by Paul Flower
The Friday after the killing, he now recalled, he had felt the threat in his gut, hard, for the first time. He had just jammed a forkful of beef stew in his mouth when he caught the weird blue-gray stare from across the table. A yellow plastic cup slipped from Elvis’ hand. During the wild flurry of activity that followed—Elvis whispering, “Sorry, Mom, sorry, Mom” and mopping at the milk with a handful of napkins, Mom knocking over her chair in the rush to slap Elvis across the face and grab a washcloth from the sink—Jesse had stared at Elvis until their eyes met again. The return look, in a face red and tear streaked, told him something new had happened that day, something bad. Jesse hadn’t said anything about it till bedtime. He’d waited until Mom had tucked him in and scolded Elvis one last time for spilling the milk. After she’d whispered, “Good night, Jess” at the bedroom door and had gone downstairs to watch TV, he cleared his throat loudly.
“You think you’re big stuff, don’t you?” Jesse whispered to the crack in the ceiling, breaking the six-day silence between them. “You think you can maybe find a way to work this thing out—you can deal with this—even though I told you there’s no stinking way you can.”
Elvis didn’t respond.
“You little, stupid, putrid, nothing piece of sewer meat. You dirty, skinny, addle-brained weasel. You worthless piece of maggot meal.” Jesse’s whisper rose in the room like steam hissing from a leaky pipe. “Don’t make me come down there and beat your skinny little head in. Talk to me.”
The bottom bunk was silent.
Jesse rolled to his side and peered over the edge. A shadowy Elvis was curled into a ball, facing his half of the window, looking out into the yard. Jesse could see just part of one side of his face, the part painted with moonlight. The eyes were clenched shut; his cheek all shiny with tears.
“I’m talking to you,” Jesse said.
Elvis’ shoulders shook like he was cold; he was crying. Jesse waited, counting the seconds to the beat of the thudding pulse in his head. Elvis knotted into a tighter ball. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.” Jesse spit the words at him.
Elvis curled tighter.
“Now, tell me what happened today. Tell me, right now, you steaming bowl of worthless pus. You dribbling piece of...”
“Nothing,” Elvis said.
“What?”
“I said, ‘nothing,’” Elvis stretched himself out a little, like he was trying to convince Jesse he was telling the truth.
“You’re lying.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Not.”
“Too.”`
“Not,” Elvis flipped over and stared at Jesse. “I am not,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Nothing happened. You understand me?” Elvis’ voice grew louder with each word. “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.”
They held each other’s gaze, blue-gray locked into blue-gray. Finally, quietly, something dawned on Jesse. “You found him, didn’t you.”
There was a flicker in Elvis’ eyes, a pause, then finally his face crumpled up like Mom had slapped him good. Elvis knotted up into his tight ball and cried.
Jesse felt paralyzed, like rigor mortis had set in. The light from the garage door opener flicked off and he was buried in darkness. Panic rose in his throat. He took a swig from the whiskey bottle, fumbled for the cap in his lap, screwed it on the bottle, then tossed the bottle to the backseat. The questions bounded in his head. Had Elvis ever said anything about this to anyone? Had someone else seen the body? Over and over and over again, the questions from then, from now, spun.
That night, back then, he’d decided to bury the man. He’d done it the next day. Now, staring into the darkness of the garage, Jesse Tieter could again feel the shovel in his hands and the look of horror locked forever in his father’s eyes. There was so much stuff he hadn’t thought about. So much he’d never anticipated. He’d been so young, so very, very young. Now, he was still trying to make up for that, wasn’t he? The eyes, he could still see them, staring up from the grave. He should’ve brought quarters. He should’ve waited until he had the body in the ground, then covered the eyes with the coins. Then he wouldn’t have that stare burned into his stupid brain. Yes. But he’d been so damn young. Too young to think of it all. And now? Now he was feeling it, wasn’t he? Oh how it ached, the burden of it pressing against his heart like a prickly, pineapple-sized growth. Open the door, he thought. Go in the house. Get away from it, maybe, with the stupid dope in the drawer. But no. No, wait. The ache in his head turned the garage from dark to red. Oh. No. Impossible. But yes. Yes. Yes. Go. Now. He saw again, in his mind, his brother in a ball, the note from Lavern. Now, before it was too late. He had a job to do. Just like before.
Jesse pushed the car door open. At the wall, he found the light switch. He kicked off his shoes and pulled on the new workboots he’d left by the door. He picked up a blue plastic tarp, still folded in its wrapper. One high-powered light, a rechargeable with a snake-like neck, was on the floor next to the shovel. The other light, a halogen that also had a battery pack and a collapsible stand, was in the corner. In seconds he collected all the gear and was stumbling across the wet grass of the backyard.
It began to rain, but he didn’t notice. He’d seen himself doing this, had worked out, gotten in physical shape for it, for months. The snakelight found the site easily; it helped that he’d had the landscaper mow a clearing out here for him. He’d told the guy, “Don’t move a thing. I want it mowed; that’s it.” He’d paid the idiot enough to do what he said.
As Jesse rigged the lights near the oak at the edge of the clearing, he was struck again by the clarity of his memory. He’d met many adults who couldn’t recall the traumas of their childhoods, but lately he’d been able to remember every sliver of detail of this thing. It didn’t seem fair.
He aimed the snake light at the oak and found what was left of the old spike. It was a stroke of luck that it had been so big; the years of weather had eaten away at it, but it was still plainly visible. He wiped the rain from his eyes, sniffed, then stepped off the distance, altering his stride to accommodate the difference between his adult height and his child height. The first time, he found nothing. The second and third and fourth tries, he found nothing. Frustrated, he went back again to the spiked oak and tried a slightly different angle and stride. Two feet beyond the mowed area, in the high grass, he kicked something hard. Trembling, Jesse fell to his knees, swept the grass aside and directed the light at the two rocks arranged in a T. He smiled despite himself. As if on cue, the rain abated.
Jesse rearranged the lights, grabbed the shovel and jabbed it in a spot near the rock. He stepped back, heaved a sigh and closed his eyes—a mistake. The past, his father’s eyes, the wound in his chest, the feel of the stiffened armpits; it came tumbling back to him down the long dark tunnel of memory.
There was a noise. Jesse cried out. He looked to the woods, his confidence trickling away. A breeze whistled through the trees. There was the rush of something—someone—through the underbrush.
Jesse scratched a knuckle, then another, dropped the shovel and rubbed the backs of both hands frantically against his pants legs.
Screw it. Go. Go on. Get out of here. Drink. Smoke. Anything else. But this? No. Not. Now. Yes. Yes. Now. Now, or what? Now or never.
Jesse set his jaw, picked up the blue tarp, removed it from its wrapper, and tossed both the wrapper and the folded tarp to the ground. He picked up the shovel, arranged his lights, and paced around the clearing, looking at it, golden and glowing. He’d come back. To solve this. To tie up the loose ends. He’d had to do it then, and he had to do it now. Her voice was in his head. “You’re the responsible one,” she always said. “You’re the one I count on.”
He began to dig. The sweat soaked his back, bitter bile surged in his throat. His breathing grew ragged. He could see her, smiling now, smiling that he’d been smart en
ough to do this. His ears burned with satisfaction and embarrassment. How could it still please him so to please her? But it did. Yes. She was smiling and that made him feel good. Dig it. Your mother will be glad with what you’ve done. Yes. Ignore the dark. Ignore that someone might see the lights and come back here. Dig it. You stupid Phi Beta Kappa. Make your mother proud. Be the good son. Dig it. Even though you want to hurt her, even though you want to tell her what she’s done to you. Dig it. And you can make her happy. Just like before, back then, back when you were her best boy.
Dig. It.
He did. And she came to him, proudly, bringing him a drink because he was thirsty. “I’m P-R-O-U-D of you,” she said. Not many boys would’ve done what you done,” she said, handing him the iced tea.
“It really wasn’t that hard,” he said, his voice a wrecked half-whisper. “Just found the right spot and started digging.”
She smiled and took him back, back in time, leading him through the creaking front door and back to the porch. They sat next to each other in the wicker chairs Dad had bought from a pawn shop. The chairs weren’t white anymore, more a faded gray, and they leaned; when you sat in one you had the uneasy feeling you were going to tip over if you weren’t careful. But she’d never let him sit in the chairs before. She never treated him like this. Jesse thought it was cool. Dig it, he thought. Dig it.
Jesse took a long hard gulp of the iced tea and looked at Mom. She was sitting, tipped toward him in her chair, arms folded. Dressed in a light blue dress, a sleeveless one, she was barefoot. He realized she’d been barefoot a lot lately. Her feet were bright pink the same way his skin was.
“What you think about moving away?” she said, pointing the question toward the road, her chin up.
Jesse choked on the last swallow of the tea, sat up in the chair, coughed hard then put the glass down on the uneven wood floor. It tipped over. “M... moving?” He bent down and fumbled with the glass, trying to save some of the ice. The cubes slithered away and turned black with dirt.
“Yeah, you know, getting away to somewheres,” she said, focusing on him now. “Going where nobody knows us real good or, you know, knows him.”
“Like where?” Jesse stammered. “What do you mean? Where’d we go, Mom?”
Mom smiled and looked at her lap. “I was thinking a nice place might be Iowa.”
Jesse jumped to his feet and started pacing.
“Your Aunt Barb and Uncle Ed’s out there.”
He couldn’t breathe. This was so like her. One minute everything was fine; he’d had everything worked out in his mind, then, Iowa. It hadn’t been part of the picture. Jesse opened his mouth to say something, to shout or scream or something. But no sound came out, only his white breath against the cool night.
“It’s a nice place to live, where they’re at,” he heard her say. “They got nice people. It’s a real friendly, good town. There’s no trouble, hardly any crime or, like, gangs or nothing.”
“Uncle Barb’s and Aunt Ed’s.” He gasped the names with disgust, not hearing how he’d switched the names. “You... we’d... you talked to them... I mean, about moving there?”
“Oh, yeah, sure—a little.”
Jesse pictured his aunt and uncle. She had fake teeth she stuck in a glass on a table by her bed. Uncle Ed, he wore a funny little straw hat sometimes and was skinny and always nervous. He was a big shot for a company that made water heaters. Jesse remembered Uncle Ed giving him a Dutch rub the last time they’d gotten together. He’d talked on and on about water heaters and the Chicago Cubs. “How ‘bout them Cubbies?” he’d kept saying.
“They’re not against taking people in,” she said. “Barb’s my sister, you know. Families do that for each other. Someone falls on hard times, they pitch in, help out.”
Jesse paused. Breathing hard, now soaked with sweat, his need for another bath was becoming desperate.
“Does it matter what I think?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“‘Course it does, baby.” She took another deep breath and fumbled in the pocket of her dress for her lighter and a cigarette. She made a big production of lighting up and took a long, hard drag, then clenched her teeth and hissed the smoke out with another sigh. “Your opinion matters, baby,” she whispered, her eyes turning again to him. The eyes were a little glazed now, and the smile was gone. “‘Cuz you’re the one that’s going.”
“What?” He hadn’t heard it.
“I said you’re the one that’s going. I didn’t stutter, boy. Clean out them ears.”
Jesse couldn’t move or speak. She held the cigarette in the air in front of her mouth, and smoke drifted up from it in a lazy, white curl. “You got no choice, considering what happened with your brother,” she said, then took another drag on the Kool.
“Mom, I’m taking care of it. I am. You said yourself I done a good job, just a second ago.”
“I’m not talking about the body or what you’re gonna do. I’m talking about the boy who seen the whole dang thing and now he’s seen the man dead and you still haven’t taken no steps to make sure he keeps his stupid, addle-brained mouth shut.”
She smoked quietly for several seconds, then pulled the cigarette from her mouth and looked up at him. She gave him a sick little smile and huffed a smoke ring in his face.
Jesse blinked. “He’s not saying anything to anybody,” he said in a voice that was cracking and weak. “I know he’s not.”
“You do not know that for sure.”
“Well, yeah, okay, not for sure. But I know sort of. Yes. Yes. I know. I do, Mom. He’ll keep quiet.”
“Sure he will.” She nodded, and stared off again.
Jesse turned and walked to the edge of the porch. He picked out a birch tree across the road and focused on it. When he spoke, his voice was almost a whisper. “So this is about Elvis?”
A car, an old Buick, rolled by slowly. It was people from Illinois gawking at the countryside.
“‘Course it’s about Elvis. Way I see it, you can’t keep control over him, so I’ll have to do it myself. I’ll raise him here on my own, and I’ll make sure he don’t remember nothing that happened. I can do it. I got a way with the boy. Meanwhile, you can just go on and live your little life. You can be somebody. It’s your reward, if you want to think of it that way—your reward for what you done.” Her voice hung in the dark of the woods as though the foggy night had preserved them there. Jesse Tieter stopped digging and rested on the shovel. He could smell her breath, could taste the cigarette smoke. A shiver of a thought: Was he losing his mind? Then, a colder one: Did it matter?
He turned back to the digging, in earnest, hoping Mom would leave him alone. But the air was suddenly, again, warm and heavy. A couple of blackbirds landed in a lower limb of the birch tree. They sat there, clucking. Standing on the porch, Jesse imagined shooting them the way he and Elvis used to shoot birds with the BB gun.
“What you told him the other night, is that what you want? You want me to kill Elvis, too?” he heard his kid-voice say. “You know, I could do it, if that’s what you want.” He said it, even though he didn’t mean it. He didn’t think he could kill, not again, not after doing it once. Even the thought of shooting birds with a BB gun made him a little queasy.
“Listen to you, talking all big and strong, like you’re something else. You, the big man killer.”
Jesse felt the tears coming. He clenched the shovel and began digging in earnest. He heard the blackbirds bolt, cackling.
“You’re not man enough. You’re not strong enough in your guts.”
“I am. I am too.”
The porch floor squeaked as mom stood, walked around Jesse and down one step, then she turned and looked up at him. Smoke curled from the cigarette, which now dangled from the corner of her mouth; a long, crooked finger of ash hung from it. He choked. “If you can do it, you’re going to have to show me
,” she said, the cigarette dancing, the ash clinging on for dear life. “‘Cuz I just don’t know if you got it in you—not anymore.” The ash fell.
Jesse looked away. What she was asking him to do he could not even attempt. “I can do it, Mom. I can.” He couldn’t believe the words were coming out of his mouth. “Really, don’t you worry.” He looked at her. “I’ll show you.”
Her eyes seemed to glitter through the smoke. “Let me make a deal with you.”
“What?”
“You take care of your brother. I mean, really take care of him. But remember, you need a alibi. So you take care of him then come up with a story to where he’s gone off to and why.”
Jesse blinked and swallowed. This was too much to ask, way too much.
“If you do it, fine. I’ll keep you right here, and when I get me a good job I’ll buy you that record you been wanting.” She climbed the step and went into the house.
Jesse’s throat felt like it was swelling; swallowing was getting very difficult. He didn’t want to kill his brother. That had never been part of the plan, had it? No. It hadn’t been. That part was Mom’s idea. No, wait, all of it had been Mom’s idea. Yes, the deal with the Beatles’ record had pushed him over the edge that day––made him extra mad at Dad. But it was Mom that made him think it was time to just kill the man, right? It hadn’t been his idea. No. No way. He was just a kid, practically a little boy, and Mom had gotten his thinking all screwed up. Mom had convinced him to be a killer, an awful, vicious killer. And he’d gone right along with it. And now she wanted the same thing with Elvis. She wanted him dead. And here he was, part of him saying, “No mom, no way,” the other part saying, “Sure, duh-huh, I’ll do it.” Such thoughts had brought him all the way back to Michigan and were driving him to dig and dig and dig in the middle of the night. What more would she drive him to do?
The shovel caught something. At first he tried to drive the tip through it. But something, the feel of it—not a root!—told him to stop. He dropped the shovel, fell to his knees and felt in the soil. His fingers grasped the thing and sent the message of recognition to his brain. The world began to spin again. His memory had been accurate. A dozen new worries and recollections, shards of thoughts from the past and today, collided. With them, unwanted, came the song “Strawberry Fields Forever” into his head.
