Cancel the Wedding

by Carolyn T. Dingman

  Leo and I went to work while Georgia chattered away, trying to break a tension that was already dissipating, and Logan held the flashlight. Somehow, after everything, it felt right to have Leo here with us helping to finally put all of the pieces of my family’s past to rest. He had known both of my parents and had had to watch them pass away. Having him here for this peculiar last bit of family business seemed like the only way for him and me to really end, to really say good-bye.

  Graham eventually pulled up in a huge truck. A dually with spotlights on the top and an enormous winch on the front. He looked like he had just been dragged out of bed.

  Logan introduced him to her mother. Georgia was making a point to try to brush the dirt off her face and out of her hair before saying hello. Some people have Sunday dinners to get to know each other; we meet the new boyfriend in the middle of the night while covered in dirt.

  After a cursory handshake and a quick introduction, Graham and Leo were digging together in the hole. They were easily doubling the pace we had been able to maintain mere moments ago.

  Graham and Leo spoke in that easy lighthearted way that men are able to, no matter the awkwardness of the situation. Their banter stood in stark contrast to the events that were unfolding and to our particular environment at the moment.

  I also noticed that more than a few of the questions Graham was asking were related to Leo and me. More to the point, where our relationship stood and where he saw it going. So when are you and Olivia heading back to Maryland? Things like that. Graham was on a fact-finding mission. I knew that Elliott would never have asked him to do that. I looked over at Logan.

  “Lo, will you come to the water with me and help me for a sec?”

  Before I had a chance to say anything she was defending herself. “I just asked Graham to, you know, see for himself that like the wedding is canceled and everything.”

  “This isn’t your place. It isn’t any of your business.” I squatted down on the bank and rubbed my hands in the lake. The cool water burned my blistered palms.

  “Don’t be mad at me, Aunt Liv. Anyone can see that you and Elliott belong together. I know it’s a total mess right now, but he’ll come around. Graham can help. You just have to make him understand.”

  “I don’t think so, Logan. It’s really bad. What I did to him? Lying to him like that? Look, I get what you’re trying to do, but really just stay out of it.” She looked like a wounded puppy. Why was I taking this out on her? “I’m sorry. I’m just a mess right now. I don’t mean to be such a bitch.”

  She gave me a hug and said in my ear, “It’ll be okay, Aunt Liv.”

  Hearing her little voice say that made something inside me shatter. She really thought everything with Elliott could somehow work out. I wanted to believe her, but every instinct I had told me she was wrong. I held her tighter. “I’m so glad you came down here with me.”

  “Me too.” Logan left to go back up to the cemetery as Georgia made her way down to me.

  Georgia sat next to me quietly rinsing her hands off. Then the clouds broke again and you could just make out the far shore of the lake. She said, “It’s really beautiful here. I would love to see it in the daytime.”

  “When you’re not busy with a grave robbery?”

  She laughed. “Yeah.”

  I stood up and stretched my sore back, which creaked and popped with every movement. Georgia stood up next to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s kind of amazing what Elliott was able to figure out. We owe him a lot.”

  “I can’t talk about him, Georgia.”

  She nodded. “Well, when you’re ready.”

  It was almost four in the morning when Leo’s shovel hit something hard. We all four jumped, startled that we had actually found something. It took another half hour to dig around the edges enough to uncover the full lid of the vault.

  The vault was constructed of concrete and had two loops on the top made out of steel rebar that were used as handles. Graham and Leo debated attaching a pulley to one of the tree limbs to use as leverage to lift the lid but then decided that they ran the risk of pulling the whole tree limb down. In the end they decided to attach the loops of the vault lid directly to the winch on the front of the truck and try to raise it up enough for us to get the coffin out. We had no idea if it would work but we were running out of time.

  We ran a large chain through the two loops on the lid and then attached that to the hook on the truck’s winch. We all moved away from the edge of the grave and then started the winch.

  The first grinding sounds of stone on stone echoed up as the concrete lid began to drag slightly across the concrete vault. The lid was not actually lifting up, but rather was being pulled askew and rotating up slightly as if hinged on the side. We were shouting at each other over the rumbling motor of the winch trying to decide the best way to get the casket out. It seemed as if the capacity of the winch’s motor was reaching its limit. When the lid was finally lifted enough for us to peek inside we stopped the winch and locked it in place.

  We all peered down into the small opening of the vault and shone our flashlights in to get a glimpse of what was waiting inside.

  We spotted a wooden box. It was heartbreakingly small.

  Lying on my stomach in the dirt, shining our light onto this tiny coffin, it finally occurred to me that this little boy, little Oliver Jones, was our half brother. And I felt an even larger sense of obligation to his welfare.

  Leo and Georgia were debating moving the chains to try to get under the whole lid and lift it up. Leo said there was no way the motor had enough torque to lift it all the way off the vault. I didn’t think it would work either and as the sky in the east started to glow a faint yellow color, I knew we didn’t have time.

  The wedge of opening between the lid and the edge of the vault was about twenty-four inches. I thought we could squeeze the casket out. You could tell that it wasn’t one of those enormous, elaborate coffins with a curved lid. It was a simple flat wooden box, the lid nailed shut. Unadorned and so very small. I thought it would fit.

  It had to fit.

  “We can pull it out. We’ll just stand on the very edge of the vault and lift the casket out. I’m pretty sure it can squeeze through.”

  Leo and Georgia were both starting to disagree with me but I didn’t think we had time for a debate. I was already climbing carefully down into the hole and Logan was following my lead on the other side.

  I reached my arm in and managed to get my fingers underneath the bottom of the casket. Logan did the same on her side. We worked it over toward the edge of the vault and then were able to get our other hand in to help lift. We managed to lift it up but we needed just a tiny bit more space to pull it through.

  Graham saw that we were struggling and rushed over to the winch. The motor started up and the cable pinged as the winch pulled it taut. I wasn’t sure if the motor would be able to lift any more. Or if the whole thing would snap bringing the concrete lid down on our arms.

  Leo yelled over the sound of the motor, “Not too fast! The lid could shift and crush their hands!”

  Logan and I both looked at each other with a quick terrified glance. Crush our hands? We made one last heave and the side of the casket was freed. Leo and Georgia both reached down to help.

  Leo screamed, “We’ve got it! Climb out of there!”

  Georgia and Leo pulled the small box up to ground level as I scrambled out of the grave, which was getting more and more difficult as the hole had gotten so deep. Logan was still in the hole. She shouted up, “Hang on! I see something else.”

  Georgia dropped back down to her stomach yelling at Logan to get her hands out of the vault before the winch gave way.

  Logan had her entire left arm inside the vault, straining to reach whatever she had seen in the dark recesses of the box. I could tell by the way she was grunting that it was heavy. When she got it out of the gap between the edge and the lid of the vault she caught her breath for a second and then hande
d it up to Georgia.

  Georgia put the metal box to the side quickly and then helped Logan out of the hole.

  When we were all back up on the ground we moved away from the edge and signaled to Graham to reverse the winch. It moaned and creaked as it went to a full stop and then slowly started in the other direction, lowering the lid back onto the vault. It sealed back up with a deep thud and we all closed our eyes with a simultaneous sigh of relief.

  The five of us, dirty and sweaty and tired, walked over and stood around our prize. Our little wooden treasure box that we had spent all night freeing from the ground. This symbolized the end of that life for my mother. The end of Janie Jones and Huntley, Georgia. All packed into a tiny wooden box.

  Graham pointed to the small metal box next to it. “What’s that?”

  We all shrugged. We had no idea what that metal box was.

  Logan picked up her shovel and said, “I call the first shower when we get home.”

  THIRTY

  Leo gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder as he walked back and started filling in the grave. The rest of us fell in line with our shovels putting the dirt back where it came from.

  It didn’t take nearly as long to put the dirt back in as it did to get it out. Although it didn’t exactly fit either. We had a huge mound of leftover dirt. It was almost sunrise and we needed to get out of there before anyone came by. We did not have time for expanding dirt. We ended up spreading it out around the base of the oak tree and covering it with pine straw.

  We tucked Oliver’s casket into the back of my car wrapped in a plastic tarp and then did the best we could to cover our tracks. When we finished it was after six thirty and the sun was up enough that we could see very clearly without our flashlights.

  I took one look at my clothes and my hands and my legs and started walking toward the lake. I was covered in dirt. Dirt from an actual grave. It was all over me. In my hair, my mouth, ground under my fingernails.

  Georgia called out. “Where are you going?”

  I just pointed to the water.

  When I got to the bank I ran into the lake and dove under the water. I stayed under as long as my lungs would let me and then burst up for air. Georgia was right behind me. When she came up she was laughing.

  “I can’t believe we just did that.”

  I couldn’t believe much of anything. “I can’t believe he was actually in there. That it’s all real. I thought we were going to keep digging and there would be nothing there.”

  Georgia was scrubbing the dirt off her hands. “William is not going to believe all this.” I knew her husband, William, would be most upset at being left out of the dig. She added, “I’m glad it didn’t smell like a dead body.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.” My shoes felt squishy filled with the muddy lake water. I reached down and took them off then threw them on the shore. Georgia did the same. Then I took off my socks and my watch and threw them next to my shoes. I was making a pile of garbage.

  Leo had walked down to the edge of the lake and was rinsing his hands in the water. He said, “William is going to be so pissed that he wasn’t here for this.”

  I had to laugh. “Georgia was just saying the same thing.”

  Leo smiled at me; all the things we needed to say for the moment had been said. He stood up to leave, to walk back up the hill to where his rental car was parked in the shadows. Yes, maybe someday we would be able to be friends. He waved to us over his shoulder, walking away without a word. I just watched him as he became smaller in the distance and then drove off into the first hazy break of dawn.

  Georgia was taking off whatever bits of clothing she could safely toss too. I reached into the pocket of my shorts and pulled out my new cell phone. I had forgotten about that. I held it up and watched as the water drained out of it. I just tossed it over my shoulder into the lake.

  I floated on my back and looked at the bowl of mountains cradling the water. I said to Georgia, “Do you think Mom . . . I don’t know, ever got over it?”

  “Obviously not.” Georgia was squeezing the water out of her hair. “You did a good thing here, Livie. I mean finding him and figuring all of this out. You got to finish what Dad was trying to do for her. It’s good we know it now.”

  I said, “Elliott figured most of it out.”

  I wasn’t sure what her thoughts were about Elliott, but for some reason I didn’t want her to blame him for my breakup with Leo. I said, “It wasn’t his fault. I mean everything that happened with Leo and me. It wasn’t because of Elliott.”

  She was making a big show of digging the dirt out from underneath her fingernails clearly unsure how to handle this phantom man named Elliott. “I know that, Olivia. You’ve had doubts about Leo for a while, whether you knew it or not. He did too. It just took some time away from each other for you two to see it. I know that Elliott wasn’t a part of that. I wouldn’t hold that against him.”

  It was either brought on by sadness or exhaustion, but I started crying again. I said under my breath, “I don’t think it really matters anymore.”

  She didn’t seem to have heard me. She asked, completely off topic from my love life, “What do we do with the body now?”

  I shook off my tears. I had been thinking about the second half of this little excavation while we were digging. Buddy had planted the idea in my head when he said we could legally move the body ourselves, in our own car. “I think we just take the casket straight over to Mary Frances at the cemetery and tell her we are burying him in that grave next to George.”

  Georgia agreed. “We should have a proper funeral for him.”

  Logan yelled down to us. “Graham’s going to drive me back to the house.”

  Georgia called back up to the two of them. “Be careful driving, Graham. I know you’re tired.”

  Logan rolled her eyes. Graham said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  I would have checked my watch for the time but I had already tossed it. “The funeral home won’t be open for hours. What now?”

  Georgia said, “Showers and sleep. Lots of sleep.”

  We got back to the house and showered in a haze of fatigue. No amount of water or soap could get the stains of the red Georgia clay out of our hands and the smell of dirt out of our hair. I finally gave up and collapsed in a wet steaming heap on the bed for a few hours of sleep before Georgia and I took the tiny casket to the cemetery.

  Mary Frances was very kind about us pulling in with a new addition to their cemetery. I had to believe that it wasn’t every day that two women pulled up with a filthy dirt-caked casket in the back of their car and asked to have it buried, but you would never know it to look at Mary Frances.

  We had copies of little Oliver’s birth certificate and death certificate. We had the letters from our father about moving him to the Rutledge family graveyard and his plans to have his final resting place be the Jones family plot in the cemetery. We gave her our proof of little Oliver’s lineage so that he could rightfully be buried in the Joneses’ family section with his father. I was tossing papers at her so fast she was having a hard time keeping up. I mentioned quickly and offhandedly that we had the permit from the disinterment but I had left it at home. I was becoming quite the accomplished liar these days.

  We made the necessary arrangements for the burial to be held the next day. When we handed Mary Frances our credit card to pay the bill she went over the line items one last time. She was going to explain the cost of the vault to us, in case we didn’t know about the policy to have each casket placed in a vault. Georgia held up her hand indicating that we were fully versed on the topic. Then Mary Frances pointed to the charge for the “grave opening and closing” and explained that was the fee for the men who dug the hole.

  Georgia smiled as she signed the bill. “A backhoe is worth every penny.”

  Mary Frances misunderstood the comment and thought Georgia was feeling blue about the idea of the grave being dug. She patted Georgia on the hand and then looked at me a
nd said, “Bless her heart.”

  With that Georgia and I broke into a fit of inappropriate giggles that we could not control. We were punch-drunk and exhausted and laughed in that unhinged way where you can’t control it. Where your eyes water and your nostrils flare and your face turns red. We laughed the whole way back to the house.

  When Georgia and I walked in the door we found Logan and Graham in the kitchen. I asked, “What are you guys up to in here?”

  Graham held up a carrot and a knife. “We’re making a lunch.”

  I turned on my heel. “Scary.”

  Georgia and I packed up some of the research into boxes to make room to sit down and eat. The four of us sat around the dinner table eating an enormous salad and overly buttered French bread while rehashing everything we had gone through the night before. We all had that nervous energy associated with a shared traumatic experience. We had the need to discuss each tiny bit of it ad nauseam in order to process the whole encounter.

  Graham was particularly enthralled with the winch on the truck he had borrowed and he kept re-creating the noise it made as it pulled the lid free.

  Georgia said hypnotically, “I can’t believe we pulled that off.”

  I found the stem of a bell pepper in my salad and held it up. “Do you mean digging up the grave or eating a meal prepared by Logan?” Logan fished an ice cube out of her tea and threw it at my head.

  Georgia ignored us. “I was referring to the grave thing.”

  Logan said for the fifth time, “I wonder what’s in the metal box.”

  The small box that had been buried in the vault with Oliver’s casket remained on the coffee table, covered in dirt and locked up tight. It was a black-painted metal box that Logan had declared was the exact same size as the shoebox from her Ugg boots. Apparently there is the English method of measurement, the metric method, and then Logan’s shoebox method.

  There were deep scratches and dents all over the dull, black surface of the box. Where the paint had been scratched off, dark red rust had formed.