OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 10: The Planting (Garrison)

Garrison had feared he'd married an irreligious woman.

Could be he was mistaken.

The way she seemed to pray over Murphy's body pleased him So did her fixin' him better for his grave than any drover Garrison had planted along the trail. He only caught snatches of the strange songs she sang through the night, while he and Cooper dug. Garrison did not understand most of what he heard, but his wife's kindness rang in every note. He reckoned a man would count himself lucky to spend his last few hours above ground being thus sung to.

Cooper chunked a shovelful of sandy rocks at his legs as he listened. Garrison turned on his partner, annoyed.

"Damn right you appreciate her!" commanded his partner. Then Cooper went back to digging with renewed vigor, as if he were a man who truly understood work.

Appreciate her how? Garrison might well make a poor husband, but surely he'd managed the first day and a half without somehow abusing the girl. He considered kicking some of the rocks right back at Cooper, but refused to stoop to such childishness.

Besides, the boys were riding by regular to report on the herd and to listen, most from a respectful distance, to Elizabeth's singing. Best not to set a bad example in front of them. Their lollygagging irked Garrison some, but in the hours after a compadre's death, it weren't like they would pull their full weight anyhow.

The coming dawn had not yet begun to gray the range by the time the partners dug the grave shoulder deep.

"Good enough," announced Cooper.

Garrison did not stop working. "Six foot's the rule."

"Maybe you and me grew, and we stand seven feet tall now. Though if we grew to twenty feet tall, we done dug way too deep and don't even know it." Cooper often amused himself with foolish comments like that. Garrison found it best to ignore him, and kept digging. "Who do you reckon decided on planting folks six feet deep, anyhow?"

"Someone knows more than us." But with the downward stab of his blade, Garrison hit a big enough rock that the shovel lurched under his foot, jarring his aching back. He felt a temptation to swear, but would not give Cooper that satisfaction.

He tried another patch of ground, with the same result. Pure rock.

Cooper cackled out a laugh that meant he'd already found the stone shelf. "I would say Nebraska is contradictin' that rule-happy scholar of the funereal arts."

Garrison stretched his shoulders and dragged his filthy hands down his face in consideration. Which was more important--the rule, or getting Murphy planted and breakfast into the boys before moving the cattle out?

As ever, pragmatism won. "Good enough."

Now came the challenge of climbing out.

* * *

Seeing his wife again, and the job she'd done for poor David Murphy, struck him as better than good enough. Some of the boys had helped her shave and dress the young drover, and he looked fine indeed for a dead man.

Sending Murphy off so well eased a touch of Garrison's guilt at his death.

How disheveled the night had left Elizabeth, muddy and pale, with her hair fallen and clothes wrinkled, reawoke an old and different guilt. Look at me! Lisle used to insist, when reduced to such slovenliness. Look at what you've done to me!

At least, she'd complained so in the beginning, before the babies. After that, slovenliness became the norm. She'd hated Garrison so much, she'd stopped caring for him, herself, or his baby. She'd even stopped going to church, when her devout family had been one of the main reasons he had chosen her. God wouldn't want to see me like this, she'd groaned from her unclean bed.