He stepped up to the grave, shovel in one hand, ladder hanging over his shoulder, and a headband equipped with a light around his head. The beam of light moved across the epitaph on the temporary plaque.
In loving memory of our father and husband
RODRICK O’HARA 1941 – 2013
Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return,
but ’twas not spoken of the soul
Abel blinked and looked again.
In loving memory of our father and husband
RODRICK O’HARA 1941 – 2013
Tick, tick, tick, tick
The flashlight flickered for a moment and then died.
“Ah shit, no,” he said in the darkness and gave the light a few hits using his palm. The light flickered, died, flickered, and then stayed on.
He read the plaque again and breathed a sigh of relief. And not just because the light came back.
Lightning tore through the sky just as the shovel rose up into the air and plunged into the soft soil. The ticking sped up. Abel’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He tried again.
Abel started to sing, slow and shaky at first but then with more force, as it seemed to take his mind of the ticking. At least for the moment.
Abel descended further into the hole as shovelfuls of soil flew out in muddy arcs.
He battled the sloppy mud and the gushing water. In the pale beams of his flashlight, he saw streams of murky rainwater flowing down the banks of the grave. The water got into his shoes and sloshed around his toes. He smelled the strong musty odor of the wet soil, of grass and the zinc smell of the water. And he smelled rotting apples. The flashlight flickered again but stayed on this time.
“Damn you,” he said through clenched teeth as his hands struggled to grip the shovel’s slippery handle. His hunched body surged forward in the desperate need to destroy the watch, to stop the ticking.
“I’m gonna sing this song, till the end of time,” he carried on singing. Abel arched back, wanting to get extra leverage as his arms raised up and then brought the shovel down. It slammed into the dirt and struck the wood of the casket. The singing stopped. So did the ticking. Abel stood very still for a moment, listening. He heard it again, but it was very faint now, somewhere in the background.
He scraped soil to the sides, and the beam of light swept across the dark brown surface of the coffin. Using the shovel, he knocked on the surface three times and waited. Abel wiped his nose and nodded to himself.
He stepped over to the foot of the grave, secured the ladder, and turned around, “Yeah, I’m goin’ down, way, way down…” The flashlight flickered, “Goin’ to where the moon never shines and angels don’t fly,” and then it died.
“Damn this stinking thing,” he said and swiped it off his head. He rammed his palm into it three times. The light flickered once. He hit it again, hard, this time with his fist.
“C’mon, you damn, stinking piece of shit. C’mon. Please.”
It didn’t come back. He tried switching it on and off a few times. Nothing. Finally, Abel let the light fall, heard it hit the coffin with a sharp thud. He stood in the darkness. He couldn’t see much other than the occasional flicker of reflected light from the rain. But he heard the sound of his panting breath, water trickling into the hole, and rain hitting the coffin. Those sounds seemed faint, close but in the distance. He started to step forward toward the head of the coffin and then heard something. He stopped. This sounded much closer. Not loud but close. He felt it under his shoes.
Three dull knocks. Like a fist knocking on the cushioned inside of a coffin.