Shallow Graves

14

Her face scared him. It wasn't just that she'd been crying, which changed the density and texture of her skin and gave her the contours of a battered wife; it was more the fluttering of the irises of her eyes, unable to alight.

What Pellam saw in Meg Torrens's face was panic.

He just stood there, beside her, not knowing what to say or whether he should touch her in a brotherly way. Thinking he should be taking charge but with no idea of what needed to be done.

Meg sat with her legs spread outward, boot tips pointed at an oblique angle, her body forward, elbows resting on her thighs, her hands washing each other absently in invisible water. Occasionally she'd glance up and Pellam would smile in a way that screenwriters would describe as sympathetically concerned.

They'd waited for twenty minutes.

Keith arrived and as soon as he did, Pellam felt himself relax; he realized he'd been standing hunched forward, jaw tight. He watched the couple embrace. Keith nodded to him.

"What the hell happened?" husband asked wife.

Meg brushed aside her hair, which had come undone from the ponytail and was strewn across her face.

"We found him," she said and started sobbing again.

Pellam said, "Sam passed out and we couldn't revive him. The doctor's been in there since we got here. He hasn't said anything."

"Oh, Keith, he was so pale. It was terrible…"

With an anger they knew was not directed toward them Keith asked, "What happened? Did he fall? Is it a seizure?"

Meg wiped her face. "We just found him. Keith, it was so horrible. He was just lying there. It was like he didn't have any muscles. I tried to wake him up. He wouldn't wake up." She looked at Pellam with her trapped animal eyes, staring at him but undoubtedly seeing the horrific image of her son's pale skin against the autumn leaves. "He wouldn't wake up."

Keith looked like he wanted to hurt someone. It didn't seem to matter to him whether this'd been caused by another human being or an animal or some haywire connections in the boy's bloodstream. He wanted revenge.

Meg pressed her cheek against her husband's chest and didn't say anything. Slowly she calmed.

The doctor who resembled a vet, the one who'd tended Pellam, appeared and walked slowly down the corridor.

The man had such an expressive face that no words were necessary. There was no doubt about the boy's condition. Pellam remembered the way the man looked at him when he'd entered the room to tell him about Marty's death.

This was no tragedy.

The doctor's round jowly face zeroed in on Meg's eyes and he said, "He'll be okay."

Meg began crying again, quieter, but more desperately. "Can I see him?"

"Sure, Meg. In just a second."

Keith's anger vanished at once as if he were afraid prolonged hate might reverse the results. "What happened to him? Was it a seizure?"

"Keith, I need to ask this. Does Sam have any history of drug use?"

"Drug use?" The laugh was explosive.

Meg let go of her husband and turned to face the doctor. "He's ten years old, how could he-?"

"Drug use?" Keith repeated as if he hadn't heard correctly.

"What did-" she began.

The doctor said, "He overdosed on drugs."

With a blustery edge in her voice Meg said, "No! Not Sam."

"Oh, give me a fucking break," Keith growled. "Are you nuts?"

The doctor continued. "It's true, Keith. It looks like it was an opiate of some kind. Probably heroin."

Keith exploded. "Are you saying he was shooting up? That's the craziest, fucking thing-" Meg touched her husband's arm. He calmed. "I'm sorry. But you made a mistake."

"I'm as disturbed about this as you are…" The doctor lifted a small plastic envelope out of his pocket. Inside were tiny fragments of crystals. "These were in his mouth. It's extremely soluble. Which means he ingested much more than this." All three stared at the bag.

"It's a dextrose base-sugar-but it's mixed with something else. I don't know what exactly. A synthetic heroin of some kind. Stronger than Percodan. I've never seen anything like it."

"Somebody put heroin in candy and gave it to my son?" Keith whispered. He looked at Meg and said, almost accusingly, "Who was he with? Did you see anybody, weren't you watching him?"

Pellam bristled, felt defensive for Meg. "We were both with the boy. He'd run off every once in a while but we-"

"For God's sake, Keith, we were at the Apple Festival. I wasn't letting him wander around in the South Bronx-" He blinked. "I'm sorry, I just-" She took his hand.

The doctor said, "I've called Tom. I had to. Whatever this is it's a controlled substance and I've got to report it."

"Fucking right you're going to report it," Keith growled. "But I don't want a story in the Leader. I don't want it to sound like he was doing drugs."

"I won't say anything to the paper. But this's serious, Keith. I don't know-Tom may want to bring somebody from Albany in."

In a faint voice, Meg said, "Please let me see my son."

"Come on," the doctor said. He glanced at Pellam, then down at the leg where the bruise resided. "How you doing, sir?" he asked pleasantly but without particular interest.

"Fine."

The doctor put his arm around Meg and led her down the corridor. Keith said, "Excuse me," to Pellam and followed.

Pellam sat down in an aluminum-and-orange-naugahyde chair and looked at a month-old People magazine without reading a single word, or seeing a single picture.

An hour later, Sam walked unsteadily out of the room. Meg had her arm around him and Keith was trying to sound cheerful while he recited phrases like, "You're doing great, skipper" and "You're a tougher man than I." Sam would blink and look at his father as if he were speaking a foreign language.

"Hi, Mr Pellam," Sam said. His face brightened a little but there was hardly any color in it.

"How you feeling, son?"

"I got sick."

"You'll be fine in the morning."

"I don't feel too good."

"Well, get better soon. We've got to practice our football, remember?"

"Yeah."

Meg, Sam and Pellam stood together, silently, while Keith paid the bill with a check and took a prescription and instruction sheet from the doctor.

The door opened and the sheriff walked into the clinic.

"Meg, I just heard."

"Tom," she said, nodding toward him.

The sheriff looked stonily at Pellam for a long moment, then glanced down at Sam. "How you doing, young man?"

"Pretty okay, sir."

"Attaboy."

The doctor joined them, along with Keith. Meg told the sheriff about finding her son in the woods and the doctor explained about the drugs.

"What is it, you know?"

"I'm sending the sample to a lab in Poughkeepsie. I'll get you a copy of it. I think it's a heroin derivative."

The sheriff winced. "Yeah, guess I'll have to go to the NYBI."

"Second time we've had an overdose," the doctor pointed out. "That boy last year."

Tom nodded. "He was in high school. They're getting younger."

The sheriff looked down at Sam then said to Keith. "You mind if I talk to him just for a minute?"

Meg asked her son, "You mind, honey?"

"Uh-uh."

"Maybe just you, me and the boy?" Tom asked her.

Pellam and Keith took their cues and stepped outside.

The sheriff crouched next to a jaundiced potted bamboo palm, vainly reaching for a tiny, greasy window in the front door, the only source of natural light in the waiting room.

Meg was struggling to stay calm, struggling to concentrate. All she wanted to do was throw her arms around the boy.

The sheriff looked into the boy's eyes. "What happened, Sam? You remember?"

"I found this envelope. And there was some candy inside. I ate it."

"You ate it?"

"A bunch of it. I guess I shouldn't've. Mom's pretty mad at me."

Meg said, "No, I'm not, honey."

Tom said, "She's just worried about you, that's all. So you don't know where the envelope came from?"

"No, sir."

"You're sure nobody gave it to you?"

"No, sir. I mean, yeah, I'm sure nobody gave it to me."

"You just found it."

"Uh-huh."

"You know what happened to the envelope?"

"No."

"I'm going to ask you a question, Sammie, and I want you to answer it truthfully."

"Sure."

"You know Mr Pellam."

"Sure."

"Did he give you the candy?"

Meg stiffened when she heard this. This hadn't even occurred to her. She started to speak but the sheriff waved her quiet.

"You mean, that he won?"

"What?"

"He won a chocolate turkey and gave it to me."

"When was that?"

"Just before I got sick."

"It was a game," Meg said. "A booth at the fair."

The sheriff ignored her. "Did he give you the candy in the envelope?"

Sam shook his head. "No, sir."

"You found it, right?"

Sam swallowed. "Yeah, it was just lying there. I found it."

"Okay, Sammie. You go home now and get some rest."

"So he gave the boy some candy," the sheriff said.

Meg frowned, repeated, "From the turkey shoot booth. Chocolate. Not… that crap."

"Look, Sam claims he found the envelope but he's lying. I can see. All right, not lying exactly. He's confused. You know kids, Meg, come on. What I'm saying is I know somebody gave him those pills and he knows who it is."

Meg asked, "You think it was Pellam?"

"Kind of a coincidence, wouldn't you say? His friend's doing drugs and gets himself killed. Then your son overdoses." He asked, "Was Sam alone with Pellam today?"

She didn't answer at first. "No."

"Any other time they may have been together alone?"

She swallowed and shook her head. "I want to be with my son."

"Sure, Meg."

Outside, Pellam watched the two of them push out the door and head toward Keith's car. Meg hugged Sam. "Let's get you home, into bed."

"I don't feel good."

Pellam stepped forward, crouched down and took the boy by the shoulders. "When you're better, young man, you and I're going to-"

Meg took her son's hand firmly in hers and practically pushed the boy into the Cougar. Pellam stared at her. She wouldn't look back. Meg didn't say anything as she walked to her car and started it.

Keith got in the Cougar, put Sam's seat belt on him.

Both cars pulled out of the parking lot, Keith's red Mercury and Meg's gray Toyota. She didn't even look at him. Pellam stared after the import for several minutes. Finally, there was nothing left to see but a residue of haze above the asphalt in the car's wake. It was only then that he realized that while he was looking at the spot where Meg's car had disappeared the sheriff, sitting in his glossy, pristine squad car, had been staring at him.

He walked over to the man. "I drove here in Meg's car from the fairgrounds. My camper's back there. You give me a lift?"

"Sorry, sir. I'm heading the opposite direction."

"Sure," Pellam said, watching his black-and-white pull dramatically out of the parking lot, slinging gravel behind it. "Thanks anyway. Sir."

Bobby sat inside the cabin at the junkyard and read a National Geographic. He looked at the stain in the margin and wondered what it was. Grape jelly, maybe. Blood? Beef juice?

R &W was fat with National Geographics. Stacks and stacks of them, going moldy. Yellow and green. His brother didn't understand why Bobby continued to buy the old ones. Something about that magazine, people thought you shouldn't throw them out, like doing that was somehow unpatriotic. So what they did was bundle them up and take them to antique stores or tag sales or junkyards like R &W and sell them, all organized by year. Or decade. Didn't matter if they made money on them. The point was, a part of America got preserved and, besides, where else but in articles about Africa or the Amazon could a twelve-year-old boy get a look at tits and not run the chance of getting whipped?

Today, Bobby was reading about Portland, which seemed like a great place to live. He closed the magazine and tossed it against the wall of the shack. True, they were starting to smell. He'd have to get out the Lysol spray.

He heard the car door slam.

Bobby knew right away, even before the door to the shack opened that there was trouble. This was something about twins, at least something about Billy and him. A telepathy thing. So now when his brother opened the door and walked through it, Bobby was staring right into his eyes, frowning with an expression that matched Billy's almost identically.

He said, "So?"

"So our ass is in deep shit," Billy muttered.

"What?"

"Torrens's kid got some of the pills. Almost OD'd."

"Fuck. That little blond kid?" Bobby glanced in a perfunctory way toward the backroom of the shack where several cartons of their special candy were stacked. "How'd he get it?" Then he knew, the message from his brother coming through loud and clear. He nodded grimly. "The pretty boy? Ned. The other day."

"Your playmate."

Bobby said, "Our playmate. Just 'cause I saw him first don't go blaming me. Why'd he give them away?"

"Why'd you give him so many in the first place? Damn, I'll ream that boy's ass."

Bobby gave a splinter of a smile. "You already done that."

But his brother wasn't in any mood to joke. "This isn't funny."

Bobby was nodding slowly. "The Torrens kid," he muttered. "They know it was us?"

"They did, don't you think we'd've heard by now?"

"What if Ned said something to the kid? About where he got it?"

"Could be a problemo," Billy said absently. "Too bad the kid didn't take 'em all. And just, you know, die. Would've been better."

"So they've got some? Of the stuff, I mean."

"Yeah," Billy explained.

"Ouch."

"It's at the clinic. They're going to be shipping it somewhere to find out what it is."

"Fuck," Bobby said. "That's bad. Man, that's bad. What're we gonna do?"

And Billy looked at his brother as if he'd just asked the most dumb-ass question in the world. "Well, if you think real hard, maybe a couple things'll come to mind."

He didn't have to wait very long before they did.

"Hello?"

The voice of Wex Ambler's housekeeper answering the phone.

Meg didn't know the woman. She'd seen her several times since she and Ambler had begun their affair-once coming out of the brick and white-trim First Presbyterian Church on Maple Street. But Meg hadn't actually heard her voice before this moment. She sounded older than Ambler.

"Is Mr Ambler there please?" Meg, who had never typed a letter for anyone other than herself or Keith in her life, tried to sound like a Kelly Girl.

"Just a minute, please. Who shall I say's calling?"

This she'd thought about. "Dutchess County Realty."

"One minute."

"Hello?"

"Wex."

A moment later, she was listening to her lover say with a tortured formality, "Yes, Meg. How are you? I wasn't expecting to hear from you." There was a pause at the end of his sentences. She knew that Ambler liked phrases of affection and it would be natural for him to add a "darling" or "dear." Under the circumstances, of course, he'd have to watch himself carefully to avoid these.

Ambler had reluctantly agreed to Meg's demand that not a single soul in town know about their affair.

Meg asked, "Is it safe to talk?" Then she regretted the idiocy of the question.

Ambler ignored it. "What can I do for you?"

"There was an accident. Somebody gave Sam some drugs."

There was a pause. "Is he all right?"

"He'll be okay. But I can't make it today."

"Of course. I understand. What kind of drugs?"

"Heroin, it looked like."

"Are you sure?" His voice sounded flatlined. As if he hadn't even heard her.

"That's what the doctor said."

"Where did he get it?"

Meg hesitated. "I have no idea. He claims he found it."

"Will he be okay?"

"The doctor said he would."

He spoke again slowly. "I'm sorry. I wish I could have been there."

She said, "Yes, that would have been good."

Static growing on the line. She guessed he was on a cordless phone and had moved into a den, or outside. He spoke more freely. "When can I see you? I-"

Then he stopped talking and-his housekeeper undoubtedly approaching-said, "Those prices are a little high."

"I want to talk to you," she said. "There're some things we should talk about."

She was thankful Ambler wasn't alone and wasn't free to ask the questions that she didn't want to answer right now, certainly not over the phone. She heard the frustration in his voice. "I understand. It's a mutual situation. Day after tomorrow?"

"Probably."

"Have you thought any more about my proposition of the other day?"

"I don't want to talk about that now."

"I'm sorry. It's just… I'll look forward to seeing you day after tomorrow."

Meg found she was answering as if Keith were in the room, which he was not. "Those would be acceptable terms." She hung up.

"How you feeling, skipper?" Keith asked his son.

"Pretty good, Dad." But Sam's voice was weak and he was huddled in his bathrobe and blanket on his bed. Heartbreaking, the way he was lying, so small and fragile.

The computer's fan whirred softly; the screen was blank except for the C prompt, waiting for instructions. Keith thought about shutting it off but didn't; he figured Sam had left it on for whatever comfort the sound of the machinery might provide.

Keith sat on the edge of the bed and tucked the blankets around the boy. "How's the stomach?"

"I liked the ice cream. It didn't make me feel icky."

Keith nodded and remembered to look the boy in the eyes. Meg had once told him that he looked away from people too much. He'd explained to her that his mind wandered; he couldn't help it. She'd told him that was no excuse. When you had children, you had to give them a hundred and fifty percent of yourself.

There was a lot he wanted to say. About how he knew he wasn't as attentive as he ought to be, how he didn't like sports the way most of Sam's friends' fathers did, how he kept putting off vacations. About how if he hadn't been working today this probably wouldn't have happened. But he thought that talk like that now would just upset the boy, make him think that the incident with the drugs was worse than it was. He told himself that he simply would make it up to the boy. Not after the expansion at the factory was completed, not after the first of the year, not after the cold-season rush, but soon, very soon.

"I'm sorry about what happened, Daddy."

"We don't blame you, Sam."

"I was like pretty stupid."

"Sam," Keith leaned forward. "It is very, very important that you tell me where you got those pills."

"The candy?"

"Right. The candy. I know you didn't just find it."

Tears had started and the little boy was shaking. Keith put his hand on Sam's shoulder and squeezed it. "Don't worry. I won't let anything else happen to you."

"He said he'd beat me up."

"I won't let anyone beat you up. I promise you. Tell me."

"A kid from the high school."

"Who?"

"I don't know his last name. His first name's Ned. I think he's a senior."

"What does he look like?"

"He was like sort of tall. Like a football player… Oh, Daddy…" Sam bolted forward into Keith's arms. They hugged for a few minutes.

Keith stood up. "You want me to leave the light on?"

"Uh-huh. Is it okay?"

Keith mussed Sam's hair. "I'll be up later and look in on you."

"Okay."

"Goodnight, son."