Buried in a Nameless Grave

The noose around Rebecca Myrtlebank’s neck made her breakout into a rash. The sun offered no mercy and everyone that had gathered to watch her hang had beads of sweat on their arms and foreheads. Rebecca stood on the hangman’s platform looking above the heads of the crowd, looking at the sky, looking for an explanation. “I didn’t kill no preacher,” she said to the clouds.

The trap door released and Rebecca dropped through. She swung at the end of the rope, kicking for life. Everyone in the crowd held their breath. A crow landed on the crossbeam above Rebecca’s head and then she struggled no more. Her tragic life had come to an end. A breeze picked up and the sweaty crowd was grateful for it, but the breeze made Rebecca’s dead body softly drift at the end of the rope and that caused a few among the crowd to shriek, as if she had come back as a vengeful ghost.

“Cut her down,” said the marshal.

An old woman in the front row of the crowd said, “Let her hang, marshal! Let the crows eat her eyes and the buzzards eat her innards.”

The crow on the crossbeam turned its head and looked at the old woman.

“Then burn the whole thing and bury the ashes.”

“Justice has been served. She’ll get a proper burial,” said the marshal. “And she will be laid to rest.”

The crow on the crossbeam made an ugly squawk and flew away.

“Cut her down.”

Rebecca Myrtlebank was to be buried without a tombstone. No marker would be placed at her grave to testify that she had been a child of God and had lived and died. It might seem cruel and unchristian but her remains wouldn’t be disturbed and sooner or later everyone would forget about her and the man she killed. It would be as if she never existed. That’s what the marshal had hoped for, anyway. In his mind she had received justice and for that she deserved some sense of decency in death.

The hangman cut her down and removed the noose. The marshal himself gently placed her into the coffin. He and the hangman loaded the coffin onto the back of a wagon. The marshal climbed onto the driving seat and he gave the whip a soft snap across the horse. It was a long ride to the gravesite. He chose a spot in a field far away from town; an isolated spot in the middle of nowhere that would swallow her whole and then this whole thing could be forgotten about. Buzzards flew overhead, making steady circles in the sky. They reminded the marshal of how the preacher’s shoes had made an arc of black scuff marks on the church floor in his final moments.

After close to an hour of riding, he came upon Eustace, the blind gravedigger, standing next to a large heap of dirt. “Welcome back, marshal.” He brought Eustace here earlier and left him to dig the grave. Eustace walked towards the wagon, using his shovel to feel the ground. He helped the marshal unload the coffin and they carried it 10 paces back to the yawning gape. Using the same kind of rope that had killed her, the two men slowly lowered the mortal remains of Rebecca Myrtlebank into her resting place.

After placing the coffin on the bottom of the grave, Eustace turned and retrieved his old rusted shovel leaning against the wagon. 10 paces back to the mound of freshly dug earth and the old man began shoveling. His back was bent from years of burying bodies and his eyes had gone dark with age, but his chest was as broad as a barn and his shoulders were like two boulders. Eustace fed dirt into the grave like a mother to a child, never spilling a morsel. He was a quiet man, but he would whistle while he worked. His tunes were always cheerful and the marshal figured it was to distract him from the solemn work he did.

The soft thumps of dirt on the pine box were the percussion accompaniment to Eustace’s whistling. The steady rhythm of thump, thump, thump and Eustace’s melodic whistling made the marshal feel guilty about burying her like this. The marshal was never a man for emotional words, but he felt that she deserved something better than indifferent whistling.

“She paid the price for what she did. Now let her rest and this be the end of it.” Eustace said nothing, just whistled and shoveled.

“I just can’t see how it could end up this way.”

Eustace stopped whistling, and his eyes shone like silver dollars, and he said, “I can’t see anything at all.” He carried on with his tune and the marshal watched him bury Rebecca. After it was all done, Rebecca Myrtlebank had vanished from the face of the earth.

That night the marshal completely drank a bottle of whiskey. As he drank, he thought of nothing but Rebecca Myrtlebank. She had killed a man of God in a church. They found her standing over the corpse, covered in blood, holding the knife in her little hand. The preacher was lying face down. She had stabbed him in the back 11 times. Nothing so bad had ever happened here before. The marshal was called to arrest her, and he expected her to be ornery and aggressive, but she stood mute and calmly complied with his orders.

The two of them left the church and outside many folks had gathered. Some of them shouted curses and damnations. The marshal escorted her to the jailhouse and it wasn’t long until a posse showed up, demanding to be let in and to kill her. They had her dead to rights and they weren’t waiting for a trial. No one had actually seen her kill him, but there was enough evidence in the marshal’s eyes to convict her. He assured the posse that justice would be delivered, but he would not tolerate another murder. Things had to be done the right way, he insisted. Bill Chaney put his hand on his pistol and he said, “Why waste the rope?”

The marshal put his hand on his own pistol and said, “Bullets will cost ya.”

That night the marshal felt it was best to sleep at the jailhouse. He could watch her and keep away any vigilantes. Rebecca Myrtlebank was lying in her bed, like how she did in her coffin, but here her eyes were open. Her breathing held a steady rhythm and she lie still. She hadn’t said a word since the marshal had arrested her. The marshal sat across from her cell, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He looked at the full moon outside her small cell window. With a headful of whiskey he had been nearly hypnotized by watching the small moon slowly move across the dark blue rectangle of sky and then a coyote howled and the marshal jumped out of his skin.

Rebecca Myrtlebank was sitting up in her bed, looking at the him. “He weren’t no preacher. He was the devil.”

“The devil?”

“He told me he was. He said he was here to take all of our souls. I had to kill him.”

“How did you kill him?”

“I snuck up behind him and I stabbed him with my daddy’s knife. I saw fire come out of his eyes. Then he went back to hell.”

The marshal finished the last of his whiskey in one big gulp and put the glass on the floor. She confessed and that was all he needed to hear. Any talk about devils was nonsense. “He was a preacher. You killed a preacher in a church. It don’t get much worse than that.” He shook his head, looking at the floor.

“He was the devil.” Rebecca sat bunched up, her knees brought in close and she looked around at her cell. “I did the right thing. You’ll see.”

“Rebecca, you made an awful mess up there. Everybody in town wants you dead. And it’s gonna happen. You’ll be hanged for this.”

“No I won’t.” Her voice was confident, almost playful.

The marshal grabbed the whiskey bottle by his side and poured himself another drink. He had brought men to justice before but never a woman. And for her to act this way made it worse. She was sick in the head and he felt sorry for her.

“Marshal, you ever think about your soul?”

“I do.”

“Soul is all we got in the end. I wasn’t gonna let the devil take my soul. He got my brother’s. My brother made a deal with the devil. He wanted his neighbor’s wife and he sold his soul for her. He married her and then he died and the devil took his soul. I saw it happen. And I swore he would never get me.”

“I don’t get to say what happens to your soul.”

“This time the devil said he would make me his wife. I told him ‘No.’ Then he said he’d kill me and everybody in town and take all their souls if I wouldn’t marry him. The whole time fire was coming out his mouth and his horns were big and red. I said, ‘Get away, devil!”

Rebecca jumped up on her bed and began screaming.

“Get away, devil! Get away, devil!“

She jumped off the bed and jumped into the wall, screaming, “Get away, devil!“

The marshal yelled, “Cut that out!” but Rebecca kept on screaming. Outside, the coyote howled again, but this time it was low and filled with pain. Rebecca howled too, and she snarled and slavered like a coyote after a fresh kill. Rebecca spun in the middle of the cell, draped in the moonlight that came through the window, and then abruptly collapsed onto the floor. The marshal waited for her to sit back up, but she didn’t move. Finally he opened her cell and cautiously approached her, taking small, quiet steps. He kneeled down and saw that she was still breathing. He carefully picked her up and put her onto the bed, the same way he had put her into her coffin. She slept the rest of the night, and the marshal watched her from behind the bars.

The marshal had fallen asleep in his chair after a few hours of drinking and woke to the sound of screaming, but it didn’t come from Rebecca, it came from the front door of the jailhouse. It was Bill Chaney, demanding to see the marshal. When the marshal opened the door, Bill said, “Marshal, now what you’ve got in there is a demon. We have to cut off her arms and legs and burn the body. It’s the only way to keep it from coming back.”

“Bill, I’ve told you how this is gonna go. I don’t wanna have to tell you again.” The whiskey hangover and the incident from last night and the entire situation left the marshal with no patience.

“It’s not right for you to keep that demon in there. She’ll kill you and all the rest of us if you don’t let us do what we have to do.”

“You need to step back, Bill.”

Bill dug his boots into the ground. “I’m not leaving.”

Bill had his hands on his hips and his holster was on his left side. The marshal was wearing his gun belt, as well. He hadn’t taken it off since he arrested Rebecca.

“So where are we now, marshal?”

“I’m gonna give you to the count of five,” said the marshal.

Bill’s palm hovered closely over his pistol. His fingers twitched.

The marshal pulled his pistol and fired and Bill did the same, but only a little slower. The marshal hit Bill in the chest and Bill’s bullet missed and struck the jailhouse. Rebecca was screaming again. “He’s come back! He wants my soul!”

Rebecca was hanged the next day. The marshal wanted it all over and done with. The only time he left her side was when he drove Eustace to the burial site early that morning. Rebecca spent her final day in silence. The marshal gave her a meal in the afternoon but she didn’t touch it. She never got out of bed. No one came to challenge the marshal for the right to kill her after Bill had tried, but he could still hear the curses from passersby through her cell window. It wasn’t until the full moon rose again did Rebecca speak, lying in her bed.

“The devil said he’s coming for you next, marshal.”

“Is that so?”

“Uh-huh. He whispered it into my ear. He said he was gonna get you after he got me. He said you made him mad.”

“I’d like to kill the son of a bitch. With my bare hands.”

“I’ll pray for you, marshal.” She closed her eyes and put her hands together and whispered a quiet prayer that he couldn’t hear.

Twenty years passed after Rebecca was hanged and the town had largely forgotten her, as the marshal had hoped. Her name rarely came up in conversation among the townsfolk. Green grass had rolled over her grave, leaving no trace of her, but the marshal never forgot where she was buried. He visited her grave a few times in those early years, just to make sure she hadn’t been disturbed and because he still felt sorry for her, but after his final time visiting, he swore he would never go back. On that final time he came upon the site, there was someone else already there, digging her up.

At the sound of the marshal’s approach, the stranger stopped his digging and climbed out of the pit. By the looks of the dirt mound next to him, he still had about three feet to shovel out. “Howdy, marshal.”

This stranger wore a dark blue shirt and had a white smile. The marshal had the uncanny feeling that he had met this man before, but couldn’t place where or when.

“What are you doing out here,” asked the marshal.

“Just talking to my old sweetheart.”

The marshal’s horse whickered and stamped his feet and tried to spin around but the marshal held the reins tight and held face with the stranger.

“Stop digging that grave.”

“No sir, we’re getting married. It took me a long time to find her. I’m not just gonna leave now.”

The marshal pulled his gun out of his holster and aimed dead center at the stranger’s chest. “Step away, mister. I mean it.” He didn’t see any weapon on the man. The man just stood there, shovel in hand, covered in coffin dirt.

“You can’t kill the devil, marshal.”

The marshal fired his pistol but the gravedigger didn’t fall. Instead he climbed back into the pit and resumed his exhumation of Rebecca Myrtlebank. The marshal’s horse reared on its hind legs and and cried in fear. The marshal spun his horse around and galloped back to town, trying to get far away from her grave, knowing that she would never rest. And neither would he.