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His eyes were blue steel, hard. The crow’s feet that emerged from them belied his years. He couldn’t have been over 30, but he took everything in like a seasoned 20-year man.

His jaw was pointed and firm and in his first week, they’d already seen it wasn’t for show. They’d tried to go at him, testing his authority, and he’d shown them a stiff backbone and an unrelenting work ethic.

When the first of the heavy snows came, they arrived at work as best they could, to find the paths between buildings already cleared. He stood inside the doors of the main office in a t-shirt with sweat beading on his forehead to hand out the day’s assignments.

Within six months of his working there, he had turned them into the most productive unit in the company. What amazed his superiors was how little blowback there was from the employees. To a man, not a single negative word was spoken. 

Instead they heard stories of problems that had arisen and how cool he had been in the face of them, putting people into place to fix what was wrong and make it better. Nothing fazed him.

Shock rippled through the unit when the executives came in and fired him. Rumors of it rippled through the buildings before the truth crashed down at the end of the day.

He left the same way he’d come in; quiet, cold steel in his eyes. He shook each of his men’s hands on the way out, staring them in the face and telling them to ‘keep up the good work.’

When the executives gathered the unit together at day’s end they were asked why they had let him go.

“You were too productive. You made the rest of the company look bad.”

They strolled through the quad’s explosion of orange and red leaves, which dotted the perfect green lawn. The boys would run off together, one the receiver and one the defender, and he would loft the football in a high arching spiral. The leather would crunch amongst the leaves as the boys rolled on the ground laughing.

He and Pete used to do the same thing with Pop, though they would end up coming to blows after the third or fourth tumble. He missed Pete.

Those early September afternoons, much like this one had been perfect, the heat wasn’t oppressive like it was in summer, but the cold didn’t bite you like it could in the fall, the sunshine was plentiful in the cloudless sky.

It was a good day to be alive. He wished Pete were here to see it. They’d talked about going to college here to play football, and a hundred other dreams.

And then high school had come and they’d taken different paths, their old dreams becoming lost memories. He wondered what his boys would do. If they would stick together, or drift apart over time. He wanted to believe blood was a binder, but he knew not to put hope in clichés.

Uncle Ted had met Pop at the gate before each game. While the boys ran the sidelines and played pick-up games, Pop and Uncle Ted would stand at the top of the bleachers and watch the game.

He could hear the noise of the crowd and the scratch of the announcer’s voice over the PA as they approached the brick gates. As he did every time, he looked for Pete, even though he knew he wouldn’t be there.

The boys went to meet their friends. He climbed to the top of the bleachers alone.

The spades hit the dirt one after the other forming a pleasant rhythm. They worked in silence as the dirt piled behind them grew. They hadn’t spoken many words since loading the truck and making the drive into the woods. They’d said a few words when picking out the spot, but once that was settled, they’d fallen into their customary silence.

At the outset it was easy and the dirt flew fast, but as they descended lower into the earth the ground was firmer, the digging harder. The older man’s pace began to flag, though he tried to work faster so his son wouldn’t notice his age, sweat still beaded on his forehead. He stepped out of the hole. His son looked up, and without a word went back to work.

Despite the cool shade of the trees his son’s shirt was damp and clinging to his muscled back. He admired the clean efficiency of his son’s powerful strokes. He felt old.

The mound grew higher as the sun rose. Neither man spoke as they alternated turns in the hole. They hadn’t talked about why they were here. It was understood between them. There was a job to do; they were doing it.

They never discussed more than the basics of the work, as they were on the same page of how to do things. The old man might explain a few peculiarities based on past experience, but for the most part the conversations were short.

When the hole was finished, they poured in two bags of lime, and then went to the bed of the truck for the body. They threw it in with another bag of lime covering it.

Sweat dripped from both as they bent back over their shovels and began to fill the hole in silence.