A Hole in the Ground Owned by a Liar

by Daniel Pyne

  Grant jumped off the hood of the car, ran to the driver’s side, got in, gunned the engine, popped the clutch, and was already halfway down the street by the time Lorraine appeared on the front porch of her house, discontented but not surprised.

  Lee was at the microphone on the graduation rostrum when he saw what he was sure was Grant’s Camaro speeding up Highway 74 toward Bergin Park and the interstate. A smear of black against green. He rubbed his finger where his wedding ring had always been and continued, “And so I am very happy to announce that the winner of this year’s Evergreen High School Weyerhauser Paul Bunyan Woodworker of the Year Scholarship—”

  A cherry bomb firecracker arced from the sea of black square hats and backward, over the howling graduates, and exploded near the boxes of diplomas with a deafening boom. Girls shrieked, boys laughed, the parents in the bleachers clicked tongues, and Lee forged ahead:

  “The Woodworker of the Year Scholarship goes to Ben Culhein, along with a $200 gift certificate from A&A Auto Parts.”

  There was polite applause from the parents, and a chorus of mocking “woot-woot-woot” from a section of boys who, though they did not know it yet, would not be receiving diplomas, just a blank card that read: FAILED TO MATRICULATE, and the principal’s private phone number for the parents who, because mail had been intercepted and messages erased, would discover this unfortunate fact after the ceremony was over. An awkward, large-limbed senior boy who still wore orthodontic braces, Ben Culhein rose in the back row and tried to make his way to the front through a gauntlet of jostling friends.

  “Ben’s senior project, in case you were curious,” Lee told the audience, “was a chest of drawers on the front of which he hand-carved an original woodland scene of native Rocky Mountain wildlife.” None of which, Lee neglected to add aloud, looked like any earthly organism.

  The Camaro was long gone. Ben Culhein thumped up onto the stage, abashed, and Lee handed him a certificate and shook his hand. Ben had black sports antiglare patches under each eye, marked with New Testament verse numbers. He looked genuinely thrilled. There was no recipient of the Lockheed-Martin Achievement in Physics Award this year, so Lee turned away and sat down, letting the scattered applause take Ben back into the gallery of his classmates. Lee settled into his folding chair next to Mr. Harounian, who murmured:

  “No Lockheed-Martin?”

  “No. Not this year.”

  “Estos niños no tienen ninguna ambición,” Harounian scowled.

  “Micky Jacobson has the grades, but he punted the SAT II test, and Lockheed-Martin has that baseline minimum score you gotta hit or forgetaboutit.”

  “Cry me a river,” Harounian said.

  Lee just nodded and wondered where Grant was going.

  Some guys just can’t commit!

  Rayna was behind the counter reading a fairly recent edition of Cosmo when Grant walked into her General Store an hour later.

  And some guys will commit but don’t think it means the same thing that you do. Make him talk! Make it part of your sexy-time. Communicate. But don’t give ultimatums, unless you’re prepared for both possible answers to the question!

  “Hey.”

  Rayna did not look up.

  “Do your pupils dilate when you’re getting ready to dump a girlfriend?” she asked him.

  “What?”

  Rayna showed him the magazine. Some airbrush perfect and posed brunette supermodel with roiling lips gazed fiery out from the cover, the tip of her fuchsia tongue between her teeth, as if thoughtful or something.

  How to Break Up without Breaking Up.

  Reading His Body Language.

  Ten Secret Sex Techniques to Keep Him Faithful.

  Plus: Cosmetic Surgery—When Is Too Early?

  “I don’t know. I’ve never watched my eyes when I’ve done it. Not that I’ve done it all that much. I might be interested in some of those ten techniques, though,” he said.

  Rayna put the magazine back in the rack and looked up into his eyes coolly. Grant saw that she knew he had done it, disappointed his girlfriends and lovers, many, many times, and that it didn’t scare her. Grant asked her if she knew anything about shotguns, and moments later she was sighting down the double barrels of the Remington Spartan 310 Grant had liberated from the Lock’n Go storage unit in Denver. She asked if he was going hunting.

  “No.”

  “Skeet?”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Rayna didn’t even smile. Grant had reached for a kind of flimsy automatic flirty wit that even he knew, the moment it came out of his mouth, was not going to fly here. It usually worked on cocktail waitresses and women on the rebound, in bars, generally, after eleven-thirty, probably in both cases because of inattention. With Rayna it was more than a waste of time; it felt like an admission of weakness. Grant wondered why he even cared.

  “Do you know anything about shotguns?” Rayna asked him.

  “Not really.”

  “Well this one’s pretty nice: walnut stock, automatic ejectors, and a ventilated barrel rib. See here? It uses screw-in choke tubes. People usually buy it to hunt fowl or shoot clay targets.”

  “Sure. That’s a good idea.”

  “Mostly because you don’t have to be very good at aiming,” Rayna added.

  “Ah.”

  Rayna stared at him again, in a way that ordinarily would not have made Grant so uncomfortable.

  “What?”

  “I have to ask myself the question, though: Who sold a shotgun to a convicted felon?”

  Grant told her about the trip to the storage unit foreclosure auction, the successful bid, the serendipity of finding something of value that could justify his and Lee’s three-hundred-dollar wager, pointing out that as such, the shotgun could be construed to be Lee’s and, furthermore, the shells Grant wanted her to sell him for it were a surprise for his brother, who, now that you mention it, had got a serious hankering for hunting skeet or whatever.

  “Lee?” She looked doubtful.

  “I had to bring the gun so you could sell me the right bullets,” Grant said.

  “Shells.”

  “Yeah.”

  For a while, Rayna just studied him again. Grant never minded women staring at him.

  “What are you really up to?” she asked.

  “You were lying about not liking the Camaro, weren’t you?” He looked right through her. Rayna shivered. Grant thought: Okay. Here we go.

  “Yes. A little.”

  “Lying a little or only liked it a little?”

  Rayna shrugged, noncommittal. “I don’t think I can sell you shotgun shells,” she said.

  “What does your magazine say about good girls and bad cars?”

  “Wear a Hooters T-shirt and learn about drifting,” Rayna said. “And that there’s usually not enough room in the backseat for anything constructive from the feminine point of view.”

  “Depends on the girl, I guess,” Grant said.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Rayna demurred. There was still the question of a felon buying ammunition for a weapon he wasn’t supposed to possess, she pointed out.

  “Well,” Grant said, “I definitely can’t buy or own a handgun, but a rifle, well, and I think the NRA would support me on this, a recreational rifle, or target shotgun, if you will, would be my God-given right as an American, albeit one who had run afoul of some liberal, penny-ass laws. And as for the shotgun shells, hell, that doesn’t even factor into the Second Amendment or any federal restrictions I’m aware of. I could be buying them for some craft projects I’m doing. Or decorations on a birthday cake for my brother.”

  Rayna gave back the shotgun. Their hands touched. Rayna shivered again and put both her hands in her pockets.

  “Can I buy singles? Or do they come in a box?”

  “I really, really like your brother,” Rayna said.

  Grant smiled and told her that he did, too. Five minutes later, he walked out with the gun and a box of shells and a nice chamois-cloth cove
r that Rayna found under the counter, which Grant thought would come in handy since he only planned on using the shotgun once.

  The stadium at Evergreen High School was in twilight shadow and completely empty except for the chairs, which Lee and a few of his vocational-education kids were folding and stacking on carts to be pulled back into storage until next year’s commencement when, from the far side of the field, a couple of nut-brown men in cowboy-cut suits came marching toward Lee, and while he thought he recognized them, he could not say from where. They’d arrived in a gaudy red helicopter that spiraled down out through blades of sunset that broke over the jagged shoulder of Mount Evans after the ceremony ended and the last parents were clearing the stands. A couple of maintenance staff serving as parking lot ushers tried to wave them off, but the chopper landed anyway, on the grassy practice fields. Lee watched the two men step out before the blades had even settled and duckwalk with heads lowered to confer with the parking guys; money changed hands, like a tip to a valet that keeps your Mercedes at the curb of that fancy restaurant where everybody can see it, and you can just walk out after dinner and get in without waiting with the hoi polloi.

  And, as anyone would, Lee thought: Whoa.

  They looked vaguely familiar. He’d seen them before, somewhere: the dead eyes, that close-cropped black hair full of some shiny product that caught the dim gleam of the waxing gibbous moon, but when they opened their mouths to speak it was with the cut, slightly lengthened dipthongs of the Wyoming plains.

  “Mr. Garrison?” The taller one extended his hand.

  “That’s me.”

  “Saul Slocumb, sir. My brother, Paul.”

  The smaller one smiled. Perfect teeth. His eyes aimed at a spot just off Lee’s face. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Your names rhyme,” Lee said.

  “Poetry of life.”

  Paul glanced back at the track and worried, “Are there chemicals on this grass?”

  Lee didn’t know.

  “We’ve come to discover that you’re in the mining business,” Saul Slocumb explained. “Coincidentally, so are we.”

  “Wyoming, sadly to say it.” Paul frowned.

  “Copper and other useful minerals.”

  Lee told them he owned just one mine and wondered how they knew, but the Slocumbs had a script and stuck to it.

  “Our daddy started with one incursion just outside Jakarta,” Paul drawled. “A mere sliver of opportunity that played out beyond his wildest expectations over the next ten years and provided him with capital and resources to explore and develop over five thousand subsequent claims worldwide with a net yield of several hundred million dollars.”

  “Somehow Wyoming was where we landed,” Saul added. “Cold and windy. God bless it.”

  “Or not,” Paul said.

  Lee allowed a respectful moment to contemplate this, then asked how he could help them.

  “Long story short, sir? We have recently procured the Silver Bell, Hawthorne, and Granny King Patent Mines and related claims directly northeast of and due east of the Blue Lark—”

  “Which is my mine,” Lee noted.

  “Yes sir, it is indeed.”

  Lee told them that he thought all those other claims were just abandoned, causing Saul to shake his head gravely. “No sir, no, they are part of the Slocumbs’ growing Colorado portfolio.”

  “The Clear Creek County Clerk,” Saul said, “has hinted that you and your partners might—”

  Lee cut him short. “Partners?” He thought aloud, “Doug? You were talking to Doug Deere?”

  “Douglas Deere, yep, that’s the gentleman,” Paul said. “Long-winded to the nth. We thought of tag-teaming the listening part since he appeared capable of talking the stick out of a corn dog. Barely credible capacity for the microbrew they call Fat Tire, however.”

  Saul, peevish at the interruption, pressed on. “Mr. Deere said you might conceivably entertain a cash offer for the Blue Lark Mine, so that we could consolidate our Argentine Pass holdings and exploit them in the most efficient way.”

  “Doug doesn’t own the mine.”

  The ensuing, awkward, and pointedly malevolent (or was it just Lee’s imagination?) silence was spoiled by a clatter of folding chairs as a badly stacked group fell off the roller cart that Lee’s students were maneuvering along the track. They looked sheepishly over at Lee. Saul Slocumb slid his fingers into the waistband of his pants as if holstering weapons. Paul Slocumb stared anxiously down at the grass under his feet and said, “You know, if there’s DDT on this bluegrass, I’d prefer to stand over on that track composite.”

  “Doesn’t own the mine,” his brother echoed.

  It was the first time Lee had seriously contemplated the possibility of a real strike rather than merely the diaphanous dream of one. The finding, the digging, the speculating, the calculating, the bonhomie of the common cause (although with Doug and Barb there was always a concomitant pall of uncertainty, as in, what-have-I-got-myself-into-with-these-people?), and now Doug had been, where, at some random bar talking it up and fielding offers from strangers? There was, again, a faint whiff of hazard to the Slocumbs. Maybe it was the aerial arrival; maybe it was just the incongruity of their appearance and their accents, Wyoming by way of Waziristan. Lee half expected them to pull out long talwars now and threaten him.

  Threat. That was what he sensed, however nebulous, lurking behind the smiles and the civility.

  A threat. Of what?

  “Full disclosure: We had several conversations with the previous owner, Mr. G. Elmore Bunn, about selling us the property, but only the preliminaries, you understand, hopeful hypotheticals, nothing, we admit, formal or binding or in writing, but imagine our complete astonishment to discover that he had sold the mine on eBay.”

  Lee said he’d not known the man’s name.

  “It’s not important,” Saul agreed.

  “We’re happy for him,” Paul chimed in. “And for you. Your good fortune, we mean. Because we think you’ll find our offer generous. Can we, um . . . ” He gestured away from the grass.

  “You don’t really believe there’s any gold up there?” Lee asked as they walked toward the track.

  “Why wouldn’t there be?”

  “Gold and silver,” the other brother said. “I can tell you this, we’ve had the Granny King assayed, and the numbers were promising. I learned, from your Mr. Deere, the prior owner of your claim had done likewise. We’ve seen the paperwork. They’re not, by any means, sir, played out. Oh no.”

  “Perhaps it’s just a mix-up,” Saul continued on his stubborn bearing, “but, as we said, your friend, Mr. Deere, the County Clerk, inferred that you and your partners would be open to—”

  “Look,” Lee interrupted. “Doug owns a share of any profit we might see from this mining operation we’re playing at. But . . . ‘Blue Lark.’ Get it? I mean, the name says it all, as far as I’m concerned, a blue lark, and the land itself belongs to me. It’s a hobby, and it wouldn’t matter to me if we spent the next ten years up there hacking away at the rock for nothing. And it’s not for sale, and I’m sorry if you came all this way on the word of a friend who has spoken out of turn.”

  Paul began violently stamping his feet on the track to shake the chemicals off them. Bam! Bam! Bam!, all Rumpelstiltskin.

  Saul shook his head like a dog as if something had entered his ears that didn’t belong there. “How can it not matter?” he asked. “How can this man go in the mountain without some expectation of reward? No, you are lying.”

  “I’m not. I’m sorry.”

  “There is nothing to be sorry about,” Saul said, “unless you are lying, sir. That’s the only explanation. There is a Sufi story about a man who cut down a tree. Do you know Sufism? We are not adherents, mind you.”

  “We’re Presbyterians,” Paul allowed.

  “But, there is a story,” Saul continued, “where this man, he cuts down a tree. And a Sufi passing by, who saw him do it, crosses to where the tree has falle
n and observes how the branches and leaves still look so fresh, you know—full of sap and happy because this tree does not realize that it has been cut down. The woodsman shrugs and tells the Sufi that while this may be true, while the tree may be ignorant of the damage it has suffered, it will know enough in due time. Upon which the Sufi bursts into delighted laughter and says, ‘Yes, and meanwhile you cannot reason with it!’”

  Lee smiled politely and tried to figure out what Saul was getting at. Was Lee the tree? Or the woodsman?

  “It’s just a story,” Paul told him.

  Dark had dropped on the valley with its typical lack of ceremony, and the sky glowed incandescent shades of blue and purple, impossibly dark and bright. “There’s another story,” Paul said, “it’s longer, but here, I’ll ruin the ending to make my point clear: A tiger offers a man three rupees for his ham sandwich. The man refuses so the tiger eats them both.”

  “That’s a good story,” Saul said.

  There was an edge to their smiles.

  “So then.” Saul stared at Lee intently.

  “No,” Lee said.

  With disbelief bordering on outrage, Saul expressed his profound disappointment that Lee didn’t even want to hear their offer.

  “No,” Lee said. “No thanks.”

  Rayna’s eyes opened. Awakened by a subterranean boom. Or did she dream it?

  She had a strong craving for a cigarette.

  Sitting up, then, she heard a second dull boom, not very loud, but it thumped in her chest like a low bass note or drumbeat, and she got up and went to the window and peered out into the darkness, not so much expecting to see anything; she just needed to look.

  Had it come from down-valley or on the mountain?

  Then again: boom. That made three. Then silence.

  The noise scared her. Rayna was not easily scared. Opening the window, she felt a cold breeze and heard the hushed shudder of wind sifting through the pine trees, the noise of a million needles trembling at the end of fluid, swaying branches like an ocean; it rolled in waves. She never got used to it. The moon was low, and the wash of stars across the sky was dizzying. The cold caused her to tremble. She wanted a cigarette and knew that there was a whole new carton of Kents in the storeroom, delivered yesterday, fresh sweet tobacco that she could fire up and enjoy, as long as she ignored the horrifying FDA warning pictures on the pack. She stood at the window for a long time, listening, watching, waiting, but there was no more disruption. The night held her.