"The Coat," by Flannery O'Connor:

"She started. The wash basket fell off her head and six white shirts-washed, pressed, and folded-flapped face-down in the mud. One of them was in reach of his hand, a rigid, immobile hand, strangely white against the soft red clay it lay in. She felt like sinking into the clay herself. It had taken her all afternoon to iron them shirts. She picked them up except the one that almost touched him. She fished that up with a stick and dropped it into the basket. Then she looked at him again. He seemed almost to have been pressed down in the clay, his thin body and outstretched arms forming a weird white cross in relief on the red. "

I chose to illustrate the first paragraph of the Coat. The imagery is repeated throughout the story, and is still lingering at the end when proud Rosa coaxes her husband to the same fate as her gruesome discovery.

This digital image was created from 6 different photos I found online, except for the basket, which ordinarily holds my shoes.