The Best American Mystery Stories 2015 (27 page)

My father pours himself a cup, takes a long sip. “So Roxy musta killed the Speakman chickens, felt bad about it, got my shovel, dug a perfectly round hole, buried said chicken, then put my shovel back with freshly turned soil on it. But later she decided she didn’t feel that bad and wanted to eat the chicken anyway, so she dug it up and fought a coon for it on the back porch. You tracking, Emmett?”

“Yessir.”

“I understand you don’t want your dog to be in trouble. I don’t know why you would lie to me. And you are horrible at it. I knew soon as I asked, saw your whole face go white.”

“Yessir.”

“Hey. Look at me. Whatever else you think of me, I’m not gonna punish your dog for being a dog. And I can’t help you with any problems if I don’t know about them. Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Good. Get a box of matches and some lighter fluid. We’re gonna fix this one together.”

So we put the dead bird, some paper, and two logs of oak into our burn barrel, then I squeeze a half-bottle of lighter fluid into the can. It all goes up in a
whoosh
of flame. The flames flicker, play light across my father’s face. “See. Fire cleanses all. Should take care of it. If there’s a skeleton left, you can break it up with my framing hammer. Not the finish hammer, though. The framing one.”

“Okay.”

“Emmett . . . what are the two things that can solve any problem?”

I say my dad’s mantra. “A bottle of Scotch and a sharp Buck knife.”

“Who’s the Scotch for?”

“Me.”

“Good. And the knife?”

“Whoever is the problem.”

“That’s right. Sometimes you need both.” He messes my hair. “Got an early overtime shift at the mill. Enjoy your Saturday. Stay with the fire till it dies down.” He tromps through the grass, never spilling a drop of coffee.

The fire is plenty hot, turns everything to ash.

After some sleep I wake and shower and feel hunger stirring me. Mom’s in the kitchen, sipping steamy coffee, reading a romance novel at the table. “Long night?” she says.

“Yup.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Want some waffles?”

“Please.”

So I eat waffles smothered in butter and thick maple syrup, and watch Garfield and Bugs and later on the Ninja Turtles. And I feel better, normal.

Mom cleans the house around me and I mow the front lawn, around the oak and under the wisteria. I almost hit the paper but stop and overhand it onto the porch. When I’m done my shirt sticks to the sweat on my back, and I wipe my forehead across my sleeve.

Inside I hear soft crying in the kitchen. Mom’s got the paper out, flat on the table. “You okay?” I say.

“Oh Emmett, I’m so sorry.” She blinks puffy red eyes, motions to the paper, and I read the headline:

Body Discovered at Battle Creek

Alfie Johnson, 12, Presumed Suicide

“Who’s Alfie Johnson?”

My mother looks at me, and then cries more. Eventually the tears subside and she says, “Your friend. Blinky. That’s his real name.”

“No. No way.” My mind is too small and I can’t make this idea fit. “I just saw him yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, honey, but he’s gone. It looks like he loaded all his pockets down with rocks and then walked to the middle of the creek and laid down.” She starts crying again.

I could see Blinky in my mind’s eye, lying at the bottom of the creek. For some reason, his eyes were open in my imaginings. “I need to talk to my friends. Can I go out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Mom. Brady and Flynn and Max were his friends too.”

She takes a deep breath. “Okay. But be careful.”

The ten-speed can’t go fast enough, but I just keep pushing the pedals harder. I ditch the bike in Max’s driveway. The door opens after my rapid-fire frantic knocks. Max’s dad answers, and whatever’s on my face is enough. “She’s in her room,” he says softly.

Max is sobbing into her pillow, and it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. I knock on her doorframe and she sits up, her face puffy and red.

“Hey,” I say, to say something.

Then she’s up and her arms are around my neck. We sit on her bed and talk for a long time, about Blinky and the awfulness of the world and how he shouldn’t have left us. Max cries and I squeeze her—like if I do it right, I can make it better. I must have been doing it wrong, though, cause I ended up crying too.

Monday comes and there’s a school assembly. A guy in a tie shows up, tells us through a microphone that it’s okay to feel how we’re feeling, and that time will slowly make things normal again. He talks about tragedy and sense of loss, and strategies for dealing with them, but whatever empathy he’s trying to convey is lost in the electronic sound system.

Off in the corner, by the basketball banners, I see Mr. Glass leaning on the wall, arms crossed and nodding sincerely to the speaker’s words. My stomach does a somersault.

I find Flynn at his locker. “You bring it?”

“Yup.” He hands me the Rubik’s Cube and I tuck it in my bag. “Even got some B-nocs. You really think this is gonna work?”

“I think he’s gonna be sheet-white when he sees it.”

“What does that prove? You think Maxine’s dad can put him in jail on a reaction?”

“I just wanna prove it to myself.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. I just wanna know I’m right.”

Flynn looks at me for a long moment. “Uh-huh. Sure.”

Maxine plays distracter for us. “Just be charming,” I tell her.

“What does that mean?”

Flynn laughs. “Just be yourself. Trust me.”

We go to the teachers’ lounge, and from the hall Maxine asks two teachers a question with an upward inflection. She smiles as they both step out. She walks down the hall and they just follow. Flynn and I walk in right behind them. Flynn pulls the blinds up all the way and cuts the cord so they can’t be lowered. I find Glass’s locker, put the cube right on top.

We walk right past the two teachers and I hear Max. “Thank you so much. You guys are great, really. I gotta get my books, but thanks for the explanation.”

Smoker’s Hill sits across the parking lot and right in front of the teachers’ lounge window. Max catches up. “That was easy.”

“What’d you ask them?”

“Just how the class schedule worked. Which classes were for which periods. They were really nice about it.”

“It’s October,” Flynn says and we both laugh. We laugh even harder at Max’s frown.

We wait on the hill, Flynn with his binoculars and me with the scope off my dad’s Marlin. One of the high school smokers wanders over. “Girls’ locker room is on the other side, fellas,” he tells us, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth.

“Gross. Get out of here,” Max says, and chases him away with a glare.

There’s mass movement after the second-period bell sounds. We wait, eyes glued to the teachers’ lounge. They file in, drinking coffee and carrying folders. Glass opens the locker and backs away. He shuts the door quickly and turns, looking at everyone in the room.

And he is sheet-white.

“Holy shit,” Flynn says.

“What?” Max asks. “What’d he do?”

I think about what I’m going to do. I think about Max’s smile, and how I never want to be out of its brightness. “Nothing,” I say. “I thought he’d react to the cube, but he didn’t. I musta been wrong about him.” Then I drop the scope in my bag, ignore Flynn’s frown, and go to class.

I wake early, meet my dad in the kitchen. It’s still coal-dark outside and he’s only on his first cup of coffee. “Morning,” he says.

“You were something, right? Before you were a millwright?”

He frowns, folds the paper neatly, puts it aside. “I surely was.”

“I have questions.”

“I may have answers,” he says. And he does, answering them all in his calm manner. It’s strange, meeting him for the first time.

Armed with knowledge, I prep my stuff, and the following day we go to Blinky’s funeral. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him in a suit. The boy in the box looks like a poor wax caricature of my friend. Max hugs me fiercely and Flynn tries to be tough. Brady cries more than Max.

People stand, say nice things, say all the right things, but none of it unties the knot in my stomach.

Glass even speaks, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Alfie was a beautiful boy. He had charms the world will never know, and it is a little darker here without him.”

I don’t cry, I just look at Glass and let the heat of my rage turn the tears to steam.

After, in the parking lot, Glass comes over. “I know he was your friend, but I feel like he was mine too.” He hugs us each and I want to crush his spine. I feel slimy and poisonous as I pull away. His eyes are shiny and wet and full of sorrow and I want to put them out with my thumbs.

That night I lie in bed, unable to sleep, staring at my ceiling, waiting. At midnight I grab my special bag, pull on sweats, and walk my ten-speed to the end of the drive before I get on. Then I ride, a river of adrenaline carrying me along. I lean into the pedals, stomp my feet. There’s the pressure of the bag on my back and the cool night air on my face and a sense of peace.

I’m sweating when I reach my destination. There is only stillness and starlight with me on the street. When I knock, I see the lights come on one by one as he moves through the house. Something moves behind the peephole. I grip the ax handle hard and the door opens for me.

“Emmett?” Glass says sleepily. “What . . .”

But I drive the ax handle into his stomach and he grunts in surprise, steps back, stoops to a knee. I bring the ax down on his back and side and shoulders and I go on until my arms are tired and Glass is a curled ball on the floor. I close the door, bind his hands and ankles with fishing line.

He cries the whole time. “Why?”

I move through the house, snapping on lights. There’s three bedrooms—a master, an office, and one full of brand-new, in-the-box toys. Simon Says and He-Man action figures, and yo-yos. I almost vomit. There’s a Polaroid on his nightstand.

Blinky. Smiling, holding a toy.

I toss the picture on the floor in front of Glass’s withered form. “This is why.”

“What? I didn’t do anything to Alfie. I would never. I only wanted him to be happy.” Glass clears his throat, puts some beef behind it. “If you let me go now, I won’t say anything to the police, Emmett. You could go to jail . . . prison even.”

I pick up the picture. “Hey, Mr. Glass, I have a question. Why do you have a picture of Blinky?”

He laughs. “Don’t be jealous, Emmett. Alfie needed extra attention. He was a special boy.”

“Why was this photo taken in this house?” I look around. “Right there on that wall.”

Only silence answers me, and in the quiet it strikes me that I sound just like my father.

So I gag him, drag him out to his car, put my bike and bag in the trunk. His car is weird, but I’ve had plenty of practice driving on the farm. The strangest thing is driving on smooth roads. No one passes and nothing moves.

When we get to my home, I drive the last leg with the lights off and kind of coast in. The dome light comes on when I open his door and he screams behind the duct tape. I drag him out despite his struggle and drop him on the tarp, right next to the burn barrel. I think of Blinky, beneath the water, staring up. I hope there was blue sky for him to see. I don’t know why.

“This can’t be settled with Scotch,” I tell him. The snick of the Buck knife opening is loud in the cloudless night.

Soon I have the burn barrel going nice and hot, a few logs of oak and a whole container of lighter fluid. When my dad comes out, coffee mug in hand, gray light has painted the horizon starless. He leans over the barrel. “Jesus.” And after a moment, “You’re definitely going to need the hammer. Remember—”

“I know. The framing hammer.”

“Well, a finish hammer with dings on the face is no good,” he says reasonably. “Now about that car out front . . .”

And he tells me that lesson.

STEVEN HEIGHTON

FROM
New England Review

T
HEY WERE PARKED
on Union, in front of her place, their knees locked in conference around the stick shift, Janna and Justin talking, necking a little, the windows just beginning to steam. We’d better stop, she said. I should go now. It was 1
A.M.
, a Thursday night turned Friday morning. Squads of drunken students were on the town. So far nobody had passed the car.
Hey, take it to a Travelodge, man!
Nights like this, that sort of thing could happen—one time a rigid hand had rammed the hood, another time someone had smacked the passenger window a foot from her ear, Justin’s fingers in her hair stopping dead.

I won’t miss this part, he told her.

I really should go, Jus.

Friday was her “nightmare day,” a double shift at the upscale café/bistro where she was now manager. Thursday nights she insisted on sleeping at her own place, alone. Sleep wasn’t really the issue, he sensed. This seemed to be a ritual of independence, and he knew she would maintain it strictly, having declared she would, until they moved in together in the new year. Other nights of the week they slept at his place or hers. They would be moving into a storm-worn but solid Victorian red-brick bungalow, three bedrooms, hardwood floors, in a druggy neighborhood now being colonized by bohemians and young professionals. Justin and Janna were somewhere on the chart between those categories. In March they planned to fly, tongues somewhat in cheeks, to Las Vegas to get married.

These separate Thursday nights, this symbolic vestige (as he saw it), tore him up in a small way. He could never take in too much of her. He had never been in this position before—the one who loves harder and lives the risk of it. It hadn’t been this way at first. Then it was this way, then it wasn’t, and now it was again, but more so. This must be a good thing, he felt—this swaying of the balance of desire—and he would try to work out in his mind why it was a good thing, and the words
reciprocal
and
mutuality
would pop up from somewhere, and the idea of a “marital dance,” which he thought he had probably read somewhere, yes, definitely . . . and his mind would start to drift, unable to concentrate on the matter for so long, and he would simply want her body next to his again. For now, no excess seemed possible.