The World Beneath

by Aaron Gwyn

  Not quite level.

  Not entirely plumb.

  You can never, it occurs to him, get it right.

  He does this daily. Sometimes twice a day. In the springtime or summer when they’ve had a lot of rain. The clean lines and clear patterns of light green against the darker—it makes him calm, Hickson. Makes him feel at home. People will say what they say, but Hickson has forgotten people. There’s a great deal he’s forgotten. He likes to cross his lawn back and forth on the mower. It gives his world angles. A frame.

  He climbs back on the mower and shifts into gear. He presses the accelerator, makes a pass, two passes, comes back around to make a third. He is circling the elm shading the north fence when a shadow jerks from the corner of his eye and he cuts the wheel sharply to avoid it. Hickson pulls out of gear, sets the brake, and turns to look behind him.

  What he’s missed by three inches is not a shadow.

  What he’s missed by three inches is a hole.

  Hickson sits. He kills the ignition and the mower shivers into silence. He starts to get up, but finds he can only sit there, staring. He looks at the hole and he looks at the sky and he stands, straddling the seat, attempting to see over the back fence. He doesn’t believe it. He crossed the swatch of grass not twelve hours before. It is plainly there, but it is plainly odd, and Hickson’s life has become increasingly even. It has smoothed out into a flat, level plane. He sits there and sits there, but it doesn’t go away. Finally, he steps down and approaches the hole, lowering himself, moving more slowly the nearer he comes.

  The hole is circular, perfectly round. It is roughly the diameter of a garbage can and, stepping to its edge, Hickson cannot see the bottom. Below him the sun lights ten or twelve feet, the earth dark and newly cut. Beyond that is black. He kneels beside the hole and runs a hand along its rim. The dirt nearer the surface is drier, a layer of dried soil that crumbles beneath his palm. He looks at his house and then behind either shoulder. He stands, walks across the yard, and stares over the fence. His pickup parked in front of the drive. The same street and the same oaks on the other side of the street and a slight breeze on which floats an occasional leaf. He walks back to the hole, kneels, and, lying on his stomach, slides in an arm. Roots and clay and small fragments of rock. He sits back on the balls of his feet and brushes his hands down his jeans. He begins to examine the grass around the hole. He begins to crawl around on his hands.

  He thinks, for a moment, he’ll go inside and get the tape measure. He thinks about a ball of twine. He thinks about a weight at the end of the twine, and then he just sits. He wonders should he call someone. He wonders who that would be.

  Hickson stands, walks across the lawn, and up the steps of his deck. He goes in through the back door, crosses the dining room, retrieves his phone from its cradle on the kitchen wall. He starts to dial an emergency number. He turns the phone on and presses the number 9. He looks at the receiver’s digital readout, and then he turns it back to OFF. He dials Parks and gets his answering machine. He dials his cell phone and gets the same. Hickson stands there a moment, tugging the thatch of beard below his bottom lip, and then he seats the phone in its charger and walks back out the door.

  He goes down the steps, across the lawn, over to his rear gate. He lifts the latch and lets himself into the adjoining yard. The grass is a foot deep in patches, burned to topsoil in others. There are beer cans and Coke bottles and an aluminum boat that rests upside down on concrete blocks. He steps onto a cracked cement patio, stomps his boots several times, approaches the sliding glass door in back of Parks’s house, and knocks. He waits a few moments and knocks again. From down the block, birdcalls. The sound of a phone. Hickson knocks a last time, tries the door, then presses his face to the glass, shielding his eyes with a hand. The blinds pulled halfway, the television on. Pizza boxes on the coffee table and a video game console left out in the center of the room. He calls for Parks once more, and then recrosses the yard, steps onto his property, closes the gate behind him, and fastens back the latch.

  Turning, he stands there, watching the hole. He’s waiting for it to vanish. Things in his life have done that. People. They are there and then they are not. Hickson takes a knee and sweeps his hand around the rim.

  Standing, walking to the mower, he climbs aboard, trips the ignition, and pulls beneath a small lean-to at the rear of his house. He steps off, takes the key, and clips it to the ring of keys on his belt. He covers the mower with a green and yellow tarp on which JOHN DEERE is embroidered in black. He goes back to the hole and casts it a final glance. He toes the grass along its edge and a few loose blades fall over and pinwheel steadily down.

  At work, a few hours later, Hickson is placing a fifth call to Parks’s answering machine when his walkie-talkie begins to vibrate. He fetches it to his mouth, tucks away his cell, and tells the man on the other end to go ahead.

  “You seen J.T.?” the voice asks.

  Hickson says he hasn’t.

  “You seen the greens on Nine?”

  Hickson tells him not yet.

  “What time was he supposed to water?”

  “Six.”

  “It’s burned to absolute shit.”

  “All of it?”

  “Whole shooting match. Thirteen looks like utter hell. Sixteen’s going to fry, it gets any hotter.”

  Hickson stands a moment. On his workbench is a rake handle and a cast aluminum head. A vise and a jar of screws. A tube of epoxy.

  “You want me to get him?” Hickson asks.

  “Yeah,” says Dresser. “Go get him. Bring him up.”

  Hickson clips the walkie-talkie back onto his belt. This, now, atop everything else. Teenage employees. Immigrant workers and kids. He runs a hand through his beard and then locks the door to the shed and walks over and climbs onto the seat of his cart. He trips the brake and pulls onto the path, the whine of the engine pitching higher as he trundles down the lane. A few singles and groups of three and four. Carson McGinnis in the fairway on Number Five. The druggist stands straddling his ball with a five-iron in one hand and a pitching wedge in the other. He looks like a scarecrow to ward off birds. Hickson gives a brief wave and drives along the path, the grass around him even and bright.

  He tops the hill on Seven, crosses the bridge at the shallow end of the lake, and pulls beside a row of birch. He sees where J.T. has parked his cart off-path, just at the edge of the rough. The flag down alongside it. His cup-puncher leaned against the rear of the cart. Hickson shakes his head. How many times has he told him? He sets the brake and walks over to the green to test the grass against his palm. The color has bleached to a light shade of brown, ashen in places, almost white. There is no moisture to it. Squatting, he looks up, and as he does, the boy emerges from a dense stand of oaks. He wears a white T-shirt and blue shorts, the shirt so large its hem falls below his knees. He is thin and short, his skin a light brown, an almost metallic look to it, as if bronzed. He carries a ten-gallon bucket on his hip and he doesn’t seem to see Hickson. Look at me, thinks Hickson, and then the boy does. He stops midstride and sets the bucket at his feet.

  “You’re not supposed to go down there,” Hickson tells him.

  The boy stands blank-faced. He scratches an ear.

  “It’s private property,” says Hickson. “It belongs to the Briers.”

  The boy stands. He wears unlaced high-tops and his socks are pulled all the way up his shins. Hickson can’t imagine how he doesn’t trip.

  “You water?” Hickson asks.

  “Yes.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why’s your green burned?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know what it’s going to cost us to fix?” J.T. looks at him. He looks at the ground.

  “You don’t care, do you?”

  “I care.”

  “Yeah,” says Hickson, “I can see. What were you doing in the woods?”

  “Nothing.”

  �
��Nothing?”

  “No.”

  Hickson watches him a moment. He passes J.T. most mornings on his way in to work. Stumbling along the side of the highway. Hickson has caught himself wanting to lecture the boy, give him lessons on how to walk.

  “Dresser wants you up at the clubhouse,” Hickson says.

  “Okay.”

  “He wants you up there now.”

  “All right.”

  The boy retrieves his bucket and walks toward his cart. Hickson fits the flag back in the cup and then stands watching as J.T. gathers his things. The boy climbs in the cart and then sets off along the path, inching up the hill by Seven, meandering out of sight. Hickson pulls the back of his wrist along his brow. He walks over and reaches his hand inside the hole and he tries to figure whether this earth would be the same earth as his housing addition across the creek. He rubs several grains between his thumb and forefinger and then stands and looks toward the grove of oaks two hundred yards away. The end of his street. He bought several years back when he was promoted. Any problems, he’d be right across the way. Hickson looks down at his watch. He pulls out his cell phone and dials Parks’s number and then stands there, chewing a thumbnail, listening for a voice.

  Sundown. Cool and cloudless. Hickson kneels along the rim of the hole, staring into black. The garden hose snakes beside him, and for the past hour he has been feeding in a steady stream of water.

  Nothing.

  Not even the sound of a splash.

  Hickson stands. He turns and walks to the faucet and is twisting the handle when the gate latch trips and then clacks shut. He looks over and sees Parks coming up the lawn. Beer in hand. Jeans and flip-flops and his dog tags hanging between his pectorals. No shirt. His hair still cut in a high and tight.

  “What say, Hoss?”

  Hickson doesn’t answer. He points to the hole.

  Cocking his head, Parks walks over and stares.

  “What’d you do that for?”

  “I didn’t do it,” Hickson tells him. “It was like that.”

  “When was it like that?”

  “This morning. I went and knocked on your door. I been calling you all day.”

  Parks gazes intently at the hole, palms on his knees. He sets the beer bottle between his feet.

  “That’s fucked,” he tells Hickson.

  “Yes,” says Hickson. “It is fucked all the way.”

  “What did it?”

  “I don’t know what did it.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “That’s why I been calling.”

  Parks glances at him. “I was up late,” he says.

  “I figured.”

  “Ashley Wheelis.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Went to the casino.”

  “Mm.”

  “You want to talk about some tits.”

  Hickson looks over at his friend. He expects the man to be cupping imaginary breasts, but Parks’s palms still rest on his knees. He has a lip full of snuff and a sunburn across his face. He’s the only man Hickson knows to dip and drink at the same time.

  “When,” asks Hickson, “you get up?”

  “About an hour ago,” Parks tells him. He leans over and spits. Hickson watches the tobacco juice drop into the hole.

  “How deep is it?”

  “I don’t know,” says Hickson.

  “You been filling it with water?”

  “I been trying.”

  The sun has dipped below the horizon. The sky is the color of skin.

  “That’s Kentucky bluegrass,” Hickson tells him.

  “You just laid it when?”

  “June.”

  “What’d that cost?”

  “About eighteen hundred dollars.”

  Parks bends down and fingers the grass around the hole.

  “It’s like it was done with a machine,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s like somebody’s cut it with a knife.”

  Hickson nods.

  “Where’s the dirt?” Parks asks.

  “Isn’t any.”

  “What’d you mean isn’t any?”

  “I mean,” Hickson tells him, “that’s how I found it. What you’re staring at, that’s how it was.”

  Parks turns to look at him. He looks back at the hole.

  “That don’t make any sense,” he says.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It’s craziness.”

  “I know.”

  Both men fall silent. Dusk is gathering, shadows stretching from the trees.

  “Maybe it was a well.”

  “Oil well?” says Hickson.

  “Maybe. You know how many they drilled out here?”

  “I know there was a bunch.”

  “Next time you’re down at Ken’s look at those pictures. There was derricks out here thick as trees.”

  Hickson kneels beside Parks. “You think it would’ve fallen in like that?”

  “It could.”

  “Look how it’s cut.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look how clean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know a well would do that.”

  “Might not.”

  Hickson leans down and puts his head over the hole. He runs his fingers across the dirt inside.

  “What are you going to do?” Parks asks.

  “Call the city.”

  “Yeah,” says Parks. “And tell them what?”

  “That I got a hole in my yard.”

  “What are they going to do? Send someone out?”

  “Have to.”

  “Why would they have to?”

  Hickson shakes his head. “Look at it,” he says.

  Parks points at the gate to the left side of Hickson’s house. The gate, like much of the fence, is new. Parks and Hickson performed the labor themselves.

  “How wide’s that gate?” Parks asks.

  “Three foot.”

  “So, first thing, gate’s coming down.”

  Hickson looks a moment. His brows furrow. He hadn’t thought of that.

  “Then,” says Parks, “they’re going to pull up your roses.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then there’s going to be tire ruts from here to the—”

  “All right,” Hickson says. “I get it.” He removes his ball cap and runs a palm across his scalp. Reaching over, he takes Parks’s beer and empties it into the hole. He pauses a moment, then drops in the bottle.

  Both of them sit there, waiting for the sound.

  NOVEMBER 2006

  The next morning, Martin had his secretary upload J.T.’s photograph on the website for Missing and Exploited Children. He had her contact the police department and put out an All Points Bulletin. He sat at his desk drinking coffee, waiting for Lem. He brought up the MEC homepage, scrolled and clicked and stared at the digital image of the boy, his ear-to-ear smile. He thought what Angelica had told him. He thought about the grandmother. Then he minimized the window and sat.

  Deputy Lemming came in at nine. He’d had to serve a warrant across town. Six-five, two hundred forty, he’d been a bull rider before taking criminal justice courses at Perser Community. He’d been deputy a little over a decade, and he’d worked under Martin the past four years. Last summer, on a routine pull-over, Lemming found himself in a high-speed chase. When it finally ended, he approached the Toyota the man was driving and ripped the door off the actual frame. Martin didn’t know such a thing was possible and part of his job was spent now reining the deputy in.

  The sky had clouded that night and it began to rain. It fell several hours, hard, steady, filling gutters along the roads, gathering in bar-ditches and the beds of streams. Martin knew the city park would be flooded, the main entrance where the road dipped beside the town’s first derrick. He’d have to send Lem at some point to put up the barricade.

  They drove south in Martin’s cruiser, crossed the tracks beyond Dawson’s Feed, went another half mile
, hooked a right, and turned back to the west. During the Oil Boom of the thirties, the town had grown so quickly there wasn’t time to build permanent dwellings. On the first floor of the courthouse there were black and white photos of those times, tents and clapboard houses stretching for miles. Blacks and Indians allowed to work in the patch were quartered south of the city proper, and though ninety years had passed, their situation, in Perser, had not greatly improved. Nigger Town, as it was called during Martin’s childhood, was a tangle of poorly maintained streets and gravel alleys, dirt paths trailing into pines. Many of the homes were constructed during the Boom—shotgun houses and ramshackle hovels made from cheap lumber and tin.

  Martin and Lemming went slowly down the narrow blacktop that served as the central thoroughfare. There were enormous potholes and cracks and Martin could see it’d been years since the county repaved. The rain channeled through the crevices and pooled in the larger holes. You had to go around. With the water standing, you didn’t know how deep. Martin flipped the lever to make the wipers go faster. He studied the passing homes. There seemed to be no one about. Windows covered with blankets. Streets deserted. The sheriff’s department rarely answered calls from the area. It was rare for a call to be placed. The people here took care of their own living and dying. They had their own markets and cemeteries. Their own stores and grave-makers. They bought and grieved in another dispensation, some other time.

  They turned down a side street and then they turned down another. Martin checked his directions and looked over at Lem. The man was sitting there in his uniform, which seemed too small for him, too tight. He looked as if he were surveying an alien landscape. Martin glanced back at the road and saw, through the rain, the mailbox he was looking for up on his left. It was a long white building that sat at the top of a rise between two houses almost identical. There was no car in the drive, but there was a motorcycle, and Martin slowed and pulled in behind it. They sat a moment looking at the overgrown lawn, the house. The swing had come off its hangers and rested on the plankboard porch, two chains dangling above it, slightly swaying. Martin took the keys out of the ignition.

  “And what are we here to do?” he asked.