The Hanging

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The man in the field tossed the last couple of logs into place. Then he straightened up, pressed the backs of his hands above his tailbone, and stretched a couple of times to counter the surprising tenderness he felt. He was accustomed to physical labor, so he didn’t count the few hours he had spent filling the pit as anything special, and compared to what he had accomplished over the course of the day, a little soreness was immaterial. It merely surprised him.

Moving with some discomfort, he took the last of the gas cans and poured the contents out over the logs, the uppermost layer of which was level with the ground. There were approximately fifteen cubic meters of seasoned beech wood, mixed with a little elm, chestnut, and birch, as well as a young plum tree with reddish brown bark on the sunny side and greenish on the shadow side, as he had noticed with an expert’s gaze. There were also thirty-one bags of coal, an amount that he had meticulously memorized before he started and then tallied sack for sack as he carried them into place, so that the work would feel less monotonous. He glanced at his watch and noted that its face was covered with dried blood and that neither hand was visible. Just as when he had checked it last. He tore off the watch and tossed it into the fire, then looked up at the sky, which was beginning to grow dark. To the west, a low band of clouds was illuminated by the scarlet rays of the setting sun, and the lake below the field lay gray and hazy. A storm was brewing.

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