Free Buried Memories by Irene Pence

and curling gray smoke, but her mother wanted to talk about Wayne’s last five minutes. Shirley had already heard too much, but she let her mother get it off her chest while she slipped into an illusion of listening. She inhaled the smoke and thought of happier family times—going on family vacations, taking off for an afternoon of shopping at one of the Dallas malls, and having Christmas dinners with her big family sitting around a white clothed table.
    Shirley mixed the ingredients she brought and made a pitcher of white Russians. The women sipped and talked and soon both of them could feel the intoxicating fumes of the sweet Kahlua. After a couple hours, Betty glanced at her watch. “Almost midnight,” she said. “It’s time.”
    Staggering, Shirley slowly stood up, extended a hand to her mother, and looked into her eyes. Betty had that “business as usual” demeanor that Shirley found impossibly hard to accept under the circumstances. It seemed ludicrous to be disposing of a body with the woman who always reminded her to wash her hands before dinner.
    They trudged back inside the trailer and swayed down the hall. Once in the bedroom, Betty opened the closet door and tugged on the sleeping bag. Wayne’s body felt as heavy as concrete, so they began dragging him. Shirley grabbed what felt like feet while Betty labored with the upper torso. Shirley saw an outline of a head through the heavy canvas as her mother took hold of it. Both women bent over at the waist and panted hard while they slowly slid the body across the carpeted floor. Then they dragged it down the hall and out through the trailer’s rear exit.
    When they first went outside with the sleeping bag, the moonlight shined impossibly bright. Shirley glanced at the road, worried that someone would come driving down their street, or have Ray Price come by, the security officer who made routine drive-throughs of the area. All noises seemed magnified. Cicadas buzzed loudly and waves from Cedar Creek Lake slapped against brick and stone retaining walls as the women bounced Wayne Barker down the three back steps. Then they jostled him over ground that held thin, sparse grass because of the ever-present shade. While he lay by the side of the grave, the women cleared out the loosely crumbled soil with shovels Betty had hidden under the trailer. They rolled him into the four-foot-deep opening and tried to flatten him as best they could. Then unceremoniously, they picked up their shovels and blanketed him with dirt, one spadeful at a time. As Barker became more concealed, moonlight shined on the mound that grew disturbingly high, forcing them to scoop the rest of the soil into flower beds and pots—anywhere to camouflage the existence of a grave.
    “Cinder blocks will hide all that,” Betty said, slurring her words.
    After they finished their chore, they went back into the house and got very drunk.
     
     
    Shirley lay awake all night in the spare bedroom at her mother’s. With Bobby at a friend’s house for the night, she had access to the trailer’s only other bedroom. Every time she thought of her mother sleeping in the next room, the room where she’d killed Wayne Barker the night before, chills bounced up and down her spine.
    The next morning, Shirley sluggishly pulled herself out of bed and went over to the window. Sunshine walked across the lawn, mottled by trees, but enhanced the mound of dirt she had hoped was only a bad dream. She rubbed her pounding head, feeling much older than her twenty-four years. Then she jumped as music blared from her mother’s room.
    In no time her mother stood at Shirley’s bedroom door. Shirley squinted in disbelief. Betty looked pretty. She wore a pair of freshly pressed jeans, a soft turquoise sweater, and perennially perfect makeup. “Time to rise and shine,” Betty said pertly. “I’ll go put on the coffee and make some toast. We’ve got to get to Seven Points and pick up those blocks we talked