Rotters

by Daniel Kraus

  “One, two, three, and four! Nice! Nice! Keep it going, ladies!”

  Giggles erupted around me. I located Stettlemeyer and she was already wincing at her gaffe. I returned my eyes to the basketball hoop: Keep jumping, keep jumping. But I sensed Stettlemeyer’s approach and felt her tap on my shoulder. Go away, I willed her. Can’t you tell what I’ve done? Can’t anyone?

  “Name!” she hollered as quietly as she could.

  I halted midjump. My body parts jounced; I felt humiliatingly male. At least forty feet were pounding down in near unison. With the gymnasium echo, it sounded more like one hundred. Thundering over everything were the ripping guitar solos and computerized backbeats of superhits of the eighties. I should not have been able to hear anything over this commotion, much less a whisper, but perhaps my hours spent on alert in a desolate cemetery had sharpened my senses. Hissing through the ranks of female bodies came Stettlemeyer’s answer: my name, my true name, the only one I would ever have at Bloughton High.

  26.

  HARNETT CAME HOME AROUND eight, long after I had eaten a wholesome dinner of peanut butter and crackers. He made as much noise as possible tossing his gear into his room and tromping around, and I shot him glares between every math problem. Soon he was at my side, throwing wide cabinets in search of food. I smirked; earlier I had gone through the same futile hunt. Eventually I heard the thud of peanut butter, the jangle of a knife, the rustling of the bag of crackers. Bon appétit, I thought.

  Instead of slumping into his rocking chair, he took a seat across from me on a stack of newspapers. I rolled my eyes and returned to my math. Despite my many absences, I was threatening to get an A in calculus, and that was exactly what it felt like—I was making a threat against Coach Winter’s insulting presumptions. The fact that he was the football coach made it all the sweeter.

  Harnett began smacking his peanut butter and crackers. I gritted my teeth and faced my numbers again. Functions f, g, and h. The computation of the squeeze principal. Negative one is less than or equal to sine x is less than or equal to positive one. It was no use—his indulgent, expectant gaze weighed too heavy.

  “Is there a problem, Harnett?”

  “What’re you working so hard on?” he said through a mouthful.

  “Calculus.”

  “Calculus,” he said, swallowing. “That’s not going to be much help.”

  “It’s going to be a big help to my grade point average, so if you don’t mind?”

  He stuck a cracker into his mouth and ground it thoughtfully. “Now, geometry, we might find some use for that. When will you be taking geometry?”

  I tapped my pencil in irritation. “Try two years ago.”

  He nodded slowly. “That an important assignment?”

  I shook my head in wonderment. “What? Who cares? You don’t care. Why are you asking me this?”

  “Curious,” he said, picking at his teeth with a pinkie. “That an important assignment?”

  I slammed down my pencil. The cardboard table did not give it the resonance I would have liked. “I don’t know. Yes? I guess so? I’ve missed so many classes now that every assignment is important.”

  “When’s it due?” he asked.

  I almost laughed at the absurdity. Since when did Ken Harnett become father of the year? “For your information, it’s due tomorrow morning. Second period. And if it’s not handed in precisely at the start of class second period, do you know what’s going to happen?”

  He cocked his head in interest—a gesture I did not trust.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, Harnett,” I said, lacing my fingers in mock patience. “There are only so many assignments in a given semester, and each assignment is worth a certain percentage of the final grade. Each time you are late, another certain percentage is taken off the grade for that assignment, no matter how well you do. And eventually, you end up like me, looking at the last eight weeks of class with absolutely no room for error.” I waved my paper. “Even if I nail this—which is more and more unlikely the longer you keep asking me questions—even if I nail it, if I turn it in any later than the start of second period tomorrow, the percentage taken off would make it mathematically impossible for me to get an A in the class.”

  “And this is important to you.”

  “What, getting an A?”

  He nodded again.

  I gave him a good hard stare. His eyes might have looked like mine, but the brain behind them could not have been more dissimilar. Good grades—no, perfect grades—were the only possible escape route from Bloughton. It had been my mother’s dream, and mine. I couldn’t expect the Garbageman to understand.

  “Yes.” I snatched up my pencil. “It’s important to me.”

  He planted his hands on his knees and gave me a sharp nod as if to say “Good enough,” and then rose and crossed the room, dropped himself into his chair, reached for the new stack of newspapers, and once again pretended that I didn’t exist.

  27.

  IT WAS A TRICK. When I awoke, my calculus book was on the floor next to me—not where I had left it. I sat up and squinted at my watch. It was just past five-thirty. Harnett’s bedroom door was open and the fire had long ago died. I pulled on some jeans and a hoodie, tiptoed across the cold floor, and peeked out the front door. The truck was still parked. Where was he?

  The dewy grass darkened my shoes as I walked through the glossy violet of predawn. As I moved past the garden, I made out Harnett standing in the yard between the cabin and the Big Chief River, his right hand curled around Grinder.

  The hole I had dug had been filled in. Indeed, its gentle rise looked uncomfortably like a grave. Harnett stood a good twenty feet to the west. It was too dark to see his face. I ventured another few steps. The water sounded like grinding glass.

  “When you dig, time is against you,” he said from the darkness. “Time is always against you.”

  Something about his tone made me think of my mother, his Val, and how time had thwarted all three of us.

  “But you dig anyway,” he continued. “Because there’s something you want at the bottom of a hole, only it’s not a hole yet, because you haven’t dug it. Got it? Now. The Merriman grave up in Lancet County is just sitting there, waiting for us. We’re losing time and money every day. So let’s not drag this out.” With alarming quickness he drove Grinder into the earth. It made a sound like a sheathed sword and stuck there, wobbling gently against the dark sparkles of the river.

  I squinted and yawned. Obviously the man was nuts. It was too dark to see much of anything aside from my breath. I hid my hands inside my sweatshirt and crossed my arms tight against my chest. “Can’t we do this later?”

  “Start when you want.” He shrugged in silhouette. “But you’ve got a couple hours till school and, like I said, there’s something you want at the bottom of a hole.”

  He left Grinder and walked past me without a word. I shivered and looked at the shovel. She still vibrated. Like a divining rod, I thought—and then it hit me. My calculus homework. Those questions about due dates.

  The asshole had buried my homework.

  “You gotta be kidding me!” I cried, clutching my head in panic. I whirled around and caught a glimpse of Harnett disappearing around the cabin’s corner. “Are you crazy? Wait! Wait!”

  In the distance, I heard the front door open and close. The bastard was going back to bed. I was motionless for a moment, resolved to freak out but uncertain of the best way to do it, and then sprinted toward Grinder and wrapped both hands around her handle. The ground below was black and wet, barely visible.

  “How deep?” I shouted at the cabin. I strained to hear past my heaving breath and pounding heart, but knew it was futile—there would be no response from my father. “Oh fuck,” I said, twisting the handle between my hands. “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”

  I grabbed Grinder and pulled. She unstuck from the moist dirt and hummed in my hands. My mind was spinning. I had asked for this. I ha
d insisted that he teach me. This was what I got for allying myself with a maniac. I kicked aside the more delicate tools of a backsaw and spade. Harnett’s rules could go to hell. I had no time for fussiness and no stake in anything beyond rescuing my calculus.

  The digging hurt, but not as much as before. Four feet later I struck something and instantly dropped to my knees. I tore through the mud with my fingers and after five minutes of grappling dislodged a black garbage bag wrapped around something hard. I reached into the bag and withdrew a flat piece of wood, apparently inserted by Harnett so that Grinder did not damage the homework tucked beneath. I removed the papers and shook them in a muddy, victorious fist.

  Sunlight warned me that first period was just minutes away. Fine, I’d miss first period, but not the second, not if I ran. I examined the mud slopped across my clothes and skin, the wet soil oozing from my shoes. Maybe at school I could change into my gym clothes. The idea was so inspired that I felt a tuft of grass fall from my cheek when I grinned.

  One hour later, we passed our calculus assignments up the row and I watched as Coach Winter flipped through them. It was obvious when he reached mine—from the back of the room I could see the muddy smears—and for a moment I thought he was going to reject it on standards of cleanliness. He glanced at me over the top of the papers, taking in the soiled shirt and jeans I had not found time to swap with my gym equivalents, and decided that berating me wasn’t worth the effort. He went back to shuffling assignments and I felt it for the second time that morning: victory.

  Good luck continued at Fun and Games, which kicked off with an activity that was neither. Akin to a sack race, it involved standing back to back with a partner, locking elbows, and attempting to execute a number of ridiculous tasks, like picking up kick balls and ducking beneath a limbo bar.

  Partners were switched up twice and both times I feared getting paired with Celeste or Foley. Instead my first partner was Heidi Goehring, an honor roll student with a questionable bowl cut but cool, chunky glasses. From what I had gleaned, Heidi kept her nose out of trouble and in the books; she would nevertheless appreciate the social darts that would fly her way if she mishandled her moments with Crotch. But she hesitated for only a moment before smiling and offering her elbows. We tripped around the gym like idiots, laughing a little more freely each time we ended up on our asses, and though the whole thing was too stressful to qualify as enjoyable, there were moments when I forgot everything except that only two thin pieces of fabric separated me from a real live girl. I fantasized that, for those brief moments, Heidi Goehring might have shared similar thoughts. When we finally unlocked and rubbed feeling back into our muscles, she returned my embarrassed smile. Unable to hold her gaze, I looked away and saw Celeste across the gym, somehow looking dignified even through this debasement.

  Any residual sensation of contentment vanished once we had adjourned to the locker rooms. Guys gave Woody hell about Celeste, wondering how sore his wrist was getting in her absence. “Guess she’s too busy spending all her time playing fun and games with Crotch here,” Rhino laughed.

  Woody’s glare was ferocious.

  “We’re starting to wonder what kind of crotch you got under there, Crotch,” he snarled.

  I pulled on my pants as quickly as I could. Rhino broke the silence by smacking Woody on the back and joking about how my menstrual cycle would probably align with the girls’ soon, while another guy flapped his wrist and tittered about what fun I’d have trading tampons with all of them. Usually such cracks broke the dark mood, but this time they hounded me back into the gym, where Celeste, Heidi, Foley, and everyone else got to observe the continued slurs. Retribution boiled in Woody’s throat; this was just the beginning of what he had planned for me. When at last the bell rang, the abuse spread through the halls like contagion. After such a victorious morning, it was a crushing reminder that I did not and would not ever belong.

  Ted had cautioned me that I couldn’t miss another practice and still play at Friday’s homecoming game, but compared to the memory of my mother’s take-no-prisoners tone, his warnings were ineffective. When I got home I leaned against Grinder and pretended the river was Lake Michigan and my mom was next to me, her arm angled protectively about my shoulders, her fingernails biting into my arm. Momentous sobs caught in my chest. Harnett could not protect me as she had. I missed her so much.

  He arrived at dusk. After dropping his gear inside, he wandered around the cabin and approached, stopping ten feet away to cross his arms. I tightened my grip on Grinder and considered the dirt at my feet.

  “Don’t start,” I said.

  He shrugged. “It was a terrible hole and you know it.”

  “Don’t fucking start with me, Harnett.” I swung the shovel. Grinder sliced at the hard ground and rang when she hit violently off-center.

  Harnett narrowed his eyes in disapproval. “If you didn’t notice, our cabinets are empty. We need food. We need money. What we need is to get up to Lancet County and do the Merriman grave. But look at you. You’re not even close to ready.”

  I made another frustrated stab with Grinder. Harnett winced at the clang of metal.

  “You don’t know what I’ve been through,” I growled.

  “You had to get up a couple hours early. You had to use a shovel. That qualifies as hard labor?”

  “School!” My voice broke in half.

  He paused. “School.”

  “Yeah, school. The place where I go to get tortured every day? Ever heard of it?”

  His puzzled, almost innocent confusion drove me mad. I brayed and drove Grinder with all my might. The flat surface of the shovel hit square and a great jolt shook through my skeleton. The pain was instant and I backpedaled. Grinder fell into the grass, her wooden handle split into three shards.

  My father sped forward and kneeled. He lifted the broken wood and tenderly rolled it across his palm.

  “Grinder,” he said. “She broke.”

  “It was old,” I said, trying to tamp down the horror. “It was old, it’s not my fault.”

  He peered up at me as if incredulous that I could possess this kind of strength. “I’ve had her for a very long time,” he whispered. “Twenty-six years.”

  I wiped my face with a sleeve. “Well, now you got me.”

  He toyed with the wood for a moment longer, pressing together the edges as if harboring a fantasy of repair. Then his shoulders fell and the pieces dropped to the grass. He wiped his palms.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “Tell you what?”

  He blinked up at me. “School.”

  The river roared.

  I opened my mouth but had no idea what came next.

  He watched me. The setting sun colored him red.

  “It’s hard,” I said. Without the shovel to hold me up I battled collapse. “Every day since I came here. It’s so hard.”

  “You study all the time.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said. “Studying doesn’t matter. That’s not school. That’s something else. That’s … paperwork.”

  “You’re unsatisfied in some way.”

  I laughed once. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. I’m unsatisfied. That’s one way to put it.” I looked out over the golden treetops. “Everyone there is against me. I don’t know why. They do things to me. They embarrass me. You have no idea. You have no idea.” I pressed my eyelids against the tears that wanted to return.

  “Good,” said Harnett.

  I peeked out at him in disbelief.

  “These people at your school.” He shrugged. “They’re not supposed to understand us.”

  “Us?”

  He nodded. “Diggers.”

  I sniffed up the snot the tears had thickened. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  He clasped his hands. “The world is full of pain. Everyone you see there is hurting from it. That principal I had to speak to? And his assistant?”

  “Simmons and Diamond,” I said automatically.


  “They eat pain for breakfast. You can’t stand next to them without expecting it to rub off. You’re unhappy there. I’m not surprised. I don’t think it’s possible to be happy in proximity to such people. I’ve never found it possible. But beneath?” He touched a finger to the ground. “Beneath is a different story. There’s no pain down there. You remember that woman. You sat next to her. You touched her. Her life was pain, too, but down there all that was gone. Remember?”

  I said nothing.

  Harnett fanned a hand through the grass like he was petting an animal. “There are things down there you wouldn’t expect, kid. Solace. A little bit of power. There’s so much to be had down there, and everyone,” he said, waving a hand at the sky, “everyone is reaching up, up.” His caressing fingers became a fist that pounded once upon the dirt. “They’re reaching in the wrong direction.”

  He gathered the splinters of Grinder, the shovel he had used since long before I was born, and stood. We were an arm’s length apart and for just a moment I thought about reaching out.

  “That hole you dug,” he said. “It was a terrible hole.”

  “I didn’t have time.”

  “The hell you didn’t.” He walked away. Near the corner of the cabin, he looked over his shoulder. “It was terrible and you know it.”

  “Okay,” I croaked. “It was terrible.”

  Late that night, as I tossed with nightmares, I thought I heard my father rustling through the forest and the halting sounds of lesser tools digging a hole; and finally, even later, the bone rattle of Grinder’s pieces being tossed into a shallow depression, the great burier buried at last.

  28.

  AND SO THE LESSONS began in earnest. I spent the next night writing a paper for Gottschalk, only to find it five feet under at dawn. Harnett was there, nudging my sleeping body with his toes and thrusting into my hands a brand-new shovel with a gleaming silver blade. The shovel was mine to name, he told me, if and when inspiration struck. When I complained that I had no clue what one was supposed to name a shovel, he told me only that I would know when the time came. He ceased complaining about the Merriman grave in Lancet County; instead he offered me an onion from the garden as he bit into one of his own. I declined. Fifteen minutes later, I dug for my life while he squatted a ways away, staring into the trees and eating.