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  I saw that Nancy was crying a little. I could tell by the way her body was heaving. That’s when she put a quick foot to Walter’s back. Way he was squatting there with the pistol dangling in his hand, it didn’t take much for him to tumble in.

  His body slammed against mine, and then me and him were struggling for the gun. I hit him a couple times. We managed to jar the light out of the grave wall and it fell into the crate. I hit him with a straight shot while I used my other hand to hold his gun hand at bay. I knocked him on his back and onto the rotting pony. I scuttled on top of him and started hammering.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the shovel I had stuck in the dirt being pulled up. Next thing I knew, I took a whack to the back, close to my neck. The goddamn bitch wanted us both done for.

  That’s when I bent Walter’s wrist and the gun went off. Walter made a sound like someone coughing a dry pea out of his throat and then he wasn’t struggling anymore. The gun fell from his hand, clattered into the box. The shovel came down on me again, but I was hunched over, and the edge of it caught me in the back again, not the head, which I’m sure was the target.

  I uncoiled, wheeled, stepped up on the edge of the crate, and grabbed Nancy’s ankle as the shovel came down again. It missed me, and I pulled her feet out from under her. I heard her air go as she hit hard on her butt and the shovel slid into the grave.

  I dragged her into the crate. She landed on top of Walter. Starlight was in her eyes. The way she looked at me was so pathetic, I almost decided to let everything she had ever done to me go. But I didn’t. I hit her hard as I could with my fist.

  She made a little barking sound and then she went limp and lay on top of Walter. That crate was so big, I could have buried another pony on top of them and still had room for the lid.

  I left the gun in the crate. I left the suitcases. I could dig them up later.

  I got hold of the lid and pulled it in place. The nails were no longer serviceable, and there were no clasps or clamps on the box.

  When I had that done, I picked up the shovel, stood on top of the box, stretched the shovel across the grave, and used it like a chinning bar. I pulled my knees up, started to swing myself, and finally twisted and threw my feet out of the grave, then inched the rest of me along the length of the shovel and was able to manage myself out of the hole.

  I was breathing pretty hard, but I started covering the grave right away. When I had about a foot of dirt on the lid of the crate, I saw the dirt move. I saw a sliver of light, probably from my penlight.

  “Ed. For God’s sake, Ed. Let me out. I can hardly breathe. Ed. Let me out. Please.”

  It was muffled, but I could understand her well enough.

  She was pushing at the lid, but the dirt was heavy, so she wasn’t making a lot of progress, and now I was shoveling as fast as I could, making her load heavier by the second.

  The dirt was still moving as she pushed up from inside. The sliver of light was no longer visible. When I was certain she wouldn’t be able to work her way out of there, I leaned over and called into the grave: “There’s a gun in there, honey. I was you, I’d feel around for it.”

  I didn’t know if she heard me or not. She didn’t say anything back.

  It took me a couple of hours, but I got that grave filled. Then I sat down at the side of the grave and wept. I didn’t know exactly who I was weeping for, but I knew it wasn’t Walter.

  No longer shoveling, and with the air quiet and the drive-in long closed for the night, there was just me and the dark and the porch light from the house.

  The flashlight Nancy had dropped was on the ground near the grave. I picked it up but didn’t turn it on. I didn’t really need it.

  As I sat there, I could hear a kind of tapping, and it took me a moment to figure out it was Nancy, probably kicking at the lid. That would be like trying to kick open the door to Fort Knox.

  I listened for a long time, and the sound kept going, and then it stopped, and there was a long silence. After a while, I heard something like a firecracker going off under a bucket.

  Nancy had heard me, and she’d found the gun.

  (61)

  That night I slept at my place in the drive-in. Before I went to bed, I took a long shower. I usually used the washing machine up at the house, but tonight I just took off my dirty clothes and laid them in the tub while I showered. When I was done, I scrubbed them using a bar of soap, rinsed them, hung them up to dry.

  I went to bed naked, no pajamas, no underwear, just me and my white skin with the black skin inside. I lay there, and now and again I’d drift off, but when I did, I’d hear that damn banging in the grave, Nancy kicking at the lid.

  It would have been dead dark down there, and the air, what air there was in that crate, would have been thin and foul and dusty with decaying horse.

  Lying there, I felt like it was me that couldn’t breathe, and that banging would get so loud, I wasn’t able to sleep but in little patches. I got out of bed a couple of times and walked around my little room in the dark.

  Without putting on clothes, I went out to the concession stand, made myself some popcorn, and poured a large cup full of soda. I took my time getting everything ready, just like I was getting ready for a showing. I went up the little stretch of stairs to the projector room. Walter usually ran it, and he had all kinds of cigar stubs up there, and the room smelled of tobacco and a little of beer. I realized in that moment that, actually, he had been doing a lot around the place. It made me laugh in a way that sounded like barking.

  I don’t know why I went up there, but I did. I sat in the comfy chair and ate my popcorn and drank my soda and looked out of the little window so I could see the screen.

  I finished eating and drinking, taking my time about it, then I went back to my room, took a long pee, lay down again. Soon as I closed my eyes, I saw Nancy’s face, the way she had looked at me right before I slugged her.

  Finally, I gave up on sleep. I couldn’t quit hearing that knocking.

  (62)

  I thought about what I should do next, but nothing clever came to me. I went over and visited with my mother and sister a day later. Anything to get my mind off that goddamn horse grave and what was down there with it.

  In my mind, I was acting perfectly normal. But Melinda wasn’t fooled. Later, leaving Mom in bed to deal with a dry drunk, me and Melinda went into the kitchen so Melinda could fix Mama’s lunch.

  “She may be dry right now, but she’s still drinking,” I said.

  “It’s that man you gave a whipping. He’s come around again. I can’t stay here when he’s here. He looks at me funny, and, well, Mama has him into her room, and when he goes in there, he has liquor. I have to leave so I don’t go crazy. The idea of it makes me sick. Him coming here, he’s bolder than ever.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “After what you did to him last time and him still coming around, I thought you might kill him. Or he might kill you. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Melinda got a can opener and opened a can of tomato soup, poured it in a pan, added water, turned on the gas, and set the pan on the stove. She turned and studied me like an insect specimen. “You all right?”

  “Sure. I’m good.”

  “You don’t act good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re kind of funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “Off.”

  “No. I’m good.”

  “How are things at the drive-in?”

  “Never better, but I got some money saved up and I’ll be moving on from there. I’m getting you and Mama a nest egg.”

  “Don’t worry about us.”

  “Like I told you, I have some money, you can go to college and she can dry out. You’ll have the birth certificate.”

  “Anybody ever tell you that you have grandiose plans?”

  “I don’t see that as a problem. You got to have more faith,
little sister.”

  “I got faith in you, bubba, but not your plans. I been trying not to ask, but what’s wrong with your face?”

  I was banged up a little from my fight with Walter. Just a few scratches, but I had a story for her. “Fell down the stairs at the drive-in coming out of the projection booth. Set my foot wrong or something. Nothing serious.”

  Melinda stared at me. She could always see right through me. “This whole giving-us-money, birth-certificate thing, hell, Ed, we’ll do all right without all that.”

  “There’s doing all right, then there’s really doing all right.”

  “Whatever you say, Ed.”

  (63)

  I worked at the drive-in, keeping it open, and when the pimple-faced girl asked where Nancy was, I told her I didn’t know, hadn’t seen her. Like her, I was just showing up, doing my job.

  I told her the same for Walter. I was trying to make it look like I didn’t know anything and at the same time trying to make it look like they ran off together. I figured them missing over time would suggest that.

  For the next day or so I was almost all right. As long as I didn’t try and sleep too much, because then I could hear that infernal knocking, hear that muffled gunshot.

  I took the tickets, and I even ran the projector, though I had a few snafus. I understood it better in theory than in actuality, but I got the picture on the screen. It was when it came to changing reels that I wasn’t so good. After a couple nights of that, I thought I should put an ad in the paper, try and find a projectionist.

  Next morning, kind of late, I was out picking up the stuff folks threw out of their car windows onto the lot. Popcorn bags, soda cups, candy boxes, rubbers. It was something that used to make me mad, them doing that, like they couldn’t take trash home with them and get rid of it properly, but now I found picking that stuff up, cramming it into a tow sack, doing what used to be one of Walter’s jobs, kind of relaxing. It gave me purpose. I wasn’t planning on beating anyone with a crowbar or hitting anyone with a rock or kidnapping, shooting, or burying anyone alive.

  It was a nice way to sort of meditate.

  While I was meditating, I looked up and saw two men walking toward me.

  Although I hadn’t seen his face that night, way he wore his hat, the size of him, I knew one of them was the cop that had stood on the dock with the suitcases. The other guy was thin and long-faced and lantern-jawed. His suit was too big for him, and it flapped around him like he was a scarecrow in a high wind. He wore a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over his forehead. I could see as he came up his socks didn’t match. One was bright blue with red clock patterns, and one was black.

  I felt a sense of panic, but I tucked it inside of me and waited.

  When they got up to me, the man from the dock said, “Your name Ed Edwards?”

  “It is.”

  “You work here, right?”

  “You can see that.”

  “Yeah. I can. But we’re police. You just answer our questions. I ask you to frog-jump, you say, ‘How high, and would you like me to croak?’ Got it?”

  “Yeah. I got it. But I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

  “Only one car here, so I’m assuming that Cadillac is yours.”

  “It is.”

  “We’re going to be looking through it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  “What you need to do is close the drive-in for tonight. Put up a gone-fishing sign or some such, because we’re going to be here a bit.”

  “All right. But shouldn’t you be telling the owner this?”

  “That’s the thing. We can’t find the owner. We’ve called, been up to the house. Know where she is?”

  “No. I been running things myself. I mostly do the books, but I haven’t seen Nancy around in a while. There’s another guy works here, her cousin Walter. I haven’t seen him in a while either.”

  “About the same while as the other?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here’s what you do. We got a warrant to search the house and the drive-in, and like I said, we’re going to search your car too. You keep yourself out here while we have a look-see, then we’ll talk again.”

  “Okay.”

  I wasn’t sure they had warrants, but it seemed smart not to bring it up. I had to be dumb about everything.

  They went away then, and some more cops showed up, blue suits, and they went to search my car and some of them went into the drive-in concession. I figured Nancy’s house was covered up in them too.

  I went about picking up trash, but my mind was racing. I was trying to think if I had anything in my room that would incriminate me, and then I remembered the five thousand dollars. It was in a shoebox in the top of my closet.

  They looked in the car, they’d find the pistol.

  I had legal papers on the pistol. I got it when I worked at the car lot because I stayed late, and sometimes sketchy characters came around.

  That was all right. The five thousand, that might require some explanation.

  I finished picking up the trash and took it to the dumpster that sat outside the drive-in and poured the contents of the tow sack in it. I did all of this slowly and deliberately.

  Back inside the drive-in, I went over to where there was a set of swings for the kids to swing on if they got tired of staying in the car or weren’t interested in the movie.

  I sat down on a swing and gently pushed myself back and forth. I saw them going through my car.

  I don’t know how long I was there, but it was a while.

  Eventually, the big cop from the dock came out, said to me, “We found a pistol.”

  “Yeah. I got papers.”

  “We found those too.”

  “Good.”

  “We got some other things to talk about, though.”

  “Do we?”

  “Yeah, we do. We’re going to be up to the house awhile, so you stay away from there.”

  “I don’t go up there except for a cup of coffee now and then. Me and Walter. More Walter than me. He’s up there a lot.”

  “How well do you know Walter?”

  “Enough to say hello and have a cup of coffee. Enough to know he hasn’t been around lately.”

  I might have said hello to that son of a bitch, but I had never had a cup of coffee with him. It just seemed like a cautious thing to say.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” the cop said. “Why don’t you come and see us after a while. Just come and talk with us. Some things you might tell us could straighten some shit out.”

  “Okay. When?”

  “No big rush. How about tomorrow afternoon? We aren’t through looking here, and I got a bit of stuff to check on. Come around, say, four or five. We’ll be leisurely about it. But show up.”

  “Glad to do it.”

  “I’m glad you’re glad. My name is McGinty, by the way. Lieutenant McGinty.”

  “All right, then.”

  (64)

  I got a sign painted up on the plywood that had been over the hole I’d dug for Julie and her crate. I sawed it in half so as to get rid of the hole I had cut in it with a jigsaw and painted on it CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. I took it out and put it in front of the drive-in, leaning it against the chain that ran across the entrance.

  I called the pimple-faced girl, whose name was Nell, I’d discovered, as Nancy had written it down in her office, which I now had the keys to. I told her we had to close for some repairs and she didn’t sound all that disappointed.

  I waited in my spot inside the drive-in until it got dark, and then I got a flashlight and went out and stood in front of the drive-in and looked around. I didn’t turn on the flashlight because I was looking for cops. It was dead dark out there without the golden finger lit up, and I was glad for that. The cloud cover was thick too.

  After a while, I felt confident they had finished their searches and gone home. I walked over to the house, went into the
shed, turned on the flashlight, found the shovel, and went out to the grave. I started digging.

  I ended up laying the flashlight on the edge of the horse grave and let that be my light. I dug for hours, and when I got down in the grave, I took the flashlight and shovel with me. I pried the lid off the crate with the shovel, and the stink jumped out at me, but there was mixed with it a hint of Nancy’s perfume. I shone the flashlight into the grave. I was shocked by Nancy’s face. It was discolored and her mouth was spread wide and her teeth were showing in a kind of angry grin. Her face was lopsided from the bullet passing through the side of her head. There were already worms in her eyes and crawling around the nose and mouth. She had lost her sex appeal. I could see a bit of Walter underneath her, and pieces of the horse.

  I braced myself, held the light with one hand and took hold of her legs with the other, and rolled her enough I could reach one of the suitcases. When I got that, I rolled her the other way so I could reach the other.

  As I used one hand to put the lid back on the crate, in the flashlight beam I could see where Nancy had dug her fingernails into the side of it, trying to dig her way out. There was blood in the scrapes.

  I felt a shiver go up my spine. I took a deep breath, worked the lid into place. I stuck the pistol in my waistband, and after I tossed the flashlight out of the grave, I used the shovel to do my chinning-and-flipping trick again and swung myself out of there.

  I spent a lot of time covering the grave up. The cloudy skies let loose with rain, and I stood there and let it make me wet, as if I were baptizing myself of the whole business.

  I carried the suitcases to my car and opened up the trunk. Since the cops had already searched it, I took a chance. I pulled out the spare and put the suitcases there, then rolled the spare inside the concession, put it in Nancy’s office.

  I put Walter’s pistol in the glove box. They had taken mine. I put Melinda’s birth certificate in there too. I took a shower and went to bed.

  The only thing I dreamed about that night was the money.