Jeff Jacobson - Wormfood

“I don’t know.” My voice cracked and trembled. “He didn’t say.”

“Archie don’t know, Ma,” Junior called back over his shoulder, imitating my high, cracking voice. “He didn’t say.”

The pallid figure in the mirror stopped moving. I could definitely tell it had a human shape now, maybe a little thin, with one arm missing or held in real close and tight, but it was a person. It was Pearl. She was watching me through the mirror. For some reason I could see one of her eyes in the reflection, perfectly clear, utterly black and staring. It felt like she was staring right through my head, right down into the nest of squirming fear that was beginning to spill out into the rest of my body. I felt naked. No, more than naked. I felt like I couldn’t hide anything, that all of my secrets were laid bare on a flat rock in the sun and poked at with a stick.

Junior stuck one of the broken ends of the bone in his mouth and started sucking on it, smacking his tongue against the top of his mouth as he sucked out the marrow.

“I know you,” Pearl said. “I know you. Saw you last night.” The reflection tilted its head slightly. “You’re Janine Stanton’s grandson, ain’t you?” It didn’t come out as a question. “Yes, I know you. Knew your grandfather. You look like him. Same scared eyes. I happen to know a few things ‘bout your grandma too.” I wasn’t sure, but it looked like the pale shape in the darkness and smoke of the mirror smiled, a horrible, crooked smile with only one side of her face. “How them boots fit, boy?”

My breath caught and I froze. How did she know about Grandpa’s boots? The figure in the mirror drifted back into the smoky shadows and disappeared. Junior flicked one half of the drumstick into the weeds and said, “What the hell does Fat Ernst want now? Tonight?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” Pause. “He just said to bring your shovels.”

The blast of a car horn shattered the evening stillness and I flinched. Fat Ernst must have been getting impatient. Junior scowled and said, “Ma don’t like a lot of unnecessary noise.”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt like crawling into a hole and hiding there. Fat Ernst hit the horn again.

Junior picked at his teeth with a long fingernail. “Shovels, huh?”

I shrugged again, helpless. “That’s what he said. Said we could all make a lot of money. Just one night’s work.”

“How much money?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to talk to him.” I was trying to get Junior to go out to the car and get me away from the house, but Junior didn’t move. He just leaned against the doorframe.

“Well, then. You tell Fat Ernst not to get his panties in a bunch and to lay off that fucking horn, and we’ll be ready here lickety-split.”

I turned to go, saying, “Okay. I’ll tell him.” Pearl spoke up suddenly, sounding just inches from my ear. “My boys best get their fair share,” she whispered. “Otherwise … there’s a-going to be hell to pay, and I do mean hell.”

I nodded, and stumbled away. I didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to see how close she was. “I’ll tell him, I’ll tell him,” I said, moving down the front walk, still nodding like a doll with a broken spring for a neck. I did my best not to run shrieking through the dying light and the circling wasps back to the Cadillac.

I jumped in and slammed the door.

“So? What’d they say?” Fat Ernst asked.

“Junior said not to get your panties in a bunch and they’ll be ready lickety-split.”

“Okay, then.” Fat Ernst lit a cigar. “Took you long enough.”

CHAPTER 20

I figured it out as soon as we pulled into the little parking lot covered in a thin layer of pea gravel and surrounded by a sagging wrought-iron fence. During the long ride back down the highway out of the hills, the Sawyers following us the whole way, I kept wondering why Fat Ernst had told Junior and Bert to bring their shovels. I was a little worried we might be heading back to the pit, but that didn’t make sense. Fat Ernst had enough meat now, but after watching him kick Heck’s corpse and drop him in the Dumpster like that, I knew he was capable of anything. Grandma had been right about him.

We were here to dig up Earl’s coffin. And steal that buckle.

The sun had disappeared over an hour ago, leaving the valley shrouded in almost total darkness. Fat Ernst killed the Cadillac, sat back on the pomegranate seat, and flicked his cigar stub out onto the wet gravel. He instantly lit another.

Earl had been buried in the Lutheran, Methodist, and Baptist cemetery. The Catholic cemetery was on the other side of the creek, closer to town. And the Mormons had their own exclusive plot of land up north, near their church or temple or whatever the hell they wantedto call it. I guess people who didn’t like to associate much while they were alive sure as hell didn’t want to lie next to each other when they were dead. They might end up in the wrong heaven or something. This graveyard waited patiently at the end of Route 11, surrounded by walnut orchards, huge trees with vast expanses of branches, silently hulking out in the darkness.

Fat Ernst kept the headlights on and I realized he had been thinking ahead when he took Heck’s submersible pump. The cemetery wasn’t too far from the creek. When they had originally started burying folks out here, the creek was still a ways off, but over the years, especially since they had built the reservoir, the creek had gradually changed its course, carrying away the dark, heavy soil bit by bit, creeping closer and closer to the graveyard.

And now the whole place was under about six inches of water.

The Sawyers’ truck pulled in next to my side of the Cadillac and the engine rumbled angrily in the wet darkness. “Leave your lights on,” Fat Ernst called out as Junior killed the engine. I looked out over the acre of headstones, rising from the black water, illuminated by the headlights. It looked as though someone had started building a bridge, pouring somewhat orderly rows of various concrete supports and foundations across a swamp, then had given up after a while. I opened the door and stepped into the muddy water, feeling the liquid instantly trickle over the tops of Grandpa’s boots and soak into my socks.

Junior and Bert climbed out of the truck and joined Fat Ernst and me in front of the Cadillac, bathed in the harsh glare of the headlights. “If I would’ve known we were coming out here, I would’ve brought some flowers for Pop,” Junior said, leaning against the Cadillac’s hood.

“We’re gonna visit Pop?” Bert asked.

Fat Ernst ignored him and asked, “You got your shovels?”

“Yep.”

“Well, go get ’em and let’s get to work. We’re not here for a goddamn picnic.”

“Hold on,” Junior said, crossing his arms. “We ain’t moving until we know why we’re here.”

“Yeah,” Bert said, nodding. He tried to cross his arms as well, but with his right arm still in a cast, it didn’t work so well.

Fat Ernst smiled. “You ever seen Earl Johnson’s belt buckle? The one made of gold? With a shitload of diamonds all over it?”

“No,” Junior said. A moment of silence. Then he smiled back. “But I heard about it.”

“Well, I just happen to know that Earl had it put in his will that he should be wearing it when they put him in the ground.”

Junior looked astonished and betrayed at the same time. “You mean to tell me … that they … they buried it with Earl?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit,” Bert echoed. I still didn’t think he knew quite what was happening. His eyes were wandering around of their own accord again, and I wondered if he’d been taking his horse tranquilizers on a regular schedule.