Vignette: Burying Bryton

Burying Bryton

Seems like we were always burying Bryton. The problem was he wasn’t very dead and the earth was much, much smaller back then. If you buried him too deep, he’d settle out the bottom side, and if you buried him too shallow, he would get sick of being dead and shimmy up for a late dinner at about nine o’ clock. 

We didn’t like interring him. Nobody wanted much to do it the first time, let alone the hundredth time, but Bryton had always been a solid guy, and he’d come up to you with puppy-dog eyes framed by those square, plastic-rimed glassed, and holding out a shovel. It almost broke your heart, and the next thing you knew you had set down your newspaper and were out re-digging his grave. 

He would tell you how much he appreciated it, and how he hoped he might do the same for you someday, and by the end—after the hug and last goodbye—you started to think you might really be putting the guy to rest.

But the hole was always too deep or too shallow. There just wasn’t a middle depth in those days.  

We kept at it on account of those puppy eyes, but by the end of summer the good will was gone, and no one cared much for the graveside gratitude and hugs.  We quit covering up the hole after we laid him down so it would be there tomorrow when we needed it, and when he begged, holding out the shovel, we wouldn’t put down our newspapers, but would just point him back to the waiting and open grave.

It should’ve worked out, but I don’t think he cared much for the casket—seems the time and the effort that went into digging the hole was the best part of dying—and with no one wielding the shovel in his behalf, after a while Bryton stopped being so dead.  

By the end of the summer, the earth was getting bigger and something inside of Bryton had probably actually died, but we didn't dig any more graves. Eventually, everyone lost track of the guy, and when we looked up from our newspapers, he was gone.