Jonas

It was like someone trying to say it, stretching it out, pulling the syllables too long, like they didn't quite remember how words worked.

I screamed.

Alma rushed in with a shotgun.

She saw me pointing at the wall.

Didn't even ask what happened.

She just said, come on.

We walked barefoot out into the cold, her in just her shawl, me in my pajamas.

She didn't bring a flashlight.

We went to the family sanitary at the bottom of the hill.

Fog was rolling in from the creek, hugging the ground like smoke.

The grass had gone grey.

Dead quiet, she knelt by one of the oldest graves and took out something from her coat.

A dried corn husk.

She whispered into it, soft, like she didn't want the fog to hear.

Then she buried it in the frozen ground and stood up without a word.

We didn't speak the whole way back.

I slept through the night and swore to never look back.

At the time, I was crashing in this beat-up old hunting trailer on the edge of a timber site near Donley County, way out where the trees had numbered people by a few thousand to one.

My cousin Mark had a small time logging operation going, and he needed help clearing some plots before the ground froze up.

I figured it was a good way to make some cash before winter and maybe get a bit of breathing room from the usual chaos back home.