Gravedigger

by Joseph Hansen

  “I can’t go with you tomorrow.” Cecil didn’t look at him. He talked to the blank television screen. “I’ve got an appointment. For a job.” He took a quick gulp of whiskey.

  Dave blinked and felt bleak. “When did all this happen? You were going to work with me, you were never going to leave me by myself again. Isn’t that what you said? This is pretty sudden, isn’t it? What do you need with a job?”

  “You don’t want a kept boy,” Cecil said.

  “Will you look at me, please? What the hell are you talking about? You’ll earn your keep.”

  Cecil shook his head impatiently. “You don’t need my help. You don’t need anybody’s help. Got along fine on your own all this time. Kept boy, that’s what I’d be.” He jerked his head to indicate the laughing people at the other end of the room. He pitched his voice up, pursed his mouth, fluttered his lashes. “‘What do you do, young Cecil? Do you act, do you interior decorate, do you style women’s hair?’” He changed voices. “‘No, ma’am—ah jus’ sleeps with Mistuh Brandstettuh.’”

  “Edwards put this idea into your head,” Dave said.

  “He just figured I’d be wanting a job, and he’s fixing it for me. A good job. Field reporter. On camera.”

  “You didn’t want that anymore,” Dave said.

  “It will keep me honest.” Cecil was big-eyed, imploring. “It won’t change anything between us. Just, I can’t be with you all the time. Don’t they say that’s best?”

  “I don’t know who they are,” Dave said, “but Edwards is an interfering bastard.” He stood up, turned, and Edwards was watching from across the room. Dave couldn’t read his expression. Not smug. What the hell was it? Anxious?

  Cecil tugged Dave’s wrist. “Don’t spoil it. It will be a good job, the pay will be great, it will make me feel righteous, like I was somebody fit for you to love.”

  “You were that before,” Dave said.

  “If you care how I feel,” Cecil said, “you will sit down. If all you care about is knocking Edwards upside his head, go on.”

  Dave sat down. “I care how you feel,” he grumbled.

  “I couldn’t just live off you,” Cecil said gently. “You know that wouldn’t be right.”

  “I wish they’d go the hell home,” Dave said, “so I could get you to bed and talk some sense into you.”

  6

  IT WAS LONELY COUNTRY, lifting gently toward ragged mountains through low hills velvet with new green from winter rains, hills strewn with white rocks and clumps of brush, and slashed here and there by ravines dark with big live-oaks. An eight-lane freeway had brought him into the hills from the seacoast, forty clean, sleek miles of new cement leading God knew where, nobody driving it but him, under low-hanging clouds, dark and tattered, spattering the windshield with squalls of rain one minute, the next minute letting shafts of sunlight through.

  He began to pass vineyards that striped the hills, then shaggy groves of avocado, leaves and limbs drooping from the heaviness of the rain. He rolled down the window of the Triumph to breathe the clean air, the smell of rain on soil. Rain touched his face. A meadowlark sang. He wished that Cecil were with him. Then here was the green-and-white road sign warning him that Buenos Vientos could be reached by taking the next off-ramp. The off-ramp was a graceful, broad curve, but it brought him to a meager strip of worn and winding blacktop.

  This climbed out of the groves, the vineyards, into the first and least of the mountains. Patches of snow began to show under clumps of brush and to the lee sides of rock outcrops. The sky darkened and the good winds for which the place was named turned mean, buffeting the little car, chilling him. He rolled up the window. After a while, he came among pines, scrubby at first, scattered, twisted by winds—then growing closer together, straighter, taller. They sheltered the little town. A clutch of shake-sided houses, a fieldstone filling station, a raw plank stable that rented out horses, a general store and post office with a long wooden covered porch, a bat-and-board café, BEER in small red neon in a window. From between the pumps of the filling station, a white-eyed husky barked at the Triumph as it passed.

  The music camp was five miles farther on, a loose collection of raw pine buildings in a meadow. One of the buildings was large, two-storied, with glass in its windows—probably the dormitory and mess hall. The rest were one-or two-room practice sheds. Downhill beyond a screen of pines could be seen the lofting wooden arc of an orchestra shell. A faded, dented Gremlin stood under a big ponderosa pine beside the farthest of the practice sheds. Snow lay under the car. Dave pulled the Triumph up behind it and got out stiffly into the cold air.

  He looked through the doorway into the little building. No piano, not now. A sleeping bag in a far corner, propped beside it a duffel bag, flap open. He turned and looked all around the little meadow. No sign of anyone. He called Lyle Westover’s name. It came back to him in echoes from the silent slopes. He poked his head into the other practice sheds. Empty. His heels knocked hollowly when he climbed to the log-railed porch of the main building. From their solidity when he pounded on the plank double doors, he judged they were barred. Vacant rooms sent back the noise of his fists.

  The car was unlocked. Nothing unexpected, nothing that gave answers. In the shed, he rummaged through the duffel bag—underwear, sweaters, wool shirts, corduroys. Also cans—baked beans, beef stew, Spam, a jar of instant coffee, crackers, a roll of toilet paper. Fifty feet behind the shed, charred sticks lay on a circle of blackened stones. The bottom of the gray enamel coffee pot was smoky. Pine needles floated in an inch of coffee in a gray enamel cup. In an unwashed steel skillet lay an unwashed steel fork. Downhill, a patch of duff had been scraped away. He dug there with a fallen pine branch. The hole held empty cans, labels still fresh. Snow began to fall on them. He covered them and went back to the shed. The sleeping bag was heavy when he picked it up. When he shook it, a pair of boots fell out. Dave scowled. Where the hell could he have gone in his stocking feet?

  He stepped down out of the shed. The snow was falling harder now. “Lyle!” he shouted, “Lyle!” and headed for the orchestra shell. He turned up the sheepskin collar, hunched his shoulders, jammed his hands into the jacket pockets. He went down the center aisle, looking along the rows of pine-log benches. He hiked himself up on the stage, the cement cold to his hands. Doors—to storage rooms, dressing-rooms?—opened at either side of the shell, but they were padlocked. He used the shell to amplify his voice and shouted Lyle’s name out into the snowfall. It sounded very loud in his ears, but no answer came. His ears were so cold they ached. He covered his ears with his hands and climbed back up the aisle. At the top, he shouted the boy’s name again, once to each point of the compass. He thought of following his voice out among the big pines. But the snow fell in dense earnest now. It was hard to see through. One man didn’t make a search party anyway—not in country this big and empty. One man could get lost and freeze to death. He went back to his car.

  In the little town, the windows of the café smiled yellow through the snowfall. It was only noon, but the snowfall made it dark. He parked beside a battered pickup truck and entered the café through a door hung with little bells that jingled. The air inside was warm, steamy, and smelled of cooking. A pair of leathery men, one old, one young, both in cowboy hats and quilted khaki jackets, sat at a counter shoveling down meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, green peas. Thick white mugs of coffee steamed in front of them. They glanced at Dave and away again, seeing he was a stranger.

  A plump, motherly-looking woman in a starchy print dress, new cardigan sweater, patched white apron, chatted through a service window with someone unseen in the kitchen. She looked at Dave with more interest than the customers had done. Dave laid a bill on the counter. “Can I have a cup of coffee and change, please, for the telephone?” It was screwed, black and battered, to the wall at the far end of the room. The woman took the bill and jangled open the cash register. She laid coins in his hand. She gave him a lovely false-teeth smile.

&n
bsp; “You look half frozen,” she said. “You drove through only an hour ago. I thought then you’d be cold. It’s that cloth top. That’s a cute little car, but you can’t expect to keep warm in it. Not in Buenos Vientos in the winter.”

  “The coffee?” Dave begged.

  “Coming right up.”

  The directory that hung on a chain off the phone was tattered, dog-eared, food-stained, but he found the San Diego county offices section and a number that looked as if it might be the right one. The motherly woman brought a mug of coffee to the end of the counter and set it there for him. She didn’t go away. She stood watching him with open curiosity. The phone kept ringing at the far end, and Dave stretched to try to reach the coffee mug. She picked it up and handed it to him. He burned his mouth on the coffee. It had come out of an ordinary café glass pot but it tasted like farmhouse coffee. The heat of it made him shiver. He was colder than he’d realized. At last a voice came on the line.

  “Sheriff station, Guzman speaking.”

  Dave gave his name, said he was an insurance investigator, and wanted to report a missing person. “From the music camp at Buenos Vientos.” Yes, he knew it was closed, but this boy had been holed up in one of the sheds. “His gear is all there—clothes, even boots—and his car is there, but he’s nowhere around. It’s snowing hard up here. Somebody ought to try to find him. The name? Lyle Westover, age about nineteen, slight build. He—” A hand tugged Dave’s shoulder and he turned. The motherly woman was shaking her head.

  “Don’t bother them,” she said.

  “Sir?” the voice on the line said. “Are you there?”

  “Yes, just a second.” Dave covered the mouthpiece. He asked the woman what she meant.

  “Isn’t he the little one that can’t talk right?” she asked. Dave nodded. She said, “I thought so. You get to know them all here in the summer.”

  “You know where he is—is that what you’re saying?”

  “In the hospital at Cascada,” she said.

  Dave said into the telephone, “I’m sorry. False alarm. I’m at the café here in town. They’ve located him for me. Excuse the trouble.”

  “No problem, sir.” The line went dead. Dave hung up.

  “At least,” the woman said, “I guess that fat girl took him to the hospital. She come running in here, asking where the nearest one was. I know her too. Trio, they call her.” She laughed. “I guess because she’s bigger than any three of the rest of them.”

  “When was this?” Dave said.

  “Said she had somebody in the car very sick, and she had to get them to a hospital right away. Last night, around six. Busy in here. But she was scared, plain to see that. I told her the way to Cascada. She was so jittery, I wasn’t sure she took in what I said. She was out that door before the words were hardly out of my mouth. I ran after her to yell the directions to her all over again, and that was when I saw who it was that was sick. Passed out cold, head over against the window glass. Oh, he was pale, white as a ghost, blue around the mouth. Frail little thing, anyway, you know.”

  Dave drank more of the scalding coffee, set the mug down. “She hasn’t come back, of course?”

  “She went up first in the morning. I saw her pass, saw her come down too, not more than an hour after. She tore right on through, lickety-split. I guess I was busy when she drove up there the second time. Never saw her. Then, of course, here she came, barging in wild-eyed, out of breath. Quick—where was the nearest hospital?”

  “Thanks,” Dave said. “Where is it?”

  Cascada huddled dreary in cold rain. Its Main street store fronts were red brick, brown brick. Feed and grain, hardware, drugstore. Modern crisp-lettered white plastic signs gleamed, so did the windows at McDonald’s and the Pizza Hut, but no one was around, and the effect was sad. He found the hospital at the end of Main street, where the motherly woman had told him it would be—a new, sand-color stucco building with a white rock roof, one story, maybe twenty rooms. The lawn around it was bright with new grass, the plantings of eucalyptus trees young and lacy. He left the Triumph on the new blacktop of a parking lot almost empty, glossy with rain. Plate-glass doors led him into a shiny little reception area. An elderly nurse pointed him down a hallway. In the hallway, he found Anna Westover, seated on a stiff, minimally upholstered armchair, and looking drawn and bitter.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “I told you I was looking for him,” Dave said.

  “He’s in a coma,” she said. “He tried to kill himself with sleeping pills. God, that child, that child.” Her voice shook. On the big, soft leather bag in her lap, her thin hands clutched each other so tightly the knuckles shone white. She was angry—at Lyle, or at herself? “What in the world is the use?” It was a cry from the heart. She looked up at Dave with tears in her eyes. “You struggle to raise them, to understand them, to make life easy for them, to train them not to make the stupid mistakes you’ve made. And what in the world is the use?”

  “If you did all that,” Dave said, “you don’t have anything to reproach yourself for. He’s a big boy now.” He sat down on another of the stingy chairs. A low table was between the chairs, on it a jug-shape terra-cotta lamp, old copies of Westways and Sunset magazines, a terra-cotta ashtray glazed blue inside. “What does the doctor say?”

  “That he’ll probably be all right.” She muttered it, rummaging in the big bag for tissues, wiping her eyes, blowing her nose. “But what’s to stop him trying it again? If life is so terrible for him?” A squeaky sob jerked out of her. She drew breath sharply, bit her lip, shook her head, squared her shoulders. “Did you find his father?”

  “No. I hoped Lyle could tell me where to do that.” Down the hallway, crockery and metal clashed. A bald, red-faced orderly in rumpled white brought trays out of rooms and dumped them into rubber bins on a trolley. Dave lit a cigarette. “Trio Foley brought him here. Where is she?”

  “Eating,” Anna Westover said flatly. “Every hour on the hour. It comforts her, I suppose. She feels terribly guilty, poor thing. She blames herself.”

  He had been mistaken in thinking the Pizza Hut was empty. She sat at a rear table whose shiny orange top, reflecting into her face, made the pimples stand out. A wheel of pizza lay in front of her, heaped with, as the white plastic letters of the sign over the counter put it, EVERYTHING. Three wedges of the pizza were already gone and she was choking down a fourth. Dave sat across from her.

  “Oh, God.” Her eyes opened behind the thick glasses.

  “I thought you were going to telephone me.”

  She gulped the mouthful of dough and sauce, cheese, sausage, anchovies. She drank from a big wax-paper cup of cola. Tomato sauce smeared her mouth and chin. She wiped them with a wadded fistful of paper napkins. She said, “I was afraid you’d frighten him.”

  “Why? I didn’t frighten you.”

  Her dimpled fingers fumbled loose another slice of pizza. She lifted it toward her mouth. He caught her wrist

  “Wait a minute with the eating, please? Tell me what happened. He’d been living up there at the camp, cooking and eating and getting along. Then you showed up, and he swallowed Seconals. Now, what’s it all about, Trio?”

  “I told him.” Her cry ricocheted off the shiny glass and plastic of the empty place. The blond boy and girl in uniform behind the counter stopped chatting and stared. “I went to make him leave there before you could find him but he didn’t want to. Then I did just what I was afraid you’d do. I didn’t mean to, but one thing led to another. Why had I come, and who were you, and what were you doing at the house, and why were you an insurance investigator, and—and—it all just came out, you know? About his father and his sister and the insurance and—” She couldn’t go on. She picked up the pizza wedge and stuffed her face with it and sat there with tears streaming down her face, chewing, chewing.

  “And then you ran away,” Dave said, “leaving him all by himself with the knowledge that either his sister had been horribly murdered,
or his father was so rotten that he had tried to defraud the insurance people by pretending he believed that had happened. Good Christ, girl, you were the one who said he was fragile, who wanted to protect him.”

  “Stop it!” She clapped her hands to her ears. “Stop it!” She had to wriggle mightily to free her bulk from the cramped space between table and banquette, but she did it with surprising quickness, and was on her feet and running for the door, all jiggling two hundred pounds of her, wailing like a siren. Dave sighed, got up, walked after her.

  “Hey, mister, wait a minute.” It was the blond boy behind the counter, rosy-cheeked, maybe seventeen but brave. “What happened? What did you do to her?”

  “Gave her bad news,” Dave said, “not gently enough.”

  The boy looked doubtful. He glanced at the blond girl. She nodded toward an orange telephone gleaming on a kitchen wall. Dave didn’t wait for them to call the police. He pushed out into the rain and trudged after the wide, wobbling figure of Trio running away from him down the sad, empty street When he caught up to her, she was hunched in a hospital hallway chair, trying to stop crying, Anna Westover bending over her, murmuring comfort. The woman glared at Dave.

  “You bring joy wherever you go,” she said.

  “Trio,” Dave said, “you saved his life. The mistake doesn’t count. You fixed it. He’s going to be all right”

  She looked up at him, reproachful, face sleek with tears, glasses smeared with tears. She hiccuped. “I’m still hungry,” she said, and burst out crying again.

  He did look fragile, as if the least little tap would shatter him. Against the hospital pillows, his thin face was sickly pale, with a stubble of dark beard. His hair curled, soft as a child’s, on his elegant skull. His eyes were large, brown, sorrowful. As Trio had said, he was beautiful, and looking at him made you want to shelter him. Yet his wide, mobile mouth was able to smile. The smile was sheepish for the trouble he’d caused, but it was real.