I kicked the toe of my dusty brown boot through the red cake batter that was now forming at my feet. The dirt oozed across the burned-out lawn, aided only by gravity and the viscous outpouring of blood that leaked from the boy’s cranium.

The shovel bit into the rock and grit with an unnerving scraping sound. With each strike, the forest seemed to shrink further away in judgment, or maybe fear. 

“Only five more feet to go!” I called, speaking to no one, but also the boy. “No, no, stay there. I’ve got it!”

I glanced at the boy as if I really thought he’d stand, grab a shovel, and dig his own grave, but I shook my head and slammed the shovel back into the dusty ground.

The sun was setting in the West, sending pink, shimmering reflections off the lake water and filling the yard with long, dark shadows, yet the air was still stuffy and hot. I pulled at the back of my shirt, unsticking it from my back. 

“Hard work, this cover up is,” I said to no one, but again to the boy. “Your fault,” I breathed heavily. “Last time I saw you alive, you were on your old man’s leg, bouncing up and down, rattling that rattler and smiling like Christmas—hell, it was Christmas. 2001.”

I threw the shovel down and reached into the top of my boot, pulling out a can of Copenhagen Long Cut. I ran my nail around the edge of the can and took a pinch and put it in my lip before returning the can. 

I picked the shovel back up from off the ground and returned to the hole, only about a foot and a half deep and twice as long. 

“He was so excited when he heard about his boy.” I paused and looked at the body again. “They’d been trying for months. And yes, I did have to hear about it. Every day!”

A soft breeze blew through the nearby trees and kissed my damp skin, and as it blew it gained strength and turned the dry dust of my lawn into the heart of the dust bowl, whipping fine dirt into the air and into my eyes and battering the bloody wound of the boys head like a pre-fry chicken leg. 

I dug faster.

The wind blew harder and harder, and soon the dark clouds rushed past the setting sun and stole the remaining daylight just before the race was over. Night had come early, and with it, bolts of lightning and ear drum bursting crashes of thunder, the bolts hitting so close that each one rendered me blind with orange.

The rain followed, and the smell of those first few drops hitting the thirsty dust took me back to springtime when I was a boy, catching bumble bees in peanut butter jars and climbing the elm tree like baboons until Mom called for us in the dark. 

A flash of lightning and I found myself staring at the dead boy. 

I kept digging. The water had made the shovelfuls heavy, but I was almost done.

As I dug, I began muttering his name. I kept saying it louder and louder until my six by six hole was finished, and I threw the last big rock from the hole and climbed out.

I looked at the boy.

“Mark.” I spit into the puddle that was now my lawn, and the red from Mark’s head was now spread so thin it was all but invisible. 

“Mark. Your grandpa’s name.” I grabbed him by the ankles and drug him close to the hole before rolling him on his side and then dropping him in. He landed hard, face down. 

I cursed and jumped into the hole after him, flipping him onto his back and closing his eyes. I pulled at his now broken nose, straightening it as best as I could. 

I climbed out of the hole for the last time.

“I’m sorry, Mark. I really am.” I spit again, the rain streaming down my face. I ran my hand through my sopping hair, removing it from my eyes. “But like I said, this is your fault.”

The bullet hole through his brain seemed to glare at me from within the grave, its gaping eye unmoving. 

“I won’t tell your father about all this. He’s mourned you once. And that’s enough.”

I began shoveling the mud onto the body, as I had with Mark’s father, years ago, except no longer under the watch of the congregation and the sobbing heap of the boy’s mother. 

“I don’t know what they did to you down there. I think the devil was involved, had to have been. People don’t just come back from something like that.”

As the rain turned to a light sprinkle, a wall of clouds to the West began flashing with bolts of lightning, and a few seconds passed and the thunder rumbled through the canyon below. 

“More rain coming. Better stay put for a while.” I patted the filled hole with the end of the shovel, packing the mud as well as I could. 

“In the meantime, I’ll dig another. Just know it’s waiting for you.” I put another pinch of Copenhagen in my lip, spitting on the grave.

I took a few steps to the North, walking about ten yards uphill and dug the tip of the shovel into the ground. Another round of thunder rumbled and shook the earth. 

“Six feet to go, Mark. Six feet up, six feet down.”