The Constant Heart (30 page)

MD moved around in the dark.

“All right,” said my father.

MD looked down the well.

“How deep do you think the water at the bottom is?” said MD.

“I don't know,” said my father.

He picked up a stone and threw it in, and it hit the water with a plop. It didn't really tell us much, since it would have sounded the same way whether there was ten feet of water or two, but we had had fall rains, and there was probably a lot of water in the well. It took about the same time as the snake I had thrown in.

This, at least, was a place that most people had the sense to stay away from, since even the maps were wrong sometimes. I was surprised that they were even accurate enough to show that a farm had been here.

We dragged the body up to the lip of the well, and it lay there, still loosey-goosey. One arm flopped over the edge of the top, which was lined with fieldstone, and I wondered if that copperhead had come back up, working its way through the ledges of the rocks, and if so, would that floppy arm, so limp and helpless, draw its attention.

“We want to lower it in,” I said. “If we just push it, maybe it will get stuck.”

“Like a breech birth?” said MD.

“Something like that,” I said.

The body lay on its back, and we pulled it so that its legs hung over the lip of the well, although the pants caught on the stone, and I had to push one of his legs with my foot.

“I don't want to touch it,” said Sara.

“You don't have to,” said my father.

“He can't hurt you now,” said MD.

“I don't want to touch it,” said Sara.

The seat of Bo's pants caught on the stones, but then we kept pushing at the shoulders. The head made a thump, like a gallon jug of water dropped on concrete, as it bounced on
the lip of the well. Then, in what seemed almost like a magic trick, it disappeared into the darkness.

But it still made a rough sliding noise, like dragging a dead dog over gravel, as it bounced against the side of the well. We all clenched our jaws. The splash at the bottom came in an uneven cadence, one hand hitting a moment after the feet or chest or head or whatever it was that first went into the water. We waited, and after a minute the water had closed over him and the surface rocked back and forth, back and forth, like some anxious tick before becoming placid again, flat and still as when we had got there.

We started back. My father walked behind Sara and I came behind them with MD and Scott limping behind me, each of them whining, touching a forehead or an elbow, dragging a foot. It was amazing how busted up they'd gotten just walking through the woods at night. MD said, “Wait. Wait. Can't you wait a minute?”

We stopped. The shapes of MD and Scott wobbled against the fireflies. In the dark, I smelled the perfume of her hair, which hung in the dusty stink of the orchard. Sara put out a hand and laid it on my forearm, taking and giving a kind of reassurance at the same time.

“Oh, shit,” said MD.

“What?” I said.

“He's got the keys. The car keys,” he said.

“You haven't got another set?” said my father.

“No,” said Scott. “Bo had them. He always wanted to have a little control, you know? Since he had nothing else. So I let the dumbshit have the keys.” He put his head in his hands. “What are we going to do?”

“What do you think?” said Sara.

We turned back, all of us sweeping along, tired, simply pushing into the dusty space ahead of us, the two hurt men making that same up-and-down, seesawing motion. Sara was up ahead, with the light. We all stopped.

“I can't climb down,” said Scott. “I'm hurt.”

“What the hell do you think I am?” said MD.

The fireflies blinked around us.

I sat down and took off my shoes and my pants. Sara picked up my pants, folded them, and held them against her breasts, the gesture the same as a widow who has just been given a flag that had been on the coffin of a dead soldier. My father cleared his throat, and in that way he had, he made me turn toward him. The air was pierced with glowing cylinders from the flashlights, and so some things were bright, and others only dimly lit. Still, my father's eyes were filled with that complicated expression: This had to be done, since we wanted all of this to disappear. No questions, certainly not about a car that was left in the parking lot down below. Maybe the rental agent would remember three men, not just two. We needed the keys. And, he seemed to say, Jake, if it has to be done, just do it. No hand-wringing. We're way beyond that. And if I needed any proof of this fact, the open hole, the darkness of the well, the entrance to some opaque, grim, and chaotic world, was right there.

“Hold the light,” I said.

The well was about three feet across, built like a stone wall, and as I went, my father said, “I think there are some copperheads around. They like these old stones.”

“There's one in there,” said Sara. “Jake threw one in when we were here before.”

“Do you think you killed it?” said my father.

“No,” I said.

I went down like a mountain climber in a chimney, my feet on one side, my back on the stones of the other. It wasn't just a hole in the ground, which is bad enough under the wrong circumstances, like a grave, but it was a reminder, too, of other things, as though the deeper I went, the more obvious it was how close my father was to dying, the scheme these men had for Sara and other healthy young women, the way that knife slipped into Bo's back, as though the entire act had been unavoidable. As I went down, the space below seemed thicker, more viscous; the dark became jelled, and worse, I thought that some dark slime could cling to my naked legs, my arms, and that it would be impossible to get off. Or would suck on me like formless but still black leeches. Is that how you felt when you had been changed from a man with neat, orderly rules to someone who, by necessity, had to exist in that world where what had to be done wasn't what you wanted anything to do with?

Never had the stars been so distant.

Sara shined the light. Down below it made a fuzzy illumination in the well and at the bottom just a bright spot on the water, which got closer and closer, as though I were stepping down into some photo of a star and then when I touched the surface it shattered into curved flecks of light. The water was brackish and to find him I moved my hand around in it as though I were mixing it. I went to the bottom, which was as sandy as a beach. The water came up to my neck; it was dark and had a musty odor, and I didn't want to put my face in, but it was the only way to reach him. He flopped over, one
arm coming out and slapping against the stones. The well was filled with the sound of water that drained out of his shirt and hair. His jeans were tight-fitting, and I had to hold him so I could get my hand into the pocket. But I couldn't reach in. The wet cloth tugged.

Of course, I thought, at first, that I was imagining that slow, lingering, and cool touch along the side of my leg, that flow that was so much like a current and yet so entirely filled with my increasing sense of disorder. Was it possible that the darkness had been made tactile, not the lack of light, but the other matters, death and the malignant, and that the snake was here not just as a dangerous creature, but a moral reminder, a black, hose-like monster that was here to give me another lesson in what it meant to have abandoned the stars? Perhaps, just perhaps, if I didn't move at all, if I held my breath so that even the surface of the water was still, the thing would move into the stones. Was that reasonable? Reasonable? The first hysterical contraction came at the thought.

The thing underwater moved its entire length along my leg, turned, and came back, now between my legs, its cool slipstream against the inside of one knee.

“What's taking so fucking long?” said MD.

It turned once and slid by my skin once more and then seemed to disappear in the darkness. I began to tremble with a wild hope that it had gone into the spaces between the stones.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”

“Then let's get a move on, for Christ's sake,” said MD.

“It was nothing,” I said. Nothing, down to the core of nothing is what that long, smooth sensation was, every fear, every doomed struggle.

I pulled Bo up so that I could see better and took hold of the outside of the pocket. I reached in with the other hand, wiggling it a little to get down to the cold metal at the bottom. He rolled over again, his hand seeming to beckon, and he sunk. In my palm I had the keys and a few dimes, a couple of quarters, and a few pennies. They tumbled into the water, the silver disks twisting end over end, flashing and disappearing with a
plink
. I started climbing back up, the keys in my hand.

“There's something else,” said my father. His voice showed that the fentanyl was wearing off. He spoke like an instrument that was losing its tune.

“No,” said MD. “There's nothing else.”

“What else could there be?” I said.

“Jake,” said my father. “Every duty has its parts.” He kneeled down next to me. The water dripped as I looked down, the drops like mercury in the beam of the flashlight that cut across the top of the well. “You know, we've forgotten something.”

“What?” I said.

“I was reading someplace the other day about Argentina. Down there they were throwing people out of helicopters into the ocean. And you know what they did? They slit the bellies of the people they were throwing into the water to make sure they wouldn't float later, when, you know, the . . . gases . . . ”

“What kind of mind have you got?” said MD. “Jesus.”

“He's right,” said Scott.

“I don't understand,” said Sara.

“He could float up to the surface,” I said. “We don't want someone coming up here and looking in the well and seeing . . . ”

“Maybe we could use stones,” said MD. “Weight him down.”

“And how are we going to tie them on?” I said.

“Shit, I don't know,” said MD.

“You can't tie them on,” said Scott.

I sat on the lip of the well, the drops forming on my feet and then, like a mechanism for keeping time, they fell, disappearing in the dark and announcing themselves with a distant silvery
plick
.

“Who's got a knife?” I said.

“Ah, Jesus,” said MD.

“Here,” said Scott.

He reached into his pocket and took out a jackknife with a bone handle.

“Hold the light,” I said.

My father put his hand on mine. It was cold but the lingering touch was all that kept me from panic. And panic, of course, is that odd sensation when the fear on the outside collides with the fear that seems to come from the center of one's self. The ultimate in giving up.

The rest of them stood back from the well. My father took the light and shined it along the wall of stones. They reminded me of the construction of a farmhouse cellar. No mortar or anything, just the stones, the layers of them going around and around. The water rose in a silvery splash as I reached into it and took hold of the shirt.

I hoped that the knife was sharp. That, at least, would help. But nothing about MD would be done that way, and as I touched my thumb to the dull edge, the snake appeared over Bo's shoulder, perfectly illuminated, eyes on mine. It had come for the utter dark and was there to remind me that while I thought I had gotten away from this, I still had the worst
part to do. The snake's head was motionless, eyes touched by light from up above, its glance interrogatory, curious, intense. It left me with that sense of being alone, of being trapped at the bottom, and all the thoughts, all the ideas I had ever had, wouldn't do me a bit of good. Here I was with a dull knife.

I pulled Bo forward, since it seemed I could use his weight over the blade, and the sudden movement made the snake strike Bo's neck, once, and then again, the sound as silent as a needle going into a patient's arm. No blood. Then the snake moved to one side, a little closer to me. Now, I thought, do it now. The knife went in, but I was left with a steady, trembling motion as I tried to saw. The snake watched, as though it were taking inventory, and that I would not be forgotten, not to mention that it was thinking over what it still might do. Did the first bites mean the venom had been diminished? And was that like saying that the first moral flaw had been coming down here to begin with and that this wasn't so bad? Then I thought, Careful, careful, if you think like that you are on the way to madness.

Then I stepped back, to the other side, and climbed, this time not like a mountain climber in a chimney, but like someone going up a ladder, and as I went, I turned back where the snake watched, then tucked its head down, into a crack, and the entire body, one long, thin spring, collected in the darkness.

I climbed back up to the top with the knife.

“Here,” I said.

“I don't want it,” said Scott. “I don't even want to touch it.”

It hit the water with a splash, which I imagined as a crown-shaped eruption. It made a watery echo down there on the
stones of the well. I pulled on my pants over my wet legs, put on my shoes, and we started again, going through the fireflies and that dusty odor.

At the river, we burned the last of Bo's things and had to wait until they were nothing but coals. Sara sat next to me, leaning against me from time to time, trembling. She took my hand, put her lips against me ear, the touch of them so warm and comforting as to seem like a drug. My father sat with us, too, and I gave him more fentanyl and some Sufenta, which we had been told to save for the worst. When it began to work, he rocked a little and said, “Un-huh, un-huh.” I saw the eyes of the snake in the darkness beyond the fire.