The Life We Bury

by Allen Eskens

  “Okay.”

  “I'll see you in a bit.”

  I hung up my phone just in time to catch the interchange from Interstate 35 to Interstate 90. I would be in Austin in twenty minutes.

  I skidded to a stop in front of my mother's apartment, throwing Lila's car into park and leaping out the door in a single motion. I covered the twenty feet between the street and the porch in a sprint of five steps, bursting through the front door and catching Larry and my mother off guard as they sat on the couch, beers in hand, watching television.

  “What'd you do to him?” I yelled.

  Larry jumped to his feet, throwing his beer can at my face. I swatted it away without breaking stride. He drew his fist up as I shoved my palms into his chest, lifting him off his feet and sending him sprawling over the back of the couch. Mom started screaming at me, but I walked past her and went to Jeremy's room, gently knocking on the door as if I were simply stopping by to wish him goodnight.

  “Jeremy, it's me, Joe,” I said. The lock clicked open. Jeremy stood next to his bed, his left eye a spectrum of red, blue, and black, nearly swollen shut. He had his pillowcases stuffed with his clothes on the bed beside him. Larry was a lucky man to be beyond my reach at that moment.

  “Hey, Jeremy,” I said, picking up the pillowcases, feeling their heft. “You done good,” I said, handing them back to him. “You remember Lila, don't you?”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “She's by her car in front of the house.” I put my hand on his back, leading him from his bedroom. “Take these to her. You're coming to live with me.”

  “The hell he is,” Mom screeched.

  “Go on, Jeremy,” I said. “It's okay.”

  Jeremy walked past my mother without looking at her, moving quickly across the living room and out the door.

  “What d'ya think you're doing?” Mom said in her best scolding tongue.

  “What happened to his eye, Mother?” I said.

  “That was…that was nothing,” she said.

  “Your piece-of-shit boyfriend beat him up. That's not nothing; that's assault.”

  “Larry just gets frustrated. He—”

  “Then you should kick Larry out, shouldn't you?” I said.

  “Jeremy pushes Larry's buttons.”

  “Jeremy's autistic,” I yelled. “He doesn't push buttons. He doesn't know how to push buttons.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do?” she said.

  “You're supposed to protect him. You're supposed to be his mother.”

  “So I can't have a life. Is that what you're saying?”

  “You made your choice,” I said. “You chose Larry, so Jeremy's coming to live with me.”

  “You're not getting his social-security money,” she hissed.

  I shook with rage, clenching my fists, waiting to calm down a little before I spoke again. “I don't want the money. He's not a meal ticket. He's your son.”

  “What about your precious college?” Her voice pitched with sarcasm as she spoke.

  For a brief second, I saw my future plans withering on a vine. I drew in a deep breath and sighed. “Well,” I said, “I guess I made my choice, too.”

  I started for the front door only to find Larry standing in my way, his hands balled up into fists in front of him. “Let's see how tough you are when you're not blindsiding me,” he said.

  Larry stood sideways in an awkward boxer's stance with his feet growing roots parallel to one another, his left fist poking out in front of him, his right tucked up against his chest. He couldn't have made himself a better target if he'd tried. With his left foot planted sideways, he exposed the side of his left knee to attack. The thing about knees is that they're made to bend front to back. If you kick the back of a knee it will buckle; if you kick the front of a knee it will remain strong. But the side of the knee is a whole different story. Knees are as fragile as dried twigs from the side.

  “Okay, Larry,” I said, smiling. “Let's have a go.”

  I walked at him as though I were going to charge face first into the right hook he had planned for me. But I stopped short, turned, cocked my leg back, and drove the heel of my foot into the side of his knee as hard as I could. I heard the bone crack, and Larry screamed as he fell into a heap on the floor.

  I turned, looked at my mother one last time, and then walked out the door.

  I leaned my forehead against the passenger window of Lila's car, staring off beyond the lights of the gas stations and towns we drove by. I could see my future dissolving, melting away, my vision blurred by the speed of the car, by the drops of water on the window, and by the tears that were starting to well up in my eyes. I would never go back to Austin, Minnesota. I would be responsible for Jeremy from now on. What had I done? I whispered the words out loud that had been banging on the doors of my brain since I'd left my mom's apartment. “I can't go to school next semester. I can't take care of Jeremy and also go to school.” I wiped my eyes before turning back toward Lila. “I'll have to get a serious job.”

  Lila reached across to my seat, rubbing the back of my still-clenched fist until I let it fall open so she could hold my hand. “It may not be that bad,” she said. “I can help take care of Jeremy.”

  “Jeremy's not your responsibility. It was my decision.”

  “He's not my responsibility,” she said, “but he is my friend.” She turned and looked at Jeremy, who'd curled up and fallen asleep in the back seat, his cell phone still grasped in his hands. “Look at him.” Lila nodded toward Jeremy. “He's sleeping so soundly. It's like he's been awake for days. He knows he's safe now. You should feel good about that. You're a good brother.”

  I smiled at Lila, kissed the back of her hand, and turned toward the window to watch the miles go by and think. It was then that I remembered something my grandfather once told me, something he'd said the day he died while we were eating sandwiches on the river, something I had blocked out of my memory for all these years. “You're Jeremy's big brother,” he'd said. “It's your job to take care of him. There's going to come a day when I won't be here to help out, and Jeremy's going to need you. Promise me that you'll take care of him.” I was eleven. I didn't know what my grandfather was talking about. But he knew. Somehow he knew that this day would come. And with that thought, a caress of serenity untied the knots in my shoulders.

  As we neared the apartment, the shift from interstate highway to city streets changed the musical tone of the tires, causing Jeremy to stir. He sat up, unsure at first of where he was, looking around at the unfamiliar buildings, his brow furrowed, his eyes blinking hard.

  “We're almost home, Buddy,” I said. He cast his eyes down to think. “We're going to my apartment. Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, a slight smile building on his face.

  “We'll get you tucked into bed in a couple minutes, and you can go back to sleep.”

  His eyes furrowed again. “Um…maybe I need a toothbrush.”

  “You didn't bring your toothbrush?” I said.

  “To be fair,” Lila said, “you didn't tell him he was moving. You just said to pack his clothes.” I rubbed my temples where a slight headache was starting to build. Lila pulled the car over to the curb in front of the apartment.

  “Can you go one night without brushing your teeth?” I asked.

  Jeremy started rubbing his thumb across his knuckles and gritting his teeth, causing the muscles beside his jaw to pop like a frog's gullet. “Maybe I need a toothbrush,” he said again.

  “Calm down, Buddy,” I said. “We'll figure something out.”

  Lila spoke again in her soft, calming voice. “Jeremy, how about if I take you up to Joe's apartment and get you situated, and Joe can go get you a new toothbrush. Will that be okay?”

  Jeremy stopped rubbing his hands, the emergency abated. “Okay,” he said.

  “Is that okay, Joe?” Lila smiled at me. I smiled back.

  There was a small corner store about eight blocks away, just one more detour in
a long day of detours. I liked how Lila talked to Jeremy, her soothing demeanor, her genuine affection for him. And I liked how Jeremy returned those feelings, or at least his version of those feelings, almost as though he had a crush on Lila, an emotion I knew to be beyond Jeremy's palate. It made me feel a little better about all that had happened. I was no longer Joe Talbert the college student or Joe the bouncer, or even Joe the runaway. I would, from that day forward be Joe Talbert, Jeremy's big brother. My life would be defined by the chain of small emergencies in my brother's world like this forgotten toothbrush.

  Lila took Jeremy upstairs to help him prepare for bed and I hopped behind the wheel to go buy a toothbrush. I found one at the first convenience store I went to. The toothbrush was green, the same color as Jeremy's old toothbrush, which was the same color as every toothbrush Jeremy had ever owned. If I hadn't found a green toothbrush at that store, I would have had to find another store. I bought some additional supplies, paid for everything, and headed back to the apartment.

  My apartment was quiet and dark when I got back, the only light being a small bulb over the kitchen sink. I could hear Jeremy sleeping in the bedroom, his muffled snore signaling that his anxiety over the lost toothbrush had given way to his exhaustion. I placed the toothbrush on the bedside table and backed out of the room, letting him sleep. I decided that I would sneak next door to give Lila a kiss goodnight. I knocked lightly on her door, a single knuckle tap, and waited. No answer. I raised my hand to knock again, paused, and then let my hand fall. It had been a long day; she'd earned a good night's sleep.

  I returned to my apartment and sat down on my couch. On the coffee table in front of me I spied Max Rupert's card, the one with his personal cell number on it. I picked it up and contemplated calling him. The clock was about to strike midnight. Surely the evidence Lila and I had gathered—the bombshell information about the real DJ—was important enough to warrant the late-night call. I put my thumb on the first button to call Rupert then backed off, deciding instead to get Lila's opinion. Besides, that would give me the perfect excuse to go to her apartment and wake her up.

  I took Rupert's card and my phone and headed next door. As I was about to knock, my phone rang, causing me to jump. I looked at the number, a 515 area code—Iowa. I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “You have something of mine,” a low, raspy voice whispered.

  Jesus. It couldn't be. “Who is this?” I said.

  “Don't play games with me, Joe,” the voice barked the words. He was pissed. “You know who this is.”

  “DJ,” I said. I tapped on Lila's door, holding the phone to my cheek so that he couldn't hear my tapping.

  “I prefer to be called Dan,” he said.

  Then it hit me. “How do you know my name?” I asked.

  “I know your name because your little girlfriend here told me.”

  Waves of hot and cold panic convulsed in my chest. I turned the door knob; Lila's door was unlocked. I pushed it open to find her kitchen table tipped on its side, her books scattered, her homework papers strewn across the linoleum floor. I struggled to make sense of what I saw.

  “Like I said, Joe, you have something of mine…” Dan paused as if to lick his lips. “And I have something of yours.”

  “Here's what's going to happen, Joe,” Dan said. “You're going to get into your car and drive north on I-35, and make sure you bring that bag of trash you stole from me.”

  I turned and ran down the steps as fast as my feet could carry me, my cell phone still pressed tight against my ear. “If you hurt Lila, I'll—”

  “You'll what, Joe?” he said. “Tell me. I really want to know. What are you going to do to me, Joe? But before you tell me, I want you to hear something.”

  I heard a muffled voice, a woman. I couldn't make out her words; it was more of a grunting sound. Then the grunting sounds gave way to a voice. “Joe! Joe, I'm sorry—” She tried to say more, but the words dropped behind a wall as if he'd put a gag into her mouth.

  “So tell me now, Joe, what—”

  “If you hurt her, I swear to God I'll kill you,” I said as I jumped behind the wheel of Lila's car.

  “Oh, Joe.” There was a pause, then a muffled scream. “Did you hear that, Joe?” he said. “I just punched your pretty little girlfriend in the face, very hard. You interrupted me. You made me punch her. If you interrupt me again, if you do not follow my instructions to the smallest detail, if you do anything to try and attract the attention of a cop, your little Lila here will suffer the consequences. Have I made myself clear?”

  “You've made yourself clear,” I said. A sickness welled up in my throat as I started Lila's car.

  “That's good,” he said. “I don't want to hurt her anymore. You see, Joe, she didn't want to give me your name or your phone number. I had to persuade her that it was in her best interest. She's a tough little bitch.”

  My knees felt weak and my stomach queasy at the thought of what he was doing to Lila. I felt utterly helpless. “How'd you find us?” I don't know why I asked him that question. It didn't matter how he'd found us. Maybe I just wanted to keep his attention on me, talking to me. If he was busy with me, he wouldn't be hurting her.

  “You found me, Joe. Remember?” he said. “So you probably know I run security at a mall. I know the cops. I got the license plate number off her car when you went through my alley. That brought me to little Miss Lila here, and she brought me to you. Or should I say, she's bringing you to me.”

  “I'm on my way,” I said, again trying to turn his attention back to me. “I'm turning onto I-35, like you said.”

  “To make sure you don't do something stupid like call the police, you and I are going to talk as you drive. And I can't stress this enough, Joe: if you hang up, if you go through a dead zone, if your battery dies, if anything happens to disconnect us…well, let's just say you'll need to find a new girlfriend.”

  I sped down the on ramp, one hand on the wheel, the other holding the phone to my ear, the car screaming as it ran through its gears. A tractor-trailer hogged the lane, so I floored the accelerator. The truck seemed to speed up, as if the driver were trying to assert some misplaced testosterone-fed dominance. I gripped the wheel so tightly my fingers ached. My merge lane grew thinner as I raced toward an oncoming viaduct rail, the truck's tires whining next to me, inches from my window. My lane turned into a shoulder as my car inched past the front bumper of the truck. I jerked onto the interstate, my back bumper narrowly missing his front bumper, his horn blaring his displeasure.

  “I hope you're driving carefully, Joe,” Dan said. “You don't want to get pulled over. That would be tragic.”

  He was right. I couldn't allow myself to get pulled over. What was I thinking? I slowed down to match the speed of the other drivers, blending in as just another set of headlights.

  “Where am I going?” I said, once my pulse returned to a manageable pace.

  “You remember where my old man's house is, don't you?”

  I shuddered with the thought. “I remember.”

  “Go there,” he said.

  “I thought it burned down,” I said.

  “So you heard about that. Terrible thing,” he said, his voice flat, uninterested, as if I was an annoying child interrupting his morning read.

  I began looking around the car for a weapon, a tool, a scrap of anything that I could use to wound him…or kill him. Nothing lay within reach except a plastic windshield scraper. I flicked on the dome light and looked again—fast-food trash, some spare winter gloves, papers from one of Lila's classes, Dan's bag of garbage, but no weapon. I heard bottles clinking in the garbage bag when I was running from Lockwood's house. If nothing else, I could grab one of those. Then I saw a glint of reflection in the back seat, something silver, half tucked in the crack where the seatback and cushion met.

  “You seem quiet, Joe,” Dan said. “I'm not boring you, am I?”

  “No, I'm not bored, just thinking,” I said.

 
; “You're a thinking man, are you Joe?”

  I hit the speakerphone button and laid the cell on the console between the two front seats, turning up the volume. “I don't make it a habit, but it happens every now and again,” I said. I quietly pulled the lever allowing my seat to recline as far as it would go.

  “Tell me, Joe, what's on your mind?”

  “I was just remembering my visit with your dad. He seemed a little out of sorts when we parted.” I slid back in my seat, holding the steering wheel with the tips of my fingers, waiting for a straight section of highway. “How's he doing?” I asked the question partly to hear his reaction and partly to get him talking as my straight section of highway appeared.

  “I guess you could say he's seen better days,” Dan said, his tone shifting cold.

  I let go of the steering wheel, flopped back on my seat, and grabbed for the shiny metallic object on the back seat. I got one finger around one side and a knuckle on the other side and pulled. My fingers slipped off. I reset my grip and pulled again. Jeremy's cell phone slid out from between the cushions, spinning forward, stopping on the front edge of the seat.

  “Of course,” Dan went on, “it's like they say: you shouldn't send an old drunk to do a man's job.”

  I sat up to find the car drifting off the road, heading toward the shoulder. I grabbed the wheel, correcting with a slight squeal of the tires. Had there been a cop anywhere in the area, I would have been pulled over. I watched the rearview mirror for cherries. I watched, waited—nothing. I breathed.

  “But he meant well,” Dan finished.

  “He meant well…by trying to kill me?” I said, trying to keep him talking. I pulled the seat lever, allowing the seatback to shoot into the upright position.

  “Oh, Joe,” Dan said. “You're not getting naive on me, are you?”

  I reached back, picked up Jeremy's cell phone, and turned it on. “Was it his idea to kill me?” I said. “Or was that yours?” I arched my back, reaching into my pocket to pull out Max Rupert's card.

  “The bottle to your head, that was his idea,” Dan said.