House of Mercy (23 page)

Abel Borzoi had requested a spot next to the tiny headstone of Beth’s unnamed sister, where there was also room for Rose.

Beth, like her brothers, had been born at the Blazing B into the hands of their mother’s midwife. According to the family stories, Rose stood when she delivered her babies, letting the strength of her legs, gravity, and women’s intuition do the work.

Two years after Levi was born, Rose and Abel lost the child who would have been an older sister to Beth. Not to complications during delivery, but to a kick from a frantic cow who’d been separated from her calf. Rose had been in her second trimester. After a painful delivery, also at their home, the preterm girl had been placed in the ground, where she waited for her parents to tuck themselves around her.

When Beth and Danny reached the spot where Levi was digging, Danny stooped and started scooping rocks into a bucket they’d brought along. But Beth was alarmed to see that Levi had chipped a long rectangular shape out of the ground.

If the grave had been on any other cemetery in the nation, it would have looked entirely normal. But the proper hole for a Borzoi should have been four feet square and eleven feet deep, so that the coffin could be placed in the ground standing up. These ranchers were buried, quite literally, dead on their feet. Something that had started long ago as a wry joke had become a dying wish, and then an enduring family tradition.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Making some changes,” he said.

“Why don’t you wait for Jacob and Emory?” she said, hoping not to sound confrontational. “They’re bringing the backhoe and some braces.” She watched Levi thrust the spade into the ground softened by rain.

Levi didn’t answer her, didn’t stop. Sweat oozed from his face and neck.

Beth scanned the road in hopes that Jacob and Emory would arrive quickly. “It’s wrong of you to do this,” she said, gesturing to the hole.

“If it’s still wrong five years from now, I’ll concede to that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m going to do it anyway.”

Danny paused with a rock in his hand. His eyes flitted from Levi to their sister.

“You’re cutting across Mom’s plot,” Beth said, though she was sure Levi knew this. “There’s no room for her if you dig that way.”

“She’ll remarry and decide to lie somewhere else eventually.”

Danny threw his rock back into the hole Levi had dug. He aimed right for the spot where it seemed Levi would thrust his shovel next. Instead, Levi interrupted his rhythm and pointed at the rock.

“Pick it up,” Levi ordered.

Danny glared at him.

“Pick it up!” he repeated, and he jabbed his shovel at Danny’s feet. Slowly, Danny stepped down into the hole. His eyes were defiant even while he went through the motions of obedience. When he bent to pick up the rock, Levi hit him with the flat of the shovel. It caught Danny between the shoulder blades and dropped him to his knees.

Beth yelled at Levi and reached for Danny, but he jabbed at her outstretched hand with the blade, and she withdrew. Danny swore at Levi and left the rock in the dirt. He climbed out of the hole, then stalked off.

“What was that about?” Beth demanded. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Levi tossed a shovelful of soil, including Danny’s potato-sized protest, into the growing heap beside the hole. “I’m going to change
everything
.”

“Why?”

“Because Dad didn’t. Couldn’t. All this honor-the-land nonsense, this keep-the-herd-strong talk. Love God, serve the weak, blah blah blah. It’s a nice campfire story, but that’s all. Ranching is a dying way of life. Dad never wanted to admit it.”

Beth looked away, feeling a sickening weakness around her heart. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Actually, I think I’m the only one in the family who wasn’t brainwashed by all Dad’s sweet philosophies.”

“Okay. If you’re so alone in the world, you can make these changes by yourself.”

She turned away from her brother, unsure where Danny had gone. She had no intention of letting Levi get his way, but a man like him needed to think he was getting what he wanted, or else he’d make her life even more difficult.

Beth walked the maze of markers that was her family, looking for an alternate place for her father to rest. Which was more important, that he be buried in the location he wanted or in the posture he wanted? That would be for her mother to decide, not Levi. Beth would at least give her mother that choice. She would find an appropriate spot, then she would return with Jacob and Danny to dig it right.

It didn’t take her long to determine where the site should be. Her great-great-grandfather, the founding father of the Blazing B, was buried near the center of the cemetery, under the largest maple. She surmised that its roots had long since crushed the pine box that held Romanov Borzoi. There weren’t many graves nearby, because the massive, tangled system made digging too difficult.

How hard could it be, really, with modern machines? Beth decided the backhoe could be driven to this spot, and that putting her father next to his founding ancestor would be fitting.

In the event Jacob found some practical fault with this plan, she decided to keep looking around until he arrived. She ventured out a little farther. There were other options, but none as poetic as the one she’d picked.

At the back of the cemetery, nearest the creek that cut through the property, her eye caught sight of a small white marker that was barely the size of a dinner plate. If it hadn’t been perfectly round, too symmetrical for a natural rock, she might not have noticed it. Also, it was planted unexpectedly close to the water, too close for a pine box to go eleven feet down without a soppy consequence.

She went to see what it was.

It was a garden stone, the kind one could create from a kit, bleached by the sun. It was plain, bearing none of the decorative bits of glass or broken tile pieces one might put into something for their garden. The inscription, such as it was, might have been scrawled with a stick into the cement before it set. There were the initials G. R., and a date that Beth recognized as her parents’ wedding day.

Because the stone was so small, and because the place was too small for a body, and because Beth believed Garner Remke was in fact alive, she dropped to her knees and pried up the marker with her fingers and began to dig.

She didn’t have to work too hard. The metal box was buried so close to the surface that she didn’t even have to fetch a shovel or trowel before she hit the lid. A flat oval rock was tool enough to scoop the packed dirt away from the sides and create enough space for her hands to reach in and pull it out.

It was an old safety box, the kind about the size of the family Bible with a keyhole at the forward side of the hinged lid. It wasn’t locked, but rust had frozen the hinges, and Beth had to apply some muscle to pry it open.

Fine dirt rained onto the papers inside as she exposed the contents to the light. Inside was an envelope that looked like it bore a greeting card. It was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Abel Borzoi, from G. Remke. The return address was from a post office box in Burnt Rock, one of the very small mining towns up in the mountains. It wasn’t far away as the eagle flew, but the rugged terrain isolated the residents and made for a slow drive.

The envelope contained a wedding card with glittery silver bells on the front and a poem printed in silver ink. The card was more yellow than ivory now. Under the pre-printed sentiment inside was a simple signature: “Sorry I can’t make it, Dad.”

A slip of paper fluttered out of the card. Beth picked it up. It was a check made out to “Abel or Rose Borzoi” dated twenty-five years ago. Ten thousand dollars.

Beth considered what this might mean in light of the story that Garner had tried to pay his daughter
not
to marry Abel. It seemed odd to her that such a father would then turn around and give the newlyweds a gift like this.

Underneath the card was a doctor’s stethoscope. There was also a photograph of a young man with a little girl. She had olive-colored skin and long dark hair, which was unruly like the man’s, and was too tall for the dress she wore. They were standing in front of a long, low-roofed building next to a sign that had been erected in the parking lot. “Remke Real Estate, Alamosa’s Property Broker.”

“That Mom?”

“Oh! You scared me!” Beth twisted at her waist to look up at Danny, who was bent over her, studying the photograph.

“Did he die in the war or something? Her dad? Is that why she’d bury a picture, like, because we don’t have a body?”

“I don’t know their story,” she said. “Mom only said he died before Levi was born.” Rose had never encouraged conversation about her biological father, though she encouraged their relationship with her stepfather.

Beth handed the picture to Danny and then, while he held it up to the sunlight, she tucked the greeting card and old check between the layers of cotton shirts she wore. She replaced the stethoscope and closed the box, then quickly reburied it.

Dusting her hands off on her jeans, she stood. “You keep that picture,” she said. “Maybe sometime you can ask Mom to tell you what really happened.”

Danny handed it back to her. “Don’t know if I care.”

She refused it. “Sure you do.”

“Maybe last week I would’ve. But now . . .” He shrugged and glanced back in Levi’s direction. But he tucked the picture into his hip pocket.

Though she couldn’t see Levi, she could hear the sounds of shovel striking dirt rhythmically.

“Levi’s grieving in his own way,” Beth said, not sure why she was trying to defend his behavior to Danny. At fifteen, she was sure he understood the truth. “But it was wrong of him to hit you.”

“Levi and Mom got all the same DNA,” Danny said. “You and I got Dad’s. So I can see how this is going to go down.”

“How what is going to go down?”

“There’s no point in fighting him, I guess.”

“Danny. Our family doesn’t fight.”

“We do now. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Beth tamped down the dirt over Garner’s box with her boots, trying to think of what to say. Nothing came to her, and Danny left again. She scooted the marker over the box with her foot and hoped her mother wouldn’t visit the site before the next rain masked Beth’s intrusion.

The rumbling of a truck engine covered up Levi’s noise. Beth hurried to the place where Jacob and Emory had parked. Next to Levi’s rock-star truck, a shiny beast overequipped even for the Blazing B, Jacob’s looked like it had just steered its way out of the Dust Bowl. The old beater towed a flatbed trailer that carried a backhoe.

Emory was unloading shovels from the truck bed, and Wally leaped out over the wheel well with his favorite shovel over his head.

“Hiya, Wally,” Beth said when he landed right in front of her.

“Hello.” His greeting lacked his usual enthusiasm. “You’re the good man’s daughter, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“These are sad times.”

“They are.” Beth swallowed and looked down at her dusty boots.

“It’s too bad he had to go. That Abel Borzoi, he was a godly man.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Someone you can’t forget.”

“That’s right.”

“Tell me your name again?”

By the grace of God Beth was able to see some humor in that line of conversation. One corner of her mouth lifted. “It’s Beth.”

“Well, Beth, there’s a rumor going around.” Here he fished his small spiral-bound notebook out of his jeans and thumbed to a page toward the back. He read, “Levi is selling the ranch because his father is gone.” Then he shook his head at this sad prospect as if it were the first time he was hearing it. “Is this true?”

“Not quite yet,” Beth said. “I’m searching for a way to prevent it from becoming true.”

“Are you now?” Wally said. “And how’s that going for you?”

Beth gave her head a light shake. “How about I keep you posted? And would you please write down, ‘Don’t tell anyone about this’? It would be real upsetting to the other associates.”

“I will. You bet. You’re a good girl. You have your daddy in you. He was the hardest-working man I ever met, and that’s coming from a real authority. I wasn’t always a lazy bum, kicking away my days out here under the fine sun. What man wouldn’t trade his soul to live a day in my shoes?”

Emory said from the back of the pickup, “You’re the hardest worker we got, Wally.”

“Uhn uhn uhn. You shoulda seen me as a young thing. I could stay a step ahead of Wall Street’s moves all day long. Now
that
was a job. But not even any of those beasts worked as hard as Abel Borzoi. It’s in your blood, isn’t it? Everything’s going to be all right.”

“That’s a real nice thought, Wally. Thank you.”

Wally was nodding and smiling at her. “Beth, Beth, Beth. Maybe I’ll have your name tattooed on my arm.”

Emory leaned into the truck for a stack of one-by-six pine boards. “You’d better have her picture inked on too,” he said. Wally laughed and laughed.

“Tell me where to dig, boss,” he said. And Wally left Beth to her bigger troubles.