Bury-Me-Here! Bury-Me-Here!

 

Let's just cut right to the heart of things, okay?

I am not always a nice person and I have an active imagination.  I think we've established that in previous posts.  Still, when opportunity presents itself, as it did Friday evening, I am not one to walk away.  After all, "Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor."

So, when Mertis told me that ever since the big "Intruder" incident at the abandoned cabin, she can't mow over there without feeling "creepy...like somebody's watching me," I just couldn't let it go.

See, Mertis likes to think she's pretty brave but she freely admits "I don't do ghosts."

So when she said the old cabin "creeped" her out, what was I supposed to do- let it go? Puh-leeze!

I said "Hmm. Well, you know the old moonshiner did drop dead over there by the spring box.  That's not very far from the cabin."

Mertis shuddered.

We're out on the cabin back porch. It's growing darker by the minute and a cool front has just begun to blow through.

 

"Tell me," I said, appearing to mull it over.  "Do you feel like it's colder over there, say, maybe 10 degrees colder?"

Mert's eyes widen. "Don't!" she says.

A soft breeze gusts past the swing where I'm sitting, hitting me before it touches Mert sitting in the rocking chair a few feet away.

"Does it feel like someone's touching you, maybe running their cool fingers across your cheek?"

"Ewww!" she shivers, jumping up from her chair. "Don't do that!"

"Do what? I was just thinking, you know, they never did finish burying him.  Maybe that's what he wants...He wants to be buried. He's doomed to wander the grounds over there until someone..."

"I'll get a damned bulldozer and do it myself, if that's what it takes!" she cries.

"Yep," I say. "They probably got to filling in the grave and then said, 'Hell, it's been a long day, what with the funeral and toting his body all this way out to the buryin' grounds. Let's have a little nip!' And that was that!" I tell her.

A few feet away a whippoorwill begins to sing.  To me it sounds like he's saying "Step to the rear! Step to the rear!" But I say, "Sounds like he's saying 'Bury me here! Bury me here!' doesn't it?"

"I told you," Mertis says, her tone ominous. "I don't do ghosts!"

"Now, Mert, you know I'm just spinnin' you a tale," I say.

"Well, there's a Confederate soldier buried on your property," she says, trying to tweak me.

I look sadly down at the floor and shake my head.  "He probably never made it home. Just a boy.  A boy wanting to tell his mother goodbye...but he never gets the chance...He's looking for his Mama..."

"That does it!" Mert cries, grabbing the screen door.  "I'm getting a beer. You need to go write something!"

She leaves me out there with the whippoorwill crying "Bury me here! Bury me here!" And the Confederate boy looking for his Mama. And the half-buried moonshiner.

"You know," I call in through the screen door, "I believe I'll have a beer, too!"

 

 

 

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