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Yick.
“Or we could just do that,” Winston drawled. “Do you want to…”
I did the honors.
Hands hurting so badly I couldn’t think straight, I went to town on the casket.
At first, I was trying to pry it open, but the dirt surrounding it was too compacted, leaving me no other choice but to break into the casket.
Eventually realizing I wasn’t going to do it the nice way, Winston handed down my sledgehammer and I broke the wood to pieces.
At multiple points it went inside the casket and I heard something crunch, but I ignored it as best as I could and beat on it until I had a clear view inside.
The first thing I really focused on were the things that were now solidly tucked down into the side of the casket between my father’s dead arms and the plush, still quite white, padding.
“You know,” Winston said from above me. “I’m honestly quite impressed with how well you’re dealing with standing on your father’s dead body.”
I ignored him and started to yank things out.
A book.
Papers.
A ring.
A watch.
Anything and everything we buried him with I pulled out, until there was nothing left but the clothes on my father’s body.
Hell, I even stole the ring off his left finger.
“I’m more impressed,” I said as I stood up and stared at the remains. “That my dad still has skin on his face.”
“That’s the embalming effect, I’m sure,” Winston said as he juggled all the things we’d pulled out of the casket. “You done?”
I held my hand up to him, blood and all, and he took it, lifting me right out of the eight-foot hole as if he’d just tugged up a pillow instead of a full-grown adult.
“Thanks,” I said as I stared at him. “Do you think we need to bury him back?”
“I think we should or we’ll raise questions,” he said. “I’d dump the remains of his headstone in with him, though. That way if someone sees it they don’t report it. And when someone sees the fresh dirt they’ll just assume it’s a newly buried person.”
I nodded and he got back up onto the tractor.
He pushed the remains of the headstone in first, and I heard more things crunch. Hopefully wood, but at this point, I didn’t care if it was his bones.
Fifteen minutes later, we were getting into his truck and I was wondering how in the hell I was going to drive home.
“What do we have?” he asked as he sat everything down.
I pulled the ring from the top of the pile and said, “My dad had this ring since I can remember. Wore it everywhere. Freaked out once or twice when it went missing.”
“There’s a symbol right here,” he said as he held it up to the fading light of the sun. “Take a picture and send it to your friend.”
I did and dropped it into the cigarette tray under his dashboard before picking up the next item.
“This is a book he had with him everywhere. He kept all his tour dates in here. Records of who worked for him when,” I said.
“That’s why you really wanted to come do this, isn’t it?” he asked as he took the book from me and started flipping through it. “This is good information. We can use it. Seasonal and yearly.”
“Dad had seasonal employees who joined us at each leg of our tour. Then there were the regulars,” I explained.
He placed the book down and picked up the pen.
“Again, one of those things he took with him everywhere,” I explained. “There’s nothing really to this, I’m sure, other than sentimental value.”
We moved on through the rest of it, and again those were likely sentimental value things until we got to the very last item.
A small book of dates and coordinates.
“What do you think this is?” I wondered.
He looked at it with a grim expression on his face. “If he’s really what y’all think he is, I would assume these dates and places hold significance to him in some way.”
I was so freakin’ angry.
There this man was, ruining peoples’ lives, and he’s out here keeping specifics on what he did and where.
I shoved it all onto the floor with a rush and said, “I freakin’ hope this isn’t what it seems.”
He looked at me then, all seriousness, and said, “Your gut is usually very effective in informing you of things that aren’t what they seem. And sadly, this is exactly what it seems. I may not have the concrete proof yet, but I’ve been doing this a long time now. Things don’t just line up this well for them not to be.”
He had a point.
I sighed and pushed his door open.
The night air had gone from toasty to brisk in the span of twenty minutes.
“I gotta drive home,” I grumbled. “I have to get to work tomorrow.”
