Chapter 9

Back in the Camaro, Gabe collapsed into the passenger seat.  He looked at Craig and was shocked to see a trickle of blood down his temple.  “Looks like you hit your head.”

Craig looked at himself in the rearview mirror and swiped at the blood, smearing it across his face.  “Yeah.”  He slammed his door and the interior of the car was plunged into darkness.

Tony leaned up from the backseat.  “What do we do now?”

Craig shifted the Camaro into drive and turned around.  “We need to go back to the hole.”

Panic seized Gabe’s gut.  “Why?”

“I want to make sure we didn’t overlook anything.”

Gabe shook his head.  “I can’t go back there, Craig.  I can’t.”

“So stay in the car.”  Craig was staring straight ahead at the ruts in the snow-covered lane.  “Dammit.”

“What?”

Craig motioned with his hand.  “The snow.  The tracks in the fucking snow.  The truck left tracks in the snow.  Anybody will be able to see something went over the cliff.”

Gabe’s breath left him.  He thought of the state trooper that had passed them on the highway, imagined him coming back this way and following their trail down the gravel road to the quarry.  Imagined him shining a flashlight on the tracks that disappeared over the edge.  Imagined him radioing in to dispatch, and remembering the vehicles he passed on the road earlier.  The red Camaro following the old blue pickup.

“It’s supposed to snow again tonight,” Tony said.  “I saw it on the news.”

Craig glanced at him, then back at Gabe.  “You two better hope to fuck it does.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way to the turnout at the hole.  The sickness in Gabe’s stomach gnawed at him like a rat.  He kept feeling the driftwood in his hand, kept feeling the thud as it connected with Melvin’s skull.  Kept hearing that horrible scream as Melvin cried out in pain.  And Craig’s voice:  Gabe clubbed him like a goddamned fish!

Craig pulled the Camaro to a stop in front of the yellow crossbars and killed the engine.  He looked at Gabe.  “You coming?”

Gabe nodded.  He didn’t want to.  He never wanted to see the hole again.  All he wanted was to go home and forget this night ever happened.  To climb into his bed and hide beneath the covers and never come out.  To forget that panicked look in Melvin’s eyes when he held onto Gabe’s jeans.  To forget that horrible sound of wood meeting skull.

The embers of the fire still gave a ghostly glow, flowing and ebbing like a living, breathing thing.  Tony poked in the stick he’d used earlier, and yellow sparks floated upward like snow from hell.

Craig found his flashlight and shined it on the muddy swath that led to the water’s edge.  The snow-lined edges were tinged with blood.  “We need to do something about that,” he said, and his voice was strained.

Gabe reached out his boot-clad foot and scattered the snow, trying not to think about what was looking at.  The red stains disappeared and faded into the mud.

“Did Melvin have anything with him?” Tony asked.

“His cigarettes,” Craig said.  “I gave ’em back to him.  I saw him put the pack in his shirt pocket.”  He was holding his letter jacket by the collar, its sleeves dragging the ground.

Gabe nodded at it.  “What’re you gonna do with that?”

Craig looked at it.  “I don’t know.  It’s ruined.  I can’t ever wear it again.”  He swallowed.  “Not that I’d want to.”

Tony stepped closer.  “Should we burn it?”

Craig shook his head.  “I’m not starting another fire.  Not tonight.”

Gabe looked off toward the water, and his gaze lit on the riprap lining the lakeshore.  “We could bury it,” he said.

Craig looked at him.  “What?”

Gabe pointed.  “Bury it.  Beneath those rocks.”

Craig followed Gabe’s line of vision, then looked back at him and nodded.  “All right.”  He strode off toward the water’s edge, his flashlight leading the way, and climbed up amid the stones.  They were large, about the size of basketballs, and covered with moss and leaves.  He looked back at Gabe and Tony.  “Help me.”

The three of them knelt and began dislodging rocks until they had dug a small pit, and Gabe shuddered as he thought, Just like digging a grave.  Craig folded the jacket and set it into the hole, and then they piled the rocks back on top of it.  The light showed no trace of the jacket to be seen among the rocks, and the stones were heavy enough and far enough up from the water’s edge that nothing would disturb them.

Wordlessly, Craig led them back down and grabbed the box of remaining beers from behind the log.  Gabe and Tony followed him down the trail and climbed back into the Camaro.  Craig opened the hatch and set the beer inside, then slid into the driver’s seat.  

They sat there, listening to each other breathing for a few minutes, no one daring to break the silence.  Snow began to fall, and they watched it accumulate on the windshield.

Craig gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.  “We don’t ever talk about this,” he said finally.  “Not one word to anybody.”  He looked into the rearview mirror.  “Tony, you don’t say anything to Lori, got it?”

Tony nodded.  “Yeah.”

“We were here, partying all night.  Melvin stopped by, had a beer with us and then he left.”  His eyes met Gabe’s.  “He left, do you understand?”

Gabe swallowed.  “Yes.”  He tore his gaze away from Craig and looked toward the outside, toward the faint glow of town through the trees.  Tears stung his eyes and he fought to blink them back.

Craig started the car.  “We go home.  We get up tomorrow and we don’t know a goddamned thing about Melvin.”  He looked at Gabe and Tony again.  “Right?”

“Yes,” Tony said.  He leaned back in his seat.

“Gabe?”

Gabe took a deep trembling breath.  “Yes.”

Craig swiped the snow from the windshield with his wipers and backed out of the turn-out, then headed toward town.  The snow was falling thickly now, heavy and wet, and the flakes reflected in the headlights like passing stars.  The wipers thumped back and forth like a heartbeat.  Like the old man’s in that Edgar Allan Poe story they read in English class right before Halloween.  And Gabe wondered if like in the Poe story the sound would drive him insane before they reached town.

They rode the rest of the way in silence.  Craig dropped him off at the end of the drive, and Gabe watched the taillights fade into the distance down the street.  He stood for a moment, watching the snow float down in the pool of light beneath the streetlamp, listening to the stillness of the neighborhood.  The snow had covered the street already, and everything seemed muted and stagnant.  And dead.

His mother’s car was in the drive, and he wondered if she might have come home expecting to find Melvin and Curtis playing a drunken game of cards at the kitchen table, and whether she had been disappointed when he wasn’t here.  He decided it didn’t matter, and he tromped up the snow-covered steps to the back porch and let himself in the back door.

His dad was in the recliner, watching an old black-and-white movie.  A Christmas Carol.  On the screen, Scrooge was huddled on a snow-covered street, peering up at a black-cloaked figure.  A figure with no face.  “I am standing in the presence of the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come?” Scrooge asked, and the figure nodded.

“That you Gabe?” his father called, making him jump.

“Yeah, Dad.”  He pulled off his wet, muddy boots and set them on the rug.

“’Bout damn time.”

He hung his jacket on the hook and yanked off his wet socks.  “It’s snowing.”  

“That’s what your mama told me.”  He reached under his sweatshirt and scratched at his stomach.  “Guess Melvin decided to stay home tonight.  Didn’t hear from him all evening.”

Gabe felt a jolt at the mention of Melvin’s name.  “I guess he was busy.”

Curtis snorted.  “Yeah, busy with a bottle.  Or some whore he picked up in Springfield.”

Gabe winced, and wondered again just how much his father knew about Melvin and Sheila.  He turned away.  “I’m gonna take a shower.”

“If you see your mama, tell her to bring me in another beer.”

Gabe stepped into the dimly-lit kitchen and saw his mother leaning against the counter with a glass of water.  She was wearing a light blue housecoat, and he thought it made her look much older, that her skin looked pale and lifeless under the fluorescent light mounted over the sink.  Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but a strand lay across her forehead.  She looked at him with her dark eyes gave him a crooked smile.  “I heard him.”

Gabe sank into a chair at the table.  “I figured he’d be passed out by now.”

“Yeah.  He’s been waiting on Melvin all night.”  She downed the rest of her water and set the glass in the sink.  “I hid his new bottle of whiskey in the hall closet.  Why do you keep giving it back to him?”

“Why do you keep telling me where you hide it?”  She smiled at that, and he looked at the floor.  “He’s not as mean when he’s drinking.  He leaves me alone.”

Sheila nodded.  “I know.”  She reached out and touched his cheek, then frowned at him.  “How’d you get so dirty?  What’ve you been into?”

He turned his head away.  “Nothing.”

She sighed and shook her head.  “Go get cleaned up.  You’re nasty.”  

She tousled his hair and gave him a weak smile, and he felt something melt inside.  At that moment he saw her not just as his mother but as a sad, lonely woman, married to a man who didn’t know how to love her without showing her with his fists.  A woman trying to catch some happiness in any small way she could, even if that meant rekindling a romance with her old high school boyfriend.

And now Gabe had taken even that away.

He stood and kissed her on the cheek, then hurried to the bathroom before the welling tears spilled down his face.

With the door closed and locked, he pulled off his shirt and wriggled out of his wet jeans and stood shivering in his briefs, trying to will the tears to stop.  He reached over and turned on the faucet in the tub.  The roar of the water would drown out the sound of his crying.  He fell to his knees and knelt over the side of the tub.  The porcelain was cold, and he pressed his chest against it as the sobs wracked his body and the tears stung his eyes.  He sat until the water was hot and the mirror above the sink had fogged over.  He had no idea what would happen now.  Had no idea how he would get through this.  

The wood came down against Melvin’s head.

Gabe clubbed him like a goddamned fish!

His arm rose and fell, wood cracking against bone.

Gabe!  What the fuck!

A knock made him jump, and then he heard his mother’s voice over the sound of the water, muffled through the bathroom door.  “Gabe?  You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“All right.  I thought I heard. . . ”

He wiped his eyes.  “What?”

“Nevermind.”

He pulled the lever on the faucet and water sprang from the showerhead.  He stepped out of his briefs and into the hot flow, feeling the pulse against his skin.  The sudden heat made him realize how cold he was.  His feet and fingers were like ice, and his scrotum had shriveled into a numb lump.  He couldn’t stop shivering.  He had never been so cold.  

He wondered if he would ever be warm again.