Dig Ten Graves Page 2

  For a second her hand tightens on me and I wince. But then she lets go and her fingers rest on my stomach. I feel her eyelashes flutter against my jaw and I’m not sure but I think I feel something hot and wet running down my neck.

  “And I’m screaming, it’s mine, please, it’s all I have, please don’t take it. Begging, right. And I’m struggling to get free from this stupid post. And this man, he stops and looks at me. He’s looking at my body, ‘cuz I’m naked. He’s leering. And he says to me, he says nothing belongs to you, girl. You have nothing. It will all be carried away. So I start crying and pleading, and he laughs and I realize that I recognize him.”

  Charon is talking rapidly now, still in her bland monotone, and it dawns on me finally that she’s revealing something, she’s opening up, and I’m not sure if I want her to open up, I’m not sure if I want her fears to rub up next to mine like this. I’ve been able, so far, to keep myself emotionally removed from her, or so I think. The truth is, I’m already caught up in her, I’m just too self-centered to realize it at the time.

  She says, “I recognize him. He’s you.”

  The post from 2004. I found it at one of those poetry websites, where anyone can show their work and have it critiqued by fellow poets. I don’t know if it was good or bad, and I don’t care. By the time I finished it, just a few brief lines, the computer had gone blurry and I couldn’t see.

  These few possessions

  These skins I put on

  Are meaningless save for the fact that they are mine

  This tender thing I will define as belonging to me

  And no one else

  But the man who sees me naked

  And tied to the post

  Will leer and tell me the truth, the ugly truth

  That all of this will be carried away

  And that in the end, nothing belongs to me

  I didn’t look at the comments and critiques from the other poets. I don’t think I could have stood it if someone tore it apart, critiqued her form or content, reduced it to an exercise.

  I see her at the club, about three weeks after she’s told me about the dream. She’s dyed her hair black. It looks good on her. She doesn’t even mention the horrible thing I did, and it dawns on me that she’s hopped up on heroin. We find our way to a table far in the back, away from the lights, and make out for awhile and I ask her how she’s doing.

  She nods and says, “Good, I’m doing good.” She smiles and it looks real. She says, “I’m thinking about going to California. I have a friend out there who maybe can get me a job.”

  I tell her that’s great and I wish her luck. I go to get a drink, run into an old girlfriend at the bar, and never go back to Charon’s table.

  That’s the last time I see her.

  So now I shut off my computer again and stand up. My back aches and my eyes hurt. I go to the bathroom and look in the mirror and see a man who doesn’t really look familiar. He’s got lines around his eyes and his Sunday stubble is graying and scraggly. He’s got a receding hairline and the beginnings of a double-chin.

  I push Charon off me and she almost falls off the sofa and I nearly laugh, she looks so surprised. I pull on my pants and head for the door. Charon, cool collected Charon, never any emotion, has a stunned stupid look on her face. I storm out of the house and to my car, parked in the street. I pop the trunk and find the black extension cord I remembered was there, about fifteen feet of it.

  Back in the house. She starts to say, “What are you doing?” but only gets the first word out before I grab her by her thin, frail arm and drag her into the bedroom. She sees the cord and her wide eyes get even wider and she starts shaking her head and saying, “No, no, no,” but I don’t listen, I drag her into the bedroom and throw her down on the floor. I look down at her and all I want, all I want to see, is her broken.

  I force her against the wooden post of her bed and tie her securely and she’s weak, she doesn’t fight much at all. But she cries the entire time.

  I take the Darth Vader figure and the Christopher Lee lobby card and the Mr. Spock plate. I take the Papa Smurf and the Elvis album cover and even the stupid little mouse. I take as much as I can carry.

  There is no why. I just do it, because her dream has sparked something in me, something cold and nasty, and I want to. I take it all, carry it all away, and leave her crying and struggling to get free.

  And now the old man I see in the mirror clenches his eyes shut and shakes his head, sharply. He forces it down, forces it back into the cage, back to the place where it never happened.

  And he gets to work fixing that clog in the sink.

  Bleed Out

  From my blind up in the tree, I see Buck and Doe come into the clearing, hard to miss because of their bright orange vests. They are talking, which is no good for hunters to do, but good for me because I wouldn’t have heard them coming other-ways.

  Buck says to Doe, “I’m proud of you, Margaret, I really am. After all this time, so many times I’ve asked--”

  Doe cuts him off, laughing-like. “I always wanted to go hunting with you, you know that. It’s just time, you know, finding the time. And I’ll be honest with you, I’m scared to death.”

  Buck is laughing-like too, now. He says, “Scared of what? A deer can’t hurt you, I promise.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just… I’m not sure I can do it. I mean, even assuming we SEE a deer out here, I just don’t know if…”

  They have guns, Buck and Doe. Me, no gun. I use bow. Bow takes real skill, real hunter-skill. I frown down at them, but they don’t look up and they don’t see me. I don’t wear orange vest, see.

  They settle down right under me, Doe sitting down at the trunk of the tree, and Buck on his haunches, like. My bow is in my hand, but I don’t move. If I move now, they would hear me. I am perfectly still, just like Daddy taught, I am part of the tree, I am the tree, I am invisible.

  Buck says, “That’s only natural, to feel that way. My first time, I was scared too, I really was. Did I ever tell you about it?”

  Doe shakes her head.

  Buck says, “Well, it was… it was kind of a mess, really.” He laughs. “It was me and my pop. We were trekking through the woods, early fall, you know, dead leaves everywhere made it hard to stay quiet. We must have wandered around for hours, just looking for a sign of deer anywhere, and me getting more and more nervous. I was, what, sixteen or so? Finally, after what seemed like hours, we came into this clearing and lo-and-behold, on the other side was this beautiful buck, five feet at the shoulders if he was an inch, with antlers out to here.”

  Doe looks interested in the story. She’s watching Buck, smiling. Slow-like, careful-like, I reach into the quiver on my back and pull out an arrow. My arrows are good. I make them myself.

  Buck says, “We were downwind, by the grace of God. My pop goes real quiet, touches my shoulder. I looked up at him and he nodded at me, kinda half-smiling. And suddenly all my fear was gone. I raised my gun, took careful aim… and shot.”

  Doe says, “A good clean shot?”

  Buck grins. “No, I’m afraid not. It was pretty poor, actually. I got him in the lower left flank. Not a kill shot at all. That deer jumped like a Mexican jumping bean and took off like a bolt into the woods.”

  Doe says, “Aww. Poor you. So it got away?”

  Silent, silent, I notch the arrow.

  “Well, not exactly. I mean, I shot him, he was going to die. It was just a matter of when and where. I thought it was a lost cause, but my pop told me not to worry and you know what he did? He followed that deer’s trail, that’s what he did. He followed the blood, me lagging just behind him, and within an hour we’d found him.”

  I pull back the bow-string, slow, so Buck and Doe can’t hear the strain of polished wood bending. I pull all the way back, deciding in my head which one goes first. If I do this right, I can bag two for one. Never did that before.

  Buck says, “We followed him into this field of tall grass, up t
o my torso. And just as we were approaching it, we heard the buck fall. I was getting set to run in there when Pop grabs my arm and says wait. Wait for it, son. So… we sat there at the edge of the tall grass and waited for, geez, must’ve been two hours. And finally Pop says okay, so we go in and there’s my buck, dead.”

  “Wow,” says Doe.

  “Yeah. That bastard just bled out, right there in the tall grass. And I had my very first buck.” He laughs. “Pop still has those antlers on the wall, in

  his study.”

  I settle on Doe, right beneath me. She’s just standing up, pushing herself up-like, so I am looking straight down at her back, her exposed neck, and I know that this is the right time, no other like it, and I release.

  Arrow makes that beautiful thwip sound and finds target, goes right through Doe’s neck and out the other side and blood is minimal but she’s dead right away. She drops. Good, clean kill.

  Buck is stunned, looking at Doe face down under the tree. I have only seconds. I notch the second arrow as quick-like as I can, swing bow around as I pull back bow-string, and his stunned eyes are turning away from Doe and looking up at me and stunned turns to horror and he starts to stumble backwards.

  I let the arrow go. Bad shot. Gets him in left side, just under rib-cage.

  “Fuck!” I says before I can stop myself.

  He cries out in pain, but doesn’t stop moving. He scrambles backwards, trying to turn, trying to get to his feet and run away. I quick-like grab another arrow, start to notch, but goddamn Buck is on his feet now and running-stumbling away into the woods.

  Cursing, I jump down from the tree, trip over Doe. “Fuck!” I says again, even though it’s stupid to talk and curse and like that when hunting. It’s no good. But I’m mad at myself for the bad shot. I like a clean kill. This one, not a clean kill. Fucked up.

  Buck is leaving a trail of blood. I follow.

  Follow for a long time, maybe two hours, something like that. Sun is high overhead, that’s all I know. But I follow his trail of blood and the crushed leaves and stuff on the ground. Sometimes I hear him, crying and cursing, scared-like.

  After a long time, I know we are coming to the clearing, where the tall grass grows. I know this part of the woods like my own house. I know it real good, I’m always here, I know the woods.

  The trail of blood leads right into the tall grass. I stop, listen. Can’t hear Buck anymore. He’s in there, hiding. Waiting for me, maybe thinking he can jump me or something. He’s dangerous now, because he’s wounded. I think for a minute.

  And then I sit down on the ground, legs crossed. I put my bow on the ground next to me. I sit, and I wait.

  I wait a long time. Hours. It’s getting dark. No noise from the tall grass, none at all. I stand up, leave my bow on the ground, and edge careful-like into the tall grass, following the stain of blood.

  I find Buck dead, bled-out, my arrow still in his side. I look at him for a while, mad at myself for the messy kill. But messy kill or no, it’s still a kill and still a trophy. Just not one of my better ones.

  I pull out my hunting knife and begin skinning, wondering which wall to hang the skull on and which room to put the skin in.

  Emancipation, With Teeth

  Ernie started to die one Monday morning as he was getting ready for work. He was brushing his teeth at the time, and didn’t feel as if he was hovering at the crossroads of his own mortality or teetering on the edge of life and death. What he did feel—very keenly, in fact—was that he was running late.

  The first indication that all was not right was a strange, almost sweet, stab of melancholy. It only lasted a moment, making him pause with his toothbrush at his molars, staring blankly into the bathroom mirror. His heart lurched unexpectedly and tears brimmed in his eyes. The lines of his face looked suddenly deeper to him and he experienced that moment, that awful moment, of clarity, when one realizes that everything is wrong and always was, and will never, ever, in a million years, be right.

  And then it passed.

  He shook his head, mumbled from behind his toothbrush, and scrubbed away. As the weird bout of melancholy passed, he noticed that the tips of the fingers of his left hand ached. After putting his toothbrush back in the cabinet he examined them. They looked fine, perfectly ordinary, the same long thin fingers that tapped away at a keyboard all day, every day, entering pointless data about pointless projects.

  But still they ached, a vague throbbing ache, like blood pounding beneath his nails. He looked at them, frowning. My fingers are trying to tell me something, he thought, and laughed a little at the idea. Yeah, they’re piping in after all these years to complain about having to type all the time. They’re gonna organize, join a union. Abused digits of the world, unite!

  The worst thing that could be said about the way his fingers looked was that the nails needed clipping. Without thinking about it, Ernie reached in the open cabinet and grabbed the clippers and started to trim his nails over the sink.

  It was the index finger of his left hand. As he started to clip the nail, something pulsed strongly there, strong enough to make him wince, and he noticed a strange yellow-white sliver sticking out, so small he hadn’t even noticed it before.

  A splinter or something, he thought. Or maybe dead nail that hadn’t come off the way it was supposed to. The new nail had grown right over it, that’s what it was. He carefully pinched the sliver with his clippers, tried to gently pull it out.

  The clippers slipped and he tried again, with even more care. The throbbing in that finger seemed to be getting worse as he prodded and poked at it. Better get it, he thought distractedly. Don’t wanna get an infection or something.

  Finally, he managed to snag the little sliver with the clippers. Slowly, he started to pull it out.

  And it hurt, much more than it should have. Ernie gritted his teeth and pulled, and the stubborn sliver started to come out and what should have been a tiny, insignificant little piece of nothing turned out to be bigger, much bigger, than seemed possible.

  With mounting alarm, Ernie kept pulling, and the sliver kept coming except it wasn’t a sliver, it was way too long and only the very tip of it seemed brittle, the rest was soft and wet and it kept coming out of his finger. One inch, two, three, and his stomach flip-flopped and went hollow. Another inch, and another.

  After six inches, six impossible inches, Ernie became aware of blood dripping into the sink, faster and faster, and some other fluid besides, like horrible yellow pus or something. His heart was pounding, dread and disbelief vying for the dominant spot in his brain.

  And he kept pulling, faster now, aware of a low rumble in his chest, an awful groan coming out of his mouth and his knees getting weak. He supported himself against the sink and pulled the thing out of his finger. Crazy, he thought, this is fucking crazy, Jesus, oh Jesus, just get it out of me, and he knew he would start panicking any second now if it didn’t stop.

  Twelve inches, blood pouring now, all mixed up with something thick and yellow and foul-smelling in the sink, and just when it seemed like it was about to end, had to end, the thing moved.

  The long thin white body snapped like a worm, splattering more blood and fluid across the bathroom mirror. Ernie screamed, finally dropping the clippers, and grasped the thing in his hand and yanked.

  It came out entirely, and Ernie felt it pulse in his fist, a living thing, no question about it. It started to wrap around his hand but Ernie screamed again and threw it into the bathtub. It hit the porcelain with a wet plopping sound, twitched once, and lay still.

  He stared at it, the taste of toothpaste still fresh in his mouth, his hair still damp from the shower. Blood dripped lethargically from his index finger onto the floor. He stared with numb horror at the thing in the bathtub.

  In stories he’d read, this was always the part where the protagonist said to himself it’s not real, I’m not seeing this, it’s not real, and Ernie tried to do that, he tried to set his jaw and re-assert his own version of realit
y. But it didn’t take. He was nothing if not a pragmatist, a realist. And the proof was still right there, right in his shower, smearing the clean white porcelain with blood and bile.

  It came out of my finger, he thought. Right out from my… my finger. Right out, yeah. He started to giggle, a muted, huffing sound from deep in his chest. He leaned against the sink and stared and giggled like a loony.

  But only after a few seconds he started to pull himself together. He took several deep breaths, tore his eyes away from the ugly thing in the bathtub, and looked at his finger.

  The bleeding had already slowed down to a thin trickle, and the only indication that some hideous parasite had emerged from it was some bruising around the tip of the nail.

  He turned on the water in the sink, flushing the blood and gore down the drain, and then washed his finger very gingerly. He dried it carefully on the towel and fished in the cabinet for the bandages. One-handed, he unwrapped the little band-aid and placed it methodically over the tip of his finger.

  He faced the bathtub again, half-expecting it to be gone, just like one of those stories, snuck away while his back was turned, only to jump on him when he least expected it.

  But it hadn’t gone anywhere. It lay dead in the tub, already seeming to go stiff, like a snakeskin or a used condom.

  I can’t do it, he thought. I can’t bring myself to clean this mess up right now.

  After work, he thought. Yeah, when I get home from work, first thing. I’ll get some gloves and some bleach and an industrial strength garbage bag and I’ll get rid of it. Right when I get home from work.

  The thought of not going to work that day never even entered his mind.