Shallow Graves

13

Apples. A thousand apples, a hundred thousand. A million.

Pellam'd never seen so many apples in his life. And in so many forms. Apple pies, fritters, turnovers, apple butter, jelly, pickled apples and candied apples. You could dunk for them. You could buy them fresh by the bushels, buy them dried and painted and glued together into wreaths and wall hangings shaped like geese and pigs.

There were girls dressed up like apples. All the boys seemed to have round, rouge cheeks.

A woman tried to sell him a chance to win a Dutch apple pie by tossing a ring onto a board with apples nailed onto it.

"I don't really care for apples," he told her.

The football field was filled with more than a thousand people, milling through the booths, playing the games and examining the junk for sale-sweaters, wooden trinket boxes, clocks made from driftwood, ceramic, macrame. Janine had a jewelry booth. Pellam had homed in on it right away, waited until she was busy making a sale, and did the obligatory appearance. All she had time to say was "Dinner tomorrow, remember?"

He nodded.

"At four. Don't you forget, lover boy." She winked and blew him a kiss.

Pellam estimated half the crowd was tourists, half was locals. No one older than seventeen seemed exactly sure why they were there. The tourists were catching the tail of some indigenous upstate experience-the country, the country!-and holding on for a while, buying vases, jewelry, decorations, food to take back to their Manhattan apartments. The Cleary moms and dads were gossiping and doing some serious eating. The kids, of course, were the only ones really enjoying themselves because for them it was nothing more than tons of apples. And who needed more than that on a nice fall day?

No more 'Roids. He'd left the camera in the camper. Now, he was just another tourist scoping out the leaves, the booths, the scenery.

The Toyota showed up five minutes later, racing through the parking lot and skidding to a stop on the crumbling asphalt. Meg saw him right away and waved. Keith wasn't with her but Sam was. The boy waved energetically. He wondered if Sam had said anything about Pellam's tendency to collect lethal weapons.

Like the other night at dinner, she looked ten years younger than the upstate matron who'd visited him in the clinic. Her hair wasn't teased and stiff but was tied back in a ponytail. She wore tight jeans and a dark paisley high-necked blouse under a suede jacket. A silver antique pin was at her throat.

The boy stayed close. "Hi, Mr Pellam."

"Howdy, Sam."

"Hello," Meg said to Pellam. He nodded in reply.

They were suddenly enveloped in a large crowd of Izod-shirted Manhattanites. The men with curly dark hair, the women in black stretch pants. Everybody had great forearms and calves, courtesy of the New York Health and Racquet Club.

The gang passed and they found themselves alone.

"You made it," Meg said.

"Wouldn't miss this for the world."

"Here," Meg called. "A present."

She pitched him an apple. He caught it left-handed.

"I hate apples," he said.

Sam grinned. "So do I."

"Cleary still a small town?" Pellam smiled.

She frowned.

He asked, "Won't they talk, we walk around like this?" They circled on the fringes of the festival.

"Let 'em," Meg said. "I'm feeling rebellious today. Phooey."

Sam was running sorties to the booths but always circling back to study Pellam with casual awe. Then he'd be off again, hooking up with some buddies from school, conspiring, looking amazed and devious and overjoyed-and always on the move.

"Energetic, aren't they?" Pellam watched an impromptu race.

Meg said, "There's nothing like children for perspective. What they teach you about yourself is the best. Somebody said that the most honest and the most deceitful, the crudest and the kindest of all people are children." She laughed. "Of course, that's only half true when you're talking about your own kids."

"You think about it, there are very few good movies about children," Pellam said. "Sentiment, mostly. Or revisionism-directors trying to patch up their own childhood on celluloid. Or trying to put adult values on kids' shoulders. Cheap shots, you ask me. I'd like to see a movie about the ambivalence of being a child. That would be a good project."

"Why don't you suggest it to your studio?"

Former studio, he thought, and didn't answer. Meg jogged away quickly to keep Sam from climbing a fence.

Pellam found himself in front of a turkey shoot booth, where you could win stuffed birds, chocolate turkeys, and a fifteen-pound frozen one by plinking tiny sponge rubber ducks-painted to look like turkeys-with a battered Sears pump action.22. Pellam called Sam over to him.

"What do you want, son, one of those little stuffed turkeys or a candy one?"

Sam looked shyly at his mother, who said, "Tell Mr Pellam what you'd like." She looked up, grinning. "This, I've got to see."

"I guess chocolate, okay?" His eyes on Pellam.

Meg said, "If he can win it you can eat it."

"But maybe not all at once," Pellam said. "It looks pretty big."

The booth attendant took a dollar from Pellam, who asked, "How many to win one of those chocolate turkeys? The bigger one?"

The man loaded the skinny gun. "Six hits out of ten."

"Okay." Pellam leaned forward, resting on the chest-high bench, and fired four shots slowly. They all missed, kicking up dust in the sandbag bullet trap.

Sam laughed. Meg did too.

Pellam slowly stood up straight. "Think I've got the feel." He quickly lifted the stock to his cheek. Six shots-fast, short cracks, as fast as he could work the slide. Six ducks flew off the board.

"Holy shit," the booth man whispered. Then he blushed. "Oh, beg your pardon, Mrs Torrens."

Pellam handed the gun back, and Sam took the candy, staring at him. Eyes wide. "Wow."

"What do you say, Sam?"

"Holy…" the boy began slowly.

Meg warned, "Sam."

"… cow. Wow, thanks, Mr Pellam. That was like totally fresh. I mean, totally."

Meg said, "Sam…"

Sam said, "Mom thinks I don't speak English."

"I know fresh," Pellam said. He looked at the candy. "I hope that it is too."

Sam peeled back the foil and bit off the bird's head. "Wow," he said through a mouthful of chocolate and walked away, looking back every fourth or fifth step. Another story was about to circulate.

They wandered on. She said, "I thought all you knew was muzzleloaders."

"I drive the L.A. Freeway. You gotta know how to shoot."

"Where'd you learn?"

"My father," he said.

"Where'd you grow up?" she asked.

"Simmons."

She turned to him, "No! Not just across the river?" She nodded west.

"The very same."

"It's a lot like Cleary."

"Little poorer, little scruffier," Pellam said. "And we don't get the tourists for the leaves. It's mostly pine."

They walked in silence for a moment, kicking through the tall grass at the edge of the football field.

"Keith couldn't make it?"

"He'll be coming by later. He's at his company."

"It was good of him to help me the other day."

"He said somebody'd stolen what you were looking for."

"Yep. We got outflanked."

They walked for a few minutes then, as if Pellam had asked about her husband, Meg said, "Keith's changed. When his partner died, it affected him. He got an edge to him."

"Really? I didn't sense anything like that."

"I wasn't sure he'd help you. He doesn't like things that are out of his own, you know, orbit. I'm glad he did."

They were being examined-dozens of heads turned conspicuously away while eyes followed them.

After five minutes of looking at booths, he said, "Why did you leave Manhattan?"

"Keith got a job with a drug company up here. I wasn't getting modeling work and just couldn't break into acting. I had a baby. I always wanted a house."

"And you like Cleary?"

She gave a nervous laugh and looked away. "It's tough for me to give you an answer. And it won't matter if I live here for another twenty-five years. I'll never know the place well enough to talk about it. These places, towns like this, they're born into you. The roots go way back. You come any other way, you're just a houseguest. You may be the life of the party, you may even get yourself elected to the town council, but places like Cleary don't become part of you. It's in the genes or it isn't. It's not in mine."

Applause not far away. A new Miss Apple had been crowned. Pellam saw a couple of kids gravitating toward him and Meg. Word was out that the location scout could shoot out a sponge duck's eye at fifty feet. The boys kept their distance as Meg and Pellam circled the field. The ripe, rich scent of decomposing grass came to them.

"Your hair looks nice that way."

Her fingers reached toward her ponytail then she stopped the acknowledgment and lowered her hand. Her eyes fled from his and she concentrated on something on the horizon. They walked to the festival's zoo-a sad collection of cows, goats, geese, ducks and a pony-before she said, "Is that why you and your wife broke up?"

"Uh, why's that?"

"Sorry, I was just thinking about you traveling around."

"There were a lot of reasons. Sure, the job had a lot to do with it."

"You were away from home six months, eight months-"

"I didn't travel as much then."

"I'd love to travel," she said. "Maybe do some acting. Not be a star necessarily. Character acting maybe. I'd even like your job."

Even your job. Just a location scout. "I don't think you would."

She said, "Well, I love my house. I wouldn't give that up. But seeing all those new places…It's like going on vacation, but having a purpose. I think that'd be wonderful."

Women said that. My house. Never our house. He remembered his wife saying just those words. Of course, in the end, that was how it worked out. It did become her house. Self-fulfilling prophecy, he guessed.

"… I guess what I'd want is Sam to come with me for maybe a week or two at a time." After a moment, she said, "Keith too of course." She looked at him but he gave no reaction to the lapse. If a lapse it had been.

Pellam steered away from the domestic situation. He said, "I can't really tell you why I like it. The thing about scouting is, it's not the work itself-finding a spot that'll work for the film. I mean, that's fine, that's what they pay me for. But I like the being on the road…" He waved his arm. "Simmons is, what, less than a hundred miles from here? I grew up with colored leaves and Victorian houses. But I was real glad to get that call and hit the road, scout for towns like this." He waved to Sam. It seemed his fan club had grown to a half dozen.

"One March," he continued, "I'd been sitting home for a month. I got a call from a producer who wanted me to scout for a labour union film. I got in the camper and headed right out to the steel mills in Gary, Indiana. Ugly, cold, gray. Walking through slush. That place was as close to hell as any I'd ever been. But I was so glad to get that call."

She wrinkled her nose. "I'd only go to fun places. Rio, San Francisco, Hawaii…"

He laughed. "You wouldn't get many jobs."

"No, but I'd have a hell of a good time on the ones I got."

"They have beer around here?"

"Probably, but don't you want some cider? They make it fresh."

"No, I want a beer. I hate apples, remember?"

"Then I guess an apple festival doesn't have a lot for you."

"I wouldn't say that."

Meg ignored the flirt and they steered toward the food concession.

As his mother and Mr Pellam were walking through the farmyard zoo Sam ran off toward a bow and arrow shoot. He thought about returning to the rifle shoot and winning something for Mr Pellam, but he remembered seeing the bow and arrow game-where you shot at paper targets of deer. One of the prizes was a small plastic football and because Mr Pellam had played in school that's what Sam decided he was going to win.

He gave the man a dollar for ten arrows and the hawker gave him a smaller bow, a straight pull, not one of the pulleyed hunting bows. Sam took it and notched an arrow, the way he'd done at camp. He went into position and pulled the string back. His muscles were quivering and his fingers let go quickly, before he'd sighted properly. He hit the deer in the rump.

"Hey," the voice called, laughing, "Got him in the ass." Sam turned. It was one of the boys from high school. A senior, he thought. He believed his name was Ned. He was smiling but Sam followed the grade schoolers' general rule that every high school boy was a potential terrorist. They'd take your lunch away from you, tie your Keds together and swing them like gaucho's bolos over electric wires, swear and spit on you, use you for a sparring partner.

Sam swallowed and ignored him. He concentrated fiercely on the target, the way his mother had taught him when he shot-not paying attention to the bow or arrow, but to where the arrow should strike. He drew the bowstring back and fought the agony in his thin arms as he stared at his target. Finally, he released the arrow.

Thwack.

A heart shot.

"Fucking good," the boy was saying, shaking his head.

Sam looked at him cautiously. Ned wasn't being sarcastic. "Thanks."

Two more heart shots, a gut shot, and then his strength started to go. The next four hit the bale of hay, but missed the deer. The last shot was another gut shot.

"Okay, you won yourself anything from the bottom shelf, son. What do you want?"

Sam hesitated. The kid was going to take his football away from him. He'd just grab it and run. He muttered, "One of those footballs."

"Okay, there you go."

Sam took the green plastic ball. He started to walk away quickly but the boy was making no moves toward him. He just said, "That was some good shooting. I wish I could shoot like that."

Sam laughed involuntarily. Here was a kid who was, like, seventeen telling Sam he couldn't shoot bow and arrow as good as him! Totally weird. "It's not hard. You've just gotta, you know, practice."

"What's your name?"

"Sam."

"I'm Ned." He stuck his hand out. No high school kid ever shook hands with grade school kids. Sam reached out tentatively and shook.

"Hey, you wanta see something?" Ned asked.

"Like what?" Sam didn't feel uncomfortable anymore. The boy could have grabbed the football and pushed him down any time. But no, he was just smiling and seemed to want to talk.

"Something neat?"

"I guess," Sam said, glancing toward where his mother and Mr Pellam were walking slowly, the same way his mother and father walked.

The boy walked off into a thick woods off the side of the football field. "What's here?" Sam asked.

"You'll see."

About thirty feet inside the woods was a small clearing. The boy sat down. He patted the ground next to him. Sam sat. "Let's see the ball."

Sam handed it to him.

"That's all right." He tossed it in his hand. "Feels good."

"I'm going to give it to Mr Pellam. He's the man with the movie company."

"Yeah, I heard about that. Totally excellent, making a film here." The boy handed the ball back to him. "Here you go."

There was silence for a moment.

Ned said, "I like it here. It's kind of secret."

Sam looked around and thought it looked like a clearing in a forest. "Yeah, it's okay."

"You got ten bucks?" Ned whispered.

"Naw," said Sam, who did in fact have eleven dollars and some change in his jeans pocket.

"How much you got?"

"A couple dollars. I don't know. Why?"

"You wanta buy some candy?"

"Candy? Ten bucks for candy?"

"It's special candy. You'll like it. I thought I saw you had ten bucks when you paid the guy at the arrow shoot."

Sam looked away from the older boy and squeezed the football. "Well, that, like, wasn't mine. It was my mom's."

Ned nodded. "I'll give you a sample. Then see if you don't want to buy one." He opened a yellow envelope and shook a dozen cubes of crystal candy into his hand. He held his palm out to Sam, who looked at the tiny bits cautiously. Ned laughed at his wariness and put a candy in his own mouth. "Come on, don't be a wuss."

"I don't really-"

Ned frowned. "You're not a pussy, are you?"

Sam suddenly grabbed most of the candies and slipped them into his mouth, chewing them down.

"No!" Ned shouted in horror. "You stupid shit! You weren't supposed to eat 'em all! They're ten dollars each!"

"I didn't mean…" Sam backed away in fear. His mouth was filled with a powerful, numbing sweetness. "I didn't know. You didn'ttellme…" He suddenly felt warm and giddy and dizzy. In his mouth was a funny aftertaste, reminded him of the chewable vitamins he took in the morning.

Ned stepped close to him, reaching for Sam's collar; the young boy cowered away, feeling the heat and the dizziness flow over his body.

"Sam!" It was his mother's voice and from not very far away.

Then he was being lifted up. Ned had him by the shirt. "You dumb little prick! You tell anybody about this, I'll find you. I'll come get you and I'll beat the living shit out of you, you got that?"

Sam thought he should be afraid but he felt so good. He laughed.

"You hear me?"

Laughing again.

He felt himself falling into the leaves, which seemed suddenly like the ground in the Candyland game he played with his babysitter until he outgrew it. Cotton candy grass, marshmallow rocks. Candyland. Hey, just like the candy he'd eaten, he thought. That thought made him laugh too. He felt like laughing forever, he felt so good.

Strange thumping noises. He looked up. Ned was running, running fast, deep into the forest. Sam thought he saw the boy turn into a tree. He stared at the spot for a long time.

He tried to stand.

Laughing.

Fireworks, black sparklers, cascades, and Roman candles, pouring their fire all over him. A huge roaring hum in his ears.

Warmth and humming music.

"Sam?" His mother's voice was both magnified a thousand times and very distant, like she was trapped in an airlock on the Starship Enterprise.

Then the fun started to leave. He felt he was going to sleep, only it was a funny kind of sleep, like the way he felt when he'd had his tonsils out and woke up in terrible pain and so thirsty he thought he'd die. He'd been lonely when he awoke in the hospital and he cried for what seemed like forever, until he saw his mother, asleep, across the room.

That's who he wanted now. "Mommy," he called.

Sam managed to struggle to his feet. He walked forward a few steps. "Mommy, help me!"

A man's voice called, "Sam!" Mr Pellam's. And that reminded him of the football. He turned back into the black explosions, the heat, the cracking fireworks, the hum, and stumbled into the clearing, where he bent down to pick up the football. He was certain he had it but as he reached forward his hand came up with nothing more than leaves. He fell to the ground.

Then he saw nothing more; a huge wave of black filled his vision. But he kept patting the ground around him for the football. He had to find it.

He'd won it for Mr Pellam.