“The only thing I like better than bringing a beautiful woman to orgasm,”
the minotaur told Kenneth, “is killing a cop.” He held up his gloves. “And
I do both with these two hands.”

Kenneth didn’t know what to say. How had he ended up in this nerve-wracking
conversation? He was only here in the first place because his in-laws made
him nervous.

The truth was, everyone made him nervous, more or less, even his own wife
and kids. He could never truly relax unless he was alone. That was why he’d
come home early. He’d accompanied Emily and the twins to her parents’ place
on Christmas Eve, slept over as per usual, opened presents, even went to
church and pretended to sing, mouthing nothing, but without complaint. Then
he’d caught the train back alone, to get some “work” done. They’d follow in
a couple of days.

He was not looking for adventure, to run loose without the family. He had
never been the type to cheat or even to have a boys’ night out drinking or
gambling. Quite the opposite. His first marriage had ended because, among
other things, he’d been too boring. In art school he’d fallen for a
beautiful and brilliant girl and they’d married when she got pregnant with
a daughter. But he was not cut out for that life: He drifted from painting
into graphic design and advertising, preferred staying home to intellectual
dinner parties, TV to confounding performance art or deafening noise, and
didn’t have the stamina, or the foolish courage, for bohemian life. When
she told him she wanted a divorce, he didn’t argue. He was crushed, quietly
crushed, heart sinking like a diver gone too deep, silently collapsing
under the pressure, but he knew she was right. He focused on work, mainly
in finance: logos, websites, annual reports, whatever. It paid well and,
though the clients could be overbearing bullies, he found them easier to
deal with than the “creatives” one met in the fashion or art worlds, who
were constantly throwing tantrums, or having brainstorms, then changing
their minds. His business clients gave him a job and said thank you when it
was done. They even paid him. On time.

He began dating his biggest client’s daughter, and she soon she became his
new wife. A nutritionist and life coach, she quit to raise their kids, but
pretty much managed his life like one of her clients (or were they
patients?): diet, clothes, even his haircuts. She was the one who had
wanted to live out here. She decorated the house. Kenneth had no
objections. He was grateful. He felt lucky to have stumbled into such a
nice life. Yet he did not ever really feel at home in this house, these
clothes, even this family. What he could never admit, to anyone, was that
he still felt like a stranger visiting among them. Most nights after
dinner, he retreated to his studio to work, or pretend to. But he did not
watch porn or gamble online like other men pretending to work. He did not
even watch sports. He read. He listened to music on headphones. Often, on
the old TV he kept there, he’d be watching the same program that his wife
and kids were, hunched in his dark burrow, while they sat laughing and
snacking on popcorn in the warm family-room light.

How free he’d felt when they dropped him at the train, ridiculously so, as
though he were the child and not the father. He picked up a pack of
Marlboro Reds, a six of Bud and a bag of Hot Cheese Doodles at the deli by
the train station before walking the three or so miles home. His own car,
(a vintage Jaguar, another indulgence, his wife’s car was the family car,
the Volvo wagon) was of course in the shop, and the shop, of course, was
closed. He didn’t mind the walk. The threatened snow had not arrived and
the air was brilliantly clear, as though a filter had frozen and shattered:
He’d been looking through a dirty window he didn’t know was there. Now he
could see the sky. As the road cut through the woods, he breathed clean air
deep into his lungs, as though inhaling pine-scented oxygen freshly made.
That was when he saw it, a flash through the branches, a silver gleam, like
from a mirror or a shield, and heard music – wailing, whining, guitars,
ricocheting off the trees.

It was shocking – he had never heard music in these woods, or seen anyone
except the occasional bird watcher – but also oddly familiar. He knew this
song from somewhere. Then the bass and drums jumped in, and the voice,
unmistakable even when distorted by the echoing woods and shredded by the
wind: it was Frank Zappa, singing about the mudshark. He hadn’t heard that
one in ages. He paused on the side of the old road: broken asphalt still
cracked from past winters, a ditch layered in dead leaves, and then the
trees, pines with their deep green needles prickled out, stiff in the cold,
white birches like ghosts or slender brides, and lording over it all, the
oaks, ancient and massive, stripped bare and dead to us for winter, as
though hewn from rock, like their own gravestones. It seemed impossible
they would come back yet again next spring. Peering through, he saw the
flash from another angle, as though a knight were galloping through the
suburban woods, wielding a shield and sword, blasting the Mothers.

He left the road. Curiously, cautiously, he began moving toward the sound,
or more like he was wading into it, a kind of force field breaking in waves
against the trees. There was no path, just layered leaves, and no guide
except the music, which kept abruptly cutting out then roaring back, like a
bad connection. He was nowhere. Then he saw the mound.

It was a small hill of fresh soil, a shallow hole hastily filled with loose
dirt – like a tiny grave, he thought, that a child might dig for a pet,
though without even a childish marker, just one or two leaves that had
fallen. Was something buried in there? He prodded it with his toe and the
dirt crumbled. He crouched down and brushed away loose soil. There didn’t
seem to be. Then, from that low angle, he saw the second mound.

It was about a hundred feet away, between two trees – though he supposed
everything here was between two trees – another low pile of fresh earth.
This time he grabbed a fallen twig and stuck it into the mound. Nothing.
Just another shallow hole, dug and refilled. It was as he straightened up
that he realized: there were perhaps a half dozen more scattered about.
Someone had been hard at work. But why?

As the music, which had dwindled away to nothing, blared out again, tinny
and distorted, Kenneth saw a tall thin shape striding in the distance: A
man passing, like a stick figure, between the lines of the trees.

Kenneth inched forward, crouching low. But what was there to hide from? He
was embarrassed, he supposed, to be caught spying, while at the same time
eager to see the digger doing whatever he did. He crept up between the big
trees that rose like fat columns around him and whose vast branches vaulted
up and joined above him like buttresses in the sky. Then the woods parted
and he saw the digger. Kenneth ducked, tingling with fear or excitement,
that happy fear you felt as a kid playing hide and seek. He slowly peeked
from behind a fallen oak.

The man was all in black, but not in winter gear: wool trousers, a black
leather jacket, cut long and belted, kind of cheesy really, pointy black
dress shoes, and a black hat, but not a wool cap or a fleece, a
wide-brimmed fedora pulled down low. On his hands, black leather gloves. He
had a brand-new shovel in one hand, that was what had been flashing, and in
the other, what they used to call a boom box, a player, probably for CDs,
or even tapes, a big one with a handle. That was why the sound had come and
gone with him as he walked. Now he set the box down on a log and pulled a
folded paper from his coat. He consulted it briefly and began to dig.
Kenneth watched as he worked, quickly and efficiently. He dug his hole,
then crouched and poked around with the shovel. Then he rose, stretching
his back, and, leaning on his shovel, took a flat pint bottle of something
from his pocket and drank. Then he re-filled the hole. He lit a cigarette,
with a gold or highly polished brass lighter that flashed like the shovel
had. But there was something else, something shiny that had gleamed on and
off as he dug and now, peering carefully, Kenneth realized what it was: a
heavy gold ring that the digger was wearing on the outside of his black
leather glove. Peculiar.

He picked up his box and moved on. It only took a minute for the man to
disappear into the maze of the woods, though the sound lingered, fading in
and out as the box swayed in his hand. Finally that too was gone. Cramped
and cold, Kenneth hurried back to the road and then up his driveway to his
family’s home.

Kenneth had craved the solitude. But he had not imagined the silence. Or
rather, to be precise, the lack of familiar sounds – the kids, wife, TV,
yelling, laughing, crying – because, of course, as soon as this emptiness
expanded, opening up a space that his family had filled, new noises that
he’d never heard rushed in: the creaks and groans of the old house, the
sighs and coughs of the heating system, the rumble of a small plane far
overhead. He put on music, the classical station, blasting it through the
house, then switched to Bad Religion, Germs, Dead Boys, all the stuff his
wife didn’t like and would never tolerate him playing so loud. He drank a
couple of beers and ate his cheese doodles, lying back on the couch, then
jumping up when he got the orange powder on the cushions. He wiped it down
with a sponge. The fact was, it was hard to relax. It was, he suspected, a
learned skill, not something a beginner could just jump on the couch and
do. On an impulse he went to the basement and searched his record
collection, stored in milk crates in a corner. Finally he found it, Frank
Zappa and the Mothers, Live at the Fillmore East. He cleaned the
vinyl and put on “Mudshark.” The second he heard it, he remembered, he’d
been a kid when he’d first heard this, in a basement on someone’s Dad’s
stereo, thrilled by the bawdy lyrics, hysterical at the absurd humor. He
listened to both sides, drinking another beer. Then he went outside on the
back deck to smoke.

If hearing that old song had triggered old memories, lighting the cigarette
was like firing up a toxic time machine. It had been right around the same
age, when he heard those records and started sneaking smokes, puffing away
with friends in those same basement rec rooms, or stealing his mother’s
cigarettes and slipping out the back door into the yard to light up, just
like he was now: the stillness, the silent trees, the taste of smoke.
That’s what he had been up to that day when, long ago in different woods,
he first found the dead body.

It was spring, April probably, or late March, the first real thaw after an
epic winter. He had just turned eight and the woods where he played had
been transformed into an ocean bottom or archaeological dig. There were a
dozen tires, a rotten couch, the skeletons of a bed and a dining room
table, spongy mattresses like sprouting fungi that he bounced on as he
tramped along, kicking in a broken TV set, shattering a discarded lamp.
There were trashed bikes, books blooming into moldflowers, baby clothes,
dead toys and toasters, a print cotton dress, still on a hanger, spotted in
mildew and mud.

He trooped on, looking for a place to smoke the Kool cigarette he’d swiped
from his mom, till he found a thick fallen limb, snapped off from a
gigantic oak, no doubt during the heavy storms that year. He sat and struck
damp matches until he got the Kool lit. It was horrible, he remembered
still, like toxic toothpaste. He gagged and put it out. Then he noticed the
rope, looped around the limb, dirty and soaked through. The other end
trailed off into the snowbank around the tree, so he started tugging. It
was tough, but there was something there. He got behind the log, foot up
and braced, yanking like in a tug-o-war. Finally something gave, so he ran
over and dug with his stick and then with bare hands. “I got it,” he yelled
victoriously to no one, grasping at something with numb fingers. Then he
saw what it was. A hand. Cold and rubbery, it did not seem real. He
recoiled, but was fascinated too, sort of hypnotized, and as though in a
trance, he gave the rope a final heave, unearthing the head like a huge
rotten turnip. The end of the rope was noosed around the neck. Or it had
been. It had sunk in as the flesh rotted, becoming part of the putrefied
throat. The head itself was mostly gone. Eyes eaten by birds of pray. Face
gone to rats and foxes. It was a hollow mess, like a pie chewed out from
the center in a pie-eating contest, with the skull now obtruding, staring
up at him in surprise, hair and teeth still comically intact. He ran home,
howling, through the woods.

Kenneth’s house was close, a small, rundown place with missing shingles and
a crooked porch on the first street he hit. He arrived in shock, already
crying, breathing too hard to explain. Kenneth’s mother, a bit of a
hysteric herself, went wild, thinking at first that he was injured,
bleeding from somewhere she couldn’t see, or that a creepy man had done
something to him in the woods. Hiccupping uncontrollably, he managed to
choke out the story but, to his amazement, his mother did not believe him.
No matter how much he argued, or begged her to come look or to call the
police, she insisted, first soothingly, then angrily, that it was a
fantasy, a mistake, a nightmare that he had misremembered. But how was that
possible? Finally it was too dark anyway. Then it was dinner. Then it was
time for bed.

The next day his mother told him to forget the whole thing but of course he
was bursting. At school he told Danny Fogle, and word soon spread, first
among the kids, then parents and teachers, till two days later, they were
marching back out as a party, Kenneth anxious about seeing it again and
feeling somehow in trouble, the parents serious and alternately silent or
bossy, and the small-town cops openly excited. One even brought his family
dog, as if this were a fugitive hunt. All except Kenneth’s mom, who stayed
home.

Kenneth remembered the sense of mounting drama as they approached the
clearing in dying light, the mingled anxiety and gratification at being so
important. When they got close the kids were commanded to stay back, then
the parents. They waited in anticipation. Some held hands and prayed. Then
the cops called them through the trees. There was nothing there.

Time passed. Years added up. The woods were chopped down and plowed under
for more houses but by then Kenneth had moved away. He too had begun to
think of it as a childish nightmare, a strange dream that got mixed in with
other faded snapshots in a memory box that, as the decades passed, he
misplaced altogether.

Later that night, Kenneth walked to the local bar. A pub, it called itself,
O’Doodles Irish Pub, it sat, missing a second apostrophe, on the road just
outside of town, a nothing place really but the only spot walking distance
from the house. After playing records and grilling himself a steak for
dinner along with the rest of the beers, he ran out of independent,
rebellious things to do at home and decided to go out. So he bundled up,
grabbed a flashlight and headed back down the road.

The place was dark but cozy, with green upholstered booths and a long
wooden bar, a low-beamed ceiling and posters of ballplayers and Ireland on
the walls. Behind the bar, a paunchy middle-aged fellow in glasses was
watching a silent wrestling match on TV, two huge specimens in tight
underwear, grinding together with the subtitles on.

Jerry, this is why they call him the euthanizer. I know it, Hank. Magnus
has no idea he is about to be put into a deep sleeper hold.

Then there was a fellow he didn’t notice at first, hunched over the
jukebox. Kenneth went to the end of the bar farthest from the TV, (And Magnus is out, Jerry. Good night sweet prince. The rest is silence, Hank) and when the
bartender waddled over with a sigh and a dirty rag, he ordered a beer.
Whatever they had on tap. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw that
there was actually a black leather coat draped on the stool beside him. A
long one, with a belt.

“Hey!” the guy at the jukebox called out to the bartender.

“Yeah?”

“You got any Zappa on this thing?”

“What?”

“Zappa! Frank fucking Zappa! How come you don’t have any?”

“Whatever’s there, man. I don’t, you know, program it. It’s just whatever’s
there.”

The guy nodded irritably, waving the bartender off, and bent back over to
study further, showing a thatch of bushy dark hair that stuck from under
his black hat. Kenneth couldn’t say he recognized him, since he’d never
really seen him that clearly, but it had to be the digger from the woods.
He was in a black wool suit. His suit was plain and tightly fitted and he
wore a black shirt beneath it buttoned up to the neck. No tie. There was
dried dirt on his shoes and the cuffs of his pants. Also – and Kenneth
noticed this as the man finally picked a song and crossed the bar room, a
song Kenneth knew but couldn’t name or say who played – the man still wore
his black leather gloves. And he still had a gold ring on the outside of
the left ring finger.

Kenneth sipped his beer and the man settled in his spot, one seat over on
Kenneth’s right. Up close, Kenneth could see that the man was in his 50s,
with a lot of gray in his black hair and bushy mustache and eyebrows. He
looked very strong, with broad shoulders, thick limbs in his tight suit,
and a broad, hard face scored with wrinkles. “Vodka,” he called to the
bartender. “Stoli. Neat.”

The bartender came and poured the man a shot. He downed it immediately and
waved the bartender back before he could even turn away, tapping the bar
with his ring. It was very old looking, thick beaten gold with a flat red
stone in the center. The bartender refilled his glass and this one the man
let sit. He sighed, settled, seemed to see Kenneth for the first time. He
nodded. Kenneth nodded back.

“What about you?” the digger asked. “You dig it?”

“Sorry?” Kenneth was startled.

“You dig Zappa?”

“Oh. Yes, I do actually. I was just listening to him…recently.”

“Amazing guitar. The best.”

“Yeah.” Kenneth nodded. “Definitely.”

He did his shot, smacked his lips and exhaled loudly. “Ahh!” Then he called
to the bartender. “Vodka! And one for my friend.”

“Oh no that’s OK thanks.” Kenneth’s beer was barely touched. But the
bartender was already pouring.

“Come on,” the digger said, holding up his glass. “I’m celebrating. Toast
with me.”

“OK,” Kenneth said, raising his. “What to?”

“Buried treasure.” They drank. Again the digger smacked his lips and waved
the bartender over. Kenneth was focused on not gagging, as the vodka ate
through his guts, and then his glass was full. He coughed. His eyes teared.

“I bet you’re wondering why I said that,” the digger said.

“What?” Kenneth asked, catching his breath.

“Buried treasure. I bet you’re wondering why I made that toast.”

“Oh…” He wasn’t sure what to say, but he figured the guy wanted to tell him
so he said, “Yeah.”

“It’s because I found some today. Almost. Anyways, I’m about to. Probably
tomorrow morning.” He laughed, showing a lot of gold and brown teeth. “I’m
rich,” he said raising his glass. Kenneth tapped his against it. They
drank. Kenneth choked less this time, but he was still speechless while the
clear liquor burned its way down to his belly, then melted into warm waves
that radiated out from his core. The man undid his top shirt button, and
Kenneth noticed a thin gold chain glimmering through his abundant chest
hair, spilling up over the collar in a thicket of black and gray. His
wrists too were unusually hairy, dense with fur between the gloves and his
shirt cuffs. A woman walked by on her way to the restroom and the digger
saluted her with his glass.

The digger smiled. “I’d like to follow her in there and see what kind of
treasure she’s got hidden under that skirt,” he said. He chuckled thickly
and Kenneth laughed too, nervously and too loud, which embarrassed him and
he immediately cut it off. He didn’t even see the bartender approaching
this time, but there he was, pouring. “I bet you are wondering why I told
you?” Digger asked.

“About that lady?”

“No. About the treasure.”

“Oh…because you’re drunk?” Kenneth giggled, feeling a little drunk himself.

Digger laughed loudly and slapped Kenneth on the back. “Not yet I’m not.
Cheers!” He lifted his glass and Kenneth did likewise. They drank.

“It’s because we are strangers,” Digger said leaning into him. “By this
time tomorrow I will be gone and you will never know who or where I am.
That’s why I don’t have to kill you!” he added, waving to the bartender.
Then, seeing the look on Kenneth’s face, he cackled. “Don’t worry. I’m not
going to kill you.” He patted his shoulder as the bartender refilled their
glasses. “My whole point was that I don’t have to.”

Digger fell silent and Kenneth followed his gaze. The door was open and a
state trooper was walking in, holding a thermos. He took a seat at the
other end of the bar and greeted the bartender. “Randy, how’s it going?”

“Evening, John. Ready for a refill? Must be cold out there.”

“If you don’t mind.” He handed the thermos across. “Temp’s getting down
there, alright. Still no snow though.”

“They’re saying it hits tomorrow,” the bartender told him and went to where
the coffee was brewing.

“Yeah we’re on alert. Expecting road closures and downed wires.” The
trooper looked across at Kenneth and Digger.

“Officer,” Digger said, lifting his glass.

The trooper nodded, “Gentlemen,” and then “Ma’am,” as the woman left the
rest room and sashayed by to rejoin her table.

Digger spoke in a low tone, smiling at the woman as she passed. “The only
thing I like better than bringing a beautiful woman to orgasm,” he said,
“is killing a cop.” He grinned and held up his gloves. “And I do both with
these two hands.”

Kenneth stared. He didn’t know what to say. He saw the woman settle herself
on the seat beside her companion. He saw the trooper munching pretzels from
a basket. Digger laughed. “Come on, relax. You’re so serious. You need a
drink, my friend.” He pushed Kenneth’s glass closer and they drank.

“Have a safe night, officer!” Digger called as the trooper passed by,
thermos in hand. He nodded and left. Digger leaned in, black hand heavy on
Kenneth’s shoulder and began to mutter a long and tangled tale into his
ear, involving a safe full of cash and jewelry and gold coins,
double-crosses, cops and a hidden stash. It was hard for Kenneth to follow,
with the loud music and the shots that seemed to keep appearing in his
hand. At one point they buried the loot, and someone named Big Moe tattooed
the map on his shaved head, letting the hair grow back to hide it. But he
started to really go bald, placing the whole gang in jeopardy as his
hairline receded.

“Then he got his head split open in a prison riot and after the scar healed
you couldn’t read shit. Besides, people don’t realize, when you get old,
your tattoos wrinkle and fade.” He eyeballed Kenneth. “You don’t got any
tattoos, do you?”

“No,” Kenneth assured him. “I wanted to get one, but I never did.”

The Digger patted his shoulder. “You’re better off. Anyway, I’m the last
one left.” He grinned and waved at the bartender. “It’s all mine.”

Kenneth looked up. He’d been in a daze. He rubbed his eyes and checked his
watch. My God, it was after midnight. The Digger took one more drink.

“So you see why I had to tell someone,” he was saying. “To have one person
in the world who knows the truth. And it had to be a stranger. You don’t
know my real name, and I don’t know yours. You can’t find me or my
treasure. So we’re both safe. And we can part as friends. Understand?”

Kenneth nodded. He was much drunker than he’d realized. The room was slowly
spinning. “Understand,” he said.

The digger tapped his own forehead with a gloved finger and then pointed it
at Kenneth’s. “You are the only one I ever let into the maze in my head.
But I did not give you the map to get back out.” Then he laughed and
straightened out his hat. He pulled a crumpled hundred-dollar bill from his
pocket and slapped it on the bar. “For you!” he yelled at the bartender.
Then he pulled on his leather coat and was gone.

Kenneth hadn’t been this drunk since college really, and as he trudged home
through the woods, he felt the landscape swirling around his head, as if he
were on a spinning carousel, the dark forest blurring by. He was warm from
the vodka, but he could see his breath smoking out before him. Then he
passed the last streetlamp and, as the darkness closed in, he somehow felt
the chill enter too, as though the black night were eating his bones. He
turned on his flashlight and followed the bobbing spot of lit road until he
heard a rustle in the trees. It was the Digger coming for him – he was
suddenly, drunkenly certain. He’d changed his mind and wanted to bury
Kenneth, along with his secret, in one of those holes. He saw the Digger’s
silhouette loom up before him, rising between the trees, now without the
hat or jacket. He saw two horns curling upward, sharp as a bull’s, glinting
like speartips in the moonlight. He heard his grunting breath. He swung the
flash and caught a glimpse of cloven hooves, and forelocks, and a furry
chest blazed with white like a shield.

Kenneth was so startled he dropped the flashlight and it went out. He
picked it up and rushed onward, but he did not turn it back on. He did not
want to see what was out there. Probably only a deer, dumb and magical.

Vodka had been his father’s drink. That was probably why he never drank it,
never drank hard liquor at all really, just the occasional beer or glass of
wine. There was a time when the harsh smell of spirits, the chemical fire
of alcohol, was enough to make his stomach clench. His father was a state
worker, when he worked, repairing and paving roads all over New Jersey, and
Kenneth had learned that when he came home stinking of asphalt and sweat,
he was safe, usually. When he crashed in reeking of booze and sweating it
too, the poison seeping from his pores, it was time to hide. His mother
tried to shield him, she caught the brunt, but there were plenty of nights
when Kenneth had to take a beating too.

And then, one day, he was gone. At first Kenneth didn’t think much of it.
His Dad would often go on benders, take off for a weekend or so, then come
stumbling in or even be found in the morning, washed up snoring on the
mangy lawn, the lawn he rolled out during a sober spring day, then never
watered or mowed. But this time he did not come back and, as the weeks
became months, Kenneth’s mother assured him that this time, he was gone for
good.

She took on another job, waitressing at a diner nights and weekends, and
with the pension from the state, they got by. He wondered, especially as he
got older, why she knew he’d never return, if it was just a comforting
story to tell her son, and herself, or if she somehow really knew. But it
was not until he was into his teens that he began to connect his father’s
disappearance with the body in the woods. It was impossible to recognize
his Dad, or anyone, in that monstrosity. He never asked his Mom about it
either. They did not even discuss normal things, like girls or future
plans. How could he ask about this?

Kenneth’s mother died while he was away at college. She never told him
about her cancer and so he did not come home until after, when he needed to
wrap up her affairs, sell the rotten house that the bank mostly owned. In
the bottom of a drawer, in an old felt cloth bag, he found his father’s
wedding ring and the gold chain he wore. Had he taken them off, as he often
did, to scrub the asphalt and tar from his hands and the sweat and grime
from his skin? Or had his mother taken them, when she hid his body, to
prevent identification? Had she moved his corpse to keep his much-needed
pension coming, to hide the evidence of a suicide and thus collect the
union life insurance which paid his way through school? Or to bury
something darker, deeper, a murder?

Now even that event was more than twenty years past, and like so many
things, even the worst things, or maybe especially the worst things, he had
ceased to question it, even to think of it at all. If the past exists,
independent of our knowledge or memory, if it persists without us, buried
somewhere in darkness, then the truth, he supposed, was out there
somewhere. But all connection between that truth and Kenneth had been
broken, or had simply degraded into nothing. Not even the rotten rope
remained.

Kenneth’s head was killing him. It was by far the worst hangover of his
life. He woke up, washed four aspirins down with a quart of water and then
went back to bed. He slept deeper and longer than he ever did, so deep that
all he could bring back from his dreams was a burnt smell of tar and the
taste of stale vodka when he burped. His sweat smelled like his dad’s. He
sat drinking coffee and watching the snow, which had finally come, falling
on his yard. He thought about the Digger. The whole drunken night played
over and over in his head, as though it were lodged there with the hangover
it had caused.

Late in the afternoon, when the low winter light was cutting sideways
through the trees, he bundled up and went out. He was determined at first,
following his impulse like a dog on a scent, but the further he walked,
back to the spot where he’d first heard the Zappa, and then into the woods,
the sillier he felt. The man was crazy. That was the obvious solution that
explained everything, the holes, even the gloves. Who walked around in a
leather trench coat with a boom box these days? And now with the delicate
flakes falling onto the silent snow, the whole thing seemed moronic, a
drunken dream.

He found the mounds and wandered among them. Then, at the end of the trail,
he found a fresh one, newly dug. The earth was darker, looser, less covered
in leaves or snow. As far as he could tell this was the last he dug. Was
this where he gave up? Or, he couldn’t help thinking, where he’d found his
gold and jewels? He picked up a stick and poked the mound, but unlike
yesterday he struck something under the surface. It was not an empty hole.

He knelt and dug, though soon his pants and gloves were both sodden. He
felt compelled, as though the whole thing had instantly become real again.
He dug wildly, tossing the dirt up around him, until, breathless, he found
it, and then he stared, unable to move or even breath: a black gloved hand,
severed at the wrist, its bloody stump frozen but showing raw meat and
bone. And on the fourth finger, a gold ring with a big red stone. Holding
his breath, afraid to touch the stump but feeling compelled by some greater
force, he drew the ring off with his own numbed and trembling fingers. Then
he ran.

The storm had come. The snow was heavy now and the wind drove it like
needles into his face. He got mixed up and ran in circles in the woods and
by the time he found the road it was dark. He fell on the ice and reached
his door exhausted. He grabbed the phone, planning to call the police, but
it was dead, knocked out by the storm. So he changed his wet clothes, made
tea, and soon, an hour later, the power too went out.

He found his thoughtful wife’s emergency kit, lit candles and played the
transistor radio. The storm had toppled phone lines and blown a
transformer. He was lucky to have heat. Some people were seeking refuge in
shelters, though many roads were impassable and everyone else was urged to
stay home. Several feet of snow were expected, and Kenneth reflected, as he
munched his dinner of cheese and crackers, that by tomorrow all traces of
his discovery would be gone. No footsteps. Thick snow over the mounds. How
would he even find the spot? What would he say, there is a hand somewhere
in these acres of woods? Feeling less and less sure of himself, he became
uneasy, annoyed almost by the ring he still had in his pocket, and which he
constantly took out to examine, though he didn’t dare try it on.

Finally, he went to his office and, in the back of a drawer stuffed with
old files, he found the soft felt pouch that held his father’s ring and
chain: another piece of “evidence” that proved nothing, that was only a
clue to him. He added the new ring, tucked the bag in its place, and
pointlessly but deliberately, (no one else came in here, and the key was
kept in a cup on his desk) locked the drawer.

Back in the living room, he turned the radio off to save the batteries and
lay down on the couch. That was when he heard the strange sounds from
outside. First there came a moaning. It was the wind, no doubt, rushing
between the trees like a cold river stinging your fingers. In the storm the
naked trees were raw as throats, and the wind came shrieking and singing,
like a horde of white-haired ghosts, whispering even through the walls and
windows, finding the tiny cracks that eluded the human eye, the spirits of
felled trees and forgotten humans, of rocks torn from the ground and bodies
buried in unmarked graves.

Living in the woods you got used to the wind. But under the wind he heard a
scratching. Like claws on a cage or nails across a back. A tapping, like
trees would make, wind-bent branches brushing the house. Except there were
no trees. Not close enough. Kenneth’s wife had wisely had them cut back, so
that nothing could damage the house in storms just like this one. So it was
not trees. But something, he knew not what, was there in the black beyond
the windows. Could it be animals driven by the storm, seeking shelter, he
wondered ludicrously. He even pictured the Digger, crawling like a beast on
one hand.

Shaking it off, he went upstairs to bed. Whatever it was could wait out
there till morning. He brushed his teeth by candlelight, used the toilet
and went to sleep. Then he heard the scratching again. In fact it was
louder, more insistent, a rapping like knuckles on the window. At least the
curtains were drawn, so it can’t see in, he thought, then admonished
himself. He was two stories up. There could not be anything there. It was
hail, or flying debris. Still he felt fear mounting, primally stupid and
insensible. Something was out there. Something wanted in. The knocking got
harder. Insistent. Without thinking, on pure reflex, he jumped up and,
grabbing his quilt, ran from the room, back downstairs, but further now, to
the basement, the back bathroom off the children’s playroom. It had no
windows at all. He shut the door and climbed into the tub, curling into a
ball under the blanket. Hiding. Cowering. Like a child. But in this moment,
he is a child, and again he is hiding in the darkness under the blankets,
as when he heard his father curse and rage. He trembles, pretending to
sleep, praying he will not come.

And then he hears the scratching. The tapping. The knocking. It is at the
bathroom door. He can even hear breathing now, a heavy grunt, like a bull.
It has finally found him. It is here. The door opens. Kenneth shuts his
eyes tight and he waits.

Late the next morning, Kenneth awoke to the ringing phone. His eyes blinked
open and he realized the power was back. He stood quickly and stumbled
upstairs, missing the call when the sight he encountered froze him in
place. All the lights and the TV were on. The storm had passed and sun
poured in, glaring off the untouched snow. The front door was wide open and
a drift of blown snow had entered, like a white sheet spread across the
threshold and into the hall. Wet footprints crossed the living room. Round
and muddy, they were probably left by boot heels, but could, he decided,
have been hooves. Equally alarmed and fascinated, he followed them to his
office, where they stopped at the filing cabinet. The locked drawer was
open wide, with the key hanging in the lock. The felt bag was lying on the
desk. The rings and chain were gone. He stared, and before he could even
organize his thoughts enough to react, the phone on his desk began to ring
again. He picked it up. It was his wife. She was on the way. Traffic was
slow, but the roads were open again and they would be home in an hour. The
kids were hungry. Should they stop for lunch or, if they picked up pizza,
would he come and eat with them?