Down the Hollow

Reverend told Tommo and Billy to keep digging ’til they shifted enough snow to reach dirt. They’ve been at it nigh on an hour now, but the going could be slower. The paddocks is slick with ice—never mind that the calendar’s just turned June—and the hollow’s filled right up to the brink. Most folk wouldn’t even know there’s a hell-deep gully here, if they didn’t grow up ’round these parts. Dísah used to dare me to climb into it all the time when we was kids. She swore up’n down that the roots poking out of its craggy sides was really fingers and petrified tongues; that the ground at its base weren’t covered with grass but human bones. Piles and piles of skulls and spines and ribs, and God-knows what else. She said it were haunted, on account of them skeletons, and I can’t say I didn’t believe her. None of us kids kept our shit together long enough to make it past the first ledge, so there weren’t none of us fit to call her a liar.

Dísah made it to the bottom, though. More times’n I can count. She’d scramble down them rough walls, easy as a possum, ’til she were well out of sight. One time, she were gone so long I knew she must’ve slipped and died; but just as I were set to run back home and fetch our Pa, she wriggled her skinny arse up over the ridge and flashed me a filthy smile. “Buck up, Jesse,” she said. “Ain’t no ghost going to get me.” In her hand, a smooth grey stone, no longer’n her middle finger. What she promised were a bone from someone’s big toe.

Now Jed’s working the pick-axe, forcing his way to where none of us ain’t never been. His hat’s pushed high on his forehead, face red and dripping, scarf rimmed with a crust of frozen sweat and breath. He and the boys is got a ways to go before they reach bottom; their tools ain’t been used much for this type of work—shouldn’t really be used now. Regular spades ain’t built for this wrong season, regular ploughs won’t do neither, and regular seeds ain’t fit for sowing. Not yet.

Only sure-fire way to fight summer snows is from the inside, so Reverend says. We gots to plant something deep in the earth’s belly; something so pure it’ll shame them white fields into melting. That’s why we’re here, me and my cousins, freezing our balls off when we should be sweltering, praying for cool rains to break the heat, to draw our crops up and keep the dust down. Instead, the three of them is chipping their way through twelve solid feet of last week’s blizzard. And I can’t do nothing more’n watch, standing on the lip of the crater they’re making, heart and knees buckling under the weight of my burden. Clenching my jaw. Struggling to keep the truth from spilling.

Reverend’s plucking his steel guitar, picking nothing but minor chords. It’s a brittle music, too fragile to keep time with the ins and outs of the boys’ shovels, the heated rhythm of their grunting and cussing. His is hangman’s songs if ever I heard them. Notes twang, dangle in the air for no more’n a second. Then gravity pulls them down, snaps their necks, and drops them dead into the hollow. Ain’t no trees or cliffs for miles ’round for the sound to bounce off of—between each note there’s nothing but hush, smothered under a blanket of falling snow.

Soon Reverend starts to sing. His voice is thinner than the cotton nightie my sister’s wearing, and bare as her arms. Whatever hymn it is, it ain’t one we sing at church. Half the time his pitch is so low I can’t make out the words, but I can tell by the look on his face that he probably never sang nothing more serious. What I do catch is all about gifts and rebirth and new life, and other stuff I only ever heard of in fireside yarns. Fat white flakes land on his eyelashes as he looks skywards; he blinks away the melt until a steady trickle runs down his cheeks. It almost looks like he’s crying.

Real tears is burning the back of my throat. I swallow and cough in an effort to keep them in. Readjust the hold I got on Dísah, hoping if I keep my hands busy my mind won’t notice how fast things is happening. I lean back a bit, so as to take more of her weight against my chest, then shimmy my arms into a better position beneath the crook of her knees, and under her shoulders and back. Gently cradle her face against my collarbone. Rest my chin on the crown of her golden head. Try to stretch her flimsy skirt so it’ll cover more’n just her thighs. Shift her again; free one hand so I can brush away the snow that’s collecting on her shins and bare feet.

“Ain’t going to get no deeper now, Rev,” Billy says. “Ground’s froze solid.”

It can’t be time. My heart jackrabbits and my legs ache to do likewise. I look to Reverend, pray he’ll tell them to keep going, at least long enough so I can figure a way out of here; but he’s fixed on finishing his song and is ignoring the lot of us. The boys crawl out of the hole they dug, toss their tools down, stretch and flex their cramping hands. Tommo slips a flask of cheap whiskey out from inside his wool vest, takes a long swig then passes it on to Jed and Billy. They each of them warm the mouth of the tin flask with their breaths first, to keep their lips from sticking, then take turns sucking heat from the bottle. I don’t begrudge them the chance to rest before they gots to fill that hole back in again—but while their faces is growing rosy, my Dísah’s cold, cold skin’s turning fish-belly blue.

I’m shivering so much I can’t tell if she’s moving at all no more. And though I rub her arms and legs as well as I can without dropping her, it don’t seem to help none.

A freight train howls across the horizon, drowning out the final verse of Reverend’s song. When we was growing up, Dísah teased him for looking like a prairie wolf, on account of his long pointed nose, mongrel hair, and deep yellow eyes. And for a second, with his head tilted back like it is just now, and the wail of the train cutting through the quiet, I reckon she were right. Our Rev’s baying for God’s help. If I could, I’d scream right along with him, bellow ’til I’m as empty and breathless as my sister.

But I know that won’t achieve nothing. So alls I do is sweep Dísah’s hair away from her eyes, kiss her ’til my tears leak out, and keep my mouth shut like I promised her.

“I ain’t one to tread on ceremony, Rev,” Tommo says. “But if we gots to do this, can we get it done before you wind up needing to bury five souls in this here hollow instead of just one?”

My eyes flick between Reverend, the boys, and Dísah. None of them meet my gaze. I back a pace or two away from them all, but soon forget how to move, how to breathe.

I’m really going to lose her.

“Right then, Jesse.” Reverend’s lost his coyote look. His head’s bowed as he walks towards me, taking one slow step after another as if he were coming down the aisle of his church. He’s slung his guitar over his back and is pulling a pair of thick mittens on as he approaches. Still not meeting my eyes.

“I know you don’t want to be here, son. But Dísah picked you as her shepherd, and you got to live up to that. This is a proud moment for you and your kin, Jess; and you can rest assured every soul in town will know how you’ve carried yourself today. So come on now.” He pauses for a minute to give me time to control my blubbering. The seconds tick by, but I can’t stop. I’m choking on my tears, snorting them in, coughing them out. And they just keep coming. Harder and thicker until I think my body’s going to burst. Only thing keeping me together is holding Dísah close. Squeezing her so tight I’m surprised she don’t snap in two.

Maybe if she does, they won’t think she were so perfect no more. They’ll see how I broke her, see the truth. Maybe then I can keep her.

“Come on now, boy. Get ahold of yourself. We all know Dísah’s special—hell, that’s why she’s here! You don’t think I wouldn’t have brought fat Chelsea or that stupid cow Jeanette if I couldn’t have? Or one of Abe Pedlar’s cross-eyed daughters, or even that retarded little girl living near Miller’s Point? What’s her name? Jayla?” He shakes his head.

“But that’s just it, son; I couldn’t choose any of them. Those girls get used more than the shitter at Pete’s Roadhouse. And, unless I’m wrong, I’ve just listed every young chickadee in town what’s got her bloods, apart from Dísah here. Now am I wrong?”

All three of my traitor cousins shake their heads, lower their eyes. As if, between them, they ain’t left more than one load in each of them so-called shitters.

“Everyone’s counting on us to do our part, Jess—oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t give me that look!” Reverend’s jaw snaps shut. Fog blows out his nostrils in bursts; he waits for it to clear before continuing. When he does, his words is strained.

“She knows what she’s got herself into, you hear? This ain’t no sacrifice. This here is a gift—she came of her own fucking volition. And, far as I can tell, so did you. You could’ve said no when she picked you, but you didn’t. You could’ve stayed back at the barn with your Pa, but you didn’t. So unless you’re keen to lose your cock to frostbite out here, I’d suggest we finish this. Now.”

Only reason I came, I want to shout at him, is to change her goddamn mind.

I turn away. Use my body as a shield between Reverend and Dísah, as if that’ll make him forget she’s here. Lift her up ’til my beard bristles against her temple, her body no heavier than our secret. Press my mouth to the frozen shell of her ear.

“Let me tell them,” I whisper. “Please, babe. You shouldn’t be here.”

The only answer she can muster is a rush of air, a wheezing out of her chest, then a rattling inhalation. Dísah never could cope with winter, owing to the rotten lungs her Ma birthed her with. I ain’t never seen her fight for breath as she is now, and I know if I don’t get her inside quick she won’t find no relief this side of life. She’s making such a racket I’m worried she hasn’t heard me, so again I say, “Please, Dísah. Please—“

“Shhhhhhhhhh,” she whispers. “Buck up, babe.”

She might’ve just winked at me, but it’s hard to tell. Her eyes is glazed and her movements all sluggish, in part from the cold, in part from the pills we swiped this morning for her comfort. Our Pa’s been hanging onto them ever since my Ma died two years back; said we’d never know when we might need them sort of drugs again. I ain’t so sure he had this particular use in mind.

“I’ll say I forced you.” Dísah starts wriggling in my grasp. I hold her tighter, compel her to listen. “Just tell them you didn’t want to do it, that I made you. They can’t blame you for that, can they?”

“Do you need me to take her, son? You’re looking a mite unsteady.” Reverend rests his hand on my shoulder and I flinch like it were a punch. In my distraction I let Dísah slide half to the ground; she’s pressed between my forearms, her tits and shoulder blades only things stopping her from fully slipping from my embrace. Her nightie snags on my coat sleeve and hikes up ’round her ribcage. I feel blood rushing hot to my face at the sight of her nakedness, and it just makes me cry harder.

“Let me go,” she says. Her voice is calm, like she couldn’t care less about our cousins gawking at her private bits, but her breath is coming short and shallow. I know I’m crushing her lungs from the wheeze and gurgle they’re producing, but I can’t do nothing about it. I feel like I’m paralyzed.

“Jesse,” she says, her tone near-stopping my heart. “Let me go.”

“I can’t,” I say, even as my arms release her. I bend to pick her up again, but she pushes me away.

“Let me go.”

The last time I see her alive, Dísah’s not much more’n a smudge. No matter how quick I wipe my eyes, everything in sight is blurred. She’s so fucking stiff she can’t hardly bend her arms and legs, but somehow she crawls away from me, gouging knee-trails down into the hollow. All on her own steam, just like Reverend wants.

He takes up his guitar again, plucks a few strings, stops when he sees the boys ain’t started shovelling. “Go on,” he barks and, slowly, they does.

“Please, don’t,” I say, running to the edge of that god-cursed hole, right as Billy tosses the first spadeful onto Dísah’s belly. “Please, Dísah—can’t I please just tell them? It ain’t too late, babe. Please.”

Her eyes lock on mine and hold steady as the snow heaps on top of her. Tears and snot is running freely down my face, but she keeps looking up at me. Shaking her head, sad but firm.

“Please,” I repeat, but Dísah just raises a warning finger to her blue lips, presses them closed. And then she’s gone.

“Smell that boys?” Reverend takes a deep breath, pulls his mittens off, and starts to unbutton his coat. “I’ll be damned if that ain’t spring in the air already, God bless that little girl’s soul.”

As Jed and Tommo tamp the snow down on Dísah’s grave, and Billy marks the spot with a flagpole, it hits me.

Only reason she chose me is to make sure I didn’t spill ’til after she were gone.

No matter how hard I begged, my sister weren’t never going to let me save her.

Dísah’s Ma’s got some nerve, draping her stoop with black fabric like she’s in mourning. Hiding inside her cabin as though, for sadness, she can’t bear to show her face. Shayanne’s peeking ’round her plaid curtains, drawing on a cigarette. Taking a good look at what’s going on outside them grimy windows of hers, like she’s just waiting for people to start filing up her drive bringing rhubarb and apple pie condolences. She’s leaning so close to the glass, I can see the makeup she’s globbed on for the occasion. Her black spider eyes widen, just for a second, when she notices me and Rev and the boys dragging our frozen arses back into town. Then she looks at all of us, hard, through a cloud of her smoke. Not spying to see if we’s brought Dísah home with us; checking to make sure she’s good and gone.

“Stupid bitch,” I say, turning to Dísah out of habit, waiting for her to roll her eyes and agree with me.

“What?” Tommo asks over his shoulder. He don’t turn to look at me—his eyes is locked on the smokestack of Pete’s Roadhouse, poking up like a steeple on the other side of the lumber yard.

“Nothing.” Cold wind whistles through the empty air to my left, then cuts right through me. “See you at Pete’s.”

Tommo nods. He fumbles in his pocket, finds his keys. Gestures like he’s tipping his hat as he passes Shayanne’s place to reach his pickup. She dips her head, accepting his greeting more than returning it. Turns my stomach, seeing her act so high and mighty.

Pa once told us Dísah’s Ma were the biggest mistake he ever did, and every day he gets on his knees and thanks the Lord my Ma took him back after he’d strayed. Even now Ma’s gone, Pa still prays. He don’t make no secret of it—just like he don’t hide how much he loves our Dísah, no matter what act brung her into this world.

Shayanne never could stand it, the way Pa and Dísah get along. While everyone else sees my sister for the beauty she is, knowing full well she’s Pa’s pride, when Shayanne looks at her daughter all she sees is Pa. Both of them with their same cornstraw hair, their same green eyes, their same smile; both of them choosing my Ma over her for the long haul. Every time Shayanne bawled Dísah out for being lazy (which she weren’t) or stupid (which she weren’t neither) or a whore everyone knew who she were really talking to. Everyone, I reckon, except Dísah.

The curses I spit across the street, across the space where my sister should be standing, get drowned out in the roar of Tommo’s engine turning over.

I ain’t been this drunk since Dísah got hold of that bottle of bourbon for my eighteenth two months back. She said Shayanne were giving her the shits as usual, so we’d have to guzzle it in the barn, if that were all right with me. Sure as hell was.

It were good shit Dísah got me, not like the piss Pete’s serving tonight. I never asked her where it came from; must’ve cost her at least twenty bucks, it were that high quality. She ain’t never had a job outside working Pa’s stall at the markets, and harvests being what they is, ain’t been much for her to sell this past year—but my girl’s a clever one, ain’t she? With her sweet face and quick tongue, she can talk most folk into finding her what she needs. Reckon that’s what bagged me the best birthday I ever had, me and Dísah pissed out of our gourds together.

“Another,” I say, shoving a wad of crumpled bills at Reverend. He looks at me for a minute, not saying nothing, then grabs the cash and heads to the bar. Dusk is falling, but Pete always holds off switching on the overheads ”til it’s damn-near dark as the devil’s arse in here. A couple old lanterns swing from the rafters, casting a whiskey glow on the handful of regulars sitting at the table across from ours. Pete’s got Nitty Gritty Dirt Band playing on the juke, replays of last season’s ball games on the tube, and a layer of fresh straw on the floor. I put my head in my hands, close my eyes to block it all out, breathe deep.

Smells just like my birthday; bourbon, hay, sweat from a hard day’s work, and a hint of sadness. Only things missing is the sound of Dísah’s squeeze-box breath, gasping softly in and out. The scent of her warm, clean skin. The taste of her tongue in my mouth.

I open my eyes. No girl will ever love me the way Dísah does. The way she did.

“This too shall pass,” says Reverend, clunking a pint of beer and a whiskey chaser down on the table’s worn surface in front of me, pocketing the change.

“Thanks,” I mumble, and gulp down a third of the beer, trying to drown the lump in my throat.

“You been over to see Shayanne yet? Paid your respects?”

“No,” I grunted. “And I ain’t going to neither.”

“You really should, Jesse. It’s only right—”

“I ain’t.”

Booze adds growl to my voice, what Dísah says sounds sexy, but what Reverend seems to take as a threat. He shuts up about Shayanne, goes back to his side of the table, sits down beside Jed. He doesn’t join in the conversation—Jed and Billy’s wondering how quick the snows’ll melt now that Dísah’s been planted; wondering how soon it’ll be before Jeanette starts wearing them t-shirts of hers, the ones that stretch so tight across her tits, so thin that anyone with a mind to look can see her nipples.

The whiskey burns a trail down my throat, sends fumes up my nose. It clears my head, instead of dulling it enough to forget what we done today like it should. There’s a three-legged seat on my right; Dísah’s sitting there, nursing a tumbler of gin. Pete always serves her when the crowds are light, even though she’s only sixteen. She repays him by clearing up every now and again, or by running the bingo once a month on a Sunday.

“Get me another,” I say. Dísah shakes her head; Billy reaches over and grabs two-fifty from my wallet, starts asking if anyone else wants one. Jed nods, says Reverend’s going to need one too when he gets back from the can. Tommo drains his glass, slams it upside down on the table with a grin. So Billy takes ten more bucks out of my wallet while I keep talking to Dísah’s empty chair.

“Doesn’t matter what Shayanne thinks, you know.”

The chair remains silent.

“Telling folk she were so proud of you for being chosen—like you had any real say in the matter.” Dísah smiles, sips her drink. Tips her head all coy-like, getting ready to say something cutting. She’s sharp, my sister; so I plough ahead before she can interrupt.

“Telling you it were the first time you ain’t let her down.” The thought makes me laugh ’til I drool. “Ain’t that what you call irony, Rev? Like you taught us? Irony?”

“Sure, Jesse.” Reverend returns to our table, wiping his hands on his pant legs. His laugh, when it comes, ain’t as loud as mine.

“Making you think she loved you for what you was doing—what a fucking bitch. What a fucking, fucking bitch.” I turn to see how Dísah’s reacting to these revelations, afraid I’ll hurt her with too much truth too fast. She’s quiet, though, so I finish my beer and keep talking.

“When is Shayanne ever been proud of you? This weren’t about you saving us, about you being important. It were about her getting rid of you—c’mon, now. Don’t shake your head like that.”

The chair wobbles, then spins, and now I’m looking up at it from below, my shoulder throbbing. Pete’s got the lights on too bright; they’re shining straight into my eyes, making my head hurt.

“What we done together—“I bite my tongue ’til I taste blood, then swallow a few times to keep from puking. “She wouldn’t have hated you any more than she already does, babe. If you’d have told her instead of dying just to make her happy.”

I sit up, then scramble to my knees so me and Dísah is looking at each other eye-to-eye. The words is shaking out of my lips, and I can’t stop them. I harden my voice, my heart, make it strong enough to say, “She ain’t proud of you—but you bought her act. You bought it, hear me? You bought it!”

“Jesus Christ, Jess—settle down. What did you think I were doing, you drunk fuck?” Billy doles out the drinks, then lifts me back into my seat, puts the change in my left hand, and a shot of bourbon in my right. He waits a minute to make sure I ain’t going to tip over, then sits on Dísah’s chair.

“Shots of Southern Comfort’s a buck each ’til eight. You up for another one?”

I look at the full glass in my hand, drain it off, blink without clearing the blur. “I love you, but still you bought it. And now you’re gone.”

Billy doesn’t say nothing. Just goes and gets us another round.

Haven’t been able to keep anything solid down for three days, my guts is been that rotten. Pa reckons I poisoned myself with drink; so he gave me a double-shot of brandy this morning to keep the jitters at bay, then made me promise I’d call past Doc’s after me and the boys get back from the hollow this afternoon. He could’ve told me to go first—probably wanted to—but we both know I couldn’t have listened. Unfinished business comes before a bellyful of sour piss every time, far as Reverend’s concerned.

“Way I see it,” Jed says, hocking a cheekful of tobacco juice into the snow bank, shielding his face from the splashback, “we shoulda seen a change by now. I mean, didn’t take Jesus no longer’n three days to work his miracle—”

Reverend cuts him off with a cuff to the back of his head. Wind catches Jed’s wool cap, sends it skittering a foot or two over the frozen fields. “Jesus ain’t got nothing to do with this, boy. There’s a fuckload of worldly doings ain’t in that fella’s jurisdiction, and this here’s one of them.”

Jed’s face reddens. He traps his hat beneath his boot, sinks down ’til he’s knee-deep in the drift. “But last time—”

“Just shut it,” Tommo says, scowling. “Save your steam for the dig, hey?”

Jed shoots his brother a look I seen a million times before: his jaw’s clenched and he’s squinting like a dog who’s just been muzzled—but it never lasts more’n a second. Face blank, he pulls himself up, brushes off, jams his hat on his head. The rest of us is walking fast, but he gains on us quick by following in our foot holes instead of ploughing a new track through the snow.

Tommo don’t ever talk about last time. I try to catch Jed’s eye, let him know I get him; but he keeps his gaze forward now, plotting the easiest route to the gully. Billy lights a cigarette—oblivious, or pretending to be. Reverend tells us we’re nigh on there, says he can see the marker we left on Dísah’s grave, a smear of dark on a ground of white. None of us need say nothing else. We know it were different all them years ago, when it were their sister got planted instead of mine.

Prairies that’d been flooded for weeks was bone dry a few hours after Raelene were gifted to the hollow, as though she gave the earth one hell of a thirst; one that meant it didn’t stop drinking ’til its tab were good and spent. Following day, my uncle and auntie were out tilling, the soil moist and pliable, with love and thanks for their little girl mixed in each handful of seed. The day after that, Dísah left her Ma, came over to our place for good. Seemed the sun wouldn’t never stop shining down on us then.

But now clouds is thick overhead, hanging low on the horizon, just about ready to drop. The wind bites my cheeks, the air slices my lungs with every breath. Ice sticks my eyelashes together each time I blink. My nose hairs is stiff with frost. Inside my coat, I’m sweating; my shirt feels clammy with it, and the smell of stale liquor and nerves wriggles up my neck, through the gap between my scarf and collar.

Whatever we done the other day, I keep thinking, it weren’t right.

I ain’t got enough booze left in me to see Dísah’s face purple and twisted from suffocation, her arms and legs scalded with frostbite, her roundness flattened under the weight of all that snow. Her lips frozen shut, dead on account of our silence.

I ain’t ready to think of her as just a body.

We see her long before we get to the hollow.

She’s sitting with one leg crossed over the other, her feet dangling down a girl-sized wormhole in the snow. And I can’t fucking believe it.

“She’s still alive,” I say, half-whisper, half-chuckle. The sour in my belly dries right up, and I get a rush that starts in my chest, powers down through my legs, and out the soles of my feet. I drop my shovel, half-stumble and half-run towards her, shouting, “Dísah!”

Three days and nights we left her out here, half-naked and alone, buried so deep even gophers couldn’t reach her, and she’s fucking survived.

She waves like she’s just been crowned queen of the Holloway county fair, looking prettier than ever. Her hair’s mussed but shiny clean, her lips is wet and red, her eyes is got a sexy shadow to them, and her skin’s got a sheen to it like she’s spent the day out in the sun. She smiles at me, teeth straight and white. Roses bloom in her cheeks, just like they did that night in the barn.

“The bones, Jesse! Down there, nothing but bones, bones, bones,” she says, laughing. Her voice is clear—and so is her lungs. Her chest is rising and falling silently; there’s no strain in her expression. I ain’t never seen her look so healthy.

“How’d you—” I bite the question in half, the words pushing out of me as I fall headlong into the snow. Reverend dislodges his foot from round my ankles, pins me down with his knee, then grabs hold of my arms to keep me from getting up.

“Stay back now, son,” he says. “Don’t go near that thing.”

“Get off,” I growl. I flail in Reverend’s grip, using the advantage hauling crops gives me over a man who’s spent thirty-odd years sitting around looking at books: digging my knees in the drift for leverage, I arch my back and push up, muscles tense and straining, ’til Reverend’s either got to let go or find himself arse-up in the snow.

He lets me up, but stays close.

Dísah claps her hands. “Don’t stop on my account. You know I like a bit of rough and tumble—don’t you, Jess?”

“Don’t listen to her, boy. That ain’t your sister,” Reverend says.

My face goes so hot, I reckon it must be redder’n my hair. “Enough of that talk, babe. Sounds like the cold’s gone and addled your brains.”

I try to laugh, but even as I’m saying she’s crazy, in my head it’s my birthday all over again. I can feel the straw poking into my bare knees; the strength of Dísah’s legs wrapped around me; the weight of her on top of me; the thrust of her beneath me.

Dísah acts like she ain’t heard a thing I said.

“I’ll always be a one-tumble girl now, won’t I?” She shakes her head, looks at Reverend, giggles at the look of shock he and the boys is wearing. Then she turns back to me. “Ain’t no point keeping quiet about it. Like you said: ain’t going to change a thing.”

“Hush, now,” I say, but I’m nodding even though I don’t remember saying no such thing. “We’ll tell everyone after you come home—let’s just get you home, okay?”

Dísah looks at Reverend, then back at me, like she’s measuring our worth with her gypsy eyes. Slowly, she gets to her feet. As she stands, a pile of bones tumbles out of her skirt and scatters on the ground. She looks at them and smiles. “Told you it was bones down there.”

I can’t help it: I start to laugh, and it builds until the sound is deep and long. “I’m so glad you ain’t gone,” I say and take her hand. Through my gloves I can feel the icy cold of her palm.

“Bones, bones, bones,” she sings. Her grip tightens on mine ’til my fingers grind together, but I ain’t going to pull away for nothing.

“Guess the gods didn’t need her, hey Reverend? She weren’t the answer after all.”

“No, Jesse.” Reverend’s knuckles crack as he collects the shovel he dropped before our tussle. He hefts it in his right hand, says, “They took her all right—they just ain’t given nothing in return.”

He, Tommo, and Billy make their way over to me and Dísah, stepping careful so’s they don’t fall into her burrow, never taking their eyes off her. Jed hangs back, though; shifts his weight from foot to foot without going nowheres.

“I knew this weren’t like last time,” he says. “Something you done didn’t work, Rev. We done all this again, and you fucked it.”

Reverend’s voice is heavy; he don’t look at me as he says, “I think it’s fair to say it weren’t me doing the fucking here, boy.”

Silence.

Loose snow squeaks in the treads of Tommo’s boots as he comes up behind me. A raven circles overhead, lets out a single shrill caw. Taking that as some sort of divine cue, Reverend nods.

“Watch out for them bones on the way down,” Dísah says, right before Reverend takes her head off with the edge of his shovel. Right before Billy kicks her body back into the hollow. Right before I hear Tommo grunt, hear the whoosh of his spade speeding through the air, hear the twang of its steel on my skull.

Right before this damned white world goes black.

My head’s thick from too much bourbon, but the straw’s comfortable beneath my back; it’s nestled so tight around my body I almost feel like I’m floating. The barn’s air is stuffy and close, warm with the heat of my breath. I ain’t shivering no more even though my pants is still down round my ankles. My belly’s roiling.

“Dísah?” I say—or try to. Snow fills my mouth, muffles all sound. It’s so dark, I ain’t even sure she’s there ’til I feel her arm snaking around my middle, feel the press of her body against mine. She lies on top of me like a shroud of ice.

“Meet you at the bottom,” she says, then kisses me ’til my lungs freeze. I look down and see a field of bones below, and then Dísah’s gone.

I close my eyes, feel the sun on my face, and hear the musical drip of melting snow.