Three years of scrimping got me a hundred and sixty thousand, enough to have a full burial casket built out of fine solid wood.
It was for my grandmother, past eighty now.
My uncle and his wife talked my cousin Homer Pruitt into it, a boy who never once said no to them, and in the dead of night they pried the lock.
They hauled the casket out and draped it in red cloth.
They turned it into the wedding bed for his new marriage.
I went to demand it back.
Homer shoved me to the ground with his own hands.
In front of a yard full of relatives he called me cold and stingy, said I'd throw away three generations of family love over a coffin.
Nobody knew I had the full woodworking contract and the transfer record for the whole payment.
And the security footage of them prying the door open and carrying the casket out in the middle of the night.
I didn't keep arguing.
I only waited for the right moment to settle up with these leeches, one debt at a time.
……
At 1:47 in the morning, the alert on my phone went off.
I sat up in bed and pulled up the feed from the family home's storeroom.
On the screen, my uncle was swinging a pry bar, smashing at the lock on the east wing door.
My aunt held a flashlight on the keyhole, hissing at him to hurry.
Homer stood behind them.
A cart sat by his feet, and two loops of thick rope hung over his shoulder.
The lock gave way fast.
The three of them slipped inside and dragged out the casket I'd just had made, inch by inch.
The coffin ran nearly seven and a half feet long, its walls thick and heavy.
The lid was carved with pine, crane, and longevity patterns, and on the inside my grandmother's name and birth date were written in gold lacquer.
Three years of saving, and it was the resting place I'd finally been able to give her.
My father died young. My grandmother was the one who raised me.
Every day she went out before dawn to sell eggs in town.
She wore her shoes through to the soles and still wouldn't skip buying me one more workbook.
After I started working, the first thing I did each payday was put four thousand into a separate bank account.
I lived in an eight-hundred-a-month partitioned room.
I wore the same old coat for five years.
The day I finally had the whole hundred and sixty thousand, I went to the woodworking workshop to choose the wood for the first time.
The old craftsman told me that preparing a burial casket while the elder was still alive was called adding years, back in the village.
When my grandmother found out, she scolded me out loud for wasting money.
But she turned away and wiped her eyes more than once.
Those days she was on an IV drip at the town clinic.
I didn't want her worrying, so I'd locked the casket in the family home's storeroom for the time being.
It never crossed my mind that my uncle's family would come steal it in the night.
I called Homer right away.
The phone rang for a long time before he picked up.
On the feed, he glanced down at the screen, not a trace of panic on his face.
"What are you doing?"
"Just moving something. You had to call in the middle of the night for that?"
"That's the casket I bought for Grandma."
He pinned the phone with his shoulder and looped the rope around the casket.
"Grandma's alive and well. What's the harm in lending it to me for the wedding, just a few days?"
The call cut off.
I grabbed my car keys and rushed out to the village.
By the time I reached Homer's new place, the red lanterns at the door were already lit.
The casket had been carried into the master bedroom.
The lid was off, propped across two long benches.
The body of the coffin was flipped upside down, a thick mattress laid on top, then draped all around with a big red bedsheet.
From a distance it really did look like a wide, heavy solid-wood marriage bed.
My uncle circled it once, more pleased with every step.
"A hundred and sixty thousand worth of wood gathering dust in a storeroom, now that's a waste."
My aunt took out a palm-sized gold double-happiness ornament and was about to nail it into the center of the lid.
I rushed in and snatched the hammer out of her hand.
"Who told you you could touch it?"
My aunt shoved me back.
"It's all Pruitt family property. What's yours, what's mine?"
"An unmarried granddaughter, going over the son's head to prepare an elder's casket. That was never proper to begin with."
I pointed at the inside of the coffin.
"The contract's in my name. I'm the one who paid."
"Move it back. Now."
My uncle's face darkened.
"Homer's getting married any day now, and the marriage bed fell through at the last minute."
"When the eldest grandson starts a household, using a casket to steady the joy first, that's bringing blessings to the old lady."
A few relatives at the door, there to help set up the wedding room, nodded at once.
Someone said the eldest grandson carried the strongest luck.
Someone else said if the casket touched the wedding joy first, the old woman would pass in peace later on.
The nonsense went around the room and somehow settled in as if it were the rule.
I grabbed hold of the red sheet.
"You stole this. Don't use Grandma as your excuse."
Homer threw himself in front of me, blocking my way.
"My parents did this for the wedding too."
"You really have to make everyone lose face today?"
He knew who'd bought this casket.
He knew exactly how I'd scraped together that hundred and sixty thousand.
But my aunt tossed off a line beside him, "My boy's the sensible one after all."
And what little hesitation was on his face vanished.
He wrenched the hammer back out of my hand.
He pressed the gold double-happiness ornament to the center of the lid.
I reached out to stop him.
The hammer had already come down hard.
The long nail drove through the ornament, and through one corner of the carved longevity pattern.
