The sun was sweltering, baking the hard earth. Using his shovel as a crutch he sat down on the edge of the grave, his boots hanging over in the empty hole. Under the heat of the afternoon the dust of the cemetery had conspired his shirt to ruination, and he cursed himself for sacrificing it to save his skin from sunburn. Now a fair piece of his two dollar stipend for burying Pearcy Parker would be needed for a new garment.

He heard a rider approach from behind, still far enough down the hill to not be a bother as of yet. Though instead of getting himself back to work, he sat for a spell longer, then a spell more. While in his pondering, sweat rolled from his brow and into his eyes. He wiped them with the back of his soiled sleeve that left a filthy trail across his face.

Before he could return to his job he found himself in the shade of the rider’s shadow. He didn’t turn in greeting, but saw the cast of one shadow become two as the rider dismounted, a big man from the sound that he made when he landed on the gravel.

The stranger took a step or two and stood next at the edge of the hole where he grunted and said, "I’m Percy Parker’s kin. Is that him there?" The man pointed to the wood slat coffin sitting at what would be the boot end of the grave.

"That’d be him, there."

The man grunted again then untied his kerchief to wipe the sweat from his eyes. He walked over to the coffin. "It’s a might warm to be grave diggin’. You should have gotten an earlier start," he advised.

"Well sir, seein’ that’s it’s Wednesday, I stayed a sleep for a time longer this morning."

"What has Wednesday have to do with anything?" The man seemed a little put-off in his mis-understanding.

"Well sir, I drinks me some most nights Tuesday."

"Uh-huh," the man grunted. "I’m Patric Parker, Percy’s brother," he explained, walking over to the coffin. "Most folks call me Paddy. What’d be your name?"

"Folks call me Banjo."

"Banjo? I would hazard a guess that’s because you play the instrument?"

"No sir, I don’t."

"No? Then why would they call you Banjo?"

"Well, it’s the kindliest thing they call me that I can repeat to someone I just made aquaintence to," Banjo answered sincerely. Then to his astonishment, Paddy parker sat himself down right atop his own brother’s coffin!

"You’re certainly a peculiar individual, Mister Banjo," Paddy Parker chuckled. Adjusting his hat a bit, he took in the surroundings. The cemetery was a desolate patch of hillside overlooking the town. It was simple and harsh, as was most of Nevada. What few grave markers left standing in survival were of the chiseled stone variety with the remaining plots simply outlined in rocks to note their existence. There was no grass or trees -- or even weeds. Just a lifeless garden occasionally swept out by the bitter breezes of the desert.

"When were the services performed, Mister Banjo?"

"Services?" Banjo seemed confused by the question, and a might disturbed about having a conversation with a man who was sitting on top of his dead brother.

"Funeral. Was it at the church, earlier?"

"Judge Harmon tolt me just this morning to set about a grave. I don’t recall talk of any scripture readin’ or such. Mebbe no-one knew he had kin a’bouts."

"It’s true ," Paddy said sadly, "I arrived this noon on the stage from Carson City to pay my brother a visit. I was quite shocked to learn of his recent demise. It was bad luck, just missing him so."

Paddy Parker paused a moment to consider his grief. He had not seen his brother in several years, though they corresponded twice yearly by post.

But he had missed his brother by about fourteen hours, according to the Sheriff. And though Pearcy Parker’s life had indeed been taken at the hands of another, the sheriff assured Paddy that the killing was justified under self defense and thus, revenge would not be a lawful calling.

"Tell me, Mister Banjo, did you know my brother?"

"We met up once. We weren’t friends."

"I guess he didn’t have any friends, if there wasn’t a funeral."

"Mebbe he was the sort of a sour disposition," Banjo offered.

"That’s bold talk from someone who only met him once."

Paddy Parker regarded Banjo with a wary eye. Just a little sprig of a man this Banjo character was, a ragamuffin who admitted freely his fondness for liquor and opinions of strangers.

"Are you a gravedigger by trade, Mister Banjo?"

"I’ve dug a passel of graves from Kansas to the Sierra’s. But here in Sedelia I’m hired on to keep the main drag clean of horse apples."

"That’s progressive for such a small lick of Nevada. I’m sure the citizens of Sedelia appreciate your endeavors."

Banjo ran a comb through his thoughts but only filtered out more confusion. "I wouldn’t know ‘bout that," he said, "but I am handy with a shovel."

Banjo decided that this Paddy Parker fella liked to ask a lot of questions, which was bad manners when you were standing over an unfinished grave in the hottest part of the day.

Grabbing a hold of his shovel handle with both hands, he pulled himself to standing and addressed Paddy Parker. "I reckon I better be gettin’ back to my work. I still gotta run a wagon to the river an’ collect some rocks for the grave, after the diggin’s done," he explained, wishing that the man would get off of his dead brother’s coffin.

Paddy Parker did just that then. He was amused at seeing that Banjo was barely a head taller than his shovel when both were stood straight. He watched Banjo go at his work for a moment, surprised at how deftly he wielded the shovel against the hard parched earth, his stature not a factor despite the size of the job.

Paddy Parker turned to his brother’s coffin and pulled a knife from his belt. Bending himself to the task, he slipped the blade between the top slats of the coffin and began working loose the nails that secured the lid. Banjo usually lived and let alone, keeping to his shovel work when necessary, and keeping to himself when it wasn’t, but --

"That’s bad luck messin’ with a man after he’s been nailed in," he advised paddy Parker, on seeing the man’s misconduct.

Paddy Parker, ensconced in his blaspheme, boogered the last nail out of the lid and said, "I acknowledge your superstitions, Mister Banjo, sympathize even. But the fact remains that Pearcy was my only kin, and I his. I have to make sure it’s him laying there. I’ve got to see first hand, to set it done in my own mind."

Banjo put Paddy Parker’s words to reason. The two men stood some fifteen feet apart, facing each other under the weight of their separate preoccupations. Sunlight reflected into Banjo’s eyes from Paddy Parker’s blade. Paddy Parker saw Banjo’s knuckles turn white under his grip of the shovel handle.

This man Parker could be a might touched by sun and grief, Banjo imagined.

"My Daddy said on more than one occasion not to argue with a man holdin’ onto a bear skinner," he decided, leaving Paddy Parker to his transgressions and whatever spells bedeviled him.

Paddy chuckled and sheathed his knife in response, almost hoping that Banjo would have stuck to his argument and save him a few moments from his sick procedure. Choosing between an altercation with the town scamp and laying eyes on his dead brother’s corpse, he might’ve just risked the gunfight, though he had taken note upon arriving at the cemetery that Banjo was un-armed.

But Banjo seemed in no hurry to oblige his whimsy and in fact, had returned to his shovel work. Paddy Parker set his intentions back to the coffin and what lay within. It wasn’t a perception of finding devastation that bothered him so. Paddy imagined a gunfight, though he hadn’t secured the details to the tragedy from the Sheriff, but a bullet hole wouldn’t render much horror anyway. His trepidation stood in the emotional fields of loss. His brother being gone meant that he was truly alone in the world, and Paddy Parker fell into all the emptiness of that predicament. He considered himself an able man, not one for wallowing in sensitivities. Being a rancher in the harshness of the Nevada territory was a life of sweat and blood. The land and the life it held left no measure for the tears of a man.

Paddy Parker lowered himself to his knees as if in prayer, and clutched the coffin lid in a shuddering grip. To his ears came the angry scrape of metal against hateful soil, Banjo’s fervor with the shovel keeping time with the treasons in his mind.

Paddy Parker shut his eyes as he lifted the lid and held it open. The smell of death found him with it’s bittersweet repugnance. His will faltered and he lowered the lid an inch or two on instinct, but stopped when he opened his eyes.

Indeed, it was Pearcy Parker within. Paddy could tell by the pocket watch, a boyhood gift their father had bestowed upon his brother. It remained on it’s chain, attached at his belt. But that wasn’t all that he saw.

"Oh my Lord! Oh, merciful God!"

Banjo heard Paddy Parker’s anguish over the noise of his digging. He had to stand straight up now in the hole to see past the top edge of the grave.

What Banjo saw was Paddy Parker sprawled out and spread in the dirt, his wails lifting over the cemetery. A sickness had come over him causing his face to twist and change color. The man’s eyes were leaking, drawing dirt all over his face, making him look like a carnival bogeyman. Heaving his revulsion in great retching spasms, his hands fought blindly for purchase but caught only air.

Banjo climbed from the grave carrying his shovel and went to Paddy Parker’s horse to fetch a canteen that hung from the saddle horn. When Banjo approached the man, he did so with trepidation. Paddy Parker’s conniption was waning and he was sitting up in the dirt, but he was spoiled by his fit. Paddy Parker snatched the canteen from Banjo’s hand when it was offered, then drank greedily. Banjo shouldered his shovel like he’d seen the soldier boys do with their rifles. The gesture startled Paddy.

"I’d be obliged to you, Mister Banjo, if you’d shut that coffin," he said, staring at the dirt. He took another swig from the canteen that resulted into a coughing fit.

Cautiously, Banjo laid his shovel on the ground, away from Paddy Parker’s reach, and addressed the coffin. Apparently the undertaker who serviced the corpse had not anticipated that anyone would unseal the coffin lid for a peek, for Pearcy Parker’s head was not fashioned properly back onto his shoulders.

Banjo regarded Pearcy Parker for a moment, laying in his death, and would never for the rest of his life forget what he was looking at. Sure, the disfigurement of Pearcy’s face was horrible, a thing of nightmares. But it was his head laying sideways, opposite to that of his body, that would spook him for the remainder of however many days that he had left to live.

Seeing that Banjo had finally laid the coffin close and begun to pound the nails back in place with the head of his shovel, Paddy Parker attempted to regain some of his lost composure by gaining his feet.

"What, in all of God’s creation, happened to my brother, Mister Banjo?"

With the last nail securely in place, Banjo stood and turned to Paddy Parker, who either purposely, or out of habit, had his hand resting on his holstered gun butt.

"That’s what the business end of a shovel does to a person," Banjo explained.

"His -- his head? Shorn clean off and all caved in?"

"It took more’n a lick," Banjo offered, suddenly grabbing the load rope secured to the coffin and without ceremony, drug it to the edge of the grave. Before Paddy Parker could voice any objections, Banjo scurried around the grave’s perimeter to the head end then gave the load rope a tug that launched Pearcy Parker’s mortal remains into the void before it settled with a crash at the bottom of the hole.

Banjo tossed the rope into the grave as well, knowing that a dirty rope wouldn’t be a bother to the recently departed. He was glad that the undertaker hadn’t been in his cups when he fashioned Pearcy’s coffin because those made while under his affliction usually didn’t survive the pull into the grave which was the only manner a man could deposit a coffin into the earth when he was at the task alone.

A thought of the coffin breaking open from the fall and Pearcy Parker’s head flying up and out of the grave to roll over at Paddy Parker’s feet, struck a chord in Banjo and he began laughing.

In his own shock and despair, Paddy Parker watched the filthy vagabond, cackling like a crazed chicken, fetch his shovel then begin heaving dirt over his brother’s coffin.

In a hundred different ways Paddy Parker thought of disposing his brother’s killer, justified or not. Paddy was now alone in the world and that brought a certain amount of anger to his mind. But ultimately, it was the law that decided the fate of such things and Paddy Parker didn’t want to spend the rest of his life as an outlaw. Maybe tomorrow he would feel differently.

Paddy Parker approached Banjo and offered the canteen. Banjo’s laughter had faded, but he still carried a smile across his face. He quit the shovelling for the canteen and took a swig in good humor. When he handed it back, Paddy Parker corked it proper and mounted his horse without waiting for a ‘thank you’.

"I had thoughts of taking my brother back to the homeplace for his eternal rest," Paddy Parker said from the saddle, "but I believe that I shall allow you to finish your task, Mister Banjo."

Banjo merely stood at the grave, leaning on his shovel as he looked up at Paddy Parker.

"Maybe I’ll see you around, sometime, Mister Banjo," Paddy Parker said as he gave his horse a nudge.

"Mebbe," Banjo said after him, watching the man ride away. Paddy Parker was certainly a peculiar person, Banjo thought. But most folks seemed to be that way. In his own mind, Banjo considered himself a simple rover, never staying settled in any one place long enough to garner a reputation. He sought the loneliness of life where he could be of no account or consequence. He wasn’t known or remembered after. His aggravation with the world settled the difference between life and death and so far, it had allowed him to wander on.

He watched Paddy Parker ride to the bottom of the hill to where it met the edge of town. Paddy Parker had stopped there and looked back up towards the cemetery. To Banjo, it looked as if the man couldn’t make up his mind about where to go.

Banjo watched Paddy Parker a moment more before putting a grip to his shovel. Maybe it was time to move on.