John Gardner - Nickel Mountain

“I tell Walt it don’t much matter where he lays,” the woman said, “his soul’s in Glory.” She stood sideways to Henry, her big-knuckled hands folded two inches or so below her chin, and she spoke out of the side of her mouth, her eyes fixed, as if intently, on the ground.

“Mmm,” Henry said, nodding, thinking about it.

The old man waved at her as if to hit her. “Oh, shut up,” he said. Then, to Henry: “She’s crazy. Always has been.”

“Walt don’t believe in God,” the old woman said. She smiled, sly, still looking at the ground.

Jimmy leaned forward to look around Henry at the grave-diggers. Henry put his hand on the boy’s head, glad to have an excuse to make no comment.

“He’s dead and rotten,” the old man said. He jerked his arm, with his cane dangling from the end of it, in the general direction of the grave. Again, however incongruously, he had the look of a hell-fire preacher. He said, “Now, you shut up.”

Henry cleared his throat, preparing to leave. “Well—” he said. He glanced over at the grave-diggers. One of the two men was down in the hole, throwing the dirt up — all you could see of him now was his hat. The other man stood at one corner, poking with a crowbar. Beyond them the hillside sloped away in sunlight and shadow, from thick glossy headstones to the taller, narrower markers over in the older section, past the statue of the Kunzmuller girl and the Kendall crypt with pine trees around it, and down to the creek, where the woods began. The shadow of a crow swept over the grass and out of sight in the trees, incredibly swift. Jimmy left Henry’s side now and walked a few feet toward the grave. He stood with his hands behind his back and watched.

“Fine boy you got there,” the old man yelled.

“Yes, he is,” Henry said, grinning.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” the old woman said. She separated her hands for a minute, and the fingers shook.

Henry rubbed his nose and said nothing.

“She’s crazy,” the old man said.

“I believe in the resurrected Lord,” she said.

Henry looked away, over in the direction of the old people’s car. It was an old green Hudson, as big and square as a truck. It had a stubborn look, a kind of solid inflexibility that was vaguely impressive. He wondered how people as old as they were could get it to go around corners. He said, “I guess we’d better be getting on home.” He took a step toward Jimmy, but the old man raised his arm.

“My boy,” he said, then hesitated a moment, “—was fourteen.”

“It’s a shame,” Henry said — the only thing he could think of to say, since any of the usual things one said might set the old man off. He looked at the ground, embarrassed, shaking his head and vaguely reaching for his cap.

“Just fourteen years old,” the old man said. He raised his arms again. “I loved that boy—” Again he hesitated, hunting for words, or maybe hunting for some lost emotion, but whatever he was after it wouldn’t come and he dropped his arm and said, “Hmph.” The old woman was weeping. The old man patted her arm, but absently, staring past her, still hunting.

“We kept his room just like it was,” the old woman said. She nodded as if someone else had said it, and rubbed her eyes with her coatsleeve, her fingers shaking.

The old man nodded too. “But then we moved.”

“Life goes on,” Henry said sadly, and the words filled him with a pleasant sense of grief. He thought of his own approaching death, how Callie and Jimmy would be heartbroken for a while, as he’d been heartbroken when his father died, but would after a while forget a little, turn back to the world of the living, as was right. And if it were Callie that died? or Jimmy? The question startled him, as if someone standing behind him had asked it, and instantly he put it from his mind. He glanced a little nervously at Jimmy, who’d moved closer to watch the digging.

“You never forget,” the old man said.

“Never!” the old woman said sharply, suddenly meeting Henry’s eyes. “When we meet him in Glory—”

The old man said, “Shut up.”

For a full minute nobody spoke, there was only the rhythmical scrape of the shovel and the thump of the dirt as it fell beside the grave. Far away there was a tractor plowing for winter wheat. The motor would dig in for a minute, then whir a second while the man slipped the clutch in, and then the motor would dig in again. It reminded him of something, vaguely.

“Love—” Henry began at last, philosophically, but he couldn’t think how to finish. The old man was still patting the old woman’s arm, and, noticing it, Henry Soames half-frowned, thinking something more that he couldn’t quite get hold of. Tears were still running down the cracks in her face, and her hands were clenched together.

One of the grave-diggers said, “There she is.” He said it as if to himself, but they all heard it, and the old man jumped, as if frightened, and touched his hat. A limp burdock leaf slipped down farther over one ear and he slapped at it, not knowing what it was. The old woman rolled her eyes toward the grave, her eyelids batting, and turned very slowly, reaching out for her husband’s arm with one hand, tugging up the front of her coat with the other, her black mouth open. After a second Henry went to her other side to help her over the grass. Jimmy was right at the edge of the grave now, on hands and knees, looking down.

“You keep back, Jimmy,” Henry called, but Jimmy pretended not to hear, and Henry let it go. They inched over the grass, the two old people bent forward stiffly, clinging to each other, both their mouths open now, sucking in air. The old man’s head was shaking as the woman’s hands had before, and at every step he ran his tongue over his lower lip. He leaned heavily on his cane, and the cane’s rubber tip pushed down in the ground, interfering with the progress he couldn’t have made without it. When they were within five or six feet of the place, the man with the crowbar said, “We’ve hit the box. She’ll still be a while yet.” They stopped, and the old man stood leaning on his cane with both hands, breathing hard and rolling his head.

“You ought to sit down,” the old woman said.

He looked at her angrily but said nothing, still laboring for breath.

The old woman said, “We ought to left him lay.”

“A family should keep together,” the old man said. As soon as the words were out, a coughing fit came over him. Henry watched helplessly, the old woman leaning on his arm.

“Our Bobby was struck by lightning,” the old woman said, meeting Henry’s eyes again. “It was God’s hand.”

The old man was furious, but he went on coughing.

“I believe in the resurrected Lord,” the old woman said again now, taking advantage of her husband’s inability to speak. “Walt don’t believe.” She smiled. Then she said: “He was only fourteen.”

“He’s dead and rotten,” the old man yelled, “it’s the Law of Nature! Consider the lilies—” He coughed again, a thick, racking cough that threatened to turn him inside out.

“God forgive this poor sinner,” the old woman said, grim, and the old man swung his cane at her but missed and jabbed it back in the ground just in time, thrown off balance.

“Here now,” Henry said. He glanced over at Jimmy but he hadn’t seen it, he was still looking down in the hole. He was lying on the ground now, his trousers low and his skin very white between his belt and the bottom of his T-shirt.

“Our only child,” the old woman said, and all at once she was crying again. The old man reached out toward her and made a patting motion in the air. She said, “But we’ve never forgot him.”

“Never!” the old man said.