It didn’t take long, which was good, because the work was horrendously hard. Janet had been smart enough to bring gloves and a flashlight, but hadn’t thought of water, so by the time they’d opened the grave—really, a hole about three feet across but the standard six feet down—she was exhausted.
“I don’t think … I can lift any more dirt,” she said as she climbed out of the grave and lay on her back on the ground.
The Rogers ancestral graveyard was up the hill from their farm, and held seven generations of their family. A few hadn’t made it—Casper Rogers died on the fields of France, blown apart in a trench in 1917, and Old Roy Castellaw, who’d married a Rogers girl, had been buried at sea—but the rest were here. Some of the graves had little houses built over them, an affectation that had perplexed anthropologists and sociologists. Most of the headstones were worn and faded, their inscriptions visible only to those who could see through the glamour’s patina.
“It’s okay, I think we found it,” Mandalay said. She’d shoveled as much as a thirteen-year-old could, but sounded like she hadn’t exerted herself at all. She lifted a two-foot wooden casket from the hole, put it on the edge.
Janet offered her a hand up. “This is hard work.”
“Desecration shouldn’t be easy,” Mandalay said as she climbed out.
“Did you have to use that word? Now I feel terrible.”
“Don’t worry, any divine retribution’s on my head.”
Janet fell back onto the ground, and Mandalay sat on the edge of the hole, both breathing heavily. Then suddenly Mandalay grabbed Janet’s leg.
“Ow!” Janet said. “What are you—?”
The flashlight went out, and Janet felt one of Mandalay’s small, dirty fingers across her lips. She tasted dirt and wanted to spit, but froze when she heard voices.
Two figures approached from down the hill, silhouetted against the glow from the Rogers house. It was a man and woman, and they walked unsteadily.
Janet looked around. There was no place to really hide, except behind a tombstone, and there was no way these folks approaching could miss the fresh hole.
Mandalay pulled her hand away, stood in plain sight, and made a series of gestures. Janet had never seen them before, and in the darkness she couldn’t follow them. But she realized who the two approaching figures were: Spook Rogers, Kera’s brother, and her sister Harley. Both were older, but like a lot of young adults Janet knew, had never truly separated from their childhood: they still spent most weekends at home, and thought nothing of bringing loads of laundry for their mother to do. They were harmless, but they were also doomed; until something traumatized them, they’d stay half-children.
They were also drunk.
“… so I finally said I’d meet him at the coffee shop in the Walmart over in Unicorn,” Harley was saying. “We’re talking, everything’s going fine, and then he gets this weird look on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask him. ‘Nothing,’ he says, ‘I just have to fart.’ And he does! I heard it, right there in the Walmart!”
They were now a dozen yards away. Spook switched on a flashlight and shone it ahead of them. The circle of light caught Mandalay where she stood.
“I hope there weren’t no second date,” Spook said as if he didn’t see the girl at all.
“There wasn’t even the end of a first one. I swear, Spook, dating is the hardest damn thing in the world.”
With no warning at all, Spook burst into tears. The flashlight shook in his hand.
“Goddammit, Spook,” Harley said.
“I just cain’t believe she’s gone,” he said, drawing each word out in a series of stuttering sobs.
“I came up here because you promised you wouldn’t do this.”
“I cain’t help it!” He threw his arms around his sister, who was a full foot and a half shorter. She staggered back under the sudden weight.
“Look, what’s done is done,” Harley said. “Get yourself together and grow a pair.”
Janet started to stand up, but Mandalay gestured sharply for her to stay still. The brother and sister remained in place, the flashlight swinging wildly as Spook adjusted his hug.
“I was going to write a song for her wedding someday,” Spook said. “I’d even started it. ‘My baby sister—’”
“Stop it!” Harley snapped, and pushed him to arm’s length. “This ain’t helping you, or me, or her.”
“But I just don’t understand it! Why would that monster kill her? She was an angel—” And again he dissolved into sobs.
Harley slapped him. It made no difference. Then she drew back and drove her knee into his groin.
His sobs cut off at once, he let out a soft squeak, and fell to the ground. The flashlight rolled away back toward the house.
“Now, stop that,” she said.
“Owwww…”
“I’m sorry, but you needed it.”
He got slowly to his knees. She helped him up the rest of the way, and the two walked back down the hill to the house, picking up the flashlight when they reached it.
When she was certain they were too far to hear, Janet said softly, “Why didn’t they see us?”
“I hid us.”
“You’ve got to show me how to do that sometime.”
“If I showed you,” Mandalay said sadly, “you’d have to carry all I carry.”
Janet brushed dirt off her jeans and said nothing. Mandalay knelt and opened the small coffin, with the remains of Kera’s hand in it. Janet couldn’t see what the girl was doing, and truthfully didn’t want to. In a moment, Mandalay closed the box and said, “All right, let’s put it back.”
Although she was exhausted, Janet worked diligently, because the sooner the hole was filled in, the sooner they could get the hell out of there.
* * *
As the pearl gray light of dawn peeked in around the curtains, Duncan watched Renny sleep. She lay on her stomach, her black hair covering her face. He wondered if that position would hurt the baby, but decided he or she was so young, it probably didn’t matter.
She’d essentially moved into his place, although they agreed they would soon have to look for someplace larger. There was no room for a baby in this bachelor-sized pad.
He brushed the hair back from her face. Her mouth was open, half-scrunched on the side pressed into the pillow. In the dimness, her expression looked a bit like Sylvester Stallone. That made him smile.
Then her eyes opened. “Stop staring at me,” she said sleepily.
“I’m not staring, I’m looking.”
“Why?”
“Wondering how I got so lucky.”
She rolled onto her back and smiled up at him. “Maybe I’m the one who got lucky.”
“Maybe we both did.”
“That still don’t explain why you’re not sleeping.”
“I have a lot on my mind. I mean, I don’t know anything about being a daddy.”
“You think I know what it’s like to be a mother? Have you met my mother? Hell, when the Ekvails moved in down the road, Mama had to warn ’em that despite what they might hear, my middle name wasn’t ‘Goddammit.’”
“Well, you won’t be like that as a mama.”
“I’ll try. Except, to tell you the truth, I don’t even like kids.”
He put his hand on her still-flat stomach. “I bet you’ll like this one. I hope he or she likes us.”
Renny put her hand over his. “Dude, what’s really bugging you?”
Duncan glanced at the clock. It was a little after five-thirty. It seemed like the time of day when honesty was demanded. He said, “All my life, I’ve been trying to be right about everything. It was important to me to be right. I used to get into fights about it as a kid.”
“I know. I remember watching a couple at school.”
“Did I win?”
“It was a split decision both times. Coach Leckie came out and broke them up.”
“Well, I feel different now.”
“You don’t want to be right all the time?”
“No. I just want to be…”
“What?”
“Better. Better each day than I was yesterday.”
She took her hand from her stomach and touched it to her face. “Oh, honey,” she said, all her usual sarcasm absent.
He kissed her. “I love you, Renny.”
“I love you, too, hotshot.”
* * *
Ginny opened the back screen door of her family’s porch. She yawned, still in her sleep shirt, and turned on the porch light. When she saw it was Janet who’d rung the doorbell, she said, “It’s five in the morning and it’s a school day. What are you doing here?”
“Get dressed,” Janet said, and pushed her back inside. She kept shoving all the way into Ginny’s bedroom.
Ginny’s family lived in a one-story house that had seen better days, but was still comfortable and homey enough. Ginny’s room was a mess, cluttered with books, clothes, and pieces of artwork that depicted mythological creatures. She’d even painted an enormous unicorn on her closet door. She cast around for something to wear in the discards.
“Do you ever do laundry?” Janet asked.
“Look, you come banging around here at sunrise, waking everybody up—”
“Oh, I didn’t wake anybody but you.”
“The hell you didn’t!” Ginny’s father yelled from their bedroom. Janet always forgot how thin the walls were in this old house.
“Anyway, come on. I have got to talk to you.”
Minutes later they were back in Janet’s car. “Where are we going?” Ginny asked.
“I don’t know. I just … I can’t … it’s like…”
“Wow, calm down.” She dug a roach from her pocket and took the lighter from its place in the ashtray. After she lit it, she said, “It’s too small to pass. Lean over.”
She took a drag, then blew a stream of smoke into Janet’s face. Janet sucked in as much as she could. Ginny did it twice more before saying, “Now: what happened?”
“Mandalay wanted me to drive her somewhere, right? Just like when we went to see Miss Azure. Only we went to where Kera Rogers was buried and … and…”
Ginny had never seen Janet so distraught. “What?”
“We fucking dug her up.”
“What, you mean like you dug up her grave?”
“Yes.”
Ginny was speechless for a moment. Then she asked, “Is that why you smell like that?”
“What, do I smell like the dead?”
“No, you smell like dirt.”
“Then yes.”
“Why did she want to do that?”
“I don’t know! She took something out of the coffin, and then we buried it back.”
“What did she take?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see.” She shuddered. “The coffin wasn’t any bigger than a damn shoe box, Ginny. I don’t even know what was in it. I’d heard that hog ate some of her, but if that’s all that was left…”
Ginny shook her head and pulled the last bit from the roach. “That’s crazy.”
“I know! I know it’s crazy! That’s why I’m freaking out!” She took several deep breaths to calm down. “Ginny, I don’t know what to do here. I mean … what if she really is crazy? We always knew Rockhouse was mean, and capable of some bad shit, but there was, like, clear cause and effect with him: You piss him off, he fucks with you. But he wasn’t crazy.”
“Have you talked to Bliss Overbay?”
“No, because what would I say?”
“You can tell her what happened. There has to be a reason why Mandalay is dragging you into this instead of her. Bliss is supposed to be her second-in-command, red right hand, or whatever you want to call it.” Ginny sat up straight. “Shit. What if Bliss doesn’t even know?”
Janet drove in silence, mulling this over. “Maybe you’re right. But keep this between us, okay?”
“Who the hell am I going to tell?”
“I know, but just keep this extra between.”
Ginny made a motion like she was zipping her lips shut.
“Thanks.” She turned to begin the long swing back to Ginny’s, since they had school later that morning.