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“Great!” Bruno yelled it towards the sky. “Just great! The spirits from beyond rouse themselves to contact us, and what do I get? A picture of my late future mother-in-law! I need a fuckingbreak!”
He punctuated the statement with a violent kick, aimed at a chunk of rotten log which had been lying on some of the bones. They’d been forced to excavate it, hoist the thing out. It split into two pieces, rotten as a sponge, but the blow still sent a jarringthwang-g-g-gof pain, shuddering up his leg. He shook the sore foot, feeling stupid.
Kev, being a genius and all, was smart enough to grasp that now was not the time for more bullshit. He picked up a metal detectors, and went back to his piece of dirt. God, how he loved the guy for that.
Sean, too, soldiered grimly on. Raking the mud they had displaced, so they could search it again. The men’s movements were heavy with exhaustion. Davy and Con were out circling. Nobody said a word. He realized, with a heavy feeling in his guts, that he, Bruno Ranieri, had to be the one to call it quits. It was his life at stake, his locket, his dead mamma, his skeletal ogres, his girlfriend in danger. They were deferring to him. Nobody wanted to let him down.
The weight of the responsibility made him feel vaguely sick.
He checked his watch. Two minutes left of the ten minute break he was allowing himself. He closed his eyes, saw mud-stained skeletons dancing, leering. An elusive glint of gold. He forced himself to think it through again. It could have fallen out of Rudy’s pocket at any point in his rough journey here. It could have been dug up by an animal, carried off by a magpie, or a squirrel who mistook it for a new kind of nut.
And after twenty years, whatever could possibly be in it would be degraded beyond recognition. Anything on paper would be a blackened crust of mold. And what else could it be, in such a small space?
This whole effort was probably a stupid waste of time.
Even so. He wanted it, damnit. He wanted to shine up Mamma’s locket, and put it on, so he could touch it. A tangible link to her. The thought of recovering it had taken hold in his mind. He couldn’t let go.
He sank down on the log, and stared at the bones. Unfair of him, to get in a snit with Lily and Edie for taking the time out to have a tender extrasensory moment with her own mom. He shouldn’t begrudge her that. At least he had some memories of Mamma in life.
Still. Jesus wept. A little practical help would have been so nice. If an entity was going to go to the trouble of crossing the great chasm between life or death, one would think it might try to multitask a little.
Whatever. Dead folks. Who the fuck knew what their agenda was, out there beyond the veil. Speculating about it made his head ache.
He rubbed his eyes, got grit in them. They started watering, and suddenly, oh,shit.He was hunched over, silently sobbing.
Oh, please. Those guys had already pegged him as a coddled baby punk. Sniveling when he didn’t get the prize out of the cereal box. But he kept thinking about that hug from Mamma in the bus station at midnight. The locket, burning against his chest from her vital heat.
Mamma, where’s the fucking locket, already?
Watch your language, you little punk.
He dashed tears away. First thing he saw was a beetle, trundling in the mud. He was brown, with a broad carapace, and humongous waving pincers that meant business.
Tears turned to shaky laughter. Behold, the respectable country relative to the skanky urban cockroach. His appointed job, to shred stuff and turn it into dirt. He wondered if this little dude’s ancestors had provided that very personal service for Rudy and his thugs.
Mamma had loathed the cockroaches that had infested their tenement apartment. She’d waged a constant war with them, poison, traps. It was useless, but she never gave up. She didn’t know how. That was Mamma for you. No off-switch.
And it was time to move his ass, since the others were still moving theirs. Still, his eyes followed the bug as it bustled around the obstacles in his path. It climbed onto the rotten log that he had split, stopping at the top, at the sharp angle where the porous wood had been freshly broken. The wood was muddy on the outside, a reddish color inside.
What a fine looking bug. Shiny and tough looking. He watched it, almost affectionately. He was punch drunk. Admiring insects. Fifteen hours of digging for bones did that to a guy. At least the bug was alive.
He was tempted to pick the little guy up, go ask Kev what kind of beetle he was, but that would be dumb and irrelevant, and they would be justified in slamming him hard. He’d had enough of that today.
He went over, crouched down to take a final look—and saw it.
Like a muddy piece of string, hanging out of a crack in the side of the log. He’d have taken it for dead grass, but a blade of grass would poke off in any old direction. This hung straight down, in a plumb line.
Like a fine metal chain.
Bruno gently nudged the beetle off its perch so he could work his fingers into the spongy crevice. It scuttled and turned, looking up at him and waving its pincers madly.
“Sorry,” Bruno muttered, wedging his cold, stiff fingers deeper, prying, prodding, flexing…and the rotten wood gave way, disintegrating in his hand. He held up the handful of wood pulp.
Mamma’s locket was nestled in it.
He stared down at it, afraid to breathe. As if it might vanish into a puff of dust, but it was cold and hard and solid. Dirt was ground into the delicate relief work on the pendant, but otherwise it looked intact.
He looked down at the beetle, who was still watching him, gesticulating with pincers and front legs. All indignant.
