The Past and the Future

His black coat hung on a cross close by, as the spade full’s came up over the brow of the grave hole he was digging and as the perspiration dripped off the tip of his nose, he voiced his displeasure. He stopped for a moment taking a deep breath; he had to ask God’s forgiveness, complaining was not really Christ like. This wasn’t his job, the man who did the grave digging absolutely refused when he knew of the dead man’s identity.

Old Pickle Bill apparently drunk had turned and stepped the wrong way, right in front of a freight wagon’s wheel as the large wagon passed on by, he lay dying, his eyes were clear and even seemed sober. Preacher Sim’s was there at just the right time, he had been talking to Mary Baldwin about the social being held Sunday after church. Preacher Sim’s was the first to reach the dying man. Lifting Pickle Bill a little and brushing horse manure from the man’s face, asked him, “Bill can you hear me?” Bill opened his eyes and said, “Father in heaven forgive me my sins, I haven’t always done right but I just want to be with my wife Jill and the kids, you remember the house fire Lord, when they were taken, if you so will it, tell them I’m coming.” Preacher Sims said, “Bill now that you made your peace with God, you’re going to be with Jill and your kids.” Old Pickle Bill looked up into the preachers eyes saying, “Will I?” “Yes, God’s word guarantee’s it.” Bill then closed his eyes for the last time.

Preacher Sims asked a few who walked by to help him get Pickle to the undertaker, but they just turned their heads and walked away. A buckboard came by; he stepped out in front of the team, the driver said, “What ails you? Stopping me like that.” The preacher requested the back of his wagon for two minutes, turning he lifted Pickles lifeless body, putting it into the wagon, now over to the undertakers please! At the undertakers he carried the old man’s body inside and laid him on the table in the back. The undertaker came over from the bank. His first words were, “What have we here?” The preacher answered, “last week a cowboy laid in the street after the shooting, for a day in the hot sun with flies all around him before I heard about it. The undertaker said, “no money, no funeral, we just take those kind out of town a ways and stack a few rocks over them. Old Pickle gets the same treatment.”

The preacher asked, “Who’s the next of kin?” “Well now I believe he had someone back East, he has twenty five acres out at the edge of town, right next to the open prairie, an old school teacher left it to him when he was a boy, his wife and kids burnt up there in a house fire twenty years ago, he built a small shack out by his barn. It’s been ten years since I’ve seen it.” The preacher offered to pay for a pine box and a clean blanket for Pickle; “I’ll need one of those simple wooden white crosses.” The undertaker melted a little saying “alright I’ll throw in the paint and paint brush to write his name, stick the brush back in the tomato can, it has some turpentine in it, when your finished.”