Gravesend (19 page)

They went up the front stoop, careful to avoid a hole that had rotted away a whole section of the second step.

Eugene said, “Remember, let me talk.”

The front door was closed. The light above it was on. Eugene knocked. Nothing. The house sounded dead.

“What if he’s not here?” Sweat said.

Eugene ignored him. He knocked again. Nothing. Just the sounds of the country. He tried the knob and opened the door in. The house smelled like coffee. There was a small fire going in the wood stove to the right of them. A half-finished cup of coffee was on the floor next to the stove.

“He’s here,” Eugene said. “Gotta be.”

Sweat thumbed through a pile of records on a chair right inside the door.

“Unc!” Eugene said. “Yo, Unc!”

Nothing.

“Maybe he went out,” Sweat said.

“Maybe. For a run or something. Dude keeps in shape.”

Eugene limped through the hallway into the kitchen. A chair was pulled away from the table and an old-timey percolator was on the stove. Eugene went over and shook it. Still a quarter full.

Sweat came into the kitchen and sat at one end of the table. “We wait?”

“Gonna do what, go home?”

“I don’t know.”

“We wait.”

Sweat went into the room with the stove and Eugene heard him sigh and plop down on the floor. “Gonna sleep,” he said.

“Whatever.” Eugene sat at the table and put the gun in front of him.

When the back door finally opened, Eugene was surprised to see that it wasn’t his Uncle Ray Boy but Duncan D’Innocenzio’s loser brother. He was wearing a headlamp that was off and carrying a shovel. “Fuck you doing here?” Eugene said.

“Who are you?” the brother said.

“I’m looking for my uncle.”

“Ray Boy?”

“Yeah, yo.”

“Your uncle’s gone.”

Eugene grabbed the gun and stood up. “Fuck you mean, gone?”

“I’m Conway D’Innocenzio. You know me?” Conway leaned the shovel against the wall.

Eugene fixed the gun on Conway. “Your fag brother fucked up my uncle’s life by running himself out into traffic.”

Conway put his hands up and his head down.

“Where’s my uncle?” Eugene said.

“You’re just a kid. Don’t get involved with this.”

“I’m a kid?” Eugene felt fired up.
What was this guy saying? What was he doing here?

“You aren’t a kid,” Conway said. “Okay.”

“Where’s my uncle?”

“I told you. Gone.”

“What’s that mean? Left? Went where?”

“Means dead.”

Eugene moved close to Conway, brought the gun up under his chin. “Dead?”

“He’s dead, kid.”

“You killed him?”

“I did. I wanted to and I couldn’t. He helped me. He wanted to die.”

“Wanted?”

Conway nodded.

Eugene wanted to blow the top of his head off. Shoot right up through his teeth so his head exploded like a balloon in one of those Coney water-pistol games. “That’s not what he wanted,” Eugene said.

“You can shoot me,” Conway said. “I don’t care.”

“Where is he?”

“I told you. Dead.”

“Where’s his body?”

“Out back.”

“Show me.”

Conway turned around and Eugene pressed the gun against his back. They went out the back door, leaving Sweat sleeping in the other room. Fat fuck could sleep through a nuclear attack. Eugene’s body felt different somehow. He was limping, but he didn’t feel like he was limping.

“There’s nothing to see,” Conway said, as they scaled a craggy hill behind the house.

“Don’t talk.”

“He’s buried.”

The hill was difficult to climb. Eugene had to reach down and balance himself with his hands. It was hard to grip the ground with the gun in his hand. He put the gun back in his pocket and focused on making it up the hill without falling. He was afraid Conway was going to run. The fucker kept glancing back at him with these shitty eyes. He didn’t look much like his brother. He looked like an old fuck-up.

At the top of the hill there was nothing but trees. Light ribboned down from above. Mist hung close to the ground. Eugene heard noises. He didn’t know what they were. Chirping. Hoots. Were they snakes? Did deer make noises? He wondered if there were bears around waiting to jump them. He was in the woods now. He took the gun back out and fixed it on Conway, but he wanted to check his neck and hair for ticks. Were they already all over him, slurping his blood?

They walked on.

“He really did want me to do it,” Conway said.

Eugene didn’t want to hear it. “Just show me where.”

Conway stopped at a place that looked like every other place. The ground was covered with leaves. Trees were all around them.

“This is it,” Conway said.

“How you know? There’s nothing to mark it.”

“I just know. I’ve been here all night.”

Eugene fell to his knees and put the gun down beside him. He touched the ground, sifting up leaves, twigs, and pebbles. “Right under here? How deep?”

“Deep. Like regular grave deep.”

Eugene got up and picked up the gun. “Get on your knees. Right where you buried him.”

“Kid.”

“Do it.”

Conway got down on his knees right on the spot where he said he’d buried Uncle Ray Boy. He put his hands behind his head. He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t shaking. He looked less like an old fuck-up now and more like a dead man.

“How’d you do it?” Eugene asked.

“We dug the hole together. He gave me a shotgun. He—” Conway stopped.

“What?”

“He got down in the hole, and I shot him. Then I buried him. I waited around so I could come out at first light to make sure no one could tell it was a grave.”

“You went to that trouble, why’d you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to lie just then.”

“You’re gonna die, yo.” Eugene held the gun sideways.

“I know.”

Eugene closed his eyes and fired at Conway. The gun kicked back. He opened his eyes to see that he had hit Conway in the chest. He fired again as Conway was falling and got him in the neck. He kept his eyes open this time.

Conway was holding his chest with one hand and his neck with the other. He was squirming around on the ground, turning on his hip. Blood was coming out through his fingers.

Eugene fired three more times. He missed twice. He nailed Conway in the forehead on the third one. Conway stopped spinning. His body went limp. Eugene went over and did what he’d seen guys do in mobster movies. He hocked a loogie at Conway. “
Vaffanculo
,” he said.

He left him there and walked back to the house, struggling down the hill, slipping a few times and dropping the gun once. He dusted himself off when he was on steady ground.

Sweat was sitting at the table when Eugene walked in with the gun in his hand.

Eugene said, “Check me for ticks, yo.”

Sweat said, “Like where?”

“Like my hair and shit. I can’t see.”

“Where you been?”

“Out in the woods.”

“I heard a shot.”

“Shit woke you up finally?”

“I was beat.”

“You missed everything.”

Sweat came over and looked at Eugene’s head. Eugene put the gun on the table. Sweat thumbed Eugene’s hair. “I don’t see nothing.”

“I feel like they’re all over me. I gotta take a shower.”

“Fuck went down?”

“Duncan D’Innocenzio’s brother killed Uncle Ray Boy. I killed Duncan D’Innocenzio’s brother.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

“Oh shit. You’re a killer?”

“Cold-blooded, motherfucker.” Eugene picked up the gun and held it sideways again. He mimed shooting it into Conway. “I went pow pow pow. Bitch didn’t even have time to beg.”

They slapped hands.

“Yo, your uncle,” Sweat said. “Sorry.”

“Fuck my uncle. My uncle wasn’t my uncle. My uncle was dead already. Fucking pussy.” He put the gun back down on the table. “Let me take a shower and then we’ll hit it. We’ll do this shit on our own.”

Eugene went into the musty country bathroom and turned on the shower. No water pressure. Shit compared to what they had in Brooklyn.

He took his clothes off and piled them on the toilet tank.

He made the water hot and got in the shower.

The hand that had held and fired the gun tingled. He looked at it and massaged the palm with his other hand.

He checked his hair and under his arms for ticks. He lifted his balls and ran a finger through his ass. Nothing. The possibility of catching Lyme’s disease on this trip had him edged up. He didn’t want to be any more crippled than he already was. He wished that somehow people could know right now that he’d put Conway D’Innocenzio down like a dog. Then they’d know he was more than a gimp. He looked down and saw a spider between his feet, near the drain. It had long legs and a beady body. He picked up one foot and jumped back. He angled the showerhead down and tried to wash the spider into the drain. The water wasn’t strong enough. The spider held on. Eugene opened the door and got out of the shower. He was skeeved out.
Spiders too? Christ
.

Eugene and Sweat walked out of the house and left the lights on and the doors open. Eugene put the gun back in the trunk, and they got in the car. Sweat asked if they should go bury Duncan’s brother. Eugene said fuck it, no way. He wanted to think about him rotting out there in the woods. He imagined a bear ripping him apart, vultures swooping down and plucking out his eyes, nuzzling their beaks into his bulletholes.

Sweat burned out of the driveway.

The roads weren’t as bad in the light. But it was still dead out. No other cars. The GPS led them back to 17B.

Sweat said, “We gotta rest before we hit that card game. We don’t even know what time they start playing.”

“Fuck you talking about rest?”

“You ain’t tired?”

“You got a nap back there, homes.”

“Short one. Maybe we hit up Mickey D’s for breakfast, too? Been a lot of driving.”

Eugene thought about it. He said, “Here’s what we do. Stop. Get food. Gas if you need it. Lean back in the parking lot of the gas station. Catch a couple of hours. Doesn’t matter when we get back to the city. Card game’s going all the time.”

“Twenty-four hours?”

“Not twenty-four hours, but a lot of the time they’re playing.”

“What happens we get there and there’s no game?”

“We feel it out. Money’s still there probably. Didn’t I say this shit already?”

“Just checking the plan.” Sweat paused. “We never got to see the bar run by that Indian.”

They found a gas station with a Mickey D’s attached to it a few miles up the road. Sweat pumped gas and paid with his credit card. Eugene wondered whether or not that was bad and then figured it wasn’t. They’d be gone by the time someone made it here to look for them. By now his mother had to know he was with Sweat.

Sweat ordered three Egg McMuffins and five hash browns and one of those little plastic peel-back cups of orange juice. Eugene got a cup of coffee and a Sausage McMuffin. They sat in the car and ate. Sweat finished all of his food in five minutes. Then he burped and leaned his seat back and closed his eyes. Eugene sat staring out the windows. He wasn’t that tired somehow. Part of him wanted to get out and go for a walk. But where would he go? There was nothing but parking lot.

Eugene closed his eyes and tried to get in a nap. He kept opening them to blow on his coffee and take sips. He’d taken two bites of his Sausage McMuffin and thrown it out the window. He didn’t see Conway when he closed his eyes. None of that bullshit people made you believe. Which meant one thing probably: he was built for killing.

Uncle Ray Boy, tough as he used to be, wasn’t. Fuck, he didn’t even really kill Duncan D’Innocenzio and he couldn’t get over it.

Eugene wished Uncle Ray Boy had died a long time ago. He would’ve been better that way. No chance to get ruined. Eugene would have had him to look up to still. Now his hero was dead and the worst thing was that his hero wasn’t anything but a pussy who got in his own grave and let Conway D’Innocenzio shoot him.

Let them both rot out there in the woods.

Eugene closed his eyes.

It was hot in the car when Eugene woke up. He’d slept for almost four hours. Sweat was still out, snoring, and it smelled like he’d let a few rip in his sleep. Crumbs from the Egg McMuffins and hash browns were all over his shirt. Eugene opened the door and let some fresh air in. Then he got out of the car and stretched and left the door open. The cold from outside woke Sweat up and he hugged himself and groaned.