Shallow Graves

muttered and didn’t say anything more. Not because he was chewing salad but because he was thinking.
    Bobby looked at a twelve-point mounted above a smoky-glass fireplace. It was weird to have a trophy in a restaurant that looked like it ought to be on Fort Hamilton Parkway in Brooklyn or someplace in Paramus, New Jersey. He studied the animal’s dead eyes and slick fur and he began salivating, imagining that he could smell fresh morning air and feel November stub grass under his boots, the heft of a good rifle in his hands.
    He said, “I can’t picture that, you know. Traveling around the country. I’d get kind of, you know . . .”
    “Disoriented,” Billy said. Billy often supplied the words that Bobby couldn’t think of.
    “Yeah. I’d like to travel, though. There’s a lot of the world to see. I just mean I wouldn’t want to travel all the time.”
    “Uhm.”
    “You’re not talking a lot tonight.” He tapped a crispy part of the pudding with his fork. The thing that was odd was that you were supposed to put gravy on it. Bobby thought they ought to give you Log Cabin and was close to asking for some.
    Pancake pudding with gravy on it. Brits were fucking crazy.
    Billy said, “There’s one thing that still bothers me. The Torrens kid.”
    “What about him?”
    “Ned gave him the candy, right? So they must’ve spent some time together. What’s a like logical question for the kid to ask?”
    Bobby couldn’t figure it out. “Tell me.”
    “He’s going to ask where Ned got the stuff, and Ned is—was—just dumb enough to tell him.”
    “The kid’s nine or ten. What’s he going to know?”
    “Sometimes,” Billy said, “you just don’t think.”
    That was not exactly true. Bobby thought a lot. It was just that usually his thoughts weren’t helpful; they didn’t go anywhere. So he was happy to mix up batter and flip flapjacks like bones that sailed through the air in space movies and drill a deer’s shoulder from three hundred yards with a shot aimed through his Zeiss Diavari ’scope and keep the roadsides of Dutchess County free from any trash that had the slightest use and a lot of things that didn’t. Beyond that, okay, he left a lot of the thinking to Billy. Who couldn’t shoot and who couldn’t cook. And who, fuck him, didn’t like National Geographic.
    Billy said, “He could know a lot. Just ’cause he’s a kid doesn’t mean he’s stupid.”
    Bobby, wondering if he’d been insulted: “So, what are you saying?”
    But Billy answered by asking, “What do you think of the missus?”
    Torrens. Meg Torrens. Had to be.
    “I dunno,” Bobby said. “You going to eat your pudding?”
    “Huh?”
    “Your pudding?”
    “I thought it was like a potato or something. Yeah, I’m gonna eat it.” Billy added, “Whatcha think about her?”
    “I dunno.”
    “She’s no hausfrau.”
    “Hausfrau? What’s that? Like a Nazi?” Bobby pronounced it Nat-see.
    “You think she has big tits?” Billy mused.
    “I dunno. What’re you—?”
    Billy asked, “What do you think about Torrens? I mean, really think?”
    “Think about him?” Bobby often repeated his brother’s questions in a tone that made it sound like it was a dumb thing to ask—usually so he could buy time to figure out an answer.
    Billy continued, “You think he’s smart?”
    “Smart enough.”
    Billy looked at his brother, then laughed. “What does that mean, ‘smart enough’? That’s like saying his dick is long enough.”
    “Okay,” Bobby said, “he’s smart enough not to put his dick where it don’t belong. Which it sounds to me is what you’re considering doing.”
    There, dude, how’s that for thinking?
    “How much you think Torrens’s worth? How much you think he makes?”
    “Man, you’re asking for—”
    “Compared to what, let’s say, we, for instance, make?”
    “—fucking trouble.”
    Billy ate his pudding, every last bit. Bobby watched this with disappointment. He thought that thirteen ninety-five, which bought you a good-sized slab of wet, red prime rib, ought to buy you a little more in the English pudding department.
    “They got themselves a real nice house,” Billy said, continuing this line of thought that Bobby didn’t quite get but knew he didn’t like.”
    “It’s okay.”
    Billy stared at his brother as if he’d just turned down playoff tickets. Bobby said, “Okay, it’s fucking wonderful. Happy?”
    “Let’s just . . .” Billy began.
    “I think