I knew it was coming. Knew it was useless to argue. Fat Ernst would probably just break my nose, then make me go up to the house by myself anyway. So I took a quick glance out at the fig trees, now just splintered, twisted silhouettes against a purple sky, and climbed out of the car. I thought about leaving the door open, thinking it would serve Fat Ernst right if I let a swarm of wasps loose inside the car. But I shut the door and started toward the house.
It still reminded me of a spider; a squat, sick arachnid with broken legs, still waiting patiently in its web of fig trees. A thin strip of cracked concrete took me to the front door. I couldn’t feel my legs; they seemed to be moving on their own, and I floated along through the weeds growing in the ragged crevices in the concrete as if I were standing onsome crumbling conveyer belt. I just eased on up to the front door and before I could stop myself, I reached out and pressed the doorbell. Nothing happened.
I swore under my breath and raised my fist to knock.
The door opened and Junior grinned out of the shadows at me. “Well, well. If it isn’t the sharpshooter. Hiya, Archie.”
He stood there wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. A chicken drumstick was clamped in one hand. He glanced over my shoulder at Fat Ernst’s Cadillac and took a chomp out of the chicken leg. He pulled his head away, like a dog, and I heard the gristle snap. He said, “Come back for some more shooting practice?”
“Uh, no. Look, I’m sorry about that—I, uh, didn’t mean to do it,” I finished in a small voice. Uncomfortable silence. I had to say something. “Fat Ernst says he’s got another job for you.”
“Is that right.”
A light flickered on somewhere behind him, to the right, illuminating the foyer of the house. A small, antique table stood against the wall behind Junior. A tall mirror hung above the table. It looked old and dark, as if bubbles and smoke had somehow infected the glass, twisting and obscuring the reflection. And I heard the voice, out of the room to the right. Her voice. It sounded like rusty iron being slowly pulled apart.
“What’s that pig fucker want?” Dry as death, the words sounded a little slurred and mushy. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about me or Fat Ernst.
Junior called back over his shoulder, “Says he’s got another job for us, Ma.”
In the mirror behind Junior, I caught a glimpse of something pale. The mirror must have been tilted somehow, maybe hung crookedly, because I could see into the room to the right. Maybe it was the living room, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t until much later that I began to suspect it was hung that way on purpose, so anyone in the living room could see who was at the front door without leaving the room. The pale shapedrifted through the smoky glass like a ghost, but I knew it was her. “What kind of job?”
Junior looked down at me and asked, “What kind of job?” He stuck the now-clean drumstick in his mouth and, in one quick jerk, broke it in half.
“I don’t know.” My voice cracked and trembled. “He didn’t say.”
“Archie don’t know, Ma,” Junior called back over his shoulder, imitating my high, cracking voice. “He didn’t say.”
The pallid figure in the mirror stopped moving. I could definitely tell it had a human shape now, maybe a little thin, with one arm missing or held in real close and tight, but it was a person. It was Pearl. She was watching me through the mirror. For some reason I could see one of her eyes in the reflection, perfectly clear, utterly black and staring. It felt like she was staring right through my head, right down into the nest of squirming fear that was beginning to spill out into the rest of my body. I felt naked. No, more than naked. I felt like I couldn’t hide anything, that all of my secrets were laid bare on a flat rock in the sun and poked at with a stick.
Junior stuck one of the broken ends of the bone in his mouth and started sucking on it, smacking his tongue against the top of his mouth as he sucked out the marrow.
“I know you,” Pearl said. “I know you. Saw you last night.” The reflection tilted its head slightly. “You’re Janine Stanton’s grandson, ain’t you?” It didn’t come out as a question. “Yes, I know you. Knew your grandfather. You look like him. Same scared eyes. I happen to know a few things ‘bout your grandma too.” I wasn’t sure, but it looked like the pale shape in the darkness and smoke of the mirror smiled, a horrible, crooked smile with only one side of her face. “How them boots fit, boy?”
My breath caught and I froze. How did she know about Grandpa’s boots? The figure in the mirror drifted back into the smoky shadows and disappeared. Junior flicked one half of the drumstick into the weeds and said, “What the hell does Fat Ernst want now? Tonight?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” Pause. “He just said to bring your shovels.”
The blast of a car horn shattered the evening stillness and I flinched. Fat Ernst must have been getting impatient. Junior scowled and said, “Ma don’t like a lot of unnecessary noise.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt like crawling into a hole and hiding there. Fat Ernst hit the horn again.
Junior picked at his teeth with a long fingernail. “Shovels, huh?”
I shrugged again, helpless. “That’s what he said. Said we could all make a lot of money. Just one night’s work.”
“How much money?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to talk to him.” I was trying to get Junior to go out to the car and get me away from the house, but Junior didn’t move. He just leaned against the doorframe.
“Well, then. You tell Fat Ernst not to get his panties in a bunch and to lay off that fucking horn, and we’ll be ready here lickety-split.”
I turned to go, saying, “Okay. I’ll tell him.” Pearl spoke up suddenly, sounding just inches from my ear. “My boys best get their fair share,” she whispered. “Otherwise … there’s a-going to be hell to pay, and I do mean hell.”
I nodded, and stumbled away. I didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to see how close she was. “I’ll tell him, I’ll tell him,” I said, moving down the front walk, still nodding like a doll with a broken spring for a neck. I did my best not to run shrieking through the dying light and the circling wasps back to the Cadillac.
I jumped in and slammed the door.
“So? What’d they say?” Fat Ernst asked.
“Junior said not to get your panties in a bunch and they’ll be ready lickety-split.”
“Okay, then.” Fat Ernst lit a cigar. “Took you long enough.”
CHAPTER 20
I figured it out as soon as we pulled into the little parking lot covered in a thin layer of pea gravel and surrounded by a sagging wrought-iron fence. During the long ride back down the highway out of the hills, the Sawyers following us the whole way, I kept wondering why Fat Ernst had told Junior and Bert to bring their shovels. I was a little worried we might be heading back to the pit, but that didn’t make sense. Fat Ernst had enough meat now, but after watching him kick Heck’s corpse and drop him in the Dumpster like that, I knew he was capable of anything. Grandma had been right about him.
We were here to dig up Earl’s coffin. And steal that buckle.
The sun had disappeared over an hour ago, leaving the valley shrouded in almost total darkness. Fat Ernst killed the Cadillac, sat back on the pomegranate seat, and flicked his cigar stub out onto the wet gravel. He instantly lit another.