BURIED
by BETHANY BRUNO
The storm reached Jacksonville long after the newscasters said it would. All afternoon the sky over the Westside stayed bright and blue, the kind of blue that fooled people into thinking weather would skip the city the way visitors skipped the industrial stretch along the river.
Cars crowded the Winn Dixie parking lot on Cassat Avenue even though rain had not fallen yet. Mothers hurried through the sliding doors with coupons in hand. Kids held on to the sides of carts, their shoes squeaking on the tile. The air outside smelled like hot asphalt and the faint brine that drifted inland whenever the wind carried the St. Johns River with it.
He sat in the passenger seat of his mother’s old Ford truck with the windows cracked. The air conditioning had stopped working two summers earlier, so the truck depended on the warm river breeze to keep the heat from rolling over them in waves. The scent of the river mixed with the smell of the marsh behind their trailer. Salt and mud and something faintly metallic hung in the air.
“Look at the sky,” his mother said as she turned left toward Timuquana Road. “Clouds always speak sooner than the people on television.”
He looked. Far out where the land dipped into marsh grass, a thin gray line spread across the horizon. It looked like metal dipped in water. Heat shimmered above the sawgrass and cattails. A Navy jet rose from the runways at NAS Jacksonville and cut through the sky with a roar that made the truck’s side mirror shake.
At the gas station he held the glass door for his mother. Inside, a tiny television above the coffee counter showed a weather map. The storm swirled in slow circles on the screen. The cashier shook his head and said people were making too much of it. He said storms always dragged toward Georgia before they reached downtown.
His mother did not answer. She took two bottles of water from the cooler and added a pack of off brand cookies to the counter. When she spoke, her voice stayed even.
“Storms go where they want,” she said.
They drove the rest of the way home with the radio off. By the time they reached their trailer off Ortega Farms Boulevard, the sky had turned the color of a bruise. The lot smelled of pine sap and wet earth. The oak tree near the steps tossed its branches as if it wanted to uproot itself and walk.
They dragged the plastic lawn chairs beneath the porch and tied the trash cans to the railing. The cooler went on cinder blocks. His mother checked the windows twice, pressing the backs of her hands along the frames. The electricity flickered. She told him to fill the bathtub in case the water lines went out.
They spent the night in the living room. Rain struck the tin roof in waves. The television cut out and returned in bursts that made the images stutter. A reporter from First Coast News shouted into the wind near the Main Street Bridge. His mother turned off the television and set a battery lantern on the coffee table. The wind rattled the windows. The walls made low, strained sounds, like the house itself was breathing through clenched teeth.
He listened to the storm through the thin walls. He heard the wet soil shift under the trailer. He smelled the river again, its sharp tide scent pushing inland. Somewhere outside something heavy crashed against the foundation. His mother moved pots under the dripping places in the kitchen. She tried to hum a tune under her breath but stopped halfway through.
“You should sleep,” she said. “You won’t stop the storm by staying awake.”
He slept in pieces and woke up to silence. It was the kind of quiet that came only after a long night of weather. Heavy but hollow. The crickets began their call again as if someone had pressed a button. Frogs joined from the ditch. The wet world sounded new.
The phone rang just after eight.
Mrs. Langley called first. Then the Hendersons. Then the couple near the Ortega Bridge. His mother wrote the times and addresses on the back of a utility bill with a stub of pencil. She sat straighter with each call. Storms brought damage. Damage brought work. Work brought income.
“Get your boots,” she said. “We’re starting with Mrs. Langley.”
They drove toward the river, passing neighborhoods that carried the storm differently. Some yards held loose shingles. Others showed broken branches across driveways. A few homes had tarps already nailed over places where water had forced its way in. People stood outside with their hands on their hips, surveying the new shape of their morning.
The closer they came to the marsh, the larger the homes grew. Ranch houses with brick walls gave way to taller places with screened porches and two car garages. Then came the homes that looked like they belonged on postcards. Fresh paint. Perfect lawns. A kind of shine that only happened when someone hired others to keep everything in place.
Mrs. Langley’s home sat near the end of a cul de sac. Behind it, the marsh spread flat and green. The front yard held fallen palm fronds and a broken planter, but the shutters and windows looked untouched.
The pool behind the house told a different story.
The screen enclosure sagged in places. The water sat dark and still. It smelled of rot and mud and the chemical bite of chlorine trying to fight something larger than itself.
His mother carried her bucket of rags and cleaners inside. She always took the interior work. Floors. Sinks. Counters. Toilets. Tasks that kept her knees bent and her patience long. He carried the pump and the long handled net. Heavy work fell to him.
Mrs. Langley stepped onto the patio in a pink robe and clean rubber boots. Her hair looked curled into shape. Her coral lipstick stood out in the pale light.
“Thank goodness you came,” she said. “That smell is unbearable. I cannot finish my breakfast with all that murky water under my nose.”
His mother gave her polite smile. “We’ll take care of it, ma’am.”
She disappeared through the sliding door. The screen shut behind her.
He set the pump beside the pool and uncoiled the hose. The water did not reflect the sky. It reflected nothing but its own black depth. He fed the hose into the deep end and turned on the pump.
The motor rattled then steadied. The water began to move in slow wide circles. Leaves and debris shifted. He dipped the net. Twigs. Palm fibers. A dead squirrel that must have fallen from an oak near the enclosure. A plastic cup. A drowned lizard curled in on itself.
He worked steadily. Sunlight broke through a cloud and reached partway down the walls of the pool. The first step emerged. Then the second.
That was when he saw it.
A shape pressed against the steps.
He leaned forward.
Fur.
Dark. Heavy with water. Legs extended at strange angles. The outline of a ribcage under sodden hair. A collar around the neck.
He froze.
He called for his mother in a breathless gasp.
“Mama.”
The vacuum ran inside. The clink of a dish. A television at low volume.
He knelt and reached in with the net. The metal pole bent under the weight. The dog slipped and drifted toward the center. He set the net aside and reached in with both arms. The water was cold. His shirt sleeves darkened. He gripped the dog under the chest.
His muscles strained. His grip slipped once. He tightened it and lifted again. Inch by inch the weight rose.
When the dog cleared the lip of the pool, it fell onto the concrete with a heavy sound. Water pooled around it. The smell surged. Sour and sharp and unmistakable.
He turned his face until the nausea passed. Then he crouched and turned the collar.
The tag was round metal. He wiped away grime and read the name.
LANGLEY.
He knew before he saw it.
Mrs. Langley had walked the dog down the sidewalk many afternoons. The animal had always looked well kept. Clean fur. Trimmed nails. A small jingle of its bell.
He closed his hand around the tag.
If she saw the dog like this, she would not blame the storm. She would blame the nearest person who did not own property here. She would ask questions about gates and fences and attention. His mother would apologize. She would accept fault for something she had no control over.
He looked toward the hedge. It grew thick and tall along the fence. Behind it sat two garbage cans already filled with torn mesh and broken yard pieces.
He slid his arms under the dog’s shoulders one more time. He dragged the body across the tile. Water streaked behind them. His boots slipped. His arms shook. The dog seemed heavier with each step. At the hedge he found an opening. He eased the body into the shadowed space behind the leaves.
An old towel hung over a garbage can. He took it and spread it over the dog. The towel was too small, but it softened the sight of the body.
He slipped the collar into his pocket.
When he returned to the pool his mother stepped outside with a bucket of gray mop water. She poured it into the grass. Her eyes skimmed the yard. For one moment her gaze rested on the hedge. Then she looked away.
He finished draining the pool. The pump sputtered and died. The floor of the pool lay pale and bare. Dirt streaked the walls where the storm water had receded. He scrubbed until the tile brightened and the chemical scent of cleaner replaced the scent of decay.
Mrs. Langley brought out lemon cookies and two paper cups of water.
“You did wonderful work,” she said. “You people always come through when we need you.”
His mother thanked her. He took the water but kept his hands in his pockets. The collar pressed against his thigh, warm from his body.
They finished the next two houses by mid afternoon. A kitchen near the Ortega Bridge had flooded with river water. They cleared it with towels and a borrowed shop vacuum. The Hendersons tipped generously. Another family handed them leftover chicken wings from the night before.
By the time they returned home, the sun had set behind the pines. The trailer smelled of tomato rice and the faint mildew of damp carpet. His mother reheated dinner and rubbed her neck as she counted her earnings. She folded the bills neatly and placed them in an envelope.
“School tomorrow,” she said. “Don’t stay up too late. Ya hear?”
He nodded.
After she fell asleep on the couch, he stepped outside.
The air had cooled. The moon shone above the marsh. The night hummed with insects and the occasional croak of a frog. He walked behind the trailer and knelt in the sandy ground.
He dug.
He did not have a clear reason. The collar could have gone into a trash can. It could have been dropped into the ditch. Yet something inside him felt wrong keeping it the way it was. Something in him needed a place for it.
He dug until the hole was deep enough. He placed the collar inside and covered it with earth. The soil settled softly, as if the ground understood secrets.
He waited.
Nothing shifted. No sound. Only the quiet of the night and the faint smell of the river on the air.
His mother called his name from the doorway.
He pressed his thumb into the mound of dirt. It left a small indentation. He brushed his hands against his jeans and stepped onto the porch.
The moonlight followed him. The mound remained small and unremarkable.
Storms revealed what people tried to hide. He had heard his mother say that once. Today had shown him something else. Storms pulled things up, then left people to decide whether to bury them back.
He walked inside. The night held its breath. He kept his silence.
Days passed.
The floodwaters in the ditches sank. Branches piled along the curb waiting for city pickup. FEMA pamphlets appeared in mailboxes. Schools reopened. Life moved on in the way it always did here, with the quiet acceptance that storms came and storms went and people simply continued.
One afternoon he rode with his mother along Ortega Farms Boulevard. They passed Mrs. Langley’s street. Fresh pine bark covered her flower beds. A new potted fern sat on the porch. The house looked untouched by anything harsh.
He saw the flyer taped to her mailbox.
A picture of the dog. A brief message that said Missing after the storm. Last seen near the marsh.
His mother slowed the truck. She stared at the flyer for a moment. Then she accelerated again.
“People lose things,” she said. Her voice held no clear emotion. Not sorrow. Not surprise. Just a tired truth.
He looked out the window. The marsh rolled by in waves of green. The air carried the smell of the river. The scent rose from the mud in warm layers. Familiar. Heavy. Permanent.
Later that night he walked to the back of the trailer again. The mound of earth sat where he had left it. Rain from a brief afternoon shower darkened the soil. He touched the ground with the tips of his fingers.
The dirt felt cool.
He drew his hand back and stood for a long time, listening to the hum of night insects rising from the grass. The smell of the river drifted on the wind, the same way it always returned after storms.
He turned toward the trailer. The night wrapped around him with its thick quiet. He carried the weight inside him, not lighter, not heavier, simply present.
Something storms could uncover, but never wash away.
author pic here
Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author. She holds a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her work has appeared in more than a hundred literary journals and magazines, including The Threepenny Review, The Sun, McSweeney’s, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, and The Huffington Post. A Best of the Net nominee, she has won multiple writing contests, including the 2026 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. Learn more at http://www.bethanybrunowriter.com.
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