“Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, your guess is about right.
Polly, Pretty Polly, your guess is about right.
I dug on your grave the best part of last night.”
Luther sang.
The black girl was leaned up against a tree, watching them as they dug.
The moon was cold, unripe. And the constellations fidgety, coming in and out, new and shy as débutantes. The new november laid in the ground and frosted the unshaded spaces with runes and glyphs of thin ice. Two boys dug a hole. Great bellies of cold breath rising up. The black girl sat breathless, dress torn, topography of her chest and stomach revealed.
Luther scooped out a shovelful of earth and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
Fer the love of God, Jed, he whispered. Close that slut's eyes, will ye? Can't barely think straight with that yellow-eyed nigger starin me down.
Jed looked away, into the empty sockets of the coal-trunked woods. He licked his lips. Looked down at Luther.
I cain't stand to look at her, let alone put my hands on her. You do it.
Luther grunted. You weren't so loathe to touch her a little while ago, ye bastard.
Another shovelful.
He threw the shovel onto the bank of dirt and climbed out of the hole and walked over to the dead black girl. Yellow orbs like dying suns. Luther stared back at her for a moment. The night drew in. Slow, wingless leaves dropped from the winter branches of the trees like dark alms. Luther closed the girls eyes with his hands. In the moonlight, he could see the hatchetmark on the plate of her skull, glistening like new tar. He stood up and looked around. Jed was crouched by the hole looking away and shivering. He was barefoot. His hands were dark with blood, sealed, holding them away like foreign, drying traitors. He was no more than fifteen and he wore the hatchet in his belt, skeined with blood.
An oil lamp with a doodling tongue of light spat skyward by his side.
Owls spoke their low passwords in the cradled trees.
Luther spat.
I reckon that's deep enough.
Jed nodded.
Luther looked at the hole and walked over to Jed and sat down beside him. The smell of night and wet dirt. Stiff crackling of blood-dried clothing.
Listen, Jed. What's done is done. She's dead. Ain't no goin back. She just another dead nigger. No one gonna miss her. They'll look around and reckon her for another runaway. Her momma'll cry and moan and her father will go out an look for her an aint no one gonna care cause she's just another poor black whore. Not the judges or the cops or the lawmen. You got that? We killed her. Everyone kills colored folks. Why, godssakes, in Missouri it's practically a sport!
Jed spat.
Luther looked away. You'll speak nothing of this, ain't that right? Not a word.
I cain't hold this inside, Luther. I gotta tell someone. I gotta tell someone or I think I'll die.
Well, talk to me about it.
Aw, hell.
Luther smiled. Okay. Shore. You go tell someone. You go on and tell your mammy and scare the blessed gospel out of her. You go damn yourself to your father, your brother. You go on and whisper it to the reeds and catch the reeds whispering it right back. Godssakes, Jed, you do whatever the hell you want.
What have we done?
Not a word, said Luther.
Jed groaned and put his head in his hands. The blue, reptile night crawled in on its belly and Luther could see the oil lamp growing sick and nervous, curtseying. Coyotesounds. Creaking, elderly trees, gossiping little rumors of moonlight through their squandered branches. The black girl slumbered.
Help me bury her, Luther said.
What have we done?
Jed was shaking, trembling. Lip scoured and shuffling his fingers in his hands like playingcards. Nodding his head like a wedding bell. No, no, no. What have we done? We gotta tell someone. What was her name?
The black girl sat unfigured and mum as a math equation. She was missing one shoe. Her sock was dirty and sagging down her leg.
Woodsmoke in the air.
Luther dragged the black girl by her ankles, head knocking and skipping obscenely against the roots, revealed and sticking out like wrists. Whitest teeth in the moonlight. He dragged her over to Jed and Jed whimpered and cowered and Luther asked for the hatchet.
I'll bury it all myself.
Jed just kept shaking his head and saying no, no, no.
Give me the hatchet, you yellow bastard.
no, no, no
Godssakes, give it to me! Luther screamed and kicked Jed until he fumbled the hatchet out of his belt and handed it to the other boy. Luther took the hatchet and Jed trembled and the moon clothed them with blue, quiet petticoats. Luther swore and kicked Jed again.
Gotta do everthin myself. Yer a coward and a murderer, Jed Fuslom. And yer gonna burn in hell.
Jed looked up.
Luther swung the hatchet at him.
His skull cracked like a stubborn shellfish. Dull, red cesarean. Luther pulled the hatchet away, revealing pink frontal lobes, like the petals of touched flowers. The trees hushed. The moon wide and pale as an undertaker. Luther tossed the hatchet into the hole and shoved the black girl into the hole and also Jed, still warm, still breathing. He shook his head. He whistled. He whistled and shoveled. He covered up their faces last – horrible and sketched, brooched eyes and red cardinal's hats of matted blood.
Luther sang:
“Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, your guess is about right.
Polly, Pretty Polly, your guess is about right.
I dug on your grave the best part of last night.”
