An Unmarked Grave (16 page)

After snapping a shot of the repaired fence, I crawled
through the barbed wire-a technique in itself-and snapped
a couple of shots of the oak. The scar in the thick trunk was
shallow, in keeping with the crumpled fender.

Several patches of shinnery-wrist-thick stunted oaks
no more than head high-dotted the pasture. Beyond the
tree was the gully.

I frowned. The gully was deep-thirty feet, at least. A
narrow creek meandered along the bed of the ravine. The
ground along the rim of the creek was scarred with tire
tracks that obliterated the original ones. On the far bank
grew a thicket of wild azaleas covered with blackberry
vines.

I snapped a few more shots. On the way back to the
pickup, I noticed a set of old tracks leading around and behind a patch of shinnery but dismissed them.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Find anything?"

"Nope" I closed the door and sat staring out over the
steering wheel. "I don't think so" I shook my head and
looked back at the gully. "It's deep"

"How deep?"

I shrugged. "Twenty-five, thirty feet"

He groaned. "Must have been some impact when it hit"

"Yeah," I replied, shifting into gear and heading on down
the road. I wanted to pay Harlan Barton a visit. I crossed my
fingers he was sober.

After negotiating the S curve and rattling over the old
bridge, I pulled up at a battered mailbox leaning to the left
like a wobbly drunk. I hoped that was not a portent of Barton's condition. Rust pocked every inch of the box.

"What's here?" Jack asked.

"Old man by the name of Barton, I think. I hope," I
replied, trying unsuccessfully to read the name on the mailbox. "Let's go up and see"

The farmhouse was a weathered gray two-story with a
porch running the length of the house. One side of the
house sagged, giving the porch the appearance of a matchstick snapped in the middle. Several panes of glass were
broken from windows upstairs and down. Some had been
covered with slats of wood, several of which had come
loose and swung by one end from a single nail like a pendulum with each gust of wind.

Back in Louisiana, I'd seen houses like this out on the
prairies, but they had all been deserted for years.

I stopped in front of the house.

Moments later, the front door opened, and a ragged figure peered out. A patchy gray beard grizzled his wrinkled cheeks. The ragged trousers he wore appeared three sizes
too big. I stepped out and held up my hand. "Mr. Barton?"

He didn't answer, so I continued, identifying myself and
explaining, "Justin Chester's family sent me up here to pick
up his things. Marvin Lewis said you sometimes worked
with Justin. I hoped I might be able to talk to you about
him" I leaned back into the pickup and grabbed the bottle
of Jim Beam. I held it up for him to see. "We didn't come
empty-handed"

Five minutes later, we were seated around an ancient round
oak table in the kitchen, a tiny pocket of warmth in the frigid
house. To merely that say the room, the entire house, was
cluttered could not begin to describe the extent of the chaos.

The only place I'd ever seen close to it was back in Central Texas in a battered mobile home in the middle of the
Devil's Backbone hills. There I encountered an old codger
who kept pet snakes in his house. He had a six-foot rat snake
he had named Jefferson Davis that came out from under the
couch every noon for a saucer of whiskey.

Glancing around the kitchen, I noted that Barton's cabinets and countertops were cluttered with dishes, pans, and
farm items. When he had run out of room on the cabinets,
he'd started around the walls. Stacks of magazines dating
back to the thirties filled the halls, leaving only a narrow
path to traverse from one room to the next.

I would not have been surprised one whit if old rat snake
Jefferson Davis didn't have a couple dozen of his distant
family members living among the junk.

Barton set three glasses on the table. I'll give him credit,
he did wipe them out, but with the tail of his greasy flannel shirt. We both declined a drink, saying it was too early in
the morning.

Barton filled the dingy water glass half full, gulped it
down, and immediately replenished it. He licked his lips and
leaned back in the worn chair, a satisfied grin on his craggy
face. "Much obliged, boys. Now, what can I do for you?"

I explained that Justin's family had hired me to gather
his belongings and talk to those who knew him. "They have
no idea what he was doing up here, and they'd like to know.
Last night, Marvin Lewis told us that sometimes you worked
with Justin."

His rheumy eyes grew wary. "Sometimes"

I studied him for a moment, sensing that he knew more
about Justin's business than I supposed. I pulled out the roll
of papers from my inside pocket and spread them out on the
table before him.

A single bulb hung directly over the table, illuminating
it with a dim glow. "Have you ever seen these drawings?"

He studied them for a moment, then placed a wrinkled finger with a dirt-encrusted nail on one. "This here is Elysian
Hills and Cemetery Road"

I showed him the sheet with the inventory of artifacts.
"This is a list of what he claims he found, but I couldn't find
any of the items, especially this one" I indicated the aircraft
skin.

He took another long drink of whiskey and gave me a sly
grin. "Wouldn't reckon you could. He gave them to me to
hide"

"You?" I stared in disbelief.

I indicated the characters at the bottom of the page. "All
of this, even the piece of metal with hieroglyphics on it?"

He pursed his lips. "I don't know about no high-er, whatever you said, but that piece of metal has that kind of
scratching on it." He pointed to the drawn characters at the
bottom of the page. "I was there when Justin copied them
from the metal. He didn't know what they meant either,
but he said he was going to take them to someone at some
college who studied things like that."

By now my heart was thudding in my chest like a twelvepound hammer forging a horseshoe. I didn't know if I
believed the old man or not, although he had given me no
reason not to. "Was there something unusual about the metal?
I mean, besides these characters?"

He looked from me to Jack and back again as if expecting us to laugh at him. "You, being city folk, might not think
so, what with all these new inventions around today, but this
metal, if you folded it in half and laid it down, it would
straighten itself out"

Jack broke into a fit of coughing.

Barton continued, nodding to the sheet of paper with the
grid penciled in. "That one," he said. "That's the cemetery.
And see there, that circle on the juncture of those two grid
lines?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

After taking another large swallow of whiskey, he replied.
"From the middle of those two roads, exactly twenty feet
southwest, is a metal rod in the ground. Justin put it there
where I showed him. Buried it under the grass so no one
would see it."

I frowned, not following the gist of what he was saying.
"Why? Does it mark something?"

A sly grin curled his lips. "Reckon it does" He paused.

We waited impatiently. Finally Jack demanded, "So, what
does it mark?"

The old man's grin grew wider. "That's where the spaceman was supposed to be buried"

f Jack hadn't been coughing enough, Barton's declaration set him off again. I stared at the old man, searching for
a smile in his eyes or on his thin lips. He looked up at me
steadily and gestured to the three sheets of paper on the
table. "Where did you find those?"

"Why?" I frowned.

"Because I couldn't. Justin was a good man. He told me
if anything happened to him, to hide those papers, but I
couldn't find them"

Confused, I shook my head. "If something happened to
him? He said that?"

His weathered cheeks had taken on a light flush from the
bourbon. His tone curt, he replied, "I don't lie none, sonny."

"No, no. I didn't mean that. It's just that I had no ideawell-"

"That there might be someone who didn't want the spaceman business stirred up?"

Jack leaned forward. "What do you mean by `stirred up,'
Mr. Barton?"

By now, the bourbon had loosened the old man's tongue.
He eyed us slyly. "Could be someone don't want the grave
dug up"

I studied him for several long moments, absorbing the
implication of his words. I thought of the wound to the back
of Justin's head. "Are you saying Justin's death was not an
accident?"

He shrugged. "I ain't saying nothing except the man had a
bad feeling. I don't know where or how he got it, but he told
me if something happened to him, to hide them papers"

I remembered Marvin Lewis telling us about the prowler.
"So that was you over at Lewis' night before last?"

"Yep. Got down into Justin's room, but I couldn't find
them papers" He spotted Jack grinning at me. "Why you
asking?"

"Lewis. He told us he had a prowler."

The old man cackled. "Marvin. He's got his own secrets.
Him and Justin thought just alike about the spaceman, but
neither of them knew the whole story. Not like I know it.
And when I told Justin the spaceman wasn't there, he didn't
believe me" He paused. "It was just after that Justin got hisself kilt dead"

It was my turn to be puzzled. "What story? About the
spaceman?"

A sly gleam glittered in his eyes. "The spaceman. He
didn't die."

I stammered. "But-"

Jack's eyes grew wide. "There's no such thing as spacemen. That's impossible"

Barton downed another glass of bourbon. I eyed the bottle, thinking I might need a slug myself. Things were getting crazier and crazier.

"There's a heap of things we ain't never heard about, Mr.
Edney. That don't mean they ain't there" Barton studied us.
I had the feeling he was wondering if he should tell us the
story or not. Finally, he continued. "I saw him once, when I
was a younker-just a glimpse as he was leaving our barn
before dark one night."

If Jack's eyes had grown any wider, they would have
popped from his head and bounced around on the floor like
marbles. And mine wouldn't have been far behind. "S-Saw
who?" Jack gasped.

"Why, the spaceman" Barton continued. "I told my
grandpa, and he told me the story about what took place. He
was a young man when the ship crashed. He was one of
them who was to bury the man, but on the way to the cemetery, they heard a noise. When they opened the box, the man
was alive, so they turned him loose. Swore to each other
never to say a word about it" He rose from the table and
pointed out the rear window. "Back there is the Diablo
Canyons. They're full of caves and tunnels. That's where
he's said to be. I used to go out and see if I could find him,
but I never saw him again. Never saw no sign of nothing
except critters" He shrugged. "Can't tell, though. I might go
out back tomorrow and catch a glimpse of him."