The Fan

21

Should have been a grave digger.

Another black night, moonless and starry, but now the air was warm, and alive with soft breezes. Surrounded once more by the old town names, written in stone-Pease, Laporte, Spofford, Cleary, Bouchard-Gil toppled the marker that read Renard, R. G., and dug again his father’s grave. This time the once-turned, unfrozen soil had lost its resistance. The earth felt weightless, and Gil very strong, stronger than he could ever remember. He was a big man, he reminded himself, bigger than Bobby Rayburn, as he had discovered when they stood so close at the ballpark; and much bigger than Primo. He pictured the knife flashing into Primo’s hand in the men’s room at Cleats, and his insides stirred with a feeling he hadn’t known since the last time he had faced some dangerous hitter: butterflies.

In what seemed like moments, Gil was down in the earth to shoulder level. The shovel blade struck the pine box. Recalling the jagged holes he had made in the wood, Gil knelt and cleared the rest of the dirt by hand. Then he climbed out of the pit and walked to the shed at the end of the dirt track crossing the cemetery. The pickup was parked behind it. Gil opened the door, reached inside, bent his knees, and hoisted Boucicaut’s body onto his shoulders.

A heavy and unbalanceable load: Gil carried Boucicaut half the distance, dragged him the rest of the way by his belt, bumping him over rocks and tree roots. Gil knew he couldn’t hurt Boucicaut anymore but still was crying by the time he got him to the grave. Boucicaut: a knight in the Crusades, according to some college girl; a real one, not like Robin Hood. He smoothed Boucicaut’s hair a little, plucked a twig from his beard. Bent over the body, Gil was conscious of the stars above, the vast black spaces between them, the infinite blackness beyond. He knew he should say something, eulogize Boucicaut in some way.

“Len Boucicaut,” he said. “Catcher.”

Then he rolled him into the hole. Boucicaut landed with a heavy thump, facedown.

Beside the shovel lay Gil’s MVP trophy, the brass-plated baseball on the hardwood stand. Gil picked it up. He had brought it with the intention of placing it in Boucicaut’s arms. Boucicaut was the MVP, always had been, always would be. It was the right thing to do, but how was it feasible, now that Boucicaut had landed facedown like that? He could climb down into the pit, wrestle the body into position; that was one way. Gil stood at the edge, picturing himself doing it. But he didn’t do it. In the end, he shoveled the earth back in, working faster and faster, hurling and flinging the last clods of it, then tilted his father’s headstone back in place, and hurried off, shovel in one hand, trophy in the other.

Gil drove to the trailer in the woods. The 325i was still parked in the junk-strewn yard, but that wasn’t what first caught his eye. What first caught his eye was the light glowing in the trailer.

He got out of the pickup and closed the door softly. Had they left a light on? Possible, but still he moved as quietly as he could toward the trailer. Now he heard voices, realized as he drew closer that they were TV voices. Could they have left the TV on too?

Gil found a window where the plastic curtains were only half drawn, knelt, and peered over the sill. He saw no one except the figures on the TV screen. Black-and-white figures in some old movie: a man in a tuxedo breathed smoke from his nose and asked a woman in a strapless gown to dance. She breathed smoke from her nose and said her feet were tired.

Then Gil felt something hard in the small of his back, and a real woman said: “Hands way up.”

He didn’t move.

“This is a twelve-gauge, peeping boy, and my finger’s wrapped around the trigger.”

Gil considered the thrower on his leg, tried and failed to imagine reaching it before she could pull the trigger; and raised his hands.

“Now, kneeling down just like that, turn around so I can see your pretty face.”

Gil started to turn. She prodded him with the gun muzzle. “Did I say anything about lowering them?”

Gil raised his hands higher, twisted around, still on his knees. He looked up at the woman. She had painted eyebrows, frosted hair, upside-down Cupid’s-bow lips.

“How to keep men the way you are right now,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Gil said. “I was only returning the truck.”

She didn’t turn to look. “What were you doing with it?”

No smooth lie came to mind. But he did remember something: She’s in the pen. “Returning it, like I said,” Gil told her. “I didn’t expect to see anyone here, that’s all. You weren’t supposed to be back till August.”

A guess, but not a wild one: her eyes wavered, and so did the gun. At that moment, the mongrel came bounding out of the darkness.

“Hey, Nig,” Gil said, and held out his hand. Nig sniffed it, then sniffed it some more.

“Who are you?” she said.

“A friend of Co’s.”

The gun came up again. “No one calls him that.”

“I always did.”

“What’s your name?”

“Onsay.” A thrill shot through him.

“He never mentioned you.”

Gil shrugged. Nig kept sniffing him, wagging his tail.

“He likes you,” the woman said. “And Nig don’t like nobody except Len.”

Gil said nothing. He knew what the sniffing was about.

“Where is he?” the woman said.

“In the city.”

“What’s he doing there?”

Gil paused. He was starting to feel clever. It was a nice feeling. Clever people could have the whip hand, even on their knees looking up a gun barrel. He gave his clever answer: “I don’t like to say.”

“Son of a bitch,” said the woman. “He just can’t keep his zipper up, can he? And don’t tell me he couldn’t wait. You don’t know what I’ve done for that prick.”

Gil didn’t reply. He didn’t know what she’d done for Boucicaut, suspected there was a lot he wouldn’t understand about a relationship where a whore demanded sexual fidelity from her man.

“When’s he coming back?” she said.

“Whenever I get down there and bring him back.”

The woman lowered the gun. There were still tough questions she could have asked, but she fed him an easy one instead. “Is that your car?” She pointed the muzzle at the 325i.

He nodded.

“Nice car,” she said. The expression in her eyes changed. “You can get up.”

Gil rose. She backed away, but only a little: living with Boucicaut, she must have gotten used to size in a man. Gil thought of another clever line. “I won’t bite,” he said.

“No?”

They looked at each other.

“What did you say your name was, again?”

“Onsay.” The thrill again, just as strong.

“What kind of a name is that?”

“It’s my lucky name,” Gil said. “What’s yours?”

“Claudine,” she said. “But it’s not lucky.”

“Maybe that’ll change,” Gil said, astonished by his sudden glibness, as though he were someone else, a tuxedo-wearing star from the thirties; a real player. And then it hit him: I can be someone else-I’m already on the way.

“Want to come inside?” she said. “I guess I owe you a drink, anyway.”

Gil went inside. Claudine laid the gun on the kitchen table. They sat down. On TV, tuxedo man was dancing with another woman; the sore-footed one looked on from the sidelines through narrowed eyes.

“Beer?” said Claudine. “Or there’s usually some Canadian.”

“Beer.” He never wanted to taste Canadian again.

She opened two beers. “What do you do?” she asked.

“I’m into a lot of things right now.”

Not much of an answer, not the kind that would do for someone like Garrity, or O’Meara, but it did for her. She nodded and said, “You’ve got a phone in your car, eh?”

“You peeked,” he said.

She giggled. This was supreme, to have the right words at hand with a woman; and he was cold sober.

“Who’s the peeper now?” he said.

Claudine gave him a long look. The nightgown she was wearing slipped a little off her shoulder. “Did Len say much about me?”

“Some.”

There was a silence. Gil heard the beating of heavy wings above; probably an owl.

Then Claudine spoke. “I could give you a special rate.”

“I’ve never paid for it,” he said.

“That’ll make it all the more exciting.”

It did.

Wonderfully more exciting. It was nothing like that last time with Lenore. This went on forever, and she came with loud cries, and there was no bitching and whining after. They lay together on the bed in the back of the trailer.

Claudine said: “What’s that hard thing?”

Gil laughed: “You still don’t know?” What ease!

“Not that,” she said: “I mean on your leg.”

“Nothing,” Gil said. He rolled on top of her and buried himself in her soft, wet space in a single surge. Then he moved like a madman. She didn’t cry out this time, but that was because she was even more turned on; he could tell.

“How was that?” he said after.

“Great.”

“Better than Co?”

Pause. “No one calls him that.”

“I always did. I told you already. Something wrong with that?”

“No,” she said. She gave him a little squeeze. “Nothing wrong.”

Soon she rolled over. Gil closed his eyes. He listened for the beating wings of the owl, but it didn’t come. He slept.

Gil had a dream. He was a Crusader, riding a red Schwinn across a barren plain. He came to a headless body lying on the ground. It wore a magnificent shirt of spun gold. He stripped it off as a gift for the king. The king’s domed palace opened for him, and he was about to gaze upon the king’s face when something cold and hard pressed against his forehead.

Gil opened his eyes. The woman, Claudine, now fully dressed, stood over him, holding the shotgun to his head.

“You killed him, you son of a bitch,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” Gil tried to sit up. She pressed the muzzle against his skull, keeping him down.

“I’m talking about the blood all over the goddamn truck, Mr. Gil Renard.”

“That’s not my name,” said Gil, realizing he no longer felt the thrower around his leg.

“Then it’s not your fancy car out there either, is it? The one with ‘Gil Renard’ on the registration.”

Gil said nothing. A single lamp shone in the trailer, on the kitchen table. He spotted the thrower beside it, in its sheath.

“Maybe you stole it,” Claudine said. “Maybe the two of you stole it and then something went wrong, eh?”

Now she was the one with the power of words, and Gil had lost it. His racing mind offered up nothing better than the rules of the successful commission salesman. Take the offensive.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said.

“Then where is he? And whose blood’s all over the truck?”

Gil had no answer.

“I’m calling the cops,” she said. She backed away toward the wall phone, holding the gun on him. Sinews twitched in her forearm. At that moment, something rough and wet rubbed against the sole of Gil’s foot.

Nig. Nig was licking his foot. The dog smelled Boucicaut all over him.

Gil had an idea.

“It’s deer blood,” he said.

Claudine paused, her hand on the phone. A gratifying pause. He was coming into himself at last.

“Deer blood?”

“He shot a deer yesterday. I was driving, on that old logging road north of the bypass. He just leaned out of the window and pow.”

“And then you put it in the cab?”

“To keep it out of sight. Not exactly hunting season, Claudine.”

That sounded like the Boucicaut she knew: he could see it in her eyes. But the gun was still pointed at him. “You said he was in the city.”

Gil tried to look sheepish. “That wasn’t quite true.”

“But he’s with somebody, right?”

Gil nodded.

“Close by?”

He nodded again.

“Show me.”

“Aw,” Gil said. “I don’t want to do that.”

Her hand shifted back to the phone. “Then I’ll have the cops track him down.” The gun barrel, heavy for her, dipped toward the floor.

“You win,” Gil said. He got off the bed, reached down to pick his shirt off the floor.

Claudine laughed a mean laugh. “Don’t want them to take a gander at that bag of knives in the truck, do you?”

Gil looked puzzled. “Why not? I’m a collector.”

She thought. Gil knew what she was thinking: knife collector, 325i, it fit. There were lots of things that didn’t fit, though, and Gil could see she wasn’t finished with them. She started to frown. At that moment, Gil heard the heavy wings beating overhead again, going the other way this time. Nig, at the foot of the bed, heard them too. Whether the sound reminded him of some nocturnal fright in his past, whether he was reacting to something else, or nothing at all, Nig suddenly began to howl.

A loud and startling intrusion that filled the trailer with bestial noise. Claudine jumped. Gil jumped too-right across the room and full force against her legs. She fell, lost her grip on the gun. Gil got his arms around her, started to shift his weight on top. Then Nig landed on him, and sank his teeth into the back of his thigh. Claudine squirmed away.

She ran across the room and out the door. Gil scrambled up. Nig bit him again, the other leg this time. Gil took the thrower off the kitchen table and sank it to the hilt in Nig’s head.

Then he was out the door too, bloody thrower in hand. Claudine was halfway across the yard, already past the pickup and the 325i. She had no keys, he realized. He ran after her, gaining at first. In seconds he was close enough to hear the high-pitched noise she made at the beginning of every breath. But then they were in the woods, where the ground was rough, and she had shoes on and he did not. He ran as hard as he could, but stopped gaining. Her frosted hair flashed on through the trees. There were trails in the woods, trails she probably knew and could probably find, even in the darkness. She was going to lose him. Without thinking of the proper form, without calculating distance or rotation, Gil drew back the thrower and let go.

How much time passed? Half a second? Three-quarters? It seemed much longer to Gil. Then he heard her say, “Oh,” and she crumpled and fell.

Gil hurried to the spot, bent down, and saw that he had been perfect. He rose and leaned against a tree to catch his breath. His hand encountered gouges in the bark. He looked, and discovered the deer-heart-sized circle he had carved, and the deep marks of his practice session.

“Yes,” he said.

He carried Claudine back to the pickup, laid her on the front seat. He put Nig in there too. If it was blood they wanted, let them find a confusion of it. Of course he knew who they would look for first. Boucicaut, even in death, a rock for him.

Gil went inside, showered and dressed, retrieved the bag of knives; then climbed into his car and drove away. He was coming into his own.

The custodian of the cemetery called the police station next morning.

“Been some digging again,” he said.

“What kind of digging?” asked Claymore.

“Just digging. No vandalism or nothin’. Everything put back, like. But digging, all the same.”

“Probably just some kids,” said Claymore.

“Maybe, but why would kids dig up the same place twice?”

“What do you mean, the same place?”

“The same grave, like.”

“Whose grave?”

“Renard, R. G.”

“I’ll be right over,” said Claymore.