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| - Originally published on StoryStar 0214 An hour after sunrise, Julianna's husband slapped his hand to the back of his neck. Cursing foully, he began kicking up dirt and cucumbers in the small vegetable garden behind their log cabin. Kneeling in the potato patch, she turned to him and had wanted to say, "Don't make such a fuss, Eli! You wont die from a little bee sting. Let's get back to the weedin'." Now as they stood in late afternoon heat looking down at the crude, simple coffin her nearest neighbor had quickly knocked together, she was glad she said nothing. Usually it was best not to say anything that might rile Eli. She still had bruises from last time. And as it turned out, she was dead wrong anyway.
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| - Originally published on StoryStar 0214 An hour after sunrise, Julianna's husband slapped his hand to the back of his neck. Cursing foully, he began kicking up dirt and cucumbers in the small vegetable garden behind their log cabin. Kneeling in the potato patch, she turned to him and had wanted to say, "Don't make such a fuss, Eli! You wont die from a little bee sting. Let's get back to the weedin'." Now as they stood in late afternoon heat looking down at the crude, simple coffin her nearest neighbor had quickly knocked together, she was glad she said nothing. Usually it was best not to say anything that might rile Eli. She still had bruises from last time. And as it turned out, she was dead wrong anyway. Rebecca clung to her mother as they stood over the hole Jasper had just finished, sunk twenty feet from the cabin's east wall in the shade. She began softly weeping again and Julianna held her twelve-year-old a little tighter. Jasper threw the first blade-full of dirt on top of the rough coffin and Rebecca turned and ran toward the cabin door wailing. Julianna turned to grab her, but Jasper said, "Let her be, Julee. She was here for the prayers and the hymns we sung. That's enough. She don't need to stand here and watch her pa get covered with the dirt he came here to farm." She nodded. "S'pose you're right enough." Jasper threw in a couple more clumps of sod; the orange tinted dirt clods thumped against the box like a bass drum. "Jas, I'm real grateful for your kind help. I don't know what we'd a-done without you." After Eli had begun to stumble and groan, in a minute he fell into their small patch of lettuce and lay stiff and wide-eyed. Julianna went inside and broke the sad news to her daughter. They covered him with a heavy blanket, and then walked two miles down the dusty trail to Jasper Haskin's place. Being Monday, and the circuit preacher not due until Sunday, they couldn't let the body lay around all week. Jasper walked back with them and quickly built a long box out of some spare planks he found inside the curing shed. Jasper stopped throwing dirt a moment and looked kindly at her, as Eli never had. "The way y'all helped me after my Millie passed last year, I'm glad to do whatever I kin." Then he turned away and resumed shoveling before she saw what shone in his eyes: Hope. But it was too late. She'd seen it--been looking for it in fact. He picked up another spade-full of dirt. "Why don't you go see 'bout Rebecca." He threw the dirt in the hole. "'Speck she's a-needin' her mamma 'bout now." Julianna hesitated a moment and then suggested, "Why don't you go, Jas. You know she thinks the world of you." She waited, hoping he'd say yes, knowing it meant he would be a surrogate father to her daughter from now on. He planted the shovel blade in the mound of freshly dug dirt standing beside the grave, it's earthly stench permeating the whole yard. "All right." He nodded. "I'll finish this when she's calmed down." He started toward the door, but stopped halfway and turned back to Julianna, his gaze toward the ground. "Don't worry 'bout nothin', Julee. Ol' Jasper'll be here to take care of you and the girl." Julianna smiled sadly as he walked away. The wrinkles on her weathered twenty-nine year old face softening. She turned again toward the grave. The smile faded. "Eli," she said to the box only slightly covered with dirt. "I'm sorry you died. I know you didn't count much on religion, but I hope you went to a better place, one where things aint so blessed harsh." She hugged herself and looked over the small dirt farm nestled away in the Durham County pine forest. "I wish I could say I 'uz gonna miss you, that I loved you. . ." Beatings over trivial things like the dinner biscuits being overcooked, the love-making that had no love came to mind. "But to me a funeral is kinda like being in church. And I don't wanna stand 'fore God and tell a lie like Ananias did 'fore Peter and get struck dead." She turned to the cabin and recalled the day three years ago when they had moved to this North Carolina sharecropper homestead. She had Eli nail an iron horseshoe over the front door to ward off evil spirits. She stood on the step and said a prayer for angels to guard the house and not let the devil in. But 'Ol Scratch seemed to have arrived anyway. The winter of 1824 had been surprisingly harsh. It had been a constant struggle to keep a flame burning in the stone fireplace, a daily battle to place food on the rough-hewn table. Come summer, toiling the tobacco fields under a blazing sun, humidity engulfing like a damp shroud, she had passed out more than once. She began humming one of the tunes she'd picked up from the slaves who had worked the nearby fields. Somehow it helped her to feel a little less of a slave herself. She stopped and asked herself, "How can it be, somebody dying from a little bee sting?" A thump rose from the grave and Julianna turned around. Her jaw dropped at seeing the dirt on the coffin shift as the lid bumped slightly. Scary stories she'd heard of evil shades trying to take over the bodies of the recent dead came back to her. She trembled, frozen in place. A groan escaped from the hole. She wished she could scream but her throat was too constricted. Eli's muffled voice croaked, "Help me! Let me out!" The top planks bumped again, but the nails Jasper hammered in place held firm. "Help! Help! I can't move!" A frantic scratching began inside the pine coffin. Finally she shook herself loose, turned to flee, but stopped. She thought about Rebecca. She didn't want this mockery of Eli coming back, horrifying her daughter. Recalling her granny's sayings, her eyes widened. She ran around the grave, grabbed the shovel and began tossing in dirt one rapid spade-full after another. "If the body is buried," granny had said. "It'll be no good to the shade trying to take it over. It'll just have to go on somewheres else!" A heavy panting came from the hole as her thin, sinewy arms paddled the shovel in quick strokes. The dirt Jasper had dug out fell back in like a small landslide. "Stop throwing dirt!" the voice yelled through the chinks in the planks. "It's a-gettin' in my mouth!" She shoveled quicker, not heeding the demon's lie. "I AINT DEAD!" the voice screamed. "Ya hear me!? That sting mussa put me out! 'At's all." Using the shovel like a broom she swept the dirt from the pile into the hole. She panted heavily as she swiftly covered the coffin. The small chinks filled in quickly as the dirt spread over the top of the box. The knocking grew louder, more frantic. The dirt mound on top of the coffin bounced up sharply. She tossed the shovel aside, fell to her knees and began pushing the dirt in with both hands. . . *** Jasper returned to the grave and found his soon-to-be new wife squatting on the ground, exhausted, her dress and hands filthy. Seeing how she stared into the quiet grave, he was tempted to say, "Now's not the time, Julee. Don't fret. He'll rise again Judgement day when the dust shall sing." But this was a time for silence. Even though the coffin was completely covered, the grave was only half filled. He picked up the shovel and began finishing the job. He asked no questions, knowing from experience that grief sometimes took on strange ways.
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