The Grave

                                                      The Grave


    “That thing’s creepy.  Get it away from me.”
    Peter looked at the pager, smiled, then leaned into her.  “Let’s page him now.  Look, I’m paging!”
    Joanne slammed her Fritz and Finklestein Book of Classical Poetry shut, squirmed away from him, put it on her nightstand, then lay under her covers.  “Stop joking!  Get it away from me.”
    Peter sat back, his half smile fading.  No, no joking matter.  His best friend Gary had just died on their fishing trip.  A little humor here, he thought, might help matters, but it only made him feel worse.  That heavy guilt flooded back, of the drunken night in which he could not save his friend.  No charges were filed from the incident on the lake in Kentucky; just a “fishing accident” that claimed his lifelong friend. 
    Peter slowly turned the pager in his hand.  Gary had always wanted a green burial, even before they were popular.  He wanted to be buried in the natural way in the old family cemetery behind the old family mansion where his aunt still lived.  But Gary also had the fear that most had in the old days with a natural burial; he had the fear of being buried alive.  He had asked Peter if he would carry a pager if his time came first, with the other one in the grave with him, for at least four days.  Peter thought that if Gary wouldn’t stir within a few hours, or even a day, he would be gone for good, but Gary insisted on four days.
    So here he was, the night after that storm-ridden funeral, holding a pager with the other end in a coffin.
    Peter rolled over and put the pager on the nightstand beside his bed and turned out the light in an attempt to get some sleep.  Yes, he thought, it was a bit creepy.  He closed his eyes, but the images of the funeral that day shown bright and clear in his head.
   
    Joanne had shown a lot of grief that day too, which had added to his guilt.  “You couldn’t have done anything, could you?”  She had said on the way there.  Peter hadn’t known how to take that.  Had she been consoling him, or accusing him?  At the viewing, her crying had puffed her eyes into a pair of wet cherries.  When they had walked to the casket, she had put out her hand.  For a moment, Peter had had no idea what she wanted.  Finally, he had put the pager in her hand.  She had taken it, then walking behind him, she had put it under Gary’s hand, which lay on his stomach.  Thank you, Peter had thought.  He had a great wife.  Sometimes.  Then later, the funeral had been a fitting one for Gary, who liked the macabre and horror stories his entire life.  Behind his aunt’s mansion which had hovered behind them over the proceedings---a vast, dark, stone crypt in its own right which housed the freshly dead of most of Gary’s family before being taken to the ground on which they stood---rain had shot streaks of water on them amid flashes of lightning from the dark gray clouds.  It had taken all of what Peter had to hear the minister.
   
    Peter tried to think about something else.  Gary wouldn’t leave his mind this night, so he thought about some of the good times.  Okay…like when they used to go hunting on his grandfather’s land.  Gary was a recipient of that land and the mansion, once his elderly aunt passed away.  Now, she still stood in possession.  Those were great days though, when they would go pheasant hunting out back and shoot…
    Beep.
    His eyes flipped open.
    Beep.
    The pager sat out there in the dark, two feet away.
    Beep.
    He raised on one elbow, then turned to look at his wife, noticing she was already sitting up.  He flicked the light on.  He jumped out of bed, smacking his toe against the nightstand.  He hobbled toward the closet.  Then back to the phone.  “Call 911?” he asked.  His wife was staring at the pager as if it had come to life and begun to tap dance.  She looked up to him wordlessly, her black, stringy hair falling into her face.  He picked up the cell phone and looked at it.  “No.  What the hell am I thinking?  He only has a short time.  The police would never get to digging him up in time.”  He threw his cell on his bed.  He grabbed his jeans and flannel shirt from the back of the desk chair, and began throwing them on.  “C’mon!”
    The sharp yell snapped Joanne out of her trance.  She jumped and threw on her black sweat pants and grabbed the black sweat shirt from the floor.  She threw on sandals while Peter threw on socks and sneakers.  She rounded the bed.  “I’ll get the car.  You get…whatever.”  She stopped at the bureau, grabbed her purse, threw in her keys, then threw in the small Beretta .32 caliber Bobcat she carried as much as she carried her keys, then disappeared.
    Peter rolled his eyes.  “What the hell does she think?”  He jumped and ran through the door and through the house to the garage.  He found his spade sitting in the corner, and noticed a white plastic bucket near it.  He stopped a second.  As he pulled the spade from the corner and trotted to the SUV, he thought of the deck of the boat, him by himself near the bow, a half-full beer, and the sound of the bucket behind him breaking the dull sound of the boat moving through the waves… 

    Gary, stumbling drunk, mixing his feet up with the bucket, then finally throwing it aside and lumbering to Peter almost toppling him, and Peter swaying, catching his balance, bounding back, grabbing Gary, the bow dipping forward in the trough of a wave, and Gary toppling over the side and disappearing in the water and underneath the boat. 
   
    He threw the shovel in the back of the running SUV, then went to the driver’s side as Joanne waited in the passenger’s.  He threw the pager at her then hit reverse in silence.  As he swung through the wet back roads breaking the night with his headlights, Peter relived the announcement at the hospital.  “Gary is gone,” the Native American doctor had said.  He had said he had died in the emergency room.
    He passed the last house in the neighborhood and headed into the country.  The night was cool, but the storm had passed and left wet roads and ground.  Gary’s aunt’s estate lay on the foot of the mountain, just off this road and down a winding dirt one.
    Gary, who never married.  Gary, the great sport.  Gary, the one who was always there ever since grade school, the one who had respect for all of Peter’s new friends he met, including his wife.
      A flurry of leaves flew into the windshield, blinding him.  The miniature ghosts from the darkness threw off his judgment and he braked, looking hard for the shoulder of the road, sliding almost out of control on the wetness, trying to feel the right tires on the dirt and gravel, not feeling it, swerving over as much as he dared…
    “What the hell are you doing?!”
    The leaves flew passed and he could see the turning in the road again, and that he was in the middle, almost in the left lane, before the road snaked even more to the right…
    “Peter what is your problem?”
    Ahead loomed the guardrail, beyond which lay the valley floor some two-hundred feet down…
    “Ah!  What the hell are you trying to do?!”
    Peter swung the SUV hard to the right.  It skidded and finally came up on the right lane.
    “You act like you never drove before!  What is wrong with you?  Speed up now!”
    “Oh, shut up and write a poem.”
    Peter floored it on the straight road ahead shooting through open fields.  He saw the speedometer climb to seventy, and at the intersection several hundred yards away, he saw headlights approaching across the field on the right, coming toward the stop sign.  Hope he waits, he thought.  Just hope he waits.  Peter flew toward the intersection as the other set of lights came to a stop.  He doesn’t know how fast I’m going, he thought.  The other car inched out, then pulled into Peter’s lane.
    “Shit!”
    The old VW bus pulled in front of him, and he hit the brakes.  Peter could see the silhouette of the driver, a man masked in darkness, but seemingly not caring about Peter.  The body of the van pulled in front of Peter’s windshield, and Peter saw the inevitable.  He could even see small scratches on the side of the bus for a second.  No way out.      “Brace yourself!  Shit!”
    Crunch.
    Peter’s driver’s side connected with the rear of the van, shattering his headlight and spinning the back of the van.  Peter slowed toward the edge and looked in the rearview, noticing that the van fishtailed, but the red lights climbed straight onto the road and it drove into the night behind him.  It never bothered to stop.
    “Peter, what are you doing?  Get moving!  Forget that!  Gary is suffocating!”
    Peter accelerated, blinking at the experience.  Too strange. 
    “It’s still beeping!” she said.  “He’s got to be conscious!  He has to be panicking!”
    “I know.”
    “Drive faster!”
    They pronounced him dead, Peter thought.  Dead!  How?…
    Beep.
    They turned right, skidding the tires onto the dirt road.  They flew into the winding black snake, spitting back bits of mud seen red in the tail lights.  After another minute, the house on the right appeared black against the sky.  The large mansion loomed dark and silent, the black womb of the dead in which all souls but one have now died.  The aunt apparently slept in one of those many rooms upstairs.  Gary pulled in and swung around back.  As he neared the back corner, a black long object made him slam the brakes again, smacking Joanne’s head into the dashboard.  The old oak, which had to have been there for centuries Peter had thought as a kid, the old family oak lay across the open passage to the backyard.  “Gary, do you have demons trying to stop us?”  He looked at Joanne, who was bent over fishing for the pager and rubbing the right side of her forehead.  She found it, then noticed her keys and .32 pistol also lying on the floor, and picked them up.  She threw in the keys, then the pistol on top.  Peter climbed out, glancing at the fallen tree.  He remembered Gary as a kid swinging on it most times he came over to see him in the summer.  He often climbed it in a contest with Peter, and Gary always climbed the highest.  “Me and this tree,” he once said as if explaining himself, “we know each other.”
    Beep. 
    “There it is.  It beeping means he’s conscious, right?”  Joanne implored.
    “Yes,” Peter said.  Now quit asking stupid, nonsense, time-wasting questions like an idiot.  “Give me the pager.”
    The backyard sported a deck and swimming pool, and beyond that the black iron gate to the family cemetery. 
    The gate was locked.  “Son of a bitch!”  he yelled. 
    “What did you expect?  And you’re going to wake up Gary’s aunt.”
    “Good!  Maybe she has the damn key!  Listen, Jo.  You watch out here.  When I tell you to, call 911 and wake up the aunt.  He‘ll need an ambulance.  But not before I tell you!”  He stomped around the fence.  She’d just better listen to him tonight.  No time to be half-witted.  He stopped at a place to scale the fence.  No place was better than any other; the fence was just as high anywhere he looked.  The black wrought iron spikes faced the sky at about chest level.  He held his spade high, ready to chuck it over, then stopped.  Instead, he pointed it to the ground on the other side of the fence and drove it home with all his might.  He pulled the handle toward him, against the fence, for leverage.  It stood about a foot higher than the fence, and he pulled on it and the spikes, hoisting himself up.  “Sorry boys,” he said, “I’ll try not to impale you.”  At the top, it was hard to keep himself up, and he slipped his crotch onto the side of a spike.  He winced hard and pushed himself over the other side, falling back. 
    The grave was not hard to find.  He skirted the tombstones until he reached where he stood just a few hours before, and saw the dark, round, fresh tomb under which Gary panicked.  He put the pager down and started digging. 
    He dug furiously through soft earth, but it proved a harder job than he thought while he also kept an ear out for the pager.
    “We’re…coming…Gary…” he said, throwing dirt.  “Seems there is something trying to keep us back, but we’re coming.”  He thought about what he just said.  Stupid. 
    “You there yet?”  Joanne called a half hour later. 
    “No!”  He paused a second, thinking.  “Go get the aunt now!  And call 911 in fifteen minutes!”  He thought he would pretty much be there by then, and the cops couldn’t stop him from opening it, but people had to know Gary was alive. 
    “No!”  Joanne’s voice came just above him.  “I’m staying here.  I need to.”
    “You’re a stupid bitch sometimes.  You know that?”
    “A man with respect never calls his wife a bitch,” she said coolly. 
    “A man with SELF respect would never marry one!  What the hell was wrong with me?”
      As he dug more, other thoughts came to him.  Gary would be badly panicked.  Maybe he’ll be crazy.  Could he handle this?  Like a drowning victim---which was what he was---he’ll want to get the hell out of there and pull down anyone in front of him.  He’ll have to be ready and brace himself.  He’s got to hear him digging, though.  “Almost to ya, Gar!  Almost there!  Hang in there!”  He stopped again.  He looked up and saw the black silhouette of his wife against the sky looming over him, her purse clutched against her.  He felt some comfort now that she was there, but rolled his eyes at the purse. 
    Beep. 
    Good.  “Keep it up!  Don’t breathe so much!  Save your air!”  He punctuated every word with the strain of digging, lifting, and throwing.
    The mound grew higher as he sunk deeper, and as he began to think he could soon not make the throw over his head, his shovel hit the wood.  Peter smiled.  Simple coffin; thank God for the green burial.  Biodegradable wood, but looked nice and shiny during the services.  He bent and began moving the dirt away.  Now, the coffin looked pretty dusty and muddy.  He scraped some mud, then started working on the clumps around the edges to free the top lid.  “Almost to him, Jo!”  He could almost open the top half and pull him out.  “Gary!  Can you hear me?”
    Nothing.  He wondered what it would be like now, lying trapped in a cotton-stuffed box, unable to move, to sit up, to raise the arms, inside a hard box, feet away from help.
    He waited for the pager.  It did not go off for several seconds.
    He bent into his work again, harder than ever.  Sweat dropped into his eyes, but he let them sting and worked on.  “Almost got to him!”
    The lid seemed freed enough.  He stopped and panted while bracing himself.  He knew at any second, Gary could push up.  Okay.  He bent down, felt around the rim, put his fingers in while blessing these simple coffins, and pulled up, ready for anything. 
    A rush of warmth blew into his head, and he held his breath until it passed.  “Gary?”
    Gary lay in the darkness, his white tuxedo shirt shining in the moonlight, and his face and hands in shadow as black as his coat.  He looked perfectly still.  Peter shined his light into the coffin.  Gary’s familiar but bloating and smooth face lay as it did in the parlor of the house, his hair combed and matted down.  Now, though, he looked overweight.  “Jo, he’s still gone.  I don’t get it…”  Peter, puzzled, shined the light down the body.  Something was different.  The hands and arms had contracted up a little over the bloating midsection.
    Beep.
    Peter jumped.  The other pager lay under Gary’s thumb, which had contracted over it.  “It’s his thumb!  You put the pager right under it and it contracted against it.  How stupid?…His muscles contracted tighter and he bloated up.  It pressed the pager.”
    He reached in, pulled Gary’s cold thumb and fingers back, and snatched the pager.  “The hell with this creepy shit.”  He tossed both into the grave dirt, then wiped his sweaty forehead, standing straight.  “Rest in peace, Gary.”  He sighed.  “Let me get his hands…”    He tried to bend the hands back down, but they were locked.  Then he noticed a white triangle sticking between Gary’s right index and forefinger.  “What’s here?  Something’s here, Jo.”  He pulled, but Gary’s hand and arm rose with it.  “There’s something here!  A card or something, Jo.”  He felt his wife still above him, watching the scene.  He wiggled it down and out from under Gary’s hand.  Peter shown his light on the card and opened it.





                                              GOODBYE,  MY LOVE!

                                    REST NOW IN PEACE AND KNOW:
                                    YOU REST ASSURED, MY BEAU,
                                    I WISH IT WERE PETER, NOT YOU.
                                    YOU FAILED IN YOUR ATTEMPT,
                                    BUT PLEASE REST CONTENT;
                                    IT’S TIME NOW FOR PETER TO JOIN YOU.

                                                          JOANNE