Everything We Buried in June

Chapter One: Joe — The Tin Box

Marcus Dietz had been under the mudroom floor for twenty minutes before he called Joe over, and when Joe crouched down into the cool dark beneath the joists, he smelled it before he saw it — diesel and clay and something sweeter underneath, like a drawer that hadn't been opened in a long time. The old porch sill had gone soft with rot clear through, the kind of rot that meant the whole corner of the house had been quietly failing for two decades while everyone walked over it without knowing. Marcus had pried up the subfloor to get at the sill, and that was when the crowbar had caught on something that wasn't wood or stone.

It was wrapped in a feed sack gone stiff as cardboard, and under that, oilcloth, and under that, a tin box the size of a large Bible, rust blooming at the seams like a bruise working its way to the surface. Joe pulled it out himself, on his knees in the dirt his father had poured a foundation into back when Joe was still small enough to ride on the tractor fender, and he held it in both hands the way you'd hold something that might still be alive. There had once been a picture painted on the lid — a ship, maybe, or a camel, something exotic and faded — and a wire bail handle gone green with age.