A Living Grave

by Robert E. Dunn

  After another handful of aspirin for the throbbing Owens had given me, I went home to pick up a few things. On the way I called Daddy. He didn’t answer. I called Uncle Orson on the shop line and Clare picked up.

  “Sounds like you have a new summer job,” I told him.

  “Just helping out,” he said. “And selling some—”

  “Really, Clare. The less I know, the better.”

  “Worms,” he finished. Then he hollered across the room and into the phone: “Orson. It’s the Hurricane.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said but I was speaking to the air.

  The phone rattled on the far end, sounding like it had been thrown and dropped, then Uncle Orson was on the line.

  “Hey kid.”

  “Have you talked to Daddy?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “He’s not picking up. Do you think he’s all right?”

  “I think he’s just busy,” he said. Then his tone changed to conspiratorial as he asked, “You have something to tell him?”

  At first I tried to sigh it away like he was being silly, but Orson didn’t let up. He didn’t talk, either. Silence spoke his expectation.

  I said, “Yes,” and I was amazed to hear the joy in my voice.

  “Don’t tell me,” Orson jumped in. “Not officially. I’ll wait until after you tell your dad. He’ll be pretty happy, though, I’m telling you.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Orson, I’m glad. We’ll come see you soon.”

  After hanging up the cell I rolled the windows down and listened to the tires on the road and the songs in my head. I should have been listening for the next spin of fortune’s wheel.

  There was something that I had read in a book about a girl with cancer. She talked about patients having that last good day. The final day when they feel good and strong and the world holds promise. After that comes a final fall into one long, final tomorrow. The thing about the last good day, she wrote, was you never knew until the long tomorrow that the good day had been lived.

  Chapter 21

  All the way back to Nelson’s place I was still singing cheerful songs. The last couple of miles, though, the thoughts behind the tunes began to turn decidedly naughty.

  I hope he has the strength for more of what we had for lunch.

  Those thoughts were derailed by the sight of a strange car in the drive. It was sleek, black, and expensive looking. As soon as I stepped out of the truck I could hear loud voices coming through the open windows. Nelson sounded angry. Byron Figorelli sounded desperate.

  “You got no idea what kind of shit storm is coming down the pipe on this,” Figorelli said.

  “I’m ready for it,” Nelson told him. “No. Screw that. I want it. I want your best shot because I’m ready to dance.”

  “You ain’t ready for this, you stupid fuck. Nobody is. You’re messing with money and people that don’t give it up. Worse than that, you’re putting me in the middle. Same place you put Johnny.”

  That’s when I walked in.

  “Is that a threat?” I asked as soon as the door was open.

  Figorelli looked like he was going to spit a bad taste from his mouth. He looked at me, then he looked back at Nelson.

  “You can fuckin’ bet this ain’t over,” he said, then jabbed his fat finger like he was marking something in the air between them. “It’s just gettin’ started.” He turned back to me and took a calming breath as he ran his hand over his fading hair. “Only punks make threats. I ain’t no punk.”

  “Which one of us are you trying to convince?” I asked him.

  “You’re kind of a tough broad, ain’t you? But I asked around. It wasn’t always that way.”

  It took a moment for his meaning to sink in. Nelson understood instantly. He rushed forward with his arms out like he was going to grab Figorelli by the neck.

  “You son of—” It was as far as he got. With surprising speed Figorelli turned, using his bulk and his powerful arm to punch into Nelson’s gut. It made an awful sound like a locomotive hitting a cow. Nelson went down in a pained outrush of breath and a spray of fresh, red blood.

  Seemingly at the same time, as if he had expected it, my weapon came out and Figorelli’s hands went up.

  “Just let one of your chins wiggle,” I said. “Give me an excuse.”

  He smiled. “You think I’d still be here if I ever gave a cop an excuse?”

  We stayed like that for too long, gazes locked, listening to Nelson gasping, his lungs clawing for breath on the floor. Finally I twitched the gun in my hands. pointing toward the door.

  “Get out of here,” I told Figorelli.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me that we’ll finish this later?” he asked, already moving.

  “Wouldn’t that be a threat?”

  He didn’t answer and I didn’t wait to get on the floor beside Nelson. His breath was coming back and he was using it in a kind of wheezing laugh.

  “I don’t know what you have to laugh about,” I said.

  “I—” he said then gasped some air. “I—” Gasp. Laugh. “I—I keep—I keep getting my ass . . . kicked.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “That’s funny stuff.”

  I wet a cloth in the kitchen and cleaned up the spots of blood on Nelson’s face. There was more than I would have expected.

  “What’s the story with the blood?” I asked. “You said you were getting better.”

  “A little better every day but not overnight,” he said, watching my face as I cleaned his. “What a woman.”

  “Don’t think I can be distracted that easily. What was all that about, anyway?”

  “Same shit, different day.”

  “I think you were purposely trying to antagonize him. These people can be dangerous.”

  “You’re dangerous,” he said.

  That stopped me and I really looked hard into his eyes when I asked, “What’s that mean?”

  “You do things to my heart.”

  There was no holding back the laugh. I don’t guess his feelings were too hurt because he joined in and pulled me down onto the floor with him. He tried to kiss me but I was laughing too hard and pushed his face away.

  “See?” he said. “Now you’re breaking my heart.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your heart,” I told him as I got to my feet and offered my hand to help him up. “It’s your head I’m not so sure about.”

  Once on his feet, Nelson took a moment to straighten out and stretch, then he said, “I have something for you.” He pointed at the big easel in the corner.

  There was a small painting there. It was a colorful forest scene with dapples of sunlight through green leaves and shadowed trunks. It would have been lovely except for the figure in the center. Nelson had painted a black and ragged-looking Leech who appeared to be striding through the wood with an evil purpose.

  “Why?” was all I could say.

  “I thought it might help you reach the girl. The one you told me about. If you give it to her—”

  I cut him off with a kiss. It was warm and loving. I was grateful for his thoughtfulness, and the fact he’d taken an interest in someone who was important to me but he’d never met. After that, I kissed him again, with something a little more than gratitude. As soon as my motivation shifted, so did his.

  It was just another way he was so much like a new man. The change made me determined to be a new kind of woman to go right along with him. That was how I ended up naked and on the couch again.

  In so many ways, even with words, we said, “I love you.”

  We slept well.

  I slept well. For the first time in so very long I dreamed of summer and color. There was no fear or fading away. Once in the night I woke. Something had changed. Sleep, for any veteran who’s been in combat zones, was like that. You sleep through anything routine, but the slightest change will bring you bolting upright. It’s like perimeter watch or hunting: You let your eyes lose focus and see only movement.

  It was N
elson’s breathing that had changed. As I waited in the dark beside him, it caught again, sounding wet and rough for a moment, then evened. All was right with my world and I closed my eyes, finally understanding some of the lessons my father had tried to give me about being happy.

  Choose it, he’d said so many times. Choose to be happy.

  I could hear myself telling him, It’s not that easy.

  You’re right, he would say. Easy is sitting around feeling sad and sorry for yourself. Happy takes work. Did I raise a lazy girl?

  I drifted off again with Nelson’s breathing and Daddy’s wise words in my head.

  * * *

  The next time I awoke the sun was up and the alarm on my phone was sounding. Nelson was already gone. When I shut off my phone I noticed that the case was gone from his pillow. On the pillow were still wet red-brown stains where blood had soaked through.

  His breathing.

  We needed to have a long, hard talk about his health. I had been meaning to but avoiding it at the same time. Trying to run toward happiness and away from the darkness at the same time. It was true that at first I was hiding my head in the warm embrace of ignorance, but yesterday was like a miracle. He was the man you saw in his eyes. Maybe I just didn’t want to curse the light and blow out the candle.

  Nelson came into the room with coffee and a grin. Nothing else, though. He was still completely naked.

  “Morning,” he said with the kind of cocky smile that speaks of the best kind of pride you can see in a lover’s face.

  I wasn’t buying it.

  “There was blood on your pillow. You were trying to hide it.”

  The smile flickered but he put it into the coffee before it collapsed entirely. When he looked back up it wasn’t quite a smile anymore. “Yes,” he said. “That’ll still happen for a bit.”

  “We haven’t talked—”

  “There’s no reason to. Don’t I look better to you? Stronger. Wasn’t I feeling better last night?”

  Cocky.

  He won me over, but not back into bed. He did come into the shower with me. I had to kick him out when he asked if he could do the shaving. I would have never gotten to work.

  * * *

  Nelson’s painting of Leech was wrapped in butcher paper and tied with a string. There is no appropriate festive wrapping paper for a present that is meant to break the ice and get a girl to talk about her friend’s murder. I carried it with me as I walked up to the Owens house. If Carrie was looking out the windows I wanted her to see it, maybe get curious.

  When I had followed up with Marion after arresting Carrie’s father, I was surprised to learn that the girl would remain in the home. Marion said the mother would fight any action, and with the dad out of the house, she’d win. I don’t envy a social worker her job.

  Carrie opened the door before I knocked. She pulled it back just enough to push her face through. The rest of her was draped in a cartoon-character bathrobe that was much too small and all but falling apart. Her legs were bare. On the one foot I could see was a fuzzy animal slipper.

  “You can’t be here when my mom’s gone,” she said.

  “Where is your mother?” I asked.

  “With lawyers. What’s that?” She nodded at the package in my hand.

  “Something for you,” I told her. “A present.”

  “For me?” Carrie thrust her arm through the gap in the door to reach for the picture. When she did, the unbelted robe fell open. Under it was only a pair of stretched and ragged princess panties that should have been considered outgrown years ago.

  “Cover yourself up,” I said.

  Carrie looked at me like I had shouted. She pulled her arm back and clutched the robe for a moment before she tried defiance. “What’s it matter?” she asked. “You’re a girl.” She let the robe open again, then placed her hands on the jutting bones of her small hips. “Mama says boys are the problem. They always want something. If it’s just girls it’s fine.”

  “It’s rude,” I told her before pushing past into the dim house. “People don’t need to see you naked. It’s about respect.”

  “Well, what if I don’t respect you?”

  “Self-respect, Carrie. It’s about respecting yourself.”

  I refused to look at her as long as she was trying to shock me with skin. She tried to hold her ground but I could feel her staring at the gift in my hands. While she worked through things I looked around the front room of the house. It was tidy in a way, but dirty. Like a junk store that took care to arrange odd bits of furniture then never dusted or vacuumed the merchandise. It smelled of mold and moist rot.

  “You can’t be in here without my mama home,” Carrie said.

  When I looked at her the robe was no longer wide open but it wasn’t closed. I shot her a hard look and turned away again.

  “Even a cop?” I asked. “Would she really mind you talking to me?”

  “Mama hates cops. She says they’re just snoops looking in on other people’s business.” She pulled the robe tight. “What’s in the package?”

  That time I smiled when I looked her over. Then I sat on the edge of a chair and said, “First, come here.”

  “We’re not supposed to sit in here. It’s for company, but we don’t have company. Ever.”

  “Is that your father’s rule?”

  Carrie shook her head. “Mama’s rules. They’re all her rules. What are you doing?”

  I had untied the cotton string that wrapped the package and held it out to check the length.

  “Come here,” I said. She came and stood right at my feet. I put the string around her waist and tied it like a belt for her robe. “There. Isn’t that better?” She shrugged with her eyes locked on the open package in my lap. “Okay, time for the present.”

  I lifted the painting from the paper and turned the front around with a little flourish. Carrie’s face lit with the kind of awe usually reserved for miracles. Without making a sound her lips formed the name Leech.

  She took the picture in her hands, staring at it as if she could fall in, then said, “He’s beautiful.”

  I was ready to tell her about who painted it and why. I thought it would make asking some questions easier. But . . . what she said stuck in my mind.

  He’s so beautiful.

  Not the painting. Leech himself.

  The phrase, along with the reverential look on Carrie’s face, set off alarms in my brain.

  This was a bad idea.

  There was something wrong about her reaction. It gave me the feeling that I had just tried to put out a small fire with napalm.

  That was when the door opened and Mrs. Owens came in.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, huffing and dragging out the word you, until it sounded like heyew. The combined effects of accent, cigarettes, and liquor did nothing to hide the hate in her voice.

  Carrie was frozen in place for no more than a heartbeat, then she ran. Without looking back she disappeared into the gloom of the house. I heard her feet moving on stairs, then silence.

  It felt wrong. All of it in so many ways. Somehow I had made things worse. I knew that as surely as I knew the pattern of my own scars. It was the feeling you get when you take the last wrong turn in a place where your skin color marks you as either threat or target. A storm-cloud feeling.

  I stood. Mrs. Owens came away from the door, leaving it open behind her. She got up in my face close enough that I could smell the booze on her breath. She wasn’t drunk, though. I didn’t think so, anyway. That judgment could have been colored by my own guilt about drinking and control. It would have been easier if she was obviously drunk. I would have had reason to take Carrie. I would have called Marion and gotten her there.

  “What were you trying to do to my daughter?” Mrs. Owens’s question dripped with disgust at its own accusation.

  It was a shocking suggestion. Another wrong heaped on the pile of what I was feeling at the moment.

  “I just needed to ask Carrie some ques
tions—”

  “My lawyer says you can’t without me or him there.”

  “That’s right, but—”

  “Get out.”

  “Ma’ am—”

  “Get out,” she said again in a voice that had gone painfully flat.

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  “Her daddy’s gone,” she said, pointing at Carrie. “And my Riley won’t come around. You’ve ruined it all. Get out.”

  I left. With me I took the feeling of spiders dancing on my skin. A thousand tiny legs tapping out a Morse-code warning. My only defense for leaving was that I didn’t understand.

  Chapter 22

  I called Marion and she said she would visit Carrie and her mother that afternoon to check on things. It wasn’t perfect but it was better than nothing. While we talked I tried to explain my feelings. There were no words. There should be. There should be a word for certainty of danger without reason or genuine knowledge. Faith came to mind, but it didn’t fit. I didn’t just have faith that I had blundered and made a bad situation worse. I knew the way you know the threat of a snarling dog.

  I did everything I legally could and I did it right. After I talked with Marion, who was the girl’s advocate and caseworker, I went to the station and had a talk with the sheriff. He didn’t complain or tell me I was being foolish. A unit was parked at the end of the street in the same spot where I had first encountered Carrie and Danny. Then he thanked me for the flowers.

  “She liked them?” I asked.

  “She loved them,” he said. “Wildflowers are her favorite. Getting them meant a lot.” His eyes welled and reddened. His big hands were shaking slightly.

  “Something’s happened,” I said. “The lumpectomy?”

  “It’s small,” he said. “We caught it early, we thought. We—I—I goddamn well thought it was going to be fine. Early is good, you think. Small is the motherfucking best case, isn’t it?”