The World Beneath

by Aaron Gwyn

  It is Saturday morning. October twenty-eighth. Hickson wakes Parks at ten and they drive to the Lowe’s in Shawnee. Parks looks over at him as they make their way down the interstate. His eyes are bloodshot, sleep crusted in their corners. Though sunburned, his skin has a paler cast. He knuckles his eyelids and runs a hand the length of his face. It makes the sound of sandpaper scraping oak.

  “Last night,” he says.

  “Who?” Hickson asks.

  “Tami.”

  “Tammy Jackson?”

  “Hell, no,” Parks says, “Tami Novotny.”

  “I thought Tami was married.”

  “She was married.”

  “I mean,” says Hickson, “I thought she still was.”

  “You thought right,” Parks says.

  They drive. Hickson coughs into his hand.

  “How’re you doing?” Parks asks.

  “I’m fucked is how I’m doing.”

  Parks shakes his head. “Just a hole, Hick.”

  “Yeah,” says Hickson. “How’d you like it in your yard?”

  Parks sits a moment, staring out the passenger-side window.

  “Good point,” he says.

  They spend hours walking the aisles, stacking, on a flatbed dolly, sacks of cement, Potter’s Earth and Daub. It is Parks’s notion that, however deep, there is a bottom to the hole, and to fill it they must seal it at the base. So no water seeps through. No moisture through the pores.

  “We seal it,” Parks tells him, “and it’ll fill.”

  That afternoon, they mix the powder in ten-gallon buckets and pour it, pound by pound, into the hole. They stand in the October light, waiting.

  “How long,” asks Hickson, “this supposed to take?”

  “Couple hours,” says Parks. “Shouldn’t be more than three.”

  “How long does it take concrete to set?”

  “Concrete’ll take a little longer. Usually give it overnight.”

  “This is quicker, though?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Why is it quicker?”

  “More silicon, I think.”

  Hickson stares at him. “How many times you done this?”

  “This’ll be the first.”

  Hickson shakes his head. He walks to his back porch and then sits there turning the plain platinum band on the ring finger of his left hand.

  That evening, they stand over the hole with their garden hoses, feeding it water. The water keeps pouring and it is dark before Hickson closes the valve.

  “Drop something in there,” Parks tells him.

  “Do what?”

  “Drop something in.”

  Hickson retrieves a small stone from his flower bed and pitches it into the hole. They stand an entire minute, waiting for sound. Parks crouches, palms cupped behind his ears.

  “Three hundred dollars,” says Hickson.

  “I’ll be damned,” Parks says.

  Monday morning, Hickson finds J.T. by the sand trap on Three and waves him over to his cart. He points to the boy’s rake.

  “Grab your stuff,” he tells him. “Get in.”

  Hickson drives him to the trap off Six, and then the one on the other side of the lake. He sits in his cart with his sunglasses, watching the boy as he combs at the sand.

  “Straight lines,” he calls. “Even it up.”

  The next day, Hickson is waiting for him in the parking lot. He hands him a shovel and motions to a trench beside the cart barn where workers are installing a sprinkler system. He stands with his arms crossed, leaning against the building, telling the boy to dig faster, deep. Several times he walks over and takes the shovel from the boy’s hands and shows him how to brace his weight behind the head of the spade. He hands him a pair of gloves. By noon the boy’s shirt is soaked through. It hangs about his knees like a damp towel.

  “If you want to,” says Hickson, “you can take that off.”

  The boy stares at him. He shakes his head. Turning to his task, he plants the tongue of the shovel and lifts a spadeful of red earth. His skin glistens with sweat.

  Hickson smiles. “Hard work,” he tells him. “Probably makes you wish you’d stayed in school.”

  The boy does not answer him back.

  That evening, Hickson is in the clubhouse when J.T.’s friends pull into the parking lot in an ’89 Camaro. All of them dressed the same. Baggy shorts and bandannas. Oversized shirts.

  “What is it,” asks Hickson, “with their clothes? Can they not find anything that fits?”

  Dresser stands beside him.

  “So they can hide their guns,” he says.

  Hickson supervises J.T. the next morning. He follows him around on his cart. The boy watering. Changing the cups. Hickson drives to the clubhouse for lunch and, when he comes down the course to check J.T.’s progress, finds him shin-deep in the shallow end of the lake. Hickson watches him several moments. The boy stares into the water, Walkman on his hip and the hem of his shirt bunched up around it, headphones plugged into either ear. He shuffles his feet, then backs up. He retrieves a golf ball. He reaches down and salvages a couple more. Every so often he walks over and drops them in a bucket by the shore. He wades back into the water and continues his search.

  Hickson pulls into the lane beside the lake. The boy is walking out of the water with his pockets bulging when Hickson steps from the cart, fetches up the ten-gallon bucket, and holds it out. The boy stands there, staring at Hickson’s chest.

  “C’mon,” says Hickson, jostling the bucket. “Give ’em here.”

  The boy reaches into his pockets and begins to remove the golf balls one by one. Yellow and white and a bright shade of orange. He pulls out Titleist. Strata and Top-Flite. Wilson Staff. He places them all in the outheld bucket. Hickson asks is that all and the boy pats flat the pockets of his shorts. Hickson grabs the mouth of the bucket with one hand, the bottom with the other, and slings forty or fifty balls back into the water. The boy’s neck jerks; his eyes widen. He looks up at Hickson.

  “Those aren’t yours,” Hickson explains. “We got a guy comes in for those every week. He pays us commission. I think that you know.”

  The boy says nothing.

  “How many of those you say that you’ve took?”

  The boy shrugs.

  “What’re you getting for them? Fifty cents? A quarter?”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” J.T. mumbles.

  “Say what?”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  Hickson studies the boy a moment. He shakes his head, walks over, and climbs into his cart. He puts J.T.’s bucket in the back. The boy mutters something under his breath.

  “What’d you say?” asks Hickson.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yeah.”

  A half minute passes, Hickson staring.

  “That’s fine,” he tells him, releasing the brake. “Don’t let me catch you saying it again.”

  Evening finds Hickson squatting over his hole with two hundred feet of kite string and a fist-sized rock. He makes a cradle at one end, cinches it tight, then builds another loop, hitches it over the rock, and makes sure of the balance. He lowers it into the hole and begins feeding out line. He is halfway through the spool when he looks over and sees Parks walking across the lawn. The man comes up, crosses his arms, and nods.

  “Cap fell through.”

  “What?” asks Hickson.

  “Cap fell through.”

  “What cap?”

  “Talked to Dad while ago on the phone. He says it’s a well. He says what they did—”

  “You told Bill?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You mentioned it was me?”

  “No, no,” says Parks, “I didn’t say you. I said ‘friend.’ I didn’t tell him—”

  “I just don’t want anyone—”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t have a bunch of—”

  “Believe me,” says Parks, “I understand.
Dad says they used to cap these things with little slabs of concrete. No telling what was here before they started this addition. Drilling. Land Run. Indians digging tunnels all those years before. Someone comes in, lays down sod, whole time you got these shafts. All that weight’s pressing down, you’re riding your mower over it, then one day, pop—down it goes. Dad said he’s seen them break off smooth as a manhole. Happens all the time.”

  Hickson watches him a moment. He looks back to the string. “So what do we do?”

  “Two choices,” Parks tells him. “A: we go to the city, in which case this yard’s going to look like a coal mine. B: we drive back over to Lowe’s, get you a grille or a shed or something.”

  “Cover it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We can’t fill it in?”

  “Not with what you and me can get our hands on.”

  Hickson doesn’t want to cover it. He just wants it gone.

  He sits a moment, thinking. He asks Parks, if they leave it, won’t it just widen out?

  “Dad says no. He says it’ll have to fill back up. The hole will fill. Just collapses back on itself. He says way they drill these jobs, the shaft is basically just this—”

  “Goddammit!” says Hickson.

  “What?”

  “Rock slipped off.” He shakes his head and begins to wind the string back onto the spool.

  “You were wanting to see how deep?”

  “Yeah,” says Hickson. He sits back on his haunches, wrapping the twine. When he pulls the end from the hole, there is neither cradle nor rock.

  “Rock broke your line,” says Parks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Must’ve had a weak spot, something.”

  Hickson studies the end of the string. Clean break. No ravels or frays. He looks over to the wad of packaging beside him. He straightens the sheet of cardboard on its front. Cartoon of a boy running in grass with a kite hovering behind him. High-tensile string, the advert says. Fifty pound test!

  Hickson stares a moment. It doesn’t feel right. There’s a stinging in his temples and a cold sensation at the base of his spine. He hopes it’s just the way he’s sitting, but it’s not. He fetches another rock. He ties kite string around it, builds the loops carefully, cinches them tight. Parks watches, nodding with every turn of the twine. When he’s finished, Hickson glances up. His friend bent over with hands on his knees. Staring. Intent. They’ve known each other since elementary. It’s the quietest Hickson’s seen the man in years.

  He rubs a hand through his beard and begins to lower the stone. He dips it into the hole and drops it steadily down, paying out line, paying out more. The minutes string slowly along. Hickson takes his time. A quarter of the spool, half the spool, three-quarters, and then the tension goes suddenly slack. He snaps a glance over to Parks.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” says the man.

  Hickson begins frantically to wind. Parks kneels beside him in the grass, and they both inch closer, and they are in identical postures, genuflecting, when Hickson pulls out the severed end of the string.

  NOVEMBER 2006

  The next morning when Martin walked in the front door of the courthouse, Nita stopped him and pointed toward the building’s rear wall. At the end of a row of folding chairs sat Charles Whitney, the boy Martin had tried to locate the previous morning. The boy was tall like Martin, bone-thin. He had a shaved head and a long face, narrow wire-rimmed spectacles which lent him a scholarly look. He was hunched over with his elbows on his knees, one foot bouncing. He wore a black hooded sweatshirt, too-large jeans, spotless white sneakers.

  “He’s been here,” said Nita, “since seven o’clock.”

  Martin took papers from his box and rolled them into a tight baton. He swatted his leg a few times. He told Nita thank you and then walked across the room. The boy watched him come. When he reached the row of chairs, Charles was already standing, and Martin waved the papers and pointed down the hall toward his office. The boy followed. Martin unlocked the door, hit the lights, went over and sat at his desk. When he looked up the boy was standing in the doorway, studying his feet. Martin directed him to one of the chairs.

  “How was your trip?” he asked.

  The boy came over and sat. He shook his head. He said he was there to help Martin find his friend.

  Martin looked at him a moment.

  “I was hoping,” he told Charles, “he’d be with you.” J.T. wasn’t with them. Charles hadn’t seen him since Thursday night. J.T. had stayed over, and he’d fallen asleep watching TV. When he woke the next morning, J.T. was already gone.

  “This isn’t like him,” said the boy. “This is bad.”

  Martin asked if J.T. had ever gone missing.

  “Never,” said the boy.

  “You know anyplace else he’d be?”

  “No,” said Charles.

  Martin sat a moment. He leaned forward and took his hat off and placed it on the desk beside him. He smoothed his fingers through his hair and cleared his throat. He looked Charles squarely in the eye.

  “I’m getting ready,” he said, “to inconvenience a whole lot of people. Based on what you’re telling me. If you’re full of shit, I need to know it right now.”

  “I’m not full of shit,” said the boy.

  “I mean even a little.”

  “Yessir.”

  “The least little bit.”

  “I understand.”

  Martin raised a hand and made an inch worth of space between his thumb and forefinger.

  The boy looked for a moment. Then he shook his head.

  “Tell me,” said Martin, “about Dave Dresser.”

  “We tagged his car.”

  “Why you’d do that?”

  “He’s a dick.”

  “What else you do?”

  “Tagged some other cars. Tagged J.T.’s boss.”

  “What else?” Martin asked.

  “We let air out of his tires.”

  “What else?”

  “We egged it.”

  “All this for Dresser?”

  “Dresser,” said the boy. “J.T.’s boss.”

  Martin sat there.

  “What else?” he said.

  “Nothing else.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No drugs?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “You sure?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You pass a piss test?”

  “Bring it on,” Charles said.

  Martin ran a palm across his chin.

  “Why’d you tag Dresser? Decide you’d pitch a little get-back?”

  “Yessir.”

  “How that work out?”

  “I don’t guess it did.”

  “You in a gang?”

  “Nosir.”

  “Dresser said you were in a gang.”

  “Dresser’s a dick.”

  “I know he’s a dick,” said Martin. “I went to school with him. Tell me about MS-13.”

  “I saw it on CNN.”

  “Saw it on CNN.”

  “Yessir.”

  They sat there. Martin let the room go very quiet.

  “Why’d you come down here to tell me this?” he asked.

  The boy had been looking between his feet, but now he raised his head. “I told you. J.T. don’t do this. Something’s wrong.”

  Martin studied Charles, and then he looked at his desk. He saw himself walking up those carpeted steps, standing outside the old woman’s room. Her daughter between them, trying to translate.

  The sheriff stood.

  He fetched his hat off the desk and squared it on his head.

  “Come on,” he told the boy. “Let’s go find your friend.”

  They started by driving the route J.T. took back and forth from work. Charles sat in the passenger seat, leaning forward, showing Martin where his friend would walk. They stopped several times, pulled to the side of the road, and got out. They checked ditches and s
torm drains. They checked behind sumac bushes and narrow stands of oak. Charles showed Martin where J.T. liked to cut across the tracks. It was just a red dirt path going through the pines. Charles stood there pointing at buildings on the other side of the rails: a lumberyard, the old depot which had been converted into a Mexican restaurant. Martin looked back behind him into the trees. He made a few notes in his ledger and then they went on.

  They drove down Malt Phillip. They drove down Walnut and First. Martin slowed the car, turned down a lane, and they went half a mile along an alley that backed several businesses, the funeral parlor, the donut shop. They pulled onto Strothers, drove down to the 9 intersection, then along the highway in back of the course. He turned into the rear entrance, drove the loop, and Charles showed him where J.T. used to hop the fence beside the creek. There was a line of woods extending toward a hill where a housing addition had been constructed several years back. You could just make out a few of the antennas, the tops of trees. They sat there with the car idling.

  “And this is always the way he comes?” asked Martin.

  “Yessir,” said Charles.

  “He never comes any different?”

  “Not that I know of,” Charles said. “He likes the same things. He has a ham sandwich every day for lunch. Mom tries to pack him turkey, but he always wants ham. Mustard. No lettuce.”

  Martin looked at Charles. He looked over the course.

  They drove the rest of the morning, and Martin made maps, drew sketches, a grid. When Lemming got in, he had him run a report out to the grandmother, and he had Nita place a call to the state police. He gave her information for the papers and asked would she make a call to the tribe.

  The next day he and Lem, three deputies, and several men from the Chickasaw Tribal Council walked the woods surrounding J.T.’s home.

  They searched a persimmon grove, traversed pastures and fields. They walked the length of Cedar Creek and then backtracked, came by the highway, walked it from the opposite bank. They retraced their steps, went back and forth through the woods.