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Cheryl Russell lives with her family in the Midwest. An RN, she has returned to school to pursue a Bachelor's degree in English. Her work has appeared in various online and print publications.
Cheryl Russell
Buried Gold
The still-damp mound of dirt blankets the pine box that's planted deep in the Kansas prairie. The townsfolk are gone now, riding in their wagons or walking along the rutted road, leaving me alone with the rows of tombstones. I leave the solitary spot where I'd watched the living give up the dead to the earth. As I walk, I feel like I'm back in the river bottom with the mud sucking at my boots. It isn't mire that pulls at me, threatening to halt my steps, but the loss of something I'll never have again in this lifetime. I turn up my coat against the bitter November wind, but it doesn't do any good. It cuts through me and binds with the cold that has entombed my heart. Not even a coat made out of the thickest buffalo hide will ever thaw the ice buried deep within a man.
Shadows stretch across the graves as the sun begins to slip away. The train will be coming soon. Not much time for me to do what I'd come to do. Darkness tries to obscure the markers, making it harder to read what's carved into the stone. But I don't need to read Lizzie's. I already know what's important. I feel the stone's cold through my thick gloves. Her father and brother must've been up all night, to get her marker ready for today. Their work stands all over this small patch of ground, touchstones for those left behind.
I pull off my gloves and trace the dates on the headstone, numbers so new that dust from the carving still rests in the curves. They say a lot, those dates, but they also don't say enough. For anyone taking the time to stop, they'll know she was born May 23, 1900. In the season before the heat of the Kansas sun baked the prairie brown, when the wildflowers were still new, while the calves still frolicked in the fields. They'll also know she was only eighteen when she died here, in November, when the dead grass rasps in the wind, the wildflowers long gone, and the cattle slaughtered for winter supplies. But they won't know the laughter and the life behind the name carved in stone, Elizabeth Grace Murphy. But I remember the laughter that chased away my gloom, the life that gave mine meaning when others proclaimed I had none.
My earliest memory is her chasing after me after I'd swiped her doll. It wasn't nothing more than a corncob really, wearing a scrap for clothing, but I'd sorely underestimated Lizzie's attachment to that dried piece of vegetation, a mistake I wasn't dumb enough to repeat. But it was the start of a good friendship. Both Lizzie and I are . . . were . . . misfits in our small town, she for missing an arm and me for being mixed blood. But I took no notice of her stump and she never put me down for my dark skin and long, black hair. School was only bearable because she was there, my friend, us against the schoolyard world. Summers, when we were done with our farm chores, we'd go swimming in the crick, or fishing in the pond. Berry-picking when the berries was ripe. I'd help her with her buckets when they were full, which was often. Lizzie could pick berries with one hand faster than most people worked with both. We spent winters skating at the frozen-over swimming hole, building snowmen under her direction, defending her against the Bloughers boys' snowballs. Younger than me by three years, Lizzie taught me how to live. But not any more. The influenza claimed my Lizzie one day ago, just liked it claimed the Yoder's new baby, Sam Miller's wife, and left the seven Sleutz children without their mama. I'm here to tell my Lizzie goodbye. I can't live here without her, facing the scorn of the others, because of my long, black braids and blue eyes.
The shadows are deeper now, the farthest stones hard to see. The train will be here soon, and I need to be on it when it goes. I don't know where I'm heading, because I'm lost without her, the one who'll hold my heart until I see her again on the other side.
I pull a small cloth from a pocket inside my coat, a place of safekeeping for a moment that will never come, for her or another. I allow the wrapping to fall away, and in the fading light I trace the gold band with my fingers. I hear the train's faint whistle as it approaches town and re-wrap the ring. Squatting down, I thrust my hand deep into the soft earth that surrounds the headstone. It's hard to dig a hole with fingers stiffened by the cold, but I do and I place the ring inside. No need to take it with me, for Lizzie's it was and will always be. I never got the chance to ask her and I'll never speak those precious words to another. I tamp the earth back into place, concealing the fact I was even here. Before I stand, I touch the spot above her heart.
I hear the train squeal to a stop at the station in town.
I stand and turn away, not caring that my coat is open to the wind, my hands numb with the cold. Nothing matters, as I leave in the dead earth the only reason I ever had to live.
