The World Beneath

by Aaron Gwyn

  “Sheriff,” he said, “this ain’t no teenager.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This ain’t J.T.”

  “Not J.T.?”

  “Uh-uh,” Lemming told him. “Guy I found, he’s a full-grown man.”

  Martin sat there. He’d heard what his deputy said, but he told him ten-nine, repeat transmission.

  Then he told him to repeat it again.

  THOMAS SPEAKS

  And so I started to tempt Him. To take me. Kill me. Drag me down, destroy me. You know the word. Et cetera.

  I dropped school. I just one day quit going. Nana, you could tell it upset her. You could tell it hurt Aunt Angelica.

  But here’s the thing. About hurting people.

  I have this meter inside me. I try and do what I can. I’m nervous and my stomach hurts. I vomit lumps of blood. It’ll be that way for months. Trying to hold it. Trying to keep it down. And then it’s like a lever breaking and everything floods, and I can feel it happening—I’m not nervous at all then—and all the time I’m thinking: Well, I hope everyone can just stay out of the way.

  Nana knows it. Angelica, she knows it too. They didn’t even fuss. About my quitting. Deciding not to go to school. And by the end of that week, I’d gotten a job. I knew I’d have to have one. It took some thinking trying to figure what.

  I needed something to where I could be outside. Close to woods. I needed something where they’d leave me all alone. I was thinking about this, cutting across the golf course on my way into town. I’d just hopped the fence and I was going along the cart path by the lake, and I looked across the field and saw the greenskeeper changing cups. It was Mr. Hickson, but I didn’t know him then. He was just a man. I watched him screw the cup-puncher into the green, pull out a tube of earth. He got back in his cart, went up the hill, and when he got gone I walked over and stood. The hole he left behind him was a perfect kind of hole. I’d never seen one close. I bent to touch it, ran my fingers along the rim. The dirt inside was cool and moist. The grass was moist.

  I looked toward the clubhouse.

  Then I started up the path.

  They hired me on, forty hours a week. Making minimum. I was Chickasaw, and that meant part of my salary should’ve come from the tribe. They paid me off-book, though. I think Mr. Dresser had something going. The check he’d write me was his own personal check. Still a lot of money. For me it was a lot. Plus, it wasn’t the paycheck I wanted.

  It was Him.

  I’d been there a few months, when I started looking. I didn’t know what I’d find. I’d have to water, change the cups, mow in the evenings. Weed-eat. Trim the hedges. I’d have to sometimes shovel gravel, rake it into paths. And when the day was over, I’d punch my time card and cut across the course.

  It’d be, by that time, just about dark. In fall, the whippoorwills. In spring, cicadas. I’d go down the path by Twelve, over-hill by the creek. You could stand and see Mr. Enoch’s house just on the other side. The same pink stone as the building downtown.

  I’d walk out to the green there, turn and watch the last of the sun. It would be sinking behind the park and the sky would be turning. Stars set inside the blue. You could look at them and feel the light on your skin. Feel it turning. It would get a little bit darker and a little bit darker, and I’d close my eyes and think of Shampe. I’d have my back to the creek and woods, and it was like I’d have Him pictured coming from the earth there, seeping up like a fog, and in my mind He was coming to take me. That feeling of watching stars in the evening and knowing if you were another person how good it would feel, and the sadness of knowing you’ll never be that person, only the person you are.

  Shampe was the answer to that. It’s what Mr. Enoch had said but he’d never needed to say it. The story was all that it took.

  It became, with me, almost a game. I’d stand there with my back turned. Eyes closed. Head tilted. Waiting for him to fetch me. Come up and take me. I’d wait some nights for nearly an hour. I’d stand until the thing inside me rose up and burst, and then there’d be the empty feeling, and it would be okay, and I’d make the walk home in the nighttime, and feel like I’d found something. Or lost something. Which in this kind of way I had. Spring and fall and winter. On into the next spring. The year turning from hot to cold.

  But, like I’ve said, whenever I start out to get something, or lose something, there’s always a thing I get or lose, I didn’t expect.

  Because—I need to say this—now we come to Shampe. A fact about Shampe. Which is: He never came. Never showed. Left me standing. Always just the waiting.

  And so as the waiting seemed the thing—not even Shampe, you understand me, but waiting for Him, the trust—I needed something. To help me wait. What do they say? “Pass the time.” Obvious, of course, what the pastime would be.

  Think of it like this:

  You open your eyes from standing and it is night and you’re not taken. He hasn’t erased you. You still exist. You’re standing on a green with your back to the creek, and the close-mown grass is like a carpet, and over there’s the hole.

  Over the creek is Mr. Enoch’s.

  Just up the path, the shop.

  No supervision.

  No one looking.

  Think about it.

  What would you have done?

  NOVEMBER 2006

  They park at the far side of the employee lot, close the truck doors quietly, and go across the blacktop toward the cart barn at a trot, half ducking, moving like the soldiers they once were. It is thick dusk and the sky has cleared. The evening’s first stars Morse a cold, quiet light. Hickson and Parks make the aluminum barn, and Hickson unlocks a side door and lets them inside.

  Dark black. The smell of must. Hickson comes up with a flashlight and leads them along the rows of carts. He selects one nearest the door, trips the hinge from the opener, and raises it. He and Parks climb into the cart, and he backs out of the garage, pulls around, and goes down the path.

  “Remember,” says Hickson, “it’s just to scare him.”

  “I remember,” Parks says.

  Night is setting under the trees, in the depressions of the course, over the lake. The cart moves with its hushed electric whine, rocks popping under the tires, the rattle of clubs against one another in the back. Dresser’s spare set. His cart. A row of golf balls rattle back and forth in the passenger-side cubby. They round a curve and Hickson points toward them, and Parks begins to load them one by one into the pockets of his shorts. They cross a bridge and then they cross another. The geese are gathered near the shore of the lake. They move among one another and spread their wings and hiss.

  There is no wind. Not a ripple on the pond. Hickson pulls the cart by the sand trap on Six, sets the brake, removes the key. He gestures toward the tree line and then his boots are in the grass, and he is bent over, jogging. He makes it halfway to the woods and then he looks back. Parks is standing in back of the cart. Hickson drops to a knee and watches. The man’s thin form is growing darker, blurred, and then it ducks and begins moving his way. He has a golf club in hand. A driver.

  “The hell,” Hickson asks him, “you going to do with that?”

  Parks studies the three-wood as if considering the question. He looks at Hickson and shrugs.

  The two of them reach the stand of oaks that run along the edge of the creek and work their way in and out of the trees until they come to the manhole where Hickson saw J.T. disappear. The metal lip of the hole is rusted and the lid cover lies upside down beside it. Parks and Hickson crouch at its edge and glance about. Hickson retrieves the flashlight from his pocket and peers inside. About ten feet down, concrete. A tunnel leading toward the stream. Hickson points at it and then over toward the woods.

  “This drains into the creek. It branches into the storm drains off Nine and Six.”

  “And he was down here with a shovel?” asks Parks.

  “It’s how he got the lid off.”

  Parks shakes his head. He looks toward the
hill across the creek.

  “Your house isn’t but, what? Hundred and fifty yards?”

  “That’s right,” says Hickson.

  “And you think he tunneled it?”

  “What do you think?” Hickson asks.

  They stare at the hole a few more minutes. They put the lid back on it and then look around them and stand. They have started back toward the cart when they hear a sharp report from the fairway to their left.

  “The fuck is that?” says Parks.

  The sound comes again.

  It comes another time.

  A third.

  “Jesus,” says Hickson. “It’s somebody hitting balls.”

  The two men go back toward the tree line and then, traveling deeper into the woods, follow the sounds up-creek. Hickson walks point, ducking tree limbs, holding the larger branches lest they catch Parks across the face. He walks through spider webs. He walks them into a stand of pine. The thwack of the golf swings comes louder, and Hickson leads them back to the fairway. They crouch behind an ancient elm and peer out. To their right, a small form stands composed over a tee which the two men can only imagine. The arms trail back, the shoulders and hips, and then the silver shaft extending from the boy’s hands whips to center and comes to rest above the left shoulder. The boy stands there, staring downfield. He bends, plants his tee, and reaching into a bucket behind him, sets another ball.

  Hickson looks over at Parks.

  He asks what planet they’re on.

  “Got me,” Parks whispers. “Woke up this morning, could’ve sworn it was Earth.”

  Hickson shushes him. The boy drives another ball. Good form. Smooth and clean. Hickson shuts his eyes a moment, tries to help them better adjust. He looks just to the side of the boy to see him better in the light. J.T. sets up, hits again, and Hickson looks down the fairway, trying to reckon how far. He has a fine swing, no question. Hickson eases onto his knees and sits there watching. The moon appears low on the horizon, squatting like a pustule, yellow and full. The boy is backlit now. Brighter. That white shirt with its hem at his knees. The same cotton shorts. High-top sneakers. No telling what his swing would be in cleats.

  J.T. strikes another ball. The moon rises brighter. Hickson can see a pair of headphones plugged into his ears.

  “Hey,” whispers Hickson, and then glances beside him to find Parks gone. He looks toward the trees and the sound of the creek. He stares several minutes into the dark. His friend was just at his elbow, crouching with the driver in hand. Hickson could feel his breath against the back of his neck. He strains his eyes. Curses. He starts to go look for him, and then, turning, pauses to watch J.T. There is the composure in his shoulders of a professional. That thing you can’t teach. He’s heard Dave say you can’t teach it. He never would’ve thought it in the boy. He doesn’t, he thinks, even see it in Dresser, and he is thinking about that when the boy tees again, and while he’s bending to set another ball, a streak of white blurs past his head. Fifteen, sixteen feet above it. The boy doesn’t seem to notice. Hickson grips the tree in front of him and rises onto the balls of his feet. He doesn’t know what’s happening. Then he does know. He almost calls out. There is another streak of white. Then another. The boy can hear nothing with headphones, and he looks to be focusing his attention only in front of him and to his left. He launches a golf ball and another pale flash smears above his head. This last one, however, is closer, and it catches J.T.’s attention. He slackens his hold on the club and turns to look behind him. It is then that Hickson shouts, and there is another streak, lower this time, and then a hard, hollow thud. J.T.’s knees buckle and he crumples to the ground.

  Then Hickson is out from behind the tree, running. He is standing over the boy, waving his arms. He looks down and then back up, and he kneels beside J.T. and slaps, a few times, at his face. Parks emerges from the dark, golf club still in his grip. He squats beside Hickson and stares at the boy. His arms are limp, his legs bent beneath him. A knot is forming just above his right ear, his temple gone convex, swelling. Hickson gives J.T. a brief shake. He puts a finger to his throat. Half a minute and he lays his ear flush against the boy’s chest.

  “What,” says Parks, “is he out?”

  “No,” says Hickson. “Dead.”

  FEBRUARY 2007

  By the time Martin arrived, there was a crowd. He weaved around cars and snugged the cruiser in between two pickups. People moved down-course. They pointed and walked. Martin didn’t know if someone had notified the paper, but he hoped not. Mullins would write another of his articles and things would be even worse. The sheriff sat a moment, switched off the ignition. He stepped out of the car, crossed the fairway, and went down the cart path at a jog.

  He reached the green winded, ears stinging from the cold. There was a mass of people gathered around the storm drain. Some talking to each other in low voices. Some shaking their heads. The smell was terrible, sickly sweet. Martin fetched at his nose. He looked over and saw Dresser standing there with palms on his knees. The man would walk a few feet from the hole, stand doubled like that, look back behind him, then walk farther away. Martin watched a few moments and Dresser finally looked up.

  His eyes were watering.

  He was pale.

  “Hickson,” he said.

  Martin went across to the manhole, folks parting to step out of his way. Lemming stood with hands on his hips. Expressionless. Martin walked up and they stared at one another. He asked the deputy how bad.

  Lemming looked at something in the distance.

  “Bad,” he said.

  Martin cleared his throat and stared at the hole. He glanced at the crowd. Lemming passed him the tin of autopsy salve and Martin opened it, hooked a bit on the tip of his index finger, swiped it beneath either nostril. He pulled a peppermint from his pocket, popped it onto his tongue, and then knelt beside the hole. He didn’t want to go down there. It wasn’t just the smell or the body. It wasn’t a lot of things. It was one thing exactly and it had been with him for the last thirty years. The sheriff tried to think. There were twenty people behind him and all of them watching. His deputy. Dresser. Martin closed his eyes. He could feel sunlight on their lids, a breeze blowing across the lashes. He was about to stand and walk to the car, and then he put his legs in and found the rungs. He lowered himself inch by inch.

  There was no wind in the tunnel, but it was colder, and even with the salve, the smell was unbearable. He stooped and began walking. He heard Lemming coming close behind. The tunnel veered to the right, sloped down at a steeper angle, and up ahead Martin could see the body. He went over next to it and sat on his heels.

  The body was bloated. The chest cavity had burst the seams of the shirt and the belt around the waist made the corpse resemble a link of sausage. It was a man, you could plainly see, but other than that you could tell almost nothing. The insects had been at him and they’d picked off a good deal of flesh. There was no hair or skin.

  No eyes.

  Martin looked away. He took a twig from the concrete beside him and turned back to Lemming.

  “You go through his pockets?”

  “I went through his pockets.”

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing,” Lemming said.

  They sat like that. The scent of it burrowed inside your head and forced you to squint. Martin blinked several times and looked back over and noticed that the man’s skull had been fractured. There was a cavity above the right orbital the size of a half-dollar. You could see inside.

  Martin backed a few feet and Lemming came forward. The sheriff put his palm against the wall. To steady himself. He’d begun to sweat of a sudden and he could feel the panic starting, everything crowding, edging him in. Lemming said something, asked him something, turned to look. Martin was halfway down the tunnel. The deputy called out, asked him to wait, but Martin was already moving toward the manhole cover. He was hunched over, stooped, crouching his way back along the passage, back toward the light.

  In t
he clubhouse, they sat in front of Dresser’s desk. The pro still had that bleached expression. He looked at Martin and then at Lemming and then at Martin once again.

  “Give me,” he told them, “a fucking break.”

  “Didn’t say anything,” the sheriff said.

  Dresser slumped in his chair. He rested his chin on his chest and seemed to study them from beneath his brows. “You were thinking it.”

  “What were we thinking?” Lemming asked.

  Martin lifted a hand.

  “No,” said Lemming, “I want to hear this. I want to hear him go ahead tell us what’s in our head.”

  Martin scribbled a few lines on his notepad, clicked, then reclicked the pen. He’d recouped himself, calmed a bit. He sat there trying to think what would be next. He was going to have to contact the coroner. The OSBI. Things would go quickly up the escalating chain. He looked back at Dresser.

  “What?” he said. “You want me to accuse you?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Lemming. “That’s real good.”

  Martin cleared his throat. He leaned forward.

  “Listen,” he said. “Neither of us thinks you had anything to do with this, but you might stop acting so goddamned inconvenienced. It’s a man laying back in that—”

  “You think I’m not sick about it?” said Dresser.

  “I don’t doubt you’re sick about it,” said Martin. “We’re not here trying to—”

  “He’s been with us ten years.”

  “Hickson?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think it’s him?”

  “I know it’s him,” said Dresser. “Who else would it be?”

  Martin raised his hands. He asked the man would he just back up.

  “Back up to what?” Dresser asked.

  “Back to the part where he quit you.”

  “What about it?”

  “When was it?”

  Dresser leaned forward in his chair, opened a drawer in his desk, and shuffled through some papers. He started to turn toward a file cabinet and then rolled his eyes as if the task were too much.