“You know we ain’t got time for that sort of funeral. But that pastor must be on his way, isn’t he?”
“He won’t be coming,” Sam said. “He gave me this Bible to read over her. We’ll do it private.”
Once the smile faded from Molly’s face, Sam could see the permanent squint etched around her nearsighted eyes.
“Wrap her in the sheets,” he said.
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“No coffin, eh?” asked Sally.
“A winding sheet is plenty good,” said Molly, trying to make the best of it. “We’ll tuck her in.”
“Help me find some place I can plant her,” Sam said.
Molly winced at his language, but pointed to a grassy field that still showed the effects of a bygone plow. Sam picked a likely, treeless spot but hit a boulder with the first jab of the shovel: it took him five attempts before he found a place thawed enough to dig even a shallow grave.
By the time the hole was deep enough to serve, the afternoon was dimming and a biting wind had kicked up.
They hurried with the body, wrapped in a sling of yellowed bedding. The old whore weighed more than Sam had expected, and the stiffness of the body made his skin crawl.
But when they got her to the grave, they stopped, not knowing how to get the corpse into it.
“You go in and we’ll hand her down to you,” said Molly.
“Not me,” he said.
“Well, I can’t do it,” Molly said. “My knees . . .”
“Oh for goodness sake, just drop her,” Sally said. “She wouldn’t do half as much for us.”
The plain truth of her statement struck Sam as funny, and he couldn’t keep from smiling when Mrs. Stanley landed with a soft thud. He shoveled the dirt in as fast as he could, and then he picked up the Bible. Sally and Molly bowed their heads as he opened the book and read, “‘Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? She is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot.’”
Sally’s head snapped up and Molly gasped, but Sam continued.
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“‘And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.
“‘And I saw, when for all the causes whereby
backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.’”
Molly cleared her throat with obvious meaning, but Sam only raised his voice. “‘And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.’”
He stopped there, short of the end of the stinging passage. Sally walked over to him and slapped his face as hard as she could. Molly followed her into the house without a glance back and slammed the crooked door, which immediately creaked open.
He started back for his lodgings thinking, Good
riddance. It had been cruel of him to read what Reverend Jewett had marked for him; it had been unkind of the Reverend to choose those harsh words. It had been like delivering lashes to Sally and Molly, who were nothing but pitiful and spent sinners anymore. And yet, the prophet’s merciless condemnation of harlots and whoring had pleased him in ways he could barely name. Jeremiah’s anger seemed hot enough to burn away the awful disgrace of his childhood, which haunted him still.