IT FELT LIKE a lightning strike every time the shovel hit the ground. The bolt of pain branched into an explosive zigzag from Finn’s right elbow up to his clenched jaws. The frozen dirt was hard as a rock wall, and after an hour the hole still wasn’t big enough.
Finn was running out of strength.
He pulled his knife out of its leather sheath in his old scouting belt and started hacking at the ground with wild, vicious motions. One last big desperate push to loosen the dirt, but it was still going too slowly.
He got up and, his energy drained, walked into the barn behind the main building and found a rusty garden mattock in the tool shed. Then he walked back to the hole, made sure that no one was watching him, and continued hacking away at it.
The tears and snot raced each other in the biting morning wind, and after yet another hour he had at long last managed to make a nice, small burial chamber.
Finn sank down on his knees in front of the hole and panted in short, winded gasps. He had seen on the news that the police were involved in the case, and now he was scared.
How could he have been so stupid? Why couldn’t he just have left it alone? He knew it was wrong, but …
He started slapping himself on the face.
You’re so dumb, dumb, dumb.
Eventually he stopped hitting himself and just sat there rocking back and forth, crying. A little because of the cold and exhaustion, but mostly because it was so unfair, the whole thing. He was never allowed to do anything fun.
“Finn?” The voice blared from the courtyard in front of the farm, hoarse and terrifying. “Finn, where are you? Come here!”
Finn jumped to his feet and wiped his hands on his pants. He ran around the building and found his mother, who was standing in the middle of the courtyard looking for him. He instinctively lowered his head when he saw her.
“What are you doing out here, you fool?” she said, putting her hands on her hips.
“Nothing,” Finn said. He slowed down as he approached her. “I just couldn’t sleep anymore.”
“Come over here,” she ordered, waving him over to her. “And pick up the pace.”
Finn reluctantly approached her. He watched her as he walked. Her red apron fit tightly and was tied surprisingly high up on her torso, all the way up by her armpits, as if her waist began right underneath her large breasts. Her cheeks hung heavily on her face, grayish and wrinkled.
She looked old, Finn thought, old and deformed, and he hated everything about her.
“Do you have any idea what you look like?” She studied him angrily from head to toe. “You’re filthy! Your face and your clothes. What in the world have you been doing?”
She spat on the corner of her apron and reached out to wipe the dirt off Finn’s cheek.
Finn instinctively pulled his head back.
Her eyes flared wide in anger, and she grabbed his chin with a cold hand. “What are you thinking?” She took a firmer hold, mashing Finn’s cheeks together so he got a faint taste of blood. “You just click your heels together when I say something, you understand?” She leaned closer to him and scrunched up her eyes. “Or maybe you think you should have some say here in this house?”
Finn managed to shake his head.
“That’s right,” she nodded. “You have no say. None! ’Cause you’re stupid, Finn, an idiot. Do you understand?”
Finn nodded.
“And you look like a filthy foreigner with all that dirt on your face. Into the shower with you,” she commanded and pushed him into the main house as she went. “You’d better make it quick, Finn. You need to leave in half an hour if you’re going to be on time.”
“Yes, Mother,” Finn said.
He scowled over at the barn as he walked. Now he wouldn’t have time to finish before he had to go to work.
It would have to wait until later.