FROM THE NOTES OF GRANDPA ROSE

Here, this here, is something he remembers: He learned to swim wearing stolen pants. Whether anybody believes him doesn’t matter, but as a thirteen-year-old already he could grow hair all over his chest. And now, just imagine, the clothesline springing, the clothespins flying, as this hairy bare-chested boy made off with a pair of trousers. Laughing, probably, as he leapt the fence. Those trousers, they were clean when he stole them, and never clean again. He hid them at the lake, when he wasn’t swimming: just wadded them together, then crammed them under a rock. The day after he stole them, that’s when they began to smell, and every day after that the odor got worse still. Monte was alone out there: just him, and the trees, and the dunes, and the water. If he had drowned, nobody ever would have known. Every day he made himself swim farther. He would swim from the clearer waters along the beach, through murky stretches of amber and sapphire and jade as the sand dropped off beneath him, out to where the water turned black. Then just float there, offshore, rising and falling with the waves. Generally, that’s where he was when the men came: As he bobbed with the waves, wooden motorboats would streak past, manned by men in fedoras, headed for the dunes. After dropping anchor, the men would unload their cargo from the boats onto the sand. The men were smugglers, worked for the gangsters in Chicago. Their cargo? Sometimes it was crates. Sometimes it was bodies. Liquor the gangsters had brewed, people the gangsters had killed: things to sell, things to hide. Here, this here, is something he remembers: He was awfully curious about those smugglers. In town, people traded rumors about the smugglers constantly, with hushed, anxious tones, as if trading rumors about bloodthirsty monsters that lurked just beyond the town limits. The smugglers had built a labyrinth of tunnels under the dunes, would store their cargo there. Sometimes he would sneak after them into the trees, but when they ducked through the entrance to the tunnels he was always too afraid to follow them inside.

After sunset, Monte would amble back into town, barefoot down the dirt streets. The village was changing: Electric lamps flickered in kitchen windows, where oil lamps had once shone; at the feed store, the pharmacy, tinny voices hollered from radios, mingling like ghosts with the voices of customers; automobiles blew through town, coupes and roadsters and sedans, on steel wheels with balloon tires. Picture him, those same green eyes, but fatter cheeks, much thicker hair, a less prominent nose. A boy, stepping over dropped apples that are dust now, stumbling over fallen bricks that are dust now, crossing paths with stray cats that are long dead. Dragging his hands along strangers’ fences, with fingers still pruney from the lake. If he was late, he ran home. He had been forbidden from swimming, which was why he’d had to teach himself to swim, out at the dunes, secretly, wearing stolen pants. His mother had drowned. His father built cabinets. In houses with mothers, the cabinets held fancy teacups and fancy saucers. His house didn’t have a mother. In his house, the cabinet held family heirlooms: the ivory revolver, the bellows clock, the golden hammer, the music box. His father often slept in a chair across from the cabinet, guarding the heirlooms from thieves. Remember, these days the heirlooms are worth a fortune, but even those days the heirlooms were worth some money.

He had been forbidden from touching the heirlooms. He would touch the heirlooms anyway. He has memories, memories of sneaking the heirlooms from the cabinet as his father slumbered across the room. If his hair was still damp, he would towel his hair with a curtain, quietly, then tiptoe past the fireplace to the cabinet. He didn’t sneak the heirlooms from the cabinet only to annoy his father. There was something that genuinely awed him about those heirlooms, about holding something that valuable in his hands. His great-grandfather had won the revolver during a duel with a ship’s captain: The hilt was made of a creamy ivory, smooth to the touch, and the barrel was textured with engravings. His grandfather had been presented the clock after pulling a jeweler’s daughter from a burning house: The clock wasn’t the type that was wound, within the clock was a bellows, that’s what ran the clock, air moving through the bellows, as if the clock were breathing. His father had been awarded the hammer. The music box had been made in Italy, for a famed composer, somewhere centuries back in his family tree. Monte always examined the heirlooms in that exact very order, saving the music box for last. He liked to savor it. Even then, when he came to the music box, he would stall before playing it: would disassemble the music box, then reassemble the music box, carefully inspecting each piece. Flick the clasp up and down. Breathe in the delicate musk of the polished wood. Finally, though, when there were no other ways to stall, he would allow himself to wind the crank. Then hold his breath, and stand very stilly. And listen to its tune. Invariably, that’s when his father would blink awake, when that music began playing: His father would scold him for touching the heirlooms, and ruffle his hair, and yawn and stretch and clap and then march into the kitchen to light the oven for their supper. Put those back where they belong, his father would holler.

Fact is, aside from the heirlooms, the only things they owned were boots and tools. They were truly poor. They never had money for anything. Consequently, their routine never changed. Every day his father was away doing carpentry. Every night his father fixed beef, carrots, and potatoes for supper. After the plates were rinsed, his father would doze off again by the fire, and the house would fall silent. They didn’t have a radio. Televisions didn’t exist yet, or stereos, or video games, or mobile phones. There were no dishwashers to thrum, no coffeemakers to ding. Some families owned electric fans, which at least could have made a whirring sound, but they didn’t have any. They had no radiators to ping and creak. Monte hated being there, in all that quiet. Sometimes he got so bored he would stick his hands onto the block of ice in the icebox, just to feel something. He felt as if he was going to be trapped in that house his whole life. He swore, if he ever got away, he was never coming back.

Weekends, time he could have spent with his father, he snuck away instead. If his father wanted help clearing gutters? He would sneak away to the dunes. If his father wanted help mending shingles? He would sneak away to the dunes. If his father wanted to toss around a baseball, kick around a football? He would sneak away to the dunes. All those afternoons he could have spent with his father, instead he spent swimming in the lake where his mother had drowned. He liked doing it because he knew it was the wrong thing to do. Afterward, though, he always felt guilty. When eventually he would slink back home, his father was never angry, only disappointed. Even then, Monte understood that the patience that man possessed was simply astonishing. But his father believed in him. His father was always trying to get him to do his homework, eat all his carrots. Such great things, his father would proclaim, squeezing his shoulders. Someday you’re going to do such great things. But Monte didn’t like doing good things. He liked bad things. He was a troublemaker. He looted coins from his father’s coat pockets to buy rock candy and slingshot pellets. He swiped pies, trampled flowers, chased dogs, smashed windows. He hid bicycles from their owners, spun street signs crooked. He used words even sailors wouldn’t. He loved almost being caught, getaways that left him breathless, getting shouted at from afar. It wasn’t that he missed his mother. People liked to say that was why he was a troublemaker, but that wasn’t why he was a troublemaker. Whether anybody believed him didn’t matter.

Everybody agreed though that the biggest troublemaker in the whole village was a girl named Ana Sharon. Fact is, she was quickly becoming a local legend. Ana accidentally or intentionally had started a fire in the schoolhouse, accidentally or intentionally had shot a horse. Ana wore boys’ boots and boys’ hats with her dresses, wore her hair like a flapper, sang vulgar songs. He has a memory of watching her tumble through the street having a fistfight with a one-eyed boy. Monte secretly loved her, but secretly hated her, too. What Monte hated was being outdone at troublemaking.

And maybe that’s why as a seventeen-year-old he started burying bodies for the smugglers: Because working for the smugglers meant trouble that even she couldn’t outdo.