The Believer Read Online Free PDF

shade of blue that sometimes they looked almost transparent. Elizabeth's mother had called Hannah her fairy child and said that if the midwife hadn't handed her the babe straight from her womb, she wouldn't have believed she was hers. She looked that much different. A throwback to an ancestor no one recalled now.
    "He's dead," Hannah said. "Like Mother." Her voice was flat, devoid of feeling. "I don't want him to be dead"
    "Nor do I." Elizabeth reached to hug Hannah, but the child backed away.
    "You let him die:" Hannah's voice was practically a scream now.
    "Death needs no permission to enter a house:" Elizabeth grabbed Hannah by the shoulders, but the girl jerked loose and ran out the front door.
    When Elizabeth started after her, Payton put a hand on her arm to stop her. "Let her go. She'll be sorry for her words and come back to you for comfort later. But it could be that now the only way she can bear it is to run from the truth:"
    "If only we could:" Elizabeth blinked back tears as she turned from the door back to the job at hand.
    "Don't we need a box for him?"
    "We have no way to buy one:"
    "Colton might help us"
    "No:" The word came out harsher than she intended. She pulled in a deep breath and held it a minute before she let it out. "I don't want to be beholden to Colton. Not more than we already are"
    "I can make one. I'm good with wood:' Payton's eyes went to the wooden dough board he had whittled for her in the summer.
    "Where will you get the planks?"
    "Off the cowshed out back"
    'All right. First help me lay him out proper. Then I'll start digging a grave out by Mama while you build the box:'

    It wasn't easy digging. The ground was hard and there were plentiful rocks and roots to prise out of the way. Their dog, Aristotle, lay beside the grave with his black head on white paws and watched her with mournful eyes as if he knew why she was digging. Her father had brought the pup in after their mother died. For Hannah, he said, but he had given the dog its name and Elizabeth thought he had loved the animal most of all.
    When Elizabeth straightened up to rest her back, she looked at the dog. "I'm sorry, Aristotle. I am so very sorry. For all of us:"
    Payton finished the box before she got halfway deep enough. She stopped digging and helped Payton lift their father into the box on the porch. Hannah had come back from the woods with her skirt tail caught up full of red and gold leaves and some purple flowers she'd found down by the river. With tears flowing now and dripping off her chin, Hannah laid the leaves in the box on top of their father's body. She gave one of the purple flowers to Elizabeth to place inside the box. Elizabeth kissed the mass of curls on top of the child's head and felt a sorrow for the fatherless child that went far beyond tears.
    Payton brought a piece of cedar wood he'd whittled and polished. It had no particular shape, but he treasured it for the red and light tan whorls in the wood. He placed it beside their father's arm and looked up at Elizabeth. "Should we say words now? Out of the Good Book:"
    "We haven't got the grave ready."
    "We need to say the words now so I can nail the top on" Payton looked grim, like someone told he must swim an icy river and so wanting to plunge into the water at once to get the ordeal over and done.
    "Very well:"
    Elizabeth went inside to get the Bible off her father's desk. She found her scissors and some string before she went back out on the porch. With hands she could not keep from trembling, she tied off three locks of her father's hair and cut them from his head. She gave one to Payton and one to Hannah. The last she placed in the Bible beside the lock of her mother's hair she'd put in there four years earlier. She pulled a few strands of her mother's hair loose and laid them over her father's heart. Then she cut a lock of her own hair and Payton's and Hannah's to place on their father's chest alongside her mother's hair.
    "Oh, my father, we will miss you