We buried Wyatt the next day early in the morning. Beth wanted to get it done before it got too hot. We had to go into town later to see the Psycho Surgeon and get my nose fixed. Pete, the other ranch hand, was a fairly good medic with the supplies he had, but if I didn't get the work done I was going to look like a monster for the rest of my life.
Because I was hopped up on painkillers and pretty loopy Beth did most of the digging. I sat on the truck bed and watched her sling piles of dirt out of the ground. There vultures lazily circling in the air overhead. Beth told me not to worry about it. They wouldn't come near Wyatt's body while I was sitting next to it. They still made me uneasy.
While Pete wasn't the greatest at medicine, he and Jeremy were very good at body disposal. They wrapped Wyatt up tight in plastic sheeting. If there wasn't a well of crimson blood pooling at one end you would think you were only looking at a well trussed up pervert in a gimp suit.
It was only me and Beth burying Wyatt. She said it was a private affair. Besides, the boys had work to do. Jeremy and Pete were driving Wyatt's truck into the city to sell it to some Russians who would chop it up and part it out. Beth didn't want to leave any clue as to what happened to Wyatt. She wanted it to seem like he up and disappeared.
Beth tossed the shovel to the side and crawled out of the hole. She looked back down into it.
"Yeah," she said, "this should be deep enough for him. Last thing I want is for a pack a' coyotes to dig him up and spread his bones all over creation. Mind giving me a lift with him?"
After a bit of fumbling we managed to get his body out of the truck bed and roll it into the grave. Jeremy and Peter made it look so easy to move a body around. Granted, they were two muscular men and not a smallish woman and a drugged up man.
I could help with the burying so I grabbed another shovel from the truck bed and started heaping dirt onto the corpse. Once the body was covered the job didn't seem so terribly gruesome and the task seemed to speed up.
"So we're just going to bury him out here? And not tell anybody?" I asked.
"That's the idea. Unless ya' fancy going to prison forever for murdering a super hero."
"It seems kind of cruel. I mean, I didn't like him, but he was still a good man overall. Now he's buried in an unmarked grave all because he was an idiot in love."
"I ain't gonna' leave it unmarked."
"Oh, no?"
"Nah. I'm gonna' plant a tree here. And once it grows big and tall you're gonna' bring me out here and fuck me in the shade underneath."
"So you're saying you want me to be around for a while? I mean, if this tree is going to grow up."
"Well, yeah. I'm hoping for ya' to stick around a good long while."
We each shoveled a few more piles of dirt. By now the grave was mostly filled in. I stuck my shovel into the ground and reached out to grab her hand. She let her shovel drop to the ground.
"What are ya' doing?" she asked.
I pulled her close to me and kissed her, thankful for the painkillers so I didn't feel anything in my face.
"Beth Amarillo...will you marry me?" I asked when I was done kissing her.
She looked confused for a second. Her eyes darted around to the fresh Earth stood on, which covered her recently deceased husband. She broke out in a big grin.
"I will, Luke. After we get your face fixed we can go ring shopping!"
-The End-
