I walked there at first light with a thermos and a shovel. I don’t know what I expected. Dew soaked my boots to the ankles. The sun came up red over the ridge, and a meadowlark started somewhere ahead of me, a bright, liquid, impossible song.
In the corner, at the foot of a stump, a square of sod had been cut and replaced. The edges were rough. Somebody had done it quickly. I knelt, wedged the shovel under the lip, and lifted.
Underneath, wrapped in a feed sack, was a gray metal cash box.
I sat back on my heels.
I knew the box. It was the one Tom’s father had used for the cattle money in the sixties, a dented thing with a broken latch that Tom had kept in the shop. I’d thought it lost. I lifted it out, brushed the dirt from the lid, and thumbed the latch.
