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  BURY THIS

  Copyright © 2014 Andrea Portes

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Portes, Andrea.

  Bury This : a novel / Andrea Portes.

  ISBN 978-1-61902-363-5

  1. Girls—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.

  3. Michigan—Fiction. 4. Suspense fiction. I. Title.

  PS3616.O7887B87 2014

  813’.6—dc23

  2013026634

  Cover design by Debbie Berne

  Interior design by Domini Dragoone

  Soft Skull Press

  An Imprint of Counterpoint

  1919 Fifth Street

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.softskull.com

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  10987654321

  For my grandparents, who saved the world, and for my son, who saved me

  Bury This

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Part II

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Part III

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Part IV

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Part V

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  It would be lily white, this snow. On a strange sort of day where the earth and the sky were the same shade of gray.

  How funny. He thought later, that in this moment, the thought tumbling through his head had been annoyance with his wife for wasting so much money on those stupid dolls. A doll collection! Collectibles! He told his friends he would eat his face off if any of those fucking things were ever “worth millions someday” or “gonna be worth a fortune” as his wife pled, pondered, prayed.

  It was the last thought he would have before he would become forever “the snow plower.” Or, better yet, “the snow plower who found her.”

  Make these branches coal, grabbing down from the sky. What are they eager to clutch? Make these snow prints hurried, and hurried, and rushed. What are they eager to hush?

  There he goes following them, now it’s a path, a scurry, a brush. Probably nothing but might as well. Into the woods and the grabby grabby trees, greedily waiting to pluck.

  A doll collection!

  What a hoot. How gaping and stupid, degrading it was, to think of that time, what, now twenty years ago, when he had looked into his bride’s eyes, under that veil, on that altar, and said the words, “I do.” If only he’d known about the doll collection. Just one doll. Things might’ve been different.

  Just one doll is what’s there in the snow, in the clutter, in the shutter of light, stab stab stab through the trees.

  Just one doll. There it is. But there are porcelain fingers and ceramic toes and glass twinkly eyes, unblinking, unblinking. It is, in fact, a girl.

  Not a doll at all.

  PART I

  ONE

  It was a silly job, really. Almost no reason to take it. Except. She remembered now, the panic of the paperwork. Forms!

  You must fill this one out, and then this one, too, don’t forget this here, and we’ll need a copy of your driver’s license. Also, a contact. In case of emergency. A formality, really.

  Struggling to comprehend the form upon form, little boxes in big boxes, sign here, dot here, if you just initial here. She had forgotten, initially, her name. What is my name? (But why should I remember my name . . . ? It’s not as if I ever call myself. When was the last time I saw myself across the room and called my name? Never. That’s when.) Well. Why should I know my name?

  “Beth.”

  Okay. There it is. That’s it, isn’t it? The name I seem to inhabit, have been inhabiting this whole time. And yet, to me, a puzzle. It might as well be Mickey Mouse. At least Mickey Mouse I have said more often.

  “Last name?”

  “Last name Krause.”

  That is a name my parents have. At least that one’s easier to remember. That is not the foreigner staring back at me in the mirror each morning, like Alice through the looking glass.

  No, this was the parents’ name, and grandparents’, too. All these German names. German German German! My name? My name is German Germany. How ’bout that? My name is Sauerkraut Strudel. My name is Pretzel Wienerschnitzel!

  She laughed to herself, out loud, in this silence. The receptionist pretended not to hear.

  (Now they’ll think I’m crazy.)

  (Now they’ll know I’m crazy.)

  Oh, wait, no. That’s right. I get to go around in this outfit, this skin. My deception is complete. Here’s how I get to squeak through. What they see:

  A young girl, almost twenty-two. With a white rat head of hair, albino hair, yes it’s a little stringy and washing it takes too long, it hurts my arms, what if someone else could wash it? Honky skin. White as paper. Almost blue. You see, a ghost. I get to be a young-looking sort of ghost with white mouse hair and gray saucer eyes and a stupid little nondescript form skinny and stringy and I’ll put a dress on me and no one will know.

  No one will know that underneath there are circles and then nipples and a triangle down below. I don’t want these circles, never asked for them. They shouldn’t be there, I sure as hell don’t want them. I should ace bandage them so no one will know. If no one knows then no one will give me that eating look and I am safe. See me in my dress. A french fry with eyes.

  This room. Blue and birch with papers everywhere, a clipboard, a cork board, put a note on it and then you’ll remember. Then another and another. “Terry’s bake sale, September 5th,” “Don’t forget to lock up!!,” “Drops = 8 PM, 11 PM!,” “Toiletry Kits under the SINK! $1 for extras – No exceptions!!!” A convention of exclamation points, as inane as it is urgent.

  This desk. Metal but a green sort of metal. Mint green metal. A candy desk. Clunky. Behind the coffee machine, there is Jimmy Carter and his big peanut smile. That jar filled with yellow wrapped butterscotch candies. That half-fridge. Something always smells sour in that half-fridge.

&nbs
p; And the receptionist. Well, let’s be honest, she’s seen better days. Maybe one day I’ll look like that? I think she drinks. Maybe here. Maybe underneath that desk in drawer number two is a little flask of Seagram’s to take the edge off the day or put the edge on, or just do something, goddammit, to eat these hours, gobble them up. Endless, this life.

  “What do you think are your qualifications?”

  A ridiculous question. The woman, bright blonde, it doesn’t match her face, and brown eyes. Her hair must be black for God’s sake. A sea-foam green sweater jacket, there’s a tie, a sweater at the waist and she is bundled up. A little bundle of brisk blonde beauty, fading, but yes, she would find company, at the tail end of happy hour, there she would be, at that hour, or later, a find. A virtual treasure.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your qualifications? What do you think qualifies you to work at the Green Mill Inn?”

  I mean, you might as well laugh in her face.

  Well, ma’am . . . and I do use that term loosely . . . I believe I am qualified to work at this shithole because I have nothing better to do and I’d like to have some money around for a change and maybe disappear from my parents a few hours a week to something other than choir practice at St. John’s Presbyterian.

  “I’m a real people person!”

  Banana blonde feigns interest.

  “’Sides that I’m a real quick learner and I took a typing class at Hope, fifty-five words per minute. Not that I’m bragging or anything.”

  “I see. Well, you won’t have to do much typing here, Miss . . . ”

  “Krause.”

  “Miss Krause. This is mostly just taking reservations, signing in guests, making sure the front bathroom is clean . . . you don’t have to clean it, Janelle does that. Just making sure it’s nice and there’s toilet paper and, sometimes, it’s nice to have a candle or Glade freshener, just if you want it. It’s mostly your bathroom, after all, customers rarely use it. But, if they do, you know, it’s the first thing they see, so, you want it to look nice. Professional.”

  Mind-numbing, this monologue, ode to a well-stocked bathroom, applesauce through a sieve. And now the mere facts, now rattled off like gunfire, too quick, can’t catch it.

  “Open at five. Close at one. One-hour break for dinner. You can take a fifteen-minute break every few hours, but, really, the whole job’s like a break. Between customers. So might as well stay here, in case the boss drops by. Coffee’s in the cabinet, Folgers, you gotta make it. There’s Styrofoam cups for customers, if they ask. Creamer, sugar, Sweet ’N Low. You can put out cookies. Maybe at Christmas. Makes it festive, ya know. See ya Monday.”

  She refastens her belt, a point made in sea foam.

  “I got the job?”

  “Yeah . . . oh, silly me. Of course. You got the job.” And then, an unconvincing smile.

  “Congratulations.”

  TWO

  Shauna Boggs had never thought about what she was doing, and what she was getting paid for. Or, at least, she’d never let herself think about it. That was something for grasping of steering wheels and late-night drinks alone in front of the TV.

  You could drink and drink and watch that late-night chatter a thousand times. Clink. Clink. Clink. And then, at some point, what, sleep? Or was it blacking out? She couldn’t tell anymore. The whole thing was so far-fetched. So far away from what she’d planned for herself, like raindrops on the windshield.

  This wasn’t her knight. Nor her pawn. Nor was she the queen. No, certainly not. Driving home in her beige Chevy Impala, knuckles clasped around the wheel, driving forward into the drink, or the hope of the drink. She could almost believe that it was not her. Here in this car. On this night. Who had just done that.

  It was funny how she always took a shower after. Sometimes the guy, the date, the not-John, would say, “Why do you always take a shower after?” She, if she could’ve said it, if she were free . . . she would’ve said, “Because I hate you. I hate everything about you. Your black eyes and your black hair and the stuff you put in it and your hairy everything, belly, back, ass, and the thought of you, the look of you, the seeing of you above me moving up down up down grunt grunt grunt, transferring myself into the walls. Because I have to wash you off me, you dumb sonuvabitch. What do you think? Look at yourself?! Why don’t you take a good goddamn guess as to why I always take a shower after?! Jesus!”

  It’s not fucking calculus!

  But no, she would say, instead, “Oh, you know, I’m old-fashioned I guess . . . ”

  Old-fashioned.

  Ha. That’s a laugh. I am old-fashioned enough to let you fuck me and then drive away in my beige Chevy Impala, with white snot on my belly and a hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket and a mouth full of thirst that can never be quenched, will never be quenched, again.

  Look at it this way. At least she wouldn’t have to work at that suck-ass job like perfect-face. The Green Mill Inn. What a dump. There wasn’t a mill around for miles, never had been.

  No, leave that kind of work to little miss Goody Two-shoes who sings in the choir.

  THREE

  Omaha Beach was almost a pigfuck. Near sacrilege to say, but something Lt. Colonel Charles Krause ran over again and again in his head, trying to get it right. The sheer randomness of it all, or had it, in fact, been perfectly right. Divinely right.

  Heading on a bobbing cork into that squall, next to him Private First Class Dwyer puking into the chop-chop sea. Jesus, could they have picked a better day? On the other side, Private First Class Solano praying quietly, solemnly, you wouldn’t even know he was praying . . . just whispering to himself really. Then ahead. That stretch of beach. Low tide. Christ. Whose idea was that?

  But it was all thought out. Half an hour before the B-17s had flown over and bombed the fuck out of the Germans. So they were told. When they got there, they would stroll along that low-tide beach, meet each other in the grass above and, who knows, maybe kill a few straggling Germans, vicious fucks. Isn’t as if they don’t deserve it. The motherland. What a crock.

  But the metal bobbing cork, halfway between the sip and the shore, is witnessing no strolling, no meeting. No, no such luck.

  It’s a fucking shooting gallery.

  Three hundred yards of beach and it’s a fucking shooting gallery. Sitting ducks. The air strikes missed.

  A half hour.

  A half hour for these sick fuck Germans to wake up and drink their whatever the fuck they drink and wait for us, US, like sitting ducks on the low-tide beach.

  Better jump off the side now, better jump off the side of the bobbing metal cork—Jesus, they are mowing ’em down in front like a firing squad. Might as well be back in the American Revolution over here.

  Jesus.

  Ratatat-tat.

  “Jump!”

  “But that’s not the—”

  “Jump, goddammit!”

  Now it’s motherfucking ice cold, all the way up to the chest, this pack, these boots, this gun, this fucking thing is never gonna fire. If I make it.

  Now bullets through the water. Pshew pshew pshew. Jesus. There and there and over there, too. Now blood, Jesus. Seeping out everywhere—how strange it goes, little tentacles, clusters. It’s not my blood. It’s not my blood yet.

  Now is the worst part. The waters ending. Now the shore. The shore. Oh, Christ. How many men? It’s crowded. This is a fucking crowded party, my friends. And these are my friends, indeed.

  Stay down. Stay down.

  OK.

  You can do this. Just a stretch of beach, just a stretch of beach. Bulletproof. I am bulletproof. I’m an American and this is how I save the world.

  When you look at the aerial shots of Omaha Beach on this day, you will get confused. There ocean. Yes, familiar. There’s sand. Yes, that seems right. There is the grass above and the bunkers. Yes, I understand.

  But then, below, where the ocean meets the shore, there are all these skinny rectangles, one, two, three, even four skinny rectangle
s parallel to the beach. All along the length of the beach. Hundreds of them.

  And then, above, one, two, three, even four above of the skinny rectangles, perpendicular to the beach, up a ways, on the shore. The length of the beach, as well.

  This is, say, one hundred yards of beach. Not much. It’s a big goddamn beach, you could only get so much in one goddamn photo.

  And the skinny rectangles?

  Make the skinny rectangles parallel to the beach, floating willy-nilly but more or less beached by the ebb and flow of the tide . . . make them the ones dead in the water. Private First Class Dwyer, who had been vomiting in the metal cork. Private First Class Solano, who had whispered to himself a prayer. Did he whisper it there in the water, too, did he whisper it to the sand and the blood in the tentacle pattern ebbing to and fro, to and fro?

  And perpendicular? Make those rectangles injured and hidden up against the dunes. Make those the ones that got grabbed and dragged and hauled and left. Make them live. Most of them.

  Make one of them a man named Charles Krause. A man who, seeing his feet below him and the skinny rectangles floating in the water ten yards down, would think now, would always think, he was not a man for getting injured. He was not a man to be torn to pieces by bullets, but the bullets begged to differ, bleeding him out into the brine. Leveled. He should’ve been up there fighting. He should’ve made it up the sand. It was a guilt he carried with him from that day to the next day to the next year and to the rest of his days, back in Michigan, Muskegon, Michigan—where he would never tell a soul. No one. Not even his wife.

  FOUR

  The snow plower would never be upset with his wife for her dumb stupid doll collection again. In fact, the first thing he would do after that day, that long day of questions and more questions . . . looking at that body, waiting for hours, those grueling sessions recounting over and over his every step, movement, thought. The watch on his wrist. The hat in his hand. Everything he had on from that day, he would put in a plastic bag and bury deep dark deep in the back of his closet.

  The first thing he would do upon seeing his wife, his sweet, ashy, thankless wife. He would walk up to her, slowly, and crash her up against the wall. He would put his mouth on her shoulder. Flowers on her apron. He would stand her up against the wall and whisper to her deep, “I am stupid. I am a stupid man. Don’t ever leave me. I will buy you a doll every day for the rest of your life and build a new room for all the dolls in the world. Stay with me. Just. Stay with me.”