The Girl With 39 Graves

by Michael Beres

  After a quick bar hamburg, which tasted like horse meat compared to the day-old bread slugburgers at the Green River Café, a cop came in. Instead of eyeballing her and the second highball, the cop looked over the two guys watching Salvatore. The guys were beneath one of the few ceiling lights and the cop went over to them. After a gab the cop left the place while putting something into his pocket. Rose wondered if she should have said something. Hey, mister. I accepted a date with this guy and I don’t think I like him. Could you give me a ride home?

  She wished they were at one of the lit tables, especially when Salvatore started talking about New York, saying there were a lot of niggers and kikes who wished he’d never been born because he “Beat the livin’ shit out of ‘em.” Maybe it was the straight bourbons talking, maybe not. His voice went up in volume, more people looking sideways at him in the dark. Rose held her purse on her lap, ready to either leave, or, if necessary, slug him with it. She carried a canyon rock in the bottom for exactly this reason.

  A little before midnight, when she could no longer take being part of Salvatore’s barroom sideshow, she told him she was expected home. He finished his last bourbon, had some water, took a pill from his pocket, downed it, and escorted her out the door. In the parking lot there was some hubbub about one car blocking another, the hoods who’d given the cop a payoff involved. Salvatore laughed like a hyena, told her to hurry into the Buick, and sped out.

  During the drive back toward Green River, he slowed down and said how beautiful she was and how he liked her dress and her shoes and especially her hair. He went on and on, saying he never saw anyone so beautiful, not even in New York. He popped another pill. When she asked what kind of pill, he said aspirin for his headache.

  He was quiet a while, then reached over and put his hand on her thigh, bunching the skirt up in his hand like it’s in the way and her thigh’s his wedge of pie. Rose had been here before and knew how to smile as she pushed his hand away.

  When they passed the Firehole Canyon sign and continued heading toward Green River she felt better. But then, as Green River lights appeared, he slammed the brakes and turned south onto a dusty side road toward the river, the top of the canyon, the necking rock. He pulled off the road at the canyon edge. When he stopped but left the engine running she figured to convince him to turn around and go back to the highway. If not, maybe she’d get out and make tracks. It wasn’t that far to the highway. She’d been here before and knew her way around.

  The dash lights glowed on his face, making him into a comic book shadow. She pointed out the windshield. “The moon sets in the afternoon now. My mom keeps track of it. With no moon the stars are sure bright, aren’t they?”

  Silence. She rolled down her window and felt a slight breeze off the canyon. She recalled this was the spot she and her girlfriends skinny-dipped down in the river the summer before. He put his hand on her thigh again, same place, moving her dress hem higher.

  “I really should be getting home, Salvatore.”

  The air was fresh compared to the bar. She wished they were still there with other people. What about the men she thought were keeping an eye on Salvatore? She looked back for another car but saw nothing but rocks, scrub, and high desert plateau against the stars.

  “It’s got to be after midnight, Salvatore. My mom will be looking for me. She might even get my uncle to give her a ride and—”

  “And what?” His voice was loud like back in the bar.

  “They’ll be driving around looking for me. My uncle comes down this road a lot because he knows it’s a favorite spot for guys with cars to take their girlfriends.”

  He let go of her leg. She pulled down her dress hem. “Can we go now? It’s our first date and maybe if we go out again—”

  “I got me a brand new suit.” His voice was low, serious. “And how about this car? I don’t go through this much trouble for other girls. They mostly come to me. Here I am, putting myself out for a gal like you and—”

  “Please. Take me home now.”

  He reached out and shut off the lights and engine. His voice changed, the hint of a phony southwestern cowboy accent. “Well maybe I’ll do just that. But first we should get out and take a gander at the canyon in starlight.”

  He got out on his side, came around to her side, reached into the open window and opened the door. “Just in case you all locked me out.”

  She got out. They’d look at the stars a while, maybe hug and kiss a little, and she’d insist he take her home. He held her hand tightly as they stared at the stars. “I sure am grateful, ma’am, for us being able to share this moment.”

  The way he spoke made her nervous. “You don’t even know me.”

  He stepped around and faced her, grasping her arms, his face a shadow against the stars. “Don’t be a jelly bean. Come on, we’ll walk down in the canyon a little.”

  When she paused, he pulled her forward, “I forgot to mention the reason for us meeting tonight. You see, I realize now, I really love your hair.”

  “My hair?”

  “Yes ma’am. I love your hair so much it gives me butterflies. Here, let me hold it.”

  “Okay, one kiss. Then I really have to—”

  He was on her before she could react. They fell to the ground. She tried to roll away but he flattened her onto rock and dust. The light from the stars made him into a shadow. He pulled something from his pocket and suddenly a blade reflected starlight. When she sat up to scream his hand covered her mouth and she felt it, an intense burning at the side of her belly that took her wind out. His other hand had both her arms locked behind.

  He spun her around and threw her back down. Something metal clattered on rock. “Nothing personal, Rose. I need to satisfy my desires.”

  One hand up her dress, his other hand grasping her hair. The burning at the side of her belly weakened her and she felt the warmth of blood. She screamed and the canyon echoed it back. Somehow he got his trousers down and ripped off her underwear. He entered her. His moves in and out were mechanical. She didn’t want it to be like this. Not the first time like this! He lifted her hips from the ground, one hand clenching her buttocks, the other pulling her hair.

  She tried hitting him, harder and harder, but he held on. If only she’d brought her purse with the canyon rock from the car. The purse that was between them when he first reached over. Thinking about hitting him with her purse gave strength to her arms and she swung hard, like when she was a kid playing baseball with the boys. Harder and harder until he let go.

  She crawled away, stumbled up to the car, reached into the open window, turned in time to see him coming for her, and swung the purse in a wide arc. It smashed him in the head and put him to the ground.

  He struggled to get up and went down on hands and knees. She staggered back to the car, holding her hot belly. When it seemed he’d given up, a growl emerged from deep inside and he launched himself at her. He pulled her hair and kept pulling. She fell away but he pulled her so hard by her hair she was lifted from the ground. Pulling and pulling at her hair. Him growling and screaming. The words “I just love your hair!” screamed out. The taste of grit and rock, her face driven into the ground, pounded into the ground as he pulled her hair again and again. Finally, the stars were gone as if they’d followed the moon below the horizon. The pain in her belly was gone, leaving nothing but her head feeling it was being blown to pieces.

  Cletus Minch fell in love with fishing gear while working at the hardware store and managed to buy himself a fly rod and reel and the gear to make artificial flies. His prize possession was the leather-trimmed creel basket he got from an old timer named Jake who said he was too old to fish and wanted the creel to go to someone who’d appreciate it.

  On fishing mornings Cletus would find a lunch packed by his mom in the icebox. Sometimes sandwiches were made with trout from his last fishing trip, sometimes jam. That morning he
could tell by the absence of fish odor his mom had used jam. He packed the lunch in his creel and headed off. The half moon wouldn’t rise until after sunrise, but once away from the few lights in town, starlight was good enough.

  He passed his old fishing spots from when he was younger and lacked proper boots. At first, shale along the east side of the gorge was loose, making his trek along the river noisy. Eventually the ground stabilized where he knew it would. Near a familiar boulder he saw the gray light of dawn. Some locals called it the necking rock. It was only a mile south of the highway, a favorite pull-off for the handful of boys his age who had access to a car or truck. No such luck for him. With his father out of work, and his mother doing laundry for neighbors, and especially because they lacked ranch land, Cletus knew they chose to have only one son, and no way would they ever be able to afford a car.

  Cletus tried a few spots where there were stepping-stones into the river, at first using a junk fly to get his rhythm. At daylight he’d get serious, fill his creel with wet moss, and catch some fish. Getting home by noon with enough cool fish for the week would help feed his family. Plus this summer a few of the neighbors had begun purchasing fish from his mother.

  When it was light enough he sat on a boulder, opened his fly box, and selected one of his favorites constructed on the proper hook size. It was reddish-brown except for the purple hackle and yellow wings. He took his time, listening to the river while he fiddled with his gear. The sun would rise behind him in the east and he looked out at boulders he could see lodged in the river bottom. He never went out so deep his high-tops would get soaked. Someday he’d be able to afford the waders he’d been eyeing at the store. Yep, one of these days he’d be standing out there in the middle of the river like the old timer who gave him the creel. He’d have bought the old man’s waders but, according to the old man, “Not worth patching anymore.”

  When the sun finally peeked over the east edge of the gorge and lit up the west side, Cletus saw the shadow of the necking rock above the far shore. The red rock reflected in the undulation of the river, mixing reds into greens and blues. As it got brighter he spotted a patch of moss behind a boulder cluster to the south. Among the boulders was one on which he’d chiseled his initials, CM, at the beginning of summer to mark one of his favorite spots. He got up and walked to the moss patch. It looked like green moss had died, turning reddish brown. But as he got closer he realized it wasn’t moss. Maybe some other vegetation, maybe something fibrous he could use to make a fly. It wasn’t until he bent to pick it up that he realized it was hair. He pulled some hair from the moss, holding the strands up to the light of the rising sun. More red than brown, maybe a red he’d seen somewhere. Maybe the color of yarn they had at the hardware store. When he pulled more hair from the moss, something came with it. At first he thought it might be a slug or part of a lizard or fish that had gotten tangled.

  Then he saw something else. Near the hair, near what looked like fish or lizard guts, down beneath the lapping water line—He dropped the hair, jumped back. He dropped his pole. He heard himself gasp. “No!” He stumbled back to the boulder on which he’d been sitting earlier. “No!”

  Frank Grogan, the elderly Green River sheriff, had an office at the back of the town hall the size of a closet. The cell in one corner was a flat-barred cube that could hold four men if they all stood. Frank’s desk was held up by an ancient treadle sewing machine stand. When he was a young sheriff decades earlier after he left the Army following the Spanish-American war, he built a box where the sewing machine had been. He put on a larger top with a lift-up pad-locked door in order to have a safe place to store ammunition. On the wall was a map of the town, a map of the gorge down to the Utah line, and a photograph of him looking like a schoolboy.

  Frank always got into the office early. Nothing else to do since his wife passed. First stop was the café for coffee and eggs, then to the office for a nap, then maybe another trip back to the café to fill his thermos. He sat on a pillow on his wooden chair, propped his feet on his desk and was about to take his morning nap, staring at the grainy photograph of himself as a schoolboy, when the door flung open and the boy himself stumbled inside, breathless.

  The schoolboy held a whip. Frank stood, grasping the pain in his chest, closed his eyes, held himself up with both hands on his desk, listening to his gasps for breath and to the boy’s gasps for breath. He wanted to tell the boy to go ahead and whip him like a wild horse because he figured the ghost of his past whoring and drinking before coming out west had returned to take him back east to the war. But then the pain in his chest subsided, and the boy spoke.

  “Sheriff Grogan!”

  “What the hell, boy? Is that you, Cletus? I thought I’d died!”

  “Sheriff!”

  “Calm down! Calm down. Catch your breath.”

  The whip was actually the boy’s fly rod. His creel had swung around to his back, the strap pressing on the boy’s neck. He was wet from head to toe and it looked like he threw up on his shirt.

  “What the hell, Cletus? You go swimmin’ this morning instead of fishin’?”

  “I…I can’t understand…I hope I did right!”

  “What, boy?”

  Cletus shifted his creel from behind his back. “There were vultures. I figured there’d be more, especially later.” Cletus came closer and turned his creel to his front, resting it on the desk.

  “It’s dripping wet, Cletus. I didn’t ask for no fish.”

  “It ain’t fish. I didn’t know what else to do. There was at least one vulture circling downriver and I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Cletus unbuckled the creel and slowly opened it, looking out the only window in the office. “I didn’t want the vultures to get it.”

  Inside the creel, packed in moss, was a hand cut off above the wrist. A small, delicate, white hand with a pearl ring on one of the swollen fingers.

  Frank fell back in his chair, held his chest.

  “I hope I did the right thing. There were vultures.”

  “Yeah, Cletus. You sure did the right thing.”

  Chapter 20

  Kiev stakeout dream, militia partners taking turns sleeping, Janos at the wheel, Lazlo in back, dead-end into a red canyon ahead. Janos! The brakes! Lazlo opens his eyes. The sky above buildings across the street tinted red. Red skies in morning, sailors take warning.

  Wait, he’s on the sofa, Niki Gianakos in the bedroom. They arrived last night, driving side streets hunting for parking. When he found a spot he pulled ahead so Niki could take it. After throwing a suitcase and briefcase into the back of his Civic, he found another tighter spot. Niki was surprised having to walk two blocks to his building.

  “There are plenty of spots on your street.”

  “Short-term. A ticket, then the rip-off towing service.”

  Lazlo recalled a rush of adrenaline when she finished using the bathroom and, wearing plaid pajamas, said goodnight before going into the bedroom and gently closing the door.

  They ate breakfast down the street at the Bakery Café. Both wore the same clothes as the night before—red blouse and shirt, blue jeans. Lazlo introduced Niki to Ria telling her they were working a case. Ria smiled knowingly and, on the way back to the window to the kitchen, mumbled, “Jamais vu, things to come.” The cook, Stella, leaned out and winked. Luckily, Demidchik, the insane Russian, did not show up.

  The sun was bright, reflecting off car windows as they walked back to Lazlo’s building. A black SUV parked across the street, windows tinted so darkly he could not tell if anyone was inside. Perhaps Homeland Security, FBI, or another agency assigned to keep Jacobson informed.

  Back in the apartment they sat at the table outside the kitchen alcove. Niki’s cheeks aglow, hair brushed into a bouffant, blue eyes sparkling in the light from the window. She suggested they compare notes and he watched as she went to the bedroom. A few minutes ago he motion
ed her up the stairs ahead of him. She’d climbed quickly. He’d done the same, subtracting years. When she returned to the table with her briefcase, he said, “You look good in jeans.”

  She smiled. “So do you. Let’s discuss appearances later. We have work to do.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  Niki pulled a dog-eared faded green booklet from the briefcase. “Pictorial Review, Civilian Conservation Corps, Pocatello District, Company 3544, Manila, Utah.” The first page had a drawing of a uniformed young man shouldering a pick as if it were a rifle. The second page had a printed message about the booklet being given someone, “Hermione” written in. Following an introduction was another line filled in, “Erotas, Nick.”

  “Hermione was my mother,” said Niki. “They met before he went into the CCCs. The way my father signed is frisky of him being that it was 1939.” Niki touched the word on the page. “Erotas is the modern form of the Greek word Eros. There are several ways to express love in ancient Greek. This is the sexy one.” Niki glanced to Lazlo and smiled. “You’re blushing.”

  The following page contained certification of the CCC member, the company, camp, date, and commanding officer signature. Next was the district commander’s message, photo, and US Army rank. After that several pages with photos of the company commander, inspectors, instructors, surgeons, officers, and local experienced men (LEMs).

  “Finally, down to the nitty-gritty,” said Niki.

  The next group of photos showed young men boarding stake-sided trucks to work sites, moving rock, putting up fences and cattle guards, the interior and exterior of barracks, and, finally, group photos with enrollee name lists.

  Niki selected a photo, moved her finger along a row, and stopped. “This is my father. No close-ups, simply part of the group. First time I looked at the photograph years ago I was able to pick him out. He had a great smile.”