Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

No. They will be traced here. Not a good idea.

Frantically he covered the bones. Then more calmly, smoothing the coarse dirt over the debris. Fortunately there was a sizable hole — a gouged-out, ugly hole — that looked like a rupture in the earth. Reno would lay flagstones over the grave — he’d purchased two dozen flagstones from a garden supply store on the highway. The children could help him — it would not be difficult work once the earth was prepared. As bricks had been laid over the child’s grave years ago, Reno would lay flagstones over it now. For he could not report this terrible discovery — could he? If he called the Paraquarry police, if he reported the child skeleton to county authorities, what would be the consequences?

His mind went blank — he could not think.

Could not bear the consequences. Not now, in his new life.

Numbly he was setting his work tools aside, beneath the overhang of the redwood deck. The new shovel was not so shiny now. Quickly then — shakily — climbing the steps, to wash his hands in the kitchen. A relief — he saw his family down at the shore, with the neighbors — the new wife, the children. No one would interrupt Reno washing the little glass-bead necklace in the kitchen sink, in awkward big-Daddy hands.

Gently washing the glass beads, that were blue — beneath the grime a startling pellucid blue like slivers of sky. It was amazing, you might interpret it as a sign — the thin little chain hadn’t broken in the earth.

Not a particle of dirt remained on the glass beads when Reno was finished washing them, drying them on a paper towel on the kitchen counter.

“Hey — look here! What’s this? Who’s this for?”

Reno dangled the glass-bead necklace in front of Devra. The little girl stared, blinking. It was suppertime — Daddy had cooked hamburgers on the outdoor grill on the deck — and now he pulled a little blue glass-bead necklace out of his pocket as if he’d only just discovered it.

Marlena laughed — she was delighted — for this was the sort of small surprise she appreciated.

Not for herself but for the children. In this case, for Devra. It was a good moment, a warm moment — Kevin didn’t react with jealousy but seemed only curious, as Daddy said he’d found the necklace in a “secret place” and knew just who it was meant for.

Shyly Devra took the little necklace from Daddy’s fingers.

“What do you say, Devra?”

“Oh Dad-dy — thank you.”

Devra spoke so softly, Reno cupped his hand to his ear.

“Speak up, Devra. Daddy can’t hear.” Marlena helped the little girl slip the necklace over her head.

“Daddy, thank you!”

The little fish-mouth pursed for a quick kiss of Daddy’s cheek.

Around the child’s slender neck the blue glass beads glittered, gleamed. All that summer at Paraquarry Lake, Reno would marvel he’d never seen anything more beautiful.

End of Excerpt

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More about New Jersey Noir

“Oates’s introduction to Akashic’s noir volume dedicated to the Garden State, with its evocative definition of the genre, is alone worth the price of the book. . Poems by C.K. Williams, Paul Muldoon, and others — plus photos by Gerald Slota — enhance this distinguished entry.” —Publishers Weekly

“It was inevitable that this fine noir series would reach New Jersey. It took longer than some readers might have wanted, but, oh boy, was it worth the wait. . More than most of the entries in the series, this volume is about mood and atmosphere more than it is about plot and character. . It should go without saying that regular readers of the noir series will seek this one out, but beyond that, the book also serves as a very good introduction to what is a popular but often misunderstood term and style of writing.” —Booklist (starred review)

“A lovingly collected assortment of tales and poems that range from the disturbing to the darkly humorous.” —Shelf Awareness

“What makes this edition such a strong example of the noir aesthetic is the vividly imagined settings and situations that it finds for all its dark doings. There isn’t a story in New Jersey Noir that doesn’t grab and hold your attention.” —Brooklyn Based

Launched with the summer ’04 award-winning best-seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

Featuring brand-new stories (and a few poems) by:Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Safran Foer, Robert Pinsky, Edmund White & Michael Carroll, Richard Burgin, Paul Muldoon, Sheila Kohler, C.K. Williams, Gerald Stern, Lou Manfredo, S.A. Solomon, Bradford Morrow, Jonathan Santlofer, Jeffrey Ford, S.J. Rozan, Barry N. Malzberg & Bill Pronzini, Hirsh Sawhney, and Robert Arellano.

From the introduction by Joyce Carol Oates:

“New Jersey! — ’The Garden State’—our fifth smallest state, with only Hawaii, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island below it in land mass, yet it’s the state containing the ‘most murderous’ American city (Camden) and the state generally conceded to be, square mile per square mile, the most densely politically corrupt. (Louisiana has been, by tradition, the most corrupt of all US states, but in recent years Illinois has been closing the lead.) Atlantic City, Jersey City, Hackensack, Hoboken, Secaucus, Newark, Camden (three recent Camden mayors have been jailed for corruption) — in these cities as in others corruption isn’t aberrant but rather a way of (political) life. .

Sitting between the great cities of New York and Philadelphia, New Jersey has been by tradition a heavily ‘organized’ Mafia state, as it was at one time a northern outpost of the Ku Klux Klan, with a concentration of members in Trenton, Camden, Monmouth County, and South Jersey. . In such ways, the most civilized and ‘decent’ among us find that we are complicit with the most brutal murderers. We enter into literally unspeakable alliances — of which we dare not speak except through the obliquities and indirections of fiction, poetry, and visual art of the sort gathered here in New Jersey Noir. ”

New Jersey Noir is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.

INTRODUCTION

WRITERS ON THE RUN

From USA NOIR: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, edited by Johnny Temple

In my early years as a book publisher, I got a call one Saturday from one of our authors asking me to drop by his place for “a smoke.” I politely declined as I had a full day planned. “But Johnny,” the author persisted, “I have some really good smoke.” My curiosity piqued, I swung by, but was a bit perplexed to be greeted with suspicion at the author’s door by an unhinged whore and her near-nude john. The author rumbled over and ushered me in, promptly sitting me down on a smelly couch and assuring the others I wasn’t a problem. Moments later, the john produced a crack pipe to resume the party I had evidently interrupted. This wasn’t quite the smoke I’d envisaged, so I gracefully excused myself after a few (sober) minutes. I scurried home pondering the author’s notion that it was somehow appropriate to invite his publisher to a crack party.