An Unsettled Grave

by Bernard Schaffer

  The stream of urine trickled to a stop. “What if we hurry?”

  “Why you in such a rush?”

  “Man, I didn’t get to try any of that girl yet. The rest of you got some, but Wombat told me I had to wait.”

  Orange chuckled from inside the shed. “That’s because he knows how crazy your ass get.”

  “Well, I expect to get some the second we get back. You really think they’re not in there partying while we’re out doing this shit?”

  The shed door opened and Orange emerged, saying, “Just get in the goddamn truck. We got a long drive and I’m not listening to you bitch about wanting some white girl the entire time. Faster we get back, faster you get your taste.”

  The truck’s engine started. Ollie leaned out, watching it turn around on the soft grass and glide down the woodland path until it vanished between the trees. Ollie’s teeth clenched together and his eyes flickered with anger. He looked at the cabin’s front door, at the motorcycles parked in front of it, and the covered-up windows hiding whatever was happening to little Hope Pugh inside.

  CHAPTER 20

  Ollie held the bottle of whisky in his hand and waved it as he spoke, knowing his brother’s eyes would follow it. Ben watched the bottle like a serpent following a snake charmer’s flute. Ollie had bought a small bottle, on purpose. Ben sat on his living room couch with his head leaned back against stained pillows, dressed in a filthy tank top and boxer shorts. His hair was matted and greasy.

  “I need your help,” Ollie said, putting the bottle down on the table, close enough to snatch back if Ben tried grabbing it.

  “Let’s open the bottle,” Ben said.

  “I need your help finding a little girl,” Ollie said. “I think I know where she is.”

  “So go get her. After we open the bottle.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Ollie said. “I think she’s been taken. Abducted by those bikers we saw at the beer store. I got a tip they had a hideout out in the game lands, past the Hayes farm. Sure enough, I found it. That’s where they’re keeping her.”

  Ben looked up from the bottle at his brother. His eyes were red and bleary and he kept clenching them together. “Don’t you have other people you can call? Call the Liston cops.”

  “I don’t trust the Liston cops,” Ollie said. “Walt Auburn came to see me that afternoon and told me to try to get along with those biker scumbags. He said there might even be some money in it for me.”

  Ben licked his lips, leaning forward like he might make a grab for the whisky. “How about the State Police? You could call them.”

  “See, that’s the thing,” Ollie said, laying his hand down over the bottle’s cap. “Where the bikers have her isn’t in my jurisdiction. It’s in Walt Auburn’s territory. If I go there, it’s not exactly on the official side of doing business, if you catch my drift. State Police won’t touch that with a ten-foot pole. They’ll notify Auburn, and as soon as he finds out, first thing he’ll do is call those Disgraced assholes.”

  The veins in Ben’s eyes were so thick it looked like they were bleeding. “Then call somebody else,” he said. “What the fuck do I know? This is your shit, Ollie. Just open the bottle.”

  “Don’t you think I tried getting help?” Ollie asked. “I called the FBI and county detectives. Both told me to send an official letter requesting their assistance and they’d see what they could do. I’m not holding my breath waiting for a response.”

  Ben’s hands shivered and he didn’t bother hiding it. He was getting the shakes and the sweats. “What do a bunch of bikers want with some little kid, Ollie?”

  “I heard them talking about it. I went down there and heard one of them saying they were all getting a piece of her, and how he couldn’t wait to get back to get some for himself. You heard about what those maniacs did in My Lai. Hell, they probably got a taste for raping children and now they’ve got another one. I swear, it was all I could do not to kick the door in right there and start shooting.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  Ollie pressed his hands together, leaning them against his forehead. “Because I was afraid if I went in there shooting they’d start shooting and she’d get hurt.”

  Ben stared at him, his eyes dark and vacant. “Is that why?”

  “Yeah, that’s why. What else would it be?”

  “Nothing,” Ben said. “Tell you what. Open that bottle and I’ll tell you what I think we should do.”

  Ollie sighed and twisted the cap to break the seal. He looked at the sink full of dirty dishes and said, “You got any clean glasses around here?”

  Instead of answering, Ben grabbed the bottle from the table and raised it straight to his lips, chugging hard. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

  “Hey, come on,” Ollie said, reaching for the bottle. Ben smacked his brother’s hand away, still drinking as he rocked back on the couch, raising his feet to kick if Ollie was dumb enough to make a second attempt. He drank until the bottle was empty, even wiping up any that spilled down from his lips with his finger and sucking the liquor off that too. He slammed the empty bottle on the coffee table and gasped for air, then sneered at the horrified look on Ollie’s face.

  “It’s your fault for bringing such a small bottle.”

  Ollie was too exhausted to argue. “Look, you had your drink. Now, pay attention. The best way is to come up through the game lands on the Liston side,” he said, drawing a circle for the house and a line for the road on the table with his finger. “We can park close enough to bring whatever gear we need. There’s mountains on that side that look right down over the cabin. We can take up positions and surveil the place for as long as we want.”

  Ben wiped his mouth again, then wiped his hand on his boxer shorts. “Let me get this straight. You think this biker gang took a little girl, and now they’re holding her as their sex slave. You think the local cops are somehow in on it. Now, you want to go there and try to free her, and you want me to come with you as your backup.”

  “That’s right,” Ollie said. “So are you in?”

  Ben laughed. “Hell no, I’m not in. And people say I’m the crazy one?”

  Ollie pushed himself up from the chair to leave.

  “Hang on,” Ben said. “You asked me for my help, so here it is. You ready? Forget the entire thing and go get us another bottle of booze.”

  Ollie stared at him. “Are you serious?”

  “Hell yes, I’m serious. Do you have any idea who these Disgraced assholes are?”

  “I’m not afraid of them!” Ollie shouted.

  “Well you should be,” Ben shouted back. “They’re straight killers, Ollie. Every man in that company was knee deep in the shit, the real shit, not like some fucking secretary. They probably have five hundred kills between them, if not more. You go anywhere near that place and they’ll gut you like a fish.”

  “I don’t give a shit who they were in ’Nam. Over here they’re just another group of outlaw assholes,” Ollie said, jabbing his finger at the badge on his chest. “And I’m not no secretary anymore. I’m the goddamn chief of police and those cocksuckers took a little girl from my town. I won’t stand here and let them just have her. Now are you with me? I’m asking you as your only brother, will you come with me and have my back?”

  Ollie stretched his hand out across the table toward Ben. There was eager pleading in the younger man’s eyes. “What’s this little girl to you? You don’t know her, or her family,” Ben said.

  “I took an oath to protect her, just like everyone else who lives here. You going to take my hand or not?”

  “Listen to me, Ollie. Call the State Police and tell them everything you just told me. Let them handle it. If they call this Walt Auburn asshole, that’s not on you.”

  “I can’t do that,” Ollie said.

  “Just let it go.”

  “I can’t do that!” Ollie repeated himself. His hand was still outstretched, hovering in the air between them. “Me and you, big brother. The Re
in boys. Kicking bad guys in the ass. I need you. What do you say, soldier?”

  Ben looked at the hand, and then up at Ollie. “I’m not a soldier anymore, little brother. I’m just a man who drinks and tries to forget. I say no.”

  Ollie pulled his hand back without another word and turned to the door, pushed it open, and left the house. Ben pushed himself up from the couch and came after him, calling out, “Ollie! Hey, wait. Come on, man. Don’t go doing anything stupid. Ollie!”

  Ollie was already down the steps and pulling the door of his police car open. He looked back at Ben and said, “How old’s your son?”

  Ben’s face contorted. “What?”

  “How old is he?” Ollie asked. “What grade is he in?” When Ben didn’t answer, Ollie pounded his fist on the car’s roof. “You only had to take one look at those biker assholes to remember exactly who they were. You knew the names of the people they served under. You know every single detail about the war, but can’t remember to feed your own kid. I used to think the war fucked you up, Ben, but that’s not true. It just revealed who you really are.”

  “Hey, Ollie?” Ben said, holding up his middle finger. “Do me a favor and go get yourself killed, you moron.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you right back.”

  Ollie slammed the police car door shut and sped off, kicking up a plume of dirt and gravel behind it. Ben stood there, watching the disappearing car, then staring at the empty road, not moving for a long time.

  CHAPTER 21

  Ollie looked at the woods through his windshield. With his head leaned back against the headrest, he listened to the birds and insects through the open car windows on either side. It was a good sound.

  At Long Binh, he’d spend the evenings outside, looking at the tops of the trees through the barbed wire strung along the outer perimeter. Normally, the only sounds he heard were helicopters and gunfire. Explosions in the distance would light up the night sky like fireworks. But sometimes, when it was quiet, which it wasn’t often, but sometimes when it was he could hear the birds and the lizards.

  The only lizard in that part of Vietnam was the tokay gecko, a small spotted creature with large eyes. The birds were Blue-eared Barbets. They were beautiful, with bright green bodies and multicolored heads. The tokay gecko and Blue-eared Barbet each made distinct sounds, often trading calls with one another, until their voices echoed through the jungle.

  One night, Ollie was sitting on the roof of his barracks watching the explosions on the far horizon, listening to the animals, finishing a six-pack left behind after one of the command staff dinners. The window underneath where he was sitting opened and one of the cooks, a black southern soldier on the last month of his tour, poked his head out. “What are you doing sitting out here?” he said, looking up at Ollie.

  “Enjoying the peace and quiet,” Ollie said, holding out a beer.

  The cook climbed up onto the roof and sat next to him, cracking his beer open and taking a long sip. He wiped his mouth, then cocked one ear toward the jungle and scowled. “Oh, man, how can you stand listening to fuck you and the re-ups?”

  Ollie could only hear the birds and lizards, going back and forth, in full chorus. “What are you talking about?”

  “Them birds, the green things, don’t you hear what they’re saying? They’re saying, ‘Re-up! Re-up!’ And the lizards keep saying, ‘Fuck you.’ But they ain’t saying fuck you back to the birds. They saying it to us. They working together, Rein, listen. ‘Re-up. Fuck you! Fuck you. Re-up!’ Goddamn jungle working to convince us all to stay in this motherfucker. Get us all kilt. My last day, I’m gonna catch me a dozen of them bastards and fry them up real good to eat on the plane home.”

  Ollie handed him another beer and the cook slid back down through the window, leaving him alone on the roof. Ollie cracked open another beer and realized it was true. They really were saying, “Re-up” and “Fuck you.” He finished his beer and went back inside.

  He couldn’t remember the cook’s name. They’d played cards together and talked about all the things they’d do when they got home. The women they’d go see. The food they’d eat. How good it would be to get out of the army. They’d exchanged addresses and promised to stay in touch, but they never did. It was like that. People always made a big deal about old soldiers writing each other postcards and finding one another after years apart. Ollie had found that when he got home, he didn’t want to look back, and no one seemed to want to look back at him, either.

  It wasn’t like he was haunted by the war or suffered the same kind of nightmares as his brother, or many of the men he’d known over there. He’d never seen any combat, let alone killed anyone. It was something Ben could see in him as sure as look at him. Something he was lacking. The Disgraced could see it too, Ollie knew. They’d immediately embraced Ben as one of their own, because kind is attracted to kind. They’d treated Ollie like a buffoon for much the same reason. And now, he was going into their lair, facing a den of trained killers, all alone.

  He closed the police car door, opened the trunk, and grabbed the items he’d stacked on top of the spare tire. A small pry bar, a pair of binoculars, and the long camouflage scabbard he’d brought from home. He dropped the pry bar into the rear pocket of his uniform pants, draped the binoculars around his neck, and unzipped the scabbard to pull out his twelve-gauge Remington pump shotgun.

  He’d driven up through the game lands on the Liston side this time. There wouldn’t be any delay getting to the cabin. He’d parked the police car in the woods as close as he could, knowing that once he had what he was looking for, he might have to get the hell out of there in a hurry.

  Ollie slung the shotgun over his shoulder and looked at the dense column of trees, trying to decide which path to take. Instead, he opened the police car door again and leaned in to grab the microphone. He stayed standing, leaning against the car’s frame, keeping his eyes on the woods as he pressed the TALK button. “Hey, you there, Pretty Lady?” he asked.

  “Of course I’m here, handsome,” she replied. “Didn’t think I was going to hear from you today. You avoiding me?”

  “No, just been busy, that’s all,” he said. “I’ll be on a follow-up, off-radio for a bit, and just wanted to let you know.”

  He could hear her typing into her computer. “What’s the address?”

  Ollie looked out at the woods and said, “I’ll be on foot in the game lands, looking for that missing girl. I’ll let you know when I get back.”

  “Sounds good. Be careful out there, handsome. Good luck, and I hope you find her,” she said.

  “Me too,” he said, about to hang up the microphone, but he raised it again and said, “Hey, what are you making for dinner tonight?”

  “Why, you coming over?”

  “If it’s any good, I might.”

  “Roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. The real kind. Made from scratch. You want me to save you some?”

  Ollie stopped himself from saying one of his typical responses. Only if you wear that blue dress you once told me about, or something like that. Playful banter. Instead, he found himself looking at the woods and trying to picture what she looked like. He’d wondered about it a thousand times. He clicked the TALK button. “You know, I’m going to be out near your work sometime next week.”

  “Is that right?” she said.

  He shifted the shotgun strap around his shoulder to redistribute the weight. It was getting heavy, just standing there holding it. Ollie clicked the TALK button and said, “I was thinking about getting lunch while I’m out there. How about we meet up, just so I don’t accidentally pick a place that likes to spit in cops’ food?”

  “That depends,” she replied. “You mind if my husband comes along?”

  Ollie cursed under his breath. He clicked the TALK button and said, “Hey, never you mind me. I was just fooling around.”

  She giggled, as light and soft as the dandelion wishes floating across the tops of the tall grass. “I’m ju
st messing with you. I got divorced two years ago. Man, you should have heard your voice.”

  Ollie laughed then, and said, “You got me pretty good.”

  “You come out here next week and I’ll make it up to you, handsome,” she said.

  “It’s a date, Pretty Lady,” he said, then hung up the microphone and closed his police car door.

  “Enjoy your walk in the woods,” she replied, but by then, he was gone.

  * * *

  He reached the cabin before dark, with the horizon washed in red and gold fire beyond the trees. It was so cold he shivered, leaning against the trunk of a thick oak tree, peering around the corner. He could hardly move, and his teeth wanted to chatter so he let them, just for a second to get it out of his system. Except it wasn’t that cold, no more than it had been, and he knew it.

  Smoke wafted from the top of the chimney pipe on the cabin’s roof, but now the car and truck were both gone. The motorcycles remained parked outside of the front door, but they were covered over with bright blue tarps. Ollie looked at the empty driveway, thinking it over. Motorcycles were loud and drew attention. It made sense they’d leave the bikes behind sometimes.

  Plus, they’d need extra space if they had a little girl tied up in the trunk, he thought. The thought of it pumped blood through his muscles and helped him get moving again. They’d left the woodstove burning inside the cabin. Only two reasons to do that. Either they were coming back soon, or there was someone inside they didn’t want freezing to death.

  If it was the girl, it made sense that they’d leave someone behind to keep an eye on her. That was what the Remington was for, he thought, tucking its walnut stock deep in his right armpit. He crept across the grass toward the cabin’s nearest window and stooped to listen. Nothing. He poked his head up, trying to see between the spaces where the towel was draped behind the glass. Darkness. As he looked, he saw the window’s cold glass fog from the heat of his breath.

  He bent back down and went around the back of the cabin, stopping at each window to listen, and look, and at each one there was nothing. He went around the entire cabin that way until he came around the opposite side, facing the driveway once more. It was time to go in. Enough stalling.