Hollow

by Owen Egerton

He lights up as I steer us out of the parking lot.

  “Monday’s the last day to pay Horner,” he says, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Not that you care.” He glances at me, trying to gauge my reaction. “Still think it’s solid?”

  “I think it’s worse,” I say. “Maybe it’s best we’re not going.”

  “Fuck that.” Lyle sucks in and breathes out. “Even if it’s pitchforks and dragons, I want to see it.”

  “Lyle,” I say. “You told me you once killed a man.”

  “Two. I’m not proud. But it was me or them.”

  “And you hid the bodies?”

  “Fuck yeah.” He flips down the visor and examines the mirror. “It’s all about keeping a calm head.”

  “I have a corpse in the trunk.”

  He flips the visor closed, but says nothing.

  “I have a corpse in the trunk,” I say again.

  “A human corpse?”

  I nod.

  “Stop the car.”

  “Lyle, I can explain—”

  “Pull over and stop the car.”

  I ease the car to the shoulder.

  “Open the trunk,” he says.

  I press the trunk release and he climbs from the car. I hear his muted “Fuck” from inside. He crawls back in.

  “You got a guy with half a neck wrapped in a shower curtain! What the fuck?”

  “What happened to calm heads? Just tell me what did you do last time?”

  “Last time? What last time?”

  “The two men you killed.”

  “Fuck, fuck, Ollie. That didn’t happen. You fucking know that.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Shit, I want no part of this. Nothing.”

  “Listen, a good woman killed a bad man. That’s all. I need your help. You are the smartest man I know, Lyle.”

  “I’m a fucking idiot, Ollie. You’re an idiot to think I’m not an idiot.”

  “Think. What would you do?”

  He nods fast, thinking.

  “Alligator farm!” he says.

  “Alligator farm?”

  “Sure! We dump him. He’s alligator shit by morning.”

  “Where do we find an alligator farm?”

  “I don’t know, Google?”

  Honk. Someone behind us flashes headlights. We both turn back. The trunk is still open.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Lyle squeaks.

  We both jump out of the car. The headlights drop to parking lights.

  “Hey, need some help?” A small bald man smiles as he rolls down the window of his Prius. “You know your trunk is open?”

  “What’s it to you, fucker!” Lyle screams. I slam the trunk closed.

  “I was just trying—”

  “Well, just try trying to fuck off!”

  He does. Passing by, his ghostly face blurred behind the streaks of rain, he shoots us the finger and I feel sorry for him.

  “Lyle,” I say, walking back to the car door. “Let’s go for discreet.”

  “I am discreet!” He turns. “And I’m driving. You don’t even have a fucking permit.”

  We climb back in and he taps his forehead like it’s a radio on the fritz.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I say.

  “Right? Like you’re going to do it on your own.”

  “I got this far.”

  “Let me think, Ollie! Let me think.”

  He sits with hands on the unmoving wheel. “I’m going to be sick.” He jumps from the car, vomits on the shoulder, and returns.

  “Okay, okay,” he says. “We read the obits, right. We find out when a funeral is happening, then we head to the cemetery after the burial. We dig up the fresh grave and place this guy on top of the coffin. See? See? They’ll never find him.”

  I shake my head.

  “Fine. Fine,” Lyle stares at me. “Let’s think. Something simple. Something elegant.”

  “Burn him,” I say.

  He faces the windshield, nods, and starts the car.

  The HEB grocery store is too bright and the Muzak too loud for six a.m. Lyle and I walk in from the rain, passing the cashiers and the few morning shoppers.

  “Going to be a great cookout, huh?” he asks loudly, clearly. He nudges me.

  “Sure,” I say. “The best.”

  “You get the chips. I’ll get the dogs.”

  “Really?” I whisper.

  “Meet you back here with the goodies!” he says, his eyes screaming for me to act my part.

  I head down the aisles and grab a bag of potato chips, then head back to the front, but Lyle spins around the corner into my aisle with a cart half filled with plastic-wrapped hot dogs.

  “How many have you got?” I ask.

  “Enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “To feed all the people . . . at our cookout . . .” Again, the screaming eyes. “What have you got?”

  I look in my hand. The one bag I’ve grabbed is a single serving of Lay’s, the kind you find in brown-bag lunches. He shakes his head and glances around. The stocker, an old man with a goiter, has just moved into our aisle.

  “Oh!” Lyle says loudly, cheerfully. “We’ll need lighter fluid.” He winks at me. “Let’s grab a few extra bottles to be on the safe side.”

  We roll up to the cashier with forty-eight hotdogs, nine bottles of lighter fluid and one single serving of Lays potato chips. We smile as the cashier rings us up.

  “Fifty-two dollars.”

  Lyle looks at me. I shake my head. He opens his own wallet. A twenty.

  “Shit,” he mutters. He pulls all the hotdogs out of the stack.

  “Thirty-two.”

  He takes two lighter fluid bottles out.

  We leave with seven lighter fluid bottles and one bag of chips.

  “Restock!” the cashier calls out as we leave.

  Lyle rips open the chips.

  “Lay’s? I hate these,” he says, cramming a handful in his mouth. “No personality. Doritos have personality.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “Perfect. No one would suspect we’d burn a body in the rain. It makes no sense. The question is where. Where is no one surprised to see a fire?”

  “Campgrounds?”

  “Yes!” he snaps. “Know any?”

  We drive an hour and a half into the hill country west of Austin toward Inks Lake. The land rolls as the morning fades in and the rain tempers. Lyle drives, chain-smoking and gripping the wheel.

  We pulled in to Inks Lake State Park a few minutes before eight—the day glowing gray.

  Carrie and I camped here once. An early date—marshmallows, box wine in plastic cups, awkward lovemaking in a tent.

  A young ranger greets us at the entry.

  “Morning! You’re the first folks of the day.”

  “We’d like a nice secluded spot,” Lyle says.

  “Great. Plenty open. The rain usually keeps folks away.” She points out Spot 47 on a crude map and asks us for thirteen dollars.

  “Thirteen?”

  “Yep.”

  We pause. Then it hits me.

  “Pop the trunk,” I tell Lyle.

  His face dies.

  “Just pop it.”

  I climb from the car and make my way to the back, smiling at the ranger. There’s Sam’s body in the shower curtain, the blood congealed like overnight egg yolk. I reach around his body to his back pockets and find a wallet. I open it and sure enough there’s a stack of bills. I pocket the bills, close the trunk, and hand a twenty to the ranger.

  “Left my money in the trunk,” I say.

  The ranger smiles and nods. “Sure. Safest part of the car.”

  Spot 47 sits behind some pines with a brief walk
down to the lake. The neighboring sites are empty for now. We are unseen.

  Our map tells us to keep all fires in designated fire pits. It’s not a large pit—a four-foot circle of gray bricks. We lift Sam from the trunk and squeeze him into the pit, wrapping his body around itself in a fetal position. Sam’s mouth is open, as if he’s yawning. We cover him with branches and moss, then douse the whole pile with three bottles of lighter fluid.

  Lyle flicks his lit cigarette on top.

  Nothing happens.

  “I thought it would . . . boom,” he says.

  He reaches in with his lighter, lighting the corners of leaves. The lighter fluid catches and the leaves crackle, but the branches and the body merely smolder, giving out a wet, gray smoke.

  “Come on! Burn!” Lyle says, circling the pit. “At this rate we’re just making jerky.”

  “Give it time.”

  “In Conan the Barbarian it just explodes, you know? Just BOOM! Fire!”

  I sit and watch the pile. The body can’t be seen under the brush and debris. Just one finger, sticking out like a twig.

  Lyle sprays on another bottle of lighter fluid. A few flames lick to life, but hardly last.

  I sit; Lyle paces. After an hour and he’s nearly frantic.

  “Look,” he says. “We need more lighter fluid. Something. Give me the cash and I’ll make a run. You watch him.”

  I reach into my pocket, but pause. I look at Lyle bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “You’ll come back, right?”

  “Jesus, Ollie. Just give me the money.”

  I hand him the money and he climbs into the Cadillac.

  An hour passes. And another. Still the pit is little more than smoke and Lyle is nowhere.

  I pour another bottle of lighter fluid on before I realize I don’t have a lighter.

  I sit on the ground and think. Could I drag him to the lake? Could I feed him to wolves?

  I think about Martin and Laika, about her touching my face, about Martin’s face in my hands.

  Martin wanted to die. It’s a strong sickness that overcomes that simple desire to live. Even when the time came and Sam pressed down the pillow, Martin fought. Some basic brain function took over and scratched and clung. That’s not how he wanted to go, suffocated in his bed. No one wants to die like that.

  Sam wanted to live. He wanted to perform stand-up and watch documentaries and whore out immigrants and beat on dying men. Now he’s dead. I feel something different from guilt. I feel responsible. It’s not a horrible feeling.

  Three hours have passed. It begins to drizzle and even the smoke is dying away.

  I walk down to the lake watching the slow rain dimple the surface. The surface beginning still, but rippling constantly. The universe must look like this to some eternal eyes—each dimple a star appearing, expanding, and then gone. I look down and see my feet are in the water.

  I had thought this moment would be one of passion and panic—a squeezed trigger, a fast step, all before I could change my mind. I had thought I would have to move quickly enough to outrun the part of me that opposed the act. The part of me that wanted life. But here I am and there is no conflict. No part of me to outrun.

  I slip from my sandals and step deeper. My pant legs soak up the cold. It doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels wonderfully inevitable. Perhaps I’ve stepped back onto God’s path. The thought makes me smirk.

  I take another step. Step. Still so beautiful. Leaves float down like whispers. Step.

  The water is cold to my crotch, like the neighbor’s pool when I was ten years old. Friends calling: Don’t walk in, jump.

  Step. Sludge squeezing into my shoes.

  Owl hoots. Church camp. Age nine. Walking alone to pee in the middle of the night—night like I’d never known night. Hoot.

  Step. Mud sucks against my feet, holding me back, but only halfheartedly. I pull free and step on.

  This is not disdain for life. This is only knowing it’s over.

  Water just below my ribs. I’m sending ripples just like the stars.

  She and I walked on a golf course at night, silent as beech bark, nervous as sparrows.

  This is not sad. Nor is this peace. This is simply how things are.

  My chin dips in. Sounds bounce off the surface from all around me. Raindrops and bird calls and insect hums and wind through weeds and snippets of pop songs and my father calling for me to refill his coffee, my mother cooing as she sees me wearing my best suit, my dormmate’s girlfriend climaxing in the dark four feet away, my puppy whining in his bath, Carrie sighing on a cold October day, Miles laughing at a puppet made of socks and rubber bands and I laugh and water spills into my mouth and I cough and spit and I step forward.

  The world goes from blue gray to moss green. Ear bubbles and muffled all. Let my feet sink deeper. Let the mud hold me under. The universe is not killing me. The universe is not saving me. The universe is just here.

  Open my mouth. Let the green into the lungs.

  A yapping false panic like a child begging not to go to bed even though the sun is down and day is done.

  Acid in my throat. Panic.

  Pine needles floating on an ice-blue pool and hotel towels stacked liked sugar cubes. The water tastes like pennies in my mouth.

  Panic keeps screaming, a hysterical old woman in my chest.

  I’m eighteen and the rope swings from the deck into the river—but you must let go! You must or you slam back into the deck cutting both knees. And she’s below me and she’s bored and I should finish soon. And Carrie and I so drunk we sweat gin and bacon and the sheets smell of everything.

  Blink. Miles, little man. My Miles. Miles waking, waiting alone. Miles calling out for me. Afraid and calling for me. You’re calling for me and I do not come. I do not come and I do not come and forever I do not come.

  If I love more. If I love more.

  Hands grab me by the shirt and pull me up. I’m yanked out of the green and wet and back into a world brighter and louder. I thrash, pushing and kicking, but whoever has me will not relinquish his hold. He tugs me back, arms around my chest, as I cough and choke.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Lyle throws me down on the bank. “We’re working here. We’re working.”

  He grabs his hair and paces in front of me.

  “God damn, God damn. I’m gone for ten minutes and you’re ready to off yourself?”

  I sit up, heaving lake water spiked with stomach acid. “You’ve been gone more than three hours.”

  “So you decide to kill yourself?”

  “It wasn’t about you.”

  “Well, it is now, fucker, I just saved you.”

  “What about it being time to leave the party? What about walking out with my head high?”

  He looks suddenly serious. “You have cancer?”

  “No, Lyle, you idiot.”

  “So your son died. I’m sorry! Big fucking deal . . . I mean it is a big fucking deal. But it’s not the only deal. It’s not the only thing. Move on, you fuck.”

  I shake my head.

  He seizes my shirt and drags me back toward the water.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  He picks me half off the ground and hurls me into the lake.

  “Go ahead and drown, dead man.”

  He turns back, marching toward the campsite. I stand in the knee-deep water and run at him. I’m yelling as I slam into him, knocking him to the ground. I pound fists into his back, into his kidneys.

  “You piece of shit, Lyle, you stupid piece of shit.”

  Lyle bucks under me, but I hold on. He twists, but I jab fists into his ribs. He reaches a hand behind him and grabs a handful of my hair and pulls me off. Then he’s on me, slapping my face. We tumble back into the lake. He holds me down, water lapping over my face. He shoves
me down deeper, holding me under, back of my head sinking into the mud, and his face blurry above. I can’t breathe and I have nothing. His hands are heavy on my chest, his whole weight pinning me down.

  He yanks me up. “Do you want to die?”

  I suck at the air, but I’m down again and sucking water instead.

  He pulls me up again.

  “Do you want this? Oliver? We can do it right now!”

  Down again. And my lungs are lurching, pushing out and sucking in water.

  He yanks me out again.

  “Live or die, fucker. Last chance, Oliver. Last chance.”

  My voice blotched and high. “Live.”

  Lyle holds me by my shirt. Staring down at me, he’s breathing hard, his teeth stained yellow, his eyes narrow and frightened. He pulls me to a sitting position. We’re both sitting waist-deep in the muddy water.

  “Good,” he says. “Good.”

  “I got Start ’Em Sticks, Burn-O-Logs, lighter fluid.” He throws open the back door of the Cadillac. “I got us some food and beer, too.” He tosses me a can of Pringles.

  “Did you think about not coming back?”

  “No,” he says, facing me. He’s lying, I can see that. But he’s also here.

  “Thank you,” I say, holding up the Pringles.

  He nods and reaches back into the car. “I saved the best for last,” he says, and pulls out two five-gallon tanks of gasoline. “Let’s get this fire started.”

  He opens up one of the tanks and circles the pit pouring. He lights a cigarette, takes a few puffs, and flicks it onto the pile.

  Whoomp. Fire swells up eight feet high.

  “See? Now that’s some barbarian shit.”

  You can see him through the burning. His clothes burn first. Then his hair and skin. I can just see one opossum claw curl, like the animal is gripping at the flames. Soon he’s not Sam anymore.

  The fire burns away the branches, exposing more of his shrinking body, the flesh pulling back from the teeth and eye sockets, the skin wincing tight.

  “Jesus, God,” Lyle says, breaking branches from trees and throwing them on top. “Jesus, don’t look at that.”

  But I do look. I won’t not look. Because I put him there in that pit and I’m burning him, so I’ll watch.

  The rain comes and goes and Lyle eats Doritos and Peeps and sucks down beer.