A Body to Bury

For Christ’s sake, Guy, I heard my mother tell my daddy harshly, Do you have to coddle her?  It’s only a damn squirrel!

She’s tender-hearted, my daddy replied, she found it and wants to bury it.  What’s the harm?

Supper’s on the table, she snapped, It’ll get cold.

It’s hot dogs and beans, Jan, my daddy told her mildly, I think it’ll keep.

I’d found the poor little creature on the sidewalk on my way home from school, it’s small, still warm carcass lying in a clump of grass at the end of the driveway.  A few feet away, our battle-scarred  orange tomcat sat, indifferently licking his paws and looking satisfied.  I’d grown up with the feisty and independent old tom, remembered him before he’d grown into a skillful and deadly hunter, but for a moment I almost hated him.  I’d slid my used brown paper lunch bag beneath the little corpse and to my mother’s horror, carried him into the house.

Dear God!  she exclaimed with a quick backward twostep, It’s  nothing but a rodent!  A rat with a bushy tail!  Get that thing out of my kitchen!

Rusty kilt him!  I told my daddy tearfully, he kilt him!  We have to bury him!

My daddy knelt down and wiped my tears then gently took the squirrel from me.  We buried him in the back yard in a corner by the back fence where the dogs rarely went and made a protective circle around the tiny grave with popsickle sticks and string. 

When I asked if he would go to heaven, my daddy nodded. 

I’m pretty sure he will, he told me, Rusty too, someday.

But Rusty kilt him, I said, beginning to cry again.

Rusty’s a hunter, my daddy tried to explain, and hunters kill things.  You can’t be mad at him about it because it’s his nature.  Do you understand?

I shook my head and this kind man who couldn’t make the pain go away, picked me up and hugged me tightly.

Then just try to remember that they’ll be friends in heaven, he told ,me gently.

It didn’t make things alright but I loved him for trying.