Dig Two Graves

by Kim Powers

  A miracle. I cleared it.

  The yapping dogs of hell didn’t.

  They leapt—twelve legs pawing at nothing but air—and disappeared into the fog that covered the pit. I slammed to a stop as I heard three yelping thuds . . .

  Whimpering, trapped . . .

  I didn’t have to do anything to get their master to stop and lean over the edge; his dogs did that themselves. Moving his torch around in the darkness to try to see them—or me—I snuck around behind him and pushed.

  Just like he had done to me in the crack den.

  “Shit. It’s you.”

  It was the last thing he said on this earth, before he landed in the pit with the dogs.

  Now the three-headed dog of Cerberus had something to feast on. And it was hungry.

  In the distance, the snarls died away. The screams.

  Now, just smacking, and the sound of my footsteps on dead leaves, coming back to my brother. Stop, then start, on my guard; what he must have sounded like dragging himself around.

  “Who is it! Who’s there! Answer me!”

  I stepped out from the fog. He was still where I had left him, spilled out on the patch of bare ground, next to the turned-up earth from where the grave had been dug.

  “How did you . . . ”

  “It’s just us now. Your helper . . . the dogs got him.”

  I had the upper hand now. I was standing. He was still lying on the ground.

  But he had a better upper hand, with a gun in it. And he was pointing it down in the grave, at Wendy and Skip.

  “Don’t come any closer. I’ll kill them!” he snarled at me. “The measurements are . . . regulation. I’ve watched so many funerals . . . your wife’s, our parents . . . that I’ve got them. Just right.”

  I was at the edge of that grave now; down inside, Skip and Wendy were covered with dirt. Roots and rocks cropped out of the sides; the smell of fresh loam rose up, suffocating. Wendy’s eyes were still closed, but Skip’s eyes were looking straight at me, the only light in the dark. Tape covered her mouth, but I could still hear everything she thought.

  Save me. Help me.

  My daughter, my baby, who had never even been to a funeral, not even her own mother’s.

  I would rip out his fingernails.

  I would throw him into the bottom of a grave, once I got Skip and Wendy out.

  I couldn’t grieve someone who had done this. I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t love him. I couldn’t forgive him.

  Iphicles was as close as he could get to the grave, the gun in his hands, that box of snakes on the ground, to the side of him. Writhing. The same thing that Skip was doing, six feet below me.

  “Here, please. Give me the gun, it’s not too late . . . ” I fell to my knees and reached across the grave to him. “Let them go, and we’ll . . . ”

  “NO! Get away! I know what you’re doing!”

  He pointed the gun at me, just as beams of flashlights cut through the fog—so unexpected we both jerked—and then blood was on his face.

  A tiny red dot, on his forehead.

  Then another.

  And another.

  It was Mizell and a team of sharpshooters, finally arriving, their infrared scopes drawing beads on him.

  Their red dots grew larger, as they got closer.

  His eyes became just as enflamed. Red. On fire. “They can’t kill me. I’m already dead. Years ago. Waiting for you.”

  His battle cry, as he plunged his arm into the snakes.

  He made some kind of sound—his mouth was open—but it wasn’t a scream. The snakes were eating up whatever sound was coming from him, biting into his flesh. His legs were moving like they hadn’t in years, kicking and bucking.

  He was trying to extend his arms up triumphantly, like the images on the broken pottery of antiquity. Hercules and Iphicles. One baby, grinning and holding up snakes. The other baby, terrified and crying in a corner.

  “See. See. I can do it now. I can make the myth. Real. I’m strong. I’m. Better. I’m worthy. Of . . . keeping.”

  He tried one last push upward—holding up the snakes, or throwing them off, I would never know; maybe Mizell and her team thought he was trying to poison me with the snakes—and that’s when they shot him. His body convulsed, like he was being bitten by the snakes all over again.

  “NO!” I think that was me, but for once, we sounded the same.

  Those red dots, now bleeding. His chest. His arms. His legs.

  Mizell and her guys raced in, their circle of red dots closing around us.

  “Holt, get away from him . . . ” she growled at me.

  “Don’t leave. Not again . . . ” my brother exhaled.

  He was talking just to me now, not them. Just us. I barely even needed to hear the words anymore. We were speaking in the silent, secret language of twins. The language of the first time. And the last. I knelt down to him, and looked in his eyes. I saw terror. His hair was so spare, so wet and sweaty; slicked down against his head, like a newborn’s. I could feel the heat pouring off his head, even in this cold night air. I tried to see the one part of him that wasn’t sick, that had once been my twin.

  “I’m. Sorry.” Every word he said to me a supreme effort. “Skip . . . sorry.”

  Behind me, rushing around. Mizell on her walkie. Calls to an ambulance. Someone in the grave, pulling out Skip and Wendy. Now they were pulling at me too—I felt hands on my midsection—but I couldn’t leave him alone again. The one thing I had ever wanted—him, dead—and them, back, safe. But I couldn’t let him just die by himself. He must have been so terrified for most of his life and . . . no. I couldn’t leave. Not yet.

  “Aaron”—I whispered his name, the name I never got to say, or even to know . . .

  But then, another name broke in. The only word I’d wanted to hear, for the last three days. “Daddy?” Skip’s voice.

  And now, Wendy too. Awake. Alive. “Ethan, we’re safe. Just leave. I’m begging.”

  They started pulling me away, but he moved, trying to crawl after us. Using his hands like claws to pull himself along. Looking up with his eyes, the only part of his body that still seemed to work.

  “I’m begging. Too. Stay.”

  I tried to blink away my tears, but they filmed across my eyes, blurring everything. And in the prism they made, it was as if I saw three of him. Three heads, swirling around.

  He was the thing I had to kill. He was Cerberus, the monster with three heads. This was the true final Labor.

  He tried to say something, but no words came out of his mouth. Just blood.

  But he knew. He knew. I could see it in his eyes. Twins know. It’s what he wanted.

  For me to finish the Labors. For me to put him out of his misery, that had brought him to this point.

  I took Mizell’s pistol from her, just like I had up at the ski lodge with that deer that was past the point of saving.

  “Holt, are you crazy?” Mizell barked. “What are you doing . . . ”

  “The final Labor. Killing Cerberus. I’ve got to finish what I started. It’s what he wants.”

  Tears still blinding my eyes, I put my finger on that cold metal of her gun, pointed it at him, and he smiled.

  And then I remembered. For the first time, I remembered him. Aaron, in the womb, smiling at me. Perfect. Happy. Floating. Ready. The two of us hugging on to each other for dear life, before we had to leave the womb. It had all been so perfect up until then.

  I smiled back at him, the last image he would ever see on this earth—it’s your turn to fly now, my brother—and squeezed the trigger.

  And then I kept squeezing it, his body jerking and exploding, until all the bullets were used up.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  The college told me to take all the time I needed—they could get somebody else to teach my classes, not TJ though, he was taking time off too—but I like being there. It’s what I do. I pass on the past. I actually think I’m a better teacher now. I understand the classics
more deeply. All that passion, all that love and hate.

  All that revenge. I finally get it.

  His, and mine.

  Some days, after class, I help Sig out on the field, and that feels good too, to live in my body again, instead of just my head. I’ve done that for too long. We work up a good sweat, and then talk strategy in the locker room over the shower stalls, our heads full of shampoo. With his cane, Sig steps out and onto a towel on the cold tile floor, dusts between his toes with Gold Bond powder, then goes to the mirror and slaps on the cheap cologne he’s worn for the past umpteen years. He wriggles into the colored bikini underwear he’s taken to wearing in old age. (Oh Lord, is that going to happen to me too?) He pulls the waistband forward and whooshes a spray of Gold Bond in there, too, then lets the underwear snap back into place.

  I still do my runs with Skip every morning, weather permitting, even after everything that’s happened. At the end of them, when I veer off to campus and she goes on her way to school, she always makes a big point of asking, “You okay? You sure?” The very thing I should be asking her, that she won’t allow. The thing everyone said to us after Patti died, and there was no answer. Then Skip always turns back to look at me one last time, before she disappears from sight completely.

  She thinks I don’t see her, but I do.

  Skip. My daughter. My life. Same thing.

  I’ve asked her if she wants to move to a different house, to get away from everything, but she says her mother is still there, and she doesn’t want to leave her behind. I feel the same way. I repainted Skip’s bedroom so you can’t see the fingerprint powder anymore, although I think I’ll always know what’s under all those layers of fresh paint. And it’s not pink! My baby’s not a pink girl anymore. Sage green. She said she wanted it to look like a color you could actually find in nature. Up on her ceiling, I’ve painted the constellations in DayGlo paint that you can only see at night, so she can focus on something when she can’t sleep. I guess that makes it “Night-glo.”

  When I can’t sleep—which is often—I hear Skip go up to the attic, after lights out. She says she’s working on something new, but she won’t let me see it yet. So she’s still doing her little sculptures, I guess, and being in her plays. At first, I tried to keep her from those; I thought that make-believe and drama weren’t good for her anymore. I wanted her to do kid things for a while. Read Harry Potter. She argued with me about that, so I knew she was starting to come back to her old self.

  Dad, you’re so out of it, she’d say. Do you know how many people die in Harry Potter? And besides, they’re doing “Legally Blonde” at school. Nobody dies in that. And I’d get to wear a wig. And fake fingernails. Please . . .

  My eyes got a little watery when she said that, and she came over and gave me a hug. Kissed me on top of my old head. My hair is whiter now than it was just a few months ago, definitely more salt than pepper. I gave in about the play, and she’s in rehearsals now. She got the lead. My tall, beautiful string bean with freckles and braces, and now, a blond wig, singing and dancing, after . . .

  I can’t go there, not yet.

  Aretha is going to the play with me and Wendy; she said she’s going to wear a brand new blond wig too, in honor of the occasion. “I paid for it, I guess that makes it legal!” I’ve finally broken down and started calling her “Aretha,” although it still feels strange, like whenever I say it she’ll break into song. “Respect” or “Chain of Fools.” She still calls me “Holt”—usually followed by “Are you crazy?” I like that. It feels like my new name. “Holt-are-you-crazy.”

  Sometimes “Aretha” comes running with me at night, to shed some pounds she says, but I think it’s to look after me, same as Skip. She can keep an eye on me that way, without me knowing it. When she sees tears in my eyes, she can pretend it’s just the wind, or a speck of something caught there.

  Mostly, though, I run by myself. I still even run through the cemetery, the way I used to do back in my college days. I still leave my goofy presents on top of the tombstones, to remind those spirits that I was there, that somebody still remembers them. A torn shoelace or a stick of gum, whatever I have at hand.

  I do it at strangers’ graves, and I do it at my brother’s.

  Aaron’s grave is a ways off from all the others, tucked away in the same corner where we ended up that night. In the same grave, even, that he dug for Skip and Wendy. When the school asked me what they could they do to help, it was the first thing I thought of.

  It’s bizarre, I know. Sick even. To have him there, in the very same place, as a reminder of the worst night of my life. You’d think I’d want his body as far away as possible from my town, my job, my daughter, my life.

  You’d think I’d want his body burned, turned to ash and dust, something I could get rid of.

  But I still need him there, nearby. In that very grave, the same one he’d dug for Skip and Wendy, and maybe even me. Most people would think it was crazy; Aretha would, for sure. That’s why I never let her come running through the cemetery with me.

  Holt-are-you-crazy . . .

  Yes-I-am.

  But this is what I need right now.

  I don’t completely understand it, but this is my penance, for forgetting him.

  For not feeling him there, in my blood.

  I did it once, and I can’t let that happen again.

  It seems as if there’s always a light dusting of snow up in that particular corner of the cemetery, higher than the rest of the school property. Looking down, the perfect vantage point. Fir trees surround it, so the sun never really gets a chance to come through. All these months later, a few pieces of yellow police tape still flutter around, from where they were anchored around the trees for the crime scene investigation, and I’ve never taken them down. I don’t know if that’s my job or the police’s, but I’ve come to like the whipping sound they make, when the wind blows. Now, it’s just like another sound of nature to me. The place would seem empty without it.

  After Patti died, I’d go to her grave and talk to her, about how to go on. How life could possibly continue.

  Patti, at least, answered back; she must have, telling me how to raise our daughter by myself, to become a beautiful and brave young woman, because that is certainly what Skip is turning out to be.

  Aaron, though, never says a word, as I keep asking him the same question: Why?

  Why everything?

  Why did he do it, to me, to Skip and Wendy, when he could have just reached out and . . .

  But no. There is only silence, except for that plastic yellow police tape whipping in the wind. So I just keep talking and hoping, someday, for answers. Like I talked to Skip in the hospital when she was in such agony. I just open my mouth and keep talking, and somehow, I keep finding things to say.

  Thirty-six years’ worth of things, to fill him in on.

  I sit cross-legged in front of his stone marker—my zane, copied from the ancient Greek athletes, a testament to my crime—and talk to him. I tell him about the past he missed, the past we could have shared, and the future we could have shared too, if only things had been different. And somehow it helps to take away the pain. Not completely though; I don’t think that will ever happen.

  For that to happen, I am still waiting.

  It’s what he had to do for so much of his life—wait—and now it’s my turn, as I pull myself up from that cross-legged position and start running back to the school and home.

  To Wendy, to Aretha and Sig, to my life. To Skip.

  She’s promised to finally have that meatloaf waiting on the table.

  Author photo by George Paul

  KIM POWERS is the author of the novel Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story as well as the critically acclaimed memoir The History of Swimming, a Barnes & Noble “Discover” Book and Lambda Literary Award finalist. He is currently the senior writer for ABC’s 20/20, and has won an Emmy, a Peabody, and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence during his time at ABC News and Good Mor
ning America. A native Texan, he received an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and also wrote the screenplay for the indie-favorite film Finding North. He lives in New York City and Asbury Park, NJ, and may be reached at kimpowersbooks.com.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my agent Jennifer Lyons (the one and only) and Ben LeRoy and Ashley Myers at Tyrus for bringing Dig Two Graves into the world. Also, many thanks to friends and editors who have helped me with readings and notes along the way: Laura Zaccaro, Jay Michaelson, Marlene Adelstein, Leslie Wells, Amy Schiffman, Jody Hotchkiss, Will Schwalbe, and Jim Mulkin (for the Latin translation of “up shit creek”!) Thanks to Anthony Nunziata and Will Nunziata for their friendship and for letting me borrow part of their twin story (actually, I just took it, but whatevs . . . ); to Don Birge, Jay Russell, VJ Carbone, and Michael Trusnovec for weekend fun; and to Marjorie Hass and Carol Daeley for helping me feel safe and welcomed on a college campus once again. Finally, to Jess Goldstein and Tim Powers, my inhale and exhale. I love you more.

  Copyright © 2016 by Kim Powers.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

  Published by

  TYRUS BOOKS

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.

  www.tyrusbooks.com

  Hardcover ISBN 10: 1-4405-9191-1

  Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9191-4

  Paperback ISBN 10: 1-4405-9192-X

  Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9192-1

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-9193-8

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-9193-8

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Powers, Kim.

  Dig two graves / Kim Powers.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-4405-9191-4 (hc) -- ISBN 1-4405-9191-1 (hc) -- ISBN 978-1-4405-9192-1 (pb) -- ISBN 1-4405-9192-X (pb) -- ISBN 978-1-4405-9193-8 (ebook) -- ISBN 1-4405-9193-8 (ebook)