Plots

Delilah graves loved her grandson as all grandmothers do. But seven hells, his whining tested her love daily.

“Festus, you either get busy living or get busy dying. No time for all this salty spray riff raff. Pull yourself together and tend to the alfalfa.”

“Yes, Nana,” The young boy said.

Useless boy, but it wasn’t his fault fate saw him tended to by a woman not made for family. IN the years past, the burial plots called to Delilah in her idle moments. People speak of legends surrounding buried treasure— but never cast their eyes upon their own cemeteries. Delilah thought that was a damn shame.

If you didn’t mind the rotted soil, you could change your life overnight with one payment delivered in sweat and spade. Delilah’s daughter might have guessed at the nature of her mother’s business— but she was taken with other deviant adventures. As if on cue, a James Dean lookalike appeared in their lives and Delilah’s little girl, Isabel, transformed into a mistress. Of danger, that is.

Delilah couldn’t help but laugh. Karma was a newfangled thing in her part of the world, but she had overheard enough toga clad hippies to understand this was a cosmic adjustment of the scales for her. Besides, the only way to learn from young love is to experience it.

Now for Festus, Delilah had concerns that he would never experience passionate embraces. He was a special boy— one who couldn’t seem to get out of his own way. His legs contained a life of their own and pitched him forward into the world like a drunk giraffe.

Tending the grounds didn’t take enough time out of the day for Delilah to avoid poking through the fresh grave dirt. Old habits die hard, but everyone who died here was her habit.

Even the varnished silver of a worn pocket watch could spark some life into Delilah’s crusted heart. The thrill of discovery hadn’t grown old for five decades and she knew it wouldn’t fade by her sixth.