Craig Johnson: Death Without Company

“They used fire, back in the day.”

What the old cowboy meant was that folks who were inconsiderate enough to die in the Wyoming winter faced four feet of frozen ground between them and their final resting place.

“They used to build a bonfire an’ allow it to burn a couple of hours, melt through the frost, and then dig the grave.”

Jules unscrewed the top from a flask he had pulled from the breast pocket of his tattered jean jacket and leaned on his worn shovel. It was 28 degrees outside, the jean jacket was all he wore, and he wasn’t shivering; the flask probably had something to do with that.

“Now we only use the shovels when dirt clods roll into the grave from the backhoe.” The tiny man took a sip from the flask and continued the throes of philosophic debate. “The traditional Chinese coffin is rectangular with three humps, and they won’t bury you wearing red ’cause you’ll turn into a ghost.”

I nodded and did my best to stand still in the wind. He took another sip and didn’t offer me any.

“The ancient Egyptians had their essential organs removed and put in jars.”

I nodded some more.

“The Hindus burn the body, a practice I admire, but we cremated my uncle Milo and ended up losing him when his top came loose and he fell through the holes in the rusted floorboard of a Willy’s Jeepster on the Upper Powder River Road.” He thought about it, shaking his head at the ignominious end. “That ain’t where I wanna spend eternity.”

I nodded again and looked off toward the Big Horn Mountains, where it continued to snow. Somehow bonfires seemed more romantic than construction equipment or Willy’s Jeepsters, for that matter.

“The Vikings used to stick ’em afire on a boat with all their stuff and shove out to sea, but that seems like an awful waste of stuff, not to mention a perfectly good boat.” He paused, but continued. “Vikings considered death to be just another voyage and you never knew what you could end up needing, so you might as well take it all with you.” The jackleg carpenter turned his ferocious blue eyes toward me and took another sip in honor of his ancestors, still not offering me any.

I buried my hands in my duty jacket, straining the embroidered star of the Absaroka County Sheriff ’s Office, and dropped my head a little as he kept on talking. I had seen Jules on a professional basis as a lodger at the jail when the nephew of the previous sheriff, and deputy of mine at the time, had picked him up for public intoxication and had beaten him. I had in turn beaten Turk, much to the dismay of my receptionist /dispatcher Ruby, and then turned him over to the highway patrol in hopes that a more structured environment might do him some good.

“The Mongols used to ride the body on a horse till it fell off.”

I sighed deeply, but Jules didn’t seem to notice.

“The Plains Indians probably had it right with the burial scaffolding; if you aren’t up to anything else, you might as well feed the buzzards.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Jules?”

“Yep?”

I turned and looked down at him. “Do you ever shut up?”

He tipped his battered cowboy hat back on his head and took the final swig, still smiling. “Nope.”

I nodded my final nod, turned, and tramped my way down the hill away from the aged cottonwood at the fence line, where I had already worn a path in the snow. Jules had been there on my three previous visits, and he knew my pattern.

I guess gravedigging got lonely.

You can tell the new graves by the pristine markers and the mounds of earth. From my numerous and one-sided conversations, I had learned that there were water lines running a patchwork under the graveyard with faucets that would be used in the spring to help soak the dirt and tamp the new ones flat but, for now, it was as if the ground had refused to accept Vonnie Hayes. It had been almost a month since her death, and I found myself up here once a week.

When somebody like Vonnie dies you expect the world to stop, and maybe for one brief second the world does take notice. Maybe it’s not the world outside, but the world inside that’s still.

It took about ten minutes to get back to the IGA in the center of Durant where I had left my erstwhile deputy to shanghai prospective jurors for the local judicial system. I rolled into the parking lot, scratched my beard as I parked, and looked at the plastic-wrapped bundles of wood priced at two for seven bucks that were stacked at the entrance of the grocery store. We had been forced to act as the Absaroka County press gang about eight times during my tenure as sheriff, which itself had taken up almost a quarter of a century. The jury wheels used by the county were chocked so full of outdated records that a large percentage of the summonses were returned undeliverable, and the ones that did get where they were supposed to go many times got ignored. My advice that we simply put occupant on the things was dismissed out of hand.

I looked at the handsome woman at the entrance of the grocery store with the clipboard in her hands. Victoria Moretti didn’t like being called handsome, but that’s how I thought of her. Her features were a little too pronounced to be dismissed as pretty. The jaw was just a little too strong, the tarnished gold eyes just a little too sharp. She was like one of those beautiful saltwater fish in one of those tanks you knew better than to stick your hand into; you didn’t even tap on the glass.

“Of all the shitty things you make me do, I think I hate this the most. I have an undergraduate degree in law enforcement, I’ve forgotten how many hours toward a masters, graduated from the Philadelphia Police Academy in the top five percent. I had four years street duty, two field commendations… I am your most senior officer.” I felt a sharp jab at my midriff. “Are you fucking listening to me?”

I watched as my highly capable and awarded deputy accosted a middle-aged man in a barn coat, copied down information from his driver’s license, and informed him that he needed to get over to the courthouse pronto or be faced with contempt of court. “Well, there’s another notch on my Glock.”

I watched as the hapless shopper balanced his purchases and wandered off to his car. “Hey, there are worse places for a stakeout, at least we’ve got plenty of supplies.”

“It’s supposed to snow another eight inches tonight.”

I looked over at the neatly shoveled driveways. “Don’t worry. You can go in and flush them out, and you can do some last minute shopping.” I was tapping on the glass and getting my tarnished gold’s worth. “How many more talis jurors do we need?”

“Two.” She searched the automatic glass doors behind us. Dan Crawford stood at the far register, registering his annoyance at our official abuse of his customer base. She looked back at me. “Talis jurors?”

“The process started in this country with the Boston Massacre. They pulled spectators out of the courtroom gallery to serve as jurors during the trial of a British soldier. It’s from the Latin, meaning by-stander. You’re Italian, you should understand these things.”

“I’m from Philadelphia, where we vote early and often, and everybody on the jury has a vowel on the end of his name.”

I looked off toward the mountains west of town and at the broiling darkness that seemed to be waiting behind the range. I couldn’t help but think that it would be a nice evening to sit by the fire. Red Road Contracting had promised to have my triple-walled flume put in by last weekend, but so far all they had done was cut an opening in my roof the size of a large porthole. They said the firebox that mounted to the ceiling would cover the hole, but for now the only thing between the inside of my snug little log cabin and the impending great outdoors was ten millimeters of plastic and some duct tape. It wasn’t really their fault. The coal-bed methane outfits were paying close to twenty dollars an hour, roughly twice what general contracting paid anywhere on the high plains, so Danny Pretty On Top had signed on with Powder River Energy Exploration and had left Charlie Small Horse to pick up the slack.