EIGHT LIES (About the Truth): A collection of short stories

When Todd Robinson asked me to contribute to his anthology
Hardcore Hardboiled
, I saw an opportunity to explore the history of Gravedigger Peace, and to take him to a dark place.

Gravedigger is the former mercenary turned cemetery groundskeeper who appears in the Ray Dudgeon novels
Big City Bad Blood
and
Trigger City
. He’s a seriously
bad dude
, and reviewers have called him a “psycho sidekick” but in the novels I never wanted to take the moral weight off of Ray’s shoulders, so I didn’t allow Gravedigger to step in and ‘take care of bidness’.

In this story we visit Gravedigger’s history as a soldier-for-hire and his transformation from Mark Tindall to Gravedigger Peace. And when Gravedigger’s past comes calling, we witness the shattering of his carefully reinvented self.

In
Trigger City
, Ray visits Gravedigger and they talk around something very bad that has happened in Gravedigger’s life between the two novels, but they never really get into the gory details.

Here’s the story of what happened to Gravedigger.

“A Sleep Not Unlike Death” won an Anthony Award and was shortlisted for both the Edgar and the Macavity awards, and was later included in the Tyrus Books ‘best of the year’ anthology
Between The Dark And The Daylight
.

I’m quite proud of it, and I hope you dig it too.

G
RAVEDIGGER PEACE WAS ALREADY SITTING
up when his eyes opened. It had been years since the nightmares, but his face and forearms were clammy with perspiration and his heart was racing, so he assumed there’d been one. Truth was, Gravedigger Peace didn’t remember his dreams these days. Not ever. Not one.

A sleep not unlike death.

Gravedigger drank from the water glass on the bedside table. The digital clock said 3:23. He stood, peeled off his moist T-shirt, wiped his face and arms. Tossed the shirt into the laundry hamper, then shuffled to the kitchen. Instant coffee with a couple ounces of Jim Beam. Final drink of the night.

He sat on the couch in the living area and drank his bourbon-laced coffee and listened to the rain drumming on the metal roof. He stared at the dead grey television screen. No point turning it on, he knew what he’d seen and nothing would have changed in the last three hours. He turned it on anyway. The set came to life right where he left it, tuned to CNN. The news hadn’t changed. The bodies, what was left of them, were back in the United States. Next of kin had been notified and the names of the five civilian contractors slaughtered in Ramadi had been released to the public.

Civilian Contractors.
A family-friendly euphemism for mercenaries. The euphemism had never bothered him when he was in the business, but it bugged the shit out of him now.

The television screen showed heavily compressed digital video that had originally aired on Al Jazeera. Five bodies, dumped together in a heap in the middle of the street. Burning. A couple dozen young Iraqi men dancing around the fire, chanting
God Is Great
and
Death To America
and other things Gravedigger could not understand. Then the television showed photos of the five Americans. Four white kids in their late twenties, and one black man in his late forties.

Gravedigger took a deep breath and blew it out, and consciously relaxed the white-knuckle grip that threatened to shatter the coffee mug in his right hand. He didn’t recognize the younger men on the television screen but he knew Walter Jackson, and had served under him in Nigeria a decade earlier. Back in another life, when Gravedigger Peace was still Mark Tindall.

The barracks smelled like cigarettes, stewed goat, and the collective body odor of seven testosterone-rich men. No breeze came through the screened windows and the cigarette smoke hung like a fog in the dim light.

Mark Tindall tossed three .45 caliber bullets into the center of the table. “Raise it up, ladies.”

“Fuckin’ Africa,” said Walter Jackson, and tossed his cards in. “I fold.” He wiped his ebony torso with an olive green T-shirt. “Never cools down, not even at night.”

“I thought you were from the Southland, Sarge,” said Raoul Graham. “Heat shouldn’t bother you.” Then, to Mark, “I’ll call your bullshit.” Raoul tossed three bullets into the pot.

Walter Jackson leaned back in his chair and grabbed a Coke from the cooler. “Milledgeville’s hot but you get a break every now and then.” He popped the bottle cap with the edge of his Zippo, gulped down half the bottle. Then held the cool bottle to his chest, rolling it across a faded blue tattoo. The Insignia of the 1st Special Forces was still legible—Two crossed arrows, with a fighting knife in the middle, pointing skyward, above the motto:
De Oppresso Liber.
Liberate From Oppression.

Underneath the motto, Walter Jackson had added:
. . .Or Not
.

Mark Tindall never asked what had turned Jackson’s army life to dog shit, but he knew that Jackson was bitter about it and saw the military as no more noble than the world they now inhabited. Fighting for whichever side offers the most money.

Mark had never served in the military and he hadn’t become a mercenary for the money. He just wanted to kill things. To inflict pain on others. Like his dad inflicted pain.

Around the table, the other three men folded their hands in turn, and Mark shot a hard look to his only remaining opponent.

“How many?”

“Three,” said Raoul, and Mark flicked three cards facedown across the table.

“And Dealer takes one,” said Mark.

“You’re gonna miss that straight draw,” said Raoul, grinning.

God, Raoul had a knack for pissing him off without even trying. “Flush draw, asshole,” Mark sneered. He separated six bullets from his pile, added them to the pot. “And it’ll cost you six to find out I made the nut.”

Walter Jackson stood and got a fresh shirt from his footlocker, put it on. “Tindall, when you’re done taking Graham’s money, I need you. Perimeter survey. Bastards are gettin’ closer every day.”

Brian Billings sat up on his cot and closed the book he was reading. “I’ll go, Sarge.”

“No you will not.”

“Aw, how come Golden Boy always gets the glamour jobs?”

“Fuck you, Billings,” said Mark, without looking up from his cards.

Jackson spoke before Billings could answer. “Tindall goes because Tindall is better than you. Quietest white boy I’ve ever seen, outside Special Forces.”

“Thanks a heap, Sarge,” said Mark Tindall. “Raoul, you gonna play, or what? I gotta go.”

“Just trying to decide between a call and a raise.”

Mark Tindall dropped his cards facedown. “Take it.” He stood from the table and strapped on his sidearm.

Raoul giggled and raked in the pot. “I
knew
you missed your flush.”

“Wrong again, genius. I was bluffing all along. Didn’t have shit.”

Walter Jackson slung an M16 over his shoulder, “Let’s go, Golden Boy.”

In the morning, Gravedigger avoided the television altogether. Queasy from the hangover, he made a solid breakfast. Three eggs, four rashers of bacon, three slices of whole wheat. And coffee. Always coffee. He considered a slug of bourbon, just to smooth out the rough edges, but the urge itself was a red flag. Sure, he’d been drinking the night before, but now it was morning. It had been years since he drank before the day’s work was done. He deferred to his better judgment, taking his coffee black. He could feel Mark Tindall creeping around in the back of his skull, and it worried him. He’d killed that guy years ago, and he was fucked if he’d ever go back.

I am Gravedigger Peace
, he reminded himself as he washed the dishes.
That’s who I am.

It had been raining for two days straight, and it was still falling at a steady pace. He put on a plastic poncho and walked to the groundskeeper’s shed, where he assigned the day’s muddy tasks to his crew. There was his assistant, Sam, who’d worked at Mount Pleasant Cemetery for longer than anyone could remember, and Sam’s son Bobby, who was approaching thirty but had the mental capacity of a twelve-year-old. Larry and Jamie were a couple of black kids who’d just graduated from high school and were working to save money for college.

And then there were the losers—Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Gravedigger called them. They didn’t get the reference and seemed to enjoy the nicknames. A couple of teenage metalhead stoners, they’d barely made it out of high school. But most people don’t want to work in a cemetery, and Gravedigger had given them a chance. The latest in a long series of small acts, since he’d killed off Mark Tindall. Small acts to confirm his status as a member of the human race.

So far the stoner kids had worked out okay. Just barely. They weren’t going to set any records for speedy work, they sometimes called in hungover on Mondays, and he suspected that they often smoked weed on their lunch breaks. But graves were getting dug, bodies buried, and the grass was getting mowed. So he’d decided to keep them on for the rest of the summer, but wasn’t planning to invite them back next season.

Gravedigger made it through the morning meeting on autopilot, and dismissed his crew. The walkie-talkie on his belt crackled to life, summoning him to the office. He hopped on an ATV and drove through the hot summer rain to the main building near the cemetery’s entrance. Without a word, the receptionist ushered him in to see the boss.

“Thanks for coming, Gravedigger. Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

“No thanks.” Why thank him for coming? And why the solicitous tone? The boss sounded like he was talking to a customer.

“Reason I called you in, we have…well, we have a body, just arrived for burial. No funeral, just burial. Employer’s picking up the tab.”

“Okay.”

“The deceased put it in his will, to be laid to rest here, because you’re the head groundskeeper.” He looked at a sheet of paper, put it aside. “His name was Walter Jackson. I guess he was a friend?”

The room spun and Gravedigger closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Gravedigger. Take a few minutes to collect yourself, I’ll wait outside.”

A silver sliver of a moon provided just enough light to move. More light would make them more vulnerable, while a moonless night would force them to use flashlights, which was even worse. This was perfect.

Mark Tindall and Walter Jackson made it out to the perimeter—five hundred yards from the barracks—at an easy pace. But the perimeter survey would be tediously slow. As Jackson so often said, “You can go fast or you can go quiet, but you can’t go both.”

Silence demands a kind of slow that very few men have the disciple to achieve. The vast majority of military men could never sustain it, but it is mastered by Navy SEALS and Special Forces. And few mercenaries. Mark took a justifiable pride in his ability. Still, he berated himself for every cracked twig underfoot, for the rustle of his pant legs, for the very sound of his own breathing. But there was none quieter, and even Walter Jackson could not hear him.

It took over an hour to make one hundred yards along the perimeter. Mark walked point, with his commander ten yards back, following—quite literally—in his footsteps. The night vision goggles were a necessity, but in this heat Mark had to take them off every few yards and wipe the sweat out of his eyes. Each time they made twenty yards, Mark stopped and Jackson slowly closed the distance between them. They used hand signals to communicate the All Clear. Then Mark started again, ever so slowly.

At two hundred yards, he saw the camp. Both the sight and sound of it had been blocked by a small hill, and by the time it appeared, they were close. Too close.

Mark held up a hand to stop Jackson from approaching, hunkered down in the tall grass, and took stock. Five small tents stood in a circle, a campfire in the center. Nine men sat around the campfire. Six wore sidearms and three cradled machetes on their laps, but Mark saw no long guns.

And then came the soft breeze. It blew gently across the campsite, and the fire crackled and threw off more light. But it blew the smoke straight toward Mark, and his eyes began to sting and water, and his nose tickled.

Mark Tindall sneezed. The night shattered.

Gravedigger stood in the rain and, using a spade, separated the grass from the earth below. The area around the head groundskeeper’s residence was taken up mostly by old mausoleums, but he wanted to bury Walter Jackson nearby, so he commandeered this spot, about ten yards from his front door. Once he’d placed the sod to one side, he used a small backhoe to dig the hole, dumping the wet soil on a tarp to the other side.

The casket arrived, and the crew lowered it into the hole. Because of the persistent rain, the ground was waterlogged and there were a couple of feet of standing water below. The sealed casket floated aimlessly in the grave.

Gravedigger sent Sam off to get the sump pump, and then retreated to his residence, where he rummaged through an old shoebox and found a photograph of Mark Tindall and Walter Jackson. It was the only thing he had kept from his former life. He’d thrown everything else away when he killed Mark Tindall and became Gravedigger Peace, but Jackson had saved his life and he could never bring himself to get rid of it. Now he would lay it to rest with his old friend.

He left the photo on the kitchen table and, in the bedroom, stripped off his sodden clothes. Walter Jackson would have no funeral, only a burial. But at least he would have one mourner. Maybe it was a useless gesture, but Gravedigger didn’t care. He opened the closet and put on his only suit.

He tied his tie in front of the bathroom mirror and tried not to look beyond the knot. But he couldn’t help himself. Avoiding his own eyes, he examined the thin white scar that ran from his left cheek down to his jaw. The scar made by a machete in Nigeria. And when he made eye contact, Mark Tindall stared back at him.
Shit! Fuck!
He swung open the door of the medicine cabinet, displacing the mirror, and fled the bathroom, thinking
I know who I am. I know who I am. I know who I am…

Photograph in hand, Gravedigger headed back out into the hot summer rain. Fuck the poncho, he would stand in his suit in the rain and give Walter Jackson a proper sendoff. It was coming down harder now, blowing in his face, forcing him to look at the ground as he walked to the graveside. He looked up, and dropped the photograph.

They were coffin-surfing. Tweedledum stood on top of the casket, rocking it with his legs, creating a wave beneath. He struck a surfer’s pose, and sang the theme from
Hawaii Five-O
. Tweedledee stood off to one side, laughing.