Three Graves Full

by Jamie Mason

  Until Gary’s attention, Jason had never allowed himself an outlet for the dislike of his father-in-law. Such men were enviable—successful and bold all the way to the diamond cuff links—whereas Jason had never done anything except inherit the dirt that the meek were promised in the Bible. The wishful thinkers had always transcribed it as if Jesus had said that they would earn the Earth, but Earth and earth are apportioned by strength, not by mildness, as every mild man knows.

  Jason’s father-in-law was righteous: generous, scholarly, sleek, fit, and far too much for Jason to take head-on. Jason wasn’t without pride, but had always confined his snappy comebacks to the bathroom mirror.

  The privacy of his own home had been no release either. Jason couldn’t very well have complained to Patty about her dear daddy. She’d been at once the spoiled favorite and the unproductive black sheep and was clever enough not to tip the balance out of her favor. She had no qualms about letting Jason have the sharp end of her temper if he complained. And he simply wasn’t at ease enough at the office watercooler to let the gossip fly. So he’d swallowed the slights, choked them down, and let them eat their way through his guts to turn him yellow and cringing.

  Gary had cared. He had wanted to hear what had happened to Jason at the hands of his highbrow in-laws. He’d asked him for more, for how he’d felt, deserted there on the drafty side of their cold shoulders, and he asked for a full account of what Jason had done about it. Gary had got angry on Jason’s behalf as the tales of the snubbings poured out. Molehills rose to their indignant height and in the process, the Coates family’s location, assets, and patterns were detailed, often at Gary’s urging. He always wanted Jason to set the scene clearly—just for authenticity, of course.

  The setup was simple. All the best ones are.

  It was the biggest job Gary had ever managed. He’d done deals as meager as lifting food stamps from trailer-park mailboxes, but the opportunity to hit something more than a house and just less than an estate was flush with challenges and payoff.

  And Gary was good at what he did, albeit small-time. He arranged and conducted the hits from a distance, perched out of reach, both literally and figuratively, from the action as it happened. His ties to the capable hands-on thieves he worked with were kept thin for everyone’s peace of mind. He had been sincere when he’d told Jason that only four people in the whole world knew how to get him on the telephone, a rolling series of noncontract, pay-as-you-go numbers that were never in his name. And one of those people was his mother, who could rarely be bothered. The rest of them had every interest in keeping to as much radio silence as their business allowed.

  For Gary, alone was better. He slept like the dead, but only when he’d spent days on his own, away from people. Sometimes it depressed him that he couldn’t just enjoy a chat or a friendly gathering, but no matter the occasion, a part of him was always circling for the most advantageous angle, looking for a weak spot in the fence. He couldn’t help himself. It was exhausting and it never switched off, although he had actually tried a little for the sake of Jason Getty.

  “It’s the biggest haul we’ve ever made. Your father-in-law won’t know whether to shit or go dancing,” Gary cackled. “We got a Mercedes, man. A fuckin’ Merc!”

  “You took his car?” Jason had lost even the color to his lips, all his blood pulling maximum distance from the story as it crashed into him.

  “Dude, we took everything. I haven’t seen it yet, but the haul was epic. Shit, the old bastard deserved it. You know that. Besides his insurance will cover it.”

  “Just like mine will,” Jason said, head down.

  Gary clucked and shifted in his seat. “Um. No. Your case is a little bit different. Don’t be sore at me, man. Your TV and watch and stuff—”

  “Stuff? What stuff? There’s more?”

  “Just a few little things. Don’t get your panties in a wad. Your stuff is my insurance. And yours, too, really. We don’t hit with a third party unless they get tapped, too. Your stuff will be held and eventually sold off with the other things. It’s all mixed in together. Cops find us, they find you.”

  “That’s bullshit.” The curse slipped out of Jason’s mouth without clearing his head, but hearing it in his own voice made him bold. “I’ll just tell them you robbed us both.”

  Gary raised his eyebrows, irritatingly mild in his amusement. “Well, that won’t go very far in explaining the thirty-five hundred dollars cash you deposited at the bank drop tonight.”

  “What? I haven’t made any deposit,” Jason spluttered and stammered. “And if you think I’m going to, you can just forget it.”

  “I wouldn’t ask it of you.” Gary had grown tired of Jason’s new tone in seconds. “You’d probably just fuck it up, anyway.” Gary sucked his teeth. “And look at you growing all kinds of balls now. Anyway, it’s your car that’s on the surveillance tape. Your jacket. Your ball cap. Your deposit ticket from your checkbook in the desk drawer in the other room. We paid a guy about your size to keep his head down and drop the envelope in the slot. He did it for twenty bucks.” Gary loosed a laugh, a jolly warning laugh, by way of a last invitation for them to make light of it all. “Course, that meant we had to find a fourteen-year-old who could drive. But what I’m telling you is—the camera saw you.”

  Jason didn’t laugh back.

  “Christ man, don’t be such a tight ass. That money will cover anything you lost. It’s no big deal! I protected you. You’re not out anything. I made sure of it. I’m trying to be a friend, here. This is how it works. My guys will work with me no questions asked, no hassle, no danger to you at all, because they know I put a rubber on these things so as no one catches preggers with problems. I can trust you now, and you can trust me—hey!—I’m being straight with you, ain’t I? And now I’m protected. Everybody gets paid and your asshole father-in-law gets screwed out of one big shock and a few days’ trouble putting his castle back together. So what? Get a grip.”

  Jason spared a groping second to search his conscience for remorse for his father-in-law’s hardship, but there wasn’t much. It was well overshadowed by a brighter shame than Patty’s father had ever caused him. Jason raged in layers. At the core was a dizzy cold spot, spinning, impossible to pin down. His stomach burned, bearing down and dragging a heavy heat inward, bending his spine. Over that, his muscles crackled with lightning, itching to strike out in quickly fading flashes. On top of it all, humiliation pricked his skin. It stung his cheeks, his palms, his neck, the backs of his legs as they trembled against the chair, but most especially, it stabbed into his eyes.

  “Are you crying?” Gary asked. “Tell me you’re not crying. Jesus, what a puss.” Although he’d started the comment in laughter, in only a few short words Gary was hit full in the instinct with alpha-male bloodlust. “Look, Jason, your chicken’s been plucked. It’s not like I can cram the feathers back in. And just because I don’t care doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. But you sitting there crying like that is straining my last fucking nerve. I’m not your girlfriend.”

  “Get out. Get out of my house.” Jason kept his voice low to tighten down on the quaking that welled up through him.

  “Oh ho! Is that how it is, is it?”

  “I mean it, Harris.” Jason bit the words off to good effect, managing to sound stern over crushed.

  Gary sat bolt rigid in his chair. “Harris? Did you just call me Harris?”

  The fight, ill at ease to begin with, whooshed from Jason in a hurry. “I’m—I’m—I’m sorry, Gary. I’m just upset—”

  “No. Stop right there. You think you’re man enough to bark me out by my last name? Do you?” Gary slapped the tabletop and launched out of his seat. “Then that’s what you call me. All the time. From now on. Fuck that. I was trying to work this out, trying to make you see that it wasn’t a bad deal for anyone except some rich asshole who deserved it. I went to a lot of trouble for you. You think I bother explaining myself to the other shitheads? You think I do? Fuck you. I’ll
knock your goddamned teeth down your throat the next time you call me Gary like we’re friends.”

  Jason was left stammering, an ache and a panic zinging between his ears, scrambling everything he wanted to say. He followed Harris to the door. “Listen, don’t go like this. We’ll work it out. You’ve been drinking anyway and—”

  Harris put a finger over his lips. “Shhhh! Just say, ‘Good night, Harris.’ ”

  The part of Jason that was still angry despised the pleading bleat that squeaked out. “Gar—”

  Harris pulled back his fist so fast Jason could only flinch and clamp his lips down over a squeal. Harris stopped the blow an inch off Jason’s cheekbone.

  “Say, ‘Good night, Harris.’ ”

  “Good night, Harris.”

  A sneer crumpled Harris’s good looks into a gargoyle’s leer. His breath was sour and yeasty in Jason’s face. Jason tried to pull his eyes to meet Harris’s close inspection of him, but they wouldn’t stay put to take in the change that had come over his erstwhile friend, his magic mirror. And then, of all the odd things, Gary Harris took Jason’s face between his two hands.

  “See you around, Jase.”

  Then he leaned in and kissed Jason’s cheek. A warm, lingering, utterly terrifying sensation. Excruciatingly slowly, Jason felt every millimeter of Harris’s soft lips lifting, tickling his skin. Harris pulled back from the embrace, and before a blink could fall, he slapped a cupped hand hard over the spot on Jason’s face. There was more noise than pain, and the tears held until Jason could throw the lock over with trembling fingers and stumble back into the first of many sleepless nights.

  10

  Jason left the living-room light on all night, every night, after the burglary. It burned as a beacon, an invitation to parley, just in case Harris rode by. That was the more noble posture of it at any rate, when Jason was able to convince himself that the light wasn’t just a shield against being caught alone in the dark. It didn’t much explain why he left the hallway, the closet, and the bathroom lit up like the Las Vegas Strip.

  Rolling the lamp’s switch to its startling little click each night also served as a ritual, a votive lit for a dead opportunity. It marked off a penance for that one moment he’d chosen to flex his temper and lower his horns at Harris; the moment he’d have back if only he could. Turning into his driveway each afternoon was an exercise in unrelieved tension. It wasn’t as relaxing as it could have been, letting out the held breath each time he found his house not tossed over. He knew there was always tomorrow. Jason’s too quiet evenings were wasted on wishing he could flip the choice he’d made that night, change things back so that Harris’s dark side still lurked, semisafely, below the surface.

  Jason daydreamed, in replay, the whole event and its aftermath spooling out differently: his mild acceptance of what had been done, of replacing the lost items and the door locks without a fuss, and then of Harris’s attention drying up, his interest in Jason waning in a few weeks or months just as Jason had always known it would have done sooner or later. Jason wanted the footnote, the whole business fading into a diary entry to be read by someone packing up his things long after it mattered anymore. In those daydreams, his life was gifted back to him. He was bitten and twice shy to be sure, in those fantasies, but no worse for the wear—exactly as Harris had said it would be. Jason hated himself mostly for that tweak of insult, that Harris had been right. The one time Jason hadn’t played along as the butt end of a joke resulted in a pissing contest that left him with nothing but wet shoes. That and an unrelenting paranoia inside his own house.

  When Harris did resurface, on a late-summer evening, he came with a six-pack. As he stood there under the porch light flickering inside a whirlwind of moths, it was hard to tell if it was challenge or good fun that radiated under his smirk and arched eyebrow. Jason’s blood slushed in his veins, and all the speeches he’d rehearsed vanished from their sentry posts.

  “You gonna let me in?” But the question was only a line out of a script with none of the blocking. Harris took the threshold as if he owned it and closed the door behind him. “Wouldn’t be good to have unwanted guests, now would it?” He laughed at Jason’s startle. “Relax. I meant the bugs.”

  Jason’s head was empty, buzzing a hollow alarm. The only thing that tumbled from his lips was a tremulous “Everything all right?”

  “Let’s have a beer” was all the answer he got.

  Harris’s brand of manipulation was in that nearly everything he said was delivered tone-neutral. It wasn’t an affectation. He didn’t need to try to mask his intentions, because quite often he didn’t have any. The desire to connect with another human being weights the conversations of most people. To make themselves known, they work their opinions and desires out of the best-fitting words and truest inflections they can manage. Harris, by nature, wasn’t concerned with being understood. He only looked for an angle. Almost anything he said could be plied as a joke, a threat, or, most maddening, like indifference. His targets marked themselves by how they translated.

  To his great discomfort, Jason could map his own complicity in all their exchanges. He’d betrayed himself over and over by wringing exactly what he’d wanted to hear from the next to nothing Harris had actually said. The jarring contrast of Harris’s fury during their last confrontation was made all the more pointed by the way it couldn’t, unlike nearly everything else Harris had ever said, be played back as anything other than menace.

  His “How’ve ya been?” was accompanied by the happy whoosh of air rushing up from under the twisted bottle cap. It scanned as “friendly” in the mind’s ear, but really, it was only three words and a bit of carbonation.

  “I’m okay,” said Jason.

  “Still sore at me?”

  Yes. “No!” Jason’s pride splintered off and refused to participate beyond grumbling in the corner of his mind. “It was just a shock, you know, that whole night. I wasn’t expecting it. I mean, you don’t expect that sort of thing, do you? You were very . . . What would you call it? Cool and everything. I just didn’t have a clue. My house was robbed. I wasn’t really hearing you. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He set you up and you’re apologizing. Outstanding.

  “I see you didn’t get a new TV yet,” Harris said as he handed Jason a beer.

  “Well, I have the little set in the bedroom. And”—Jason swallowed a painful knot of his drink—“I didn’t know if you’d want the money back.”

  Harris laughed over the rim of his bottle, watching Jason with too steady eyes, his lips just brushing the rolled-glass edge. Jason locked his shoulders against a shudder at the unwelcome memory of the feel of those lips. “Jase, you really are a piece of work.” Harris flopped into his usual chair at the table. “But it does so happen that I actually do need a little money.”

  Jason’s offer of a check was rejected on practical grounds, so he drove, against a tirade of abuse from his kneecapped self-esteem, to an ATM. It was only $300. Harris was being nice. Harris isn’t being anything. His visit is an olive branch, a threat, a scam, an honest need—face it, it is anything your jelly spine makes of it. Jason let the argument ricochet inside his skull, tearing him a headache. But he spoke to Harris of only inconsequential things and laughed whenever he thought he heard a joke.

  They stood in the foyer in the same positions they’d taken at their last showdown. Jason was damp in his uncertainty, knowing he’d played along as best he could, cautiously hopeful that he’d eased the lid back over Pandora’s box. It wasn’t the sort of hope that could boast firm footing, though.

  “Well, Jase, you came through for me.” Harris clapped him on the shoulder. “I thought you might. Good man.”

  “Look, Gary, the other night, I never meant to—”

  The slap rocked him to the right and burned like hot pavement against his cheek.

  “You think everything’s all right? Think again, Getty. Pissing your pants and kissing my ass all night doesn’t put us back as good buddies. I tried to be a fr
iend to you and got Harris for the fucking hassle. So Harris it is. And if I have to tell you again, you’ll wake up on the goddamned floor.”

  “Why are you so mad about that?” Jason held a cooling hand to his face, but his eyes burned. Pain, shame, and anger brewed stinging tears.

  “Because you’re ungrateful. And you just need to believe me, I am not about second chances.”

  • • •

  Harris became regular in his attentions after that. At least regular in that rarely more than three or four days separated his appearances at the door. Sometimes he’d hang out as if nothing were wrong: drinking beer, cracking jokes, and complaining about mundane things across the table from a stiff-backed Jason. Other visits were short, taunting episodes of ringing the bell in the small hours of the morning, waking Jason for a loan or a chat. Harris seemed to get a kick out of telling Jason that he looked like stir-fried shit, so Harris kept him good and tired. Harris always returned the money he borrowed, though. On his next visit he never once failed to settle their account in full.

  Harris started bringing things for Jason to hold for short spans: boxes of loose jewelry, computers, a case of new cell phones, and, once, an Acura with a smashed passenger window.

  “What if it has one of those tracking things on it?” Jason tried to rein in his pout, as it always sparked up the bully in Harris.

  “Well then,” he’d replied, but had to stop for a short fit of mocking giggles, “you’ll just have to tell them that you’re holding it for your good friend Gary Harris. See how that works out for you.”