Ol' Earn, the undertaker, broke into a sweat crossing the funeral home lawn. The Georgia sun was a blinding glare. I'd have to put the sprinklers out after today's mowing, or Earn would have a desert around his mortuary by tomorrow.

"Yard looks good, Toad. Gonna water it?"

"Got to, boss man, er we've killed it."

"Got a grave to dig in the Old Sideroad Baptist Cemetery. I ain't real sure you can even get a shovel to it, much less a backhoe."

"Damn, Earn, this ain't no time to be a-bustin' hard clay." I touched the soggy bandana knotted around my head.

"I'll lend ye my floodlights and generator. We got until eleven AM day after tomorrow."

"If I'm gonna swing a mattock this week it's gonna be in the middle of the night. Tents and fans won't cut it in this heat."

"I've got the plastic flags marking the corners."

I used the dig 'em truck and hauled the tools out to the high, lonesome Sideroad Cemetery, hooking up a floodlight and box fan to the generator.

The graves were in close rows. The four flags on wire stakes were around the last cramped empty space.

There was a long granite double marker with the deceased one's name and birth date carved already. Hiram Plommely, 1940. His wife was under the other end of the marker. The stone had been waiting for him for seven years.

I felt tired all at once. Katie's beloved grandfather. My Katie. No, that Atlanta lawyer's Katie.

The Katie who made me dig graves in the night with a shovel, craving liquor, and probably didn't even know it.

I shook off them blues and took a sip of Jack D. to steady my digging hand, and went to work as the whippoorwills opened up in the woods.

The last two feet in depth was slatey, hard-assed digging, and I lacked a foot as that first sweet silver blur appeared over the jagged hills to the east.

The long car drove up and parked at the churchhouse and the lights went out. Damned Earn, seeing how I was doing, I figured.

I was beat. I killed the generator and sat down in the grave and nipped the Jack again.

Katie's dress was expensive. She wore a frigging hat. Hell's pecker, she was pretty, even though bearing down on forty.

"Old Katie. Gawd, Sorry 'bout your gramps, gal," I said, and struggled to my feet, wishing there was enough dayspring for an upskirt peek.

"You smell all sweaty," she said.

"No shit. How's the counselor?"

"His number's in the Marietta directory. I haven't seen him in months." She beckoned with both hands.

The birds freaked out in the woods around the graveyard. The gold light of morning glinted on wet streaks down her jaws.

I hugged her hams and she slid down through my arms and we stood nose to nose in her grandpa's grave.

In the most unlikely of places, love was resurrected.