Jeff Jacobson - Wormfood

“That’s it,” Fat Ernst whispered in a tight voice. “That. Is. Mother. Fucking. It.”

CHAPTER 21

Without a word, Junior and I kept digging, holding the shovels sideways as we scraped mud out of the hole, flinging it away in looping, uneven arcs out into the rain and darkness.

It didn’t take long to figure out we had hit the concrete shell that held the coffin. I stood back while Junior went to work with the sledgehammer, pulverizing the cement lid. Within minutes, the rough slab collapsed around the coffin. I started throwing chunks of concrete out of the grave.

About three feet of the casket extended into the hole; the rest was buried under the south wall. We had been close, but we hadn’t dug down directly on top of the whole thing. It looked like we had found the top end, because I could see the seam where the lid was cut in half, in case you felt like lifting it up and saying goodbye during the funeral.

Fat Ernst had to wake Bert up by slapping him on the back of the head again. But once he was awake, even Bert could see that we were getting close, and he took his job seriously, kneeling at the top of the dike and holding the lantern out over the hole.

“All right, then.” Junior said, and stuck his shovel into the mud and left it there. “Gimme that crowbar.”

Fat Ernst thrust the three-foot bar into the hole, nearly crunching my skull in the process. “Do it. Pop that bitch open.”

“Oh that’s what I’m gonna do all right,” Junior said in a velvet, seductive voice as he felt along the edges of the coffin. “Gonna pop your sweet little cherry like a virgin on prom night. That’s right, baby.”

I backed into the far corner, giving Junior some space as he got romantic with the coffin. He found a spot he liked, along the side and near the grooved seam along the top. He took the crowbar and jammed it up under the overhanging lip on the side, then wrenched it down in a rushed, savage motion. The wedged tip snapped clean out of the groove and flipped up and popped Junior in the nose. He went back against the side of the pit, landing hard, and before he had even burbled out “Mudderfugger,” blood started gushing out of his flattened nostrils as if somebody had cranked open a faucet.

“Shake it off,” Fat Ernst commanded.

Junior didn’t do much except make fists, little grabbing motions in the air in front of his face, and blink rapidly.

“That must hurt like hell,” I said.

“Popped your cherry,” Bert said, and I guess that struck him as particularly funny, because he started giggling uncontrollably, and the lantern started to shake, throwing our huge shadows around the hole like lurching giants.

“Come on, come on,” Fat Ernst said. “We’re almost there. Quit fucking around.”

Junior blinked a few more times and shook his head, spraying blood all over the place. With a tremendous, “You fucking fuck!” he raised the crowbar above his head and brought it down on the coffin with all his strength. The impact left a slight dent and made a hollow boom, but that was all. This pissed Junior off even more, and he attacked the coffin in ferocious spasms, flailing away at it like an old blind woman trying to kill a rattlesnake with her cane.

Finally, he gave up, exhausted and spent. Blood was still running freely from his nose, but Junior ignored it and stared at the coffin like he was trying to scare it into opening. “Gimme that sledgehammer.”

Fat Ernst dropped it into the hole. Junior bent over the coffin, inspecting the dents and grooves that he had inflicted on the lid. Sliding his finger along the seam where the lid was cut in half, he found a small notch, a chip broken out of the surface. “There we go,” he whispered.

He caressed the notch, then gently worked the blade of the crowbar into the narrow space. “Hold this,” Junior said to me, indicating the bar. He held it upright, directly in the center of the lid, as if he was about to stake a vampire.

I did what I was told, firmly grabbing the cold steel with both hands, holding it snug into the little chipped space. If I had realized what Junior was planning, I probably wouldn’t have been so quick to grab the damn thing, because he stepped back, swinging the sledgehammer up and over his head. He said, “Watch it,” and smashed the hammer flat down on top of the crowbar in a tiny burst of sparks and stinging chips of metal. The jolt vibrated up my arms into my chest and it felt as though I had grabbed hold of an electric fence. I’m lucky I didn’t let go, and managed to keep the crowbar in an upright position, because the second blow came just as fast. I stepped as far away from the coffin as I could, holding the crowbar with one straight arm. Junior kept whipping the sledgehammer over his head and swinging it down, like he was working on a railroad, driving iron spikes into solid rock.

After about five or six blows, my hand went numb. It took a few seconds to realize that I wasn’t even holding onto the crowbar anymore, yet it was staying upright. Junior had managed to pound it almost an inch into the seam in the coffin lid. He kept at it, bringing the hammer down and grunting every time it smashed into the crowbar.

“All right, open wide for daddy,” Junior said as he straddled the coffin, crowbar between his legs, and grabbed the tool with both hands. “You like it, don’t you?” He screamed this last part out as he wrenched the crowbar forward, then back. It gave a little, but not much.

“You know you want it!” Junior kept screaming and spitting blood, but I guess the coffin wasn’t in the mood for sweet talk. That crowbar didn’t budge. After a moment, Junior said, “Bert, get your ass down here.” He looked at me, disgusted. “Unlike like the Amazing Human Noodle over here, I need somebody with a little weight, a little fucking strength.”

“You got it,” Bert said, and slid into the grave. Junior hopped off the coffin and told me to get on it. “Sit down, put your back against the wall, and push at it with your feet. Me and Bert’ll pull.” He positioned Bert at the head of the coffin and stood next to him. I braced my boots against the crowbar, spread my arms, put my hands flat against the dripping mud wall behind me, and got ready to push. On the other side of the bar, Bert wrapped his left hand over my boots. Then Junior encircled Bert’s hand with both of his fists, interlocking his fingers. “Now, when I give the signal, we’re gonna pop this old girl open.” He winked. “And that’s a goddamn promise.”

Maybe it was Bert. Maybe it was my legs. Maybe the coffin finally just succumbed to Junior’s romance. I don’t know. Whatever it was, when Junior shrieked, “NOW!” I kicked out as hard as I could and they jerked backward on that crowbar. I heard a deep, satisfying crack. The crowbar suddenly flopped over toward the Sawyer brothers, and they tumbled into the mire at the bottom of the grave. I looked down to see a long, ragged crack running between my legs, up toward my ass. This made me vaguely uncomfortable and I scooted off the top of the coffin right quick.

“Yes!” Fat Ernst shouted, clenching both fists.

And suddenly, only one thing became real. The buckle was close now, close enough to smell, close enough to taste, close enough to touch. All of our aches and pains and blisters, the rain, the mud, all of it faded into the background, became unimportant. Junior worked the crowbar around in the crack, slamming it back and forth like a mandesperately trying to churn smooth butter out of cheese. The opening got wider and he worked the crowbar down the coffin, trying to crack the lid in half lengthwise.

The whole lid split right in half. The bottom half wouldn’t open much because at least three feet of the coffin was still buried under the mud wall, but Junior pried open the top half enough that he could force his fingers inside and pull. It swung open with a groan from the mud-caked hinges, but it was open, by God, a quarter of the lid pried up and waiting.