Fall Line. Joe Samuel Starnes

There had been a lot of dead babies in the old days. Elmer’s mama had lost two before he came along.

      He walked over to his mother’s former grave. Elmer had not seen it since she had been dug up. He had visited the night before they exhumed her with the rest of all the Finley Shoals folks and carted them off down to the new cemetery built for those flooded out of their home burial grounds. He looked around for a flower to toss in the hole but it was December and nothing was blooming. The only colors in the landscape were the auburn leaves clinging to the red maples on the hill to the east and a touch of green in the patches of wiregrass. Everything within reach of the cemetery was barren or brown or weedy.

      He heard a rumbling from across the cleared land and saw up Sills Road a pulpwood truck loaded with a stack of cut pine logs, its chains hanging and clanking, the engine groaning under the heavy weight. Dust kicked up at the sides of the truck as it motored toward the intersection of Finley Shoals and shifted into a lower gear and lurched as the clutch popped and the transmission caught hold and slowed it down, but strengthened the traction of the thick tires. A covey of quail near the side of the road in a grassy open spot took flight at the noise, scattering like brown specks over the blue-green horizon in the low southern sky. The truck driver slowed to watch the flapping fat birds. Elmer walked between the open graves to what had been the McKibben plot so he could get a look at the quail settling back down in the distance.

      The truck came on and stopped near to the old graveyard, about fifty yards from where he was standing. The driver rolled down his window and waved at Elmer, gesturing for him.

      “Hey, boy, come over here.” The man’s voice was gruff.

      Elmer held his ground, just staring, while the man continued to summon him.

      “Hey,” the man yelled and waved again.

      Elmer didn’t answer.

      The black-haired pulpwooder with leathery skin opened the truck door and climbed out and came around the front of the white cab, the engine idling rough. He was tall and had an enormous gut that hung down in a tucked white T-shirt like a sack over his belt, filling the shirt as tight as a water balloon that shook as he walked. His dark hair was slicked up high from his forehead in a pompadour and fiercely parted on one side.

      Elmer stood and watched him come, his large fists clenched, his eyes set hard. The man walked to the edge of the graveyard and studied on it for a minute, as though surprised to see the ground pockmarked with holes. He walked as close as he could get to Elmer, about the distance of a baseball pitcher to home plate, without stepping onto the cemetery grounds. His rough skin had the look of a fresh-oiled baseball glove.

      “Son, didn’t you see me waving at you?”

      “Yessir, I saw you.”

      “Well, why didn’t you come over to me?”

      “Just didn’t.”

      “You dumb, boy? Or is you a haint?”

      “I ain’t nary of the two. I just don’t got to take no orders from you.”

      “You what?”

      “I ain’t being bossed by no pulpwooder in my own home.”

      “You in the graveyard, you dumbass.”

      Elmer extended his right arm rigid in front of him and let his middle finger point to the sky.

      “Fuck you,” he said.

      The man walked into the cemetery and came for Elmer, winding a fast path around the open graves. Elmer instantly regretted leaving his gun in his truck and considered rushing to it, but instead held his ground. He had never run from anyone. He clenched his fists and dug in his heels and the big man was soon on him, throwing a punch that glanced off Elmer’s forehead. The man was too tall for Elmer to punch squarely in the face so he slugged the man’s huge gut. It was like hitting a sack of feed and the man didn’t flinch but kept coming and punching and the weight of his body came behind it and pushed Elmer down onto the ground and the pulpwooder landed hard on top of him. The man smelled of sweat and coffee and pine trees and gasoline. Elmer scrabbled in the dirt to stay out of the two graves they were between but the big man was hitting him, alternating between gut blows and head blows that hurt like hell with the big slow lumps of the man’s fist, his girth pinning Elmer to the ground.

      Elmer pushed at the man and surged as hard as he could to get loose, sliding to the side, but the man clung to him. The earth began to fall away and he and the man tumbled like an entwined couple six feet down into the hole, landing with a thud in the clumps of mud at the bottom of the empty grave where Waddie McKibben had rested for fifteen years. The blow of landing under the man in the empty grave knocked Elmer’s breath from him. His chest felt like it was being crushed and he desperately tried to breathe. The big man quit throwing punches and cussed a string of “goddamns” and “sumbitches” and stood and tried to climb out, a boot heel stepping hard on Elmer’s left elbow. On his first try the man stretched one leg up on the top edge of the grave and tried to leap out on his other leg but he fell back on top of Elmer, his ass landing on Elmer’s thighs, painful as hell, but somehow the hurt in his legs shocked his breath back into him. The man kept cussing and this time got better footing and hoisted one leg up on the rim of the grave and then groaned and yelled “shit” and pushed against the side with his other leg. He struggled until he cleared the edge and was out.

      Elmer lay at the bottom of the grave, his head and stomach and legs hurting, the ground damp despite the recent dry spell, furious he didn’t have his gun. Elmer heard the man let loose another string of profanities in between groaning and wheezing to try and catch his breath. The man cussed for a while and breathed heavy and then fell into a coughing fit.