Over Tumbled Graves

by Jess Walter

  Joel took a step into the room. “Someone out there?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  They’d already made love, when Caroline had come home from the hospital. She had initiated it, in part because she wanted to distract herself, to fall away, to lose herself in the tumble and flow.

  The other part was that she didn’t want to talk to him about the things that had happened that day. Anyway, the sex had been nice, tender and slow, and she hadn’t felt caged, the way she sometimes felt when his thick arms surrounded her.

  In the doorway, he shuffled his feet. “I’m going to bed.”

  She smiled. “Go ahead. I just need to sit here a minute.”

  He hesitated. “You never told me, how was your mom today?”

  “Fine.”

  “She doing any better?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great,” he said and edged along the wall to the bedroom. Caroline turned back to the window and hugged her knees as the car outside shifted into gear.

  Dupree looked over his shoulder once more at the house, then at the photograph in his hand. The man with the tattoos was still smirking, still staring out at Dupree as if he were unafraid and knew the secrets that Dupree knew about the capricious nature of death, about the vulnerability of women, about how easy it was to kill someone. He imagined the guy coming face-to-face with Caroline on the footbridge over the falls, and it made Dupree want to kill him.

  Spivey leaned over to look at the picture in Dupree’s hand. “So is that the guy we’re lookin’ for?”

  Dupree set the photo on the dashboard, shifted into gear, and spoke quietly to the smirking man looking out from the picture in front of him. “Hmm? That you? You the guy we’re lookin’ for?”

  6

  Lenny was sitting in his uncle’s car across the street from the pawnshop when the fat pawnbroker pulled up in his pickup, unlocked the gate, and pushed it back. The guy was wearing Sea-hawks sweatpants and a filthy white T-shirt with a shiny frog on it. Lenny couldn’t understand why people wore dirty clothes like that. Drove him nuts. Shelly used to do that, when she wasn’t hooking, used to lounge around in whatever clothes happened to be close. Lenny even did her laundry sometimes and still she’d grab some tiny pair of shorts that she’d worn the day before rather than put on clean clothes. It was one of the things Lenny counted on never understanding about her.

  The shop was called Nickel Plate Pawn, but Lenny had been disappointed in the selection of handguns. He’d pick one up anyway, though that wasn’t why he was here. He was here because the thing in the park had changed everything, cut short his time.

  Lenny climbed out of the Pontiac and crossed the street, hands deep in the pockets of his khaki pants. The pawnshop owner had pulled the cyclone fence back and unlocked the door and was entering when Lenny came up behind him, grabbing the door before the shop owner could close it.

  The man jumped, turned, and looked at Lenny, his hand on his chest.

  “Jesus, man! I almost shit my pants. You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”

  “Sorry,” Lenny said, moving past him into the shop.

  “You’ll have to come back,” the man said, “I don’t open till eight-thirty.”

  Lenny ignored him and walked up and down the glass cases, looking at hunting knives. Maybe that would be better.

  The pawnshop owner looked at his watch. “Eight-thirty. That’s not for another twenty minutes.”

  “Oh,” Lenny said. “Right.”

  The pawnshop owner cocked his head and grinned a little bit as Lenny leaned over a glass case, peering in at an elaborate hunting knife with a bone-white handle.

  “What are you, some kinda retard?”

  “No,” Lenny said, and like a flash, he raised his left arm and brought his elbow down on the glass case, sending a deep crack along the length of it. Before the pawnshop owner could say anything, Lenny brought his elbow down again, this time shattering the glass in a circle around where his elbow had gone in. As the pawnshop owner stood there, dumbstruck, Lenny pushed the broken glass from the frame, reached in, and grabbed the hunting knife.

  When he turned, the man recognized him. “You were in yesterday…askin’ about a…what was it?”

  “Bracelet.” Lenny walked over, calmly took the keys from the man’s hand, and locked the front door. He walked back just as slowly and showed the pawnshop owner a claim check for the bracelet, then turned back to the items under the glass.

  “Yeah,” the pawnshop owner said, trying to pretend nothing was wrong. “A bracelet. That’s right. Some chick you knew sold it.”

  “Yeah. You wouldn’t give it to me.”

  “Well, like I told you, after a certain time…I can’t sell it back at the pawn price…except to the person who pawned it.” He looked at the hunting knife in Lenny’s hand. “But you know what, for you I’ll make an exception.”

  “Thanks,” Lenny said.

  Relieved, the pawnshop owner edged behind the counter, Lenny following. He opened a drawer of jewelry and flipped through it. He looked up and forced a smile. “I think I retagged it. I’m trying to remember…”

  “It’s gold.”

  “Oh, right, right.” The man opened another drawer.

  “You gave her ten bucks. It was worth two hundred. She needed the money.”

  The pawnbroker looked up again, nervous. “Yeah, sorry about that. She didn’t make a big deal about it, I guess.” He held up a gold chain and Lenny winced when he saw it. He handed it to Lenny, who stared hard at it.

  The pawnshop owner backed toward the wall. “Yeah,” he said, “I remember you now. We talked about prison. Your tattoos. You just got out.”

  “Couple months ago,” Lenny said, still staring at Shelly’s bracelet.

  “Yeah,” the man said, “I asked if you liked being out and you said you’d never go back and I said, ‘Yeah, no shit.’ Remember?”

  Lenny stared at the bracelet, and its slightness made him angry. He wondered how they curled those little gold rings around each other, wondered at the grace and delicacy of some people’s hands, at the bluntness of his own.

  “Yeah, it’s coming back now,” the pawnshop owner said. “You asked about…uh…who was it? The girl who sold this thing…she was a hooker, right? Worked with that black kid who runs dope in the park. Did you find him?”

  “Yeah.” Lenny moved away from him to the glass case filled with handguns.

  The pawnshop owner kept talking nervously, hoping. “So, did he hook you up? The kid in the park?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  The man was pleased. “You get some good shit? Maybe mellow you out?”

  Lenny pointed at a nine-millimeter in the case. “You got ammo for this?”

  “Uh, I don’t sell ammunition.”

  Lenny turned his left arm over and noticed that his elbow was bleeding where he’d broken the glass case, that the blood was dampening his long-sleeved black T-shirt. He made a face more of irritation than of pain, took two quick steps, and flicked the knife at the pawnbroker, who put his hands up to protect himself and was cut across the palm.

  “Ah, Jesus! Okay!” he said. “There’s ammo in the bottom drawer.” He unlocked the drawer and handed Lenny a loaded clip and two boxes of nine-millimeter ammunition.

  “Unlock the case too.”

  The pawnshop owner hesitated, wiped his brow with his good hand, and unlocked the case. Lenny reached in, took the handgun, hefted it, pointed it at the front window, and then turned it over in his hand.

  The pawnshop owner clenched his bleeding hand as Lenny loaded the handgun. When he was done, he looked up at the pawnbroker with something approaching pity.

  “Why don’t you wash that shirt before you wear it?” Lenny asked.

  “Huh?”

  “That shirt. It’s dirty.”

  The pawnshop owner looked down at his shirt and swallowed hard. “I got it out of the hamper. I like this shirt.”

  Lenny scooped up the bracelet. The br
ight lights under the jewelry case glistened off the gold links.

  “I’ve been robbed before,” the pawnshop owner said. “You don’t have to worry about me. I never say nothin’. I did six months myself, man. Fraud and some business with checks. So I understand. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  Lenny looked up from the bracelet, his face flushed, cheeks red. “Why’d you give her such a bad deal? Why weren’t you fair with her?”

  The pawnshop owner just stood there with his mouth open.

  “What else did you do?” Lenny said. “What did you make her do?”

  “I don’t—” But no other words came out of his mouth.

  “Get down on your knees.”

  The man was crestfallen. “I thought we got along good before. I thought everything was cool.”

  “Get on your knees.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry about your friend.”

  Lenny motioned with the handgun and the man slowly dropped to his knees, looking around the room once, as if there might be some reset button, or a trapdoor, or someone to help him. Lenny stared at the man, shaking in his sweatpants and dirty T-shirt, so small like this, on his knees, and felt a shudder go through his arms. Maybe he didn’t have to do this. He could scare the man and then stop. He saw the pawn ticket in his hand still. The man seemed unaware of the fact that his jaw was quivering. Lenny tried to imagine what the man was thinking, what Shelly would’ve been feeling. There were people he wanted to talk to, no doubt, and things he wished he’d done differently. But those were adult thoughts and Lenny guessed the pawnshop owner was thinking little-kid thoughts, wishing he could curl up somewhere in the safety of his momma or hide under his bed. When an animal died, people said it was out of its misery. There was something to that, he supposed. All the scratching and fucking around makes up a life. And finally, what difference does it make, you do it right or you do it wrong. Every life comes to an end.

  The man began to cry as Lenny raised the handgun.

  “Jesus.” The pawnshop owner squinted and covered his face. “What happened to you yesterday?”

  7

  “That’s him.”

  Dupree put his hand on Caroline’s shoulder and gestured to the stack of six-packs in front of her, five sheets of photographs, each with a half-dozen mug shots. “Take one more look,” he said. “I want you to be sure.”

  “I don’t need another look. That’s him.”

  Dupree smiled. “Humor me.”

  Caroline flipped through the stack and settled again on the second sheet, her eyes moving from left to right across the photos. When she was done, she tapped the print and pushed back away from the table. “I’m sure. Number four.”

  “That’s right,” Spivey said.

  Dupree said over his shoulder to Spivey, “This isn’t a test.”

  Caroline turned and looked up at Dupree. “Number four.”

  Standing behind them in the interview room, Spivey spoke into his newest toy, a microcassette recorder that had recently replaced his ever-present notebook. “Twenty-nine April. Officer Mabry has identified suspect number four from a photographic lineup as the man she saw on twenty-eight April push Kevin Hatch, AKA…”

  Dupree put his hand over Spivey’s and used the younger man’s fingers to squeeze the stop button on the tape player. “Don’t do that,” he said. “It’s embarrassing.”

  Spivey walked outside, mumbling into the tape as he left.

  “Sorry about that.” Dupree gathered the photos and sat on the table, a few feet from where Caroline was staring a hole into the tabletop. “I guess there was a reason they stopped using monkeys in the space program.”

  Caroline took the photos from Dupree. “His hair is a little longer,” she said, “but it’s him. The eyes…What’s his name?”

  “Lenny Ryan. Just finished a nickel at Lompoc in California. Assault, theft, possession with intent—simple shit. Got out a couple months ago. Skipped on his parole in Oakland. No one knew he was here until he taught your guy to dive.”

  Caroline stared at the picture. “So he has family here?”

  “Far as we know, just Uncle Pipe Wrench. But we only got the name an hour ago from the guy’s mother. She hasn’t seen him since he got out of prison.”

  “So he comes here to buy a dime bag and steal his uncle’s twelve-year-old Pontiac? That makes no sense.” Caroline held the photo in front of her, staring into the man’s eyes. “So why’s he here?”

  “Who knows,” Dupree said. “Maybe no reason, a guy like that.”

  “A guy like what?”

  “Like a top,” Dupree said.

  “A top?”

  “You’re too young to remember tops. Had a big round end and a pointy end. Wrap a string on the round end, pull, and it spins on the pointy end.” Dupree couldn’t believe there was a theory he hadn’t shared with her, this top theory. After four weeks with Spivey, he was excited to be teaching again. “A guy like this, you yank on his string and he’s gonna spin around for a while, bump into things, careen off, till he just spins off the table or hits something that stops him. You can’t apply the rules of reason and logic to a thing spinning in circles.”

  She grinned. “So you think I pulled his string?”

  “No.” Dupree was sorry he’d brought it up. “Not you. The bust. Guy gets out of prison and now he’s gonna be arrested for a hand-to-hand dope deal? He doesn’t want to go back, so he pushes your guy into the river to get away. Bang. You got a top.”

  “He doesn’t want to be arrested for a misdemeanor drug deal, so he commits felony murder? How much sense does that make?”

  “My point exactly. A top doesn’t make sense. Just spins.”

  “And so, what, we just wait for the top to stop spinning?”

  Dupree considered the question half as hard as he considered the lines above her eyes. “How’s your mom?” he asked after a moment.

  “Fine,” Caroline said.

  “She feeling better?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  Caroline looked once more at the photo, and it seemed to Dupree that she was memorizing every detail of Lenny Ryan’s face, his blockish head and thick sandy hair, his dark eyebrows and cocked mouth. Then she handed the photo back to Dupree. “You need anything else from me?”

  “No. I think that’s it. What’ve you got today?”

  “We’re raiding a house over in East Central at ten. Burn’s supplier.”

  “Undercover?”

  Caroline laughed. “Not me. I’m in the truck. I don’t think they’re gonna let me play dress-up with the fellas for a while.”

  “I suppose.” Dupree shifted, still trying to figure out how to approach the things he had so much trouble talking about. “You seem a little…how are you?”

  “Lane wants me to see someone in professional services. I made some noise about talking to my guild rep and he turned and ran like he was on fire.”

  Dupree nodded, then stood and stuck his hands in his pockets, thinking that maybe he could strike a pose that would say the things he couldn’t, express his feelings for her in a way that wasn’t creepy, because creepiness seemed a definite possibility, given the things he was thinking just then. “There’d be no shame in seeing someone. You know that, right? Might even help.”

  “You know, you’re right,” she said. “You really ought to go.”

  He smiled at her sharpness and felt a pride and a responsibility that were different from the other thing he felt around her, the shortened breath, the gentle tug and taunt of her proximity. Sometimes he would stare at a hand-sized place on her body, the notch above her hip, the curve of her calf, the groove at the back of her neck, and he worried about the loyalty of his hands, daydreamed about their betrayal. And he wished that putting a hand on her side would be enough, even though he knew it couldn’t be.

  The interview room was narrow and long, with a table at its center and no windows, no two-way mirror from the movies, just a door and w
alls that pressed against Dupree, that hummed with the promise and threat of intimacy. He cleared his throat and looked at the photo of Lenny Ryan again.

  “Hey, this is my kids’ swimming instructor.”

  She smiled and, having felt the tug too, shifted in her chair away from him, telling herself the usual dodges: He’s married and flippant and skinny and cynical and too old. This last made her smile at her own hypocrisy. Dupree was twelve years older than she; she was twelve years older than Joel. She had dated only one other man significantly older than she was, fifteen years ago, in college. He was a graduate-level instructor in the English department, almost as thin as Dupree, and it made her smile to think how old he seemed at thirty, when she was now six years older than that. He had seduced her by the book, if such a book existed for that kind of man, the kind who quotes Neruda after sex on the mattress on his book-strewn floor, who pretends to listen to her every word, who has a boy’s fumbling zeal when making love. Since she was a criminal justice major, the Neruda poetry was a nice diversion—So I pass across your burning form—but it was a bottle of wine and a Wallace Stevens poem that first did her in, “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” its refrain still rattling around amid the guilt and waterfalls and elegies of the job: Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. The graduate instructor had begun to explain the poem, the existential insistence of letting “be be finale of seem,” the triumph of a moment over its potential, tangible over abstract, ice cream over death, but by then Caroline had already decided to sleep with the man and get a double major in poetry and criminal justice.

  She thought about that attraction and about this one. Such an attraction said certain things about a girl whose father had left the family. An attraction to a man older and in a position of authority was inherently unhealthy, the blending of father figure and lover, and was fraught with disappointing glimpses of the future, at least the male version of it—love handles and graying hair, an increasing knack for self-delusion, and, in Dupree’s case, the shell he’d built over the years to protect himself.