Rotters (38 page)

T
ED POINTED AT THE
bar for the third time. Beyond his manicured nails the dots and lines made weeds and thorns. I blew but my lungs withheld, knowing better than my brain they would need all their strength for the evening’s dig. My fingers, too, reserved their strength. The notes that I emitted dribbled like blood.

I yawned behind the mouthpiece and glanced at the clock. It was nearly six, time to get home and suit up for work. Ted frowned and stood up straight. He reached over and shut the sheet music. I was grateful. I rubbed the notes from where they had embedded into my eyes.

When I looked again, he was still standing there staring. I waited for
Next lesson, then
. It didn’t come. I cleared my throat. I set the trumpet in my lap. For whatever reason, dismissal still seemed compulsory.

“We have an understanding,” he said finally. “I know that. But I would like permission to speak freely.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

He crossed his arms. “Why do you keep coming?”

I shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“Classes, you don’t attend. Trumpet lessons, though, you come all the way here for. Why is that?”

“Like I said.”

“You can’t continue this way,” he said. “Eventually they’ll flunk you. You already know that. One day soon you won’t be a student here anymore.”

“All right.” I pulled off the mouthpiece.

“And I’m going to tell you something else. I don’t care. Flunk out. You don’t like something, stop it. You don’t like going to school, stop going. But don’t you stop these lessons. Whatever you do. We’ll meet somewhere else if necessary. We’ll play outside, on weekends if it comes to that. But one thing we’ll not ever do is stop. Am I making myself clear?”

I stared at my lap, incapacitated with a feeling of inevitable abandonment.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s all you have.” He said it with such confidence that I recoiled. “Someday when it’s over, whatever it is that’s got you, we’ll play together, you on trumpet, me on clarinet. I’ll lend you albums to listen to that will inspire you. You can lend me some, too. Just think of that. Picture it. Imagine it as often as possible and one day it will happen. We’ll go to an opera. You ever been to the opera? I go every year.
Faust
is my favorite. They play it at the Metropolitan all the time. You know what it’s about? It’s about a man who makes a pact with Lucifer in exchange for knowledge. Imagine seeing that. Picture it. Just keep picturing it and one day we’ll be there, both of us at the Met. Just don’t stop the lessons. Don’t stop. Do you understand?”

I nodded and tears fell from my chin.

“Okay,” he said. He flattened his mustache with his finger and thumb. “Well. Next lesson, then.”

T
HE EXACT DAY OF
the accident is lost to me. After hours of sullen invectives, I had relented and allowed Harnett to join me on a dig. Just forty-five minutes from the cabin, I knew it would be a job so easy even he couldn’t derail it.

But he was drunk, not stupid. He was offended by the simplicity of the dig and griped at me the entire way there. I kept my mouth shut and drove. Once we were at the location, he snatched the Root from me. I sighed and watched him murder the earth, trying to keep track of what went where so I could put it all back together again when he was through.

“You’re so eager to get rid of me,” he spat between strikes. “One of these days you’ll get your wish. I’ll be dead and you’ll finally be happy.”

“I’ll never be happy,” I said. “Keep digging.”

“Don’t do me like Lionel. That’s all I ask. Don’t stick me in a box and shove me down a hole. At least have that much respect for your old man.”

I pictured Lionel’s plot, perched so magisterially above the Atlantic. “You’d be lucky to have what he has.”

“Hell with that. You burn me. Incinerate me. Toss me around so I’m scattered in the wind.”

“Strewn,” I said, remembering a fact from one of Harnett’s books. “The church prefers
strewn
.”

“Think I give a damn what the church prefers?”

A thunking noise—he was at the casket already. Graceless as he was, his strength and speed were undeniable.

He muttered from below. “Even better: excarnation. Will you do me the kindness?”

The term was familiar, but I couldn’t immediately define it. Harnett, desperate for ways to trump me, pounced.

“It’s Tibetan tradition. Celestial burial, sky burial, excarnation. Same thing. It’s perfect. It’s beautiful. It’s more than I deserve, but maybe you’ll take pity and give it to me anyway.”

I heard the skipping thumps of the crowbar slipping from his hands. Reluctantly I moved forward and peeked down the hole.

“Three days.” He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. “You let me sit for three days. Don’t bury me, don’t do nothing. Just let me ripen for three goddamn days. Then take my clothes off, take me out to the country. If that’s too much of a goddamn hassle for you, sit me out in the backyard, I don’t give a damn.”

I kneeled down at the edge. “Let me help you.”

“You want to help me? Then dismember me first, if you got the stomach for it. It’s Tibetan tradition.” His lips curled in resentment as he tried again to pry the lid. “Forget it. You don’t have the stomach. Just toss me out in the grass.”

Part of the problem was that the Root was down there with him, getting in his way. “The Root,” I said. “Hand her up.”

“Not a lot of vultures in Iowa,” he said. “But plenty of birds. They’ll come in, one or two of them at first, and pick at me. You just stay back and let them. Pretty soon they’ll be there by the dozens. They’ll eat me, part of me, every one, and they’ll carry me into the sky. And then when they shit, I’ll be everywhere. It’s goddamn beautiful and more than I deserve, but maybe, just maybe, you’ll do your father the kindness.”

He was visibly wobbling and slumped to the dirt wall for balance.

“Get out.” I tried to be firm. I held out a hand. “You’re going to hurt yourself. Get out.”

“Don’t forget to bring a sledgehammer,” he slurred. “When the birds are done, you gotta shatter my bones to bits. Tibetan tradition.”

“You’re wasting time. Get out.”

There was a pause and then he moved with alarming speed, snatching the crowbar and the Root in either hand and clambering up the hole. I remained crouched at the edge, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of cringing. At the top he tripped and fell on his face.

“Sooner than you think,” he fumed, hauling himself to unsteady feet. “Sooner than you think I’ll be gone, and then you can dig these goddamn holes however you goddamn like and toss me down one of them like a dog.” He snarled. “You can go to hell.”

With that he drove the Root into the ground. She made a meaty slicing sound as she impaled the earth. Even wasted, Harnett knew the sound wasn’t normal. I became aware of a tingling coolness.

I raised my right hand. The top halves of my index, middle, and ring fingers were gone. Together we looked at the Root and saw three white nubs nestled to one side of the blade. In unison our eyes moved again to my outstretched hand. An eternity passed. At last blood as black as oil began slurping from the holes.

“Harnett.” I held my hand higher as if he hadn’t already seen. Blood twined down my wrist and arm and heavied my sleeve.

There was a blur as Harnett moved. I felt disconnected from my body. I pushed myself away with my heels until I ran out of breath and let myself fall back against the cool grass.
Above me was a gorgeous canopy of stars. Each one of them, I marveled, would correspond to a piece of Harnett’s body after his celestial burial. It was beautiful after all.

At no time did I entertain illusions of reattachment. There was a grave to be filled, and Diggers have priorities. Back at the cabin, Harnett ransacked the sink cabinet until he found a dusty bottle of peroxide. He shoved a handful of aspirin at me and a glass of lukewarm water, then unwrapped the bloody cloth from my hand and dumped the peroxide. I screamed, then laughed at the girlishness of the sound, then screamed some more. My other arm toppled books. My legs sent newspapers flapping like descending gulls. I barely noticed when the front door opened and a man tossed his crutch to the floor and dropped to his knees in the sizzling lather of water, blood, and disinfectant.

Knox cupped my cheek with a cool palm.

“Jesus wept,” he said. “Jesus wept. Jesus wept.”

A
S HE HAD DURING
my bout of boneyard blues, the one-legged reverend nursed me back to health. He sutured my wounds with a white-hot needle and kept me afloat in liquids. Somehow he found time to make coffee on the stove. He had to wrap Harnett’s fingers around a mug before he would take it. My father sipped the stuff while perched near the sink, refusing to look at either of us. For once I had the rocking chair, although it felt all wrong—it was all I could do not to insist Harnett come take it back.

Knox’s arrival had not been coincidence. He had heard of
the maiming of Under-the-Mud and the suspicious disappearance of Crying John and was on his way to Virginia to visit the hospital where the Apologist hovered just north of demise. To this already crowded list Knox added Brownie, who had suspended all digging to undergo an intense three-month religious study in hopes that Jesus Christ might save him. Knox had been guiding Brownie’s studies when word of Harnett’s Bad Jobs had finally reached Texas.

It was not like last time. There was no conversation between the men. Their wordless exchanges said it all. Knox was angry and distraught. Harnett was consumed with shame and self-hatred. Though overwhelmed with pain, I felt like the one in charge. These two could fight their little fight all they wanted; regardless, the Son would continue digging even faster and better than before, just wait and see.

The secret smiles Knox had shared with me during his previous visit were similarly absent. I wanted to attribute it to his fatigue and the long drive still ahead of him, but I knew that wasn’t it. I had changed. Knox could see it in my every sound and movement. Only occasionally did he ponder me in a way that stirred sensations of hope. While I had no desire to be a part of Bloughton or the wider world, Knox’s approval still meant something.

The reverend sent Harnett out for firewood, and after my father had returned and retreated to his corner, Knox spent the next few hours whittling away at the choicest log. I watched him from where I was curled up on the chair. Soon he was sanding three wooden pellets. His total absorption was itself absorbing, and I rearranged myself within the blanket that swaddled me. He winced as he adjusted himself on the bucket; it was a difficult balance to maintain with only one leg.

“You want the chair?” I asked.

He frowned at his sanding. The repetitive whisper began lulling me to sleep. Knox’s voice was of the same soft and shifting quality; at first it was difficult to differentiate it from the noise.

“Hundred years old I am,” he said quietly. “Sometimes feels like two hundred. Two thousand. Feel it most at times like now, when I’m not movin’. I’m
always
movin’. Made my life out of movin’. You folks name your shovels; I name my cars. Bethany, there was a beaut. Jacqueline, strong as a tank. Patty—Patty didn’t last long, but she was fast. Back when I had hair it would crunch flat when I was drivin’ Patty. And where do I go? Where do all these fine ladies take me? I ask the good Lord each and every night: ‘Where you takin’ me, Lord?’ Feels like a hundred years I been askin’ that question and a hundred years I been gettin’ no answers. Now I’m tired. But I keep movin’. You want to know why? Because I’m scared. Me too, hallelujah. I’m scared if I turn off that engine for good, my ears will finally hear and then I’ll know for sure there aren’t no answers, not for me. Because I’ve done Him wrong. That’s the kind of silence I don’t know if I’ve got the strength to bear. That’s a forever kind of silence.”

The pellets of wood were fingers. He placed them in the crease of his thighs and picked up an old glove and pair of shears. He gathered three of the leather digits between the blades and began to saw.

“There be a woeful darkness out there. I see it every town I pass through. I see it on the sides of the roads. I see it real strong when I visit any of y’all. But I see it most in the rearview mirror, in me. God is good. Least I think so. I pray ‘Talk to me, O Lord’ and there’s quiet. I pray ‘Show me, O Lord’ and
there’s darkness. These old eyes have cried buckets, so many buckets I feel like a child, younger than you. ‘It’s not fair,’ I cry. You think God is fair? ‘I’ve worked so hard,’ I cry. You think Jesus checks my speedometer? Boxer, Under-the-Mud, Resurrectionist—I’ve watched so many of you pass, your names are like dust. But my life—this is
my
life. I’ve crossed into the most woeful darkness to bring y’all into the light. Maybe I’ve gone too far. Maybe I’m lost in the dark. Maybe this isn’t the story of your descent, Joey Crouch. Maybe it’s the story of mine.”

Briefly he held greasy bolts in his lips while he traded the shears for pliers. He fitted the wood into the newly fingerless glove and clamped it in place. A knobby old thumb pressed the first bolt against the leather. He spat the rest of the bolts into a palm and began twisting the corresponding nut.

“The number of sins I’ve let come to pass, it’s far too many to atone for. Did I assist y’all for the right reasons? I don’t know, He won’t tell me. When I look in the mirror, it’s black. When I press my ear to the ground, it’s quiet. That’s blindness and deafness. That’s hell. And every day hell nudges up a little closer. It’s in the tollbooth on the interstate. It’s in the backseat of my car. It’s in my glove box, it’s in my hip pocket. It’s my missing leg. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Sometimes I feel like I’m one of them, and you’re one of them, and Ken’s one of them, too. Can’t be true, though. Look at me. I got a deflated lung. I got issues with my prostate. My knee aches so bad some days I can’t press the brake. By the way, my new car is named Priscilla Beaulieu. You know why? Because I’m hopin’ she’ll take me to see the King.”