BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 47

1958

HENRY

Henry espies Delos Wells' pickup. He owns the land on the hill a half mile away, is heading north up his lane. When he reaches the gravel road intersecting east and west, Henry holds off on further digging until he sees Delos coming west. Henry hurries to partially fill the hole he just started.

His gopher traps lay scattered aside him to give him an alibi for being here on an incline not yet farmed. But the slough that drains the opposite slope is just fifty feet away and he has a trapline on the alfalfa field that drains to it. Delos, he's betting, is too heavy—and lazy—to get out of his pickup and question him, but Henry waits, just to be sure. Two minutes later, Delos takes a left down toward Henry, so he ambles toward the fenceline to intercept him—manage the encounter.

Sure enough, Delos stops, his arm resting on the window frame. He doesn't shut the vehicle down—"bad battery," he says—so won't be prolonging the discussion. Given Henry's slow speech pattern, earned in a WWI battle that didn't take his voice but slowed his speech to a snail's pace, no conversation lasts long anyway, so his entertainment value is limited.

"Ain't many gophers up here on this side, are there?" Delos waves his arm to indicate the waste area.

"Just...one...Male," Henry says, once he's formulated the words in his head.

Delos nods. "Every one counts," he says. "Tough digging?"

Henry opens his mouth, nothing comes out for a moment, he closes it to take another start. "Getting there," he blurts.

Delos eyes the ground. "Is gravelly, for sure." As if he's caught Henry's affliction, he keeps silent. "Just to warn you," he finally says, "I'll be watering over there—" he indicates the facing slope "—day after tomorrow."

Henry nods. Delos tells him good luck and drives down to McTucker and turns around, heads back the other way.

Best make haste, Henry thinks, reopening the shallow hole he made. He takes a spud digger link, one end cut off, and drives it into the ground roughly thirty inches. Nothing. He grabs another, hammers it in but hits nothing solid. On the third attempt, about twenty inches down, there is a thumping sound, and Henry stops the pounding, ties a piece of sisal around the hook end of the link. He moves around in like fashion, hammering links in until he's struck something in six places. The twine flags form a rectangle. He shovels from link to link until he's identified a structure's edges beneath the soil. Paying close attention to the road just in case someone comes, he removes the dirt within the outline he's exposed.

A wooden lid that must have seemed a single piece at one time, its boards now separated slightly from years underground, lies before him. He eyes the road again, kneels, pries. Applying steady pressure, adjusting it to give what he imagines to be a bounce and extra torque, he breaks the seal after a minute or two, then—after again looking roadward—he lifts the side with no hinges to reveal what's inside.

A skeleton, which might surprise someone else, but Henry half-planned for the event. What would be buried here but a body or a robber's loot? The Indians, lacking shovels, wouldn't have buried a tribal member in such a location, they used rocks if they buried a body or left it to rot if they had to.

It is a very small person or a young child, a girl he guesses by the rotted but still somewhat intact clothing—it appears to be a dress, the headwear a bonnet, neither with much color left. There are no shoes, which would help identification, but at the feet a sack lies and he reaches awkwardly to pick it up. He lifts it, it's heavy. He has to set the lid down to open the sack. From its weight his hopes rise regarding its contents. Sure enough, gold, or what appears to be so. A bar, four or five pounds, he estimates. Has to be from the mines. Bars were smelted larger than the bullion that banks traded in, to limit theft.

He sets it down, opens the box again and investigates further. In each corner a similar sack, though he doesn't check their contents. A small metal box near the hands. He picks it up. Rusted, it opens reluctantly to reveal parchment inside. His eyes aren't the best any more, but he can make out ink, quite faded, a word here and there. He puts it in his pocket, his jacket a little too warm now with the late spring sun rising to burn off the dew. His attention has been on the body and the gold, so when he hears an engine and sees a car coming he panics, puts the sack back in the box, shovels dirt on the lid. He tries to shield the hole from the passerby by kneeling with his unset traps, picks them up in such a way as to move into the driver's line of sight. He waves, luckily it's a stranger who waves back. He drives down to McTucker and parks. A fisherman, he hopes. He sets his traps down, his eyes on the car, hurriedly fills the hole, scrapes the soil nearby to cloak the location, takes his gear and moves across the slough to the alfalfa where his pickup is parked.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston