_-"Are you sure this is where you buried the bodies?" asked Glen Martin, gasping for air in the moonlight, his folksy plaid shirt drenched in sweat. He was exhausted, and mentally drained. The boldfaced lies his mind had been using to sweet-talk the rest of his aching body to move were at an end. His weary arms could no longer dig.
The hot and humid night was unbearable, even for Florida in the middle of July. A pungent orange blossom fragrance saturated the wild orchard. The full moon possessed a curious clarity, usually reserved for cold, winter nights. Martin, standing in a hole he helped dig, planted his shovel with a solid thrust. He slowly wiped his sweaty forehead with his soiled sleeve.
--Clay Augustine, who weighed a robust three hundred and fifty pounds, wore a determined look on his face as he dug. "They just have to be," he said, shaking his head as if chasing off a mosquito without his hands.
--"Third hole since midnight. How long are we going to keep this up?"
--Clay Augustine ignored the question and tried to dig faster. His attempt failed.
--"I said…it's our third hole since midnight," repeated Glen Martin to his friend's annoyance.
--"But this could be it," said Augustine as he flung a shove full of dirt into the darkness.
--"If I'm not mistaken…you said that last week."
--"I mean it this time!"
--"Yeah, and you said that two weeks ago."
--Clay Augustine continued to dig undeterred. It soon became abundantly apparent that no response was forthcoming.
--Glen Martin abandoned his planted shovel and turned away. He climbed up into the darkness, dislodging dirt along the holes edge. His fifty-six year old back straightened under protest, as a sharp pain made him keenly aware of his body's displeasure. It felt good to be out of any dark hole at his age. No point egging on the inevitable.
--Surrounded by acres and acres of wild trees, Glen could see the ghostly glow from the back of the high school in the distance. It was the only light for miles. To the south of the school, almost as far, the outline of a gigantic oak was faintly visible. The tree blotted out a small fraction of the dark horizon, hiding a few stars in the eastern sky. He hobbled away from the hole to an orange tree, his body starting to stiffen.
--"This is no time for breaks," said Augustine, pausing reluctantly from his dig.
--"Oh, don't go confusing this with a break, Clay. My old body is done for tonight. It's got nothing more to give."
--"You can't be serious," said Augustine who was beside himself, figuratively speaking. Two Clay Augustines would have never fit into that hole.
--"Don't I look serious," said a voice from the shadows.
--"I can't even see you now," said Augustine aggravated, scooping his shovel into the dirt.
--Glen Martin quietly watched his friend dig. "If you keep on sweating like that, Clay, you'll have more water outside your body than in it. That can't be good thing. "
--Augustine did not bother to look up as he muttered something derogatory under his breath.
--"I didn't quite catch that," said Glen with amusement. "You say something?"
--"No, nothing," said Clay grumbling. "I was talking to myself."
--"I thought as much," he replied to the obvious lie.
--The strained conversation abruptly ended and the darkness grew peaceful.
--Glen Martin carefully sat himself down and eased back against the tree. He tried to relax, his thin frame leaning against the trunk. Surveying the peaceful night, he took in the many silhouettes of the trees that surrounded them. An ingrained sadness of faded memories and happier times that had long since gone lingered within. The orchard had shed its straight rows of trees years ago. A hoard of pines had invaded the wild groves since and the easily discernable, unobstructed dirt avenues that once existed between the fruit laden trees were no more.
--The rhythmic noise of Clay's shovel was the only sound.
--Glen Martin broke the silence first. "You should have marked the grave. Nothing short of trying to find a needle in a haystack, this is."
--Augustine stopped digging with an unexpected laborious groan. He turned to glare at Glen with a look that suggested he believed him to be mentally challenged. "Damn it, this isn't buried treasure, Glen. Why would I ever think to mark the spot? Give me one conceivable reason, please When I planted those two, Richard Nixon was president for Christ sake."
--"Alright," replied Martin defensively. "I'm just saying."
--"Please don't," said Augustine irritated, his hefty, rarely exercised, calorie-laden body fatigued. He tried to steady his breath from the exertion as he planted his shovel.
--A warm summer breeze rustled the leaves, trees, and brush. From the darkness, several hard thuds came as a handful of oranges thumped the ground, cracking some dead branches.
--Augustine gazed up at the clear, starry sky as he leaned against his shovel, resting. His eyes became lost in the magnificent stars. "What time you got?" asked Clay finally.
--Glen fought a yawn and lost. "It's almost four. Not much time now."
--"I'm not giving up," said Augustine, whose physical shell screamed otherwise.
--"Have it your way. Be as stubborn as always, Clay."
--"Thank you. I will."
--"But don't you want to know why?"
--"No. Not at all.."
--"I think that you do."
--Clay Augustine stared at him, keeping his angry retort to himself. He didn't look happy.
--"It's simple really," said Glen Martin casually, "because I'll soon be at home sound asleep, while you, on the other hand, are still out here, alone I might add, digging in the full light of day, where the whole wide world can see you."
--Clay Augustine relented after a strained silence. "Ok, you're right. I've said it, happy?"
--"It's truly a miracle."
--"But don't worry about it, Glen..."
--Glen Martin held his breath. He didn't like responses that started with the word "but."
--Clay continued. "If this ends up being the spot we won't refill the hole. We'll take what we came for and get the hell out of here."
--"I like the sound of that," said Glen relieved.
--Clay wiped more sweat from his puffy red face. "I'm so happy."
--"But if this isn't the spot, we'll need the time to refill it, Clay"
--"I don't need to be reminded."
--"Well…how many more feet you think?"
--Clay Augustine didn't much appreciate the question. After all, when you're secretly digging for misplaced bodies during the early morning hours, this was the verbal equivalent of being on a lengthy road trip and asking: Are we there yet? He gripped the shovel handle and yanked it from the ground. "A couple feet, maybe more. I don't exactly remember how deep."
--"If you'd picked a spot near Russell's Oak, you sure wouldn't be worrying about it now."
--Clay began to dig again only slower, his movements painful. "You know that's great advice there, Glen. It surely is. Where were you thirty-eight years ago when I could have used it?"
--Glen Martin, to his friend's great annoyance, thought about an answer to his rhetorical question. "I was still at the Prom, if I remember correctly."
--Clay shook his head. "I don't know about you sometimes…I just don't know."
--"What do you mean?"
--"Never mind," said Clay in futility as he continued to dig with a purpose.
--The intermittent breeze returned, nudging a forest of tree limbs into motion. Martin silently watched from his tree before falling asleep. The sound of the steel shovel repeatedly penetrating the soil resonated throughout the orchard. It would be the only sound from the cloak of darkness.
----------------------------------------------------------------------***
--An hour had passed and it was still dark. Glen Martin awoke suddenly to clumps of dirt chunks softly peppering his body. A shovel was propelling the earthy projectiles into flight.
--"What are you doing?" said Glen, protesting to the night. Disoriented from his slumber, his hands instinctively flew up into the air to block the next salvo of dirt. When another batch of earth didn't arrive as expected, he cautiously lowered both his arms and looked around.
--A skull with an arm for a neck stared back at him from the edge of a much deeper hole.
--Glen Martin, who was still propped up against the orange tree, instinctively scrambled from the skull as fast as he could. Adrenaline surged through his body, his heart was pounding.
--Subtle laughter came from the hole.
--"Damn you, Augustine!" shouted Glen Martin, turning warily back toward the hole.
--"It may very well come to that, but keep your voice down."
--"What in God's name do you think you're doing?"
--"Never mind that. Get over here…and bring a flashlight with you."
--Glen Martin slowly got up off the moist ground as quick as his sore, stiff body would permit. Hobbling over to their backpacks, he rifled through the contents for a flashlight -though, with the majestic glow from the moon that night, they hadn't really needed them. With flashlight in hand, he scurried to the edge of the hole. It was several feet deeper than an hour ago. Augustine held the skull in his hand like a basketball; what appeared to be bones unearthed at his feet.
--"What did you find?" asked Martin, pressing. Please, Lord, let this be it.
--"I think I found…"
--"Yeah…you think you found what?"
--"Jimmy Hoffa."
--"Did you find the grave or not?" asked Glen irritated.
--"Give me your flashlight."
--Glen Martin switched the flashlight on and tossed it down into the hole to his friend.
--With the flashlight, Augustine slowly crouched down and examined the bones he unearthed at his feet. Martin knelt anxiously at the edge of the hole, as if waiting for the next lottery ball to drop. Leaves rolled throughout the treetops as the wind returned.
--"This isn't it," said Clay despondently with a look of regret Glen couldn't see.
--"Maybe you're mistaken."
--Augustine reverently placed the skull that he had been holding to what was left of its body. He slowly stood back up. "I'm not."
--"But how can you be sure?" asked Glen, not entirely awake, or willing to admit defeat yet.
--Clay switched off the flashlight and darkness returned to the hole. "Because of one glaring fact -there is only one skeleton here. I buried them together, Glen. Stands to reason that they should still be together thirty-eight years later, don't you think? Besides, my father's revolver should be here, and it's not." He shook his head. "We've dug in the wrong place…again."
--Glen Martin perplexed, pointed down to where he thought the skull was. "Then who is that?"
--"I haven't the foggiest. It could be anybody."
--"Anybody," repeated Martin slowly, not liking the sound of that either. This wasn't his night.
--Clay Augustine smiled with arrogance. "You've absolutely got to be kidding me, Glen. Your family goes back. You know the whispered rumors about Russell's Oak. Hell, if you were black in the 50s and found driving within the city limits after dark, those Southern good old boys would have yanked you from your car without hesitation. Those poor black souls were almost always beaten, or disappeared outright. Who knows how many Maynard Smith High faithful went missing, permanently, back then."
--Glen Martin didn't want to acknowledge his communities tainted past, so he often didn't.
--Clay Augustine noticed his friend's uneasiness and smiled. "Come to think of it. I'm actually surprised these are the only human remains we've stumbled across."
--"It seems most others were insightful enough to bury their bodies closer to Russell's Oak."
--Clay Augustine turned slowly to his friend and gave him a scowl. It was an argument he would only lose. His sore body moved gingerly as he retrieved the shovels and passed them up.
--Offering his outstretched hand, Glen Martin struggled to help pull up the large man out of the grave. After a few attempts, he succeeded, much to his back's pleasure.
Together, they each took a shovel and began work on refilling the hole with dirt. The unearthed skeleton soon disappeared under a pile of scooped soil. The effort went by quickly. Within twenty minutes, the hole vanished entirely. They hid the freshly turned soil on the graves surface with loose shrubbery, dead branches, and leaves. While Clay finished up, Glen took a moment to take a GPS reading on his BlackBerry and save it.
--After collecting their stuff, they turned to the west and headed away from the high school and Russell's Oak in the distance. Walking at a swift pace, they trampled through the wild grove for some time without speaking. It was yet another failure. What was there left to say?
--Near the end of their journey, Clay Augustine began to turn pale. He reluctantly stopped to lean against a dead tree that creaked grudgingly from his weight. He was exhausted.
--Glen Martin put down the shovels and waited patiently. After a longer break than he expected, he retrieved a wrapped Twinkie from his pack and held it aloft. "Come on, not much further."
--Clay eyed the two golden sponge cakes with creamy fillings. He pulled himself together, ignoring Glen and his Twinkies. A loud creak came from the tree when he removed his weight; the tree would have been greatly relieved, had it not already been dead. They continued on.
--The night was fading fast. Daylight finally broke.
--Clay Augustine had taken the lead through the groves as his friend diligently followed, eating his Twinkies. They emerged from the wild orchard like Ponce de Leon finding the Fountain of Youth. The obscure, overgrown dirt road where they had parked their cars lay ahead; one was a late model Chrysler and the other a spotless, silver Lexus.
--With their latest weekend late night excursion at an end, Glen Martin tried to be optimistic. "Clay, they don't start clearing for another month. We still have time. A lot can happen between now and then, especially politically. Let us try again next week. I should recover by then."
--Augustine glanced at him with a sullen look of melancholy. Anything he uttered he knew would be born from his frustration and fear. "Should I pray on it, Glen?" he retorted sarcastically. "Is that what you want me to do? Will God take care of this one for me?"
--Glen Martin knew his friend was disappointed, but it didn't excuse his lashing out, it never did, especially at him. "Forgiveness is always an option, Clay. You just have to ask for it."
--Augustine was about to lash out again, but refrained. His anger soon faded. He turned from his friend and gazed back into the wild groves as if he could see through both the acres of trees and intervening years. A collection of intense memories and feelings returned. He fought to get the words out. To, after all these years, say them aloud. The words finally came…
--"I killed them without hesitation," said Clay whispering, as if he could be overheard.
--"It was always assumed those two ran off together, never to return."
--"You never believed that or you wouldn't be out here, and you weren't the only one. You've seen it. I still get the looks from those with roots in Harrison. That hasn't changed nor will it ever. That is the reality." He paused and awkwardly smiled as if he found something amusing. "Everyone was partially right though. They won't be returning anytime soon."
--The morbid words hung in the air. They were strangely out of place at the dawn of a new day.
--Clay Augustine became angry as he turned back toward his friend. A sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Did they really think they could injure me, humiliate me…and get away with it?"
--Glen Martin watched his friend intently, but didn't say a word.
--"You want to know the funny thing," continued Augustine lethargically, "This all makes perfect sense to me now. It really does. After all these years, you just knew there had to be a reckoning. There had to be. It was to be expected." He paused and stared back into the wild groves. "There is no forgiveness in this life, only the temporarily unknown, complicated by layers of secrets."
--Glen Martin sought the unspoken truth he had avoided for years. "Why did you do it, Clay?"
--"You've never asked that question before, Glen. I admired you for it."
--"Sorry to disappoint."
--Clay Augustine halfheartedly smiled even as his strained voice trembled. "I couldn't live with the jealous rage that burned within me back then. I'd never felt such feelings of betrayal before. It was an overwhelming anger and hatred. An unshakable need to share my pain with those that had inflicted it." He tried to steady his voice. "It's true what they say: you never quite care about a woman the same, not like your first. She was so beautiful and intelligent, that girl."
--Glen Martin had waited three decades for the truth, and it arrived. He didn't say a word.
--Clay Augustine continued as his emotions forced their way to the surface. "I can still see their faces of disbelief… such rage I had inside me that night… enough for both of them."
--Glen gave his friend the best look of sympathy he could manage. He didn't know what to say.
--"I was only seventeen," said Clay Augustine, whispering. Regret saturated his faint voice.
--Glen Martin nodded his understanding as they suddenly held each other's gaze; both were soaked in sweat and covered with a mix of sugar sand and black dirt. Twenty-four hours had passed since either of them slept. Clay Augustine looked like a man who was at the end of his rope, but had tied a huge knot and was hanging on for dear life.
--The sunrise blazed through the treetops as if they were on fire. Martin walked to his Lexus and opened the trunk. He wiped off the shovels and neatly laid them inside, one beside the other. The crisp morning air was overflowing with a freshness that only the dawn brings.
--Clay Augustine admired his friend's car. I'm definitely in the wrong business.
--Glen Martin slammed his trunk closed. "Will I see you in church tomorrow?" he asked.
--Augustine turned away and trudged toward his Chrysler. "Ellen and I will be there."
--"That's good to hear, Clay. You've got yourself a real special woman there."
--"So she has repeatedly told me," said Augustine in mock agreement. "Anyway, you got something special planned for tomorrow or are you just going to wing it again?"
--"You might find a few words of comfort and strength."
--"I have no doubt," said Augustine a few feet from his late model Chrysler.
--"Same time next week then?" asked Glen Martin, as if it were nothing more than a weekly poker game, trying his best to lift the spirits of his oldest friend.
--Clay Augustine slowly nodded as he unlocked his car with a beep that echoed. He was fading fast in the sunlight. "Good night, Reverend.
And the story continues in...
