Only Saints

« xxi. »

The sun finds me with a shovel in my hands, digging something that could be my own grave. I break the thick, woody roots of St. Augustine grass with every hard shove of metal into the earth. I drag clods of sand and soil from their usual place and build up the banks of a new creek, and I wonder how much it will take to fill in the old one once I'm done digging this bend.

The shovel is old. Its handle is cracked so badly that splinters dig into my hands with a viciousness, and the metal head is barely held on by rusted-out screws. Still, it works, because I tell it to work with every breath, every strike, every heartbeat so loud and hard on the inside of my ribs.

Hold, I tell it. "Hold," I mumble, so often it doesn't taste like a word any more, letters shivering over my teeth, dripping from my mouth like blood where I bit my lip too hard trying to drag the shovel out of the gardening shed. The morning tastes like iron and regret as it rounds the horizon into a new day.

The Sebring ladies are the first to leave, in a parade of tropical muumuus and fluffy white hair. I make eye contact with one of them. I smile, dark and grim, and she turns away and sits in her sister's car before she can look back at me again.

Every time I strike the earth with the shovel, it feels like I'm carving out my own chest. I tear at the grass and hope, fervently, I'm not about to strike a pipe laid too close under the surface. Six feet down, more or less, is limestone. I'm not going to dig that deep; it only has to be a few feet, and the water will do the rest of the work for me.

I don't know how many hours it's been since I left the second time. I don't know how many hours it's been since I stopped crying. I don't know how many hours it's been since I gave up on anything but digging, as if I'm a robot built for one purpose. The weight of the shovel feels like punishment on sore arms.

Maybe it's all that I deserve.

If I strike a little deeper, maybe I will finally dig out my heart. Maybe I will uncover it, here, buried in the sand and soil of Old Mère's yard. Maybe I can dust it off and run it under the water. Maybe I'll split it open with the shovel, and then the blood will spill from my lips and I won't have to worry about breathing air or water any longer.

Maybe I'll finally be able to close my eyes and not dream of her, her dead eyes, her blue lips, her heartbeat fading under my fingertips.

Maybe we'll see each other in Hell.

A laugh tears from my chest at that. It chokes up. Turns to tears.

I'm not even halfway done digging the new curve for the creek. There's still so much left to go. I sink to my knees on the wet grass, my hands pulled down over the split handle of the shovel where it's dug deep into the earth. Maybe I can find my heart under all of this. Maybe I can kill myself with work, the way I always knew I would.

Feet crunch on the grass next to me. I don't look up until they try to take the shovel away. Then my hands clench tighter around the handle, and I hold it deep in the ground in front of me.

"No," I say, as loudly as I dare. If I speak any louder I may start bawling my eyes out.

They let go of the shovel. Sit next to me on their knees, and it's Florie that I'm looking up at through my ragged loose hair, pulled out of its neat ponytail sometime during the night. Her face is twisted up in a little pout, and she folds her hands patiently in her lap.

I'm the first one who says, "I'm sorry."

"No," she says, as if that was exactly what she was waiting for, "I am."

The next minute is an awkward stumble of words over words:

"I didn't think—"

"I should have been—"