another cop out? the beginning of a long ago story.
My name's Juan, and I'm a gravedigger.
No. My name's Juan and I dig graves.
No, that's not it either, makes me sound like I like graves. I mean, I like graves, or I wouldn't be practicing digging them all the time so I can be the regular gravedigger when old Gus finally gets to try out the results of his own craft. But what I'm looking for is the right way to say it. My daddy always said that if you're gonna spend as much time doing something besides sleeping, you better fucking-a like it as much as sleeping. I figure that starts with the pride you take in your job - how you can say it to others, what you do.
I'm Juan and I'm a gravedigger.
When I started digging practice graves on the land Daddy left me, I sure didn't figure that old Gus would last this long. Gus is not a thin man, and his red old face only gets redder after the two cans of Bud with lunch. The wheezing sound he makes with each thrust of the shovel gets a little louder. The nap he takes around three each day lasts a little longer every day.
I know these things about Gus because I used to spend a lot of time at the cemetery, watching Gus and talking to him, noting his every move. That was when I first decided what to do with the rest of my life. After a while, I could see I was making him nervous, so I bought a pair of binoculars and stood in the woods at the edge of the cemetery and watched him secretly.
Gus has been digging graves forever. He made the final resting place for my Daddy and maybe his Daddy before that. Old Gus has made room in this earth for two wives, a son and, when he was a young farmer and gravedigging was only a side job, he dug a dirt bed for one of his cows who had fallen over dead one day for no apparent reason.
It was the summer that his second wife and all of his cows died that Gus gave up on farming. His wife fell to some bug that they had to send her to the city for, only it was too late. They didn't want to send her back in anything but a hearse, but Gus sat silently in the hospital's morgue until they relented and helped him load her body into a pine box and onto the back of his truck.
No one's sure about what cut up all his cows so bad, but the thing what was sure was that they were all dead, the whole herd of twenty scattered on the southern side of the forty. Some people thought it was the hippies who lived around here then, but nobody could ever prove anything. After a while the hippies left and the matter was forgotten by everyone except Gus.
Gus never did anything much after that. Enough people died around here so that he could live on the money he made by digging their graves and he lived quietly. We never saw him much at the Five Star or in town, unless he was buying groceries or something.
My name's Juan, and I'm a gravedigger.
No. My name's Juan and I dig graves.
No, that's not it either, makes me sound like I like graves. I mean, I like graves, or I wouldn't be practicing digging them all the time so I can be the regular gravedigger when old Gus finally gets to try out the results of his own craft. But what I'm looking for is the right way to say it. My daddy always said that if you're gonna spend as much time doing something besides sleeping, you better fucking-a like it as much as sleeping. I figure that starts with the pride you take in your job - how you can say it to others, what you do.
I'm Juan and I'm a gravedigger.
When I started digging practice graves on the land Daddy left me, I sure didn't figure that old Gus would last this long. Gus is not a thin man, and his red old face only gets redder after the two cans of Bud with lunch. The wheezing sound he makes with each thrust of the shovel gets a little louder. The nap he takes around three each day lasts a little longer every day.
I know these things about Gus because I used to spend a lot of time at the cemetery, watching Gus and talking to him, noting his every move. That was when I first decided what to do with the rest of my life. After a while, I could see I was making him nervous, so I bought a pair of binoculars and stood in the woods at the edge of the cemetery and watched him secretly.
Gus has been digging graves forever. He made the final resting place for my Daddy and maybe his Daddy before that. Old Gus has made room in this earth for two wives, a son and, when he was a young farmer and gravedigging was only a side job, he dug a dirt bed for one of his cows who had fallen over dead one day for no apparent reason.
It was the summer that his second wife and all of his cows died that Gus gave up on farming. His wife fell to some bug that they had to send her to the city for, only it was too late. They didn't want to send her back in anything but a hearse, but Gus sat silently in the hospital's morgue until they relented and helped him load her body into a pine box and onto the back of his truck.
No one's sure about what cut up all his cows so bad, but the thing what was sure was that they were all dead, the whole herd of twenty scattered on the southern side of the forty. Some people thought it was the hippies who lived around here then, but nobody could ever prove anything. After a while the hippies left and the matter was forgotten by everyone except Gus.
Gus never did anything much after that. Enough people died around here so that he could live on the money he made by digging their graves and he lived quietly. We never saw him much at the Five Star or in town, unless he was buying groceries or something.
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