I tugged the body the last few feet to the open hole I had made in the backyard. Sweat trickled down into my eyes and I paused long enough to swipe at it with the back of my hand. God, he had let himself get so fat.

I had to sit down in the dirt and brace my feet against his side to shove him those last few inches into the hole. I grunted with strain and he rolled in to land with a meaty thud. I crawled over and looked down at him. I should feel something. After all, he was my father. Nope, nothing. I grabbed the shovel laying beside the hole and began the job of filling it in. I couldn't help a small smile of satisfaction when the first bit of dirt landed on his face. He had brought all this on himself.

When I was done and I had patted the dirt down so it wasn't so obvious that I had buried something, I stood silently for a moment. I had prepared a prayer of sorts but it was almost disappointing that he couldn't hear it.

God is dead, no matter what you said.

Now your dead too and ain't it a shame.

You got no one but yourself to blame.

I hope you burn in hell for all you done,

And always remember that it was me who won.

I giggled helplessly at the end. I sounded like a hillbilly and I had spent years correcting myself to weed out the accent of my childhood. Now here I was back and sounding like I never left. I laughed harder until I stumbled over to the bushes lining the back fence and puked up the dinner I had so carefully prepared.

I walked slowly back to the house, leaning the shovel against the side of the shed on the way. I locked the front door behind me and threw myself into his favorite chair. I leaned back and locked my hands behind my head. We had never been allowed to sit in his chair. If he caught us and we weren't quick we would feel the back of his hand on whatever body part he could reach.

I was the only one left now and I guess that meant the chair was mine. I would burn it in the front yard tomorrow.

Once upon a time I had a big sister and a little brother. It sucked being the middle child. I wasn't the special first born and I wasn't the baby. I tended to think of myself as the spare. You know, a stand-in just in case something happened to the other ones. My brother Amos died when he was six. Momma left him playing in the bathtub to go fetch Daddy his dinner and when she came back he was floating face down in the water. No one knows for sure what happened. Momma was never the same. Her eyes died that day. I tried to tell Anna that Momma was dead too but she pinched me hard enough to bruise and hissed at me to shut up.

I backed off, rubbing my bruised arm and muttering all the curse words I knew. For a nine year old that was quite a few. The day they put Amos in the ground was rainy and cold. Daddy shook everyone by the hand and smiled a lot. He was showing a lot of teeth. Momma stared at the people with her dead eyes. When we got back in the car to drive home from the cemetery, Daddy was still smiling that big toothy grin.

Learn more about this author, Marsha Sigman.
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