“Say, are you drunk?” the deputy demanded.
Delroy had to work to answer. He was so cold and numb his body didn’t want to respond, and his head felt so thick and full that he could hardly think. “No. Not drunk.” Just bereft of belief. Abandoned by God. Punished because I wasn’t perfect.
“Well, I can’t leave you here.” The deputy squatted, grabbed Delroy by the back of his shirt and slicker, and muscled Delroy to his feet in an amazing display of strength. “Man, you are a big ‘un, aren’t you?”
Delroy didn’t say anything. He felt like he was in a dream—no, a nightmare—and couldn’t get out.
Once he had Delroy standing, the deputy tried to get him moving. Only Delroy’s legs were too numb to work. He keeled over.
“Whoops,” the deputy said, moving around quickly to catch Delroy across his shoulder so he folded at the waist. Even from that brief moment of being vertical, Delroy knew that he was a head taller than the deputy, but the man was broad and hefty, with shoulders an axe handle wide.
With surprising strength, the deputy shifted Delroy’s considerable weight across his shoulders, then stood again and started walking. His rain boots sank deeply into the mud and made sucking noises when they lifted as he carried Delroy through the graveyard.
A car with a light bar and a whip antenna was parked a short distance away. The lights speared into the darkness, turning the rain gray and showing the downpour. SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT stood out on the door over a seal that Delroy couldn’t make out.
The deputy put his long-handled flashlight on top of the car, opened the door, and levered Delroy onto the rear seat. Delroy sprawled across it. The heat from the car’s heater blew over him, waking throbbing needles of pain all over his body where the cold had soaked in bone deep.
Standing in the doorway of the car with the interior light showing on him, the deputy peered down at Delroy with irritation written on his beefy face. He was in his late fifties, a solid, husky man used to hard work. He had big hands and a neatly clipped mustache and round-lensed glasses.
“Haul your feet in,” the deputy said.
Delroy did, but the effort lacked strength because now that he was out of the cold he was shaking all over.
“Get outta that slicker. I got a blanket in the back.”
At first, Delroy didn’t move.
“Get it off,” the deputy said in a rougher, louder voice. “I come in there and have to skin you myself, I’m not gonna be happy about it.”
Too tired to argue or resist anymore, Delroy starting shrugging out of the slicker.
The deputy stepped to the rear of the car as Delroy forced himself into a sitting position and continued pulling the slicker off. He couldn’t get it off himself, but the deputy helped him when he returned with an olive army blanket.
“I’m going to get you to the hospital, get you checked out,” the deputy said.
“I’m fine,” Delroy said, shivering beneath the blanket.
“Mister, you laying out in a cemetery in a March rainstorm in the middle of the night, why if you check out fine physically, I’m gonna have your head examined, too.” The deputy closed the door.
Seated now, letting the cushions take his weight, Delroy looked back at Terrence’s grave. A mild burst of lightning strobed the sky and lit the grounds briefly. The fresh mound of earth that covered his son’s grave stood out in stark relief. He’d covered the grave site back up before giving into the soul-draining fatigue that filled him.
The deputy slid in behind the steering wheel and knocked the mud off his boots before pulling his feet inside. A wire mesh screen separated the back of the car from the front. Switching on the overhead light, the deputy opened Delroy’s wallet and flipped through it.
Delroy hadn’t even noticed when the deputy had taken his wallet. Now, he didn’t care.
A look of surprise showed on the deputy’s face as he glanced over his shoulder through the wire mesh. “You a navy man?”
“Aye.”
“What are doing here?”
Delroy didn’t want to answer, just wanted to be alone. But he couldn’t find it in himself to be rude to the man. “My son’s buried in this graveyard. My father before him.”
The deputy studied him. His eyes were pale blue and quick as a fox’s. “That grave I found you by. Somebody dug that up.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I felt I needed to.”
“Terrence Harte. That would be your son?”
Delroy knew then that the man had an eye for detail if he read the gravestones while getting him to his feet. “Aye.”
The deputy hesitated, peering over his glasses with a steely gaze that softened a little. “How long since your boy passed?”
“Five years.”
“It’s a hard thing, losing a son,” the deputy said.
Delroy didn’t say anything.
“Lost one of my boys nine years ago.” The deputy folded Delroy’s wallet back up and dropped it onto the passenger seat beside him. “Was a drunk driver killed him. Crossed the white line. My boy never had a chance. Laid in a coma for seven months till we finally give up hope, and the hospital pulled the plug.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” The words came automatically, but the emotion behind them was distant. Somewhere inside his dead heart, Delroy felt certain he did feel sympathetic about the man’s pain and loss.
The deputy nodded. His eyes remained hard, but they were a little less suspicious now. “I gotta ask you something.”
Delroy looked at him.
“You take anything out of that grave?” The deputy held up a hand. “Don’t you bother lying to me either, because when I get you to the hospital, I’m gonna search your clothes. You took something, I’m gonna find it.”
“No,” Delroy said. “I didn’t take anything.”
“Good.” The deputy let out a sigh. “You didn’t take anything. That’ll make things a little easier.” He turned his attention
