Beth clutches Jack to her side, as if to comfort him, although she is the one who is crying. His head knocks against her big soft breasts.

Connor offers a hand, but Jack’s father ignores it and lifts himself out of the grave under his own power. He dusts his palms off, walks to Jack’s side, and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Do you want to throw dirt on her?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

Hank’s head jerks, and he stares down to see if Jack is giving him lip. He seems to decide his son is genuinely curious, and his face softens.

“To honor her memory,” Hank says.

“Oh,” Jack says. He picks up a handful of soil but then just lets it trickle out of his fist. He doesn’t feel like honoring her with a faceful of dirt.

“That’s all right,” Hank says. “Maybe you’d like to bring her some flowers one of these days.”

Beth is the first to grab a clump of earth and toss it in. She almost seems angry, the way she flings it at the body. The dirt makes a resonant thwock falling on the tight sheet, like a child’s hand slapping a toy drum. Others join her. The man with the crossed bandoliers finds a shovel and begins to fill in the hole. Some of the cowboys fire their six-guns and wahoo mournfully. A bottle of Bulleit Bourbon begins to go around.

In less than a half hour, she has been planted like a seed.

4.

Five weeks after they plant his mother in the soil, Jack is on his way into town with Beth and Connor. His father has loaned them the F-150. Connor has farm business at Cordia Agricultural Supply, and Beth tells Jack he has to come along to protect her. She says she’s trying to take care of her teeth, and she’s worried about the candy machine in the lobby. She never can control herself around SweeTarts. But if Jack comes with them, he can eat most of her tarts for her, and her teeth will stay white and bright and straight, and Connor will still want to kiss her.

“Mmmmmmaybe,” Connor says, squinting at her with one eye, like a man contemplating a challenging assignment.

She laughs and gives him a kiss that turns into a bite, Beth chewing on his lower lip. On the walk to the truck, he casually swats her heart-shaped behind. Such casual intimacies make Jack sick at heart, and for an instant he’s sorry that Connor ever came back from Afghanistan—such an evil thing to wish, he feels he might wilt with shame. Longing should be a sweet thrill, but for Jack it is a worm in a rotten apple.