I wiggled my fingers in the dirt, feeling it jam up under my fingernails. I found another, smaller bone and then a whole group of bones so little they might have been chicken bones. Willie’s toes?
I laid all of the bones together on the towel and kept searching. When I had dug with my hands for several minutes without finding any more bones, I used the spade to turn over the dirt at the bottom of the hole.
I unearthed more hunks of rotting wood, but no bones.
I decided I must have found them all. I folded the towel tightly around them and put the bundle in the backpack. I tossed all the rotten wood back into the hole, then threw in the torn plastic bag. I didn’t know what else to do with it. I couldn’t leave it on the ground, and I had too much in my backpack already. I shoveled most of the dirt back into the hole, leaving enough space for the rest of the daisies.
I stomped the dirt down hard all around the clump of daisies before I emptied the rest of the water from the bucket. Breathing hard, I looked in every direction, relieved to see I was still alone.
I left the bucket at the edge of the cemetery. There was no need to carry it up the hill and back; I’d pick it up on my way home.
I considered leaving the metal box, too, since it added a lot of weight to the backpack, but I suspected that whatever was in the box had value. Otherwise, why would someone go to so much trouble to hide it? I didn’t want to leave it sitting around unguarded, even in the empty cemetery.
As I walked away from the graveyard, I felt energized. No one had seen me. The dangerous part of my mission was finished.
“I got them, Willie,” I said. “I got all your leg bones.”
I thought the least he could do was come to offer his congratulations.
Halfway up the hill between the cemetery and the river, I stopped to rest. The metal box was heavy, and I wished I didn’t have to carry it uphill and back. The hatchet and the shovel weren’t light, either.
I took the box out of the backpack and fiddled with the brass lock, which held securely.
“What do you have?” Willie appeared, finally, and sat beside me.
“I found this buried in the grave with your leg,” I said. “Do you know what it is?”
“It ain’t my leg coffin, that’s certain. You’ll need a file or a heavy pry bar to open that box without the key.”
“Your wooden coffin was rotted, but I think I found all your leg bones.”
“Could I see them?”
I laid the towel on the ground and carefully unwrapped the bones.
Willie touched the largest one, running a finger gently down the length of the bone.
“This was a fine leg,” he said. “All the years I walked on it I never gave it a thought, but I missed it sorely when it was gone. I didn’t appreciate what I had until I lost it.”
I wrapped up the bones and put them in the backpack again. “Someone must have used your leg’s grave as a hiding place,” I said as I slid the metal box in beside the towel.
“Who would bury something with my leg?” He sounded as puzzled as I felt.
I thought of the “five W’s” I had learned in school—the questions a news story should answer: Who? What? When? Where? Why? I knew where I’d found the box, but I didn’t know who had buried it, what was in it, when it had been put in the grave, or why. Five questions, one answer.
I drank more of my water, then hiked the rest of the way to the river. The sun was high now, and when we emerged from the trees to the open riverbank, the rays beat down on my back. I could almost hear Mom’s voice: “You need sunscreen on your face and arms.”
I always used to get annoyed at her nagging. Now I missed it. Nobody cared if I read past midnight or if I went to bed without brushing my teeth.
I wondered what she and Steven were doing today. Maybe this afternoon when Aunt Ethel and I got the mail there would be a letter for me.
I set the backpack beside Willie’s grave and removed the hatchet. I raised and lowered my shoulders a few times, working out the kinks.
The hatchet cut through the rose branches, but it was slow work; the thorns grabbed my hands as I chopped. I wished I had asked Aunt Ethel for some gloves. I tried pulling my sleeves down over my fingertips, but they didn’t stay down.
After I cut off each branch, I used the hatchet as a hook to drag the branch to one side. By the time I got all the brambles off Willie’s grave, my hands and wrists were covered with scratches. I wiped the blood on my pant legs and used my teeth to remove one especially large thorn from my thumb.
I picked up the spade and began to dig. The soil here was more sandy than at the cemetery, which made the digging easier.
As I worked, I thought about the metal box. Yesterday I’d told myself it was OK to dig up Willie’s leg because I wasn’t really taking anything from the grave; I was only moving the bones to a new location.
Now I had taken something. The metal box didn’t belong there in the first place, but it wasn’t Willie’s, and it certainly wasn’t mine. The excuse I’d practiced, in case I got caught, was “I didn’t remove anything except Willie’s bones.” I couldn’t say that anymore.
I had believed that once I dug up the bones and got safely away from the cemetery without being seen, my worries were over. Now I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t think there was any way I could be linked to the removal of the box, but it made me uneasy all the same. I hoped whoever had buried the box wouldn’t discover it was gone until fall, when I was safely back in Minneapolis.
When I’d dug down about two feet, I paused to wipe the sweat from my forehead and to drink some more of my water. Puffy blisters had popped up on both of my palms. I eliminated grave digging from my list of possible future careers.
I wondered how deep I needed to go. I didn’t want to dig until I found Willie’s skeleton. I was getting used to freaky situations, but that would be too weird even for me. On the other hand, I didn’t want to bury the leg so shallow that a dog or coyote would dig up the bones and run off with them.
Willie made the decision for me. He looked into the hole I’d dug and said, “You’re deep enough.” I don’t think he wanted to look at his skeleton, either.
I laid the towel at the edge of the hole, then unwrapped the bones. I lifted one long side of the towel and gently shook it until the bones slid down into the hole. I grabbed the spade and shoveled the dirt back in, quickly covering the bones.
When I had replaced all the dirt I’d removed, I used the hatchet to drag some of the rose brambles back on top of the grave. I heaped them all across the dirt so if anyone happened this way, it wouldn’t be obvious that someone had recently been digging here.
When I finished, I looked at Willie. He stood beside the pile of branches, smiling at me. “I’ve waited a long time for this,” he said.
“Do you want to say a prayer or something?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Sarah prayed for me the first time,” he said. “Nobody needs two funerals.”
“I guess we’re done then.” I rolled up the towel, put it and the hatchet in my backpack, and slid my arms into the straps.
Willie still stood beside the grave. He removed his miner’s hat, then laid it gently beside the pile of branches. I realized Willie wanted a marker for this spot, something permanent like the gravestones in the cemetery.
I thought of Florence’s gravestone that said BELOVED DAUGHTER, SISTER, AND TEACHER and wondered what Willie’s ought to say. LOVING HUSBAND AND FATHER seemed appropriate, but I knew there would be no such marker.
I wished I had dug up the small W.M.M. plaque and brought it along to identify this grave. I didn’t offer to do it now, though. I had dug up the bones and made it out of the cemetery without being seen; the last thing I wanted to do was return to dig up Willie’s marker. Especially now, after I’d taken the box from the grave.
After Willie laid his hat on the grave, he noticed me watching.
“Something to mark the spot,” he said.
“When you disappear, your hat does, too,” I said.
“Only if I’m wearing it. I can leave it here.”
“Won’t you miss it?” I asked.
He rubbed one hand across the top of his head. “Yes, and I worry someone will take the hat, but it’s all I have.”
I picked up the shovel and started to walk away, then turned back. “Keep your hat, Willie,” I said. “I’ll remove the little gravestone with your initials on it, bring it here, and put it in the proper place.”
“You are the best friend this old coal miner ever had,” Willie said as he put the hat back on.
My arms ached, my back hurt, my legs were sore, and the blisters on my hands were oozing, but I felt good inside. After more than one hundred years, Willie’s leg was finally reunited with his body.