The Buttons

The Buttons

The heat in the south was impolite and brash breaking down the doors like a drunken and jilted devil. Even as the blazing god rested easy in the west the heat lingered. A velvety sky of milky blood painted over a sleepy hillside turning all the greenery into black silhouettes against the horizon. The aroma of suppertime was wagging its finger home for all except the Monroe boys. Two brothers Bear and Wyatt Monroe paid no mind as they journeyed to a Civil War Cemetery. They passed a series of front porches where salty-backed folks rocked away, listening to Aint’ Misbehavin’ by Fats Waller. In the remote holler no one knew the stock market had crashed. Times were always hard.

The ole folks wagged their tongues in curses at the boys who were known for stealing whatever they could carry. The hens crowded the steps with one hand on their wide hip with the other cradling a cigarette, ready to peck in everyone’s business but their own. In their minds any unattended yougin’ was their business.

“What you doin’ goin’ down there?!”

“You ain’t got no business bein’ o’er there!”

“Imma tell your momma!”

The boys didn’t care as they walked faster and waved the ole bitties away like flies. They knew their concern was just old wives’ tales. Just like the heat, superstition was common in the south. Spirits were just the corncobs and horseshoes nailed to front doors. Bowls of rice were left out because spirits were meticulous and needed to count anything put in front of them. By morning time, the spirit would be burned up by the sun. So why be bothered? They were getting to that age where it was all silly. Only little kids get scared by the boogabear. With Daddy hopping freight trains, the Monroe boys were the men of the house and couldn’t be spooked by haints.

Bear and Wyatt were the oldest of five other siblings, and the competition for the bravest and strongest never ended. They were both just as rowdy as the other, but Bear was the one always taking it up a notch. One time he stole a whole ham for Momma but it was too heavy for him to carry back. He decided to bury it and come back for it later. When he came back the ham was half-eaten by maggots and spoiled by the heat.

Wyatt was quiet but volatile. He was always the first one in a fight to pick up a stick, bat, switch—didn’t matter. Because of his small size he wasn’t afraid to use anything to his advantage, and that didn’t exclude his teeth.

Both boys took delight in using their sibling’s fear of ghosts against them. They’d rattle the bottles of Momma’s haint tree outside their door just to hear them scream. They were as tough as their bare feet padded with calluses. The only thing that kept lashing at their heels was if Momma found out. If she found out! It was worth the risk in hopes to find a sword or musket buried amongst the remains. Even the tall grass yanked at their shorts as if to heed them away. But warnings were like nails made of cotton on hardheads.

They finally came to the old church that had been long abandoned after the fire. The charred church surprisingly stood chilling their legs and neck, making their skin look like freshly plucked chickens. The boys knew where there was a church there was a cemetery somewhere nearby.

A worn brick fence guarded a series of tombstones rising out of the kudzu and leaves like stone wildflowers. The cemetery where Granny was buried looked like a garden for saints with all the flowers and gifts. Where were all the sentiments? These ancestors were forgotten, which made Bear and Wyatt feel a little easier about digging them up. The names and dates were faded but remained. The only ones unmarked were scattered stones outside the brick wall almost drowned by nature. They were slave graves. At least their dog’s grave had a name on it.

Bear and Wyatt paid no attention as they continued with their shovels until something cracked in the dirt. A yellow and slender bone revealed. They had dug up cat graves before just to see the bones. But now it was different. The devil felt close as it got darker. A sulfuric stench crawled up their noses and yanked on their throats. A disturbed intuition filled Wyatt’s heart. It was like whenever he saw Daddy hit Momma when he was drinking and Momma had to tie him to the bed to make him stop—he was seeing something he wasn’t supposed to be seeing.

“I don’t feel good,” Wyatt ached, holding his belly like it was going to fall out of his shirt. Trying to cover up his existential fear with a sham belly ache, “Maybe we should go home.”

Bear saw right through it. “You scared?”

“No!” Asking if a boy was scared was a quick way to shut him up. Bear looked back at the bones. Sheaths of delicate fabric still clung to the frame. Judging by the mass of the shirt and pants, it was a large man that had been buried there.

“Their bones are white,” Bear said, his tone suggesting he suspected the bones to be made of coal. Wyatt cringed when Bear ruthlessly picked up the bones. He felt the need to show he wasn’t afraid. Something shiny caught his attention. Barely threaded against the yellowing smock was a row of pearly buttons.

“Look!” Wyatt brushed away the dirt to reveal a row of beautiful buttons winking back at them lustfully. They reminded the boys of a lady in town who wore her skirts too short according to Momma. The brother’s exchanged looks of greedy rapture before tackling the dirt a chorus of mine began.

A fighting bell rang in their heads. Bear easily snatched the buttons out of Wyatt’s hands but his little brother wasn’t willing to go down that easy. Picking up the nearest log he prepared to swing as hard as he could at Bear’s head. A truce was made before anyone got a concussion as Bear took a mason jar and placed all the buttons inside. Then the fight turned into who could carry the buttons home.

When they looked back at the wrestled bed rest a sickness stirred. Desecration of the dead was sin no matter what skin color. All bones were white. Still, it didn’t seem right to leave them in the ground. They left the cemetery before it got too dark to see the trail home, hiding the jar by their window before walking inside so Momma wouldn’t see. When they got inside, Momma was standing at the door with her hand on her hip and her brow crossed into suspicious knots. They entered the kitchen and she eyed the dirt up and down, it wasn’t unlike the boys to come home covered in dirt. Momma had already caught wind from the neighborly hens.

“Virginia said ya’ll was messin’ round that cemetery.”

“No ma’am.” The boys uniformly lied.

“Ya’ll better not bring no devil in my house playin’ round up there!”

“Yes ma’am.”

Bear and Wyatt were made to wash in Florida water before given supper. Momma was burning cedar leaves around the house reciting Psalms 91 until bedtime. The boys kept sharing glances of fiendish success, feeling like they got away with murder when Momma never found the buttons.

The distrust between Bear and Wyatt thickened, suspecting the other of taking the buttons and hiding them somewhere the other couldn’t find. They slept with eyes on each other as well as the jar perched by their window. Letting the buttons be baptized by the moonlight while they slept. Both wanting so much to feel how pirates felt and revel in their treasure, but neither could shake the smell of iron on their hands. The dirt under their nails was the blood on their hands. That was hallowed ground dirt they brought into their house. That dirt was supposed to be an unspoiled bed-rest—now rattled and wrathful and cursing them at the edge of their bed.

It was a beckoning silence that brought the boys out of deep sleep. Not a startling bang, just a deadly knowing that forced them to peel their eyes open and be noticed. Bear and Wyatt awoke to see a six-foot figure in the same tattered smock covered in dirt. The spirit whose grave they pick-pocketed had come back, and no amount of cedar leaves could keep him away. At first they tried to ignore him, but the sulfur smell grew stronger until it suffocated them out of their bedsheets. The spirit’s arm outstretched toward the windowsill.

“Those are Josiah’s buttons…,” The spirit spoke in a fast and hushed hissing with a blackness cast over his eyes only revealing his rapidly moving lips. In the shadow the spirit’s eyes were rolling backward in a trance, whimpering, discharging hot and cold anger. Their beds would shake whenever they tried to ignore him. Scratches rained down their backs from under their mattresses. Cursed with hearing the spirits desperate chant:

“Those are Josiah’s buttons… Josiah, Josiah, buttons, mine…,” the spirit would get his message word scrambled, but it was still loud and clear.

Wyatt wanted to call for Momma, but an invisible noose constricted his voice and his neck burned from the rope rash. An undeniable presence, but impossible—Bear and Wyatt petrified and locked, forced to watch the spirit yearn for his buttons.

“Josiah… buttons… mine!” All night, the spirit whispered to them, engraving into them his purpose.

The presence tantalized until the sun came. The brothers looked at each other cross-eyed with a lack of sleep. Neither reached for the jar to give it a shake and hear the marble giggle against the glass. Wyatt was the first to suggest taking the jar back to the cemetery, but Bear was hesitant—chalking up last night as a coincidental nightmare. But with each day they still had the buttons, the less they believed it to be a coincidence, and the more it proved to be a nightmare.

Haints had a way to linger without opening cabinet doors by themselves or violently throwing objects about the room. A haunting is meant to be the torture of the soul. It’s clever. That’s why whenever someone says they have seen a ghost and people look at them like they are crazy. The humiliation following being ostracized is true horror.

Bear and Wyatt were alone in their curse. Every night was the same. Josiah’s spirit would come and choke the boys while they slept, and every morning followed a debate on what to do about it. Momma took them to the doctor when she started to notice the red rash around their necks—thinking the boys had scarlet fever. But there was never a fever. The doctor said they must have been playing too rough with each other.

The torture spread throughout the household. Food started to spoil quicker even if it was bought the day before. Their chickens started laying mushy eggs. Their old goat was once docile and now charging at whoever was just trying to feed eat. One morning Momma found the goat tangled and dead in the fence like it was running from something.

Bear and Wyatt thought everything was going to be better when Daddy came home. However, the next morning he was gone and so was all the money Momma had been saving up. The plague taking over just got worse every day, but the spirit’s visits at night stayed consistent.

Bear and Wyatt were quick to anger—fighting constantly over little things. The boys had always fought, but punches were never raised above the neck. Wyatt would find Bear alone in their room just holding the buttons, jingling them around the jar in a hypnotic state. They hardly spoke. They didn’t play. Momma noticed and tried to get Bear out of the room but he would rage and swear he would burn the house down while everyone slept.

Momma had finally had enough. She called them into the kitchen after the other siblings had left to listen to the radio stories. Momma took an egg for each boy and began to rub it all over their bodies. When she cracked the egg into a cup of water and oils, the yellow yolk was tainted with speckles of blood.

Momma didn’t gasp. She just nodded her head and hummed because her convictions were proven. “I don’t know what you boys did, but ya’ll gonna have to fix it.”

Wyatt thought it would be enough for Bear. Still he would find him in the room, holding the buttons in the light to admire their shine.

“Maybe we should sell ’em so we can get some of the money back for Momma,” Wyatt suggested, really just wanting to get rid of them for good. Bear didn’t answer, cuddling the jar close.

“I’ll kill you if you take ’em.”

Wyatt had heard many death threats from his brother. His threat didn’t sound angry. It was still as stagnant water. Bear said it in the same way he would say he was taking out the trash. It was just a thing he was going to do. Bear was gone and Wyatt knew he had to get rid of them alone.

That night, he slithered the jar out of Bear’s arms while he slept and snuck out of the house. Everything seemed to work in his favor to not get caught as if Josiah was aiding his way. Wyatt cooed the buttons as if speaking to Josiah directly.

“I’m takin’ you home. I’m sorry.” He kept repeating over and over again.

When he got to the edge of the woods towards the trail, Wyatt was struck in the back of the head with a branch. Spinning around to see who it was, but, unfortunately, his vision didn’t stop spinning with him. Swimming in front of him was an illusion of four Bears holding the branch. Bear’s faces reminded Wyatt of a painting at their church that always disturbed him. A terrifying tableau of demons dragging lost souls to hell. Bear’s ghoulish expression looked back at Wyatt the same way.

As soon as Bear became one coherent figure, Wyatt tried to plead with him. “We have to take ’em back-,”

Bear tackled his still disoriented brother to the ground. “GIVE ’EM TO ME!”

This fight was different from all the others. Bear’s voice sounded inhuman, chorused by the many other demons taking hold of him. The way Bear grabbed at Wyatt’s throat and kicked at his ribs wasn’t playful. Wyatt had no other choice but to pick up the nearest rock and swing it at his brother’s head to get him off. The first swing only made him angry, the second one made him silent. Bear lay still on the floor beside him. In fear, Wyatt kicked his feet against the trail, leaving Bear limp and bleeding. The fear that he killed his brother kept him from looking back. He had no choice to turn around. A hot breath grabbed at the nape of his neck. It was Josiah. He felt him pushing him forward. Even the rocks cutting at his feet couldn’t stop him. Josiah was lifting him by his collar and whipping him all the way there.

When Wyatt returned the dirt was waiting, still lose and hot from the sun. He didn’t even bring a shovel as he clawed at the dirt with vigor. By the time he reached the spirits bed, Wyatt’s hands were cracked and bleeding. He tucked the buttons snuggly into the dirt as if cooing a disturbed baby. Wyatt felt steamy tears roll down his face with relief.

After the deed was done, the soil seemed cool and calm Wyatt took a shard of coal to write on the unmarked stone: Josiah. Hopefully, it would be a sign of respect and acknowledgment. He looked around at the wonky laid stones, wondering how many more were there with no name except for Josiah.

Walking back through the trail he still felt heavy until he heard Bear crying in the distance. He was alive. Wyatt found Bear holding his head and crying, but he seemed recovered.

“Where am I?” Bear asked.

“We’re going home, Bear.”

“Are they gone?”

Wyatt was afraid to answer. “Yes.”

Bear nodded to himself, “Good.”

Returning to their beds at peace, Bear seemed like his old self after shedding the burden. For the first time in weeks which felt like years, the brothers looked deeply at each other. The aftermath of the haunting was written in hand-shaped bruises and cuts all over their bodies. They couldn’t help but cry realizing what they had done to the other. Bear and Wyatt vowed to never return to the cemetery, praying for forgiveness until sleep swept them away. Wyatt thought home would feel different, but there was still heaviness.

As the night grew older, the atmosphere curdled. Waiting… again with its slender arm outstretched, the boys woke up to the familiar sulfur in the air. Something brushed at their bare feet awake. At the edge of their bed was a yearning apparition whispering unfinished business. The spirit’s frame was smaller. It was a girl in a messy frock covered in dirt from the grave she left to make her petition to the boys. Her eyes were veiled by blackness as she whispered, Martha.

She wasn’t alone. The whole room filled with a chorus of names dying to be heard. Bear and Wyatt thought they could be rid of the cemetery, but the cemetery was not ready to be rid of them.