Mr. Braithwaite had paid for a nice plot looking out over a bend in the river where the sun exploded over the pines in a shower of pinks and reds in the evenings. We sat off a ways in the truck under the big oak in the center of the cemetery. It was a hot day in the middle of August and a warm breeze came through the windows, carrying the sound of the words being spoken over the deceased.
On most days I didn’t partake, and rare was the day Santiago offered, but I cracked a Bud from his cooler, trying anything to beat the heat. Santiago had pulled a small bottle of Jack from his hip pocket and was a quarter of the way down before I realized it was there. He was mumbling to himself, though I couldn’t make out the words.
“How much do you think a plot like that costs?” I asked to break up the silence.
“What?”
“How much do you think Ol’ Man Braithwaite paid for the plot for Billy?”
“Who cares?”
“How much are any of these plots?”
“No clue.”
“You’ve worked here 20 years and you don’t know how much the plots cost? That’s crazy.”
“I just bury ‘em. I don’t worry about how much it cost them to get here.”
“It’s a nice spot,” I said, oblivious to the dark mask falling over Santiago’s face and the dark clouds forming on the horizon.
“Nicer than the bastard deserves,” Santiago replied, taking a long pull from the bottle.
“Not as big a turnout as I would have thought.” A small crowd of white-haired men and women were gathered around the plot.
“More than the weasel deserved,” said Santiago, picking up on a certain refrain, “he deserved to keep living, keep dealing with whatever brought him to his end, short of that, he deserved to stay in that tree and have the crows pluck out his eyes while he rotted.”
I laughed, thinking Santiago was making one of his crude jokes or was just irritable due to the heat.
“I wish they’d move it along and get the hell out of here,” he stormed after another pull on the bottle, “don’t they know people have work to do?”
I was about to answer, but he spoke again, “no, they don’t give a good god damn about other people’s work, so long as they get what they want. They just take and take, damn the consequences.
“And that’s what their kids see – them just takin’ and takin’ – and so they think that’s the way of the world. They think it’s okay to just take what they want, like they’re owed because they were brought up in privilege. They don’t care who or what they hurt. They just want what they believe is there’s, like it’s some sort of divine right.”
A low rumble of thunder rolled across the Melanski, punctuating his words. A crack of lightning struck hard and fast over the river sending the gathered assembly scurrying to their cars.
As they slammed their car doors and scrambled to get their windows up, a wall of water worked its way up from the southwest corner of the cemetery. I hurried to roll up my window as the rain began to rattle off the roof of the truck and another roll of thunder shook the air. Santiago made no move to roll up his window, instead allowing the pellets of water to explode off his window into the cab. He was so deep within the depths of the darkness covering his face he didn’t notice.
The break lights of the last car of mourners had faded into the distance when Santiago turned the key in the ignition. The truck coughed to life, lights fluttering on to cut through the artificial darkness of the afternoon storm.
Santiago put the truck in gear and sent us crawling down the roadway toward Billy Braithwaite’s final resting place. His knuckles were white on the wheel. A beet red coloring had replaced the deep tan on his face and the fury that sat there caused me to inch closer to the door on my side of the cab.
Lightning continued to flash and the bursts of thunder were so loud and violent they shook the truck as we inched towards the plot. Far off to the west, the sky was becoming lighter.
Santiago put the truck in park as the rain continued to pound the truck’s roof. He opened his door and got out as another burst of thunder rolled across the cemetery.
“What are you doing?”
“A burial.”
“But the thunder? The lightning?”
“It’ll pass by soon enough.”
“Why not wait?”
“You can wait. I have work to do.”
“But it’s not safe.”
“Safe enough.”
“Santiago…”
“Goddammit, I’m going to bury this bastard right here, right now. I can’t wait another goddamn minute. I want him in the ground. I want this over with. Sit in the goddamn truck if you don’t want to help or if you’re afraid. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care. I’m burying this bastard.”
In the years I had known him, these were the harshest words this harshest of men had ever spoken to me. I slumped from the truck in fear and shame. In an instant the rain had soaked me to the skin. My toes swam in my boots as I grabbed a shovel and walked through the puddles to the mound of muddy dirt that awaited us.
As the rain subsided and the thunder faded to the distance, a soft light hung in the cool air. Rivulets of water ran from the top of the dirt pile and poured down along the walls of the grave to form a thin moat that glistened in the dark around the concrete vault.
I’ve never seen someone approach a job with the fury with which Santiago attacked the pile of dirt and the burying of Billy Braithwaite. He tore into the pile, tossing shovelful after angry shovelful into the hole. I attempted to assist but found I was more liable to get hurt then I was to be of any assistance.
There was a possessiveness to Santiago’s work, as though he had to be the one to bury Billy. I wondered if it wasn’t unlike the way Pap had been when he buried Gram. Though I doubted there was any love lost between Santiago and Billy.
Santiago fell into a fast angry rhythm: shovel into the pile, life shovel, throw dirt, curse, spit into the grave, shovel into the pile, lift shovel, throw dirt, curse, spit into the grave. The added weight of the rainwater, nor the mud his boots sank into did a thing to slow his fury.
When it was time to tamp down the sides, to pack the dirt in around the vault, Santiago jumped down on top of the concrete. In a normal burial, we worked from the edges of the hole out of an unspoken respect (or fear) of the dead. I wasn’t that comfortable walking on top of the plots once we’d put the sod back on, but I had an active imagination.
Santiago had no problem stomping on the dirt and sod and spitting during a normal burial. I don’t think he ever thought about respecting the dead, but he still didn’t walk on the vault before it was covered.
My first week working in the cemetery I’d had to lie face down on a vault because I’d knocked in a piece of wood the man who lowered the vault into the grave was using to stage his equipment. When the wood had fallen in, I’d looked up at Pap who’d give me a look that said, “it has to come out, and I’m not getting it.” So there I was, lying facedown on top of a dead body. It remains the creepiest experience of my life.
When Pap told Santiago about it later, he’d laughed the hardest I’d ever seen a person laugh. I’d never seen him laugh before. It was odd, but the act of making this unhappy man laugh took the edge off my embarrassment and I was rather pleased with myself.
There was no laughter as Santiago stormed around on top of Billy Braithwaite’s vault slamming the piece of wood we used to press down the sides with a vigorous rage. When he was satisfied, he jumped from the hole and took to the pile again with same rhythmic assault: shovel into the pile, life shovel, throw dirt, curse, spit into the grave, shovel into the pile, lift shovel, throw dirt, curse, spit into the grave.
When the level of dirt reached a particular height, he jumped back on top of the vault and tamped the edges again. The furious power of the strokes was unbelievable in someone so small.
When the edges were packed in he threw the wood tool to the edge of the hole and moved his hands toward the front of his pants.
“Santiago – “ I started, but my words were cut off by the black look he gave over his shoulder at the sound of my voice. He pulled the bottle of Jack from his pocket, reared his head back and took a huge slug as he pissed on Billy Braithwaite’s vault.
I stood paralyzed, unable and unsure of what to do and what I was seeing. When he finished, he took another quick pull on the bottle, adjusted himself, jumped out of the hole and fell back into the rhythm: shovel into the pile, life shovel, throw dirt, curse, spit into the grave, shovel into the pile, lift shovel, throw dirt, curse, spit into the grave.
I walked over to the truck and took out a Bud and watched him work. He stormed through the rest of the job in a white-hot fury, stomping the dirt on top of the hole to pack it in, beating at the pile until it was gone. He mumbled to himself, but I didn’t try to make out the words. Still stunned in the face of a rage I didn’t understand, I leaned against the truck and sipped my beer.
As the light began to fade from the day, he placed the last pieces of sod. He pressed them into place with his boots in angry authority. He dropped the shovels and tamping stick in the bed of the truck.
Coming around to the front of the truck he reached in and took a beer from his cooler. He popped it open and drained it. He reached for another and said, “nothing so good as a beer after a piece of good hard work.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t waiting for a response. He cracked and drained the second beer, then took a pull from the bottle of Jack before opening a third.
He carried the third over to the Braithwaite plot and rested it on the headstone. With his back to me, he pissed on the stone and surrounding flowers. After having watched him piss on the vault, I suppose I shouldn’t have been as surprised, or repulsed, as I was by his pissing on the stone.
When he returned to the truck, he answered the disgusted look on my face by finishing his beer and saying, “it keeps the slugs off.” He smiled.
Then he climbed into the truck, motioned for me to do the same, and we drove back up to the shed. We didn’t speak again on this earth.
