The crucifixion was an afterthought, and it was carried out without passion, in the evening, in the heat. The sun was setting, but it was hotter yet. And it was not a crucifixion, proper, though afterwards it had all the signs. They spilled him out with the corn, plucked up the corpse from the dust, and nailed him to the lynching tree, hands above his hanging head, feet below, his middle sagging, slack, between. One-Eye Jack Potter bled him and carved something in his chest, laughing, as he rubbed some syrupy used motor oil into the wound. Bull Meadows said to gut him, and they did as they were told. They stuffed the cavity with spilled corn and gravel and gave it a rough stitch with fishing line. They wrapped the body in a grey tarpaulin, threw it in the bed of the truck, and covered it with sacks of feed, while Bull Meadows pulled the auger out. By the time they had binned the corn again, it was night, and it was hotter than hell. Jody Barnes and One-Eye Jack Potter were charged with driving the dead man to DeWitt County to dump in the lake, near the power plant. The dogs were loosed to devour the mess the crows had started on at the foot of the lynching tree. The turkey vultures were already rocking back and forth as they made their patient circles high above. Bull Meadows went to bed early that night.
It was getting late when the boys got back to town, but they got to the square in time to get ice-cream cones. They sat sweating on the tailgate licking them, watching the girls in tube-tops across the street.
“I never gutted a man before,” Jody Barnes said after a while, mopping his forehead with his hand.
One-Eye Jack Potter crunched into the top of the cone and chewed, grinning. “Just like a deer or that god damn donkey-goat, I figure. Only it ain’t got no horns to show for it.”
One of the girls waved.
The heat wave worsened over the next few days, setting record highs, driving some mad, and killing others. The day the crucified man was pulled from the water and slouched off, heading east, was the worst to date.
He disappeared into the countryside, and those on the beach were afraid to follow. The next day was hotter still, and the day after that, and the day after that, as the sun flared brighter and brighter and burned hotter and hotter and scorched into the earth.
And then it burned out.