Recapitulation:
Barry stepped to the edge of the shallow precipice and peered over. Along the sides of the grave, dirt crumbled downward as the woman continued her tantrum, thrashing against the coffin’s lid. She kept crying out, “No, no, no.” Barry got on his belly, arms dangling into the grave, ready to try to lift her out, when he noticed her fumbling at the lock on the casket, with some sort of metal shim. Up until now, Barry never understood what the point of locking a grave was. Unless you believed in zombies, in which case their increased strength and decreased pain sensation would allow for smashing through the lid anyway, making a lock pointless. Locks kept people in, not out.
The woman banged her fist against the lid, still etching away at the lock. “Miss, this isn’t the way, you’ve got to come out of there.” Slow, even tones, generic phrasing that couldn’t offend anyone, and once he got a grip on her, he’d drag her out like a breech birth.
She turned upwards, looking through Barry. “Look, Grandma’s got something that belongs to me. I dropped my ring in there during the wake, and I didn’t realize it was gone until a few minutes ago. That ring was the last thing she gave me, and she told me to remember her by it. When I was stroking her face and saying goodbye, the ring must have slipped off, it was too big, but I kept wearing it, I couldn’t help it, oh please please let me get that ring back, please, you’ve got to have a key.” Now she wailed, cried, stretched for Barry’s arms, then stretching towards the casket, tossing flowers about like a child with a box of tissues, making a spectacle.
“So, the picklock, was that also to remember her by?” Barry screwed up his face, arms still hanging over the edge, modern day Kilroy.
Those deep green eyes shifted, once warm and inviting as an emerald, now cold and hard as, well, an emerald. She frowned up at him, then tossed the shim. It bounced off his forehead. She scrabbled to the opposite edge of the grave, grabbed the crumbling edge, tried to pull herself out, but fell back in, more of the dirt tumbling after her.
“You’re supposed to leave a piece of your heart, not everything else.” Barry walked around to the other edge, grabbing his shovel and throwing in a nice clod of mushy mud. It splattered against her, cold and wet and dirty he thought. Sounded like a jellyfish hitting a wall.
“You ass.” Now her eyes were fiery and ready to bore holes through him. “Stop throwing that shit at me. If you don’t stop.” Empty warning, as another mud clump sealed her mouth shut and slathered her in a thick crust.
For his part, Barry loved tossing dirt onto a live person, he’d never had the opportunity before, and she gave him such a wonderful reaction. Ambling over to the mud pile, he scooped up another mudball, strolled back over to the new pit. The woman continued scraping earth from her face and her body, her clenched fingers flicking away the mud. Standing, her head peeked just above the surface of the pit. She grasped the felt carpet, gave a second go at trying to get out. Barry wound up and whapped the poor, dirty woman in the face. The load threw her off balance and she fell back into the pit, the casket clacking against her shoes.
“Let me out of here.” Now she sounded just as sad and desperate as before, though for a different reason. Barry chunked his shovel into the ground and leaned on the handle. He crossed his right leg over his left and peered into the depths. Poor woman, her black velvet dress now coated with mud, creating a Rorschach ink blot. Barry just saw more mud. She fumed, ready to blow her top. Her pixie-like brown hair matched the mud.
“Make me laugh. Tell me why I shouldn’t turn you in.” Thing was, even before Barry finished talking, he knew he wouldn’t turn her in. Just scare her, let her go. Life was too short, and was there any real reason why the deceased needed her trappings now? No. At least the woman might learn something. She’d at least broken up his day’s monotony.
“Did you see the rock on that ring? I’ll give you half.” As if that was enough, she scrambled over to the other side, knelt down on the coffin, her hand raised, palm up. “Come on, hand me my pick and let’s do this. We don’t have all day.” Mud-stained, humiliated, lacking any sort of control over the situation, she acted as if she’d been pulling the strings from minute one.
Barry no longer smiled. He stared at the tiny glint of metal, at her hand, calluses flowering all over it, at the walnut coffin with the metal ribs keeping it sturdy. Tilted his head back to allow the rain to trickle into his nostrils, down into his mouth. A hint of tang, wonderful acid rain. What could it matter? What did it matter? Today had already cracked his expectations apart. He let his shovel drop, picked up the shim, ran it through his fingers. Cold and lifeless, just like that coffin, just like that body. Life was for the living.
They didn’t pay him near enough to keep him from placing the shim in the woman’s hand. They only paid him enough to bury the evidence.
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