Clay-Filled Grave

My sister and I split five tabs of acid at a house party on the one-year anniversary of El Viejo’s death. Since I’m his favorite customer, Sal offered me five for thirty, and even though it was Maria’s first trip, I thought she’d be able to handle two and a half hits. We dropped in an upstairs bedroom with walls covered in green and blue tapestries as bongs, blunts, and bowls were passed round and round and round. We half-knew everyone in the room, and they knew us collectively as the Bolanos twins. At the door of the party, I told Maria that we’d only take the acid, but in that sea of people pressing together with smoke instead of air, we took drags of joints tasting of whiskey, shots of bong water flavored vodka, and whatever else the party passed us. 

I cheered on a brunette chugging a bottle of gas station Rosé. Maria hovered at my elbow. I started wading through the crowd because I saw a girl with a half-shaved head of blue hair who I’d never seen before, but Maria yanked my arm back. 

“I don’t feel any glue.” I shoved her off me. 

“I don’t know anyone else here.” She grabbed my elbow again.

“Well, if you talked to other people,” I pushed her again, “like I’m trying to. It wouldn’t be a problem.”

She flipped me off, and I walked up to the girl. I watched Maria out of the corner of my eye 

“’Sup. I’m Ignacio,” I shouted over the music. Maria shuffled up to a guy and waved. His back was turned to her. 

“Oh, hi.” She pointed at herself. “Clara.”

“How’d you end up at this party, Clara?” Maria talked to the guy’s back.

“I have a couple classes with Chelsea.”

“Oh, you’re a college girl. What’s your major?” I leaned in. Maria waved goodbye to the guy’s back and wandered out of sight.

“Anthropology. I should go find my girlfriend.”

“Aight. Have a good time, dude,” I said as she slipped into the crowd.

Maria appeared next to me. “She was a lesbian, right?”

“At least I talked to someone.”

“He wouldn’t turn around. The music’s too loud.”

“Aw. Poor, tragic Maria. Let me show you how it’s done.” I turned and tried talking to some guy with gelled back hair and podium cheekbones holding up two blazed green eyes, but the eyes swiveled around away from me as if they hadn’t heard a word, so I turned to find another face to talk to and kept turning and kept turning and kept turning as the crowd pressed in closer and closer and closer. The music crashed through and circled above me like the stained-glass cherubs when my mom led me down the church aisle to communion as I stared at the back of a sweat soaked beige plaid shirt. The smell of incense floated in the air and mixed with weed. I found myself squatting in the middle of the party and choking on the smell of spilled beer and Sunday church sweat and dog shit coming from the floor, but I couldn’t stand with those fat angels floating down with their wings’ beat bashing my skull.

Maria forced me up and led us to tear through the crowded room. She used me to break through walls of fishnets, leather jackets, and what-the-fucks, as she whispered “almost, almost, almost.” 

We fell through a door onto a gray square of concrete under a flickering light under a rotting shingle roof under a crescent moon over a tattered umbrella over a pair of shivering children, thrown out of their home by their drunk father flinging books and forks and crucifixes after losing his third job that month. 

Maria slapped me. “Come back.” Slap. “Come back.” Slap. I blinked away El Viejo’s memory, but he kept ripping back to the front of my mind. Greasy gray-black patchwork stubble. The back of a hand with a scarred-over welt. A nose hanging to the left. Slap. I sat up on the concrete with Maria standing over me. A circle of statues watched us. I tried saying “I’m okay,” but I don’t know if it came out. 

Maria laughed. “You’re crying like a little bitch!” 

Confusion and relief breathed life into the statues who stomped out cigarettes and filed back into the party. I laid back, watched the stars dance around the sky, and reassured myself that I was just on drugs and had nothing to fear. Besides, dwelling on your dead dad is a party foul. I stood to go back to the party and find another girl who looked like she had daddy issues, but then Maria shrieked. 

She curled up and shivered as sweat poured down her face. “He’s coming.”

“Hey, listen to me. You’re safe. No one is coming.”

“He’s at the door.”

“There’s no door, because we’re outside, and we’re safe. I promise.” I grabbed her wrist and brushed her palm against the dirt. Slack jawed, her chin rolled down, and she watched the grass slide under her fingers and spring back up.

“He’s doing this,” she muttered. “His ghost hid in those tabs. He’s been waiting for the chance.”

I didn’t believe her, but when her eyes glazed over again, I forgot to disagree. I reached out to stop her from falling back to dead memories, but she marched into the dark yard and wandered in circles, staring at her feet. She looked around and bolted to the back of the yard. I realized I should intervene before she hurt herself, so I ran to her. She went into a tool shed, but I stopped at the door. I didn’t want to go into the shed, because imagining Maria going for hatchets or saws to cut El Viejo’s ghost out of us gave me a bad vibe.

Maria emerged with a shovel and a gardening trowel. She handed the trowel to me. “We’re going to stop him.” She walked past me toward the street, and as she disappeared into the night, I remembered Sal floating in a pool for hours, tripping and insisting he was a duck while four of us tried getting him out. I knew I couldn’t talk her down, so I thought about going back into the party, but then I remembered Sal shouting “Quack! Quack!” as he jumped off his roof later that night thinking he could fly and ran after her.

I followed her along the road as the concrete breathed. She marched like the Bishop at a confirmation mass with a shovel as her crozier, but I stopped going to church years ago, and yet I still followed her like a rat-faced altar boy, sweating under a thick cotton collar, and her wordless determination pissed me off as the cheap shoes from Ross I picked to wear to a party where I could’ve been striking out for the fourth time that night instead of hiking through town rubbed my ankles raw. I hoped they wouldn’t rub too raw and end up bleeding on these socks, because I was running out of wearable white socks and bleaching blood out would be hell, and if I complained about it, Maria would say it was my fault, just like she did when we were in high school, and I stayed up all night to do my homework after I finished hers, because ‘You chose to do it,’ but I did it to help her even though she never asked, but if I watched as she spiraled and flunked out, then it’d be my fault too, and what kind of brother would I be if I let her fall so far, but now she expected me to go along with her no matter what without showing any fucking gratitude for all the shit I went through to keep her safe without ever knowing where she led us, but this time I knew what she was making us do, but I needed to hear her to tell me.

“Maria, what are we doing?” 

“We’re stopping him.” She didn’t turn.

“You said that already. How are we stopping a dead man?”

“We’re going to break him, like he’s trying to break us.”

“Maria, if the trip is going to break you, I’ll just call Sal and get us some Klonopin.”

“That won’t stop his phantasma from haunting us.” 

“Fucking really? The acid is just freaking you out. We should just go back to the party. I’ll even introduce you to that guy you tried talking to.”

She spun around and thrust her shovel at my face. “We’re stopping him.” 

Maria pushed the shovel under my chin and repeated, “We’re stopping him.” I wanted to run from my sister as her hardened face began to resemble our father, as if El Viejo’s ghost possessed her and forced the shovel into my face. I heard him. You think you’re a man, mijo? I felt my face burn. You think you’re a fucking man? I felt my throat closing. “No, Papá. Lo siento.” The shovel pulled back. I saw Maria’s face soften. She stared into her shovel as if it were a mirror. She had to see him in her as well.

“You can go back,” she said, running a finger along the edge of the shovel. “I need to do this.”

She turned away and went down the road, but I couldn’t let her go. She’s my sister, and she’d never abandon me, because I’m her brother.

The first time Maria tried running away, she left at two am a few months after our mom died from a brain aneurysm when we were twelve. She woke me up and rushed me out of the house. I thought it was a dream at first. When we got a block away, I told her I could stay and stop El Viejo from trying to find her. 

“What kind of sister would I be if I left you behind?” she had said. 

I ran to catch up to her. We arrived at St. Monica’s Catholic Cemetery and found the gate locked, and Maria started climbing the fence. I hesitated. I didn’t know if the old groundskeeper, Mr. Brown, was still alive. If he saw two Mexicans trying to get into his cemetery, no less than six cruisers would surround us in seconds to stop the armed gangsters he would swear he saw. Maria was disappearing into a sea of graves, so I hopped on the fence and hoped Mr. Brown was dead or asleep.

After I climbed to the other side, a dog’s bark boomed around me. I threw myself into a bush. A German Shepard didn’t rush around the corner, so I climbed out. Picking leaves out of my hair, I raced to catch up to Maria at El Viejo’s grave, until I tripped and fell flat on a pile of fresh dirt. I rolled over, and a long-necked gaping-mouthed behemoth loomed over me. I scrambled off, crawling away until I could get on my feet and run.

I found her as she spat on his headstone and stabbed her shovel into reddish-brown dirt. I pulled away bits while Maria tried to tunnel. I stopped to breathe and looked at the headstone. “Eduardo V. Bolanos Sr.” I wanted to drive my trowel into it and dig out the “Sr.” I changed it a week after Maria and I moved out to spite him. I called him that afternoon to tell him he’s not a senior without a junior, but he kept it to say, “I still own you.” That was the last time we spoke before he died. 

Maria chucked her shovel to the side. Standing in a half-foot deep divot, she turned and kicked the headstone.

“Are you hiding from me?” She kicked it a few more times.

“Maria, come on. We’re not going to get to him.” I grabbed her arm, but she slapped me away, staring into the dark.

She cocked her head to the side and rushed off, as I trailed behind her. She went straight toward a yellow taxi left in the graveyard. A leftover taxi that could’ve been our way out of here, but as Maria climbed into the cab. I saw an arm coming out of the top and tank treads on its sides and realized it was a digger standing watch over a fresh grave.

“I don’t think this is a great idea,” I called, but she didn’t hear me as she rummaged around. The engine revved alive.

“Stupid gringos,” she laughed, “left the keys in here. Don’t they know the Mexicans moved to town?” 

“You don’t even have a license.”

“Stop being a pussy!” She drove the digger toward El Viejo’s grave. I started to run behind but saw the claw hanging off the back and imagined it taking my head off, so I hung back as she ran over graves, knocked over headstones, and cackled. I checked the road for flashing lights, ready to grab Maria and run. She slowed as she got to El Viejo’s grave.

I walked up as the claw started flexing. Maria leaned on a stick and urged the claw into the ground. It scraped against El Viejo’s headstone and pressed on the ground. The machine groaned, and I thought I saw the treads starting to lift off the ground. I jumped into the cab and yanked the stick back. The claw retracted. Maria and I pushed and pulled the sticks and levers until we could control the claw. Through the fogged glass, Maria couldn’t see the ground, so I stood opposite the grave and shouted directions. 

The first scoop scraped into the packed dirt with grass like El Viejo’s stubble that I saw cropping up in the mirror when I forgot to shave. It nudged and tipped the headstone. The second scoop tore up two handfuls of grass and flipped the headstone. I guided her to break into the clay-filled grave. I stole glances to the road, always expecting the cruiser that never came. The claw scraped against something at the bottom of the hole. Maria froze and moved the claw again. When the scraping floated out again, Maria flew out of the cab and jumped into the hole with sloping sides and ragged edges. 

She ripped into the dirt with her nails. I almost threw myself in the hole to help her but threw the trowel down first. She dug around the edge just enough to tear the coffin open, revealing a paper-skinned corpse with sunken eyes and wispy hair. I took a step back into a wall of dirt. El Viejo’s mummy laid at peace. His skin faded white. His jaw unclenched. His eyes had sunk back into his head where they once bulged. I only recognized him from the faint hint of patchwork stubble silhouetting his jaw.

Maria stood over him, as if she thought El Viejo’s eyes would shoot open when she threw open the casket. She stared and waited for him to make the first move. She brought the shovel down onto his skull. “Baboso!” she shouted, her voice cracking. Thwack. “Chúntaro!” Thwack. “Pendejo!” Thwack. “Joto!” Thwack. “Maldito—” Thwack. “puto!” Thwack. “Piece of—” Thwack. “shit!” Thwack. “Mother—” Thwack. “fucker!” Thwack-snap. The shovel pierced his skull, separating the nose from the mouth. She leaned on it, panting. Her mouth hung slack. I tried to pull her out of the grave, but she kept throwing my hands off her. She stared down El Viejo. The corner of her lip curled up and a giggle escaped. She started chuckling and then came a booming laughter so strong that even El Viejo’s mouth flew open and guffawed. I gave into the raucous laughter as we came together as a family.

Joaquin Macias was born in Sumter, South Carolina to a surrealist and a communist. He is an aspiring writer and student of English and Theater at Winthrop University. His writing has previously appeared in Crack the Spine, Riggwelter, and Heavy Feather Review.