Going Underground

by Susan Vaught

  “One, two, three, four,” I say automatically.

  “Three!” Fred shrieks. “Three! One, two, three, four!”

  “She likes you,” I tell Livia as she pulls out two bottles of water, two small bags of chips, then what looks like sandwiches wrapped in foil, one package for me and one for her. “She doesn’t talk this much in front of anybody besides my parents and Marvin.”

  “The cookie guy who helps you dig?” Livia puts her hand up to her forehead to shield her eyes from the low-hanging sun.

  “Yeah.”

  Livia’s next smile looks a little secretive and mysterious. “Does he ever bring cookies home from work?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I need to get to know him better.” Her smile gets wider, and I try not to be jealous of Marvin, who isn’t even here. Butthead. He would get a job that girls appreciate at this level. As a gravedigger, I can offer shovels, dirt, and dead things.

  “I kept it simple. Gourmet turkey sandwiches.” She pulls out small jars of mustard and mayo and some plastic silverware. “Didn’t want to scare you to death this first time.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  I’m terrified.

  The sandwich is warm and it smells like garlic and other spices toasted into the bread. My stomach growls. I add some mustard, then take a big bite.

  “Mmm.” That comes out unplanned, and it makes Livia smile.

  “Sometimes simple is best,” she says.

  “Fred,” Fred agrees.

  “How many more graves do you have to dig tonight?” Livia asks as Gertrude finally finishes her tuna, waddles off a few paces, and plops down in the grass to bathe her face and paws.

  “Just this one, and it’s done. I don’t even need to move the dirt tonight, because the funeral’s not until this weekend.”

  Livia’s face brightens to almost glowing in what’s left of the sunlight. “Do you need a ride home? I could take you when you’re finished.”

  “I just live down the road.” The heat hitting my face probably shows underneath all the dirt, never mind the mustard on my chin. I wipe it off with my sleeve, then realize Livia laid out a napkin for me. “It’s better if I just walk. Kind of shakes out the kinks from digging. Besides, I’d get a lot of dirt in your car.”

  She looks disappointed. I hate that, but she wouldn’t feel that way if she knew her car would stink like tuna and sour graves and probably mustard, too, when I got out.

  Livia goes silent for a few seconds, eating, swallowing, then taking a slow drink of water. She glances around. “Is Harper here?”

  “He’s—” I point in the direction of his little house, not sure what to say, because if she wants to talk to him, that won’t be totally possible. “He’s in there, but I think he’s sleeping.”

  Sleeping it off.

  I hope.

  Because if he comes staggering out, he’ll make a scene about this, I bet.

  “He drinks a lot, doesn’t he?” The shift in Livia’s tone is quick and kind of harsh, and Fred picks up on it, too. She makes shooting noises as Livia waves a hand to dismiss her own question before I finish groping around for an answer. “You don’t have to tell me. I’ve seen him. I know what drunk people look like. My sister was a drunk. That’s what killed her.”

  I don’t have a clue what to say, so I open my chips and keep my mouth shut, but Fred says “Fred” in an anxious, quivery voice.

  Livia lays her hand on the travel cage, and I almost lunge toward her to pull her fingers out of danger, but Fred doesn’t make any move to bite her.

  “Claudia died in a car wreck.” Livia stares down at Fred like she’s talking to the parrot instead of me, but I know that trick too well to fall for it. “The people she hit died, too. That’s why we moved—because everyone in town hated us.”

  My stomach turns a slow, aching flip, on top of my sandwich and chips, and more heat rises from my middle all the way to my cheeks. “I … know that feeling.”

  Livia takes her hand out of harm’s way and rubs her eyes with her fingers, as if she’s trying to concentrate or maybe meditate. “I can’t believe I just told you about that. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

  The few feet of blanket separating us seem like too much, but also not enough as I shrug. “It’s okay to tell secrets in a cemetery. Dead people don’t run their mouths. Neither do cemetery caretakers. That’s kind of in our job description.”

  “Kids. Two of them. And their pregnant mother.” Livia pushes the rest of her sandwich away from her, then picks up a brown dirt clod and crushes it in her hands, letting the dirt sift down between her feet. “My sister killed three people—four, depending on how you believe about unborn babies.” She looks intensely disgusted, but also miserable and sort of sick.

  “I think I remember hearing something about that on the news.” As soon as I see the extra pain in Livia’s face, I wish I hadn’t said anything, and I wonder immediately what all she’s heard on the news about me, and when she’ll remember it. I should just tell her, like now, before she confesses anything else to me that she might regret later.

  “The family is suing my parents because the car was in my dad’s name.” Livia says this fast, like she needs it all out of her, and right now. “He says they’ll get everything and we’ll have to file for bankruptcy. We’re not buying anything new because there’s no point. It’ll all get sold and given to those people.”

  Jeez. At least nobody sued us. Nobody wanted to—none of the parents even wanted charges filed, but that was up to Kaison the Evil, not them, and he didn’t care about the truth.

  It could have been worse.

  It could have been worse?

  First time I ever considered that possibility.

  “I’m sorry,” I manage, then stumble around getting the rest out. “You know, what she did, what Claudia did—that’s nothing about you.”

  “I know that here.” Livia taps the side of her very pretty head. “Here,” her finger slides to her heart, “it’s harder. I wasn’t in the car, but I knew she was drunk when she drove off, mad at my dad, as usual.”

  Yeah, she’s definitely been needing to let all this out. I can tell by the way her words are boiling up and spilling over, and I can see the tears filling the corners of her big eyes.

  “You can’t make somebody stop drinking and drugging.” I gesture toward Harper’s house. “People do what they’re going to do.” Kaison with his smug face and bad comb-over flickers through my brain. “Trust me on that.”

  Livia nods and looks down. Destroys another few dirt clods. She’s breathing in quick gasps.

  We sit quietly for a while after that, then Livia tells me how many times her parents tried to help her sister. How many times she tried to help. When she cries, I want to put an arm around her shoulder, and finally I scoot closer to her and do put my arm around her, even though I stink like tuna fish, mustard, dirt, and all.

  She doesn’t gag, and she actually slows down on the tears a little, and leans into me. In the afternoon sun, her dark hair looks like sparkly silk, and she smells so much better than Marvin I don’t even have words to describe it.

  “It doesn’t seem real, any of it.” Livia’s voice is quieter now, and her words are coming out slower. “The people Claudia killed. Claudia being dead.” She glances toward her sister’s grave. “It’s hard to think about her in a box under the ground. She’s my sister, you know?”

  I don’t know. I can’t really imagine how much that hurts, but I can tell from her face that it’s hollowing out something way down inside her. That sensation, I totally get. Stuff in my life sucks, too, but for the first time, I’m realizing that the bad stuff, the really bad stuff, it happened three years ago. I’ve had time to get over the worst of it. Livia hasn’t had hardly any time.

  “When I’m upset and can’t calm down, I listen to music.” I slide my arm off her shoulders, reach to the pocket without the tuna can, pull out my iPod, queue up one of my mellow playlists, and offer h
er an earbud. “Like I told you, I’m obsessed. I’ve got days of stuff on here, most of it memorized. When I sink into the sound, the words, it keeps me from thinking too much.”

  She takes the bud and puts it in. A second or so later, she says, “ ‘Hey Jude.’ Beatles. I like the Beatles. Claudia thought they were lame.”

  I let her take the other earbud, then the iPod. She sits, totally still except for the finger she’s using to scroll through my collection, which is a lot bigger than Marvin’s now. She picks out “Shiny Happy People” by R.E.M. and closes her eyes.

  “One, two, four,” Fred says into the new silence in the cemetery.

  I put my finger to my lips.

  Fred bobs her head once, fluffs up as much as possible, and lowers her head in a definite parrot sulk. I’m glad Livia’s fingers aren’t on the cage anymore, because Fred would abandon her unusually generous behavior and chew one off at the knuckle.

  When the song’s over, Livia takes out the earbuds and gives me back my iPod. “Thanks. That really did help. Your collection is amazing—and you’re a good listener.”

  “I didn’t used to be. I think I’ve learned it working here.”

  This time when she smiles at me, I feel twice as awful and twice as guilty, like I did when I sicced my parents on Cherie. Trying to figure out some way to say that, I come up with, “Listen, I don’t work here because I’m some morbid jerk-off.”

  Livia laughs. “I know that, and I know you live close. It probably saves a lot of gas, working just down the road from your house.”

  Yeah. She’s letting me off. I want to go with that, to let it pass, but that would make me a giant shit head, and I don’t want to treat Livia that way. “Harper pays more than minimum wage and I get a lot of time to myself—but that’s not why I picked this place. Some crappy stuff happened in my life a few years ago. I—I got in trouble.”

  It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t fair.

  That wants to fly out next, but I hold it back. How many criminals and convicts cue that tired old refrain every three seconds? I’m not going to be that guy.

  Livia looks surprised, but not panicked or like she’s considering bolting off the pile of grave dirt. “So, what did you do?”

  “I … I … uh. Okay. That’s hard to talk about.” The mouth’s moving, but my brain and the rest of my body go on total lockdown. My muscles get so tight I wonder if muscles can crack, and I can’t say any of it out loud. I’ve never said it out loud, and here, now, I can’t, but I can force out, “Look. You probably don’t want to be here talking to me.”

  It’s the best I can manage. I’m such a frigging coward.

  To be really sure she gets it, I add, “Other people around here—well, the black mark on me might be sort of contagious.”

  Her eyes go wide. “Uh, like my sister murdering two kids and a pregnant woman? Come on, Del. What did you do?”

  My mouth opens, but my mind is blank, and it’s all I can do not to start crying like a total, stupid baby. I clamp my lips shut and try to breathe, digging my fingers into the dirt until some of the pile rains back into the grave.

  “It’s okay.” Livia’s voice cuts into my panic, but I’m staring into the grave instead of looking at her. “Just tell me when you’re ready. I can wait.”

  I’ll never be ready.

  Did I say that out loud? I might as well have, with the look she’s probably seeing on my face. “If you don’t want to know about me, better not look me up online.”

  I’m famous. I’m infamous.

  “I won’t.” She looks guarded now, but not upset. “My dad would be watching, anyway. Kind of makes everything complicated.”

  “Cerote,” Fred mumbles, still sulking like a rejected toddler.

  The sound of her bird voice makes me jerk my head up and look at the cage, then at Livia.

  Livia shakes her head. “I wasn’t sure before, but now I am. Your parrot’s swearing in Spanish. She just called me a turd.”

  “Me,” I say, laughing and hating the tin-can sound of it. “She’s calling me a turd, not you. Definitely for me.”

  The rest, I can’t say.

  You have no idea.

  You don’t need to come back here.

  You don’t need to hang around me.

  All the things it’s so easy to say to Cherie—with Livia, I can’t.

  “Don’t bother trying to warn me about yourself, okay?” Her smile is better than the reds and pinks of the setting sun. “Just get to know me, and let me get to know you, and I’ll make up my own mind.”

  Yes.

  And then my brain points out—this isn’t so different from Cherie. I’m telling her not to hang around me, and she’s telling me she’ll make up her own mind. With Cherie, it all feels horrible, but with Livia …

  Yes.

  Out loud, I force myself to tell the truth. “You probably shouldn’t talk to me when you come here.” I stare at the dirt pile now because I can’t look at her. “Not until I can get my sh—uh, stuff together enough to tell you everything, so you don’t regret even knowing me.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but she’s smiling that little smile, and giving me the I’m-strong-and-I’m-not-backing-down look.

  “You shouldn’t come talk to me when you visit your sister,” I say again. “I mean that.”

  “We’ll see,” she says, and she leaves it at that.

  I’m Pretty Sure Angels Laugh at Rooster Whisperers

  (“Almost Lover”—A Fine Frenzy, who probably never whispered to a rooster.)

  Who am I?

  Before Good-bye Night, that answer was easy. I would have told you I’m Del Hartwick, the baseball kid.

  Why am I here?

  Before Good-bye Night, I would have said, to play baseball, to love Cory, to go to college and become a doctor and specialize in sports medicine and see what I can discover.

  What’s the point?

  Before Good-bye Night, I would have said, only freaks have to ask a question like that.

  I had all these friends and all these ideas and all these plans. I had all these things I could do, all these places I could go, and all these people to go with me. I was somebody—or at least I thought I was.

  Now, if I end up dead, only a few people would notice. Livia made dinner for me, and she’s come back every night for a week, just to sit and talk for a few minutes before she goes to her sister’s grave. She might miss me. My folks would give a care, and Marvin would get upset. Branson and Dr. Mote would feel weird in some professional way, and Harper would notice for a while at least, until he drank me away.

  Cherie.

  Jeez.

  Cherie would make my death a personal tragedy and set up shrines at my grave (or memorial site if I get cremated), but she’d get tired of that in a few months. She’d move on because she’d have to move on, because people like Cherie have to have … I don’t know. Something they’re obsessed with and attached to. A dead guy wouldn’t be enough.

  All in all, if I died, I think Fred would have the biggest problem.

  When parrots grieve, they stop eating and drinking and molt and stand around with their head and their wings drooping. It’d be hard to keep her alive. I’ve been writing a bunch of stuff in a notebook I labeled THE BOOK OF FRED—everything she likes and hates—and tucked some recordings of my voice in the pockets to help her and whoever takes care of her in case something bad happens. I hope Livia would take Fred, but that might be asking too much of anybody not dedicated to birds.

  Plus, I don’t think anything bad will happen. Right now I’m living on the theory that the really bad stuff in my life has already happened. No matter how many times Dr. Mote asks, I don’t ever think about hurting myself or anyone else. Even though the best life I can have now will be crap compared to my original plans and those dreams I still can’t let go of, I’m thinking if I just keep doing “the next right thing” (I got that from Branson), my life might not suck completely.

  In fact, I’ve been
writing down some plans for my future to show Branson:

  1. Open my own cemetery. The dead don’t care about criminal records.

  2. Win the lottery and buy a fake college degree off the black market.

  3. Talk Harper into letting me sell caskets at the funeral chapel on the off days.

  4. Keep asking to apply to schools until somebody gets sick of reading my mail and lets me in, then make it through vet school, too, and just help birds as a volunteer, like dad.

  5. Go out with Livia, marry her, and let her support me while I open a bird sanctuary for used and secondhand parrots.

  Well?

  You got any better ideas?

  I really like the vet school option best, and I’m sure there’s room for two rooster whisperers in the world. Only, I think I’ll be a parrot whisperer and work on birds of prey as a second specialty. Hawks and eagles are amazing, the way they sail high over everything, wings wide, swooping through the sky like kings of the air. They have all the room and solitude in the world, but they aren’t lost in space. They own it.

  Unlike chickens, who only own what we give them.

  Dad has given his current rooster a sixteen-by-twenty fenced and covered lot just behind our back porch, with a divider down the center so he can close off half the pen and regrow grass on one side or the other every few weeks. Clarence the former fighting rooster also has a hay-lined ten-nest chicken condo, with an insulated green tin roof and a cedar ramp up to the front door that reminds me of a pirate gangplank.

  “Come on, big fella.” Dad’s voice is low and supercalm as he edges through the door of the lot. Dad’s carrying a bucket of cracked corn, and he wants Clarence to let him in without attacking him. I’m standing on the porch at a safe distance, watching in case Dad needs any help. It’s November now and cool this morning, with almost no clouds in the sky. The air feels sharp and fall-winter, and digging graves won’t be such a misery.

  The rooster glares at dad with his one good eye, all his feathers puffed out. I’m pretty sure poofy chickens are bad, just like poofy parrots. Feathers all ruffled out are a bird’s way of saying, Back off, you big human monster.