by J. D. Barker
Although not even five o’clock, someone sat at every booth, table, and stool. About a half-dozen people stood around the front door, waiting for something to open up. Lurline Waldrip was behind the counter, wiping up what looked like a coffee spill. She looked up at both of us, shook her head, then went back to it.
I saw the woman’s coat first.
When you bus tables, you quickly learn to seek out dirty dishes and glasses upon entering a room, hone in on them like a radar. My eyes began that involuntary exercise the moment we stepped inside, taking in the people second, and the various eating utensils, plates, and bowls first. Full versus empty, half-full waters in need of refilling. Her coat, though, her coat caught my eye.
I saw the white coat draped down over one of the stools at the counter, and all other sights and sounds left the room as my eyes followed the lines of that coat up the stool to the woman sitting atop it with her back toward me, her long, white hair falling over her shoulders. A newspaper sat folded neatly beneath her left hand on the counter, and I watched as she raised a coffee cup to her lips with her right.
She must have felt my eyes on her, because she turned around, spinning slowly on the edge of the stool. I think I stared at her for a full ten seconds before I realized this wasn’t the woman from the cemetery, Ms. Latrese Oliver, as she had called herself, this was someone else, someone I had never seen before.
I pushed passed Auntie Jo and ran toward the bathroom. Somehow I managed to close and lock the door and get to the toilet before my meager breakfast and lunch came back up.
I stayed not only for my shift but through the end of Auntie Jo’s shift, too. Mr. Krendal told me I could go home more times than I could count, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to be alone. The rush didn’t end until after 9 p.m. Lurline said it was because it was Friday, payday for most, and half the city decided they didn’t want to cook. She said a pocket full of cash led to the trifecta—hot meal, bar, strip club for nearly every single guy in the city, of which there were many. I knew what a bar was. There were three on every block. I had my suspicions about strip clubs, too, my limited knowledge having come from Dunk’s slightly less limited knowledge. Auntie Jo tried to keep up with the crowd, but she was moving slow, and Lurline stayed more than an hour after her shift to help out.
We had left the windows open, and some of the papers from the dining table had blown around the apartment. I scuttled around and picked them up as Auntie Jo turned on lights, closed both windows, and dropped down into her chair. “I’m getting too old for this.” She pulled off her shoes and rubbed at her swollen feet. She then counted out her tips and swore under her breath.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re still thirty-eight short for rent. I thought for sure…” she trailed off, closed her eyes, and pressed her calloused palms against her temples.
I made six dollars in tips. I placed the money in her hand. She opened her mouth to argue, then smiled weakly. “You’re a good kid. I’ll pay you back, every cent.”
“Hang on.” I ran to my room to get the rest from my savings. She’d take my money now, and I wanted to give it to her. I lived here, too. I wanted to help.
I saw the envelope on my bed when I turned on the light.
The envelope sat atop my sketchbook, also on my bed—not where I left it.
I glanced back at Auntie Jo through the open doorway, still in her chair, then stepped cautiously into my room, searching every corner and shadow.
The envelope was white, letter size, about half an inch thick. A single word was printed across the front in neat handwriting—
Pip.
The envelope contained five hundred dollars in cash.
4
That night, I had a bad dream. I had a really bad dream.
I was four.
Daddy fastened me into my car seat.
“All secure, Captain Jack?”
“Yep.”
“Your momma hooked you up with a road soda.”
I took the sippy cup from him and brought it to my lips, careful not to spill. Chocolate milk, my favorite.
Momma got into the car.
I remembered this trip.
I remembered every second of it from the moment we left our house until we pulled up outside of Auntie Jo’s apartment building, the same one where we lived now.
We pulled up outside the red brick apartment building, and Auntie Jo came out, an ever-present cigarette lodged between the fingers of her left hand.
I knew what came next.
Momma’s door opened, the two woman hugged. Auntie Jo poked her head in through the opening, smiling at me.
“Josephine,” Daddy grumbled.
She said nothing to him.
This is when things changed.
This is where it was different.
I remembered Daddy getting out of the car, lifting me out and setting me on the ground. I remembered both Momma and Daddy getting back in the car and driving off down the road, watching them disappear over the hill before taking Auntie Jo’s hand and going into the building with her.
I remembered all of that as if it happened yesterday.
That is not what happened next, though.
In this dream, something else happened entirely.
Daddy opened my door, removed something from the seat beside me, then closed my door. I watched him carry that something around the car and hand it to Auntie Jo.
Momma and Daddy got back into the car, and we were moving again.
Daddy swore at all the red taillights ahead. He made a right-hand turn without slowing down. The inertia pressed me into the side of my chair.
Neither of them looked back at me, which was rare. One or both usually did in these moments.
We went over a bridge, followed soon by a tunnel, the car gaining speed.
I felt us going faster, the car speeding up, growing louder.
Daddy did look up then. I saw his eyes in the mirror, but he didn’t look at me. He looked at something beyond me, something behind us. Momma glanced at him, and I saw her look, too, only she looked into the mirror on her door.
Daddy swerved, passing a car moving much slower than us. Our car got louder, faster.
“79 is coming up,” Momma said.
Daddy’s eyes in the mirror again. “Too far.”
His eyes drifted to me in the mirror then, if only a second. I saw the white SUV pull out of a side street directly into our path. He did not.
Momma didn’t, either. She didn’t have time to scream.
When I woke from the dream for the third time, I didn’t dare go back to sleep. I stared at the ceiling until the light of morning reached through my window and tried to grab me under my mound of blankets.
5
Two weeks before Christmas, we had a bit of a warm spell. The previous week’s snow disappeared, leaving behind the brown, mushy earth and faded grass slumbering comfortably beneath. The sky bore only a passing resemblance to day, filled with thick, dark clouds eager to get winter back underway. Auntie Jo insisted I wear my winter coat, a thick monster of a thing made of wool meant for temperatures as low as minus ten. I unbuttoned the coat as soon as I left the apartment and considered taking the ridiculous thing off altogether. It was nearly forty degrees out and climbing as I stood just inside the large iron gates of the cemetery.
Four more envelopes appeared after the first, always on the eighth of the month, always labeled Pip, and always found on my bed, somehow left there while the apartment was vacant. The last arrived on Monday, only two days ago. I considered skipping school and hiding in the apartment, but my teacher, Ms. Thomas, frequented the diner and would no doubt ask my aunt where I was. I considered pretending to be sick, too, and nearly did until I realized I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be alone in the apartment with whoever was leaving those envelopes. I knew it wasn’t Stella. I suspected it might be Ms. Oliver, and that thought was enough for me to abandon the plan altogether.
Each envelope contained ex
actly five hundred dollars.
I knew I couldn’t give the money directly to Auntie Jo. She would ask where the money came from, and I couldn’t tell her I found it on my bed. I couldn’t tell her the money came from my savings, either. She knew how much I had. I also couldn’t let her see the envelope with Pip written on the front, because that would just lead to more questions. Ultimately, I took the money out of the first envelope, wrapped the cash in newspaper, and left the bundle in Auntie Jo’s locker at the diner. She found the money after her shift the following day and didn’t say anything until we got home. Then she pulled the money from her purse and showed it to me. She thought Mr. Krendal left the package for her. If she told me aliens beamed it into her locker from their mothership circling the Earth, I would have been happy with that explanation, too, as long as she didn’t suspect the windfall came from me. She said she confessed to Mr. Krendal she was behind on the rent and needed an advance. He told her he didn’t do loans or advances. If he helped her out, he’d be obligated to help everyone out, and times were tough. She believed he left the money anonymously simply to avoid potential problems with the rest of his employees. When she thanked him for the money, he simply said, “What money?” and returned to the grill. Sometimes unspoken words say more than an entire conversation.
When the second envelope arrived, I again wrapped the cash in newspaper and placed the money in Auntie Jo’s locker. Again, she suspected it came from Mr. Krendal. She was no longer behind on the rent and considered giving it back. I told her sometimes it rains, we should save it. She tucked the money away in the back of our freezer wrapped in aluminum foil with MYSTERY MEAT written across the package on masking tape.
With the arrival of the envelopes that followed, I hid the money in my underwear drawer. I didn’t want to risk Auntie Jo attempting to return it to Mr. Krendal again, and she no doubt would. Auntie Jo had her faults, but she was a proud woman, and taking charity wasn’t too far off from panhandling in her book. If money got tight again, I’d find another way to get it into her hands.
I looked up from my post beside a large granite obelisk to see Dunk wheeling around the corner on his BMX bike. He wore no jacket, only a Run DMC sweatshirt and jeans. As he crossed through the cemetery gates, he backpedaled, engaging his rear brakes, locking the back tire, and skidded sideways to a controlled stop a few inches from my feet.
“What exactly are we doing here?” He dropped the bike in the grass and leaned against a tall black tombstone, realized what he was touching, then took a few steps back, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “You know I don’t like this place. Cemeteries creep me out. Haven’t you ever seen Night of the Living Dead? Romero doesn’t live far from here. For all we know, he got the idea for that movie when one of these stiffs made a grab for him right where we’re standing.”
“Well, he lived to tell about it.”
Dunk’s eyes narrowed. “Or did he? Have you ever seen him? He looks like a zombie.”
“Zombies aren’t real.”
“If there are zombies anywhere, they’d be here in Pittsburgh. This place is a shithole,” he said. “Chicago was a happy place. Look at the films set around Chicago—The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles. In Chicago, we had Molly Ringwald down the road in Evanston. Nothing bad ever happens in Evanston.”
“Anthony Michael Hall could easily be a zombie. That Ducky kid, too.”
He thought about this. “You got me there. They’re some creepy-looking dudes. Molly’s a fox, though. I’d do her.”
“You don’t even know what that means.”
“Of course I do. A gentleman never kisses and tells, though. You’ll have to fumble through the art of love all on your own, Mr. Thatch, now that you have a girlfriend.”
I had told Dunk everything.
He knew about my first meeting with Stella through the incident with the old woman. I didn’t know what else to call it. The incident seemed right. He knew about the money, too.
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Whatever, Romeo. Is she here?”
I didn’t need to check the bench to be sure she wasn’t here, and wouldn’t be, until next August. I gave up attempting to find her any day other than August 8, and that day was still very far off. “No, I haven’t seen anyone.”
“Then why are we here?”
I needed to know more about her. I need to know something about her. Lately she seemed to occupy nearly all my waking thoughts, and I figured it was because I had so many questions. If I answered those questions, if I figured out who she was, maybe I could get past this. Maybe I wouldn’t want to see her so bad. Maybe I wouldn’t bother to go to the bench next August at all. “Her name is Stella Nettleton. I want to check all the headstones in here and see if I can figure out who she visits every month.”
Dunk’s mouth was open slightly, and his bushy eyebrows seemed to touch. “That may be the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. How many stiffs do you think are buried here?” His face went red, then, “I mean, besides your mom and pop, because they’re not stiffs, they’re, I mean were, I mean—”
“We need to watch for any headstones dated August 8, too,” I interrupted. “Just in case whoever she visits didn’t have the same last name.”
He nodded toward the small white building next to the adjacent parking lot. “Isn’t there a log or something in the office? That seems much easier than running around Satan’s waiting room, checking names. Not that your parents would be…oh heck, this is awkward. Can’t we just go play ball or something? I saw some kids at Carnegie Park. Justin was there. He’ll let us play.”
“I can do this myself, if you don’t want to.”
Dunk sighed. “No, if this is how you want to spend your night off, I’ll help. We should start at the office, though.”
“I tried that a few weeks ago. They didn’t have any records for people named Nettleton, and I found three people who died on August 8, two others who were born on that day.” I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and showed it to Dunk. “All five of these are on the far end of the cemetery, the newer part. I tracked them down yesterday. The bench is in the oldest portion of this place, nowhere near these. The man at the office said a fire destroyed all the records prior to 1926, all the old stuff, so the only way to be sure there is nobody else is to check all the gravestones, one by one.”
Dunk scratched at the side of his head. “How many are there?”
“One hundred and twenty-four thousand.”
The color drained from his face. “You know that’s impossible, right? You realize how long that would take? Like a thousand years. Maybe longer. Maybe a lot longer.”
“I don’t think we have to check them all. Whoever she visits must be near that bench. We start at the graves near there and branch out until we find what we’re looking for.”
For the next three hours, we did exactly that, moving from stone to stone, row to row. We found nothing.
August 8, 1987
Eleven Years Old
Log 08/08/1987—
Subject “D” restless.
Audio/video recording.
“Is there anybody there?”
“What do we do? Should we answer him?”
“Naw, he’ll pipe down in a few minutes. Just ignore him.”
“I had a bad dream. Can you turn on the lights?”
“Should we do it?”
“I’m not gonna do it—he’s on a schedule. Ignore him. It’s your move.”
“I can’t concentrate with the kid jabbering in there. He creeps me out.”
“I’ve got checkmate in two more moves anyway.”
“No you don’t, not after I take your…oh, shit. I’m an idiot.”
“Yep.”
“Your name’s Carl, right? If you can’t turn on the lights, can you at least talk to me until I fall back asleep, Carl?”
“Fuck! How does he know my name?”
“Calm down.”
“Screw you.”
“I do
n’t want to hear my name coming out of his mouth. Not now, not ever.”
“He can’t hurt you, not with the audio delay.”
“Can’t we just switch him off? Mute him?”
“Then it won’t record. Something important gets missed, and we’re both looking for new employment.”
“You’d be all over that switch if he said your name.”
“Well, let’s just hope he fixates on you, then.”
“Has he ever been outside his box?”
“Not since I’ve been here.”
“When did you start? ’81?”
“Fall of 1980.”
“That’s insane. That room can’t be more than ten by ten.”
“He’s got a window.”
“Overlooking what? The parking lot?”
“I heard he was out when they first brought him in, but that didn’t last long. One other time two years ago. The kid’s got a nasty temper.”
“Do you have any kids, Carl?” David said.
“Christ! Shut him up.”
“Do you want to play again?”
“Naw. I can’t focus.”
“Do you ignore your own kids, too, Carl? You really shouldn’t.”
“Fuck me.”
“I heard his dad did that to him, to his face.”
“I heard that, too.”
“Something snapped then, in his head. He’s not right.”
Carl let out a nervous chuckle. “He’s nowhere near right. That’s why they keep him in a box.”
“Still, just a kid, though.”
“What does that mean? You want to talk to him? Cheer him up?”
“Hell no.”
Carl pressed the microphone button. “Would you like Warren here to read you a bedtime story?”
Warren slapped his hand off the button. “What the fuck? Why’d you tell him my name?”
“He knows mine, only seems fair.”
“You’re an asshole.”
The room fell silent, then—