Escape Clause

Lucas walked from the path back to the tarp that covered his sister Jinjee’s grave. She had been buried a week ago. Jinjee, that gangly kid with her long black hair and freckles. And her daredevil confidence that always made Lucas laugh. Jinjee, dead of a drug overdose. Heroin cut with too much Fentanyl, the coroner said.

Now she lay in the ground, cold as a stone.

The tidy country cemetery glowed in the mellow evening sunlight. Lucas had chosen Jinjee’s plot himself. It was a peaceful patch, tucked away on a slope and screened from the road by trees. The grave overlooked the Animosh River. Lucas imagined his sister sitting with him, watching the water flow past like a ribbon of flashing silver.

Lucas was a sun-burnt man with calloused hands, a landscaper by trade. He had laid out two rosebushes near the tarp, along with a shovel, pickaxe, and crowbar. He would make this grave beautiful for his sister.

Since Jinjee’s death, though, a thought chafed like a sore in Lucas’s mind. He remembered his Irish Catholic grandmother saying, like it was a fact, that the most recent person buried in a cemetery was compelled by God to carry water to all the suffering souls in Purgatory. The escape clause was that this burden would pass in due time to the soul of the next person to be buried. But in this out-of-the-way graveyard, another burial may not happen for a long time.

Now, Lucas did not believe in God. Souls lugging water to Purgatory was just make-believe. Yet his grief moved wild within him. He had to ease his sister’s plight, even if it was just a nightmare playing in his head. It was the least he could do.

Lucas heard the growl of an engine and the scrunch of gravel. He walked to the path as a blue Ford pickup pulled up. A man climbed out. He was short, with a shaved head. The black hoodie he wore could not hide his gut. The man had a fleshy face and small, darting eyes.

“Hey, Luke,” he said. “Meant to get here quicker but my GPS took a wrong turn.”

“Hello, Sean,” said Lucas.

Sean jabbed a thumb toward the gravestones.

“Why meet here?” he said.

“Privacy,” Lucas said.

Lucas saw Sean’s eyes focus on the tarp and rosebushes spread on the grass. He seemed puzzled. Then a look of comprehension flashed across Sean’s face. His eyes widened. The man flushed and squinted at the ground.

“Luke, you know, I just want to say again…I mean, I’m really sorry about Jinjee. She went too young. man.” Sean ground a heel into the gravel. “You know it wasn’t me sold her that shit, right? My merch is safe.”

“It’s OK”, said Lucas. “Not blamin’ you.”

The two men were silent for a long minute. A blue jay called from the riverbank.

Sean looked up.

“Well…uh…where is it?” he said.

“Where’s what?” Lucas said.

“Your call,” said Sean. “You said you found a stash at Jinjee’s place and did I want to see it. Sure, I can take it back—off your hands, I mean. If the price is right.”

“Like I told you on the phone, Sean,” Lucas said. “I don’t want your money. I just want to unload it.”

Sean smiled, then caught himself and reworked his face to look somber.

“Deal. So…where is it?” he asked.

Lucas walked to the tarp and tapped a coffee can.

“Let’s take a look,” Sean said. He squatted over the can and pried off the lid. He dumped out a small pile of nickel bags filled with powder.

“Hmm…not bad.”

Sean scooped up the bags and began counting them.

Lucas bent and picked the crowbar up from the tarp. He grabbed a corner of the tarp and yanked it away to uncover a dirt pit.

Sean glanced up to see that Jinjee’s grave had been opened. In the fading light, he looked down the shaft at an exposed corner of her pine coffin.

“Jesus!” Sean jumped up, staring at the gaping grave.

Lucas swung the crowbar hard at the back of Sean’s head, aiming for a bump visible at the base of his skull. The bar struck with a squishy thump. Sean pitched forward and lay face down, not moving. Blood trickled down his neck.

Lucas knelt and pulled a phone and truck keys from Sean’s pockets. He dragged the body to the edge of the grave and tumbled it down the shaft. It sprawled with a clatter on the coffin. Lucas threw the bags of powder in after Sean’s body and dragged the tarp back over the grave.

The sun had set, and twilight was approaching. Lucas wiped Sean’s phone clean against his shirt, tossed it into the coffee can with the truck keys, and sealed the lid. He climbed down the embankment to the lapping river, pitched the can in a high arc into the water, and watched it sweep away in the current.

Lucas climbed back up the bank. As darkness settled over the cemetery, he shoveled dirt by flashlight, refilling the grave and planting the rosebushes. Lucas left Sean’s truck along the road in front of the cemetery.

Two days later, the local newspaper reported that Sean Scavone had gone missing. The article said that GPS data from his phone led the Sheriff’s Department to drag the river down near Freisport but no body was found. As Lucas read the news, he thought to himself that Sean was the kind of person the police wouldn’t work too hard to find. They’d just be glad he had disappeared.

On a late-summer’s afternoon, Lucas brought four jugs of water to Jinjee’s grave. He watered the rosebushes, then poured the rest onto the parched soil of the plot. It was no bother to haul the water. And to give his sister a cool drink. No bother at all.

***

Jim Wright lives and works in central New York State. He writes short stories when he can and works as a school psychologist when he must. He is a member of the Downtown Writer’s Center in Syracuse, NY.