Solomon Creed: The only thriller you need to read this year

Holly Coronado stared down at her husband’s coffin, a couple of handfuls of dry sand and stones scattered across the pine lid.

– There’s a fire blowing this way, Mrs Coronado, and I been called away to help.

When the stones had first fallen on to the boards the sound of the larger pebbles had seemed hollow to her. They had made her think, for a flickering moment, that maybe the coffin was actually empty and all this some kind of elaborate historical re-enactment they had forgotten to tell her about.

– I’m supposed to stick around until after everyone’s gone.

The coffin had not been her idea. Neither had the venue.

– I’m supposed to fill in the grave, Mrs Coronado. Only they need me back in town … because of the fire.

She had only gone along with everything because she was numb from grief, or shock, or both, and knew that Jim would have loved the idea of being buried up here next to all the grim-faced pioneers and salty outlaws no one outside Redemption had ever heard of.

– I’m going to have to come back and finish up later, OK?

Jim had loved this town, all its history and legends. All the earnest foundations upon which it had been built.

– Maybe you should come back with me, Mrs Coronado. I can drop you back home, if you like.

He had told her about the strange little town in the desert the very first time she’d met him at that freshman mixer at the University of Chicago Law School. She remembered the light that had come into his eyes when he talked about where he was from. She was from a nondescript suburb of St Louis so a town in the desert in the shadow of red mountains seemed romantic and exciting to her – and so had he.

– Mrs Coronado? You OK, Mrs Coronado?

She turned and studied the earnest, sinewy young man in dusty green overalls. He held a battered starter cap in his hands and was wringing the life out of it in a mixture of awkwardness and respect, his short, honey-coloured hair flopping forward over skin the same colour.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Billy. Billy Walker.’

‘Do you have a shovel, Billy?’

A line creased his forehead below the mark his cap had made. ‘Excuse me?’

‘A shovel, do you have one?’

He shook his head as it dawned on him where this was headed. ‘You don’t need to … I mean, I’ll come straight back and finish up here after.’

‘When? When will you come back?’

He looked away down the valley to where a moving wall of smoke was creeping across a large chunk of the desert. ‘Soon as the fire’s under control, I guess.’

‘What if you’re dead?’ The crease deepened in his forehead. ‘What if the whole town burns up and you along with it – who will come back and bury my husband then? You suppose I should just leave him here for the animals?’

‘No, ma’am. Guess not.’

‘People make all sorts of plans, Billy. All sorts of promises that don’t get kept. I planned on being married to the man in that box until we were old and grey. But I also promised I would get up out of bed this morning and comb my hair and fix my face and come up here to give my husband a decent burial. So that’s what I’m fixing to do. And a shovel would sure help me keep that particular promise.’

Billy stared down at the twisted cap in his hands, opened his mouth to say something then closed it again, turned around and loped away down the hill to where his truck was parked in the shade of the large cottonwood in the centre of the graveyard. Tools bristled from a barrel in the back and a solid, ugly bulldog sat behind the wheel, ears pricked forward. It was watching the smoke rising up from the valley. It didn’t even move when Billy jumped on to the flat bed and set the springs rocking, just kept its eyes on the distant fire, its tongue lolling wetly from its mouth.

The smoke filled almost a third of the sky now and continued to spread like a black veil being slowly drawn across the day. Vehicles and people were starting to congregate by the billboard at the edge of town, black dots against the orange roadside dust. A few weeks ago Jim would have been right at the centre of it, organizing the effort, leading the charge to save the town, risking his life, if that’s what it took. And in the end, that’s exactly what it had taken.

Holly heard boots hurry up the hill then stop a few feet short of where she was standing. ‘I could drop you back home,’ he said, talking to his feet rather than to her. ‘I’ll come back before sundown to finish up here, I promise.’

‘Give me the shovel, Billy.’

He held the shovel up and examined the blade. It looked new, the polished-steel surface catching the sun as he turned it.

‘If you don’t give me the damn thing, I’ll bury my husband with my bare hands.’

He shook his head like he was disappointed or maybe just defeated. ‘Don’t feel right,’ he said. Then he flipped the shovel over and jabbed it into the dirt like a spear. ‘Just leave it round here someplace,’ he said, turning away and hurrying down the hill. ‘I’ll fetch it later.’

Holly waited until the noise of his engine faded, allowing the softer sounds of nature and the empty cemetery to creep back in. She stood for a long while, listening to the cord slapping against the flagpole by the entrance, the Arizona state flag fluttering at half-mast, the wind humming in the power lines that looped away down the hill. She wondered how many widows had stood here like her and listened to these same lonely sounds.

‘Well, here we are, Jimbo,’ she whispered to the wind. ‘Alone at last.’

The last time they’d been up here together was for a campaign photo-op about two or three months previously. They had not been alone back then; there had been a handful of other people – press, photographers. She had stood here by his side, framed by the grave markers with the town spread out below them while he outlined his plans for its future, not realizing he wouldn’t be around to see it.

She walked over to a mound of dirt set to one side of the grave. She grabbed the edge of the stone-coloured sheet of canvas covering it and started dragging it off, stumbling as her heels sank into the ground and her tailored dress restricted the movement of her legs. She had bought it for his investiture, a little black number designed to be classy but not too showy to draw attention away from her handsome husband, the real star of the show. It was the only black dress she owned.

She stumbled again and nearly fell, the tight dress making it hard to keep balance.

‘SHIT!’ she shouted into the silence. ‘SHIT FUCKING SHIT.’

She kicked her shoes off, sending her heels sailing away through the air. One skittered to rest against the sword cluster of an agave plant, the other bounced off a painted board that marked the final resting place of one J.J. James, died of sweats, 1882.

She grabbed the hem of her dress either side of the seam and wrenched it apart with a loud rip. She was never going to wear it again; no amount of dressing it up with a new scarf or belt was ever going to accessorize away this memory. She gave it another yank and it tore all the way up to her thigh. She planted her bare feet wide apart and felt the heat of the earth beneath them. It felt good to be free of the constricting dress and the heels. She felt more like herself. She grabbed the shovel and stabbed the blade into the pile of dirt, the muscles in her arms and shoulders straining against the weight of it as she heaved back and tipped it in the hole.

Dry earth whumped down on the wooden lid of her husband’s coffin.

Wood. Fifth anniversary is wood. Jim had told her that.

They had spent their first anniversary here in this town, a break from study so he could show her the place where he hoped to be sheriff one day. He had introduced her to everyone, taken her dancing at the band hall where everyone knew him, taken her riding in the desert, where they’d made love on a blanket by a fire beneath the stars like there was nothing else but him and her and they were the only two people on earth. She had bought him a tin star from one of the souvenir shops and given it to him as a present, a toy sheriff’s badge until he got a real one.

First anniversary is paper – he had told her with a smile – tin is what you give on the tenth.

She had always loved it that he knew stuff like that, silly romantic stuff that was all the more sweet and surprising coming from the mouth of such a big guy’s guy like he was – like he had been.

He never got to pin the real badge on, and the gift of wood she ended up getting him for their fifth anniversary was a pine box lying at the bottom of a six-foot hole.

She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and it came away wet.

Goddammit. She had promised herself she was not going to cry. At least there was no one around to see it. She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. She didn’t want to give them a damned thing, not after they had taken so much already.

She remembered the last time she had seen Jim alive, sitting behind his desk in his office at home, looking as if he had been crying.

I need to fix this – was all he would tell her. The town needs fixing.

Then he had stuffed some papers in his case and driven off into the evening. But it had been Mayor Cassidy who had driven back, knocking on her door at three in the morning to deliver the news personally, his words full of meaning but empty at the same time.