Shallow Graves

wall. Looked like he was examining the grand ballroom of a Fifth Avenue hotel.
    They cracked open more beers and turned on a rerun of the The Cosby Show .
    Bobby said, “He’s stupid in this one. Cosby, I mean. He just mugs for the camera and counts his money. I liked him better in I Spy. That was some real acting.”
    “I never saw it,” the boy said.
    “On before your time. These two CIA guys. White guy, he was Robert Cummings—”
    “Culp,” Billy corrected.
    “Robert Culp. Right. And Bill Cosby. Man, it was a good program. They knew some real shit karate.”
    “Course, this show’s got Lisa Bonet,” Bobby pointed out.”
    Billy called, “Hey, Ned, would you get a hard-on kissing Lisa Bonet?”
    “I get a hard-on looking at Lisa Bonet.”
    “Hot as hell in here,” Billy said. He took off his shirt and wiped sweat from his face with it. Underneath he wore a sleeveless T-shirt. “Hey, Ned, you’re one strong dude. See if you can turn the heat down.”
    The boy pulled off his red and white jacket and dropped it on the bed. He wrestled with the radiator knob for five minutes until he was crimson-faced from the effort.
    “Damn, it’s frozen.”
    “Aw, forget it,” Bobby said. “We’ll just sweat.” He unbuttoned his shirt to his navel—no tee underneath—and flapped it to cool himself. The twins dropped into the room’s two chairs. Ned started to sit on the floor but Billy said, “Naw, take the place of honor.” He nodded at the bed and Ned flopped onto the spongy mattress. Bobby handed him another beer. They watched TV for a half hour.
    Bobby said, “Hey, you want to try something?”
    Ned said, “I guess. I don’t know.”
    Bobby pulled an envelope out of his pocket, a small manilla envelope. He rattled it. “Surprise.”
    “What’s that?” the boy asked.
    He opened the envelope and showed the contents to the boy.
    “The hell’s that?”
    Inside were two dozen bits that looked like rock candy.
    “It’s sweet,” Bobby said.
    Billy gently shook the envelope until three or four spilled into the boy’s hand. He lifted them and smelled.
    “Don’t smell like much.”
    “Yep.”
    “We’re gonna eat fucking candy?”
    “Sure, why not?”
    Billy and Bobby each took one. The boy lifted his palm to his lips but they touched his wrist. Billy on the right, Bobby on the left. “Uh-uh. Just one at a time.”
    “Huh?”
    “Just one.”
    The boy dropped the others back into the envelope. Then lifted the single crystal to his mouth. He ate it slowly.
    “It is sweet. It’s—” He stopped speaking. His eyes went wide then suddenly his lids drooped. “Man,” he whispered. “This is totally fresh. Man.” He brushed at his ears as if they were clogged, a dumb grin on his face. “What the fuck is this?” His words faded into a giggle. “Man. Excellent.”
    They knew what was happening—how the soft cotton was expanding into the crevices of his mind, the warmth, the coming feeling starting at the fingertips and flowing along the skin like a woman lying slowly, slowly down on your body, dissolving into a warm liquid, flowing, melting . . .
    “You happy?” Bobby asked.
    The boy giggled. “Man.” He opened his mouth and inhaled as if he were tasting air.
    Billy caught his brother’s eye and a slight nod passed between them. Bobby closed up the envelope and slipped it into the boy’s jeans pocket, where his hand lingered for a long moment.

Chapter 9
    THE THIRD ON his list.
    The R&W Trading Post on Route 9, which the poker-playing boys had been kind enough to suggest to him, was the one. The time was 9 A.M. and a faded sign promised the place was open.
    Pellam parked the camper in the small lot and walked back along the shoulder, which was gravelly and strewn with flattened Bud cans and cello wrappers from junk food. Occasional cars and pickups zipped past and he felt the snap of their slipstream.
    The Trading Post stretched away behind a gray, broken stockade fence, which was decorated with some of the artifacts that were waiting to be traded: a rusted Mobil gas sign, a blackface jockey hitching post, a cracked wagon wheel, a whiskey aging barrel, an antique wheelbarrow, a dozen hubcaps, a bent plow, a greasy treadle sewing machine mechanism. If R&W had put the premier items here in the window Pellam wasn’t too eager to see what lay behind the fence.
    But that didn’t interest him anyway. What had caught his attention was what rested at the far end of the lot, where the