I didn’t need to worry. The tollbooth operators barely looked at either Brad or me on the entire four-hour drive to my old neighborhood in Connecticut. There was no one on the roads, and I could probably have made the trip in three and a half, but I kept strictly to the speed limits, staying in the right-hand lane while cargo trucks rumbled past me in the passing lanes. I kept the radio off, but somewhere around Worcester Brad’s body shifted and made a gas-expelling moan. I’d been prepared for this, telling myself that dead bodies make sounds, but I still jumped about two inches in my seat when it happened. After that, I turned on the radio, flipping between crappy stations until somewhere in Connecticut I found a late-night jazz show on a commercial-free station way left on the dial. I didn’t particularly like jazz, since it reminded me of my parents, but I could recognize a number of standards. “On Green Dolphin Street” by Miles Davis segued into Nat King Cole’s “Autumn Leaves.” I listened to the words, trying to keep my mind away from the fact that I was driving through the night with a dead man as my passenger. Even with the radio turned up loud, I heard two more expulsions, and the cab of the truck filled with the smell of both urine and excrement. I thought about that black stray cat I killed years ago when I was a girl, and the way I’d been shocked by the presence of shit. I remembered how the disgust over that dead cat had made me feel even happier that I’d killed it. It was the same with Brad Daggett next to me in the truck. He’d gotten what he deserved, maybe even better than he’d deserved. He was dead now, and couldn’t hurt anyone, but I still had to deal with his disgusting body. And I had to survive the remainder of this trip. I put a little more weight on the gas pedal, thought it couldn’t hurt to go a little bit over the speed limit. The miles ticked by, through “There’s a Small Hotel” and Chet Baker’s “Almost Blue” and Dinah Washington singing “This Bitter Earth.” The songs began to fuzz in and out of range as I got closer to home, but I didn’t flip away, preferring snatches of old music to furniture warehouse ads and bad talk radio.
I turned the radio off when I reached Shepaug, listened to silence as I wound along the familiar tree-lined streets. I passed the driveway for Monk’s House, instinctively turning my head and seeing a single second-floor light still burning. I guessed that my mother had fallen asleep reading, the way she did every night, book splayed open across her chest, lamp still on. I took the next right, down the weed-choked driveway that led to the empty farmhouse. I killed the truck’s headlights and slowed to a crawl. Just as it had been in Maine, it was a cloudless night in Connecticut, the black sky crowded with bright stars. The farmhouse, unadorned and colorless, rose up out of a yard that had become a pasture. A single tree, planted too close to the house, seemed to be enveloping the structure, one of its branches having punctured the roof. I stepped out of the truck, and was flooded with the familiar piney smell of the surrounding woods. I took my penlight and waded out into the adjacent meadow, its dried-out grasses crackling under my feet. I had been back to this meadow a few times since childhood, but this was the first time I’d been here at night since that summer evening when I’d killed Chet. I walked toward where I thought the well was, only turning the penlight on when I thought I was close, pointing the beam down at the ground. It took five minutes, but I found the well cover, covered by the grass I’d flattened over its top so many years ago. I propped the penlight on the cover’s wooden edge, angling it slightly up so that I’d be able to see its weak beam, then walked back to the truck.
Except for the rainfall of the day before, it had been a dry September and October in New England and the ground of the meadow was soft but not muddy. Keeping my eye on the penlight’s beam I drove the truck from the driveway onto the meadow, bumping up and over a few rocks that were all that remained of an ancient stone wall. Brad Daggett jolted back and forth on his seat, emitting another expulsion of gas. My window was rolled down, my head halfway out. I pulled the truck up to the left of the well and kept it running while I got out and circled around to the well cover. With my gloves still on, I ripped away at the meadow grass and loosened the cover. I pulled it away gently, trying not to break the rotten wood, and laid it next to the well opening. I picked up the penlight; in its beam I could see worms writhing in the bare earth where the well cover had laid. I pointed the beam down the well, seeing only the rocks and dirt that covered Chet. I imagined what was left of him down there—a withered corpse, some paint-splattered clothes, a few rotted picture frames, a pair of dark-rimmed glasses. The world turned suddenly dark, and a slight jolt of fear went through me. I looked up, and it was a single scrap of cloud that was blanking the moon. I watched it pass by, and the world was flooded again with moonlight.
I opened the passenger door of the truck, unbuckled Brad, and he tumbled out on his own accord, landing face-first onto the ground, one of his feet, in his large work boots, snagging on the edge of the door. I loosened his boot and his leg followed his body down onto the ground. He was about three feet from the well hole, but even so, it was not easy to move his bulk. I wound up rolling him over several times till his head and torso were flopped into the well, then I lifted his heavy feet till he slid over the edge. He hit the bottom of the well with a splintery thump, sending up a rush of acrid air.
Brad, meet Chet. Chet, meet Brad.
I pulled the cover back onto the well, tapped down its sides, and replaced the meadow grass, sweeping it over like hair across a bald spot. I checked my watch. It was nearly 3:00 A.M. It was all going just as I had planned. Before I got back into the truck to drive to New York City, I took a moment just for myself, standing under the starry night, surrounded by nothing but darkness and nature. “Rare breed of animal,” my father had once called me, and that’s what I felt like. Totally alive, and totally alone. My only companion at that moment was my younger self, the one who tipped Chet down that well. I imagined she was there with me. We locked eyes, not needing to speak to each other. We understood that survival was everything. It was the meaning of life. And to take another life was, in many ways, the greatest expression of what it meant to be alive. I blinked, and my younger self disappeared. She came back into me, and together we drove to New York City.