My spade had a short handle of wood so old it splintered in my hands. I dug with it. It was a labor of love. Spring had just ascended to the mountain where we lived. The ground had just thawed. I wore rubber boots. It was a labor of love.
The earth sent its smell up to me. Birds wandered the branches of the trees, inspecting the tender buds. Freezing was in the past, or so we hoped. I dug the ground, the air cold on my face, the sun hot on my back. My feet sank in the mud. The deeper I dug, the darker and colder the soil. I dug past roots. Earthworms uncoiled sleepily then stuck their heads back in the ground. A rusted tin can broke under my blade. A piece of china surfaced, a white triangle like a big tooth. Blisters blossomed on my palms. I paused to wipe the sweat from my face.
When the hole was big enough, I went to get him. He was still frozen from the long deep cold of winter. I had kept him well, wrapped in the blankets from the bed he died in. He was lighter than in life, lighter than when he used to press down on me, heavy and dull and persistent as a sack of cement.
I got him out into the sunlight, pulled him across the sodden lawn in our toboggan, rolled him over into the hole. He fell in, still wrapped in his cocoon of blankets. I looked up at the sky and said a few words. “Dear God,” I said. “Take him. And tell him I’m sorry.” I thought a second. “Amen,” I said.
I shoveled the dirt back into the hole, the dirt and the worms and the dirt and the piece of china and the rusty tin can and the dirt. I buried him and the smell he would have become. Buried his dead brain and his long gray penis and his big blue hands. Buried the memories. Buried my father.
It was a labor of love. I was done by sundown.
-Elizabeth Inness-Brown
