There is a Season
AU: Its 1870 Heath is 20, Nick is 28, Jarrod is 33, Audra is 19. I haven't decided about poor Eugene. I'm still working on this don't know if I'm going to need him or not. Tom died 1869.
Strawberry, California April 1870
Heath didn't like to do it this way. He thought about it off and on the whole time he worked on the coffin. He couldn't see any other way that he could do it. It didn't seem fitting to him. There just wasn't any way he could lower that coffin into the ground with his mama in it. He couldn't even bury her right. Her sad miserable life was his fault. Her dying poor was his fault. Now it was his fault she couldn't be buried in a right, Christian manner.
He borrowed an old wagon from Mr. Finch at the livery and washed the wagon all over so it was clean. His mother always strongly believed in cleanliness. 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness' she always said. He guessed the theme of most of his early life was cleanliness. His mama doing other folk's laundry, "Don't you mess with that washing, Heath Thomson, don't you touch them clothes, they're all clean now," yelling at him in their little back yard. Those were probably the first words he remembered her ever saying to him angry.
His mama was a cleanliness demon, cleaning their house, cleaning other folk's houses, cleaning him. He remembered her scrubbing the mine dust off him like to take his skin off. He'd tell her, "just gonna be all dirt again tomorrow, Mama," but that never stopped her from taking off a layer of skin before she let him have his dinner. Standing him out behind the house scrubbing him with that water she kept heated, waiting for him to get home from working in the mine. Him hopping around the yard, her a hold of his arm, hanging on scrubbing away the whole time. Telling him, "you're not sitting down to my table lookin' like that. You remember now, 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness'." Finally, even Mama had to give up, just couldn't get all that dust out of his skin. Like all the other miners, he'd worn his trade on his face and in the seams of his hands.
So he scrubbed that wagon out good. Then he cleaned up Gal until she shone bright as that old cook stove on a Sunday afternoon. Aunt Hannah and Miss Rachel had cleaned Mama up. That was only fitting and he was thankful they had been there for that. Didn't know what he would have done otherwise. But Aunt Hannah and Miss Rachel had always been there when he needed them, so that was not a problem he'd needed to worry about.
Getting that coffin into that grave though. That was a problem he had thought about the whole time he was building the box for his mama. He wasn't strong enough to get it down in that hole alone. Miss Rachel and Aunt Hannah might have helped but he didn't think they could do their side alone. Mr. Finch hired Heath all those years ago to work in the livery cause his back was too bad to clean the stalls any more. He'd always treated Heath real well. Been polite to him, given him the job in the livery. But his back was real bad now and Heath didn't want to make him feel bad about not helping, so he couldn't even ask him.
He was damned he'd ask his uncle to help. Not that the old man would help any way. He'd be damned he'd ask and hear the old man say, "No." Not that he'd say, "no," nothing so simple as that. He'd give Heath another talking to about how worthless he was and how he'd killed his mama. Killed her by being born and killed her by living. Not something Heath felt like hearing just this minute, when he wasn't sure he disagreed with the old man.
So Heath had finally decided that they would just have to make do. Make do the way they had his whole life. The four of them making do with what they had. Getting by as best they could on their own.
He carried his mama out of the house and put her in the box in the back of the wagon. No way he could carry her out of the narrow little front door in that box. Not and do it seemly without tipping it every which a way to get it out the door. Aunt Hannah had dressed her in her best church dress and combed her hair out. Mama's hair was still beautiful; when the rest of her was thin and wasted with the consumption, her hair was still golden and shinning. He ran a tress of it through his finger before laying it gently down on her shoulder.
He remembered when he was boy running and his mama chasing him, her hair flying behind her all golden in the sun. It was one of the few clear memories he had of his early youth. They must have been up in one of the high mountain meadows in the summer because he remembered it had been all wild flowers. He was running and laughing so hard and his mama caught him and tickled him until he was laughing so he could hardly breathe. He could remember her laughing and her hair all around the two of them and being so happy and loving his mama so much. Been a long while since he could remember being happy, but he had never stopped loving his mama so much.
Didn't know how old he was that day, must have been before the mine though, 'cause there hadn't been time for the meadow after he started working. Then there had only been the Sundays with no work and Sunday was for church and reading the Bible, not for long walks to distant meadows.
Miss Rachel put Mama's wedding ring quilt in the box and up the sides to cover her with. He remembered his mama sewing on that quilt at night. Cutting up all those little pieces and sewing them into those circles. After he laid his mama in the box, he fingered the quilt, remembering bits of forgotten shirts, old and ragged made whole and beautiful in that quilt. Must have taken his mama two years to make that quilt, sewing a little on it each night when she came home from work. She'd save scraps of cloth from the shirts she made for the miners and keep them in her ragbag for that old quilt. Those bits had been bright and full of color while the bits from his shirts had been dull, all the color washed out of them by the time they were too old to wear any more. Now all the bits were old and faded, must have been ten years ago his mama finished that quilt.
Now it was her shroud. That seemed fitting to him. He was glad she had such a fine quilt for her last bed. He carefully folded the edges of the quilt over her still body. He looked at her face for the last time and then folded the top of the quilt down over her beautiful blond hair and her blue eyes, closed forever.
He took the lid of her box and fitted it on over the base. He used the hammer he had borrowed from Mr. Finch at the livery to hammer in the nails to hold the top, careful that none missed and split the side of the box. He didn't want to bury his mama in a splintered coffin. He'd never had enough money to buy her the things he'd wanted, but he'd always tried to make what he did give her as perfect as he could. This box was the last thing he could give her and it was as perfect as he could do.
He sold his gun rig in Pinecrest and bought the wood for the coffin. He got oak so it would last. Difficult to work with 'cause it was so hard, but it would last a good long time. He bought a plane there in the hardware store to make the boards smooth so there were no splinters or rough spots. He got a little linseed oil from Mr. Finch at the livery. Knew he always kept a little for the handles on the rakes and forks. Now he used the oil on the outside of the box to give it a nice shine.
It was the nicest box he could make his mama. When he was a boy, he used to tell his mama he was going to take her away from Strawberry someday and build her a beautiful house. They would talk about their house in the valley. It was going to have a bedroom for each of them. It was going to have a big fireplace to keep them warm in the winter and front porch for sitting on in the summertime. But the only home he had ever built his mama was going to be this oak box.
He drove in the last nail using an extra nail to set the heads without denting the wood of the top. Then he took out the linseed rag from his pocket and carefully wiped where he had driven in each of the nails. Finally, satisfied that everything was as fine as he could make it, he jumped down to the ground from the wagon bed. He helped his Aunt Hannah and Miss Rachel up on to the wagon seat and climbed up beside them. Picking up the reins, he gave Gal a soft click and she walked away pulling the unaccustomed wagon.
There was never any question where he was burying her. There was a grove of redwoods just passed the end of town they had both loved to walk in on nice Sunday afternoons. Sometimes in the summertime they would pack a lunch, a couple of hard cooked eggs, or maybe some bread and jam, and come out here to eat, sharing a jar of water. They would pretend they were Robin Hood and Maid Marian in Sherwood Forest or King Arthur and Guinevere in Camelot. Heath would run about, fighting off bandits and evil knights while his mama would cry out in distress, her arm thrown dramatically across her forehead. Finally, the two would laugh and sit in the shade and eat their lunch. Both too tired from the long week of work for too much play but enjoying their time together, so rare during the week and relished on their day of rest.
Heath dug the hole in the early morning before the sun came up, neatly piling the dirt all on one side. It was too early in the season for any flowers but he gathered a big armful of the fragrant deep woods ferns and put them in a bucket near the head of the grave. He had spread some straw in the bottom of the hole to make a good soft place for the coffin to land in case he couldn't let it down as softly as he wanted. He'd put two neat pieces of oak, left from the coffin, in the bottom of the hole so he could get his rope out afterwards.
He stopped Gal with the wagon just passed the hole and climbed down. He gave a quick look to make sure he had the wagon in the right spot before he helped Hannah and Rachel down. Once they were safely on the ground, he climbed into the back of the wagon and carefully pulled the coffin to the edge of the wagon-bed. Again on the ground, he dragged the coffin until the foot of it rested on the earth, got a good hold of the head of the box and then nodded to Rachel who led Gal forward pulling the wagon out from under its load. Once the box was clear, he lowered it carefully. He looked into the deep hole now to make sure all was ready.
Going back to the wagon, he got the rope he had coiled in the back and turned Gal and backed the wagon to the other side of the grave. He passed the middle of the rope under the coffin giving himself about ten feet of rope on either side. Once he was satisfied, he went back over to the wagon and tied the two ends of the rope to the under support on the wagon bed.
"Just walk her away slow, Miss Rachel," he said, taking a good grip on the rope near the coffin. He was only going to get one chance at this. It was the last thing he could do for his mama and he surely didn't want to make a mistake.
Miss Rachel took a grip on the reins just beneath Gal's chin and gave her a soft cluck. As the little mare stepped forward, Heath lifted his side of the coffin by the rope, so that the wagon dragged the box toward the grave. Once he had the box poised over the opening, he called to Miss Rachel, "Stop her there and back her a bit."
The mare willingly stepped back and with her help, Heath slowly lowered the box into the hole. The oak was not as dry as it might have been. It was the best he could get in Pinecrest, but it had made a heavy box. His mama couldn't have weighed a hundred pounds but he guessed that box was at least that much and then a bit more. He was glad Gal was there to help; the box was an awkward load for one man to manage.
The box came to the bottom of the hole so gently he didn't hear it hit the two oak supports, he just knew he couldn't feel the weight of it any more. "Stop her there, Miss Rachel," he called out softly, and laid his length of rope on the ground. He walked around the grave and untied the rope from the wagon and dropped the ends into the hole. Then he led Gal away from the grave. After pulling the rope up and coiling it neatly on the ground, he removed the ferns from their bucket of water and dropped them down on top of the coffin. He wished again he had some flowers but Strawberry was not a place of flowers, never had been in his life, except maybe that one mountain meadow.
Miss Rachel read from her Bible and they all said the Lord's Prayer. Aunt Hannah sang Mama's favorite hymn with Heath and Miss Rachel joining in on the chorus. Then it was done.
"You come back to the house when you finish, Heath," Miss Rachel said, loosing her hold on her Bible with one arm to give Heath's waist a gentle squeeze. "We got dinner there."
"Yes, ma'am," Heath said, returning his Aunt Rachel's hug. "I won't be too long here, just got to set the headboard."
Rachel nodded her head sadly and then, taking Hannah by the arm, the two walked away from the grave back toward the shabby little house where no one lived.
Heath took off his good shirt and folded it carefully in the back of the wagon and put on his faded blue shirt. He only had the one good shirt and he wanted to keep it nice for the dinner Miss Rachel and Aunt Hannah had been cooking all morning. The old blue shirt would do for what needed doing now.
The first dozen shovelfuls were the worst. Each one fell on that box with a hollow booming noise that seemed to fill his head. After the first couple, he had to stop and just stand there for a bit before he could go on. Didn't seem possible that he was putting his mama in a hole in the ground and filling it in with dirt. Didn't seem possible he had nailed her into a box. He wanted to crawl back down in that hole and open the box and look at her one more time. Make sure, he guessed, that she was really dead.
Took him a few minutes to get through that foolishness before he could get back to his shoveling. Once each shovel full of dirt stopped sounding like doom to him, the work went faster. Didn't take but maybe ten minutes before there was no sign his mama had ever lived, besides a mound of earth and a bastard son.
He stood looking at that mound of dirt, trying to decide which was more worthless, the mound of dirt or the bastard. Finally, sighing, he walked back to the wagon and picked up the headboard he had carved from the widest of the oak boards.
It wasn't like one of those fancy stone grave markers he'd seen in San Francisco. He wished he had money for a marker that would last for all time, so strangers passing in a hundred years would know that his Mama was lying in these woods. But he figured the redwoods would need to be that marker. These redwoods had out lasted the mine and would out last the town. Could be they would outlast some piece of marble too.
He set the marker in the three-foot trench he had left and carefully filled in around it. Then using the heel of his boot he tamped the earth in good and tight all around the base. The dirt on the grave would settle as time took it. He wanted to make sure the marker stood straight so he took time with the settling. Once he was done, he took Mr. Finch's linseed rag and carefully oiled the handle of the shovel and cleaned the blade before returning the tool to the back of the wagon. He'd take the wagon and shovel back to Mr. Finch in the evening after dinner.
He took the little dogwood tree he had dug up and planted it near the head of the grave, filling the hole with his hands, setting the tree straight. He didn't know if there was enough sun in that patch of redwoods for the little dogwood to grow, but his mama had sure loved the dogwood blooms in the spring so maybe she would help it along a bit.
Finished, he stood at the foot of the grave and just looked at the mound of dirt and the marker. Leah Thomson 1828-1870 Beloved Mother. "Good-bye, Mama. I love you," he said simply and then turning, he walked back toward the wagon.