“You can see him?” said Helen.

“Yep, he’s smiling at me.”

“Tell him I love him.”

“He knows,” said Marigold.

Forty-Two
The Root of All

It was midnight. Coot stepped on the shovel. It sank into the soft earth behind the outhouse. Judy stood guard beside the wooden latrine, holding her distended belly.

Over the winter months, Judy had gone from being flat-stomached to fully pregnant. When the spring came, Judy’s dresses had become too small on her body and her face had gotten puffy. People began to talk. They called her terrible things, and she’d become a mockery.

A breathtakingly beautiful mockery.

“Couldn’t you have picked somewhere less disgusting to bury it?” whispered Judy. “I think I’m gonna vomit.”

“Disgusting was the whole idea,” said Coot.

“Well, hurry up. I can hardly stand the smell. It’s making me sick.”

“Just tell me if you hear anyone coming.”

“I’m nauseous.”

“Keep your voice down and keep watching.”

Coot didn’t remember burying the box so deep, but he was at least three feet into the earth and still saw no sign of it. This worried him. Someone might have stolen the money. He tried not to entertain this idea. He had worked up a sweat from digging. Spring mornings were warm and humid. He removed his shirt so that he was wearing only his undershirt. He dug two more feet downward.

“Geez, how deep did you bury it?” said Judy. “All the way to China?”

He wondered to himself about what he would do once he found the money. Where would they go? What would they do? It was a mixture of excitement and sadness for him. Judy had agreed to let Coot take care of her, but it was only because she had nowhere else to turn. Nobody wanted a woman who carried a bastard. She knew this. He knew this. And it didn’t make her love him. He knew that too.

“Wait,” she said.

Coot stopped digging.

She held her hand up. “I think someone’s coming.”

“What?”

She shushed him.

A slamming screen door. Footsteps in the grass. Coot wiped sweat from his dripping forehead and squinted in the dark. It was Danny Terrance, stumbling out the back door, unbuttoning his overalls.

Judy hid behind the outhouse, standing next to Coot, plugging her nose. She kept close to him, pressing her body against his. He held her tight. It was the closest she’d ever been to him.

They heard the sound of Danny fertilizing the grass. He coughed a few times, sniffed, then cleared his nose. Coot noted how very well hydrated Danny Terrance seemed to be. It sounded like he was letting go of the Chattahoochee River.

The stream of water stopped. Then silence.

“Hey, who’s out there?” said Danny.

Judy’s eyes became big. Coot could see the whites of her eyes in the dark. She pressed a hand over Coot’s mouth. “Sshhh,” she whispered.