Kings of the Earth: A Novel by Jon Clinch

hand and hitched up his pants and went down from the porch, on past Audie again and around the empty barn and up into the fields.
    Creed was on the tractor, his silhouette atop the ridge making a slice against the sky. He saw Tuttle coming and he cut the engine and it took a while to quit. The ridge where he was working was a little bit of a walk, and although it took Tuttle some time to reach him he made no effort to climb down and meet him halfway. He sat in the sun and waited, and Tuttle came on slowly.
    “I’m sorry about your mother.” Tuttle said it without introducing himself, trusting that Creed would know him by his collar.
    “She was dying for a long time.”
    “I guess we all are.” Tuttle shaded his eyes and looked up toward Creed where he sat on the Farmall. “We’re all dying from the moment we’re born.”
    “I mean the cancer,” Creed said.
    “Right. Right you are. The cancer.” There in the dry field with dust on his shoes, he turned and surveyed the landscape from beneath the shade of his hand. He turned his back on Creed and sighted down toward the barn. “I know she was a fine woman,” he said. Such were the words that came under these circumstances. He said them with his back turned, as if to allow for some doubt that he’d even spoken. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
    “So how much for the job?”
    Tuttle turned back. “What was that?”
    “The funeral ain’t until tomorrow so I guess you come about the charge.”
    “Oh, no. There’s no charge. I appreciate the thought, but there’s no charge.”
    “All right. She paid her debts and I won’t have her go out owing.”
    “Oh, no. Never fear.”
    “All right, I won’t.”
    Tuttle brightened a little. “You could make a donation, though. If you like.” And then, by instinct, “The church is always in need.”
    “Vernon keeps hold of the money,” said Creed. He put his foot on the starter.
    “Actually, what I came for was to see if there’s something you’d like me to say about your mother.”
    Creed pulled at his lip, brown teeth behind a brown hand. “She paid her debts,” he said. “She done her best with the four of us. That’s all.”
    “She did her best.”
    “It weren’t easy.” His eyes glassed over thinking it, and his foot bounced on the starter.
    “She did a fine job.”
    “Just say that.”
    “I will.”
    Creed pressed the starter once and nothing happened and he pressed it again and nothing happened and then on the third try it kicked in.

Preston
    I F THEY’D HAD any common sense they’d have waited awhile to close off that room, but common sense was never their strong suit. I was up at the graveside for the service and I stayed to help put her in the ground. It was just the three boys and Donna and DeAlton and Margaret and me, along with a cousin of DeAlton’s from over in Valley Mills. The eight of us and the reverend. He was a nice enough young fellow although I don’t guess he had a lot of funeral work under his belt yet, and a good deal of what he had to say sounded like he’d gotten it out of a textbook. Like he was just filling in the blanks. Then again he didn’t have much to work with.
    Audie was quiet the whole time. He stood alongside his sister and she held his hand. I kept my eye on him and I made up my mind that he wasn’t certain as to who was inside the box. I think he had a picture of his mother in his mind and it didn’t include her lying underneath a coffin lid. After the reverend said his piece he held his Bible to his chest and started in on “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” and we joined in, Donna and Margaret and me. The boys tried to help but kept coming in late. There isn’t a strong voice among them anyway. DeAlton just looked at the ground. I don’t know about his cousin. I didn’t look his way.
    I’d helped Vernon and Creed lay out ropes under the box and we used them to lift it up a little bit and edge it over and let it on down. One of the ropes got snagged