I could see the headlights cut through the dark and the mist enveloping the cemetery. I knew Skunk was driving slow and easy because the lane was filled with potholes and ruts. The Gethsemane Baptist Church is located on the other side of the county near the North River. Digging a grave behind that church is like digging a well. Many years before I was even a gleam in my father’s eye the church elders purchased a field near a grove of twisted mulberry trees. The branches looked like dancing skeletons as they were illuminated by the headlights. I was standing near a freshly dug grave covered by two large pieces of plywood. I leaned on my short camping shovel like it was a cane. A folding stepladder lay at my feet.
Skunk pulled up and stopped his car so that his trunk was lined up with the edge of the grave. He got out and I heard his keys jangle as he unlocked the trunk. I expected to be assaulted by the stench, but we had sealed up the body well with duct tape and a thick tarp. We flipped the plywood over and exposed the gaping maw of the grave. Tomorrow the gravediggers would drop a 2,100-pound concrete vault in this hole. A few hours later a 280-pound casket would be lowered in the vault and the whole thing would be covered with about 100 pounds of dirt. The edges would be filled in and tamped down and then the gravediggers would move on to their next job. Only Skunk and I would know this was the final resting place for two dead souls. There was a hot greasy film in my throat like I had drunk shots of whiskey mixed with gasoline. My mouth was rapidly filling with spit. Skunk turned and stared at me.
“You all right, hoss?” he said. I gripped the shovel tight.
What I wanted to say was that I didn’t feel all right. I didn’t think I would ever feel all right again.
“Yeah, I’m good. Let’s get it done,” I said.
I handle the bodies.
That’s what I say when people ask me what I do for a living. I find that gets one of two responses. They drift away to the other side of the room and give me a sideways glance the rest of the night or they let out a nervous laugh and move the conversation in another, less macabre direction. I could always say I work at a funeral home, but where’s the fun in that?
Every once in a while, when I was in the Corps, someone would see me at Starbucks or that modern mecca Walmart in my utility uniform. Sometimes they’d catch me in my dress blues after a military ball just trying to grab something before heading back to the base. They would walk up to me and say, “Thank you for your service.” I’d mumble something like “No, thank you for your support,” or some other pithy rejoinder, and they would wander away with a nice, satisfied look on their faces. Sometimes what I wanted to say was “I took care of the bodies. The bodies with the legs blown off or the hands shredded. The bodies full of ball bearings and nails and whatever some kid could find to build his IED. I loaded the bodies up and dragged them back to the base, then went back out on another patrol and prayed to a God that seemed to be only half listening that today wasn’t the day that someone would have to take care of my body.”
But I don’t think that would have given them the same warm and fuzzy feeling.