Tall, damp grass traced wet lines on his cheeks. His knees and elbows sank into the soft ground. A yowl rolled through the darkness and over the cane fields. “Panther,” Cotton whispered. The white church with the stumped steeple rose into view, now pearly with moon-silver. A breeze dragged quiet fingers across the back of Charlie’s neck and his skin sprang into bumps. Shaggy cane heads rustled, passing the moon’s light across acres of bladed sea, brushing the light up and away, defending the low shadows. The yowl came again. Longer. Closer. Cotton and Charlie peered through the graveyard’s iron bars at the small grove of stones that marked the planted dead. Every stone was painted with moonlight. Every stone left a long stripe of night shadow behind it. Charlie could hear the crunch and scrape of a blade biting through earth and hitting something hard, but he couldn’t see around the nearest headstone. He leaned closer to Cotton, shoulder to shoulder. A man was up to his ribs in Coach Wisdom’s grave, and he was digging.
