

After waiting through the necessary tears and drama, he took the pink ribbon from Callie, set her on her feet, and turned her around. Working more by feel than sight, he began the task of rebraiding.

His hands, rough and clumsy as a hound dog’s paws, were chilly, and the fine dark hair kept slipping from his fingers. When his handiwork dissolved for the third time, he gave up. No hands would work that were chilled such as his and no eyes in such poor light. Five minutes in front of the fire, after a bit of stoking, and the task would be done. Getting to his feet, he watched Callie sit on the stoop and cross her arms.

“Let’s go in,” he said, and held one hand down for her to grasp. “Papa’s hands won’t work in the cold.”

“No,” she said simply, and drew her knees up under her arms. It was her new way, since her mother had died. Not defiance so much as a courtesy, informing him of how things were going to be. William, who never would have tolerated such behavior six weeks earlier, sat back down and put his hands under his armpits.

Immediately Callie jumped up and ran to the well in the center of the yard. He called her name, knowing all the while that it was a useless exercise, then got up and followed her across the swept ground, keeping an eye that the white nightgown stayed on the outside of the circular rock wall that surrounded the well. When he caught up with her, she had hunkered down in front of it. He sat down beside her.

“Look,” she called, and one slender arm flew out from the huddle of nightgown and disordered hair and pointed to the sky. “There’s the dipper,” she shouted, and danced the shape of it in the air with her finger.

“That’s right,” William said, and deciding that he could at least keep her warm even if he couldn’t control her, he stretched out his legs and pulled her onto his lap.

“But there’s no water,” she said, as if her heart would break, and William sensed the beginning of a storm of vexation over this notion. He had discovered that the only way out of these dark fits of anger was a quick distraction.

“Callie,” he said in a loud whisper. He ducked his head and looked from left to right and then at her as if he knew a marvelous secret that no one else must hear. Seeing her eyes open wide, he knew the trick had worked.

“What?” she whispered, and he felt her face turn up to his.

“You hear those dogs? Those barkers down the road a bit?”

She nodded her head, enthralled.

“You know what’s making ’em go on and on like that?”

She shook her head, lips parted and eyes unblinking, all past traumas forgotten. William had no idea what was coming next, but he had learned to improvise like never before in the last few weeks.

“Well,” he said, and looking up to the sky, it came to him. He turned Callie outward and lifted her face toward the stars.

“You see that star up there,” he asked, and aimed her head toward the North Star. At that moment the barking grew to a fever pitch and William imagined that he heard a man shout. But it was all around him now, every dog on every homestead alerted to something in the night, and William, in the cacophony, could hardly be sure of what he heard. He looked back down when he felt Callie tugging on his sleeve.

“I see it,” she said, slightly piqued, and William knew he was in danger of losing ground if he didn’t hurry on.

“That’s the North Star,” he said. “But it’s part of something else too. That star makes up part of a bear up there in the sky. That’s what my daddy, your granddaddy, told me when I was little like you and that’s what’s got those dogs all keyed up. They’re barking after that bear up yonder and there’s nothing more they can do than bark.”

“I don’t see any bear,” Callie said, and stood up, stepping to the left and to the right and all the while squinting upward. “I don’t see a bear,” she said again, her voice smaller this time and closer to tears. William pulled her back on his lap.

“It’s a dipper too,” he added in desperation, and ran his finger along the trail of stars that made up the Little Dipper. “See there?” he said, trying to cover her with his coat. Her bare feet were ice, even through his trouser leg.

“Where?” she shouted, and William ran his finger along the sky trail again, pulling his coat closer around her when she threatened to burst out of it.

Please let her see it, he implored, and finally she saw something, because her head started banging against his chest in an enthusiastic nod.

At that moment the barking stopped, as suddenly and inexplicably as it had begun.

William looked away from the sky, stared into the darkness, and wondered at the oddness of it. Callie began pulling on one of his shirt buttons.

“What’s his name?” she asked, giving all her attention to the button, twisting and turning it and plucking it with her fingers.

“Stop that, Callie,” William said, sharper than he meant to because he’d be more likely to traipse across the moon than be able to sew a button back onto a shirt.

“It pushes,” she said in a high-pitched whine, and William opened his shirt where the button was digging into her head and felt a rush of pleasure at the brush of her soft hair against his bare chest. For now, at least, he still had her and her little sister and he would move heaven and earth and hell to keep them alive. Thinking that perhaps the night air was not the best thing for Callie, he decided to begin the process of putting her back to bed. He savored the touch of her for another moment and then hugged her and set her on her feet.

“What’s his name?” she insisted, stomping one ice foot into the earth and pointing toward the sky.

“Virgil,” William said, thinking of his father’s name and then thinking faster still. “And he has ordered most of these dogs down here to hush up and go to sleep. You hear how those closer ones have gone quiet?”

Dogs were still barking in the distance all around them, but William was hoping that for once Callie would not examine the statement for absolute truth.

“They’ve gone quiet as church mice, haven’t they?” he hurried on, taking her hand. “Most of them, anyway. They know it’s bedtime for dogs and children. And old Virgil up there, he’d like to see them all go to sleep, all dogs and children as well. Think you can oblige him?”

Some miracle of five-year-old logic stepped in, and Callie nodded. William smiled and counted it as a victory. It was one of the precious few he’d had since being thrust into the uncharted mystery land of children, with scant provisions and no map. He was making his way, but slowly.

They had turned to go into the cabin when he heard it.

A pair of riders were coming down the road, pushing their horses until the sound of hooves hitting dirt filled the night. He heard them coming, heard the desperate clomping pass his property, and heard the sound echo off the trees as the riders pressed on into the distance. Any minute he expected an abrupt end to the sound, as pushing a horse like that in the dark was a fool’s game, asking for a misstep that meant death for horse and rider.

In another moment it was as if the sound had never existed. The hoofbeats that had dominated the dark had faded and then were gone as quickly as they had come, returning the night to the barking dogs.

William felt Callie’s arms tighten around him and looked down to find her sobbing quietly onto his breeches. When he tried to kneel down, she pressed her face even harder against his thighs.

“What is it, Callie?” he asked, stroking her hair and wondering if he’d ever be any better at this, at the whys and hows of tending children.

She mumbled something but it was garbled by sobs. He bent his head closer and asked her to repeat it.

“Reaper,” she whispered, and he knew in an instant what was in her mind. Like a thief in the night, the preacher had spoken over her mother’s coffin, the Grim Reaper comes and takes what he will and then is gone, but our Heavenly Father... William had shut his mind to the rest, having no patience for a justification of Hannah’s death.

“No, Callie,” he said down to her. “That’s just a couple of men on horses, riding down the road in a hurry. That wasn’t the Grim Reaper. That was just men like Papa. There is no Grim Reaper.” Just as there is no Heavenly Father, his mind continued.

They’re lying about all of it, but another corner of his mind recoiled in fear at that and still another corner mocked him and said, Speak it aloud and see for yourself.

“There is no Grim Reaper,” he repeated. “Now let’s fix your hair and then maybe I’ll tell you a story.” She moved her head, which he took for a nod. Lifting her up into his arms, he walked back to the stoop.

No Grim Reaper, the mocker in his head screamed, and William thought back to the mocker, That’s right. Even so, he shuddered when he saw the cabin door standing slightly ajar, even while knowing that was surely the way he and Callie had left it.

Drying tears he had quickly become adept at, through lots of practice. In order for them to survive, he had also learned to put something like a meal on the table twice a day, on dishes that had at least been scraped clean of the previous meal. Every garment they owned had been washed at least once since Hannah had died, and he was able to keep the girls at least a stage away from filthy. Hair, it seemed, would be his undoing.

He had started the hair-washing ordeal on the next afternoon, suffering through tears at each stage, from the wetting down to the scrubbing with soap, through the futile attempt at combing out the pair of ravaged birds’ nests. Louisa, who shed silent tears in the company of her thumb, had been bad enough. But when Callie had shrieked at every slight pull of the comb, he had given up and placed them both in front of the fire with their dolls until their hair was completely dry. In this decision, even shrieks were powerless against him. He would not risk them getting chilled and then fevered or worse.

Now, getting them ready to go to the tavern, he wondered what Hannah would think of her oldest daughter going out into the world looking like a miniature madwoman, her hair hanging about in tangled clumps. If you cared, you shouldn’t have left me, he thought, and then wondered at his own sanity. Settling the girls in front of him on the horse, he dismissed the issue as irrelevant. He would have to carry on whether sane or insane, so why even bother to consider it? Nudging Gus gently forward toward the road, he worried over another matter entirely — ​would the girls be quiet long enough for him to get a swallow of gin and a scrap of adult companionship. At this moment in his life, after five days of working alone, it was all he wanted.

Last time out they had not. Louisa had fretted at the loud men hurting her ears, Callie had seen a witch on the ride over and clung to William’s leg the rest of the evening. Tonight, if they could be still at the same time for a slim half hour, he had promised to buy them each a new hair ribbon at the dry goods store. Bribery, he had discovered, was even better than diversion.

Once there, he set them on the floor in the corner of the tavern with two dolls and a bag of marbles and got himself a glass of gin. Taking a chair at a nearby table, he nodded a greeting to one of his neighbors.

“So you still haven’t found anybody,” Josh Miller said by way of greeting.

“Not looking,” William said, stretching his legs out under the table and leaning back. It felt good to sit down, good to be warm, good to have a drink in his hand and a neighborly body to drink it with. “I don’t need anybody,” he continued, and then took a drink of gin to wash his throat clean of the lie.

“Seems like you do,” Josh said, looking pointedly into the corner at Callie’s matted hair. When William looked daggers at him, he just shook his head. “A man can be too stubborn sometimes, seems like to me. Besides, those two little ones need something better than you to look at.”

“Can’t argue with that one,” William said, and looked over the other patrons in the tavern. The place was crowded with men and boys, with a stray female here and there. One over near the keg seemed to be the centerpiece of a small throng of boys who were vying for her attention with lively words and gestures.

William saw them all as potential murderers, for surely one would win her heart and vent his passion on her until she died. That was the way of the world.

“It’s no use thinking about that one,” Josh said. “Unless you can drop ten years off your body and twenty off your thinking. I doubt she’d be satisfied to tend children, but she might know of—”

“I thought I said, pretty clear, that I wasn’t looking,” William said. “I reckon she’ll die soon enough without coming around me. I’ve killed one already, seems like that’s enough for a while.”

“You stupid fool,” Josh said with feeling but no malice. “If you figure on calling yourself a murderer, I reckon that little baby boy is a killer too. Killed his mama and himself. You reckon that’s the way of it, Will?”

“I reckon some folks need to tend to their own business and keep out of mine. Don’t you have another subject, Josh?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Josh said. “Talking about killing, there was a killing over near your place last night. Ben Pierce was riding early this morning down the Raleigh Road and nearly stumbled over poor old Johnny Grant lying sprawled out beside the road with his throat cut. Been robbed, it looked like. You know that pouch of money he always wore around his neck?”

“Yep,” William said, fighting a numbness that was starting at the tips of his fingers and working up.

“Well, that was gone, and you know he never went nowhere without it, even wore it to bed, they say. That was gone and his old daddy’s pocket watch was gone and that locket that had his mama’s likeness, they took that off him too. I don’t reckon he had much more than that, being an idiot and all. And you know them dogs he always kept running around at his feet?”

William nodded.

“Caught one of ’em with a knife. Ben carried that one home but figured the other one must have got away or crawled off to die, since it wasn’t around nowhere. A damn shame, is what it is. You hear anything at your place last night?”

“Yep. Dogs barking, pitching a fit — ​late, after ten o’clock. Then a couple of horses running full chisel a few minutes later. I reckon I heard the whole thing.” He had gotten up from his bed to look for peace, to be with Hannah, and had heard a murder. A tiny ember that had been smoldering in his brain sprang to life. “Who do you reckon would kill an idiot boy like that?”

Josh looked at him and tipped his head toward the circle of young people across the room.

William let the gesture lie. “Could have been anybody. Lots of folks knew Johnny took that road home from the sawmill every night. Being the way he was, he’d be easy pickin’s. A stranger could have done it, would have known once he had a word or two with the boy that he wasn’t right in the head.”

“Could have, but didn’t,” Josh said, and with the words came a chill that William sensed in spite of the flames at the tavern’s hearth and the bursts of laughter and easy talk that hummed around them.

“So what are you saying, Josh?” William asked, and then was distracted by Louisa tugging on his sleeve. Her doll, she explained, had suffered a hurt leg when Callie had deliberately dropped her from a dangerous height. William took out his handkerchief and dried Louisa’s tears and then wrapped the doll leg, glancing at Josh and at the rag leg he was tending and then across the room where he’d seen Josh look. Finishing the job, he handed Louisa the doll and told her to run along, but instead she climbed into his lap and lay against him, sucking her thumb and stroking the wounded doll.

“You’re saying it’s somebody we know,” William continued when Josh showed no sign of answering his question. “You’re saying it’s somebody in this taproom, if I’m reading you right.”

“You see that group over yonder?” Josh asked, and dipped his head in their direction again. “Wendell Pike, Jimmy Galton, Eddie Bishop, and all them boys around Mary Ann Graves?”

“I see ’em,” William said. “I’d be blind and deaf not to, the way they’ve been cutting up all night.”

“Well, I been watching them, both before you got here and since. They been cutting up all right, trying to impress that girl, mainly with fancy talk. But some of that fancy talk, a lot of it, I’d say, has centered around Eddie and Wendell and something Eddie keeps bringing out and dangling around to show everybody. I got a good look at it once, when I went out back. It’s a watch.”

“Lots of folks have watches, Josh.”

“That’s so. But what’s so dang funny about that one? He’s showing it off like a square nickel.”

“Could be new to him. Could be his daddy’s or his granddaddy’s or he just bought it himself.”

“It’s new to him, all right. Newly filched off of Johnny Grant’s body. You know and I know that his daddy, being both a drunkard and poor as Job’s turkey, didn’t buy that boy no new watch to show off like that.”

“Maybe the boy bought it himself. He works at the sawmill, doesn’t he?”

“He turns up at the sawmill now and again and Wendell’s daddy might give him a day or two of work if he has it, but that’s hardly enough to go buying a fancy watch when your daddy barely makes enough to keep his own body and soul together, let alone his children’s. That’s Johnny’s watch, I’d bet my head on it.”

“Rather than bet your head, why not talk to the sheriff ?” William said. He felt Louisa flinch in his lap when the group in the corner burst into laughter. When she put both fists over her ears and began to whimper, he knew his time at the tavern was almost over.

“I intend to tell him,” Josh said. “Trouble is, that’ll likely be the end of it. Like you said, lots of folks have watches, and who’s around to testify to that one being Johnny’s? The boy didn’t have no family and hardly any friends. Just them two dogs, and they’re good as gone too.”

“He went to the sawmill nearly every day of his life,” William said. “Some of them must have known him.”

“He did do that. He was a pest they tried to run off, and when he came back, they ignored him best they could.”

“Still, some of them must have seen that watch.”

“’Course they did. That’s why they figured on robbing him. They saw the watch and they saw the money pouch and then went through the poor boy’s pockets after they’d finished their handiwork on him and took his mama’s locket as well. It’s just a wonder they didn’t open his mouth and check for gold teeth.”

“So tell the sheriff,” William said, and set Louisa down on her feet. Finishing the last of his gin, he gestured to Callie, who studiously ignored him. “That Grant boy is entitled to justice same as any man under this roof. More so, since he was soft in the head and couldn’t defend himself.”

“I agree with you, friend,” Josh said, and after one long last look, he turned his back on the group of young people. “And I will talk to Clayton about it. But the fact is, Wendell Pike’s daddy owns the sawmill and Eddie’s his best friend and Johnny Grant was just an idiot boy who had nothing and no ties and nobody’s going to care much that he’s gone. I reckon he’ll find justice in the end, like the rest of us. Trouble is, he’s going to have to wait till then to get it. Till then, he’s just dead and that’s the end of it.”

“That’s never the end of it, Josh,” William said, adding a goodbye before going to the corner to gather Callie and an ever-widening circle of marbles.

Never the end of it, he thought again when Louisa woke up a few nights later crying for her mama and inconsolable. He would have preferred a knife in the ribs to the child’s pitiful cries, but there was no one to give it to him, so he simply held her until she went back to sleep, a rough and clumsy substitute for someone who had been silken and soft and warm. He slept no more that night but went about the cabin waiting for dawn, from the hearth to the stoop to the stairs, there to listen for the girls’ soft breathing. Place made no difference now, for everywhere was the same — ​a place without Hannah.

Finally seeing the sky lightening in the east, he made himself think about the coming day. He had chores to do. He had turned the soil in both cornfields but not yet put in the first seed. March was creeping into April and he had not planted a salad garden. He would work on that, turn the old bed near the cabin, work in some leaves and manure, and get the soil ready to set in seed. He could do that; in fact, had to. In spite of his soul rending in two, they still had to eat. The salad garden was nearby, so he could watch the girls playing around the cabin, maybe even set Callie to work with a spade, helping him. With a plan in mind, he turned to breakfast.

The plan worked for half the morning and then went sour. The girls played house on the stoop, bringing out dishes and pans and the churn, and things went well until Callie appeared in the doorway with an armful of linen. Picturing himself washing bedsheets for days, William put a stop to that and set off a string of misbehavior that climaxed with one arm being torn off Louisa’s doll when his back was turned, a crisis no amount of lemon drops could set right. Putting his plow in the toolshed, he rinsed his hands and spent a half hour working with needle and thread. After finally reattaching the severed limb, he hitched up the horse, tidied both girls and himself, and set off down the road for the Methodist church. It was time to visit Mama.

Tying up in front of the church, he lifted the girls out of the wagon and watched them run around to the back as if their mother would be there waiting to welcome them to a picnic or a game of jacks. Instead there would be silence and a stone and that would be their mother for the rest of their lives. William walked around the church slowly, dreading the sight of the stone and the mound of earth, always dreading it, as if each time he saw these terrible objects, Hannah was lost to him anew. Coming to the corner, he braced himself and moved quickly, wanting to get it over with, to let the gouge in his soul bleed a little more until perhaps, one day, it would begin to heal.

He was surprised to find the girls talking not to their mother, as they usually did, but to Henry Cobb. The man was standing on Hannah’s grave, shirtsleeves rolled up, leaning on his shovel. As William reached them, he heard Callie imploring the gravedigger to start lifting the dirt off her mama.

“Hush, Callie,” he said, pulling her up to hold against him. “I’m sorry to see you back at work so soon after just laying Matt Avery to rest last week.”

“Yes, sir,” Henry said, and lifting his shovel in the air, he plunged it into the earth that was Hannah’s grave. William winced slightly, as if the action could hurt her. Turning his mind from his own foolishness, he set Callie down and nodded toward a freshly turned plot in the far corner of the burial ground.

“Who’d you put way down yonder, Henry, in that swampy ground down there? Water stands like the devil there when we get a rainy spell.”

“Yep, I know,” Henry said, reaching around for a flask hanging from his belt. He took a long drink and sighed with satisfaction. “It was that idiot boy that got himself killed over near your place, the one with them dogs.”

“That was a week ago,” William said, and smelling whiskey fumes coming from the man, he reckoned that was what it took to do such a job as covering people with earth. “He’s just now getting buried?”

“Yep. Nobody claimed him, nor any interest in him. Some of the women laid him out for a day or two and waited, but no one turned up to see him or take him, and you can’t wait forever, not with it warming up soon. Millie came by a while ago and we said some words over him and then I got to work.”

“But why’d you put him down there, Henry, away from all the folks and in that soggy ground?”

“What’s the difference?” the gravedigger said, and shrugged. He took a cloth sack off his belt and pulled a piece of cornbread out of it. “Been a long time since breakfast,” he said, and started eating, dropping crumbs on the ground around him. “Nobody’ll be coming to see him, so nobody’s going to get their feet wet. What’s the use of wasting good space on a boy like that, as long as he’s put down good and proper like everybody else? Sorry, William,” he said, and stepped away from Hannah’s grave with his johnnycake. “I didn’t mean no disrespect. Guess I forgot myself for a minute.”

“Guess you did,” William said, wanting to knock the man flat to the ground with his fist. Instead he took the shovel away from Callie, who had started scraping it across the raw earth, and handed it back to the gravedigger. “If it’s all the same to you, Henry, the girls and I would like to visit with their mama for a bit.”

“Sure enough, Will,” the man said, and shoving the rest of the corn cake into his mouth, he threw the shovel over his shoulder and headed for a fat pine tree at the edge of the cemetery.

William kicked the crumbs off the grave and told the girls it was time to say a prayer for their mama and go. Callie questioned the haste of it and Louisa whined. William had in fact planned to stay longer, but the gravedigger was sitting under the old pine watching them, and William felt the intrusion keenly.

After speaking his own empty words to the sky, he waited while the girls each spoke a prayer, with Callie’s being a jumble of lamentations and requests addressed to God and her mama in turn, and Louisa’s a suggestion that Mama come down for a visit. William tried to listen to the phrases like he always did, to see what was in each girl’s heart, but his mind kept slipping away, to the fresh mound of earth in the swampy ground that no one would be coming to visit.

It started a few days later, without William even realizing anything had begun. He had not left the farm for several days, doing man’s work in the daytime, woman’s work in the evening, and the devil’s work at night, sitting on the stoop and longing for Hannah to come back to him. Sleep, which had become a matter of three or four hours a night, was something he longed for during the day, when it was impossible. So it had been with a foggy brain that he had gone to the feed and seed store and bought exactly half as much corn seed as he needed for his southern and most productive cornfield. Getting the girls ready for another trip to town to buy more, he wondered if they were even safe with him as a caretaker. Perhaps he would confuse Louisa for a barrel of pickles and leave her standing beside the counter in the store or forget he had children altogether and ride off with a couple of feed sacks in their places. Nothing anymore would surprise him.

For this reason he spoke to the girls quietly after lifting them from the wagon in front of the store, asking them to remain in his sight at all times and to hold hands and never lose sight of each other. Even Callie was sobered by something in his demeanor, and the two followed William into the seed store like a pair of tiny ghosts and stood quietly behind him, moving as he did and never uttering a sound. And so it was that William, who had been living a life of nothing but distraction for weeks, was able to take note of his surroundings in the seed store. And what he noted was that the man leaning on the far end of the counter, waiting for his order to be filled, was Eddie Bishop.

William could not have sworn it was the Bishop boy; he had never spoken to him that he could recall and had no more than a nodding acquaintance with his father. On getting closer, however, he saw what he needed to see. An old scar, running from the boy’s left ear to his upper lip, marked him as Eddie Bishop, the Eddie Bishop who had gotten his face half cut off in a drunken brawl one night after work.

Sending Callie and Louisa over to warm themselves by the stove, William walked down to the end of the counter where Eddie stood.

“Morning, Eddie,” he said. The boy looked at him briefly before returning his attention to the door of the storeroom.

“Morning,” he muttered almost inaudibly, dropping one arm onto the countertop and stretching to see as far into the back as he could. After a moment or two, he fell back on his heels and began drumming his fingers on the countertop.

“I was wondering what the time is, Eddie,” William said, not bothering to conceal the chain of his own watch. “Would you happen to have the time?”

“What?” Eddie asked. He stopped drumming his nails on the glass and stared at William as if he’d asked for a ride to the moon.

“The time,” William repeated, putting his hands into his pockets in such a way as to leave the watch chain draped over the flesh of his arm. “I know you’ve got yourself a new watch. I saw it the other night at the tavern. I was wondering if you could give me the time.”

“What’s wrong with your watch?” Eddie asked, turning to face him for the first time.

“Not a thing,” William said, and in that moment they locked eyes and William knew he had achieved his purpose, which was to do nothing more than needle the boy, to nudge him into a state of unease.

“The time, Eddie,” William said again. “I really need to know the time.”

Eddie scowled and looked away, then fumbled at his pants pocket and pulled out a watch. “Half past eleven,” he said, fumbling again to replace it and nearly missing the pocket when the storekeeper suddenly appeared with his order. The boy slung the two feed sacks over his shoulders and left the store without giving William another glance.

Walking to the other end of the counter to place his own order, William counted the first skirmish as his, although the victory had no practical merit in the course of the war.

Two more days passed, and in those days William tended the children and worked to keep up with his chores but no longer as a sleepwalker stumbling through an endless succession of hours. The tiny flame in his brain that had sparked to life on hearing of the murder now bore a steady light, neither flickering nor dancing but glowing brighter and stronger with each passing day. On the third day he determined it was time, or well past time, to talk to the sheriff. The boy had already been dead for two weeks and William had heard nothing more about it.

He dropped the girls off at Lottie Calvin’s place, partly because she had been pestering him for weeks to accept some help and partly because he did not want them to hear his conversation with the sheriff. Louisa screamed as if she was being thrown to the devil and Callie attached herself to his leg, but he had to let them out of his sight sometime, so he passed them over to Lottie, waited till she had hold of them, and left. There was nothing for it but to close his heart as best he could, though Louisa’s screams echoed in his brain all the way to the county jail.

He had known the sheriff would be hard to nail down and it took three more stops before he found Sheriff Clayton Burwell engaged in a game of horseshoes behind the gristmill. Even though prodded by his own impatience, he knew better than to interrupt the game. Hoping the man he needed the ear of would win, he watched and waited until Arnold Morgan got two ringers in a row and Sheriff Burwell was undeniably defeated. Without giving the man a chance to engage in the usual banter, William stepped up to him and asked for a word.

“Sure, Will, what’s on your mind?” Burwell asked, rubbing his palms against his trouser legs and then lifting a tankard that sat on the ground beside them. “That was a stinker, wasn’t it? Two back-to-back and by Arnold Morgan.”

“Rotten luck,” William said, and then rushed on while the man was taking a drink. “I was wondering, Clayton, what’s been done about that Grant boy’s killing. It happened near my place, you know, close enough for me to hear the whole thing.”

Burwell exhaled with satisfaction and shook his head. “That was a bad thing, killing a half-wit boy like that: cutting his throat like a hog and leaving him laying in the road to bleed to death. Some folks are too damn mean to live and that’s the truth.”

“And?” William prompted and waited, but the sheriff was deeply engaged in slaking his thirst and dismissing his horseshoe opponents with a wave and a few acid remarks. When it seemed as if he had forgotten the subject altogether, William brought it up again.

“Have you gotten anybody for it yet?” he asked. “Josh Miller told me he was going to talk to you about it — ​about what he knew. Or what he thought he knew.”

“He did,” the sheriff said, and collecting the horseshoes from the far stake, he walked over to the back of the mill and hung them on a nail. “I listened to him and I thanked him.”

“And?” William said again, wondering if the man was thick. “What came of it? What are you doing about Eddie Bishop?”

“I rode over to the sawmill one day when he was working. I asked him if he had anything whatsoever to do with the killing of Johnny Grant. He said no, or I believe it was, hell no. I asked him if he’d gotten himself a new watch recently, that someone had seen him with one the day after the killing and it looked mighty suspicious, and I wanted to know the truth. He said he had got a new watch recently and not that it was any of my damned business, but Wendell Pike gave it to him because it seems Wendell was figuring on getting himself a new one and didn’t need it anymore. Not that it was any of my damned business, I believe he added in case I missed it the first time.”

“And?”

“And what, Will?”

“What did you do then? What else did you ask him?”

“I asked him nothing else. Told him he could do with a damned sight more respect for the law and left. What more was there for me to ask him?”

“Ask him if you could see the watch, see if it looked like Johnny’s.”

“I don’t know what Johnny’s watch looked like. Do you?”

“No, but somebody must have seen it, somebody at that sawmill or some neighbor. Or a shopkeeper, maybe.”

“Will, I’ll tell you what I told Josh Miller. That boy had no living relatives. The only neighbor that cared a whit about him was old lady Cox who lives in that shack down the road from him, and she’s blind as a bat and couldn’t tell a pocket watch from a wagon wheel. I think it’s an act of pure evil what was done to that boy — ​a gentle soul like that — ​but without a witness, without something to link a man to the killing beyond a bunch of guesswork and just plain talk, there’s not a thing I can do about it. You got anything to add? Josh said you heard the whole thing happen. You hear Eddie Bishop’s voice? Or Wendell Pike’s? Hear Johnny yell out their names or anybody else’s?”

“No. I heard voices, but—”

“But they could have been anybody’s. The dogs were barking up a storm, you said that yourself. I got no reason to hang any crime on Eddie Bishop because he’s got himself a new pocket watch. There’s nobody to say it was Johnny’s, and frankly, Will, like I told you, nobody gives a tinker’s damn that the boy’s gone, beyond the awful meanness of it. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. The only way the Bishop boy’s got any chance of being brought up for that killing is if someone finds the money pouch or that locket in his possession, and you can be damned sure nobody’s going to, not at this point. Or, even more unlikely, if he confesses. Or, best of all, if Johnny Grant rises up out of the grave and points a finger at Eddie and says, That’s the one who cut my throat. The boy’s off scot-free, Will, and there’s not a thing for it, not a thing.”

“Maybe not,” Will said. He thanked the sheriff for his time and determined to himself that there must be a thing for it, that he would find the thing for it, and the thing he found would bring that dead boy justice.

It was the first thing that had made sense in weeks.

The sheriff had given him no satisfaction but several ideas. Find the money pouch and locket. This had no realistic value, since Eddie Bishop, although rough, was not stupid and would know these two things would link him to the crime. The sheriff’s favored option, Johnny rising up from the grave, was also not worth wasting a thought on, although with his newfound fantasy of Hannah doing the same, it was hard for William not to picture this, picture the boy coming forth from the earth and finding justice for himself.

A confession seemed only slightly more possible. Any man who would do such a deed would not have to worry with being pricked by a conscience. Either he had none or a conscience so twisted that his only notion of good and evil involved injustice to himself. William thought and thought, he thought while covering seeds, while chopping wood and combing hair and collecting eggs. He thought of Johnny Grant and the boy’s naive trust and how it had probably helped to kill him, and he thought of Eddie Bishop and his meanness and greed, which would probably kill him one day but hadn’t yet. He had taken everything the Grant boy had in the world, even his dogs, at least one of which had been cut for pure meanness, and he had taken his mama’s locket, which had been taken for greed. Done everything, Josh Miller had said, but open up the boy’s mouth and...

William, as though suddenly bewitched, put the egg in his hand back into the nest and sat back on his heels in the floor of the chicken coop. Gold teeth. If the boy had had them, the killers would want them. But only if they thought they were there.

The new plan, conceived in an instant after weeks of pondering, was as obvious as it was frightful. William faulted himself for not thinking of it the same night Josh had spoken the words, for not going home at once for the shovel and rope. The trouble was, then as now, he would need some help.

He had not had much use for the preacher since Hannah had died. The man, who had no wife to miss and no children to raise alone, had asked William to accept the unacceptable. The idea that Hannah was in heaven did not warm William’s bed at night, nor dry her daughters’ tears. To the girls, William spoke of Hannah being in a better place; to himself, he only knew of a stone and six feet of earth.

He had spoken to no one about his thoughts, for they were surely blasphemous, and as bitter as he was, there were still the girls to think about, their place in the community and their future, for who would want to bring into the fold of their family the daughter of a blasphemer? The few remarks he had made, sentiments that had leaked out after several mugs of rum, had been to Josh, who had suggested, stupidly, that he speak his mind to the Reverend Brown. At the time, William had likened that notion to thrusting a scalded hand into the fire. Now he had a real use for the man. What he was planning was against the law and was on church property. More importantly, he needed another pair of eyes and ears to make the scheme work, a pair of eyes and ears that carried the weight of moral authority behind them. Who better, if he could be convinced of the sanity of the scheme, than the Reverend Brown?

For several more days William went about his farm work, rehearsing and carrying out the plan in his mind, flinching at the open horror of it but at the same time reveling in the idea that it might work and the boy might ultimately rest in peace.

He made inquiries of his more pious neighbors about when the preacher’s circuit would bring him their way, about where he’d be staying and how long. Finding this out, he did what he had to do. Come the Reverend Brown’s Sunday, William scrubbed the girls the night before, dressed them in their cleanest dresses, suffered through the purgatory of hair combing, and went to church.

The service lasted two hours and consumed most of his patience, the socializing with friends and neighbors the rest. He had spent half an hour watching the girls gather bluets for their mother’s grave by the time most all of the wagons had gone, finally giving him a chance to speak to the minister privately. He had originally thought to invite the man home for a meal, but Callie and Louisa were terrified of him and William did not want to start a series of nightmares that might go on for weeks. Instead he requested a private meeting for later that night, around nine if it was possible, as he had already arranged to leave the girls with a neighbor and his need to speak with the reverend was urgent.

After laying out his request, William willed the preacher to accept it. If he did not, if he balked or as much as hemmed and hawed, William planned to plead an immediate need for spiritual guidance, for salvation from hell, for anything that would draw the man to the church at nine o’clock.

He was relieved when the Reverend Brown immediately agreed to the meeting. Figuring he was chalking up sins fast enough without lying to a man of God, William gathered up the girls and left the churchyard quickly, before the preacher had a chance to ask him what it was about.

The girls had cried again at being left, and William wondered at the condition of his own heart that he felt simple sadness for this instead of agony, that his newfound craving for justice had grown stronger than his need to spare his children pain. He had assured them they were needed to keep Aunt Lottie company, kissed them both, and left. Riding to the church, rehearsing his upcoming speech in his head, he felt something akin to excitement. The emotion was so foreign, he wondered again at his own sanity.

Tying up at the church, he tilted his watch into the moonlight to check the time. He had thirty minutes to spend with Hannah before the minister arrived. Lighting the candle he’d tucked into his saddlebag, he walked around to the back of the church and found the stone he had carved weeks ago with the girls’ wilted wildflowers lying atop it. It was the first time he had been alone with Hannah since she had gone.

He stood for a moment, then knelt down; not, he assured God, to display any piety, but in order to be closer to Hannah. He had intended to send his thoughts to wherever she was, to commune with her even if the communication was only one way. But after a few minutes the ache to touch her was so great he grew weary of fighting it. Touching his fingers to his lips and then to the earth above her, he left the burying ground and walked back around to the front of the church.

If God was inside, William had no desire to be, so he put the candle out and settled on the front stoop to wait for the preacher.

When the man finally arrived, William stood up and led the way into the tiny sanctuary. Using the church’s tinderbox, he relit the candle, set it on top of the stove, and settled on the first bench. Impatiently he listened through the Reverend Brown’s small talk, waited while the man settled down beside him and placed a tattered Bible on the pew between them. The sight of it loosened William’s tongue.

“You can put that book away, Reverend, because we won’t be needing it. Although you might take issue with that after hearing me out.”

“If you don’t mind,” the minister said, “I’ll leave it between us. Even if you’ve got no use for it, I might. And it’s not impossible it could help you, William.”

Damn Josh Miller and his flapping tongue, William thought, but he didn’t plan to argue, at least not that particular point. He bore on to the business he’d come for.

“Reverend, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a boy was murdered here a couple of weeks ago, an idiot boy named Johnny Grant.”

The Reverend Brown nodded. “I heard about the fact of it happening. I didn’t hear much more than that.”

“Well, I heard the whole thing happen,” William said, and again in his mind he heard the dogs barking and barking and then silent. “The ones that did it slashed his throat, stole his money pouch and his mama’s locket and his pocket watch, and cut his dogs. They did that last just for meanness. Then left the boy there in the road to die alone, bleed to death while his dogs bled with him, one beside him and one off somewhere else. He lived alone and he died alone with not even a dog to comfort him. And the ones who did that to him walked away and are going about their business while that boy lies back of the church in swampy ground that butts up against the woods. Dead for all time and nobody thinking much of it but what an awful shame it was and what a meanness. But what can anybody do about it without some kind of proof saying who did it?”

“Does anyone know anything at all?”

“It was done by Eddie Bishop,” William said, “with some help, I believe, from Wendell Pike. Eddie was showing off a new watch soon after it happened and cutting up with Wendell like they were big bugs, and you know Wendell thinks he is one, what with his daddy owning the sawmill. I think they just got tired of Johnny hanging around and the two of them cooked up a scheme to get rid of him and line their pockets at the same time. I want them to pay for that. The Grant boy had nothing in life. The least he deserves is justice in death and I aim to get it for him. Don’t tell me about the great reward he’s receiving in heaven or the better place he’s in right now, about how we should envy him. Right now he’s under six feet of swamp ground.”

William waited for recriminations, lectures, even a sermonette on his impiety, but the Reverend Brown simply looked at him for a moment. In the candlelight, William could read nothing in the man’s face except fatigue. Suddenly the preacher seemed more human than divine and William felt some of his own hostility drain away.

“I need your help, Reverend,” he said, and when the Reverend Brown nodded and said, “Go on,” William took a deep breath and explained his scheme in full.

Again the preacher was silent for several moments. When he reached down for the Bible, William stiffened in his seat.

“If you’ve got a bone to pick with me, Reverend, I’d rather hear it from you than from that book there. With all due respect, I’ve not had much use for it since Hannah died, and I don’t see how it could help with what’s facing us here. If you can’t see your way clear to help me, I’ll do it alone. But I intend on doing it, one way or the other.”

“On the contrary, William,” the Reverend Brown said, and tilting his Bible toward the candlelight, he flipped its pages quickly at first and then slowly and then one at a time until he’d found the thing he was looking for. Running one finger down the page, he stopped near the middle and looked up at William. “Of course I’m going to help you. Do you think I don’t want murderers brought to justice? I’ll help you, but it’ll have to be soon. I can’t stay past Thursday night or I won’t make it to Calvary Springs by Saturday afternoon. You’ll have to get things in motion quickly and pray they go as you need them to. It’s so outlandish it just might work.”

“It’ll work, Reverend. I intend to be sure of that.” William stood, impatient to get back to the girls. “You got all the details straight for your part, times and everything?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Good. Then I’ll do what I have to do tomorrow night, and come Tuesday night we’ll see if we can’t get that confession that Burwell needs.” William took up his candle and was ready to leave the church when politeness forced him to acknowledge that the Reverend Brown was still sitting with his fingers on a passage of scripture. “You got something under your finger there, Reverend, before we set off for home?”

“I do,” the minister said, “and I want you to remember this on Monday night, when you’re standing behind the church, ready to start on the boy’s grave. Remember that you won’t be alone.”

The sanctuary was quiet for a moment as the Reverend Brown found his place, and then the words came softly into the silence, filling the room as if God himself were speaking.

“The Lord killeth, and maketh alive; he bringeth down to the grave” — ​here the preacher looked him straight in the eye — ​“and he bringeth up.”

William nodded, acknowledging the man’s point so he’d close his Bible and go home.

The plan would be carried out in three parts. The first part, and undeniably the hardest, would have to be completed on Monday night. That would be the setting of the trap. On Tuesday morning there would be the bait to cast about, and on Tuesday night the prey would be ensnared by their own greed, if everything went according to plan. Or if anything went according to plan, William had to admit to himself.

He spent Monday going over the details of the evening that lay before him. In addition to spinach seeds to sow, there was a considerable amount of wash to be done. Jabbing down on the garments in the washtub with a hoe handle, William considered what tools he’d need for his evening’s work. A shovel, certainly. A lantern to see what he was doing. An ax and a clawhammer because he didn’t know if the boy had been buried in a coffin or a winding sheet. A pint of rum to keep his nerves steady and keep his hands moving. Rope to pull the body up and a feed sack to move it in.

What to do with the boy’s body in the interim had been a thorny problem, but the Reverend Brown had finally suggested that he himself could find a few hours on Monday afternoon to leave his parishioners on the pretext of needing a time of private prayer.

Then, a few hundred feet into the forest surrounding the cemetery, he would dig the boy a temporary resting place. The prayer story, he assured William, would be no lie. He would surely be praying with every shovelful of earth that justice would be visited on the living and the dead. The new grave would be flagged with a strip of white cloth and William prayed the preacher would remember this detail. He had no desire to stumble around in the dark dragging a dead man in need of a grave.

He made the girls a special supper of buckwheat cakes dredged in molasses, and as darkness fell, he told them a story about how lonely Aunt Lottie would be tonight if they didn’t come again, and how she said she would make gingerbread and keep it warm near the fire just for them. He had told Lottie only that he was feeling the need to make frequent trips to the church. Assuming his need was of a spiritual nature, she was happy to tend to the girls. Let her think what she will, William thought. When Callie asked him about the tools he was assembling in the wagon before they left, he told her he would be digging potatoes and hoped she would forget his answer before she had a chance to tell Lottie that he was digging potatoes in April in a churchyard.

He left them on the warmth of Lottie’s hearth, without tears this time, a fact he was grateful for. As soon as he was a good half mile from Lottie’s place, he stopped the wagon and reached under the seat for the jug of rum he’d stowed there. His nerves, which had been none too steady all day, were beginning to work on his hands, making them tremble a bit as he thought of the job he’d cut out for himself. He had shoveled tons of soil without a thought, but now it would be a delicate operation, else he could harm the boy further, a thought that sickened him. He held the jug in his hands, waited for the first swallow to settle, then took another drink. That would be all for a while. He could not afford to get drunk, at least not until his evening’s work was done.

Pulling up in front of the church, he was relieved to find it dark and silent — ​no late-night parishioners seeking guidance such as Lottie imagined him to be. He waited in front of the building for a moment to be sure no one was coming down the road from either direction, then got down from the wagon and took hold of the reins. With the lantern held high in one hand, he led Gus around to the rear of the church and pulled the wagon up as close behind the back wall as he could get it. Any late-night traveler riding by must see nothing but a dark church and an empty graveyard.

Tying Gus to a pine at the corner of the building, he took the tools and feed sack and carried them down to the boy’s grave. Coming back to the wagon, he picked up the jug and finally the lantern, which he turned down to a flame the size of a feather tip.

He stopped at Hannah’s grave for a moment and wondered if she knew what he was about to do and if she knew, did she approve. But he could feel nothing of her tonight, only the darkness and isolation of the place, and he wondered if his nerve would hold out for the duration of the task.

Bidding her farewell for now, he lifted the lantern and the rum and walked downhill to the soggy ground where Johnny Grant lay buried and where Johnny Grant would soon not lie buried, courtesy of William and his shovel.

Taking another drink before he began, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and put the jug down close by. Then he picked up the shovel and set to work.

He rose late the next morning and, after a breakfast of bread, butter, and coffee, went to work on the second part of his plan. Today he would cast the bait. This could involve one stop or many, depending on how long it took him to find his prey. He hoped it would only involve one stop — ​the sawmill where Eddie Bishop was known to show up on occasion and work. No matter what, William intended to keep hunting the boy until he found him.

He had left the girls at Lottie’s overnight and stopped by to see them and to spin another lie to Lottie. His conscience, which had lain dormant for weeks, had begun to prick him, but the lying would soon be done. The plan would come to its conclusion tonight, either to success or failure. Either the prey would take the bait or not, either the boys would both come or not, either the words of confession would be spoken or not. He challenged God to make it happen while dismissing the hope that he would. He had once beseeched God to stop Hannah’s bleeding and beseeching had proved useless. He doubted a challenge would go much further, but it was the closest he could get to prayer.

His first stop, at the sawmill, came to nothing. Wendell Pike’s father was just finishing up a small order and had not needed extra manpower. Eddie Bishop, if he had come, had not been needed and had not stayed. William thanked the man, said he’d consider the price for boards they’d discussed, and left, marveling at the ease with which he was concocting and delivering lies.

He tried the gristmill next, with no luck, and then the tannery, in case Eddie or Wendell was passing time there and jawing with some of the other boys, and then the store, where he was told Eddie had come and gone after doing some business. Everywhere someone would listen, William spun his tale, the one he wanted spread around until it would be impossible for Eddie Bishop and Wendell Pike not to hear it, even if they didn’t hear it from him. Figuring he could never be so lucky as to find Eddie or Wendell at the tavern, William went in anyway to get himself a drink and spread his bait around a bit more. When he found Eddie Bishop inside, kneeling over a game of marbles, William made a tentative pact with God to reconsider his new faithlessness.

Having found his prey, he looked about for a suitable ear to hear his tale. The tavern was not thickly crowded, with it being the middle of a working day, but there were a few men like himself, slaking their thirst before or after attending to business, and a group of ne’er-do-wells over in the corner with Eddie, some engaged in and some watching the game in progress. William ran himself a mug of rum, took a chair at a table as close to the marble group as possible, and began speaking with great drama to a man he had never seen before in his life.

“Traveler?” he asked, turning his chair so his voice would be projected into the marble corner.

The stranger nodded. “Passing through on my way to Charleston.”

“You wouldn’t be Johnny Grant’s uncle, then.”

“Never heard of him,” the stranger said. “My name’s Davis.”

“Oh,” William said, and held out his hand to the man. “Will Gibson’s the name. Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Davis. Not that I’m trying to meddle in your business, but we’re expecting a visitor to the neighborhood and I thought you might be him, seeing as how I didn’t know you. Pretty important man coming here, as I understand it. Coming here to do a sorrowful thing, though.”

“Is that right?” Davis said, and William could see he had aroused the man’s interest, as he had hoped to. “And what would that be, if you don’t mind telling it.”

“Don’t mind a bit, seeing as how everybody will know it sooner or later. This gentleman who’s coming here, Beau Grant’s his name, he had a nephew here name of Johnny Grant, who was robbed and killed a couple of weeks ago. Cut down in the road just like a dog and left to bleed to death. The poor boy didn’t have his right mind and didn’t have any relations here, so he was buried in a soggy old grave behind the New Hope Methodist Church and we all thought that was the end of it. But that was before his Uncle Beau got wind of what happened.”

Davis sat up lazily in his chair and scowled at William. “If the boy didn’t have any relations, then who told his uncle?”

“Well,” William said, thinking fast and cursing the stranger Davis for being so quick-witted, “one of the women of the church, who knew about this uncle, she sent him a letter about it. And just the other day she got one back.”

William looked over to the marble corner and saw Eddie had lost his turn and had moved back a bit from the group. Judging from his intense frown, William assumed he was concentrating on something other than marbles.

The stranger nodded as if that were the close of the subject and swilled his drink. William continued as if he’d been asked for more.

“Seems like this uncle, Beau Grant, is a wealthy man and didn’t like the notion of his blood kin being cut up and left to die and then buried in swamp ground. He’s a good man, this uncle is, because he hardly knew the boy and knows he didn’t have a thing to his name hardly except what the thieves took off him, and of course that’s gone. Not a thing left on the face of this earth but that row of gold teeth in his mouth,” William said. “After all,” he added, and chuckled, “what thief would have thought of opening up a boy’s mouth and plucking out his gold teeth, even if they would bring a pretty penny?”

The stranger was looking at him as if he were daft, but William plowed on, rewarded by Eddie’s rapt attention. The boy was now clearly paying no mind to the marble game in front of him.

“So what Beau Grant’s fixing to do is only because he wants the boy to rest in peace in a nice place and near to one relative at least. He’s expected sometime tomorrow, and he’s going to dig that boy up and take him back to his own home and put him in the family burying ground up where he lives near Richmond. Coming all this way to carry that boy to a proper grave, that’s a good man.”

Davis nodded in agreement. “Train? Ugly work to carry a body that far any other way.”

“Horse and wagon,” William said without thinking, then quickly set out to cover his mistake. “He is a rich man; in fact, he paid for those teeth, but he wants to keep the boy in his hands and under his care all the way. Feels like he’s suffered enough at the hands of strangers. So tonight will likely be the last night that poor boy will spend in his grave behind the church, God rest his soul. His uncle will have him up by tomorrow night and on his way back home.” William spoke the word tonight a little louder than the rest and hoped the gears would start turning in Eddie’s head.

“Well, he’s a better man than I am,” Davis said, and finished his drink. “I can’t say I’d be real eager to dig up a body that’s been put down for weeks and tote it a couple of hundred miles with me on the back of a wagon. A grave’s a grave, regardless of where it is. Why go to the trouble, especially since he hardly knew the boy?”

“It’s just the kind of man he is,” William said, and rushed to finish his speech because the stranger was brushing off his coat and pushing back his chair. “And it won’t be that much trouble, not with the kind of spring we’ve had. It’ll take some time, that’s true, but the earth’s neither crusty dry nor heavy sodden. ’Course where the boy is, the soil’s damp all the time and it would be a lot quicker job for two men than one. But I expect Mr. Grant can get some help if he needs it. Good luck to you, sir,” he finished, and stood up himself. “I hope your business goes well in Charleston.”

Mr. Davis nodded in response and made his way out of the tavern. William walked over to the keg, ran himself another rum, and sat back down at the table. He could not have asked for the second part of the plan to run more smoothly. The bait had been cast and he just had to wait and see if the fish were biting.

He stretched his legs out under the table and leaned back in the chair, sipping at the rum and watching Eddie reenter the marble game. It was with great satisfaction that William saw him lose his turn right off.

The hours before dusk had to be filled, so he filled them with his daughters, playing games and telling stories between the chores that could not be postponed. Finally, when the shadows were slanting long and narrow, he told them another story about how Aunt Lottie would need them for just one more night, and then she’d be all right on her own, and they could sleep in their own beds at home once again. He dropped them off with little fanfare, except for Lottie’s questions, which he pretended not to hear. Tomorrow he would tell her everything. Tonight he had nothing on his mind but capturing his prey. Again the church was dark and the churchyard empty when he got there. Riding around to the back, he dismounted, shouldered his shotgun, and scanned the woods that surrounded the small burial ground. If the Reverend Brown had gotten there first, he had hidden himself well. William saw nothing but tree trunks and undergrowth dissolving into blackness.

He led Gus into the woods on one side, and after tying up to a sturdy persimmon tree, he stepped back into the clearing. Following along the edge of the woods, he turned to look where Hannah lay but dared not stop because the cover of darkness was complete, and his prey would be eager for their treasure. Stepping back into the forest just behind the boy’s grave, he squinted and finally, some twenty feet in, caught sight of a glint of metal. Stepping another yard sideways, he saw a faint glow emanating from behind a large tree trunk. Moving forward as quietly as he could, he walked in toward the light and found the Reverend Brown sitting cross-legged beside an ancient oak tree, his Bible open on his lap. Next to him, hidden from direct view by the massive trunk, a kerosene lantern was glowing. Sitting beside that, wedged upright into the oak leaves, was a silver flask.

“Didn’t know you were a drinking man, Reverend,” William said, settling down on the ground across the lantern from him. “Hope I haven’t driven you to it, with this scheme of mine. You’re a good man to help me.”

“You haven’t driven me to anything, William. I drink hot coffee even when I’m not spending a night in the woods trying to catch two killers. I just hope we won’t be needing that.” He nodded toward the shotgun over William’s shoulder. “And call me Mark, if you don’t mind. Seems like we’re going to be here too long to stand on formalities.”

William was struck dumb for a moment and then extended his hand as if he’d just met the man. “I never figured on you having a first name somehow. Stupid of me.”

“That’s all right,” the preacher said, and offered his hand in return. “Lots of folks feel that way. Coffee?” he asked, and lifted the flask.

“Don’t mind if I do,” William said, and took a drink. It was perfect, lukewarm and strong. “How long have you been here, Mark?” He said the name only with difficulty, as if breaching a taboo.

“I got here just before dark and checked inside the church to make sure it was empty. Found this spot and got settled in about a half hour ago. I expect we’ve got a long night ahead of us. You got the boy... up all right?”

“Yep,” William said, remembering the soft resistance of the shovel tip when it met flesh. “The poor soul was put down in a sheet, not even a decent coffin.”

“That’s a shame, but made your work last night easier. You find the new spot all right?”

“I found it,” William said, remembering himself pulling the boy’s body behind him, his handkerchief up to his nose. “Don’t you suppose we ought to turn that light down, Reverend — ​Mark, in case one of them is sharp-eyed and looks this way?”

“There’ll be time enough for that. We’re liable to be here a couple of hours before they come and I’d planned on doing a little studying. We hear anybody coming, we can put it out in a second. You couldn’t see it from the back of the church, could you? I couldn’t when I looked.”

“No,” William admitted. “And I reckon we’ll hear them long before they could see us.”

The Reverend Mark Brown nodded and they said a few more things and then the preacher looked back down to his Bible. William moved back and leaned against a tree trunk. He closed his eyes, better to hear any hoofbeats in the distance, but all he heard was a chorus of spring peepers filling the night air with their singing.

He had not realized his own fatigue. Coming out of a restless sleep, he checked his watch and found that an hour and a half had passed. The sight of the minister still bent over the Bible in his lap gave William such a feeling of annoyance that he had to look elsewhere. Stretching out flat, his fingers interlocked under his head, he gazed up into the overhead limbs. After a few moments, his eyes got used to the dark and he searched out star patterns in the sky. He tried to find Virgil the sky bear but could only see scattered stars against a backdrop of eternal blackness.

And yards away from him, Hannah lay under the earth, just as isolated as any star overhead, her coffin nailed shut tight, another world of eternal darkness. Knowing the preacher was still reading, wasting the light of a lantern to study the meaningless ancient words, William felt his blood begin to run a little faster, his mind become a little sharper. He sat up and stretched his legs.

“Mark,” he said, still with difficulty because the existence of a Christian name made the man harder to hold at arm’s length.

The preacher stopped reading and looked over at him. “Yes?”

“How old are you?”

He closed the Bible, leaving a twig to hold his place. “Twenty-four.”

“You don’t have a wife, do you? Or children?”

The younger man smiled. “Hard to have one without the other.”

“But you don’t have either.”

“No, I don’t. Hope to, someday.”

“You hope to,” William repeated, feeling that some blister in his soul was about to burst and it would kill him if it did and kill him if it didn’t. The preacher’s face was earnest, interested, innocent of life as it really was. William knew now his goal was to erase that look on the younger man’s face and replace it with one that reflected life on earth.

“So,” William continued, pausing briefly as they both heard a horse coming down the road. The hoofbeats rose and then fell away into the night. After a moment the spring peepers, who had hushed for the disturbance, started their chorus again.

“So,” William repeated, “you don’t have a wife. If you did, would you love her?”

“I hope so,” the younger man said, and laid the Bible on the ground beside him. “That is the main idea on entering into marriage, I think. At least, in most cases.” His tone was still conversational, jocular; it was a lighthearted chat with a parishioner.

Around them the forest was teeming with life, with the singing of frogs and the stealthy movements of animals who lived their lives after dark and crept about the forest floor unseen. Even the treetops swayed gently in the night breezes, stoic and silent but alive nonetheless, the stream of life flowing into them from the dark earth below. This was the land of the living.

Twenty feet away was the land of the dead, where Hannah lay, now and forever.

“Ever see anybody bleed to death, Reverend Brown?” William said abruptly, and felt a rush of pleasure as the complacent face on the man of God melted away.

“I can’t say that I have,” he answered. “I’ve been at the bedside of the dying—”

“Ever seen someone you love bleed to death, regardless of what you did, ever watched the life seep out of them until their heart stopped and they lay staring at you, cold and dead? Ever put them away in the ground, Reverend, under six feet of earth and left them there and gone home alone?”

The minister’s face was somber now. William feared the man would reach for the Bible and start flipping pages, but he didn’t.

“No, I haven’t, William. I’ve lost loved ones, of course. Who hasn’t?”

“Of course,” William said, but in truth he had no mind for other folks’ loved ones at the moment. “I’ll tell you something, Reverend. I do appreciate you trying to help me catch these boys. I don’t know if they’ll even come or not, but at least we did what we could and maybe the Grant boy can rest in peace knowing that. But I can’t say I want the Almighty here too, in the form of that book you keep reading. I don’t have much use for the book or its subject.”

William felt a strange sense of liberation, as if he had just had words with God himself, expressing an anger that had existed since time began. He waited for the preacher to sermonize, but the blasted man just kept looking at him, waiting. William decided to give him what he was waiting for.

“You said at Hannah’s funeral that we’d see her again. Well, it doesn’t make me feel any better that I’ll see her in fifty years or ten years. I want to see her tonight. I want to see her now.” He stopped and thought of her just thirty yards away and forever beyond his grasp, and the cruelty of it enraged him. “Can you show me,” he said, nearly choking on his own anger, “can you show me one verse in that damned Bible of yours that justifies a mother being taken from two daughters who need her? One reason that makes sense, why God allowed her to bleed to death when he could have spared her?” By the last sentence he was shouting. He couldn’t help himself.

“No, I can’t, William,” the preacher said. “There’s absolutely nothing in the Bible to make sense of it, and no one could truthfully say that there is.”

William waited for the next part, for the list of buts — but our Heavenly Father knows what’s best; but we have to rely on faith alone; but Hannah was called by God to be an angel; but we’ll all understand one day. Instead the minister was finished. A fountain of rage that had been building for weeks and would have erupted if the man had said more suddenly eased off and dissipated. William slumped against a tree trunk and took a deep breath. The blister had burst at last and had not killed him.

He was still catching his breath when they heard more hoofbeats. The minister held up one hand for silence as the animals slowed and then stopped in front of the church. Around them the spring peepers abruptly fell silent.

“It’s them all right,” Mark whispered into the darkness. He had extinguished the lantern on hearing the horses being led around to the back of the church.

Lying low, silent and motionless, they heard intermittent talking and a loud nervous giggle coming from behind the church. After a pause of several moments, a light sprang to life near the building. While William watched, it diminished slightly and then began moving from the back of the church to the lower end of the cemetery.

“They’ve got a lantern,” he whispered from where he lay stretched on his belly. “They just turned it down because they don’t want to be seen back there at work. I did the same thing when I dug the boy up last night.”

Finally the lantern stopped moving and appeared to hover in the air for several moments. Then they set it down and William heard the sound he had been hoping for since a row of shiny gold teeth had popped into his mind like a dream. They were digging in the earth, lifting the soil away from a boy they had robbed once and now a corpse that they hoped to rob again. William smiled.

A half hour passed and then another and William thought his soul would burst from the flesh, he was so impatient for the final scene to begin. At last, when the boys were waist deep, he whispered to the preacher, “Let’s move up now. They’re about halfway down and concentrating on the dirt under their feet. They’re not going to look up for another half hour at least. I’ll go first and find us a good spot. When you hear me stop, count to ten slow, then feel your way up till you find me.”

William moved forward on his hands and knees, putting his weight down silently like a cat stalking his prey. He stopped once, when they did, and waited for them to rest. After a moment he realized he might be missing just the thing he’d come to hear and so began moving forward again, an inch at a time. By the time he had gotten close enough to understand their words, they had taken up the shovels and gone back to work.

In a few minutes the Reverend Brown came up beside him, shaking and kissing the heel of his palm. “Sweetgum balls,” he whispered when William glanced at him. “How much deeper do you guess they’ll go before they start wondering?”

“We’ve got another good half hour of waiting time, I’d say. Settle down and get comfortable. Go to sleep if you want to. I’ll nudge you if they start getting peevish.”

“I’d just as soon keep my eyes open, William. Have you noticed those rifles they’ve got at the edge of that hole they’re working in?”

“Sure,” William said, patting the stock of his shotgun. “I’m ready for ’em,” he added, and then fell silent and watched as the diggers went deeper and deeper, their breath now tearing in and out of their lungs like fire. They spoke little, and when they did, the words were muffled by the thrusting and pulling of shovels.

“William,” Mark whispered after a bit, “you think we’ll be able to hear them from here? I can’t understand a word they’re saying.”

“We’re gonna have to,” William said, “because we can’t risk getting any closer. I don’t think we’ll have a problem once they get back on the surface and Eddie’s temper gets fired up.”

The Reverend Brown nodded and the ground crackled as he shifted his position. Still they watched as the diggers went down into the ground, until at last they were watching shovelfuls of soil flying up from a gaping hole in the earth. When one of the boys scrambled up and out and took the lantern back into the pit with him, William gripped the preacher’s arm.

“Get your ears ready, Mark. I reckon they’ve gone far enough now to start expecting their reward.”

For fifteen minutes there was nothing but an unearthly glow from the grave and random scrapings and William knew they were checking for substance beneath the soil. There was some indistinct mumbling, then more soil came flying out of the open hole, and more scraping, and finally Wendell Pike’s head and the lantern appeared at the edge of the pit. In a moment the rest of him followed, hoisted up by Eddie. When Eddie followed and thrust his shovel into the ground like a spear, William held his breath.

“How far down do you reckon they put him?” Wendell said, and his voice had a nervous edge to it that William relished. “We musta gone six feet by now.”

“Yeah, we’ve gone six feet,” Eddie said, stalking around the grave but looking at Wendell. “We went six feet pretty damn quick seems like to me. That dirt lifted up mighty easy, like it’s been lifted up before, lately. What do you guess, Wendell?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Wendell answered, turning with Eddie as he paced back and forth. “Of course it was lifted easy. He ain’t been put down but a couple of weeks.”

“You know damn good and well what I’m talking about,” Eddie said, his voice rising a few notches. Good, William thought, his temper was already outstripping his caution.

“All I know,” Wendell said, “is I just spent half the night digging up an empty hole in the ground. How do you even know this is where they put him?”

“’Cause this is the only grave in the swamp ground. You see another one, Wendell? And you’re the one who walked right down here to it, even though I was carrying the lantern. You knew where it was right off, didn’t you? You musta done it this afternoon, musta gone straight from your place after I told you about it. I reckon it didn’t matter if you got caught ’cause your big old daddy would get you out of it.”

“Done what?” Wendell said, getting in Eddie’s face and shouting. “Done what?”

“You know what,” Eddie said, and jerking his shovel out of the earth, he slung it into the field of headstones that stood as mute witnesses to his fury. “You came out here already this afternoon and dug him up and knocked them teeth out of his head and probably already traded ’em off. Then let me come out tonight and dig at an empty hole for two hours.”

“You’re crazy,” Wendell shot back, and the shouting began in earnest. “I never been out here before in my life, but you thought the idea up, so maybe it was you that dug him up, then was too scared to admit it and tried to blame it on me. How stupid do you think I am?”

“How stupid do you think I am?” Eddie yelled back in his face.

“Stupid enough to miss half a dozen gold teeth in a dead man’s mouth.”

“Like you didn’t?”

“I’m not the one who had their hands on him, am I, Eddie? I’m not the one who killed him.”

“You reckon I opened his mouth and looked in after I finished him?” Eddie shouted, pushing Wendell backward into the dirt pile.

William sat up at once, his fingers closing over the shotgun beside him.

“At last, thank the good Lord,” the Reverend Mark Brown said aloud, getting stiffly to his feet. “You ready to end this, William?”

“I am,” William said. “Thank the good Lord, at last.”