Demon Box

Not in the slightest, the ravens make it clear as soon as they see their rightful spoils being lifted into the wheelbarrow. They rise from their separate posts, beating the air with their wings and calling. They flap into a circling formation above the wheelbarrow, calling together in perfect cadence as they follow all the way through the pasture to the swamp at the other end of the seventy acres. Sometimes the circle rises higher than the cottonwood tops so their continual rain of abuse sounds almost musical in the distance. Other times they circle close enough that Deboree could have swatted them with the spade.

He picks a shady spot under an overhanging oak and sticks the spade into the dirt. It’s clay: mud in winter, baked concrete in summer. It would be easier digging up by the pond, but he likes it here. It’s hidden and cool. The arms of the old scrub oak are ceremoniously draped with long gray-green shrouds of Spanish moss. The pinched, dry oak leaves are motionless. Even the ravens have abandoned their raucous tirade and are watching in silence from a branch in the tallest of the cottonwoods.

He hangs his hat on an oak stob and sets to digging, furiously now that he has chosen the site, hacking and stamping and chopping at the mat of clay and roots until his lungs wheeze and the dust runs off his face in gullies of sweat. He finally wipes his eyes with the hem of his shirt and stands back from the simple black basin. “Ought to be deeper if we want to keep the foxes from smelling it and digging it up.” He looks down into the hole, panting and shaking so violently that he has to support himself with the shovel. “But then, on the other hand,” he decides, “it’s deep enough for folk music, as they say,” and tips the corpse into the hole. To make it fit he has to bend the front legs back against the chest and force the hind legs together. It looks actually cute this way, he concedes, a kid’s woolly doll. Hardly used. Just have to sew on a couple of bright new buttons for eyes, be good as new.

Then the trembling starts to get worse. This must be how they begin, he thinks. Freak-outs. Breakdowns. Crack-ups. Eventually shut-ins and finally cross-offs. But first the cover-up…

He spoons the earth back into the hole over the little animal much slower than he had dug it out. He can feel that he has blistered both hands. He wishes he’d remembered to bring his gloves. He wishes Sandy hadn’t smoked his last joint. He wishes he had his glasses. Most of all, he wishes he’d thought to bring some liquid relief. His throat is on fire. There is water back up at the stock tub, a short walk away, but water isn’t enough. There are fires in more than the throat that need attention. And no hope in the house. Why hadn’t he driven to the liquor store in Creswell before he started this flight? Always good to have a parachute. Never know when some unexpected downdraft might pop up, throw the best flier into a tailspin. He closes his eyes and frowns, examining the possibilities. No downers, no tranquilizers, no prescription painkillers even. All went with the main troops on the Woodstock campaign. Not even any wine left at the house, and Betsy still off with the only working vehicle. In short, no parachutes nowhere.

He begins to shudder uncontrollably, his teeth chattering. He’s afraid he is having a stroke or a seizure. They run in the family, fits. Uncle Nathan Whittier had a seizure slopping the hogs in Arkansas, fell into the sty, and the hogs ate him. No hogs here, just those ravens up there and these still oaks and, over there, in another little glade only a dozen yards deeper into the swamp, atop a stump in a beam of smoky sunlight, by the grace of God, a gallon of red wine? Burgundy? From the heavens a bottle of burgundy?

He drops the spade and reels through the branches and banners of moss until he has the bottle in his hands. It is a wine bottle, cheap Gallo to be sure but still half full and cool in the shady bottom air. He unscrews the top and upends the bottle and drinks in long swallows until he loses his equilibrium and has to lower his head. He turns around and sits on the stump until he catches his balance, then tips his head back for the bottle again. He doesn’t stop swallowing until his lungs demand it. There is less than a fourth remaining after his unbroken guzzle, and he can feel the liquid already spreading through his body’s knotted thoroughfares, already bringing relief.