A Living Grave

by Robert E. Dunn

  I was careful this time, going slow and checking every spot someone could hide. Before going in I walked the perimeter and checked the doors and windows. Inside, everything was the same and secure as well. Before going to his bedroom I stood for a few minutes in the middle of the great room with the view and the art in progress. It was a good room and fit the man.

  It would be impossible not to know I was falling for Nelson. It was just as impossible not to picture myself here, with him, maybe in winter with snow on the ground and a fire in the woodstove. A month ago—no, less than a week ago, even—that thought would have probably given me a panic attack. I could not have imagined—this—any of this, my feelings, desires, plans for a future.

  Things—life—seemed different in just the last few days. It was so strange to think that I had spent years worried about men. I had feared them and their intentions and believed all of them capable and ready to do the kind of things to me that had been done in that other life. Standing there in Nelson’s house, for the first time I began to see the men who were actually in my life. They were so much more than the shadows I was running from. So many good men surrounded me that I wondered then how it was I had only seen the bad.

  The rack of paintings beside the work space drew me. I knelt beside it and flipped through the canvases and art boards. It was a catalog of the Ozarks, colors and places that I thought lived only in my mind. Streaks of paint, built-up and shifted, pushed by brush and knife all conspired to present the world the way I had always thought of it. Beautiful.

  Nelson’s tools were there, scattered but clean and ready. I held his brushes and smelled the rag that rested by the easel. It smelled of the oils and thinners he used. It smelled like his hands after he worked.

  To one side, there was a small end table with a drawer that stood open. Inside the drawer was a small case. It would have been so easy to write it off as just another box of paint. I couldn’t do that. It was obviously new. Everything else was worn and used. Then there was the texture to it. The box was dead, dull plastic. It had a utility that clashed with the wood and animal bristle all around it. Most of all I couldn’t ignore it because I had seen its kind so many times before.

  I opened the case and pulled the revolver from its perfect vacuum-formed cradle.

  Sometimes we stumble across parts of other people’s lives that we know are secret, even if they are not well hidden. We seem to have a sense about these things and touching them imparts an instant guilt that is greater than the action. It’s the knowing, not the finding. And we can never unknow.

  The revolver had never been fired. It was loaded with only two cartridges.

  Only two?

  With sudden clarity I knew that two was one too many.

  I looked back in the drawer and found the receipt and the box of shells. The paperwork was dated about a month prior. There was something else. Stuffed to the back of the drawer where they had been shoved aside like a horrible joke were a pamphlet for a hospice and another that was titled End-of-Life Options.

  I put it all back just the way I had found it and went upstairs to gather Nelson’s clothes.

  * * *

  We made it to the Oak Ridge Boys show just in time. Everyone but me looked rested, ready for a night on the town. I wore my other pretty dress but felt like a sack of potatoes wearing heels. There was too much to think about. While the Boys were singing about Elvira, I was doing a mental inventory and craving a drink. At least the craving kept me awake.

  After the show I got my drink, but it was only beer and I was careful. If I had been alone I would have gotten into Uncle Orson’s behind-the-counter-special reserve. I drank my one beer while we had an impromptu fish fry for a late dinner. Dad dredged catfish filets in cornmeal with salt and lemon pepper, paprika, cumin, rosemary, and sage. That’s his mild recipe. When I’m not around he’ll usually add cayenne and probably some other things I don’t want to know about. While he dredged, Uncle Orson manned the outdoor fry pot. Nelson and I cut red potatoes and roasted them while we blanched some asparagus then sautéed it in olive oil with garlic and melted Parmesan cheese over it in the covered skillet.

  It was another feast and it should have been joyous, but I kept watching Nelson’s plate.

  “You’re not eating as well as last night,” I said even as I told myself not to.

  “I’m doing okay,” he said. “I’m loving the fish.”

  “You’ve only had one bite.”

  “I’m pacing myself.”

  “Only one bit of potato.” I said it like an accusation and I suppose it was.

  “But an entire stalk of asparagus,” he said through an embarrassed smile. “If we’re keeping count.”

  I shut up. But it was difficult. I knew he wasn’t trying to starve himself, but it still felt like that and pissed me off. While we were cleaning up he asked if I would take him to get his truck in the morning. He said he had things to do in Springfield.

  The whole keeping-my-mouth-shut thing fell apart there. I tried to sound casual when I asked what things.

  He didn’t look at me when he said, “Doctors’ appointments.”

  The multiple wasn’t lost on me. “Want me to come along?” I asked, still trying to keep it a casual offer.

  Nelson shook his head and then he put on a smiling mask of good feelings. “You’ll be busy tomorrow with important things,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t have any idea what’s important,” I said. I had spoken quietly but it felt like shouting. The look on Nelson’s face said the same thing. He was confused and hurt by my self-serving and selfish little one-line tantrum. I left him standing there and went outside. My footsteps were just heavy enough to keep him from following.

  On my way out I grabbed another beer and went to the top deck of the houseboat. That spot that had become Nelson’s unofficial work space. It was high with a wonderful view of the lake and a perfect place for brooding. I was feeling sorry for myself, not him. He didn’t invite sorrow and that made me wonder if I was bringing it into his life.

  No one came up to talk to me. I could feel them giving me space and being kind about it. That pissed me off too. I wanted someone to poke their head up so I could chew it off. My therapist said that when I share my anger I’m really trying to share my pain. Sometimes I fantasized about shooting her between the eyes.

  The night was so clear in the sky that it was hard to tell where the lake ended and the horizon began. Stars reflected in the still lake shimmered and broke in the small waves before reforming. As open and lonely as it was, I had never heard quiet in an Ozarks summer night. Sound crowded in from every direction. Cicadas buzzed constantly. Frogs, both lake and tree, were chirping as well. It was a comfort.

  Somewhere in the water a fish broke the surface and splashed. The sound was loud even within the millions of night calls going on. It rolled over the surface of the water and I could imagine it being carried down the lake and well into Arkansas.

  I climbed down the little aluminum ladder and paused at the window into the cabin. Nelson was inside sleeping. My lonely vigil up top had been longer than I thought. For a couple of minutes I watched him. Half of me wanted him to wake and see me. The other half wanted him to keep sleeping. That part cherished the anger I still felt and wanted to milk it a while longer.

  I needed another beer or something stronger, so I went into the dark shop.

  “I wondered how long it would be,” my father said. He was sitting at the table with a beer open in front of him.

  “Were you so sure I would come in here?” I asked. Even to me my voice sounded petulant and pushy.

  “Yep.”

  “How?”

  He studied me from the shadows. I couldn’t see his face exactly; just the outline, but it was enough. I knew for a certainty that whatever he said to me was going to be perfectly reasonable, not unkind, but would sting. It would also be completely true. His hand reached forward to grip the neck of the sweating beer bottle. He h
eld it between his thumb and two fingers and swirled the last quarter of the liquid around. Then he drank it all, turning the bottle up and finishing with a satisfied sigh.

  “This is where the beer is,” he said. Quite reasonable. Quite true.

  “Yes,” was all I could say.

  “This was the last one.” The bottle hit the tabletop with a hard thunk. “I couldn’t drink them all. I had to pour some out. Your uncle’s going to be a little put out with me, but what else is new?”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “You have to ask?”

  I didn’t, but I wasn’t in the mood for admissions.

  “You have a problem,” he said. “It’s not insurmountable and it’s not the end of the world, but it has to be addressed before it consumes you.”

  “You think I’m a drunk?” I asked. It was both a question and an accusation.

  “No,” he answered, reasonable and not unkind. “I think you have a million reasons to drink. If you deal with them you won’t need to drink anymore.” He smiled and then said, “Then you can drink for fun. Like me.”

  “You think it’s that easy?”

  “Nothing’s easy.” He was still smiling.

  “I’ve got a therapist, you know. I don’t need another. It’s her job to deal with my problems.”

  “No,” he said, dropping the smile. “It’s your job. Have you been working at it as hard as you could?”

  I didn’t say anything back. What could I say? I didn’t like therapy. I liked hitting people and getting drunk. At least sometimes I thought I did.

  Then he asked, “Can you handle the burden you’re adding on?”

  My cheeks flushed with heat and my eyes brimmed with tears. I didn’t like where this was going at all but I was afraid of walking away.

  What I finally ended up saying was, “That’s none of your business.”

  Dad smiled and said, “It is. Of course it is. You will never be none of my business.”

  What he said made me think of the Briscoe family. Longing and loss, love violently truncated. I wondered: If I could see my father’s eyes, how much would they look like David Briscoe’s? All these years I had denied him the chance to know his daughter’s pain. Sharing always has a bit of the selfish to it, but I couldn’t see if it was more selfish to share the truth with him or to keep it from him.

  It didn’t matter because that was not the time. Nelson was the elephant standing in our room.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I know.”

  Finally, with a deep preparatory breath, I told him, “I don’t know what to do.”

  He pulled out the chair beside him, making room for me. I sat down and all the words fell from my mouth like they had been teetering on my teeth, waiting for me to stop balancing them. I gave him a synopsis of the past couple of days: the murder, the whiskey, meeting Nelson, beating the boy. All of it came spilling out and when it was finished pouring and it was just talk—the talk was all about Nelson.

  When I told him about the gun I had found, I ran out of words and energy. I ended up saying, “I don’t know how I feel.” I’m pretty sure Dad heard the lie in my voice. Then I said, “I don’t know what to do.” And we both knew that was the truth.

  “Do about what?” he asked. Dad was all about precision. “How you feel or how your feelings are going to hurt you?”

  “It already hurts.”

  “Oh, honey, the hurt hasn’t even started. This—” He gestured around the darkness with a hand showing nothing and everything. “All of this—is the sweet hurt. A life well lived hurts like hell. That’s why I don’t believe in that kind of afterlife. Who needs it?”

  “If this is the sweet stuff I’m not sure I can handle anything more.”

  “That’s the choice you have to make, isn’t it?”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “I think you ought to like him. A lot. I think you should help him and be kind and care. . . .”

  “But?”

  “But he’s hurt waiting to happen. If you can’t take it, it’s not fair to him to keep it going. Is it? He damn sure can’t take it. Maybe that’s the question. Which one of you is the strong one?”

  “A relationship where I’m the strong one? That’s hard to imagine.”

  “You’re strong, sweetheart. You’re just like your mother. It would be so much easier if she was here for you to talk to. She didn’t know her strength, either.”

  “You never talk about her.”

  “The end was one of those hard hurts. Something that takes your wind and leaves you gasping. It’s hard to talk about even the good stuff without feeling some of the hurt again.”

  “What if you didn’t have to go through it? What if you knew about the breast cancer when you met her?”

  “What-ifs are just that—what if? But I’ll tell you, if I knew—I would have made all the time we had even better.”

  I kissed my dad on the cheek and hugged him hard. It reminded me how badly I wanted to kiss Nelson.

  “Good night,” I said and headed for the houseboat. Dad didn’t say anything, but when I got to the door I heard the hiss of a beer bottle opening. “I thought you said they were gone?”

  “I lied. Dads are allowed.”

  “Hey, I thought you said we were going to handle my problems?”

  “We are. You only really have the one. Everything else is just part of it.”

  “And what’s that, Dr. Freud?”

  “Fear, sweetheart. You are afraid. That’s what I’ve been telling you. Life is kind of an angry bitch. She fights you every step for every piece of joy in your life. Being afraid of the hits she gives won’t make her hit any less or any less hard. It just makes you miss the joy.”

  Nelson was sound asleep when I got back in the cabin. Even with the lake below us and a cool breeze sneaking through the windows, it was hot inside. He was sleeping shirtless and without covers. Boxers only. I decided to take life by the balls, but in only the most loving of ways. He woke smiling and we stayed close and naked the rest of the night.

  Chapter 13

  Wednesday came early to the dock. Nelson was up before the sun and painting when the first light bruised the east. Uncle Orson was up and banging around doing chores he had put off with guests. Dad helped him by netting out the dead minnows from the live-bait well and spreading coffee grounds over the two worm beds. Uncle Orson replaced missing bumpers on some of the boat slips. That sounds like it might be quiet but it involved nailing sections of old tire to deck planks. At least I wasn’t hungover.

  As much as I love my time on the houseboat and dock, the bathroom is a real limiting factor, especially on a workday. I slipped out and went home long enough to shower and dress for work. I came back to the dock, kissed Dad and Uncle Orson good-bye, and then took Nelson to get his truck out of impound. We agreed to have dinner together at his place. I would be there at six.

  My morning was paperwork. I had to fill out reports and time logs. There were routine cases and dead-end investigations to be summarized and filed. All of the busywork was to keep my hands occupied and allow my mind to process. I always seemed to think best when I had two tasks: one routine or done by rote, the other purely mental. If I’m not thinking about thinking, my brain will sort things out on its own.

  There was a line, I was sure, that lead between Byron Figorelli and the bikers and it somehow passed through Nelson, Johnny Middleton, and finally, Angela. That line was written in whiskey somehow or another.

  I made a call to the agent in charge of liquor control for the Missouri Department of Public Safety in the southwest district. Voice mail. After that I called the City of Branson Finance Department to get information about Moonshines. I got a live person but she had to take a message. A few calls later and I gave up and turned to e-mail. When I had contacted everyone on my list I made my summary report for the sheriff—longhand on a legal pad—and left it on his desk.

  I needed to talk to someone face-t
o-face if not voice-to-voice, and one person I could be reasonably sure of finding was Byron Figorelli. It was a good idea and it worked—almost.

  When I arrived at the parking lot to Moonshines, the big RV was taking up most of the back end. I parked out front but stayed in the car. At the RV’s door was a man wearing a cowboy hat and a black suit with rhinestones and cow-skull appliques. There was something about him that made me think I’d seen him before. I just couldn’t remember where.

  The man in the suit had a look of restrained anger. He had one foot on the asphalt and the other up on the RV’s step, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He was standing firm and giving Figorelli a talking-to, punctuating his remarks with a long finger. I knew from experience that Byron Figorelli didn’t take that kind of interaction well. This time he was taking it and keeping quiet. A couple of times he tried to open his mouth but the other man just kept talking and pointing. When it was over, the shiny cowboy went to a car and drove away quickly. When I approached the door of the RV, Figorelli and Cardo were just coming out and locking the door behind them.

  “Who’s your fancy friend?” I asked.

  “Hey, look who it is,” Figorelli said, nudging Jimmy Cardo, who still had the key in the lock. “It’s the dyke with the big stick.”

  Cardo smiled without mirth. It was an expression meant to insult and it worked. But I kept my cool.

  “No answer for me, then?” I tried again.

  “What can I say.” He shrugged his huge shoulders. “You’re just not asking very interesting questions.

  “Interesting, huh? Would it be interesting to talk some more about Johnny Middleton?”

  “He was a drug-addicted redneck creep that thought he was somebody. What’s interesting about that?”

  “Is that all?”

  “No.” Figorelli held out his hand and Cardo gave him the key. He pocketed it, then said, “Johnny was a one-hundred-percent douche bag. You want to know anything more?”

  “You always do business with douche bags?”