Dig Two Graves

by Kim Powers

  Dry, arid wind and dust swirled around us as we kept holding on for dear life, afraid to let go. Afraid to leave that thin metal chute that had saved our lives.

  A breeze whistled over the farm, almost taking it back to how things had been when we first got there. Everything untouched, natural, almost purified. And then . . .

  . . . like the flap of a piece of paper, rustling and flapping with the hollow, scraping sound of something bone dry that had been left out in this field forever. I don’t think Mizell heard it; she was still in shock, but I did.

  It was coming from a tall wooden utility pole, on top of which was mounted a loudspeaker. The kind that used to announce the names of rodeo riders and cowboys.

  Something was nailed to the pole.

  In that morning air, a chill ran through me.

  I was already a broken man, just what the madman wanted; all four Labors he’d sent us out here to do were over—my body pelted, skin broken, legs barely working anymore—but he still wasn’t done with me. Not yet.

  Oh my God no, no . . . please God no . . .

  I released my hold on Mizell and staggered away from her, practically crawling.

  “Where the hell are you going? I still need . . . ” she began.

  . . . and then she saw it too. Twenty, thirty feet away, a package, brand new and dazzling white, and tied with twine. It hadn’t been here forever; it just got here. For us. For me.

  I got to the utility pole and pulled the package off where it was being held there, nailed to the pole like a bull’s-eye.

  I felt it. Something spongy inside, that gave when I pushed against it.

  Mizell came toward me and mashed into it too, trying to feel what shape was inside.

  “I can’t . . . you have to . . . what if it’s a finger . . . fingers . . . he said ‘her fingers will be next’ . . . oh my GodohmyGod . . . ” I’d been so strong, but I couldn’t be strong anymore.

  Mizell began untying the twine and pulled the outer covering of white paper away, to reveal what was inside. She looked before I did, then looked at me, confusion on her face.

  A shirt. A child’s shirt.

  My shirt. My faded little blue and black cowboy shirt with silver snap buttons, which I had worn here so many years ago.

  And scrawled in large letters, facing me when I lifted the folded-up shirt off the paper:

  If only you’d answered your fan mail.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  After all his planning, it didn’t seem fair that it would all be over, one way or another, in mere hours. But there were many things to do before then, miles to go before he slept.

  Messages to be delivered.

  Contact to be made.

  Labors to be . . . completed.

  He flipped a switch on a movie projector to make sure it was working, and a conical beam of light hit a wall in the principal’s office, away from the girls, searching for just the right playing surface. Ah, his favorite sensations. Old school. The scratchy print of leader film, Xs and slashes and what looked like strands of hair, embedded on the film . . .

  The burning smell of a light bulb, bringing the plastic to life . . .

  The hiss of celluloid, crinkling and threading through an old-fashioned reel-to-reel projector . . .

  And the sound of Hercules, the fake one, the movie one, in agony.

  It had been the only good thing they ever did at the home, show them movies.

  His favorite had been Hercules Unchained, but they got the title all wrong. Steve Reeves was completely chained, trying to bring down the colossal columns on either side of him. That’s when all the boys would cheer, as they projected the movie on one of the walls. All the bumps of paint, layered and layered on top of each other through the years, would show through on Steve’s face, making him look like he had pimples.

  Just like all his cellmates. Classmates.

  Of all of them, he was the only one who’d been smart enough—who’d been good enough—to be allowed out, to go to a real school, even if it was just a few rooms. And now, he’d recreated it much as he remembered it, with some crucial improvements, especially in the principal’s office.

  Yes, there was still the heavy wood desk, the wire baskets, even the heavy, looming portrait in the gilt frame of the man who had been the principal. How that portrait had escaped the looters over the years, he didn’t know; surely the frame was worth something, even though pigeons had taken to roosting on top of it and, well . . . relieving themselves. It looked like he was crying, old man Somerset, the founder of The Somerset School, tears of bird shit running down his cheeks.

  Guano? Was that it? No, that was for bats. Cave-dwelling bats, but he was sure they must have made a home here too. Hanging upside down. At least they hadn’t done that to him when he was a student here.

  How many hours had he spent there, sitting on that burnished bench outside the principal’s office—happy to be there, on that gleaming, golden wood—preparing to beg to stay here overnight and not be taken back to that other home, where one half of a bunk bed was waiting for him. How he could make do here, put his little lopsided head down on top of his desk and take an eight-hour nap through the night, using a towel for a pillow. In the morning, he could go in the bathroom and splash cold water on his face and be good to go. He could even help the teachers get ready for the day . . .

  Just please, please, don’t make me go back there.

  But no, no, they never listened to him.

  Now they would.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Mizell was at the wheel this time, on her cell talking to Frick and Frack while driving us to Sig’s house. She and I had reversed positions and now I was riding shotgun, trying to figure out where that old cowboy shirt had come from. I hadn’t seen it in a million years, not since kindergarten or first grade, maybe. I remember wearing it for a school picture, smiling at the camera, a big gap between my front teeth; I probably still had the picture thrown in a junk box at home. The buttons done up all the way to the collar. But after that . . . who knows?

  Well, he did.

  The shirt had gone in the rag bin, I suppose. Or my mother gave it away to Goodwill or something, like she was always doing. But wherever it had gone, it hadn’t existed for me anymore.

  Until now. The thing I took out of that macabre package was mine, from over thirty years ago; the fringe on the cuffs had even gotten worn off by the time I quit wearing it. No—not worn off, bitten off. Chewed off. That’s what I used to do. Put it up to my mouth, even while I was wearing it, to gnaw on it; the hard metal of the silver snaps against my teeth . . .

  I held it up to my nose and smelled it. It was fresh, like it had just been laundered; no yellowed underarm stains or the residue of deodorant, it was long before puberty, long before I started sweating. I was trying to smell my childhood on it, wonder where it had gone, but nothing . . .

  And then something.

  Something that wasn’t me.

  Initials in magic marker, on the label inside the collar. BCH.

  What the hell was BCH? Who the hell?

  And fan mail? ‘If only you’d answered your fan mail.’ What the hell did that mean?

  Sig had taken care of all that, or the PR firm we hired had. There was an impossible number of fan letters coming in, requests for an autographed photo. Part of the Wheaties money had paid for that, so I could go on with my life. Now it was coming back to bite me in the butt.

  Mizell pulled up in front of Sig’s house, one of the little cottages the school owned on a street that was right off the track field. You’d think he’d want to live somewhere else, have time off, but his boys on the field were his life. He loved being able to roll out of bed and pretty much be at work, and Canaan was good to him, letting him coach until he was ready to call it quits, not the other way around. Sometimes I thought he’d spent the nearly twenty years since I was a student there looking for his next Olympic star. He’d never found one, not even a close contender.

  A
nd the house was always unlocked. Whenever I warned him about it—yeah, little sleepy town, nothing bad ever happens here—he always came back at me with, “Let ’em take whatever they want. Me, the TV. There’s not much else.” And he was right. Just piles and piles of junk. But to Sig, it wasn’t just junk, but history. Newspapers, trophies, plaques, barbells, brochures about new sports equipment, scrapbooks full of clippings of the boys he’d trained. And a room with a view: he could always look out his front window, across the street to the track, and see his guys running there.

  Now, Sig had just seen his greatest guy come in—his big star, his biggest success—wounded and limping, covered by dirt and dust, holding a little boy’s cowboy shirt that was thirty years old. With a question about fan mail and what it had to do with his daughter and girlfriend being kidnapped.

  There was a lot to talk about.

  “Jesus Christ on a crutch, you look like you’ve just redone your entire Olympic program, with a partner,” Sig said to me and Mizell. “We gotta get you two fixed up.”

  Before I could tell him what I was there for, he went digging through his medicine cabinet for Band-Aids and butterfly sutures. Mizell and I had started cleaning ourselves up at his kitchen sink when Sig’s front door came banging open.

  It was TJ, who must have been following us, looking almost worse than we did. Tortured, but in a different way. And he didn’t waste any time getting to the point, even if it was in another man’s house.

  “We had a bargain, remember? I tell you what happened, you tell me. I told. You didn’t. We’re not finished.”

  “Oh please. Not you again,” I shot right back at him. “Get the fuck outta here before she gets you for breaking and entering.”

  Mizell jumped in. “Markson, Casey, whatever your name is, right now is not a good time . . . ”

  “There’s never a good time to find your father’s body hanging by a noose.”

  That’s when Sig came back into the room. “I know all about you. What you did. You are not welcome here.”

  Sig started pushing TJ out the door. Pathetic, and scary, this once powerful old man, his bony arms now covered with liver spots, pushing against this kid who was just as bony. But there was something desperate about it. Something Sig wanted to make disappear.

  TJ was pushing back just as hard. His eyes weren’t just crazy anymore; they were in agony. I could see it through the smudges on his glasses, the rat’s nest hair hanging over his forehead. “Just give me this one last thing, then we’re done. I’m begging you.”

  I’d said the very same thing to the kidnapper. Your life, reduced to one thing, one phrase, one plea.

  I’m begging you.

  TJ stood his ground, still huffing from his set-to with Sig. “Did you turn in my dad? Tell them to test him? That’s what his suicide note said. He blamed you. Just tell me, once and for all, and then I’ll go. Forever. Just like he did.”

  “This isn’t the time,” I said. “Or the place. My daughter is missing. Wendy’s missing. Because of you . . . ”

  “My father’s dead because of you. So just say it. Tell me the truth.”

  “TJ, please . . . ” Now everyone was looking at me, waiting to see what I’d do. Maybe I’d known what I had to confess from the second I’d found that very first note, pinned in the silhouette of my baby girl. Maybe I’d known it ever since the second I did it, thirteen years ago.

  “He’s right. Your dad was right. I was the one who did it. I was the one who called him in.”

  My entire lily-white history, changed in seconds, with just a few words.

  It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to tell anybody, as hard as telling Skip her mother was dead. And for now, it was the only thing in the room. Skip, Wendy, their tortures were all on hold, in the shock of silence.

  I kept going. “They needed a fall guy, and I gave them one. Your dad. They just needed one example. One face. There was a rumor going around, that they were going to do random tests . . . ”

  I saw thirteen years ago like it was now: one phone call. That’s all it took. That was the night the real Hercules was born, the minute I hung up that phone. Mark Casey got randomized to pee in a cup, and I walked away with thirty pieces of silver.

  A gold medal.

  “He killed himself because of you.” TJ spat it out at me. “You were the traitor. The Ninth Circle of Hell. That’s where you belong.”

  “Nobody belongs in hell. I’m there now, and I know,” I answered TJ back. This was my fight now. “But he was the traitor, because he cheated to win. He fucked with the honor code. The Olympics. You build yourself up with hard work. Not with drugs. You stay as pure as they were in ancient Greece.”

  Mizell finally spoke up, putting two and two together. “That’s why he attacked you on the tape. At the games. He knew you were the one who did it.”

  “No, there was somebody else.” I turned toward Sig. It all made sense now. That’s why he’d been trying to push TJ out of his house. That was the secret he was trying to make disappear. My secret. “You knew, the whole time. Didn’t you? That it was me . . . the traitor.”

  Sig opened the front door so he could look out at the track, hundreds of yards away. He’d die happy, if that was the last sight he ever saw. His team. His boys. What he said told me everything I needed to know. “I wanted to win as much as you did.”

  I needed eyes to look into, eyes to say this to, so I looked at TJ. The person who needed to hear it the most. The person who’d been waiting years to hear it. I needed to give this kid back something, so he could go on living. So I could too. “‘What’s the worst thing you ever did?’ Isn’t that what you asked me that night at Cousin Charlie’s? The worst thing I ever did? I’ll tell you. It wasn’t just that I wanted your father gone because he was doping . . . I needed him gone. He could have beat me without the drugs. He was that good . . . he would have won without them. That’s my truth. And his. He knew it. That’s what I’ve gotta live with. That it should have been him up there. Not me. That’s why I quit the Olympics. I didn’t deserve to be there.”

  I nodded toward Sig. “Ask him.”

  “Could my father have won . . . instead of . . . Hercules?”

  Sig gave him his truth—and mine—with a single word. “Yes.”

  I didn’t have any more secrets. I didn’t have any more life. “I deserve this, what’s happening. This is what the kidnapping is about. Somehow. In some way I don’t understand yet . . . I fucked with the code. You do wrong, you’re punished. I did wrong to somebody, and now I’m being punished. That’s what the classics are all about.”

  When Mizell’s cell phone rang—mine was lost to that fire at the crack den—it was almost a relief. Even if it was the kidnapper. Especially if it was him. He was my fate, for whatever reason.

  Mizell put it on speakerphone, so we could all hear.

  “At least you saved your girls from buying the farm . . . when you were down on the farm.”

  “Please. Who are you? Just tell me.”

  “Do I have to spell everything out for you? Just like the fingernails . . . spell it out . . . ”

  “Spell out what?” I yelled back at him. “AH is all they spelled out. Or HA. Like you think this is all one big fucking joke.”

  “Language. You sound like you were raised in a . . . fucking orphanage.” He spit the word out. “If you’d just answered your fan mail . . . ”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I was your. Biggest fan. I sent you fan mail. Fan mail, from some flounder. And oh, how I floundered.”

  He slammed down the phone, and the connection between us, our umbilical cord, was cut.

  And then, as if he’d just remembered something, Sig started moving. “Jesus Christ on a crutch . . . orphanage . . . your fan mail . . . ”

  Sig went to his roll-top desk and began rummaging through a bulging scrapbook of Olympic clippings. “You got all sorts of crazy stuff back then,” he said, flipping from page to page,
gray paper almost turning to dust in his fingers. In those pages, I saw my younger self fly by, a victor making wild crazy grins for the camera. “I didn’t show it to you, because I didn’t want you to lose your focus.”

  At the very back of the scrapbook, stuffed in between the last page and the hard binding, were a handful of letters, opened, but then stuffed back in their envelopes. All with the same return address.

  “The Bruckner Children’s Home, Pittsfield, Mass. What—you mean that old orphanage?” I said, pulling the pages of run-on writing from an envelope, an envelope Mizell grabbed from me, then held up next to the cowboy shirt I’d gotten.

  “Wait . . . look at this.” Mizell held the envelope’s return address up against the inside collar of the shirt, with the Magic Marker writing. “BCH. Those initials. They’re the same initials. BCH. Bruckner Children’s Home. That’s where the shirt is from. That’s where we’ve gotta go now . . . ”

  And then I saw it. Four lines, four lines of terror, from the same person who’d been plotting and planning ever since then. Buried at the very bottom of the final page of one of his insane fan letters to me. Clearly an adult; no child could be this evil.

  They sent me away, so you could go play,

  They left me alone, so you’d be on your own . . .

  They’ll feel my gloom, when they meet their doom . . .

  But since you’re greater, I’m saving you for later.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Mizell didn’t use her siren driving to The Bruckner Home, some thirty minutes away, but still, we couldn’t have raced there any faster.

  “There” was where we turned into another place I vaguely remembered from childhood. My mother taking our little Sunday school class there, to see where our tithe was going. It all looked so normal, after the fire and brimstone stuff we’d been scared with in church.

  “If you’re not good, if you don’t work hard and win for your father, you’ll end up there.”

  Clean and orderly, at least the parts they showed us. One little girl from the home was leading our group, and I asked her—in all innocence—“But where are all the orphans? They said we’d get to see orphans.”