The Best American Mystery Stories 2013

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  He wrung the compress into a bowl and resoaked it. He laid it on Jacob’s forehead; the man groaned and opened his eyes.

  “Told you to leave,” Jacob said. He started to say something else, but his voice caught; he coughed and whooped. He inhaled once more and fell slack, mouth open, hands twitching. Henry scrambled back and tripped over the bowl of cold water. He crashed on the floor. The room smelled of shit and sour sweat.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I said I’m looking for a man. Brown hair, big eyes, young face. Might have a limp.”

  The woman with her hair in a tight gray bun looked past Cort’s shoulder to the blue Chevy parked in front of her porch. She drew in her robe and shivered. The living room felt warm at her back, but far away.

  “Well, I haven’t seen anyone fits that description,” she said.

  “You sure, ma’am?”

  “Of course I’m sure. What kind of silly question is that?”

  “It’s not silly if you’re standing where I’m standing.”

  Cort narrowed his eyes toward the living room, the warm house, the sound of children playing upstairs. The porch felt small and confining.

  “Where’s your husband at?”

  “He’s on a job,” she said.

  “What’s he do?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m just curious. This is a fine home. Looks like a man of great care lives here.”

  “He’s a carpenter.”

  “Like Jesus.”

  “If that’s how you want to put it.”

  “That is how I’m putting it. You checked your barn this morning?”

  “Every morning,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  Cort stepped forward, boot toe knocking against the threshold. He stared at a strand of gray hair that had fallen across her forehead. It waved in the cold wind, inquisitive-like.

  “Something about my car interests you,” Cort said.

  “No, sir.” Her voice quivered.

  “Go on. Tell me.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Rather doesn’t enter into it. Tell me.”

  The woman drew in a sharp breath. Her daughter squealed upstairs.

  “That’s Ed Dobber’s Chevy,” she said.

  It was late afternoon and the boys had cleared the rest of the rocks, letting Jacob cool in the living room because they didn’t know what else to do with him. For a few hours Henry almost forgot what was waiting for them back in the house. When they’d dumped the last of the stones, Henry squatted on his heels and looked up at the sky. Sam stood near him, breathing hard in the cold.

  “Tomorrow we’ll dig a grave with Dad,” Sam said, and he sniffed and put his hands on his hips.

  They walked back to the house. Sam fetched the good sheets from the linen closet while Henry stripped Jacob to his underwear and sponged his legs clean. He bundled the soiled jeans into a paper bag and set them by the front door. Sam combed Jacob’s hair, slicking it back with some of their father’s pomade. Then he wiped Jacob’s ears with a washcloth and folded his arms across his chest. They finished covering Jacob with a sheet when Henry spotted someone walking up the driveway.

  The man stopped in front of their house. He wore a long black coat and narrow boots. His eyes were small and dark, like a doll’s eyes.

  “Get upstairs,” Henry said to Sam. “Wait in my room, and don’t come down until I call for you. No arguing this time. Just go.”

  Sam ran up the stairs as Henry picked the sack off the floor. He spotted the Browning, leaning against the old china cabinet. The man knocked, sharp and loud.

  Henry opened the door. Cort stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, eyes narrowed.

  “Your father home?”

  “No, sir. He’s out back.”

  Cort glanced at the driveway, at the rusted tractor sitting in the field. A cluster of sparrows sat huddled on its hood, chests puffed against the wind.

  “Maybe you could go get him for me,” Cort said.

  “He’s working. I’m not supposed to bother him when he’s working.”

  Henry saw a fine spray of dried blood on Cort’s neck and a spot of blood in his ear.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Cort said. “Might have come this way.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone.”

  “Let me finish. He’s about yay tall, may have a limp.”

  “No, sir. It’s been me and my brother all day.”

  “And your father.”

  Henry nodded. “That’s right.”

  Cort looked back at the driveway. Henry wondered if the man could hear his heart pounding. It was the loudest thing he’d ever heard. It drowned out the wind and everything else. Just his heart, running fast and hard.

  “I did find this, though,” Henry said, and he grabbed the sack from behind the door and held it out for Cort.

  Cort smiled slightly and opened the sack while Henry held it. Then he took the bag and pulled the sawed-off from underneath his coat. He leveled it at Henry, tilting his head to one side.

  Henry stood, frozen.

  “You had me fooled,” Cort said.

  “Take the money.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  “Just remember I didn’t have to give it to you.”

  “Yes, you did.” Cort rubbed his forefinger against the double triggers. “Where’s Jacob?”

  “He’s dead. We found him in the woods.”

  “And your brother?”

  “In the house.”

  “Call him.”

  “I will not.”

  Cort smiled again. “Call him, son.”

  Henry tightened his lips.

  “You know, when I was your age, this was something I wondered about every day,” Cort said. “How often you get a chance to see the end before it comes. You ever wonder about that?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Now that’s a shame.”

  Cort settled back on his heels and lowered the shotgun level with Henry’s chest. Something flashed and boomed behind Henry; his right arm stung like hornets and he cried out. Cort stumbled sideways. He squeezed both triggers of the sawed-off. A chunk of the porch exploded. Splinters peppered Henry’s legs. The air smelled like firecrackers.

  When Henry looked up from his bleeding arm he saw Sam standing on the porch, holding the Browning, smoke curling from the mouth of the barrel. Cort had fallen onto the front gravel path; he lay there, coat shredded and blood blooming across his white T-shirt. Henry knelt by Cort’s side and inspected his face. His breathing was shallow. A few pellets were embedded in his cheek.

  “You got him,” Henry said.

  Sam dropped the shotgun and ran to his brother. Henry let him hug as he gazed across the field, toward the edge of the woods. His arm throbbed and he didn’t know how he felt. Sick, or sad, or maybe even excited. Maybe all three.

  “Fetch the wheelbarrow,” Henry said.

  Sam stared down at Cort.

  “Sam.”

  Sam blinked.

  “Go on and fetch the wheelbarrow,” Henry said.

  “But he’s still breathing.”

  “Don’t you worry about that.”

  They pulled Cort out of the wheelbarrow. Henry grabbed him by his belt with his good arm and hauled him over the lip of the well as Cort groaned and his eyes fluttered beneath his lids. Sam dropped the sack of money into the yawning hole, watching the white disappear.

  “On my count,” Henry said.

  Sam pressed his hands against Cort’s warm side.

  “One. Two. Three.”

  Cort fell. The two boys peered over the edge, staring into the dark, waiting to hear the sound of his body. They waited a long time.

  JOYCE CAROL OATES

  So Near Any Time Always

  FROM Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  OH! HE WAS SMILING at me.

  Was he smiling—at me?

  Quick then looking away, looking down at my notebook—where
I’d been taking notes for a science-history paper—while spread about me on the highly polished table were opened volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book of Science, Science History Digest.

  A hot blush rose into my face. I could not bring myself to glance up, to see the boy at a nearby table, similarly surrounded by spread-open books, staring at me.

  Though now I was aware of him. Of his quizzical-friendly stare.

  Thinking, I will not look up. He’s just teasing.

  In 1977: still an era of libraries.

  In the suburban branch library that had been a millionaire’s mansion in the nineteenth century. In the high-ceilinged reference room. Shelves of books, gilt-glinting titles, brilliant sunshine through the great octagonal window so positioned in the wall that, seated at one of the reference tables, you could see only the sky through the inset glass panes like an opened fan.

  Will not look up, yet my eyes lifted involuntarily.

  Still he was smiling at me. A stranger: a few years older than I was.

  Never smile or speak to strange men, but this was a boy, not a man.

  I wondered if he was a student at St. Francis de Sales Academy for Boys, a private Catholic school where tuition was said to be as high as college tuition and where the boys, unlike boys at my school, had to wear white shirts, ties, and jackets to class.

  Smiling at me in a way that was so tender, so kindly, so familiar.

  As if, though I didn’t know him, he knew me. As if, though I didn’t know him, yet somehow I did know him, but had forgotten as you feel the tug of a lost dream, unable to retrieve it, yet yearning to retrieve it, like groping in darkness, in a room that should be familiar to you.

  He knows me! He understands.

  I was sixteen. I was a high school junior. I was young for my age, it was said—not to me, directly—which translated into an adult notion of underdeveloped sexuality, emotional immaturity, childishness.

  It wasn’t so unusual that a boy might smile at me, or a man might smile at me, if I was alone. A young girl alone will always attract a certain kind of quick appraising (male) attention.

  If whoever it was hadn’t seen my face clearly, or my skin.

  Seen from a little distance, I looked like any girl. Or almost.

  Seen from the front, I looked like a girl of whom relatives say, Her best feature is her smile!

  Or, If only she would smile just a little more—she’d be pretty.

  Which wasn’t true, but well-meaning. So I tried not to absolutely hate the relative who said it.

  This boy was no one I’d ever encountered before, I was sure. If I had, I would have remembered him.

  He was very handsome! I thought. Though I scarcely dared to look at him.

  Mostly I was conscious of his round, gold-rimmed glasses, which gave him a dignified appearance. Inside the lenses his eyes were just perceptibly magnified, which gave them a look of blurred tenderness.

  His face was angular and sharp-boned and his hair was scrupulously trimmed with a precise part on one side of his head, the way men wore their hair years ago; unlike most guys his age, anyway most guys you’d see in Strykersville, he was wearing an actual shirt, not a T-shirt—a short-sleeved shirt that looked like it might be expensive.

  Smiling at me in this tentative way to signal that if I was wary of him, or frightened of him, it was okay—it was cool. He wouldn’t bother me further.

  He’d been taking notes in a notebook, too. Now he returned to his work, studious and intense, as if he’d forgotten me. I saw that he was left-handed—leaning over the library table with his left arm crooked at the elbow so he could write with that hand.

  A curious thing: he’d removed his wristwatch to position it on the tabletop, so that he could see the time at a glance. As if his time in the library might be precious and limited and he feared it spilling out into the diffuse atmosphere of the public library, in which, like sea creatures washed ashore, eccentric-looking individuals, virtually always male, seemed drawn to pursue obsessive reference projects.

  So I continued with my diligent note-taking. Amphibian ancestors. Evolution. Prehistoric amphibians: why gigantic? Present-day amphibians: why dwindling in numbers?

  Trying not to appear self-conscious. With this unknown boy less than fifteen feet away facing me as in a mirror.

  A hot blush in my cheeks. And I regretted having bicycled to the library without taking time to fasten my hair back into a ponytail so now it was straggly and windblown.

  My hair was fair brown with a kinky little wave. Very like the boy’s hair, except his was trimmed so short.

  A strange coincidence! I wondered if there were others.

  My note-taking was scrupulous. If the boy glanced up, he would see how serious I was.

  . . . environmental emergency, fate of small amphibians worldwide . . .

  . . . exact causes unknown but scientists suggest . . .

  . . . radical changes in climate, environment . . . invasive organisms like fungi . . .

  Then, abruptly—this was disappointing!—after less than ten minutes the boy with the gold-rimmed glasses decided to leave: got to his feet—tall, lanky, storklike—slipped his wristwatch over his bony knuckles, briskly shut up the reference books and returned them to the shelves, hauled up a heavy-looking backpack, and without a glance in my direction exited the room. The soles of his size-twelve sneakers squeaked against the polished floor.

  There I remained, left behind. Accumulating notes on the tragically endangered class of creatures Amphibia for my earth science class.

  Did it occur to you to exit the library at the rear? Just in case he was waiting at the front.

  Did it occur to you it might be a good idea not to meet up with this boy?

  Of course it didn’t occur to you he might be older than he appeared.

  He might be other than he appeared.

  Of course it didn’t occur to you, and why?

  Because you were sixteen. An immature sixteen.

  A not-pretty girl. A lonely girl.

  A desperate girl.

  “Hey. Hi.”

  He was waiting for me outside the library.

  This was such a shock to me, a relief and a wonder—as if nothing so extraordinary had ever happened and could not have been predicted.

  I had assumed that he’d left. He’d lost interest in me and he’d left and I would not see him again, as sometimes—how often, I didn’t care to know—male interest in me, stimulated initially, mysteriously melted, evaporated and vanished.

  But there he was waiting for me, in no way that might intimidate me: just sitting on the stone bench at the foot of the steps, leafing through a library book he was about to slide into his backpack.

  Seeing the look of surprise in my face, the boy said “Hi!” a second time, smiling so deeply that tiny knife cuts of dimples appeared in his lean cheeks.

  Shyly, I said hello. My heart was beating in a feathery light way that made it hard for me to breathe.

  And shyly we stared at each other. To be singled out was such an unnerving experience for me, I had no idea how to behave.

  To feel this sensation of unease and excitement, and so quickly.

  Like a basketball tossed at me without warning, or a hockey puck skittering along the playing field in the direction of my feet—I had to react without thinking or risk getting hurt.

  Boldly, yet not aggressively, he asked my name. And when I told him he repeated “Lizbeth.”

  He told me his name—Desmond Parrish.

  Amazingly, he held out his hand for me to shake—as if we were adults.

  He’d gotten to his feet, in a chivalrous gesture. He was smiling so hard now, his glittery gold glasses seemed to have become dislodged and he had to push them against the bridge of his nose with the flat of his hand.

  “I wondered how long you’d stay in there. I was hoping you wouldn’t stay until the library closed.”

  Awkwardly I murmured that I was doing research for a paper in my
Earth science class . . .

  “Earth science! Quick, tell me, what’s the age of Earth?”

  “I—I don’t remember . . .”

  “Multiple-choice question: the age of Earth is a) fifty million years, b) three hundred sixty thousand years, c) ten thousand years, d) forty billion years, e) four point five billion years. No hurry!”

  Trying to remember, and to reason: but he was laughing at me.

  Teasing-laughing. In a way to make my face burn with pleasure.

  “Well, I know it can’t be ten thousand years. So we can eliminate that.”

  “You’re certain? Ten thousand years would be appropriate if Noah and his ark are factored in. You don’t believe in Noah and his ark?”

  “N-No . . .”

  “How’d the animals survive the flood, then? Birds, human beings? Fish, you can see how fish would survive, no problem factoring in fish, but mammals? Nonarboreal primates? How’d they manage?”

  It was like trying to juggle a half-dozen balls at once, trying to talk to this very funny boy. Seeing that I was becoming flustered, he relented, saying, “If you consider that life of some kind has been around about three point five billion years, then it figures—right?—the answer is e) four point five billion years. That’s a loooong time, before October ninth, nineteen seventy-seven, in Strykersville, New York. A looong time before Lizbeth and Desmond.”

  Like a TV standup comic, Desmond Parrish spoke rapidly and precisely and made wild-funny gestures with his hands.

  No one had ever made me laugh so hard, so quickly. So breathlessly.

  As if it was the most natural thing in the world, Desmond walked with me to the street. He was a head taller than me—at least five feet eleven. He’d swung his heavy backpack onto his shoulders and walked with a slight stoop. Covertly I glanced about to see if anyone was watching us—anyone who knew me: Is that Lizbeth Marsh? Who on earth is that tall boy she’s with?

  It seemed natural, too, that Desmond would walk me to my bicycle, leaning against the wrought-iron fence. Theft was so rare in Strykersville in those years, no one bothered with locks.