The World Beneath

by Aaron Gwyn

  THE WORLD BENEATH

  Also by Aaron Gwyn

  DOG ON THE CROSS: STORIES

  AARON GWYN

  THE WORLD BENEATH

  A NOVEL

  W. W. NORTON & COMPANY / NEW YORK LONDON

  Copyright © 2009 by Aaron Gwyn

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  Production manager: Anna Oler

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gwyn, Aaron.

  The world beneath: a novel / Aaron Gwyn.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-393-07155-9

  1. Missing persons—Investigation—Fiction. 2. Sheriffs—Fiction.

  3. Persian Gulf War, 1991—Veterans—Fiction. 4. Oklahoma—Fiction.

  5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3607.W96W67 2009

  813'.6—dc22 2008052427

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

  Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

  for Lance Corporal Scott Sparks—

  and my grandfather,

  J.L.M.

  There was the sense—an almost religious conviction—among many of the Plains Indians that something malevolent traveled beneath them. This was more than a malign, abstract force. It was a presence, a person, a character as fully developed in the Native American psyche as the Satan of Hebraic writings or those demons who assailed Buddha during his trial of Enlightenment.

  Enoch Malcoz,

  Deep Dweller: Stories of America’s First Man

  THE WORLD BENEATH

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  THOMAS SPEAKS

  THOMAS SPEAKS

  THOMAS SPEAKS

  THOMAS SPEAKS

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  JULY 2006

  He closed the passenger door and followed the two of them down the trail. Just a narrow path through the oak trees, thick branches, thickly leaved. It was summer and hot. The leaves drawn into themselves. They had the look of shriveled hands. The air on his face felt humid, thick, and though he’d just exited the Camaro, he’d already begun to sweat. There was perspiration on his shoulders. Perspiration on his face. He thought he’d say something about it, but Herring would only mock him. Better, as always, to keep it quiet.

  He was good at this, keeping quiet. Around Herring he had to be. And now even around Charles. At one time it was just the two of them—J.T., Charles—but they were fifteen now and there was the issue of cars. Women. Suddenly, a hundred other things. Christopher Herring would turn seventeen that August and he’d been driving since the age of twelve. J.T. didn’t like him, but he was friends now with Charles. Which meant he’d have to be his as well.

  He followed them, keeping himself a few paces back. Charles was laughing. Trying to make Herring laugh. It’d become that way. Herring was white and Charles was black and J.T. thought of himself as neither. His mother had been Latina. His father, Chickasaw.

  Both were gone now.

  Sounded like neither to him.

  The trail made a turn and then it made another. The dirt was red and soft as a powder. In other places, hard and baked. You’d see, time to time, hoofprints where cows had crossed, the U’s on the ground like impressions in plaster. The path went uphill, swung to the left, then began sloping down. J.T. stepped carefully. Ahead of him, Charles laughed at something, said something about church. It was the only word J.T. caught. That and carpet. Was he talking, J.T. wondered, about the church where he used to go?

  “Fuck the church,” Herring said.

  The trail began to widen and he heard the shush of water. They were trying to strike the creek below the falls. Herring said this path would take them to it. He’d been high since noon and he said a lot of things. Driving out, he’d kept passing the joint to the backseat and J.T. would hold the smoke in his cheeks, blow it quickly out. He was fairly sure Charles had been doing the same. He’d begun thinking otherwise when they emerged into a clearing and crested out upon a bluff. The stream wound beneath them, gradually narrowed, rushed over a sandstone lip. It made a falls into the pool below. J.T. had heard people talk about it. The drop and the water. No telling how deep. There was a bank around the pool where the ground fell sheer. At the other end, an opening where the stream flowed out. Trees flanked the water, giving that sense of enclosure. J.T. wondered: Was it an inlet or a nook? Perhaps even a cove. He thought cove, and then alcove, trying to decide which was better, unable to decide.

  A massive pecan stood beside the stream, one of its larger limbs stretched above them, and then out above the pool. Someone had attached a length of cable. Maybe twenty feet or so of cable, thin and black with a loop at its end, knots spaced every few inches. It hung above the pool like a rigid noose. Herring gestured to it and the three boys stood staring. Too high to use as a swing into the water. Only purpose would be dangling out there, tempting your fate. They talked about this a few minutes and then Charles turned, sunlight glancing off his spectacles. He went over and picked up a branch. He brought it back, handed it to Herring, and they took turns trying to hook the cable and bring it within reach. J.T. watched for a moment, then went over and seated himself on a stone. He wiped the sweat from his neck, braced his arms upon his knees.

  He felt, of a sudden, very tired and he thought that he could maybe sleep. He wasn’t getting enough, his nana told him. His aunt told him this as well. Charles and Herring’s chatter drifted to the background, and J.T. sat listening to the water as it sluiced through the stone channel and splashed into the pond. It sounded like someone saying, Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

  His eyes had just closed when Charles asked him something. He opened them. Indicated he hadn’t heard.

  “Tonight,” Charles repeated. “You still staying over?” J.T. said he couldn’t. In the morning he had to work.

  “Work,” said Charles.

  “Fuck work,” Herring said.

  The two of them had managed, by this point, to retrieve the cable and were leaning back, tugging on it, first one, then the other, testing the line, trying to determine its strength. Herring said it would hold them, but Charlie wasn’t sure.

  “There’s metal inside it. It’s like it’s full of rust.”

  Herring pulled on it. On his right forearm was the tattoo he’d gotten from a parlor down in Dallas. Ramrod, the letters read. No one called him this but Charlie. Herring was tall and thin, his blond hair shaved into a narrow crew. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt. Blue jeans. Boots. Charlie wore the same, trying to copy him, J.T. thought. He’d even shaved his head. But Charlie was much smarter. Charlie was so much kinder.

  “What are you?” Charles asked. “One seventy? One seventy-five?”

  “One fifty-eight,” said Herring.

  “Yeah,” said Charles. “We’d snap it for sure.”

  Herring stood there a moment.

  Looked at J.T.

  Said it would definitely hold him. J.T. knew what was coming. He was too tired to even fuss. On the scales at the golf course he weighed one twenty-five. He worked the greens at the course, and he snuck, on occasion, to the clubhouse, went down the hallway to the lockers. He’d hoped to put on weight, but he couldn’t seem to do that, and the metal ruler atop the scale marked him at sixty-five inches. This was in sneakers. He was fifteen years old and he’d grown all that he would.

  He stood from the rock and brushed the seat of his pants. He walked over and to
ok the cable in his grip.

  “It’ll break,” warned Charlie.

  Herring said it wouldn’t.

  “Why won’t it?”

  “It’s cable,” Herring said. J.T. didn’t think about it. You had to do these things. Boy of his stature, you had to do them all the time. Jump this, swing off that, you got used to it. You broke ankles, chipped teeth, but this was the price you paid for belonging, and there was very little belonging left.

  And so you took what you could, which was now a length of cable in black insulation, the plastic peeling to where you saw the metal beneath. J.T. didn’t test it. He didn’t even try. He planted a foot in the stirrup, took a step back, and, holding the cable tightly, launched himself above the pool. He swung out with the breeze gone suddenly cool, light glancing off the water, and he’d just reached the end of the cable’s arc, started back toward the bank, when the tension went slack, and he looked to see the cable snap an inch above his grip. His stomach shrank inside him. His throat tightened shut. He was suspended in the air a moment and then began to fall. The pool rushing toward him, his body twisting prone. He was almost flat when he struck the water. It nearly took his breath.

  Then he was swimming, moving quickly through the water, almost, it seemed, upon it, noise coming from the bank above him, from Herring and Charles. And then he was out, slipping on stones at the edge of the pool, and then scrambling up the side of the bank, hands pulling at him, standing there beside Charles, panting and drenched. His heart pounded in his head. Adrenaline buzzing. He could’ve hit a submerged rock or tree stump. He could’ve broken his back.

  “Holy shit!” Charles was saying. “Holy shit!” J.T. looked at Herring. He knew better than to speak.

  “You all right?” said Charles.

  He nodded.

  “You okay?”

  He nodded again.

  “Holy shit!” said Charles, face beaming wonder.

  Herring seemed disappointed that he wasn’t hurt.

  “It was like something off the TV,” said Charles. J.T. shook his head.

  “Like the TV,” said Charles. He glanced at Herring. “Was that not like TV? Was that not the shit?”

  “Fuck the TV,” Herring said.

  It was close to midnight when he came up the drive. He walked across the lawn to the chanting of crickets and went through the back door, up the back stairs, to the kitchen. The lights were out, but there was the glare of a lamp from the living room. He could see its reflection on the kitchen tiles. He took off his sneakers and laid them out upon a towel. He peeled his socks off, left them to dry as well. He stood for a moment, watching the moon out the window, light filtering through the leaves. A sick sea-light. The incessant swirl of insects. He turned and stepped over and went across the floor, leaving footprints of vapor that vanished as he passed.

  In the living room, his grandmother was seated in her upholstered rocker, black and yellow paisley, passed on by her mother. She was asleep now, glasses low on her nose and her Spanish Bible parted upon her breast. She was a thin woman, very small, and, sleeping, she resembled, almost, a child. Her wrinkles smoothed out. Her hair was thick. She’d continued, all these years, to dye it. Coils of velvet black. He stood looking down on her, swallowing it back. He whispered her name, though he knew she wouldn’t hear. He said it low enough she couldn’t. The book on her chest rose and fell. Rose and fell. She was wearing a white flannel nightgown, even for all the heat, and her feet were encased in slippers he’d bought her the previous winter.

  He stood several minutes, watching the slack expression on her face. He leaned closer, careful, like kneeling before a shrine. Beneath lids the consistency of paper, you could just make out her eyes, a pair of marbles covered by parchment. Every so often they would twitch. The boy wondered what she dreamt of. And did she worry in her dreams? He inhaled, gently released the breath. A shudder passed through him and he thought, for some reason, this was the last he would see of her. A panicked thought. He was used to it. This woman, a last link to ancestors he vaguely imagined. His love for her like an iron upon his chest. He touched the fingers of his right hand to his lips. He started to move the Bible, but that would only wake her. Gingerly, he took a crocheted blanket from the back of the rocker, and then knelt there, tucking it around her slippered feet. He stood for several moments, and then went up the stairs.

  In his room, he sat at the small desk. The house was quiet. Stale and hot. There was a fan on the shelf that oscillated back and forth. He sat there with the dictionary open before him, thumbing pages, thumbing more. He looked up cove and alcove. He looked up nook, inlet, and bay. He read the definitions and next to each he made a dot with the lead of his pencil. He closed the dictionary and put it back in its place and then he sat there, thinking of Charles. Of Nana. His aunt. He could feel them all receding.

  He turned off the lamp and stepped over and lay upon his bed. Atop the covers of his bed. The room was dark. Blackout blinds over his window. He lay there in his boxer shorts with the air moving across his legs, prickling them slightly. He could just feel the breath of the fan, then the absence of the breath when it turned away. He stayed like this, perfectly still, and when he could take it no longer rolled onto his side, sat at the edge of the mattress, then turned and knelt on the floor.

  He braced his elbows against the bed. He clasped together his hands. He crossed ankles, left over right, rubbed the arch of one foot against the heel of the other, then recrossed his ankles, right over left. He prayed the words that ran inside him. Four words. Over and over. He clenched his eyes tightly and after a few moments he could see a light on the inside of the lids like the negative of a picture, two light holes swimming in black. He tried to focus on this. He focused on the words. He repeated them again and again and then broke into the slightest whisper. He pressed his lips to the blanket and muttered into his quilt.

  “Let me be taken,” he said. “Let me be taken. Let me be taken. Let me be taken.”

  NOVEMBER 2006

  Sheriff Martin turned into the parking lot and pulled into the handicapped place just in front of the building. It was early evening, cold November, and there was a line extending out the door, onto the sidewalk, over in front of the law offices of Sokolove and Phelps. Retired couples. Teenagers. Single men in their thirties, standing huddled in on themselves, staring at their feet. The sign atop the building read Ernie’s Soft-Serve & Yogurt, and the GRAND OPENING banner still hung across the plate-glass window. Martin sat watching a moment, then reached for the door handle. As he did, the radio coughed his call sign, then went silent, then coughed again. He was waiting for the third time when he unhooked the receiver and brought it to his mouth.

  “County One,” he said.

  “Sheriff?”

  “Go ahead, Nita.”

  “Sheriff?”

  “Yeah, Nita. Right here.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman told him. “I couldn’t get ahold of Lem.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I don’t think his unit’s working.”

  “It’s okay, Nita. What do you need?”

  There was a pause. Martin looked out the windshield and watched an elderly man emerge from Ernie’s with a small Styrofoam bowl. The man stood on the sidewalk and began spooning the bowl’s contents to his mouth. His breath was fogging from the cold, and his ears turned a bright shade of red, but he kept eating regardless.

  “We had a call come in,” said Nita, “out on 99. On past the four-mile, two miles back east.”

  “Out by Grainger’s?”

  “Yeah,” said Nita. “Spanish lady. Her daughter made the call. She hasn’t seen her grandson in a couple days.”

  “How many days?”

  “Two or three.”

  “How old’s the boy?”

  “Says he just turned fifteen. He was supposed to be with friends, but the friends’ parents don’t know nothing about it.”

  Martin sat a moment. The man was still there on the sidewalk. He
spooned a final bite into his mouth and then stood studying the bowl. He tossed it in a nearby trash can, walked down, and stepped back into line.

  “You want me to wait, get ahold of Lem?”

  “No,” said Martin, “I’ll take it.”

  “You sure? Probably a mix-up.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. You mind calling Deb?”

  “She expecting you?”

  “She is,” said Martin. “And, Nita?”

  “Sheriff?”

  “You find Lem, send him down to Ernie’s. Tell him one scoop vanilla, one scoop chocolate. No nuts. Have him run it out to the house.”

  There was another pause. Martin imagined the woman writing. She said, “One scoop vanilla, one scoop chocolate.”

  “No nuts.”

  “Got it,” she said. “No nuts.”

  Martin started the engine and shifted into reverse. “Thanks, Nita. Tell Lem I said thanks.”

  The woman chuckled. “It’s ice cream now, is it, Sheriff?”

  “Yeah,” said Martin. “Ice cream and everything else.”

  He drove out 99 past the city limits and airstrip, the construction supply companies, the local plant farm and nursery. It was dark now and clear and Martin would duck his head from time to time and glance at stars. Orion to one side. Over there the Dipper. He could see Cassiopeia’s W etched sideways above his rearview mirror, its lowest line slanting down. Martin had spent three years in his early thirties working a fire-watch tower in the mountains of southern Colorado, and since being back he’d come to appreciate the open feeling, the wideness of sky. He’d known easterners who’d come west from Knoxville and Atlanta, and when they hit the broad expanse of Oklahoma prairie they cowed under that sense of infinite horizon. Martin drove a mile under the speed limit with the scanner dialed down and the radio’s volume turned a little higher. He glanced over and saw the moon was two days till full and just beginning to rise.