Nine

15

Denver, Colorado

Tuesday, May 20, 4:41n A.M.

In the memory-dream, the digging dream, he was a child again.

The boy Kit sat in a corner, reading A Tale of Two Cities, turning the pages as quietly as possible. He was much quieter, much more studious than most eleven-year-old boys, a fact remarked upon by his teachers in every school in which he had ever been enrolled. He had long ago lost track of how many schools he had attended.

He had also, long ago, learned the art of establishing his place at a new school. He could spot the reigning bully within minutes of entering a schoolroom. Rarely did he actually have to fight now. Kit was lean and strong, and tall for his age, but this was, he knew, not what kept challenges from being issued. He found that he could somehow communicate in one long stare that a fight would be a bad idea. If it came to that, he would win. He had tested himself against larger, adult opponents, and if he seldom won those encounters, he learned method from them. Usually, only another child who had faced the same at home had enough anger in him to try anyway.

The invariable pattern at any school would be that soon the bully would learn that Kit wanted nothing more than to be left alone, and would comply with this wish rather than face this strange, cold newcomer’s fists. If any other student sought his protection, Kit would give it, but always with the warning that he would be gone from the school within weeks. Despite the hero-worship this earned him here and there, the protection was never given with any real offer of friendship. He had learned few lessons as thoroughly as how to make his inevitable leaving-taking as painless as possible.

Like all of the homes Jerome chose, this one was isolated from its neighbors. There were no streetlights this far out of the city. Eventually, the room grew dark, but Kit didn’t want to turn on a light. A light would attract attention. The last thing he wanted right now was to distract his mother and his stepfather.

Serenity and Jerome were excited about something. He wished they were both drunk or high or even having sex. Usually, at any of those times, they ignored him. When they shared this hard, mean-spirited laughter, any number of things might go wrong. They might fight. They might cause the sort of trouble that would then require another move. They might turn on him in one way or another.

His mother, in all his experience of her, was a weak woman, more inclined to aggravate any attack on him than to intercede on his behalf. He could hear the slurring of her words now, between the moments of laughter.

By the time he was eight, Kit had known that Serenity had chosen to give birth to him in order to ward off loneliness. He was certain that she wished she loved him but knew that his guaranteed attachment to her helped her to survive between relationships. She scorned the only other source of stability in her life-a family that would have welcomed her home at any time. But Serenity, most misnamed child, had been a runaway, a drug addict whose wealthy family had not been able to buy any cure that would bring her back to them.

Kit, throughout any part of his childhood he could remember, did whatever he could to take care of her. She would be most tender toward him when he was most needed. He liked being useful, looking out after her, protecting her to whatever extent he could. He was not always successful.

That night, his mind strayed from the French Revolution as Dickens portrayed it. The laughter pierced through his enjoyment of the book. He kept it open only to avoid eye contact with the two at the table.

Kit thought that Serenity already understood that as charming as Jerome could be when he felt it would do him some good, he did not marry her for love. He married her because he needed to master someone, and in her moments of sobriety-always filled with self-recrimination-she seemed to believe his mastery a penance. Kit sensed that somehow this time she had met a man who was worse than all the other men who had dated, slept, lived with her before now. Some had matched his heat. None had matched his ice. There was something in Jerome that enjoyed cruelty in the way her most hotheaded lovers had not.

A temper had its expression and its end. The building toward its release was nearly worse than the release itself. But with Jerome, there was seldom release in a blow. The tension in the household built, and built, and built. Then this brittle laughter would start.

When Jerome and Serenity were first married, Kit had not been living with his mother. Serenity had frequently left him in the care of his grandmother, usually because of an arrest, or a boyfriend who objected to feeding another man’s son. In these months, he would be transported into a world so different from the one he usually lived in, the return was twice as cruel. Eventually, he began to shield himself from these disappointments in much the same way he shielded himself from the pain of parting with school friends-he resisted any deepening of the attachment. Elizabeth bore it patiently, making him both ashamed and unable to resist hoping he could live with her.

“Come here, Worm.”

“Yes, sir.” Kit quickly closed the book and hurried over to his stepfather.

Jerome had not only married Serenity, he had insisted that she collect her son from his despised mother-in-law. What Elizabeth Logan had ever done to him, Kit didn’t know. But he constantly made remarks to Serenity about how much Elizabeth had spoiled his stepson. The nickname “Bookworm” had been shortened for several months now.

“Your mother and I are getting tired of putting up with your nonsense.”

This was a favorite phrase of Jerome’s. He seldom explained what he meant by “nonsense.” It was not a question or a command, though, so Kit knew not to make an answer of any kind. This time, however, the cause of Jerome’s displeasure was soon made clear.

He held up a phone bill.

Kit went pale.

“You know anyone in Malibu, Serenity?”

“No one I give a shit about,” she said.

Jerome smiled. “Well, then. Since I don’t know anyone in Malibu, and you don’t know anyone in Malibu, I guess we know who called from this house.”

After a particularly bad day at Jerome’s hands last month, he had missed Grandmother Elizabeth so much, he had dialed her number. Her answering machine had answered, and he had hung up without leaving a message. At eleven, he was learning how little time is needed to incur a long-distance charge on a phone bill.

“Do you know what worms are good for, Worm?”

Trying not to let his uneasiness show, Kit answered, “No, sir.”

Serenity laughed. He didn’t know what she had taken. Some sort of downer. Jerome was stone cold sober, though.

“They eat dead things, for starters.”

Jerome stood and walked to the back porch. Kit knew better than to move.

When he returned, he held a shovel.

He thrust it toward Kit. “Take it, Worm.”

“Yes, sir.” Kit obeyed. The shovel suddenly seemed larger, heavier.

“Let’s go. Serenity, you come along, too.” Kit followed him into the dark backyard, fear constricting his muscles, so that his movements were awkward. He could hear his mother laughing behind him.

Jerome didn’t seem to notice his clumsiness or his mother’s laughter. He came to a halt near the far fence, in the darkest part of the yard.

“Lie down.”

Trembling, he obeyed.

Above his face, the shovel came down, its sharp edge veering away from him at the last second and piercing the earth so near to the top of his head, dirt sprayed over his face.

“I didn’t hear you say, ‘Yes, sir.’”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be, you little asshole.”

He pulled the shovel free and moved so that he now straddled Kit’s waist. He was smiling. He lifted the shovel, held it just over Kit’s heart, letting it rest against his thin shirt, so that Kit could feel its cold blade against his chest. Jerome was staring down at him. Kit started to cry, and Jerome’s smile widened. “You worm.”

He lifted it high and brought it down-this time, just outside Kit’s right shoulder.

“Damn me, I missed. I’ll have to try a different target.”

Serenity laughed.

Jerome settled the blade on Kit’s throat. “That ought to do. Cut your fucking too-smart head off.”

Again the shovel came up, again furiously down. Just to the left of him.

Jerome moved so that he was over Kit’s knees, and the shovel touched down on the boy’s crotch. He used a little pressure this time, and Kit cried out in pain.

“Shut up. No one’s going to hear you out here, anyway.”

Kit squeezed his eyes closed, but Jerome did not see this as he negotiated the move of bringing the shovel down and stepping back at the same moment. The shovel was left planted near Kit’s feet.

“Stand up.”

“Yes, sir,” Kit said, tears still falling. He was shaking so violently now, it was almost too difficult to obey this simple order.

“Now, you damned baby, you can start digging.”

“Yes, sir.” He struggled to pull the shovel free.

“You dig in between those four marks.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know how deep it has to be?”

“No, sir.” Hardly able to breathe now, still he tried to make his muscles work.

“Six feet.”

Kit looked up.

“You look around you, Worm. This is the end of the line. You’re going to dig your own grave. I’m going to bury you right here. And the only choice you have right now depends on how well and how fast you dig, because that’s going to be what decides whether you are buried dead or alive.”

And so he had dug. He had dug and dug and dug, until his hands were as blistered and raw as any galley slave’s, his shoulders and back sore, and his skin and clothing covered with dirt. He dug because he wanted to be dead.

The ground became harder, but he worked and worked at it. He was only a boy, though, and the rim of the hole was barely above the level of his head when the sun began to rise.

Jerome walked up to the edge and said, “Stop.”

He leaned on the shovel, muscles shuddering in fear or exhaustion, he wasn’t sure which.

“Give me the shovel.”

He handed it up.

“Lie down.”

He stood swaying. Jerome kicked his shoulder, easily knocking him over.

A shovelful of dirt landed on him. He found he could not move, could not even bring himself to brush it away.

Go ahead, he thought. Bury me. I don’t care. I don’t care.

Jerome laughed. “Maybe I’ll let you live another day, Worm.”

Kit, too exhausted to crawl out, lay in the bottom of the grave and slept.

As almost always happened when he dreamed the digging dream, at the moment when he fell asleep in the dream, he awakened from it. He did so now in Denver, miles and years away from the events of the dream, but feeling the power of the memories press in on him all the same. He quickly reached for the light, then held on to a small Chinese soapstone carving of a tortoise. A lucky tortoise, he had been told. Before long, he was breathing more steadily.

Sometimes, the dream would last a little longer, and he buried Jerome. In reality, this had not happened. In reality, when the hot sun had awakened him early that afternoon, he was roughly pulled from the grave by Jerome, who told him to wash up, because they were moving that day, and he didn’t want worm dirt all over the car.

There would be more digging in days to come.

He told himself now that he could not rely on omens, on dreams to tell the future. He just barely resisted the impulse to call Meghan. Then he showered, awakened Spooky, and after promising fast food for breakfast and lunch, started for Albuquerque far earlier than he had planned.