The Burial by Courtney Collins Read Free Book Online

sight of the house and the sight of him gone.
    In the light of the morning Jack Brown could see that most of Fitz’s horses and cattle were missing and those that remained were subdued and heavy in the legs, tottering aimlessly as if they had all eaten some stupefying weed.
    The house, too, looked like a sick thing with its cowering head. Around its smashed windows and open door was charred and the residue of flames spiralled out to its edges.
    Inside was the same mess and tangle Jack Brown had traced the night before. But by daylight he could see there were footprints and the footprints were not his own. They were Fitz’s. He was sure of it. They led in towards the cellar and they led back outside.
    Jack Brown pulled furniture and other charred things from the opening of the cellar and lowered himself down. He pressed his hands and feet against the sandstone walls and when his feet reached something solid he planted himself on it. He lit a match. The floor was a soup of mud and shards of glass and piles of salt. Against a wall was a shelf lined with cracked jars and sacks piled up, some of them still whole but most split right open.
    His eyes adjusted, Jack Brown surveyed the cellar, turning in the small space. He balanced on bricks until he realised that the bricks were balancing on some other thing. He kicked away the rubble and saw what he did not want to see. It was Fitz—or what remained of him. Jack Brown could make out his grimy torso, his arm and the buckle of his belt glinting in the dark.
    He pressed both hands against the wall. He thought, It should not have come to this. Did he kill Jessie first and then kill himself? Is her body here as well?
    And then: I am done for. A black man standing over the remains of his white boss. If I thought justice would not serve me then, I know it will not serve me now.
    Jack Brown pulled a sack from the shelf and tore it open. He poured out its contents; he could not tell if it was sugar or salt but he was not about to taste it. He thought, Salt would preserve him best—but why would I want to preserve him at all?
    And just like the old man had done with the dog, Jack Brown opened the sack right up and filled it with his find. But unlike the old man, Jack Brown did not regard Fitz’s body as any kind of prize. Fitz was dead. There was no life left in him and there was nothing that Jack Brown could do to reverse it. He dragged the sack up and out of the cellar.
    He was still not certain that Jessie was not in the cellar too so he lowered himself back down and lit matches and moved things around until no part of the cellar was unturned. Only then was he certain. She was not there.
    But where was she?
    He followed the tracks of Fitz’s boots, first to the veranda and then out through the mud to the edge of the grass. Jack Brown knew Fitz’s prints, the size and weight of them in the dirt, and he knew the length and unevenness of his stride. He pressed his fingers into the indentations in the ground and he knew they were not made by Fitz. He guessed it. Jessie had worn Fitz’s boots. She had killed him and she was gone.
    Was this what he was to wait for after all?
    He mounted his horse with the grim haul and headed back towards the forest.

THE OLD WOMAN got her way. She picked up my mother by the hands; still cursing her, the old man picked up my mother by the feet and they loaded her into the cart next to the dead lamb.
    It was a slow ride back to the base of the mountains.
    When my mother woke it was dark. She arched her neck back to see the old woman, her hair swinging from side to side as she rode, her horse pulling the weight of the cart, jolting as they moved up the slope.
    The moon was still thin but the stars were bright and lit the trees enough to make shadows. As the cart moved through the forest, the shadows passed over it. The cart canted more and more with the slope and my mother could see the path they had already travelled. On that path