by Pete Hautman
Such was my mind-set when I slipped out of the house after Mother had gone to bed. I walked across the golf course to the maintenance garage where we kept an old Ford tractor with a bucket on the front and a backhoe on the back.
The moon, almost full, had risen. I could see the bodies on the sand as I drove the tractor up to the bunker. Nothing had changed. I picked up the bloodied golf club and put it in Pop’s golf bag. I got back on the tractor and dug a pit in the sand next to the bodies.
Four feet down I reached a layer of peaty muck. Water seeped into the pit. The swamp Pop had drained was still there, just beneath the surface. I climbed off the tractor and rolled Rosen’s body into the pit. It landed with a splash. I picked up the gun, wondering whether it was the same pistol Stan had used to shoot up that bar. I threw it on top of Rosen’s body, then dragged Pop over and rolled him in too.
My plan at first had been to simply cover the bodies with sand, but I got to thinking: What if they search the golf course with dogs? Would the dogs smell the blood? Would the odor from the decomposing bodies sift up through the sand?
I drove back to the clubhouse. A year earlier Pop had built a stone patio just off the club bar on the west side. The limestone blocks he used were enormous — six feet long, three feet wide, and half a foot thick. Two of the slabs had gone unused and were stored behind the maintenance garage, covered with vines. After a bit of jockeying, I managed to get the bucket under one of the slabs. I drove the tractor back to the seventh hole with the limestone slab balanced on the bucket.
Two feet of black, swampy water had seeped into the pit from below. Only Pop’s knee and one of his hands were visible. I eased the slab over the hole and slid it off. It fit perfectly. I scooped the sand back in the hole with the backhoe, then got off the tractor and used a sand rake to smooth the surface of the bunker. It looked pretty good, but there was still blood mixed in with the sand, and I was worried about dogs sniffing it out. The tractor tires had left clear marks on the grassy verge, and I was worried about that too.
As if in answer, the moonlight went away. A bank of low clouds had moved in. I saw a flicker of lightning on the western horizon. It was an answer from the heavens. A good hard rain would rinse the sand and wash away the tire marks. I felt as if my work had been blessed — by the devil, perhaps, but blessed nonetheless.
By the time I returned the tractor to the garage the rain had begun to fall. I scrubbed the blood off the golf club, put it back in the bag, and left the clubs in Pop’s office where he usually kept them. The rain was coming down hard by then. I walked home across the golf course, heedless of the lightning, letting the rain run down my face and body in a cleansing torrent. I was feeling powerful, giddy almost, as if I had done a wonderful thing.
I did not think about my father or Robert Rosen or Rosen’s family. I would think about those things later, but on that night I had been seized by a sort of madness. I was a young man who had accepted a role, who had completed his mission while setting aside the rightness, the wrongness, the impossibility of it all. I was a soldier who had witnessed an atrocity, and committed one of his own. I could not allow myself to think about what I was doing or what I had done.
Years later I read a book about the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, Poles, Hungarians, and others. The book’s author used the term “the banality of evil.” Eichmann had set aside his soul and done his job with emotionless, dull efficiency — not out of hatred or passion or fear, but simply because he had a job to do.
On that long night, I was Adolf Eichmann — just a soldier doing his job.
I arrived home utterly soaked. I stripped off my clothes and crawled into bed and slept until awakened by the morning sun blasting in through my window and Mother standing at the foot of my bed looking down at me.
“I can’t find your father,” she said.
There was more. When Stuey finally reached the end and closed the notebook it was after one in the morning. He lay back and stared at the ceiling and thought.
Things nobody knows, Gramps had said.
Things nobody would believe.
My Book of Secrets.
If they were supposed to be secrets, then why had Gramps written them down?
It’s our history, Gramps had said.
It was Stuey’s history too.
Stuey went to his window. The full moon lit the tops of the apple trees; the shadows beneath the branches were stark black. He could see the top of his grandfather’s gravestone poking up through the tall grass.
Had anything changed?
A dark form detached itself from the shadow of the nearest apple tree. He saw a flash of white. A face? The figure turned its back and moved off into the orchard’s shadows with a familiar shuffle.
Gramps.
Stuey’s neck prickled; his heart thumped. He stood at the window for a long time, but Grandpa Zach did not return.
Stuey was awakened the next morning by the doorbell. He heard his mother clomping from her studio to the front door. He looked out through his bedroom window. A dark-blue sedan was parked in the driveway — an unmarked police car like the one Detective Roode drove. He ran downstairs.
Detective Roode was standing in the foyer talking to his mom. Stuey moved closer.
“Are you sure?” his mom was saying.
“A wallet was found beneath the body,” said the detective. “We were able to read his driver’s license. To be absolutely certain, we will have to compare his DNA with yours, but given the estimated age of the remains and the fact that they were found on what was once your grandfather’s golf course . . .”
“Where he was last seen,” Stuey’s mom said.
“Yes.”
“I never knew him,” she said.
Detective Roode nodded. “In any case, you are his closest relative. We wanted to let you know right away so that we can release the information to the public.”
“So that people will stop thinking you found Elly Frankel?”
“Precisely.”
“Do you know how he died?”
“That will have to wait for the autopsy,” Roode said. “But we are treating this as a murder investigation. After all, he didn’t bury himself.” He frowned. “It was more than sixty years ago. We may never know what happened.”
“It was my great-grandpa, right?” Stuey said.
They both looked at him, startled. “Where did you come from?” his mom asked.
“Is it him?” Stuey said.
Roode looked at Stuey’s mom, who nodded.
“We think so,” Roode said.
“What about Robert Rosen?” Stuey said.
His mom gave him a sharp look. Detective Roode leaned toward him and asked, “What did you say?”
“Didn’t he disappear at the same time as my great-grandpa?”
Roode straightened and forced himself to smile. He turned to Stuey’s mom and said, “Your son is correct, Mrs. Becker. We did indeed find two sets of remains, but we hope to keep that under wraps until we locate Robert Rosen’s next of kin.”
“You won’t have to look far,” she said. “Maddy Frankel is his granddaughter.”
After Detective Roode left, Stuey’s mom went to the sofa and sat down and said nothing. Stuey stood there watching her stare into space. After a minute he said, “Mom?”
She looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there.
“Oh, Stuey,” she said, and shook her head. “It’s so sad. All those years of suspicion and blame. I suppose we’ll never know what really happened.”
“Maybe we will.”
She frowned. “Why would you say that?”
“I’ll show you.” He ran upstairs and got the notebook.
“It’s Gramps’s Book of Secrets.” He pushed the notebook into her hands. “I read it, so they’re not secret anymore.”
She held the notebook in her lap without opening it.
He said, “Remember what Gramps said abo
ut secrets? He said secrets have the power to break the world in two. If I have a secret and you don’t know it, then you live in one world and I live in another, right? And if the secret is really, really big, then maybe our worlds break apart completely.”
She smiled in a puzzled sort of way. “When did you become a philosopher?”
“He also said there were ghosts.”
“That was just your grandfather talking.”
“I believe him.”
“Stuey, honey, there are no such things as ghosts.”
“Gramps said ghosts are made of memories, and he said they get stuck here because of secrets. I think Gramps got stuck. I think his dad got stuck too.” He pointed at the notebook in her hands. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
She shook her head and set the notebook aside.
“I’ve read it,” she said.
“You have?”
“Daddy had it with him when he died. He was holding on to it when we found him, clutching it to his belly as if it was the most important thing in the world. I read it that night and hid it in the golf bag.”
“You knew?”
“I know what Daddy wrote.”
“But . . . why didn’t you tell anybody? Why didn’t you tell Elly’s mom?”
“It happened a long time ago, Stuey. Before I was born. I just didn’t see any reason to dredge up the past. I was so happy when you and Elly became such good friends. I thought we’d left our family’s secrets behind.”
“We have to tell,” Stuey said. “We have to make the secrets not secret anymore.”
She shook her head slowly. “Why? What difference could it make?”
“It could change everything!”
“Stuey . . .”
“Don’t you see? The world broke apart because of secrets, and now Elly’s gone and the woods are gone and maybe we can fix it!”
She put her hand on his head, as if trying to keep him from floating away. “Stuey, there is nothing we can say or do that will bring the woods back. Or Elly.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “We have to fix it. We can tell the police so they don’t go looking for a murderer when Grandpa Ford and Robert Rosen actually killed each other. Like Gramps said — they hated each other to death. We can tell the Frankels. So they know what really happened, and when everybody knows the truth, then —”
His mom was looking at him with a pinched expression.
“I’m not crazy,” he said. “I’ve talked to Gramps. He’s the one who told me to find the notebook.”
Stuey was afraid she would get mad, but she didn’t. Instead, she opened the notebook and flipped slowly through the pages. After a few minutes she looked up.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“We have to tell the truth,” Stuey said.
They told the truth.
Nothing changed.
What had he expected? That Castle Rose would rise up from the flattened forest? That the trees would grow back overnight? That Elly would come strolling up the driveway?
His mom made copies of Gramps’s notebook. She gave one to the police and one to Maddy Frankel. Parts of it were printed in the newspaper and for a few days all of Westdale was buzzing with the old news . . . but nothing changed. It was ancient history. The mall was being built. Elly was still gone. Life in Westdale went on.
For the next few weeks, every day, Stuey visited the spot where the Castle Rose had stood. It was marked by the broken limestone slab and a slight depression where the stone had been. A few torn strips of yellow police tape were strewn about.
Elly never showed up.
In August the men came with their big machines, bringing truckloads of gravel, concrete, and stone blocks. Soon, the mall began to rise where once there had been a forest.
Mr. and Mrs. Frankel sold their house and moved to Atlanta.
School started again.
Time passed.
I write these words now looking out my window at the forest that was once my father’s country club, and I think how the golf course devoured the marsh, and how my father and Robert Rosen devoured each other, and how my actions devoured the truth.
I have lived my life with this secret, a veil of darkness that separates me from everyone else in the world, and I wonder how things might have been different. What if Pop had never drained the marsh to build his golf course? Or if he had not gone out onto the golf course that night? Or if Robert Rosen had not followed him?
If Pop hadn’t swung that golf club at Rosen, would Rosen have fired his gun? If Rosen hadn’t threatened Pop with the gun, would Pop have swung the club? And what if I had not buried the bodies? What if I had called the police and told them what I had seen? Each of those acts would have led to a different future, a different reality.
Is reality simply a dream we share? Will sharing my story change what is real? Alas, I will never know.
“Elenora!”
Elly groaned and ground her face into her pillow.
“Elenora Rose! It’s a quarter to seven!” The voice sliced down the hall and through her door and jabbed into her ears. She turned her face toward the clock next to her bed. It was only 6:36.
“You lie,” she mumbled.
“Elenora Rose Frankel! I want to hear you in that shower this minute!”
She sat up and rubbed her eyes with her palms.
“Elenora!”
She shoved her covers aside, swung her legs off the bed.
“Elenora!”
She stomped down the hall to the bathroom, making sure she was heard. She turned on the shower and sat down on the toilet and stared at the multicolored floor tiles. Sometimes she could make the tile pattern look like flowers, but this morning it looked like random rectangles, hard and cold beneath her bare feet. A single dark hair had appeared on top of her left big toe. She pinched it between her nails and yanked it off. Stupid hair.
She let the shower run for another minute, then turned it off. She leaned over the sink and splashed some water on her face. She dragged her fingers through her thick, insanely curly black hair and risked a quick glance in the mirror. Same stupid pointy face. She turned her head so she could see the streak of blue she’d dyed into it, and she smiled. Her mom hated that blue streak. She turned away from her reflection, stripped off the shorts and tank top she had slept in, and got dressed. Clean underwear from the laundry basket. Jeans from yesterday. A random T-shirt. Was it dance class day, or pottery day? Every morning it was something, even in the middle of summer. She looked down at her shirt, at a chocolate stain that hadn’t quite come out in the wash, and hoped it was pottery day. The stain wouldn’t matter then.
“Elenora!”
She left her nightclothes on the bathroom floor and shuffled zombie style toward the kitchen. The table was set for her, as always: a bowl, a carton of milk, a box of granola, and half a grapefruit. One thing was different this morning. On a small plate next to the grapefruit was a small cherry tart with a candle stuck in it.
Her mother said, “Happy thirteenth birthday, Elly Rose.”
Because it was her birthday, Elly declared, she wouldn’t go to dance class or whatever she was supposed to do.
“Don’t you want to see your friends?” her mom said.
“I don’t have any friends.”
“What are you going to do then? Sit around the house and mope?”
“I’m going out on the lake.”
“You spend more time in that kayak than you do at home!”
Elly didn’t bother to reply.
“Don’t forget to put on sunscreen,” her mom said.
On the morning of his thirteenth birthday, Stuey’s mom gave him a hundred-dollar Mall Pass — a gift certificate good at any store at Southdale, a mall fifteen miles away.
“You can use it to buy yourself new school clothes,” she said.
“Mom, school doesn’t start for two months!”
“It’s just a suggestion,” she said. “You can buy whatever you w
ant.”
“But this certificate is for Southdale. How am I supposed to get there?”
“I’ll drive you there this weekend.” She pointed in the direction of the Macy’s building looming over the treetops. “I’m not giving one nickel to that eyesore!”
“Whatever,” Stuey said. “I’m going over there now.”
“You spend too much time in that place.”
“You used to tell me I spent too much time in the woods.”
“Right, and the woods are gone.”
“Anyways, thanks for the gift certificate.”
“You’re welcome.”
Stuey went up to his room to get his baseball cap and his wallet. He only had four dollars. He rooted through his drawers, looking for change. He found two quarters, a nickel — and the compass. He hadn’t looked at it since the last time he’d seen Elly — the time he’d gotten soaked. The bezel was rusty, the glass was clouded, and the needle was frozen. He held it tight in his hand, feeling a hollowness grow inside his chest. He started to put it back in the drawer, then changed his mind and hung it around his neck.
“Happy birthday, Elly Rose,” he said.
Through the orchard, past the poplar grove, and over the knoll. How many times had he walked that path? He squeezed through a cut he’d made in the chain-link fence and scrambled down the steep bank to the parking lot of Westdale Mall.
The mall had turned out to be even bigger than Stuey had imagined. It took them a year and a half to build it. There was an enormous Macy’s at one end and a SuperTarget at the other. In between were sixty-two smaller stores, a Life Time Fitness, three restaurants, a twelve-screen theater, and a huge semicircular food court selling everything from pizza slices to sushi.
The mall curved around a pond. They called it Westdale Lake, even though it was so small you could throw a rock across it. A fringe of trees separated the surrounding parking lots from the neighborhoods on each side.