Cemetery Lake

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Mostly I land on Sidney Alderman. My elbow crashes into the coffin and my thumb is jarred from his mouth. My knee hits the wall, but the rest of me lands against the old man so the impact is cushioned. Alderman isn’t so lucky. He doesn’t have anybody to land on. Just his wife, except that her years of offering any support are over. So he lands hard up against the wood with the shovel beneath him-harder, I imagine, than if he were falling in there by himself. Because I’m falling with him, there’s my weight and there’s momentum and the laws of physics, and they all add up very badly for Sidney Alderman. His head bounces into the edge of the coffin.

I push myself up, bracing my hands against the dirt walls and the coffin. Blood is pouring from my thumb. The edges of the bite have peeled upward, revealing bright pink flesh. I reach into my pocket for my handkerchief and wrap it tightly around the wound. It doesn’t hurt, but I figure in about twenty seconds it’s going to be killing me. I get to my knees and shake Alderman a little. There is no response, so I shake him harder. When he doesn’t stir, I take the next step and search for what I’m beginning to fear, putting my fingers against his neck. Blood starts to leak onto the coffin. The lid is curved slightly, so the blood doesn’t pool; it runs down the sides and gets caught in a thin cosmetic groove running around the edge of the lid. Drop after drop and it starts building up; it climbs up over the groove and soaks into the dirt.

There is no pulse.

I start to roll Alderman over, but stop halfway when I see the damage. The tip of the shovel is buried into his neck, its angle making it point toward his brain. His head sags as I move him, and the handle of the shovel rotates. His eyes are open, but they’re not seeing a thing. I let him go, and he slumps back against the coffin. My hands are covered in his blood. I stare at them for a few seconds, then wipe them on the walls of the grave, then stare at them some more, before shifting my body as far away as I can from Alderman, which isn’t far. I wipe my hands across the wet earth once more and clean them off on my shirt. All the time I keep staring at Alderman as if he’s going to sit up and tell me not to worry, that these things happen, that it could’ve happened to anybody.

Jesus.

I climb out of the grave. It’s a lot easier for me than it was for Alderman because I’m working with a whole different set of dynamics. I lie on the lawn, staring up at the sky that is just as blue as it was when I was sitting in the digger, digging up the grave.

Jesus.

I get up and start staring at Sidney Alderman from different angles that don’t improve the situation. I try thinking about Emily, looking over at the SUV that is hidden by the trees, knowing she’s in the back, hoping her presence will make things seem better than they are. Hoping to justify Alderman’s death by thinking he deserved it. I try this, but it doesn’t work. It should. But it doesn’t. He deserved the chance to tell me everything he knew about the dead girls, and those dead girls deserved that too. I think about Casey Horwell and I wonder how she’d react if I called her and told her where her story had led. I figure she’d be thrilled-it’d give her the airtime she is desperate to get.

I walk over to the trees so I can see both the grave and the SUV. I look from one to the other. Is there a next step? I figure there is. There always is. I have, in fact, two first steps to choose from-the problem is each one heads in a different direction.

The first one requires me to reach into my pocket for my cell phone and call the police. Only I don’t. They’ll say I wanted this to happen. They’ll say Alderman pushed me too far, and that I reacted. Only they’ll say I had time to calm down, because there were several hours in between Alderman taking Emily out of the ground and me putting him in it. Hours in which I dug up his wife’s grave, spoke to the priest, and continued the investigation. So they’ll say I didn’t snap. They’ll say it had to be premeditated, because I had plenty of opportunities to go to the police, but I didn’t. They’ll say I knew what was happening, that I looked into the abyss and dived right in.

I go with the other direction.

I climb back into the grave and roll Sidney Alderman over. His blood is now pooling on each side of the coffin. I tug at the shovel, but at first it doesn’t move. It’s caught on something inside his body. I shift it from side to side, loosening it like removing a tooth, and it comes away with the squelching sound of pulling your foot out of mud. I toss it out onto the grass and climb back out.

I walk to the other side of the trees and scan the graveyard. There isn’t a soul in sight. I walk back and start to scoop dirt on top of Alderman. It hits him heavily: some pieces stay where they hit, others roll down his side and into the blood. The sound can’t be mistaken for anything other than dirt against flesh. I drop the shovel. There are black crumbs of soil stuck on the end of it, glued there by Sidney Alderman’s blood. I make my way back to the shed and return with the digger. I can only take the road so far before I have to drive over and around other graves and around trees to reach the plot, and when I get there it doesn’t take as long to fill the grave as it took to empty it. When I’m done I drive the digger back and I stand in the shed, trying to keep my feet under me as the world sways. Another Tate has just been added to my collection of personalities. Each one more messed up than the other. Leading me where?

A tightness spreads across my chest, and suddenly the shed seems way too small, the walls cramping in, the ceiling lowering down. I get outside only to find that the whole world doesn’t seem big enough anymore.

The clouds are back, the sun completely gone now. Dusk is here, and it’s a little hard to make out the scenery. I find the SUV and drive to my daughter’s grave. There I sit until a few nearby mourners leave the area. Then I carry her gently, scared she’ll fall apart, scared that I’m going to fall apart. I rest her on the ground, then climb six feet closer to the Hell that I’ve proven again I’m destined for. I reach out and scoop her up, then lay her down. She doesn’t look like Emily. She may be wearing the same dress, have the same hair, but everything else is different. It’s different in a way I don’t want to think about. I tuck her hair away from what face she has left and stroke it behind what ears she has left. I close the lid, not wanting to spend any more time with her, but at the same time I want to spend all night here, holding her hand.

I use the same shovel that killed Sidney Alderman to bury her. It seems right that I do it this way, and I relish the pain that courses from my thumb and up through my entire arm. It takes me an hour, and when I’m done my shirt is covered in dirt and is damp all over, and the day is dark and the makeshift bandage on my thumb even darker. I throw the shovel in the back of the SUV. The vehicle is covered in my fingerprints. My own car is still here. I’m a murderer, and if I’m not careful the world is soon about to know.

I drive back to the shed. I find some turpentine and soak some rags in it, then I go around wiping down every surface I’ve come into contact with. I drive to Alderman’s house and park up the driveway and I do the same thing there. I wipe down the SUV and I carry the shovel back to my own car. When I leave, nobody follows me. Nobody seems to care.

I drive to the nursing home. The staff at the home doesn’t appear thrilled to see me. Carol Hamilton has gone for the day, and nobody else asks me what in the hell I was on about this morning. Nobody asks why I look like shit, my clothes messed up, my skin black with dirt, why I have a filthy handkerchief on my thumb. I spend an hour with my wife, and now more than ever I need something from her-a squeeze from her hand, or her eyes to focus on me and not past me-but she can offer me none of this. I don’t fill her in on anything that’s happened. I stare out the same window she stares out, and I see the same things, and this is the closest I have felt to her in two years. Part of me envies her world.

When I get home I use a saw to cut the shovel into half a dozen pieces. I wipe each of them down, but I know I’ll need to do more than that-will have to dispose of them where they’ll never be found. I climb into the shower then, and watch the dirt and blood wash away, though I still feel covered in it. I remove the handkerchief from my thumb and rinse the wound, which continues to bleed weakly. It needs stitches, but I’m not going to get them. I bandage it and make some dinner, but I can’t eat. I turn on the TV, but can’t understand what the news anchors are even talking about. I grab a beer and sit out on the deck and stare at a piece of concrete we left exposed five years ago when we built the deck. The cement was wet and we carved our names into it so they could never be washed away. Daxter comes out and jumps up on my lap, but only stays a few seconds before jumping back down. I stare at the names in the cement as I finish my beer, and then I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom while looking for sleep. I think of Quentin James and the Alderman family and the four dead girls I’ve never met. I have robbed their families of any closure, because the man who could help me is dead. Any hopes they had for answers I took down into the abyss with me.