Warm Fire, Cold Comfort

     Henry cursed the cold December ground, which lay unyielding under his shovel. He’d have to save his tears for later, once he was back inside, lest they freeze on his face.

     His boy deserved a proper grave. James had made it all the way back from The Great War, where so many brave young men died. He’d fought in those dirty trenches and came back worse for it. Burlington celebrated his return as a hero, but Henry saw how the light in his son’s eyes had guttered out.

     After all those months surviving the Germans, it was the Spanish flu that killed James. Within two weeks of coming home, he was sick. Three days later he was dead.

     This would be, if the ground would give, Henry’s second grave of 1918. In September his wife, James’s mother, simply didn’t wake up. When the doctor made it out to the farmhouse, he said it was an aneurism. He could take her body for further inspection if Henry wished. Henry did not.

     He gave Mary the respectful home burial she would have wanted. But even more she would have wanted the same for her son, whom she saw for the last time leaving home in the Army uniform she pressed for him.

     Squatting low, Henry touched the ground just to be sure it wouldn’t warm to his touch. It didn’t.

     He could call on the morgue. They would pick James up and store his body. But what if they put him in a mass grave? So many people were dying of this damned flu that Henry didn’t trust the staff to take care. People got desensitized after experiencing that much death.

     Still, he couldn’t keep the body preserved until spring. James would thaw before the ground, and the thought of the elements or the animals savaging him made Henry weak.

     Burning James’s body wouldn’t be the Christian thing to do. Surely when Pastor Tom found out, Henry would be kicked out of the church. Or maybe he’d recognize that Henry was making a hard decision during trying times, but Henry doubted that. What were the horrors of war and sickness against the judgment of God? Or God’s earthly proxy, anyway.

     Henry’s penance would be days of chopping wood to make up for using so much, or maybe he’d let himself freeze. That was a decision for another day.

     He built the pyre far enough from Mary’s grave to keep it safe but close enough that they could rest together. He stacked the wood, ringed it with rocks, and retrieved a few buckets of water from the well just in case. With great care he laid his boy’s body out on the altar he’d created.

     It took several tries to get the fire to catch, but soon it was high enough that Henry removed his gloves and earmuffs and loosened his scarf. Tears rolled down his cheeks, unfrozen, and he watched until long after the flames died and the world darkened around him.