Wet buckets

Someone has to be buried, we would chant. Dare each other to be first to be buried, knowing that in the end we would bury each other together. We would bribe other kids to bring us buckets and buckets of wet sand. Everyone would form a convoy of buckets--your big pink bucket with purple splash polkadots, my gardening bucket of a calmer green, someone's borrowed plastic pail. We would be covered in sand, baking our heels and scratching sweaty backs into the crystalled earth.