New Jersey Noir

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Reno even visited marinas in the area, compared prices: sailboats, Chris-Craft power boats. In truth he was just a little afraid of the lake—of how he might perform as a sailor on it. A rowboat was one thing, but even a canoe—he felt shaky in a canoe, with another passenger. With this new family vulnerable as a small creature cupped in the palm of a hand—he didn’t want to take any risks.

  The first warm days in June, a wading pool for the children. For there was no beach, only just a pebbly shore of sand hard-packed as cement. And sharp-edged rocks in the shallows. But a plastic wading pool, hardly more than a foot of water—that was fine. Little Kevin splashed happily. And Devra in a puckered yellow Spandex swimsuit that fit her little body like a second skin. Reno tried not to stare at the little girl—the astonishing white-blond hair, the widened pale-blue eyes—thinking how strange it was, how strange Marlena would think it was, that the child of a father not known to him should have so totally supplanted Reno’s memory of his own daughter at that age; for Reno’s daughter too must have been beautiful, adorable—but he couldn’t recall. Terrifying how parts of his life were being shut to him like rooms in a house shut and their doors sealed and once you’ve crossed the threshold, you can’t return. Waking in the night with a pounding heart Reno would catch his breath thinking, But I have my new family now. My new life now.

  Sometimes in the woods above the lake there was a powerful smell—a stink—of skunk, or something dead and rotted; not the decaying compost Marlena had begun which exuded a pleasurable odor for the most part, but something ranker, darker. Reno’s sinuses ached, his eyes watered, and he began sneezing—in a sudden panic that he’d acquired an allergy for something at Paraquarry Lake.

  That weekend, Kevin injured himself running along the rocky shore—as his mother had warned him not to—falling, twisting his ankle. And little Devra, stung by yellow jackets that erupted out of nowhere—in fact, out of a hive in the earth that Reno had disturbed with his shovel.

  Screaming! High-pitched screams that tore at Reno’s heart. If only the yellow jackets had stung him—Reno might have used the occasion to give the children some instruction.

  Having soothed two weeping children in a single afternoon Marlena said ruefully, “Camp can be treacherous!” The remark was meant to be amusing but there was seriousness beneath, even a subtle warning, Reno knew.

  He swallowed hard and promised it wouldn’t happen again.

  This warm-humid June afternoon shading now into early evening and Reno was still digging—“excavating”—the old ruin of a terrace. The project was turning out to be harder and more protracted than he had anticipated. For the earth below the part-elevated house was a rocky sort of subsoil, of a texture like fertilizer; moldering bricks were everywhere, part-buried; also jagged pieces of concrete and rusted spikes, broken glass amid shattered bits of red shale. The previous owners had simply dumped things here. Going back for decades, probably. Generations. Reno hoped these slovenly people hadn’t dumped anything toxic.

  The A-frame had been built in 1957—that long ago. Sometime later there were renovations, additions—sliding glass doors, skylights. A sturdier roof. Another room or two. By local standards the property hadn’t been very expensive—of course, the market for lakeside properties in this part of New Jersey had been depressed for several years.

  The new wife and the children were down at the shore—at their neighbors’ dock. Reno heard voices, radio music—Marlena was talking with another young mother, several children were playing together. Reno liked hearing their happy uplifted voices though he couldn’t make out any words. From where he stood, he couldn’t have said with certainty which small figure was Kevin, which was Devra.

  How normal all this was! Soon, Daddy would quit work for the evening, grab a beer from the refrigerator, and join his little family at the dock. How normal Reno was—a husband again, a father and a homeowner here at Paraquarry Lake.

  Of all miracles, none is more daunting than normal. To be—to become—normal. This gift seemingly so ordinary is not a gift given to all who seek it.

  And the children’s laughter too. This was yet more exquisite.

  With a grunt Reno unearthed a large rock he’d been digging and scraping at with mounting frustration. And beneath it, or beside it, what appeared to be a barrel, with broken and rotted staves; inside the barrel, what appeared to be shards of a broken urn.

  There was something special about this urn, Reno seemed to know. The material was some sort of dark red earthenware—thick, glazed—inscribed with figures like hieroglyphics. Even broken and coated with grime, the pieces exuded an opaque sort of beauty. Unbroken, the urn would have stood about three feet in height.

  Was this an Indian artifact? Reno was excited to think so—remains of the Lenni Lenape culture were usually shattered into very small pieces, almost impossible for a nonspecialist to recognize.

  With the shiny new shovel Reno dug into and around the broken urn, curious. He’d been tossing debris into several cardboard boxes, to be hauled to the local landfill. He was tired—his muscles ached, and there was a new, sharp pain between his shoulder blades—but he was feeling good, essentially. At the neighbors’ dock when they asked him how he was he’d say, Damn good! But thirsty.

  His next-door neighbor looked to be a taciturn man of about Reno’s age. And the wife one of those plus-size personalities with a big smile and greeting. To them, Marlena and Reno would be a couple. No sign that they were near-strangers desperate to make the new marriage work.

  Already in early June Reno was beginning to tan—he looked like a native of the region more than he looked like a summer visitor from the city, he believed. In his T-shirt, khaki shorts, waterstained running shoes. He wasn’t yet fifty—he had two years before fifty. His father had died at fifty-three of a heart attack but Reno took care of his health. He had annual checkups, he had nothing to worry about. He would adopt the woman’s children—that was settled. He would make them his own: Kevin, Devra. He could not have named the children more fitting names. Beautiful names for beautiful children.

  The Paraquarry property was an excellent investment. His work was going well. His work was not going badly. His job wasn’t in peril—yet. He hadn’t lost nearly so much money as he might have in the recent economic crisis—he was far from desperate, like a number of his friends. Beyond that—he didn’t want to think.

  A scuttling snake amid the debris. Reno was taken by surprise, startled. Tossed a piece of concrete at it. Thinking then in rebuke, Don’t be ridiculous. A garter snake is harmless.

  Something was stuck to some of the urn shards—clothing? Torn, badly rotted fabric?

  Reno leaned his weight onto the shovel, digging more urgently. A flash of something wriggling in the earth—worms—cut by the slice of the shovel. Reno was sweating now. He stooped to peer more closely even as the cautionary words came: Maybe no. Maybe not a good idea.

  “Oh. God.”

  Was it a bone? Or maybe plastic? No, a bone. An animal bone?

  Covered in dirt, yet a very pale bone.

  A human bone?

  But so small—had to be a child’s bone.

  A child’s forearm perhaps.

  Reno picked it up in his gloved hands. It weighed nothing—it might have been made of Styrofoam.

  “It is. It really … is.”

  Numbly Reno groped amid the broken pottery, tossing handfuls of clumped dirt aside. More bones, small broken rib bones, a skull … A skull!

  It was a small skull of course. Small enough to cup in the hand.

  Not an animal skull but a child’s skull. Reno seemed to know—a little girl’s skull.

  This was not believable! Reno’s brain was struck blank, for a long moment he could not think … The hairs stirred at the nape of his neck and he wondered if he was being watched.

  A makeshift grave about fifteen feet from the base of his house. And when had this little body been buried? Twenty years ago, ten years ago? By the look of the bon
es, the rotted clothing, and the broken urn, the burial hadn’t been recent.

  But these were not Indian bones of course. Those bones would be much older—badly broken, dim, and scarified with time.

  Reno’s hand shook. The small teeth were bared in a smile of sheer terror. The small jaws had fallen open, the eye sockets were disproportionately large. Of course, the skull was broken—it was not a perfect skull. Possibly fractured in the burial—struck by the murderer’s shovel. The skeleton lay in pieces—had the body been dismembered? Reno was whispering to himself words meant to console—Oh God. Help me, God. God! As his surprise ebbed Reno began to be badly frightened. He was thinking that these might be the bones of his daughter—his first daughter; the little girl had died, her death had been accidental, but he and her mother had hurriedly buried her …

  But no: ridiculous. This was another time, not that time.

  This was another campsite. This was another part of Paraquarry Lake. This was another time in a father’s life.

  His daughter was alive. Somewhere in California, a living girl. He was not to blame. He had never hurt her. She would outlive him.

  Laughter and raised voices from the lakeshore. Reno shaded his eyes to see—what were they doing? Were they expecting Daddy to join them?

  Kneeling in the dirt. Groping and rummaging in the coarse earth. Among the broken pottery, bones, and rotted fabric faded to the no-color of dirty water, something glittered—a little necklace of glass beads.

  Reno untangled it from a cluster of small bones—vertebrae? The remains of the child’s neck? Hideous to think that the child skeleton might have been broken into pieces with a shovel, or an axe. An axe! To fit more readily into the urn. To hasten decomposition.

  “Little girl! Poor little girl.”

  Reno was weak with shock, sickened. His heart pounded terribly—he didn’t want to die as his father had died! He would breathe deeply, calmly. He held the glass beads to the light. Amazingly the chain was intact. A thin metallic chain, tarnished. He put the little glass-bead necklace into the pocket of his khaki shorts. Hurriedly he covered the bones with dirt, debris. Pieces of the shattered urn he picked up and tossed into the cardboard box. And the barrel staves … Then he thought he should remove the bones also—he should place them in the box, beneath the debris, and take the box out to the landfill this evening. Before he did anything else. Before he washed hurriedly, grabbed a beer, and joined Marlena and the children at the lakefront. He would dispose of the child’s bones at the landfill.

  No. They will be traced here. Not a good idea.

  Frantically he covered the bones. Then more calmly, smoothing the coarse dirt over the debris. Fortunately there was a sizable hole—a gouged-out, ugly hole—that looked like a rupture in the earth. Reno would lay flagstones over the grave—he’d purchased two dozen flagstones from a garden supply store on the highway. The children could help him—it would not be difficult work once the earth was prepared. As bricks had been laid over the child’s grave years ago, Reno would lay flagstones over it now. For he could not report this terrible discovery—could he? If he called the Paraquarry police, if he reported the child skeleton to county authorities, what would be the consequences?

  His mind went blank—he could not think.

  Could not bear the consequences. Not now, in his new life.

  Numbly he was setting his work tools aside, beneath the overhang of the redwood deck. The new shovel was not so shiny now. Quickly then—shakily—climbing the steps, to wash his hands in the kitchen. A relief—he saw his family down at the shore, with the neighbors—the new wife, the children. No one would interrupt Reno washing the little glass-bead necklace in the kitchen sink, in awkward big-Daddy hands.

  Gently washing the glass beads, that were blue—beneath the grime a startling pellucid blue like slivers of sky. It was amazing, you might interpret it as a sign—the thin little chain hadn’t broken in the earth.

  Not a particle of dirt remained on the glass beads when Reno was finished washing them, drying them on a paper towel on the kitchen counter.

  “Hey—look here! What’s this? Who’s this for?”

  Reno dangled the glass-bead necklace in front of Devra. The little girl stared, blinking. It was suppertime—Daddy had cooked hamburgers on the outdoor grill on the deck—and now he pulled a little blue glass-bead necklace out of his pocket as if he’d only just discovered it.

  Marlena laughed—she was delighted—for this was the sort of small surprise she appreciated.

  Not for herself but for the children. In this case, for Devra. It was a good moment, a warm moment—Kevin didn’t react with jealousy but seemed only curious, as Daddy said he’d found the necklace in a “secret place” and knew just who it was meant for.

  Shyly Devra took the little necklace from Daddy’s fingers.

  “What do you say, Devra?”

  “Oh Dad-dy—thank you.”

  Devra spoke so softly, Reno cupped his hand to his ear.

  “Speak up, Devra. Daddy can’t hear.” Marlena helped the little girl slip the necklace over her head.

  “Daddy, thank you!”

  The little fish-mouth pursed for a quick kiss of Daddy’s cheek.

  Around the child’s slender neck the blue glass beads glittered, gleamed. All that summer at Paraquarry Lake, Reno would marvel he’d never seen anything more beautiful.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  ROBERT ARELLANO was born in 1969 at Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, and raised at 228 Kent Place Boulevard, where he shared a bedroom with brothers Manuel and Miguel, a wall with sisters Alicia and Ana Maria, and another wall with parents Manuel and Alicia. His novel Havana Lunar, which was a 2010 Edgar Award finalist, and his Southwest noir Curse the Names (2012), are both published by Akashic Books.

  RICHARD BURGIN’S fifteen books include the novel Rivers Last Longer and the story collections Shadow Traffic and The Identity Club: New and Selected Stories, which the Huffington Post listed as one of the forty best books of fiction of the last decade. His stories have won five Pushcart Prizes and been reprinted in many anthologies including The Best American Mystery Stories 2005. He teaches at St. Louis University where he edits the literary journal Boulevard.

  MICHAEL CARROLL’S stories have appeared in Open City, Ontario Review, Boulevard, and such anthologies as The New Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

  JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER is the author of the best-selling novels Everything Is Illuminated, which was adapted into a film starring Elijah Wood; and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His short stories have been published in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and Conjunctions. Foer’s latest book is a work of nonfiction, Eating Animals, which was an instant New York Times and international best seller. He lives in Brooklyn.

  JEFFREY FORD is the author of the novels The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, and The Shadow Year. His most recent story collection is The Drowned Life. Ford is the recipient of an Edgar Award, a Nebula, a Shirley Jackson Award, and a World Fantasy Award. He lives in South Jersey and teaches early American literature and writing at Brookdale Community College.

  SHEILA KOHLER is the author of eight novels including Becoming Jane Eyre and Love Child, and three collections of short stories. Kohler was awarded two O. Henry Awards, an Open Voice, the Smart Family Foundation, a Willa Cather, and an Antioch Review Prize. She was a fellow at the Cullman Center and teaches at Bennington and Princeton. A film based on her novel Cracks, directed by Jordan and Ridley Scott, debuted in theaters in the spring of 2011.

  BARRY N. MALZBERG graduated obscurely in the same Syracuse University class of 1960 of which New Jersey Noir’s editor was valedictorian. Less than a decade later, as Malzberg struggled toward modest prominence in science fiction, the valedictorian won the National Book Award in fiction. Not only has she been an inspiration for well over half a century, she’s kept Malzberg humble. Extremely humble.

  LOU
MANFREDO served in the Brooklyn criminal justice system for twenty-five years. His short fiction has appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Brooklyn Noir. He has authored three novels, Rizzo’s War, Rizzo’s Fire, and Rizzo’s Regards (forthcoming). Born and raised in Brooklyn, Manfredo and his wife Joanne have lived in New Jersey for many years.

  BRADFORD MORROW is author of the novels Come Sunday, The Almanac Branch, Trinity Fields, Giovanni’s Gift, Ariel’s Crossing, and The Diviner’s Tale. His anthology, The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death, coedited with David Shields, came out in 2011 with W. W. Norton, and a collection of short stories, The Uninnocent, is forthcoming from Pegasus Books. Morrow is a professor of literature at Bard College, and lives in New York.

  PAUL MULDOON is now Howard G.B. Clark ’21 Professor at Princeton University. From 1999–2004 he was a professor of poetry at the University of Oxford. In 2007 he was appointed poetry editor of the New Yorker. Muldoon’s collections of poetry include New Weather (1973), Mules (1977), Quoof (1983), Madoc: A Mystery (1990), The Annals of Chile (1994), Hay (1998), Poems 1968-1998 (2001), Moy Sand and Gravel (2002), Horse Latitudes (2006), and Maggot (2010).

  JOYCE CAROL OATES is the author of a number of noir works of fiction including Rape: A Love Story, Beasts, A Fair Maiden, The Female of the Species, The Museum of Dr. Moses, and most recently Give Me Your Heart. She has edited American Gothic Tales, The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, and The Best American Mystery Stories. She has been a resident of Princeton, New Jersey, since 1978.