Shallow Graves

12

Pellam parked the camper in the driveway of the Torrens house (the word "homestead" came to mind). Meg stepped out onto the porch, then smiled and jumped down the few steps to the walk that led to the driveway, wiping her hands on a scallopy apron and looking just like a housewife out of a 1960s sitcom.

A housewife, however, in a tight, blue silk blouse, the top two (or was it three?) buttons undone.

Eyes up, boy.

My God, she's got a freckled chest.

Pellam just loved freckles on women.

"What brings you here, Pellam?"

"Came to borrow something."

She blinked. To joke, or not to joke? "Butter churn?"

"Naw."

"Bear grease for your muzzleloader?" she asked.

Gotcha.

He smiled indulgently. "As a matter of fact," Pellam said, "you're talking to one of the only people in the state of New York that's fired a Sharps.54."

And she didn't miss a beat. "A Sharps? Forget about it, boy. That's a drop-block breechloader, not a muzzleloader."

Got me.

She laughed hard at his jolted expression. "Girls usually melt at gun talk, huh?"

He said, "Nobody in the goddamn world except me and born-again gun nuts know about Sharps anymore."

"I never fired one but my daddy had one. He collected guns. I've got myself a Springfield breechloader in the den."

"No." He laughed. "A forty-five seventy?"

She nodded. "Carbine. With a saddle ring and everything."

"Damn, what a woman. You ever fire it?"

"What good's a gun unless you fire it? But try getting the black powder smell out of your silk undies."

"Not a problem I have."

"Sam and I take it out to the range sometime. Hard to find ammo, of course."

"That's what I wanted to borrow."

"Ammunition?"

"Your son."

"The bomb expedition?" she nodded.

"Yep. It okay?"

Meg said, "You ever known any parent to mind when somebody says he'll take your child off your hands for a few hours?" She called Sam then turned back to Pellam. "Oh, before I forget… The Apple Festival is Saturday afternoon. You interested in seeing it?"

"I guess. You'll be there?"

"It's a family thing."

What was that supposed to mean? You'll be there it's a family thing. He waited a second for more messages; when he got none, he said, "Sure. Look forward to it."

Sam appeared. "Hey, Mr Pellam, we gonna look at bombs?"

"You bet, Sam."

"All right! Can we go in the camper?"

"That's the only wheels I got."

"Can I, Mom?"

"Sure, just be back by six for dinner."

"Mr Pellam, these are the greatest. They got red ones and green ones and they got mortar shells that Dad says they don't have powder in them anymore and hand grenades…"

"Do not, under any circumstances, buy him anything."

Pellam laughed, "Yes, ma'am."

They got into the camper.

"Hey, Sam, you know, one thing'd be fun?"

"What, Mr Pellam?"

"Why don't you bring your metal detector along?"

"My metal detector?"

"I have this collection?" Pellam said. "And whenever I'm in a new town I like to add to it."

"I collect dinosaurs. And baseball cards. And pro-wrestling cards, of course." Sam jumped down out of the Winnebago and ran into the house.

Energy. Where do they get it?

He was back in two minutes.

"You need batteries?"

"Nope. They're recharged. I used ni-cads. What do you collect, Mr Pellam? Coins?"

He said, "Bullet casings."

Sam said, "Wow."

As it turned out, Pellam liked the bombs as much as Sam did.

This particular junkyard was a lot classier than R &W. He remembered it from the poker boys' list. It sold mostly what the name promised: Army Surplus, which seemed to be in pretty good supply despite what Bobby (or Billy) had said. Vehicle parts, cartridge boxes, portable latrines, tools, tents, flashlights. All solid, olive-drab, functional. A lot of things that you couldn't use for much other than paperweights: Bombsights and old altimeters and doughboy helmets that wouldn't even make good planters.

But the bombs, yeah, they were great. All different colors. Different shapes. Some pointed like rockets, some rounded like old-time airplane bombs. Jesus, they were huge. Pellam cautiously tapped one. Hollow.

Sam said, "They're just practice bombs. You don't have to worry."

"I wasn't worried," Pellam said quickly.

"You looked like you were afraid it was going to go off."

"Ha, ha."

Sam showed him mortar shells, concussion grenades and bayonets, mean-looking things with deep blood grooves up the side. Most of them were still wrapped in sticky creosote.

Despite what Meg had told him, he wanted to buy the kid a bomb. They were only fifty bucks. Then he admitted he really wanted one for himself. One of the deep blue ones. He wanted to mount it on the front of the Winnebago.

No-what he really wanted was to buy one and mail it, C.O.D., to Alan Lefkowitz, c/o Big Mountain Studios, Santa Monica Boulevard, Century City, California…

Then Sam decided it was time to look for bullet casings. They climbed back into the camper and drove ten minutes out of town, parked and started hiking.

They walked through the woods, following what was a pretty clearly marked trail. The boy had a box over his shoulder and carried a short metal rod with a disk attached. He had a headset around his neck. They were by themselves. The day was very quiet. Sam kept looking up at Pellam as if he expected him to say something brilliant.

"You think you're going to find bullets here?"

"You never know."

"Like from hunters?"

"Right."

"You hunt, Mr Pellam?"

"Yep. Haven't for a while. My father and I used to go out all the time."

"Where's he live?"

Pellam glanced at him. "He died few years ago."

"Like Grandpa Wold."

"That's your mother's name? Wold?"

"Un-huh. She's got a gun, my mom. Grandpa gave it to her. It's an old one. Mom and me shoot it sometimes down by the river. Wow, it makes this totally loud noise, really loud. And it knocked me over nearly."

He set down the metal detector and illustrated shooting the gun and falling backwards. He lay on the ground, still.

Pellam looked down at him, alarmed. "Hey, you okay? Are you all right?"

"Sure!" He jumped up. "My dad doesn't hunt much. We go fishing sometimes. What'd you hunt?"

"Pheasant, duck, geese."

Sam asked, "You like football?"

"I used to play."

"Yeah, I knew it! Where? Pro, I'll bet."

He laughed loud. "Pro? I'm about a hundred pounds light for that. Naw, just in high school."

"Quarterback, right?"

"Receiver. I figured it was better to get jumped by one or two big guys instead of four or five."

"What's it like to score a TD? Running over the line. I like the way, you know, how they run over the line and then drop the ball like it's nothing to them. That's so neat! What's it like?"

"I didn't score that many. I wasn't that good."

"Sure you were!" the boy countered. "I'll bet you saved the team. When was that? A couple years ago?"

"More like twenty."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Holy cow, you're older than my mom. You don't look old."

Pellam laughed. He'd forgotten how completely kids nuked your careful adult delusions.

"Hey, Mr Pellam, can we like practice passing sometime? My mom tries but she's a girl and all, you know. Maybe you and me could practice, you could give me some tips. My dad, well, he's busy a lot of the time. All he cares about is his job."

Pellam knew enough not to get into that one. He said, "We'll see."

"My mom'd like it if you stayed around for a while. She likes you, I can tell."

Or into that one either.

They came to a ridge that overlooked the parking lot where Marty had died. The lot was about two hundred yards away. There was only one other high point that Pellam could see that had a view of the lot and that one was five hundred yards. Not an impossible shot with a good scope but this would be the more likely spot for a sniper. Also, this faced the rear of the parking lot, and, if Marty had parked head in, would offer the car's gas tank as a target.

Still, it'd be a bitch of a shot in any kind of breeze, and on a warm day-as that day had been-heat waves from the valley beneath would have blurred the line of sight.

"Okay, Sam, go to work. Find me what you can."

The boy wandered back and forth for ten minutes, retrieving two mashed Coors cans and a quarter ("It's yours, son"). Suddenly he shrieked and ran up to Pellam with a.22 long rifle cartridge in his hand.

"Nope, too small. I'm looking for centerfire. You know the difference?"

"No, sir."

"Firing pin hits a.22 on the rim of the shell. So they're called rimfire. Bigger calibers hit the percussion cap in the center. They're called centerfire."

"Wow, that's neat."

"Come here, I'll show you." Sam frowned, then his eyes went wide, as Pellam opened his jacket and pulled a gun from his waistband. It was an 1876 Colt, steel with dark rosewood grips

"Wow," the boy whispered.

Pellam kept the gun pointed at the ground. "Always pretend a gun is loaded, even if you know it isn't, and always pretend that it could go off at any minute. So you never point it at anything unless you're prepared to shoot it. Got it?"

"I got it. That's a cowboy gun."

"It's a Colt Peacemaker, a.45." He opened the thumb cover and with the ejector rod eased the shell out. He held the end up for the boy to see. "There, that's the cap in the center. The pin on the hammer hits the cap and that sets off the powder. The old-time guns like this use black powder. Like the one your mother's got. Newer guns use smokeless."

"Can you take me shooting, Mr Pellam? Please?"

"Let's talk to your parents about it. Maybe."

"Shoot something. Will you?"

"Not now, Sam. It's not a toy." He put the gun back in his waistband. "Let's find me my cartridges."

With even more enthusiasm the boy swept the detector over the ground. Pellam wasn't paying much attention to him, he was looking at the dark patch of plowed-over earth in the distance, the parking lot, where Marty'd died a horrible death. He didn't notice the boy stoop down and pick up something then come racing over to him.

"Look what I found, Mr Pellam. Look!" Sam dropped the two cartridges into his hand. They were.30 caliber, though the length was odd, stubbier than a.30-'30 or.30-'06, bigger than a Garand. They couldn't have been from a carbine like an M-1 because a short-barreled rifle wouldn't have been accurate enough for a shot of this range.

"Good job, Sam." He patted the beaming boy on his shoulders. "Just what I'm looking for." He dropped the cartridges into his pocket.

"You show me your collection some day, Mr Pellam?"

"You bet, Sam. Time to get home."

"Aw…"

Together they walked down the mountain, swapping fishing stories.

That night, Sam upstairs, and Keith still at the company, Meg Torrens ate a turkey sandwich with cold cranberry sauce and drank a glass of white wine, reading the headlines and the first paragraphs of all the stories in the New York Times.

She heard the clicks and tiny pops of the hundred-year-old house, the muffled roar of the furnace coming on-something reassuring about the way its simple brain kicked the machinery on and coursed hot water through the pipes. It would shut off and there'd be moments of complete, muffled silence.

She finished the Arts section, dropped the paper and walked upstairs to Sam's room.

"Hi, Mommy."

She walked to his computer.

"Tell me again. You dial, then what do you say?" Meg looked at the computer.

"Aw, Mom," Sam said. He was tired, it was nearly nine. "It's a modem. Nobody says anything. You just get a tone. That means you're on-line."

"Show me." In the master bedroom the clock radio played a sad country western tune, an old Patsy Cline song.

Sam bent over the keyboard and typed rapidly. Meg and Keith spent thirty dollars a month for access to a current events database, which Sam had learned contained a sports submenu; they'd ended up with huge overages one month when he'd printed out the starting lineups of every baseball team since 1956.

He picked up the phone, dialed, his mouth twisted with exasperation, though Meg knew he was tickled to show off this esoteric knowledge. A squeal came from the phone. He held it toward her like a ray gun. "Zap, zap, zap!" And pressed a button on a small box. The computer screen came to life.

"You're on-line, Mom. What do you want to look up?"

"A name. I want to look up a man's name."

She typed in some characters. The response come back in five seconds. Meg scrolled through the text. "How do I print it?"

"You either do a screen dump or download the whole file."

Where did they learn this stuff?

"Just tell me what to push."

"Here." Sam happily hit a button, and the raspy matrix printer began its satisfying sound.

Reminded her of the Polaroid.

Bzzzt.

The sound lasted for some time. There was a lot to print.