Frozen Hallowed Ground [justin]

6am. Morning coffee. Apple butter on rye toast.

Rex pulls back the canvas from the door frame and heads out ahead of the others. Pete turns off the kerosene heater and prepares the pull-wagon while Tom gathers the tools.

6 foot ladder, measuring rope. Gasoline. Wooden matches. Shovels and a pickax.

The sun is up but hasn’t crested over the mountains yet. The valley is still and radiant with the virgin snow reflecting any ambient light it can gather. The hamlet smells of cedar and cypress smoke which pours out from the chimneys of the thirty or so houses.

Brick and mortar, outside. Dim glow, inside.

Rex passes St. Jude’s Church of the Resurrection where he and Maggie were married about 5 years prior. The building tries to make eye contact with him, but Rex continues with his vision elsewhere and burrows his thick, worn hands deeper into his pockets. The snow has a thin layer of ice on it that breaks as treaded upon. Rex thinks to himself how it sounds as though the land is exhaling with each step, and wonders why it would hold its breath for so long.

Overwhelmed. Stubbornness. Horror.

Tom and Peter find Rex by the hillside, in the lonely part of a cemetery, staring at a poor man’s tombstone. Pete carefully and methodically measures out the plot and Tom pours gasoline first around its borders and then in its hub. Rex strikes a match on the side of the box and the flames quickly consume the snow and dead grass and for a brief moment flare up some green as the minerals in the dirt burn. The tundra is still frozen; if anything, the fire was memorial, something likened to a sacrament. “Guess we best get to work,” Pete mumbles.

1 meter wide, 2.4 long, 1.8 deep. 4.32 cubic meters. Concentration matters.

Folks tend to think it’s impossible to dig up a frozen grave site, when in reality it just takes 3 men who don’t mind sweating and being numb at the same time.

“May I ask what you boys are doing up here,” asks the would-be Sheriff who appears from nowhere.

Drunks. Lunatics. Grave robbers. Necrophiliacs.

“If you didn’t want anyone to notice you, you shouldn’t have set off that fire. My guess is that you’re looking for some gold or silver rings, maybe some heirlooms or such in the coffin below.”

“There’s no coffin below,” Rex said brashly.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. We all fall. Down.

Rex reached inside his pocket and handed the Sheriff a tattered piece of paper.

“I own this plot, sir. This is my land. I will do with it what I want.” Tom continued piercing the earth while Pete shoveled it away.

“What are you planning on doing here then, son,” the Sheriff said while handing back the deed, “bury yourself?”

“That’s already been done. This is my wife’s plot. She died 3 years ago.”

“Sorry to hear that, but I thought you said there was no coffin in that ground?”

Tom was getting annoyed by the law man’s “listening” skills.

“I did, sir. This is her place, her head stone. But when she and a few others all got sick and died around the same time, folks panicked and thought it was pestilence and would spread if they didn’t do something. So they burned the bodies… it wasn’t even a ceremony… no prayers, no order… just, just a pile of fear set ablaze. That’s when I left, and, I assume, shortly before you came into town.”

“That’d be about right. So where’d you go?”

“Two mountains over, three counties removed in coal country… to stay with her family. These are her brothers, Peter and Thomas. I’m Rex and, if you don’t mind, we have a lot of digging to do before sunset.”

“Pleasure, I’m sure. Still doesn’t answer what exactly you’re doing this morning.”

Rex took a moment.

“Maggie used to grow flowers and I was able to take a few with me when I left and keep some semblance of them over the past few years. But this year was rough and they didn’t re-grow for some reason. All I have left is a red one that’s been holding on for some reason. We’ve come to dig up Maggie’s plot, displace the dirt and plant the last one in the heart of the earth. I think she’d like that.”

“So you traveled three days, in the middle of winter, to spend countless hours digging in order to plant a flower in a hole and then fill it back up? Excuse me son, but that’s stupid… downright pointless and dangerous if you ask me.”

Peter and Tom looked at each other and then Rex.

Indignation. Exasperation. Pity.

Rex’s lips moved while his teeth stayed locked together. “Life is never pointless amongst death, only misunderstood.”

The Sheriff squinted his eyes, bit the inside of his cheek, spit and said, “I’d best be on my way, boys. Stay out of trouble, you hear?”

Rex, Pete, and Tom worked the rest of the day, not stopping to eat or even talk. They all thought about Maggie and what she meant to them in different ways. She was a gem even when she was pissing them off. The labor together uncovered memories of her that they had once forgotten and though they would never say anything, they all knew that day that there were tears mixed with their sweat.

Once they were finished, all three stood at the edge of the open grave, watching their breath escape them, and stared at their emphatic toil. The white snow clothed the brown mud which gave way visually to the red heart at the core. If nothing else, at least for a few minutes, it was a work of art. But the brothers and husband knew it was more than that as well.

Tom opened his mouth like a false start to a conversation, licked his lips, cleared his throat and then spoke. “She was always like that, you know… it didn’t matter if she was around the crude or the pure, she stuck out and shined differently than everyone around her.”

They shoveled the dirt back into the fissure of the earth, with no remorse or even thought of futility, knowing they loved and honored Maggie the best they knew how. Patting one another on the back, they packed up their tools and went back to their tent, resting and warming up and plotting their course for the morrow.

6pm. Evening coffee. Apple butter on rye toast. Maggie’s favorite.