An Unsettled Grave

by Bernard Schaffer

  Neither J.D. nor Adam moved from the landing, though they were bombarded by schoolbags as the rest of their classmates rushed past. “Maybe they’re hiding,” Adam said, taking his glasses off and wiping the lenses with his gloved fingers.

  “Where?” Hope said, exasperated. “It’s not like they’re waiting for us on the buses. Stop being babies.”

  J.D. looked at their bus, measuring the distance from the landing to its open doors. “All right,” he whispered.

  “Do you guys want to walk home together?” Hope said.

  “Are you out of your blasted mind?” Adam replied.

  J.D. punched him in the arm. “I told you to stop saying that. Nobody says blasted. You sound like a dork.”

  Adam cried out, rubbing his arm. J.D. turned back to Hope. “We aren’t walking home, that’s for sure. We all live too far away from one another. Why don’t you get on our bus, we’ll make sure Adam gets home, and then you and me can get off at my stop, and walk to your house.”

  She said okay, but her eyes were on Adam. “You all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, storming down the steps past J.D. and her, his face flush with embarrassment.

  “What did you hit him for?” Hope asked, as they fell in behind him.

  “He says comic book words that nobody says in real life,” J.D. told her. “It makes both of us sound dumb.”

  She didn’t respond, and in her disappointed expression it was like some kind of light flickered throughout the universe on the verge of going out. “I’m sorry I hit him, okay?” J.D. said.

  “Are you sorry you did it, or sorry I saw it?” she asked.

  J.D. walked ahead and tugged on Adam’s sleeve. “Hey, I’m sorry I hit you. I’m really blasted sorry.”

  They got onto the bus and hurried down the aisle to find an open seat. The three of them pressed in together, holding their schoolbags on their laps. The bus hissed and began to move.

  * * *

  As Adam went down the bus’s steps, J.D.’s face was pressed to the window, checking for signs of movement. Adam bolted for his front door, inhaler tight in his hand and his schoolbag swinging wildly from side to side. Adam was only halfway up the driveway when the bus started moving again. J.D. shouted, “Wait!”

  Everyone lurched forward as the driver stomped on the brake, glaring at J.D. through the wide rearview mirror that let her watch all of the kids seated behind her at one glance. “What’s the matter?” she barked.

  Every head on the bus was turned toward him. He turned and looked over his shoulder through the window, seeing Adam race up his front steps to safety. “Nothing,” J.D. said as he slid back down into his seat. “Sorry.”

  The bus came to its last stop, and the remaining children filed down the steps. Hope followed J.D. down the steps and stood with him on the side of the road, watching the rest of the kids run off to their homes.

  “Which one’s your house?” Hope asked, looking at the homes scattered along the street.

  He dug his sneaker into the gravel road, pretending that he didn’t hear her.

  “If you’re not going to talk to me, I could have just taken my own bus home instead of riding with you,” she said.

  J.D. pointed at the last one at the far end. The worst-looking one, with grass that hadn’t been cut, and shutters hanging lopsided. It hadn’t occurred to him how awful it looked compared to all the other houses until she saw it and said, “Oh.”

  She asked him if he had to go home first, and he told her that he didn’t.

  “If you don’t want to walk all the way back to my house, I can just call my dad to come get me,” she continued.

  “I said I don’t want to go there,” J.D. snapped. “I wanted you to ride with me so I could make sure nothing happened to you or Adam, okay? There, that’s my stupid house. You saw it. Now can we get going?”

  “All right, fine,” she said, reslinging her schoolbag over her shoulder and starting to walk. “I was just trying to be polite. You ever heard of that? It’s a thing where you don’t punch your friends and you don’t yell at them when they’re just asking a simple question.”

  He walked alongside her without speaking, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Here,” he said, reaching for her. “Give me that.”

  “Give you what?”

  “That,” he said. He lowered her schoolbag down from her arm and free of her hand. “I’ll carry it.”

  She watched him hoist her schoolbag onto his free shoulder, now carrying hers on one and his own on the other. “I didn’t need you to do that.”

  “It’s a long walk,” he said. “You’ll get tired along the way and start complaining, I bet, so let me carry it.”

  “Why, because I’m a girl?”

  He was about to answer yes, but the look on her face made him pause. “Because I’m being polite,” he said instead.

  Hope smirked and rolled her eyes. “I bet you don’t know the first thing about girls.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Name three.”

  “I know you like flowers,” he said. “And stuffed animals.”

  “And?”

  He remembered what he could of his mother. Trying to recall what she liked or the things she’d done that no one else in the house had. Only one thing came to mind, and he blurted it out without thinking. “You all sit down to pee.”

  Hope laughed at that, loud and hard, a high-pitched sound that filled J.D. from the pit of his stomach to the top of his head with boiling embarrassment. “Well, you asked,” he muttered.

  “You’re blasted right, I did,” she said, flashing a smile, and they both laughed. “Since I’m asking stuff, how come they call you J.D.? Don’t you like your real name?”

  “My dad says it’s a dumb name and my mother forced it on him, so when she died, he started calling me by my initials.”

  Hope looked at him, sliding a dangling curl back behind her ear. “What’s your name?”

  “It’s stupid,” he said.

  “I bet it isn’t.”

  He found himself upended by her eyes, like a man strapped to a carnival wheel at the wrists and ankles, spinning endlessly, with no sense of what was up or down. “Jacob,” he said.

  “Jacob Rein,” she said. “I like that. I’m going to call you Jacob from now on.”

  “Don’t. It sounds like it’s from the Bible or something.”

  “Well, J.D. Rein makes you sound like a redneck race car driver,” she said.

  The sun was cresting over the tops of the trees, leaving the street partially in shadow. They stayed in the shadows to keep from having to shield their eyes. “Was your mom sick or something?” Hope asked.

  “Yeah, she had cancer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hope said. “That must have been awful.”

  “I don’t remember it. She died when I was still real young.”

  “So it’s just been you and your dad?”

  “Yeah. Well, except for my uncle Ollie. He moved out here a few years ago and we spend a lot of time together.”

  “I talked to my mom about you,” she said.

  “You did?” J.D. said, not knowing if that was good or bad.

  “She asked if you were related to the chief of police, but said she’d never heard of anyone else in your family.”

  “My dad doesn’t go out much,” J.D. said. “We moved here when I was little. My dad said it was cheap enough and far enough away from everything that he wouldn’t have to see anyone. I guess he got his wish.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said. “Do you not like your dad very much?”

  He frowned. It was something he’d never considered. His father was just something in his life that had always been and felt like it would always be. It was pointless to fret over. His father was as constant and inescapable as the sun or the moon or the air itself.

  “I’m sorry,” Hope said. “That’s a dumb question. I was just wondering why you never want to go home.”

  “It’s
hard to explain. Sometimes he has these dreams, even when he’s awake. He forgets where he is, and he gets crazy. I’m kind of used to it, but it scares other people when they see it.”

  “When my dad drinks beer, he falls asleep on the couch and snores like a grizzly bear,” Hope said, making a few loud snorts to imitate the sound.

  “I like it when my dad drinks,” J.D. said.

  “You do?”

  “He’s happier and nicer to me.”

  “What happens when he doesn’t drink?” she asked.

  “He’s not.”

  * * *

  They reached Hope’s front door by five o’clock. The sun had already retreated from the sky, leaving nothing but strings of clouds beyond the crimson horizon. Neither of her parents was home. Hope stopped at her front steps, looking up at the house. “I’m probably not allowed to have a boy in the house without them here,” she said.

  J.D. unslung her schoolbag and handed it to her. She carried it up the steps, then stopped and looked back at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Of course,” he said, waving good-bye to her. She vanished inside the front door and J.D. stood there, heart pounding in his chest for no reason. He stretched out his aching shoulder, glad to be free of the weight of the second schoolbag, and started home. He went around Hope’s house, toward the backyard. He decided he’d take the long way and go through the woods. It wasn’t completely dark yet, and he needed to wait before he went home.

  If he got back too early, his dad might still be sober. Sometimes, Ben didn’t wake up until the late afternoon, depending what kind of night he’d had. Then he’d have to find a way into town and get beer or liquor, depending on what he could afford, and whether or not he had any in the house. There normally wasn’t anything left in the house. That could take hours. Plenty of times J.D. made it back from school before Ben got home, and he’d have to stay in his room, keeping clear, until Ben got enough drink in him to mellow out.

  It was best for J.D. to stay away as long as he could and not take chances. Ben never asked where he’d been or what he’d been doing. He didn’t seem to notice when the boy wasn’t there. If anything, it was the opposite. When J.D. was around, everything about the boy seemed to infuriate his father. Simple things, like the way J.D. spoke to him, or looked at him, or didn’t look at him when being spoken to. Everything was some kind of challenge to Ben’s authority, intentional or not, when Ben wasn’t drinking.

  In school, some of the kids referred to their dads as nasty drunks. For J.D. it was the opposite. His dad was a miserable sober. J.D. understood why, though. No one had ever explained it to him, or given him any kind of reasoning behind it, it was something he just knew. For Ben, drinking was like medicine. A magic potion that kept him from turning into Mr. Hyde. When he didn’t get it, the monster got loose, and good luck to the villagers who got in his way.

  The only exception was when his father had an episode. Drunk or sober, it didn’t matter. At times Ben Rein was possessed by some demonic spirit filled with gunfire and explosions and screaming at people to get out of the way.

  In fifth grade, J.D. and Adam had become obsessed with Greek myths, and read everything they could about the adventures of the earliest heroes. They filled their days pretending to be Perseus and Hercules, fighting three-headed serpents and armies of skeleton warriors. It ended the day J.D. found a book containing the tales of Euripides.

  In it, Hercules is confused by the goddess Hera and thinks his wife and children are enemies attacking him. He kills all of them with his arrows, and then, once the curse is lifted, he is left kneeling in a pool of blood surrounded by their dead bodies.

  J.D. had seen his father emerge from those kinds of curses, sometimes kneeling in the backyard clutching a shotgun, sometimes running through the house screaming, “I’ll fucking kill every one of you!” He’d seen his father standing in the doorway to his bedroom clutching a knife, covered in sweat, with his eyes so wide there was white on all sides of each iris.

  When J.D. was younger, he’d slept under his bed, or in his closet, whenever it got bad. Now, he just pulled his dresser in front of his door to block it.

  He made his way into Hope’s backyard, able to see the clearing where her blanket lay. He could make out the lopsided brick chimney through the trees and realized there was a pair of eyes looking back at him from behind it.

  J.D. froze in place, clutching the strap of his schoolbag.

  He looked again, seeing nothing but shadows beyond the stones, and still did not move. “Hello?” he called out, hearing his own voice echo in the woods beyond.

  A branch snapped and several birds fluttered from the trees overhead. “Who’s there?” he said.

  He turned and looked back at Hope’s house, able to see through the back windows into the kitchen and washroom. Was someone spying on her and her family, he wondered. Some kind of Peeping Tom creep? He’d heard his uncle talk about them before. Maybe a burglar, or worse, trying to see if Hope was home alone. His fist tightened around the strap on his schoolbag and he felt lit with red-hot anger. He raced into the woods, growling like an animal, and took a running leap over the green army blanket spread out on the ground. He landed in the mud past the chimney, but nothing was there.

  J.D. scanned the woods, listening over the sound of his own rapid breathing, searching the dark woods for signs of an intruder. He couldn’t see past the first row of trees. He stood there, looking, until he heard someone behind him.

  Hope leapt out at him from behind one of the trees, laughing at how he jumped backward. “What are you yelling about back here?”

  “I thought I saw someone,” he said. The amused look on her face made all of the anger spool out of him, leaving him feeling cold and foolish.

  “You were going to protect me?” she said, stepping closer to him.

  “If I had to, I guess,” he said, swallowing.

  She touched his face. Her fingers were warm against his cold cheek. “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Plenty of times.”

  “Are you telling me the truth right now?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  “No,” he whispered, inching back from her. His knees were quivering.

  She came closer to him, the steam of her breath touching his face. The fronts of their coats were crushed together. “Me neither,” she said. “It’s an important thing, I think. A first kiss.”

  She wrapped her hands around his arms and raised her mouth to his. Their lips touched. J.D. was about to pull back, but he felt her mouth open against his, and the warmth of her tongue twirling against his own.

  They kissed like that, for how long he would never know. It was dark out by the time they came apart. His lips hurt. His jaw ached. It didn’t matter. He would have kissed her again and again, a thousand times, if the lights hadn’t come on in the back of her house and her father hadn’t opened the rear door and called out, “Hope? Are you out here?”

  They ducked down, out of sight. “I have to go,” she whispered.

  “Okay,” he said, and she kissed him again.

  “I have to eat and do my homework,” she said, then kissed him once more.

  “All right,” he said, laughing.

  “But after that, I can come outside for a little while.”

  He smiled at her, at the idea of seeing her again so soon. “I’ll be here,” he said.

  She pushed away from him, then ran back, slammed into him and kissed him again.

  “Hope! It’s dinnertime,” her father shouted.

  “I have to go.”

  “Go,” he said.

  She kissed him again. “I’ll be back. Meet me here in two hours, Jacob Rein.”

  “All right,” he said. They kissed a final time. Soft. Precious. A kiss that would sit in his memory longer than he could ever have imagined then.

  After that, she left. He watched her go, kneeling on the blanket, waving to her each time she looked back and waved at him. He watche
d her disappear inside the back door and stood up, looping his arms through his schoolbag, about to head home, when he spun suddenly to face the dark woods. Something, he felt, had been staring at him just then. Something close enough to touch him. J.D. waited, listening, but heard nothing. He told himself it was just his imagination. The scent of Hope was still on him, and he found himself wanting to relive their intimate closeness instead of standing alone in the woods staring at shadows.

  He headed into the woods, leaving the clearing behind, lost in his own thoughts. If anything was lying in wait in the shadows, he didn’t look for it, or think about it, because all he could think of was Hope, and how much he wanted to see her again.

  * * *

  Ollie’s police car was parked in front of the house when J.D. arrived home, and the front door was already opening by the time he went up the first few steps. His uncle appeared at the screen door, looking down at him. “You’re home late.”

  “I was at a friend’s house,” J.D. said, coming through the door.

  The sound of heavy snoring filled the living room. Ben Rein was passed out on the couch, his head draped backward over the armrest, mouth wide open. Each breath released a nauseous gas from his stomach full of beer. Crumpled cans littered the living room, surrounding his father in a pile.

  “Do you have any homework?” Ollie asked.

  “Just a few things.”

  “All right. Bring your schoolbag with you.”

  “Where are we going?” J.D. asked.

  “Out to get something to eat. I’ve been waiting here for you all afternoon.”

  “I was going to eat here tonight,” J.D. mumbled.

  “Eat what? The fridge is empty. Come on.”

  “But I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Ollie said. He looked at his brother, then back at the kid, and sighed. “Listen, I realize he’s your dad and you want to look out for him, but reality is, he’s not doing a good job of taking care of you. That means I have to help out. Now come on, we’re going to get some food. We can eat anywhere you want.”