Dig Two Graves

by Kim Powers

  Was he aware of it, that if he broke his thoughts up into questions he could talk easier? Skip thought it would be hard to talk like that, to have to think at the same time you were saying something.

  “I’ve thought a lot. About the Olympics. What they were like. But I’ve never thought. About that. And how did his. Parents afford to go? They were poor. You know.”

  “How did you know that? About his parents . . . I mean, my grandparents. I never knew them, I mean, not really. I was just little when they died. But I’ve seen pictures of them.”

  It was as if he hadn’t heard her, lost in his own thoughts. “No, I think he must have. Traveled . . . ” He took a deep breath, filling up his lungs. She could tell he was embarrassed—at least aware—at having to do it. “ . . . with the rest. That movie—Alive. A soccer team. They crashed. They had to eat. Each other. To survive. In the Andes.”

  Then he laughed. Or maybe he was just clearing his throat. Skip couldn’t tell. When he said something next, he was closer to her. How did he get so close? He was leaning in to her; she instinctively backed up in her school desk, to get as far away from him as she could, afraid he was going to put that headphone thing on her head again. She tried to make herself shrink in the seat; become as small a target as possible. Her bound hands were dangling loose behind the seat; she tried to grab onto the flat surface of the back of the desk, the part where you’d put your schoolbooks, to give her something to steady herself with.

  And that’s when she felt it. A knob. Some kind of screw. Something that stuck out.

  Something she could try to cut the duct tape on her hands with.

  “Does he talk? About the Olympics?”

  She shrank further down, careful to keep her hands as still as possible, so he couldn’t see them moving. She had to play like nothing had changed.

  “Will you be. In the Olympics? Is he . . . passing that on?”

  Did he really want to know, or was he just testing her somehow? She could tell he was smart. In class, she could tell who was smart by who did their homework and raised their hands, but with him, she just knew, without being able to see any of that stuff. With smart people, there’s always a reason they ask stuff. There’s a reason they do everything. They already know the answer; they’re just waiting to see if you know the same one they do. Skip was afraid if she didn’t answer his questions, he’d get mad and hurt her even worse.

  First the slap, then the shock. Who knew what he’d do next. Each one was getting worse.

  She decided she had to talk, for now. If she talked, maybe she wouldn’t cry.

  If she talked, and he looked at her mouth moving, then he wouldn’t see that she was doing something with her hands behind the desk.

  “He doesn’t want me to. We run together, but it’s not fast. It’s just for fun. And I get out of PE if I do it.” She stopped, but he didn’t say anything. Where was he? She could only tell from his voice. Had he moved behind her? Had he seen the new weapon she’d just discovered, that had been there the whole time? Her way out? She had to keep talking, to distract him.

  “He says it was too hard. That’s why he quit, he couldn’t keep doing it. He says he was already too old, and he was just twenty-six.”

  “I saw him, you know. On TV. Everybody did. The Olympics. They’re not just sports”—a breath—“they’re stories. Dramas. Overcoming the odds. Crashing on mountains. Eating your teammates. That’s what gets you in the news. This will certainly. Get him in the news. Back in it.”

  Good. He was still in front of her. He hadn’t moved.

  She gripped her thumb and finger tighter around the screw. It had ridges on it, threads, and it stuck out about half an inch from the wood of the desk chair. She was afraid if she shifted to get a better hold of the screw, her knuckles would hit against the chair and he’d hear it.

  She talked louder, to hide any noise her hands might make.

  “I don’t think he wanted to be in the news. I think that’s why he quit.”

  “Quitting is for. Losers. You can’t quit. You have to keep going. No matter what. Why, just look at me . . . ” He laughed. “Oops. I guess you can’t, with your blindfold on.”

  He was moving away from her now, looking at something else. At least he wasn’t moving behind her. She put all her hopes on that little half inch of screw now. As long as it was there, as long as she could hold on to it, she’d be okay. As long as it was there, she had hope.

  “I’ll take it off soon enough. Your blindfold. Then you’ll see my art. All good things to those who wait. Except food. I don’t want you to go hungry.”

  She heard another sound, the clatter of a tray and silverware. The familiar sound she used to hear from her father, when she was little, and he made the oatmeal after her mother died but made it too hot. Rubbing a spoon against the rim of a bowl for just the right amount, then blowing on the food to cool it off.

  Skip felt the metal tip of the spoon push against her mouth, trying to pry it open.

  “Stew. An old family recipe.”

  She didn’t want to eat, even though she hadn’t had anything except water, but she was starving and hunger took over. She didn’t want to sit up and move her torso closer to the food, move her hands away from the screw so that she might not be able to find it again, but . . .

  She ate. Everything. It tasted almost familiar, like something her father would make her when she was upset, or needed comfort food or stayed home from school. Tomatoey. Thick. Sausage and a dash of balsamic vinegar for an extra kick. She slurped up every offering of it from the kidnapper’s spoon, and when some trickled out of her mouth, he wiped up the dribble on her chin. At least she wouldn’t die that way, starving to death. And the soup was good.

  “Nectar of the gods,” he said, giving her the next spoonful.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Whenever you were hungry but didn’t have the money to eat, Cousin Charlie’s, a deli on the main drag in town, was the place to go. All the famous people who came through town—as famous as Mt. Gresh ever had—got a sandwich named after them, made up of their favorite ingredients. Ethan even got his own, when he joined the faculty. The “Herc Hero.” Beef and horseradish. Swiss cheese and spicy mustard.

  “Charlie”—nobody knew if that was his real name or not, that’s just what everybody called him—even let you run a tab if you were short. He’d been the first person to put together a sandwich platter with sides of coleslaw and pickles to send to Ethan’s house, after he heard the news. And now he offered free food and coffee to the students handing out the flyers about Skip, before they even had to ask.

  The middle of November, it was already dark by the time TJ and the class of Ethan’s that he’d taken over could meet. Most of the shops on Brockett Street, just a few blocks from campus, were beginning to close, and anybody who was out on the street was in a hurry to get home. Maybe not the best time to hand out flyers for Skip—it was cold, fingers were stiff and dry, you didn’t have the friction and oil on your fingertips to peel the flyers apart, one by one—but this was all they had. It would have to do.

  TJ could see his own breath, coming out of his mouth. He hugged his jacket around him, hands in the pockets.

  Last year, he’d had a boyfriend from the theater department. Rodger, with a d. His first boyfriend. His only boyfriend. They weren’t together long, just a few months, but TJ went to see all his shows. He was in some original play about George Washington crossing the Delaware—The Marble Horseman; Rodger called it “Marble Horseshit”—playing one of the soldiers camped out on shore, in the fog. The soldiers were all dressed in rags and had to look like they were freezing to death; Rodger really did. TJ was convinced he saw the breath coming out of his mouth, up on stage, even with all those hot lights on him. Rodger hugged his arms around his chest above a fake campfire, and took on this hollow look, like he’d never get warm. After the play, when TJ asked him how he did that, when everybody else on stage just looked so fake, Rodger said, “I just studied
you. In bed. You always look like there’s a bag of ice strapped to your chest. You’re always shaking.” They broke up after that, and TJ had been too afraid to sleep with anybody since. He didn’t want anyone else to see him shaking.

  Now, TJ tried to burrow even further into his coat so no one out on the street would see him shaking there, either. But even inside the coat, his arms wrapped around himself, like he’d seen Rodger do on stage, TJ could still feel goose bumps. Still felt freezing, with nerves. He breathed into the fake fleece collar so his breath would come back to him and he could smell how it bad it was. Ripe, that’s how bad, after half a tuna grinder and coffee. He’d grab a peppermint off the counter inside Charlie’s later; it was time to get started.

  “Okay, two or three of you take Old Campus . . . somebody hit the Commons . . . if anybody has a car, take some of these down by The British Maid . . . ”

  Another breath, and it was time. TJ was as nervous as he’d been teaching that afternoon. He whispered “Passing on the past” to himself—what Professor Holt always said—and with that, stuck a flyer in someone’s face. “Have you seen this girl? She’s the daughter of a local professor, Herc Holt, from the Olympics . . . ”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A full twelve hours since the first call, and nothing. Not unless that Bible verse from the Book of Daniel told me what I was supposed to do next. I kept thinking if I just focused on Skip’s room, I’d see something the police had missed, but there was barely anything left in the room. The police had taken away her mattress and box springs, leaving just the big empty metal frame. They’d taken her beanbag chair, too, so that I had to sit on the floor, my back braced against the wall. There was nowhere else to sit in here. Even her giant stuffed giraffe; they’d taken that too. They’d have my gold medal if I hadn’t grabbed it away when that cop had it on.

  Now, I kept tossing it in my hand, looking from it to the Bible verse that I’d torn out at the hospital. “The image’s head was pure gold. Its upper body and arms were silver. Its lower body was bronze.” Top to bottom, gold, silver, bronze. First place, second, third. I’d told Mizell about the verse, and the parallel to the Olympics I’d discovered, and she and Sig were downstairs on computers, trying to track down those other two winners. One was from Johannesburg, taller than me, massive thighs; the other from Russia. With even bigger thighs. Yvgeny. He’s the one who’d been predicted as the winner, before the Games started. He was actually pretty friendly, for someone who could crush me by just looking at me.

  Mizell and Sig were having a hard time finding out anything, even though with that first call from the kidnapper, Mizell had finally been able to get the FBI involved. A team was driving up from the regional office in Boston, and maybe they had some pull with Interpol, to look into those other countries. But the idea that it was one of them . . . it just seemed so preposterous. Why let thirteen years go by, and only now strike? But Olympians were used to that; training for years—waiting—for a goal that would be attained in just a few days. If ever.

  If somebody had taken that medal away from me, a medal I had lost blood, sweat, and tears working for, could I get back at them like this?

  I was afraid to think of what my honest answer would be.

  I didn’t have to—not then—because they were suddenly yelling at me to come downstairs.

  TJ had just run through the front door, throwing it open so fast they must have all thought it was the kidnapper, ramrodding in to take all of us. I got to the landing as he seemed to take his first breath; his face was red and flushed; even feet away from him, he smelled like sweat, cold sweat, and the outdoors.

  “Stop right there,” Mizell was saying to him, as he tried to race past her to get to me.

  “It’s okay, it’s my TA. Teaching assistant. TJ Markson,” I said, as I came down and he stuck a piece of paper in my hand. “What? What is it?”

  “We were handing out flyers, down by Charlie’s. It was dark, all these people were going by . . . I charged the flyers to the department account, I hope that’s okay, but I didn’t have any money and . . . ”

  “TJ. Short answer. Focus,” I snapped, even as I was looking at the photo of Skip and those telltale words underneath her face: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?

  “I don’t know how I got it or who gave it to me, maybe when I dropped all my flyers then bent down to pick them up, but . . . ”

  “Tell me.”

  He flipped the sheet over to its backside, where it was covered with a handwritten scrawl. He was poking at it so hard I couldn’t focus on the words.

  “This. This. I went inside Charlie’s to get some more coffee, like I needed any more of that, and then . . . this.”

  He stopped as my voice took over, smoothing out the paper and reading aloud what had been written on the back of my daughter’s smiling face.

  One is done, now two is due.

  Whose head grows back if you give it a whack?

  Find that reed, or watch her bleed.

  Even the score with ten more.

  Then post it on Facebook, to get what I took.

  Everything that, until now, had just been slow motion and waiting, suddenly screeched into place. In my head, I raced past the blood, the head that’d been whacked, Skip’s head, the Olympics, the gold, that horrible nickname, and saw that everything had been leading to this.

  “The Hydra,” I said, looking straight at TJ, knowing he’d understand. “The Hydra grows its head back ‘if you give it a whack.’”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” said Mizell.

  “Oh my God,” I said, “it all makes sense now. The Hydra. Killing the Hydra. That’s the Second Labor of Hercules. ‘One is done, now two is due.’ One was the lion . . . ”

  “The Nemean Lion,” TJ jumped in, catching on. Two nerds, a little one and a big one, speaking a foreign language together. One only they understood. “It’s the First Labor of Hercules. First, second . . . Then ‘even the score with ten more.’”

  Now I took over. “That’s twelve . . . the Twelve Labors . . . that’s the ransom. He’s making me do the Twelve Labors of Hercules to get my daughter back.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The kidnapper first learned about the Labors back at the home, to take away the pain.

  They tried to get him to walk, but he couldn’t. Not without crutches to hold him up and braces on his legs, and even then, his legs turned in on themselves: knees inverted toward each other, his back bent over and his elbows held out to his sides, almost like wings, to balance his legs. A rare type of muscular dystrophy. The doctors had done all they could, but the man who ran the home—Mr. Frank, the boys turned it into Frankenstein; it was really too easy, almost a gimme—said his staff hadn’t done enough. They hadn’t tried hard enough. They needed to know if the boy felt something, anything, in his legs, so that’s when the needles began. The pin pricks. First on his calves, then up the back of his thighs, then his butt. He felt them, but he still couldn’t walk on his own. Frankenstein said he was just being lazy, he wasn’t trying hard enough. His brain clearly worked, he was one of the smartest boys in the home, so why couldn’t his brain transmit the signals to his legs?

  If they didn’t work on his legs, try his spine. If little needles didn’t work, use bigger ones.

  After the sessions, the youngest nurse at the home put salve on his wounds and blotted up the blood, but she was new and couldn’t speak up or she’d lose her job. He couldn’t speak up much either because he was usually crying too hard. And words came late to him. He could read them, but he had a hard time saying them. So the young nurse he loved so much, Marie, his Mamarie, because she was more like a mother than a nurse, helped him learn to talk better by making up rhymes for him to say back to her. If he focused on the words and stories she told him, it would give him something else to think about, besides the pain of the needles. Besides the pain of not being able to get two whole lungs full of air. The pain of the words not coming out in person, like he heard the
m in his head. The pain of his family, leaving him there, not coming out in person either.

  If he thought in rhymes, which took even more concentration, he’d be even further away from his pain. Make up poems about Hercules, the strongest man ever, Mamarie told him. Be brave and strong like Hercules, and nothing can ever hurt you again. He’ll be your friend. Hercules will protect you.

  Then the next session came.

  Frankenstein tickled the soles of his feet, getting warmed up.

  So was the little boy, who couldn’t walk, who could barely talk, except to himself and his Mamarie. He started out by just saying the rhymes in his head. Thinking them, to himself, every time Frankenstein touched him.

  Be fi-ne, slay li-on . . .

  Frankenstein went to his ankles, to see how the protruding bones reacted.

  Wear Lycra, beat Hydra . . .

  The little boy tightened his ass, even though Frankenstein was nowhere near it yet. He was still pricking his calves.

  Capture hind, won’t hurt behind . . .

  When Frankenstein got to the crook behind his knees, the little boy started mumbling to himself. The sounds started to come out of his head, onto his lips. He knew the worst was yet to come.

  Roar, catch boar . . .

  Frankenstein was getting closer, to the back of the little boy’s thighs; there was more flesh there, so he stuck the needle in farther.

  Not a fable, go to stable . . .

  Frankenstein didn’t understand what the little boy was saying—the words were audible, but it was the meaning that threw him. He jabbed the needles in even harder. Farther.

  The little boy spoke back in kind, his voice gathering strength, and the pain receding even more, as he disappeared into his rhymes. Into his stories of Hercules and his labors.

  Love words, not birds . . .

  His ass was the target now; Frankenstein would really go to town there.

  Have school, hunt bull . . .