Nobody Made Us Die

Ellis Rusk inverts his chipped teacup against the table’s worn floral oilcloth, cutting off the steam before Verna Rusk can lift the iron kettle. Across the scrubbed linoleum, Verna ladles yellow porridge into a third stoneware bowl and sets an upright fork beside the empty chair pulled an inch from the table frame. The range clock clicks with a dry plastic snap. Outside, raw spring fog presses flat against the glass, blurring the limestone heaps down by the haulage road. Ellis reaches across the table, his fingers closing around the cold tines of the unused fork, and jerks it back across the oilcloth until the ceramic edge clatters against his own plate.

"Leave Tamsin’s place alone, Ellis," Verna says without turning from the stove, her reading glasses tucked into the canvas bib of her apron as she strikes a sulfur match.

Ellis slaps a folded yellow census form down between them, flattening the paper with the heel of his palm until the single typed line bearing his name and no other dependents faces the stove. "The district surveyor didn't write her down in ninety-four, and the quarry office didn't deduct for two," he says, leaving his hand pressed hard over the crease. Verna draws the iron kettle back, its boiling spout spitting gray water across the hot lid, and slides a freshly copied stack of funeral programs over the edge of the surveyor's slip without glancing at the ink. Ellis folds the census slip back into his breast pocket, yanks his coat from the hook by the back latch, and steps out into the limestone slurry without untying his double-knotted laces.

Ellis Rusk steers Mrs. Corley by the elbow past the canvas screens, keeping her clear of the industrial cooling tubes that drone along the varnished basketball court. Under the flat humming strip lights, Della Pike sits behind a metal folding table with the identification register open between two wire trays. When Mrs. Corley signs the ledger with a shaking hand and shuffles toward the cafeteria doors, Ellis unclips his black ballpoint pen and reaches across the desk, aiming the metal tip at the next open ruling.

Della drops her open palm across the page, pinning the ledger flat against the plywood veneer. Beneath her fingers, a single ruled space sits entirely white, without a surname or a burial tag. "There’s no girl in the gym, Ellis," Della says, her voice flat against the thrum of the floor fans. Ellis does not lift the pen; he jams the brass tip against the knuckle of her thumb, trying to pry her hand aside to write Tamsin's name across the paper. Della does not flinch from the pressure. She bears down with both wrists, the wood table groaning under her weight, until the steel nib snaps through the paper grain and leaves a dark, ragged gouge beside her thumb.

Ellis pulls the broken pen back into his pocket, his knuckles white against his thigh as Della slides a heavy brass ruler over the tear to pin the blank row shut. Across the partitioned gym, the cafeteria hatch clatters open, where Verna Rusk begins ladling broth into plastic bowls for the next waiting family. Della meets Ellis's eyes without lifting her hands from the desk, her fingers spread wide enough to blot out the paper and the silence beneath it.

Ellis Rusk shoves the equipment room door shut behind him, the brass latch catching with an oily click as he lunges toward the register open beneath the amber slit of the high window. Della Pike slams the heavy covers shut right against his breastbone, the brass-bound corners digging through his faded work shirt before he catches both of her wrists in his hands. Rain hammers the corrugated iron above like gravel thrown against a tin tub. Della wrenches her arms downward to twist free, knocking a bin of leather medicine balls off the bottom shelf, but Ellis does not yield; he backs her into the rack until iron uprights dig into her shoulder blades and her breath breaks hot against his collar. "Look at me, Ellis," she whispers, her fingers locking into the stiff cotton of his sleeves and pulling him down with her as her knees buckle toward the canvas cot.

Her mouth hits his jaw, wet with salt and rain, before her hands yank his buttons through their frayed threads and shove the cloth off his shoulders. Ellis drops his weight over her on the groaning springs, his fingers digging into the coarse weave of her cardigan as she parts her thighs to bracket his hips, scraping the rough denim of his trousers against her bare knees. Della pulls his head down into the crook of her neck, her teeth catching the skin over his collarbone hard enough to bruise as she matches each hard, breathless push of his weight against her. He thrusts into the tight, burning heat of her vagina, his cock buried deep within her slick passage as she pulls his hips flush against hers with her calves locked at the small of his back. Della’s orgasm wrenches through the walls of her cunt in three hard, clenching spasms that clamp tightly around the shaft of his penis, her heels drumming into the canvas frame. The sudden constriction triggers his own finish; Ellis spills his semen in sharp, heavy surges against the slick depths of her cervix, burying his forehead into the damp wool over her chest until his tremors taper into the creak of iron links.

Ellis lies spent against Della’s breast, the smell of damp canvas and cooling skin settling between them as the storm overhead drowns out the hum of the cooling units in the gym beyond. Della rests one flat hand against the nape of his neck, her thumb brushing his damp hairline, while her other arm stays wedged behind them against the desk leg, keeping the dark volume of the register pinned firmly beneath the wood.

Ellis Rusk guides Cletus Venn down the narrow wooden steps into the cobbler’s shop, pushing open the sagging latch while morning mist clings to their coats. Under the bare filament bulb, Ellis stops before the pine shelves, where dozens of heavy quarry boots sit neatly paired with clean iron tacks driven into their new half-soles. Ellis reaches out and snaps a wire-bound paper slip from an oiled work boot, turning the card to the amber light. "Calvin Miller paid this in full three days before the gathering," Ellis says, tapping the pencil receipt against the leather counter.

Cletus snatches the card from Ellis’s fingers, his broad thumbnail flattening the creased paper against his faded wool sleeve. "Men square their tabs when the work slows down, Ellis," Cletus says, backing against the bench until an iron last clatters against a tin of neatsfoot oil. Ellis does not step back; he pulls two more tagged boots down, letting the stiff hide slam onto the notched table between them, both slips stamped with paid notations dating back to the previous Tuesday.

Cletus shoves his heavy leather apron across the wood, covering the stamped tags with the stiff hide. Ellis keeps both hands planted on the edge of the bench, watching the old man’s chest rise and fall in the pale glare of the bulb.

Ellis Rusk lunges forward across the leather shavings, snatching the black cloth-bound appointment diary directly from Cletus Venn’s unbuttoned jacket pocket before the older man can turn aside. The tungsten bulb swings above them, slicing pale arcs of light across iron lasts and split soles as Cletus lunges back, his heavy right hand slamming over the open pages on the pine workbench. Beneath his broad, flattened thumbnail lies the white ragged stub where an entire leaf has been ripped out against the stitched spine.

"Give me the pulpit on Friday, Ellis, or tell them yourself what they agreed to," Cletus says, leaning his full weight against the bench while neatsfoot oil seeps into his cuff. Ellis digs his fingers into the stiff leather binding, trying to wrench the book free, but Cletus bears down until the wood groans and the remaining paper wrinkles beneath his palm. The date stamp above the torn fibers clearly marks the previous Tuesday, entirely clean of ink except for the frayed margin where the town's final hours were stripped away.

Ellis lets go of the cover with a sharp snap of paper, leaving Cletus clutching the mutilated diary against his chest as the wire-tagged work boots sit silent along the wall. Ellis turns the brass handle of the shop door, stepping out toward the road where limestone slurry runs cold along the gutters.

Ellis Rusk shoves open the slack wire perimeter gate, his work boots sinking into gray limestone slurry as he strides toward the leaning timber shed. Hollis Creed steps directly across the waterlogged path, intercepting him with an iron gate key and a crumpled slip of paper thrust hard against Ellis’s chest. A gust of cold wind rattles the fence wire, whipping fine drizzle against the canvas collar of Hollis’s work coat. Under Ellis’s thumb, the damp paper reveals a printed receipt for forty pounds of seed potatoes, clearly stamped by the county agricultural merchant three days after the Tuesday gathering.

"You take the key, Ellis, and you put your name on the trench roster before the chapel bell rings on Friday," Hollis says, his age-spotted fingers clamping down on Ellis’s forearm like iron calipers. He yanks Ellis toward the edge of an open ditch, pointing down where pale, fragile shoots push out through the coarse burlap of a half-sunken sack. Ellis twists his wrist to pull back, his heel skidding in the slick clay, but Hollis does not release his grip. "Don't let them tell you we just laid down and quit," Hollis rasps, his other hand reaching down and tearing an iron spade from the earth to slam the shaft into Ellis’s ribs.

Ellis catches the rusted ash handle against his chest, the metal cold and caked with yellow grit through his work shirt. Hollis lets go of his arm, leaving wet thumb-marks on the dark cotton as he steps back toward the shelter of the shed. The iron key bites into Ellis's palm, heavy and wet, while the postdated receipt wrinkles in his fist beside the spade’s upright blade.

Ellis Rusk slams his palm down over the stack of photocopied eulogy drafts on the oilcloth table, dragging them toward his chest before Verna Rusk can slide them into her wicker darning basket. The paper crackles under his fingers, still smelling of the school copier’s warm chemical toner beneath the dull hum of the range clock. "Show me the pages they actually signed, Mother," Ellis says, his knuckle pinning Cletus Venn's typed name against the worn webbing of the cloth.

Verna does not reach for the paper; she lifts the heavy cast-iron kettle from the burner and fills the third ceramic teacup resting before the empty chair. Steam curls upward between them, clouding her wire-rimmed reading glasses as she sets the iron base down with a sharp iron ring against the stovetop. "You sat right there beside Miller when the tea was poured on Tuesday, Ellis," Verna says, her gaze fixed on the unused cup as she smooths her canvas apron flat. "You held your tongue and nodded like the rest of us when they agreed there was nothing left to wait for."

Ellis lets go of the photocopies, his fingers trembling as the stiff paper curls back toward the sugar bowl. He stares at the three saucers, his boots rooted to the linoleum while the mechanical tick of the electric clock measures the silence between them. Without answering her, Ellis spins on his heel and lunges toward the hall stairs, his heavy soles taking the steps two at a time to reach the dark landing above.

Ellis Rusk hauls the black tin deed box out from beneath the floorboards of the bedroom wardrobe, slamming it onto the quilted bed so hard the brass clasp shears clean off. Folders of brittle paper spill across the faded patchwork—quarry tax filings from 1991, baptism slips, and municipal household declarations stamped with county purple ink. On the landing outside the open door, Verna Rusk stands with her apron cinched tight around her waist, her heavy gray-green eyes tracking his hands as he flings open the ledger-sized household forms.

"There is not a single line with her name on it," Ellis says, his voice ragged as he shoves a folded tax assessment across the bedsheet toward her feet. The paper bears his father’s dark pencil and only two names beneath the head of house: Verna Rusk and Ellis Rusk, single child, born 1980.

Verna steps forward into the room, planting the broad sole of her shoe directly over the scattered sheets on the floorboards. "You can burn every scrap of paper the county ever printed, Ellis," she says, her mouth setting into a hard, rigid line, "and it won't wash away who sat at our table." Ellis snatches his slate-blue jacket from the post, shoves past her shoulder into the narrow stairway, and lets the front screen door bang shut against the morning fog.

Della Pike slams the office door shut and yanks Ellis Rusk backward by the collar of his damp work shirt, sending a sheaf of blank enrollment forms spilling across the linoleum. When he twists to reach back into the metal rack for another box, she shoves both palms hard into his breastbone, driving him off balance until the back of his knees strike the low frame of the canvas cot. He hits the coarse fabric on his elbows, chest heaving under his unbuttoned slate-blue wool, but before he can push himself upright, Della swings one leg over his hips and drops her full weight down across his thighs. Her fingers dig straight into his hair, jerking his chin up to bring his mouth inches from hers. "Stop hunting ghosts in my cupboards, Ellis," she whispers, her breath hot and rough against his lips. "Touch something that has blood in it."

She does not wait for him to answer. Her knuckles grip the waistband of his work trousers, tearing them down past his hips along with his shorts, while her other hand yanks the wool skirt up around her thighs to expose the slick, scalding heat of her slit. Ellis reaches up blindly, his palms sliding over the curve of her ribs, feeling the rigid shudder of her ribcage against the wet salt of her skin. Della raises her hips just enough to guide his hardened cock directly against her open vulva, sinking down on him in one hard, unrelenting drop that takes his full length into her tight, wet sheath. Ellis’s breath catches in his throat as the deep friction stretches her around him; the canvas frame groans beneath their weight while her fingers claw into his shoulders, nailing his back flat against the mattress.

She sets a relentless, bruising rhythm, rising and slamming down against his groin while her teeth sink into the tendon beside his neck to stifle her cries. Her inner walls grip his shaft with frantic, suffocating pulses, drawing him deeper until the heat inside her vagina coils tight and breaks, her pelvis shuddering in violent contractions that grind hard against his pelvis. Ellis arches upward into her clenching cunt, his cock swelling and erupting deep inside her womb in hot, uncontrollable spurts that spill over their tangled thighs. Della collapses forward against his chest, her forehead pressed into the hollow of his collarbone, while the steady drum of spring rain on the corrugated roof drowns out the ragged gasp of their lungs.

Ellis Rusk flattens the jagged paper stub from Cletus Venn’s pocket diary across the open mortuary ledger, aligning its torn edge against the binding beneath the yellow spill of the desk lamp. Della Pike lunges forward and slams both forearms across his wrists, pinning his knuckles hard into the oak desktop. "Stop lining up dead paper, Ellis," she says, her breath rough against his temple as rain rattles through the corrugated steel overhead.

Ellis wrenches his right arm upward, dragging the torn paper toward the ruled graphite columns, but Della catches him by the throat with her open palm and drives his back against the upright iron shelves. Wire bins of rubber balls clatter against the wall as she leans her full weight against his chest, her thumb pressing hard into the dark hollow above his collarbone. "Look at the skin you're standing against," Della says, her mouth inches from his chin, her knees forcing his thighs apart against the metal uprights.

Ellis catches her wrists, his fingers digging into the wool of her slate-blue cardigan until she twists hard, yanking him downward across the rough canvas cot. The inkstand topples from the desk ledge behind them, striking the linoleum with a heavy wooden thud as Della pins his shoulders to the mattress with both knees. She grips the front of his slate-blue shirt in both fists, trapping his hands against the coarse canvas as the cold air from the gym floor sweeps beneath the door.

Cletus Venn steps out from behind the heavy canvas mortuary screen and catches Ellis Rusk by the elbow, wrenching him back against the wooden risers of the folded bleachers. The mechanical hum of the refrigeration units drowns out the rain on the high gym windows as Cletus thrusts an iron cobbler’s hammer and a greasy bundle of rag into Ellis’s ribs. "Give me the paper back, Ellis," Cletus says, his weathered fingers digging hard through the wool of Ellis's sleeve. "Take the hammer. Tell me what she looked like at that table and I will swear on the chapel pulpit tomorrow morning that Tamsin drank from the third cup."

Ellis yanks his forearm backward against Cletus's chest, twisting until the older man’s grip tears loose from the cuff. A fistful of pointed steel lasting tacks spills from Cletus’s open coat pocket, clattering in a sharp, metallic spray across the polished maple floor. "You don't know her face any more than Della's book does," Ellis says, shoving his right hand deep into his coat pocket where the jagged diary stub remains crumpled against his knuckles.

Cletus drops to his knees on the varnished boards, his blunt fingernails scraping through the chalk dust to gather the scattered tacks before the mourners outside can hear them fall. Ellis steps over the preacher’s outstretched arm, his heavy work boots grinding one of the iron nails flat into the yellow paint of the basketball key.

Verna Rusk drops a heavy bundle of photocopied funeral booklets onto the folding table, the paper thudding against the varnished pine under the hum of the overhead fluorescents. Ellis Rusk steps past the canvas mortuary screen and smooths Cletus Venn’s jagged diary scrap flat against the tabletop, pinning its curled edge beneath his thumb. Della Pike emerges from the equipment office doorway, stopping short as the draft from the double doors catches the loose sheets. "Take the clean copies, Ellis," Verna says, her voice hard as she pushes the stack toward his ribs. "The town needs to hear the preacher's name read aloud tomorrow, not your questions."

Ellis does not touch the fresh ink; he slides the torn paper beneath the glare of the strip light, tracing the ruled pencil lines with his thumbnail. Down the left margin runs a column of initials beside household names—each marked with the precise, ledger-squared ticks he used every morning on the quarry weighbridge to clear outbound trucks. At the bottom of the list, right beside the date of the last kitchen meeting, sits his own penciled cipher: *E.R.*, stroked twice to cross the stem. Della steps forward, her hand dropping flat over the oak rail of the bleachers as she looks down at the graphite letters.

Ellis pulls his hand back from the table as though the fiber burned his skin, leaving the scrap exposed between the twin stacks of printed programs. Verna reaches out to cover the pencil marks with her broad palm, but Ellis snatches the jagged paper away and shoves it deep into his breast pocket. He turns his back on the podium and the quiet screens, his work boots squeaking against the maple boards as he walks toward the rain at the side exit.

Verna Rusk thrusts the sharp-creased pages of the photocopied eulogy into Ellis Rusk’s chest at the bottom of the gym platform, her fingernails digging through his woolen sleeve to force his fingers shut around the paper. The packed rows of metal folding chairs squeak against the maple floor as dozens of mourners turn their heads beneath the buzzing fluorescent tubes. "Read the preacher's name from the top line," Verna whispers, blocking the steps with her broad canvas apron. "Give them an end to it, Ellis."

Ellis crushes the clean white sheets into a dense ball against the iron handrail, his knuckles white against the metal. He shoves past her shoulder, taking the two wooden steps in a single stride, and pulls Cletus Venn’s jagged diary scrap from his slate-blue breast pocket with his free hand. Across the aisle, Hollis Creed watches from the end seat of the front row, both dirt-stained hands resting flat upon his knees.

Ellis smooths the torn fragment against the scratched wood of the lectern, right beside the gooseneck microphone that hums with live static. He lets the crumpled eulogy drop to the floorboards at his feet, leaving only his own penciled initials exposed beneath the stark overhead lights.

Ellis Rusk leans his mouth against the humming gooseneck microphone and reads the initials off Cletus Venn’s jagged diary scrap into the crowded gym. "We sat in the kitchens on Tuesday," Ellis says, his voice booming flat through the PA speakers over the rows of folding chairs. "I ruled the columns. Hollis gave up his spade, and nobody asked for a preacher." Verna Rusk charges up the platform steps, her canvas apron snapping against the pine risers as she clutches Ellis by the collar of his slate-blue work shirt with both hands, wrenching him backward off balance.

Ellis wrenches his shoulder down to break her grip, his collar button snapping and bouncing across the maple boards. Verna claws at his forearm, her face dark with blood. "Be quiet, Ellis," she hisses, her nails raking the skin above his wrist as she reaches to smother the live microphone with her palm. Ellis drives his elbow back, twisting his body into the lectern to shove her off. The heavy wooden stand tilts, catching the corner of the nearest canvas partition and ripping the fabric down along its brass eyelets with a sharp, dry crack.

The torn screen sags to the floor, exposing the bare gym bleachers and the cold zinc floor where the caskets had sat beneath the cooling fans. In the front row, Hollis Creed stands up, his heavy hands gripped over the back of his chair, while the mourners behind him press back into the aisles in dead silence. Ellis lets go of the crooked microphone, drops Cletus's scrap onto the ripped canvas at Verna's feet, and steps down off the platform into the center aisle.

Ellis Rusk shoves the rusted latch of the wire allotment gate aside, stepping past the winter-rotted cabbage stalks as cold drizzle washes the chalky road dust from his boot toes. Hollis Creed emerges from beneath the sagging lean-to shed, hauling an open burlap sack of sprouting seed potatoes into the open lane. Without speaking, Hollis grips a rusted iron spade by its pitted shank and rams the ash handle hard against Ellis’s chest. "Take the handle, Ellis," Hollis says, his sleeve dragging wet against the wire fence. "The dirt doesn't care who sat in the kitchen."

Ellis catches the tool in both hands, the splintered wood biting his palm as he turns toward the ditch line where gray water pools in the limestone slurry. He sets the rusted iron blade perpendicular to the trench edge, kicks down on the shoulder of the steel with his right heel, and leans his full body weight forward until the earth cracks open with a wet, sucking tear. Hollis drops down on one patched knee in the muck, reaches into his olive coat pocket, and wedges a sprouting tuber with pale shoots deep into the exposed cleft.

Ellis wrenches the ash shaft back, rolling a heavy wedge of gray marl across the planting line to bury the root. Hollis stands, shakes the cold slime from his knuckles, and drives his own iron shovel blade two inches ahead into the unbroken clay.