Ignore the rumors. This is the truth. I was there, a boy of twelve. I stood among them in the black of night as they buried Francisco Collins for the second time, and I witnessed what can never be explained, no matter the words I choose.

Francisco Collins died on the Saturday after the lunar eclipse. I remember him clearly, unbent and tireless, the man who revitalized the Collins Ranch. As he hiked through the wild lands that abutted the property, he crossed a cottonmouth that snapped its fangs into his ankle. He hobbled back to his house but not in time to leach the venom. He expired on the floor of the kitchen as the maids prepared the evening meal. The maids claimed his death cursed; since that day, milk brought into the kitchen would swiftly curdle, no matter how recently the cow had been milked.

Three days after Francisco’s death they buried him at St. Iago’s in the new cemetery he helped establish. Half of Matamoros County came to the funeral. It was the hottest August in twenty years. The ground was parched, and it took the diggers gallons of water and a full day to remove six feet of that stubborn earth. Three dropped from heat stroke. The doctor feared the diggers were digging their own graves as well, but luckily just one was needed.

Francisco’s eldest son and heir, Xavier, presided over the memorial. Back then Xavier Collins seemed ancient to me, a man of fifty or so. Now I know what a child he truly was. Francisco’s daughter Anastasia returned from California with her husband and seven children. Francisco’s other son, Henry, the one who fled east, where no one ever goes, never showed his face. Rumors were he died, or married poorly, or brought some other unspeakable shame upon the Collins name.

Looking back, perhaps the malady that affected Xavier had struck Henry as well.

I was at the memorial, not the one at Columbus Hall for those who wouldn’t stand beneath the angry sun but still found courage to stuff their bellies with roast pig and beer supplied by Xavier. That’s where the rumors started, I believe, from those who complained the pig was not moist enough and the beer too warm for their liking.

No, I attended the banquet at the Collins Ranch. My uncle Peter was the groundskeeper at St. Iago’s. He brought me and my sister Daniela. Yes, she would later marry Xavier’s son. No, that does not color my impression of Xavier or the events of that August. You can disregard my story if you want but that doesn’t change the truth of it.

Xavier Collins must have spent a ransom on the banquet. The dessert table had every kind of chocolate creation ever dreamed of. My best shirt smelled like French chocolate for weeks, no matter how many times my mother washed it. But Francisco’s wife, Miriam, did not partake. She shuttered herself in the library, sitting ramrod in an oak chair with a black veil over her head. Sometimes her daughter and daughter-in-law would perch by her side. Other times she would chase them out and curse all the snakes in the world. Or she would scream that a snake had crossed her threshold and call on her grandsons to search under the carpets. They would find nothing but forgotten dust. Later she tried to buy the wild lands from the state. When they refused, she hired workers to salt the earth so that no gopher or flower and especially no snake could ever find a home on that cursed landscape.

At some point in the afternoon Xavier Collins caught me in the pantry rummaging for something. Secrets—I always wanted to discover secrets, the truth of things, but all I found in the pantry were jars of pickled vegetables. I told him his sister asked me to fetch her a jar of beets. He smiled at me. He had a well-fed face and eyes the color of lake water eating up the sunshine. “Oh, little Gus, what a poor liar you are.” He leaned in close, and I smelled the whiskey on his grinning lips. I wasn’t scared that he caught me in a lie. I was more thrown by his happiness—not faked, children can tell these things—on the day his father was buried. I always knew adults were strange, the Collins family more so than most. But this was unexpected.

“Tell me the truth, little Gus.”

“My mother loves beets. I thought I would bring her some to cheer her up.”

“What a good son you are.” He turned the jar in his hand. “I always hated beets. They were my father’s favorite. Not me. I prefer sweets. He looked at the jar as if it was poisoned. “Here. Give these to your mother. I would give you all of them if I had my way, but my own mother would throw a fit. You know how important it is to keep your mother happy.” He tousled my hair. Usually, I hated when adults did that; it felt like ownership or dominance. But not when Xavier did it. He was old but he seemed to be my own age.

“Do you miss your father?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Then why don’t you look sad?”

He knelt down before me. “Can I tell you a secret? One you swear you’ll never tell a soul?”

“My mother says it’s a sin to swear.”

He ignored me and told me this. “Sometimes things die but you never know it. Sometimes people die but you never know it. They go on, walking through life, years, decades, seeming to be alive when they are not.”

“How is that possible?”

Xavier shrugged. “Sometimes I’m afraid I’m dead too, right now, that I, too, died a long, long time ago.”

“Oh, no. You’re very much alive. Trust me. I know all about vampires and zombies and werewolves. All the monsters of the night. I would know if you were one of them.”

“Would you, little Gus? Adults are skilled at hiding the monsters they become.” He lifted another jar of beets from the shelf and placed it in my hand. “Give your mother my best. Now, I believe there’s a lonely bottle of whiskey calling my name.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“I do.”

I wrapped the jars in my coat and threaded among the mourners until nightfall, when Uncle Peter dragged me and my sister away as Francisco’s grandsons shot roman candles at each other and bottle rockets to the sky. Smoke drifted up to the stars. My eyelids were heavy, and I was riddled with fear that a cottonmouth would leap out from the underbrush and bite me.

No snakes came for me, except in my sleep, restless because I was still angry that my mother accused me of stealing the beets. A tiny bandit, she’d called me. I tried to tell her the truth but all that came out was something garbled about snakes.

After three days of roof-pounding rains Uncle Peter came to our house and my mother sent me and my sister outside as they drank black coffee. Through the window I saw her hands wave and her face flush red, and I was sure it had something to do with the beets. When Peter ushered me inside no one said a word about the beets.

“Put your work boots on, Gus,” he told me.

“Work? But it’s dark. What would we be doing in the dark?”

He looked at my mother who held a fist to her mouth. Peter shook his head not at me but at his shadow against the floorboards. “Something you can never talk about to anyone.”

“It’s not right,” my mother said.

“Xavier Collins specifically asked me that he be there.”

“And I have no say? Is it because I am a woman?”

“You know better than to play that card on me.” Peter told her. “And you also know what will come of us if we stay in the good graces of the Collins family.” He looked to me. “And what will happen if we don’t.”

“It’s not right.”

“Your opinion is noted.”

“Promise me no harm will come to him.”

He strangled his hat with his hands. “How can you even suggest such a thing? You know I’d never put him in any danger.”

The way they looked at each other—silently communicating in some coded sibling language I could never know—I walked out that door afraid I’d never see my mother and sister again.

On the trip to wherever we would be going, Peter said little to me. The radio droned low with some sad baritone. Peter smoked cigarette after cigarette, clucking his tongue, muttering words under his breath I couldn’t quite string together, though I swear I heard him mention a curse from God as he roared his flatbed Ford through the starry night. As we pulled up to the back gate of St. Iago’s cemetery he pulled a flask from his pocket and took a hard swig that made his face twist.

“I would offer you some, but my sister would surely murder me.”

“I would never tell her.”

“I know that, Gus, but that’s not the point. One trespass is enough for tonight, I believe.”

“Trespass? What do you mean?”

He looked out at the darkened rows of granite tombstones. “What we do here, you have to swear to never tell anyone. Ever.”

I couldn’t swear. To do so would be a sin. I didn’t want to lie to my uncle, either, so I just sat there, hoping he would mistake my silence for a yes.

“And if anyone ever asks, you were helping me dig a trench to repair a burst pipe.” I pictured a flood of water carrying the coffins to the river and then to the open sea. I nodded.

We walked past two silent vehicles, one a truck patched with rust, the other a shimmering Chrysler Imperial. I knew who the sedan belonged to, of course, but I said nothing. I followed Uncle Peter. Clouds covered the stars, draping the tombstones with shadows. The wind carried the scent of pine and a distant trace of tobacco smoke. Ahead, toward where Peter led us, I spied the blazing orange eyes of demons. I trembled and almost fled but I held firm and after a few more steps and a break in the clouds I realized the demon eyes were the glowing embers of cigarettes.

Peter took me to where I’d stood three days earlier: the fresh grave of Francisco Collins.

In the back stood Xavier Collins in a black duster, hat tilted forward on his head. His hands were thrust in his pockets, and he gave me a glancing nod that I returned in kind. In front of him were two workmen I knew from the Collins Ranch: Silvio, gray-haired and coiled like a spring, and Barnaby, as stout as a boulder. Both held shovels in their hands.

“Thanks for fetching Gus,” Xavier said.

“It wasn’t easy.”

“Nothing ever is.” Xavier kicked the packed dirt. “Was the road clear?”

“Not a soul.”

“Let’s get this over with.”

I stood back, confused. “What are we doing here?” No one answered me. “What am I doing here?”

“You’re here to keep watch,” Xavier told me.

“Watch out for what?”

“For anyone coming. Any lights from the road. Can you do that for me, little Gus?”

I nodded, so proud to be among these men. I tilted my head toward the road now and then, but mostly I watched as the men unshoveled the rain-damp earth. I didn’t dare ask why they’d disturb Francisco’s grave. Perhaps he was still alive, and there was a bell inside that he’d rung to alert them of his false death. Perhaps a pirate treasure had been inadvertently slipped into the casket alongside the fine old man.

I looked out toward the distant hills, purple in the night. A coyote bellowed. I shivered and focused on the empty road as the smell of fresh-tilled dirt hit my nose. I leaned against a fence post, my eyelids heavy but not daring to shut them for more than a moment and not daring to turn back to check the progress of my uncle and Silvio the spring and Barnaby the boulder as their grunts rang out in a chorus. The whole while I didn’t hear a peep out of Xavier Collins and after what felt like a year I flinched from a hand laid on my shoulder.

“It’s almost over,” Xavier said to me, though he didn’t sound very convincing.

“What is?”

Instead of answering he pointed to Silvio and Barnaby hauling the casket from the wound in the earth. When Peter reached for the latch Xavier leaped forward as if he was about to touch a live wire.

“No. Not here.”

Where then? I wanted to ask.

He motioned to Uncle Peter’s flatbed Ford, and Silvio and Barnaby and Peter lifted the casket with a blizzard of grunts and clanked it onto the vehicle.

“Follow me,” Xavier told the men as he stared back at the hole in the earth. I wondered if he felt that same sense of violation I did.

We took the service road out of St. Iago’s. Uncle Peter shut the radio off. His cigarette dangled from his lips, the ash flaking off and falling onto his dirt-stained shirt, the tail lights of Xavier’s Imperial like red eyes luring us onward.

I kept thinking of that casket, bobbling on the back of the truck. “Is it a…”

“Hush up,” his voice strained. “Please.”

I nodded and sunk into my seat. I never wanted to displease Uncle Peter. Not ever, and especially not then.

Twenty minutes later we pulled up to the back side of the Collins Ranch. Xavier unlocked a gate and drove on. We followed him past a copse of trees, then up a low rise to a lone oak with aching limbs that scraped the ground. Xavier pulled close to the tree and the Imperial’s taillights went black.

He climbed out and walked in circles to the left of the oak’s bulging trunk. Finally, he stopped. “My great-grandfather planted this tree when he first settled here in Matamoros County. It survived droughts and floods and blight and fires, this tree alone, and it’s where all the men in my line have been buried. This is where Francisco must be laid to rest.”

I looked around the sloping hill. I didn’t see a single tombstone. “Why didn’t you do that in the first place?” I asked with all the bravery of a boy.

Uncle Peter grabbed my arm and pulled me back a half step.

“No, that’s fine,” Xavier said. “It’s a fair question. I thought time had moved on. I thought consecrated land would cure the problem. I was wrong. So, here we are.”

Silvio and Barnaby pulled up in their rattling truck. They killed the headlights and climbed out.

“Shovels, men.”

Xavier stepped back and pointed to a certain spot on the ground five feet to the left of the collapsing tree. “Here, I believe.” Xavier rubbed his hands over his face.

“Are you sure?” Peter asked.

“I’m certain. Dig here.”

This time I wasn’t pulling guard duty. The night had cooled enough to raise the hair on my bare arms. The coyotes and hawks and owls fell into their slumber, and I struggled to keep myself awake. I didn’t dare sit down, not when I was allowed to be among the men. Maybe Xavier saw my struggle because when Silvio, Barnaby, and Peter were halfway to six feet he called me over. He sipped from a silver flask. In the moments where the moon broke free of the clouds, I saw a design etched into the flask, a snake eating its own tail. I wondered how it didn’t choke.

“Ask me if I miss my father,” he said to me.

I caught the whiskey on his breath. “Do you miss Francisco?”

He exhaled and fell silent. I wondered why he didn’t have his “yes” at the ready. Then he spoke. “He died three days ago of a snakebite, yes?”

I thought it was a trick question. I nodded.

“That’s not entirely true. He’d been dead for me for years and years.”

“How many years?”

“I am fifty-five now. I was four when I first noticed he had died from me. So, that makes fifty-one years.”

“But he always looked alive. What happened to him?”

Xavier drank from his flask and shrugged. “Perhaps he got bitten by a snake years ago, and that snake poisoned him, so slowly that no one noticed he’d died. Not even Francisco himself.”

“Is that why you’ve brought him back here? To revive him?”

“Such things are impossible, little Gus. So much in this world is impossible.”

The men in the pit grunted as they flung up clods of damp earth.

“I never answered your question,” Xavier said.

I’d been thinking of Francisco Collins slowly dying over years and years from a snakebite. I’d forgotten the question. “Are you sad your father died?”

“Not this time. Years and years ago when I realized it? Perhaps. Now?” He shook his head. “It’s too late for that. I’ve been alone with that grief for so long. This, this death, this passage of his body, it’s irrelevant. The damage is long since done.”

As only a fool or a child would do when someone unburdens their soul, I told him I didn’t understand.

He fixed his milky eyes on me. “No, of course you don’t. Someday you might. I pray not, but unfortunately that’s not how life works.” In all my days since I’ve never seen a man so thoroughly burdened. He looked as if he ached to tell me more. Instead, he called out to the men in the pit. “How goes it?”

“Almost there, sir.”

Xavier tousled my hair and left me. He peered into the pit and sighed. “That’s deep enough. Climb out and help me haul the coffin over.”

He walked toward the flatbed Ford trailed by Peter, Silvio, and Barnaby. I wondered if he wanted me to help carry the coffin, too. Was that why I was there? I stayed put, hoping to see a meteor break through the clouds. I heard the metal of the coffin grind against the truck bed as they slid it off. At first the men almost bobbled it but they righted it and marched it to the newly dug pit. Instead of dropping it inside Xavier had them drop it just beside it.

He pulled a small crowbar from his duster and jammed it underneath the coffin lid.

Treasure, for sure. Xavier grunted as he forced the metal between the seam. I watched the others. Peter bounced from leg to leg, his mouth a rigid line. Barnaby had to look away. Silvio twitched and his mouth worked furiously muttering something I couldn’t hear. Finally, the coffin lid surrendered with a popping sound like a jar opened.

As Xavier lifted the lid I took a step back.

“Come here, little Gus,” he called out.

I looked to Uncle Peter. His eyes flickered between me and the coffin. He gave me a nod—I trusted him more than anyone in the world, even more than my own mother—so I went to Xavier.

The coffin lid was flung open. The satin lining glistened in the night. Francisco Collins was still very much dead. I saw no treasure except for the gold crucifix on his neck. He wasn’t a vampire or a zombie or werewolf. He was nothing more than a man, dead: yellow-fingernailed, hollow-cheeked, waxy and still, giving off an odor like a musty closet.

I knelt beside Xavier. “This is what I needed you here for,” he said.

“For what?”

He rubbed his mouth with a trembling hand. “To witness. I need someone to see, to know, to understand, otherwise it will never end for me.”

I was about to ask what when he leaned over the face of his dead father and retched. Was it the sight? The smell? The whiskey?

It was none of that.

He retched hard. Barnaby came running up, but I shooed him away. I set my hand on the back of Xavier’s neck as a hacking growl burst from his mouth. Strands of saliva hung like tinsel from his lips. He cried out weakly and surrendered a throat-scraping heave like a sacrifice to a resentful god. He wailed as if in pain and a tiny black snake slithered out of his mouth. He heaved and out came another snake, and another, more than a dozen in all. They tumbled into the coffin and swarmed the corpse until one wriggled between the lips and split the thread that stitched them together and then these tiny snakes fought each other to slip inside the mouth.

Once the last snake vanished, Xavier took a great gulp of air. He looked at me with clear eyes and grabbed me by the collar and pulled me so close I could smell the whiskey on his breath, and something else, something rotting, and I was afraid he would throw me into the coffin with his dead father, or maybe another snake would come out of his mouth and crawl into me. Instead, he said to me with a voice as clear as a church bell, “I needed you to see.” He inhaled and exhaled, and his breath smelled like a wet April morning. Still the cleanest thing I’ve ever smelled in all my years.