If It Bleeds Read online

“Yes.”

  “Good. The right thing to do.” He slipped an arm around my shoulders and guided me away from the coffin. “You had a relationship with him that I’m sure a great many people would envy. Why don’t you go outside now and join your father? And if you want to do me a favor, tell Mr. Rafferty and the other pallbearers that we’ll be ready for them in just a few minutes.”

  Another man had appeared in the door to the vestry, hands clasped before him. You only had to look at his black suit and white carnation to know he was a funeral parlor guy. I supposed it was his job to close the lid of the coffin and make sure it was latched down tight. A terror of death came over me at the sight of him, and I was glad to leave that place and go out into the sunshine. I didn’t tell Dad I needed a hug, but he must have seen it, because he wrapped his arms around me.

  Don’t die, I thought. Please, Dad, don’t die.

  * * *

  The service at Elm Cemetery was better, because it was shorter and because it was outside. Mr. Harrigan’s business manager, Charles “Chick” Rafferty, spoke briefly about his client’s various philanthropies, then got a little laugh when he talked about how he, Rafferty, had had to put up with Mr. Harrigan’s “questionable taste in music.” That was really the only human touch Mr. Rafferty managed. He said he’d worked “for and with” Mr. Harrigan for thirty years, and I had no reason to doubt him, but he didn’t seem to know much about Mr. Harrigan’s human side, other than his “questionable taste” for singers like Jim Reeves, Patty Loveless, and Henson Cargill.

  I thought about stepping forward and telling the people gathered around the open grave that Mr. Harrigan thought the Internet was like a broken watermain, spewing information instead of water. I thought of telling them that he had over a hundred photos of mushrooms on his phone. I thought of telling them he liked Mrs. Grogan’s oatmeal cookies, because they always got his bowels in gear, and that when you were in your eighties you no longer needed to take vitamins or see the doctor. When you were in your eighties, you could eat all the corned beef hash you wanted.

  But I kept my mouth shut.

  This time Reverend Mooney read the scripture, the one about how we were all going to rise from the dead like Lazarus on that great gettin-up morning. He gave another benediction and then it was over. After we were gone, back to our ordinary lives, Mr. Harrigan would be lowered into the ground (with his iPhone in his pocket, thanks to me) and the dirt would cover him, and the world would see him no more.

  As Dad and I were leaving, Mr. Rafferty approached us. He said he wasn’t flying back to New York until the following morning, and asked if he could drop by our house that evening. He said there was something he wanted to talk about with us.

  My first thought was that it must be about the pilfered iPhone, but I had no idea how Mr. Rafferty could know I’d taken it, and besides, it had been returned to its rightful owner. If he asks me, I thought, I’ll tell him I was the one who gave it to him in the first place. And how could a phone that had cost six hundred bucks possibly be a big deal when Mr. Harrigan’s estate must be worth so much?

  “Sure,” Dad said. “Come to supper. I make a pretty mean spaghetti Bolognese. We usually eat around six.”

  “I’ll take you up on that,” Mr. Rafferty said. He produced a white envelope with my name on it in handwriting I recognized. “This may explain what I want to talk to you about. I received it two months ago and was instructed to hold it until . . . mmm . . . such an occasion as this.”

  Once we were in our car, Dad burst out laughing, full-throated roars that brought tears to his eyes. He laughed and pounded the steering wheel and laughed and pounded his thigh and wiped his cheeks and then laughed some more.

  “What?” I asked, when he’d begun to taper off. “What’s so darn funny?”

  “I can’t think of anything else it would be,” he said. He was no longer laughing, but still chuckling.

  “What the heck are you talking about?”

  “I think you must be in his will, Craig. Open that thing. See what it says.”

  There was a single sheet of paper in the envelope, and it was a classic Harrigan communique: no hearts and flowers, not even a Dear in the salutation, just straight to business. I read it out loud to my father.

  Craig: If you’re reading this, I’ve died. I have left you $800,000 in trust. The trustees are your father and Charles Rafferty, who is my business manager and who will now serve as my executor. I calculate this sum should be sufficient to see you through four years of college and any postgraduate work you may choose to do. Enough should remain to give you a start in your chosen career.

  You spoke of screenwriting. If it’s what you want, then of course you must pursue it, but I do not approve. There is a vulgar joke about screenwriters I will not repeat here, but by all means find it on your phone, keywords screenwriter and starlet. There is an underlying truth in it which I believe you will grasp even at your current age. Films are ephemeral, while books—the good ones—are eternal, or close to it. You have read me many good ones, but others are waiting to be written. That is all I will say.

  Although your father has power of veto in all matters concerning your trust, he would be smart not to exercise it concerning any investments Mr. Rafferty suggests. Chick is wise in the ways of the market. Even with school expenses, your $800,000 may grow to a million or more by the time you reach the age of 26, when the trust will expire and you can spend (or invest—always the wisest course) as you choose. I have enjoyed our afternoons together.

  Very truly yours,

  Mr. Harrigan

  PS: You are most welcome for the cards and the enclosures.

  That postscript gave me a little shiver. It was almost as if he’d answered the note I’d left on his iPhone when I’d decided to slip it into the pocket of his burial coat.

  Dad wasn’t laughing or chuckling anymore, but he was smiling. “How does it feel to be rich, Craig?”

  “It feels okay,” I said, and of course it did. It was a great gift, but it was just as good—maybe even better—to realize Mr. Harrigan had thought so well of me. A cynic would probably believe that’s me trying to sound saintly or something, but it’s not. Because, see, the money was like a Frisbee I got stuck halfway up the big pine in our backyard when I was eight or nine: I knew where it was, but I couldn’t get it. And that was okay. For the time being I had everything I needed. Except for him, that was. What was I going to do with my weekday afternoons now?

  “I take back everything I ever said about him being a tightwad,” Dad said as he pulled out behind a shiny black SUV some business guy had rented at the Portland Jetport. “Although . . .”

  “Although what?” I asked.

  “Considering the lack of relatives and how rich he was, he could have left you at least four mil. Maybe six.” He saw my look and started laughing again. “Joking, kiddo, joking. Okay?”

  I punched him on the shoulder and turned on the radio, going past WBLM (“Maine’s Rock and Roll Blimp”) to WTHT (“Maine’s #1 Country Station”). I had gotten a taste for c&w. I have never lost it.

  * * *

  Mr. Rafferty came to dinner, and chowed down big on Dad’s spaghetti, especially for a skinny guy. I told him I knew about the trust fund, and thanked him. He said “Don’t thank me” and told us how he’d like to invest the money. Dad said whatever seemed right, just keep him informed. He did suggest John Deere might be a good place for some of my dough, since they were innovating like crazy. Mr. Rafferty said he’d take it under consideration, and I found out later that he did invest in Deere & Company, although only a token amount. Most of it went into Apple and Amazon.

  After dinner, Mr. Rafferty shook my hand and congratulated me. “Harrigan had very few friends, Craig. You were fortunate to have been one.”

  “And he was fortunate to have Craig,” my dad said quietly, and slung an arm around my shoulders. That put a lump in my throat, and when Mr. Rafferty was gone and I was in my room, I did some crying. I tried to k
eep it quiet so my dad wouldn’t hear. Maybe I did; maybe he heard and knew I wanted to be left alone.

  When the tears stopped, I turned on my phone, opened Safari, and typed in the keywords screenwriter and starlet. The joke, which supposedly originated with a novelist named Peter Feibleman, is about a starlet so clueless she fucked the writer. Probably you’ve heard it. I never had, but I got the point Mr. Harrigan was trying to make.

  * * *

  That night I awoke around two o’clock to the sound of distant thunder and realized all over again that Mr. Harrigan was dead. I was in my bed and he was in the ground. He was wearing a suit and he would be wearing it forever. His hands were folded and would stay that way until they were just bones. If rain followed the thunder, it might seep down and dampen his coffin. There was no cement lid or liner; he had specified that in what Mrs. Grogan referred to as his “dead letter.” Eventually the lid of the coffin would rot. So would the suit. The iPhone, made of plastic, would last much longer than the suit or the coffin, but eventually that would go, too. Nothing was eternal, except maybe for the mind of God, and even at thirteen I had my doubts about that.

  All at once I needed to hear his voice.

  And, I realized, I could.

  It was a creepy thing to do (especially at two in the morning), and it was morbid, I knew that, but I also knew that if I did it, I could get back to sleep. So I called, and broke out in gooseflesh when I realized the simple truth of cell phone technology: somewhere under the ground in Elm Cemetery, in a dead man’s pocket, Tammy Wynette was singing two lines of “Stand By Your Man.”

  Then his voice was in my ear, calm and clear, just a bit scratchy with old age: “I’m not answering my phone now. I will call you back if it seems appropriate.”

  And what if he did call back? What if he did?

  I ended the call even before the beep came and climbed back into bed. As I was pulling the covers up, I changed my mind, got up, and called again. I don’t know why. This time I waited for the beep, then said, “I miss you, Mr. Harrigan. I appreciate the money you left me, but I’d give it up to have you still alive.” I paused. “Maybe that sounds like a lie, but it isn’t. It really isn’t.”

  Then I went back to bed and was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. There were no dreams.

  * * *

  It was my habit to turn on my phone even before I got dressed and check the Newsy news app to make sure no one had started World War III and there hadn’t been any terrorist attacks. Before I could go there on the morning after Mr. Harrigan’s funeral, I saw a little red circle on the SMS icon, which meant I had a text message. I assumed it was either from Billy Bogan, a friend and classmate who had a Motorola Ming, or Margie Washburn, who had a Samsung . . . although I’d gotten fewer texts from Margie lately. I suppose Regina had blabbed about me kissing her.

  You know that old saying, “so-and-so’s blood ran cold”? That can actually happen. I know, because mine did. I sat on my bed, staring at the screen of my phone. The text was from pirateking1.

  Down in the kitchen, I could hear rattling as Dad pulled the skillet out of the cabinet beside the stove. He was apparently planning to make us a hot breakfast, something he tried to do once or twice a week.

  “Dad?” I said, but the rattling continued, and I heard him say something that might have been Come out of there, you damn thing.

  He didn’t hear me, and not just because my bedroom door was closed. I could hardly hear myself. The text had made my blood run cold, and it had stolen my voice.

  The message above the most recent one had been sent four days before Mr. Harrigan died. It read No need to water the houseplants today, Mrs. G did it. Below it was this: C C C aa.

  It had been sent at 2:40 A.M.

  “Dad!” This time it was a little louder, but still not loud enough. I don’t know if I was crying then, or if the tears started when I was going downstairs, still wearing nothing but my underpants and a Gates Falls Tigers tee-shirt.

  Dad’s back was to me. He had managed to get the skillet out and was melting butter in it. He heard me and said, “I hope you’re hungry. I know I am.”

  “Daddy,” I said. “Daddy.”

  He turned when he heard what I’d stopped calling him when I was eight or nine. Saw I wasn’t dressed. Saw I was crying. Saw I was holding out my phone. Forgot all about the skillet.

  “Craig, what is it? What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare about the funeral?”

  It was a nightmare, all right, and probably it was too late—he was old, after all—but maybe it wasn’t.

  “Oh, Daddy,” I said. Blubbering now. “He’s not dead. At least he wasn’t at two-thirty this morning. We’ve got to dig him up. We have to, because we buried him alive.”

  * * *

  I told him everything. About how I’d taken Mr. Harrigan’s phone and put it in the pocket of his suit coat. Because it came to mean a lot to him, I said. And because it was something I gave him. I told him about calling that phone in the middle of the night, hanging up the first time, then calling back and leaving a message on his voicemail. I didn’t need to show Dad the text I got in return, because he’d already looked at it. Studied it, actually.

  The butter in the skillet had begun to scorch. Dad got up and moved the skillet off the burner. “Don’t suppose you’ll be wanting any eggs,” he said. Then he came back to the table, but instead of sitting on the other side, in his usual place, he sat next to me and put one of his hands over one of mine. “Listen up now.”

  “I know it was a creepy thing to do,” I said, “but if I hadn’t, we never would have known. We have to—”

  “Son—”

  “No, Dad, listen! We have to get somebody out there right away! A bulldozer, a payloader, even guys with shovels! He could still be—”

  “Craig, stop. You were spoofed.”

  I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. I knew what spoofing was, but the possibility that it had happened to me—and in the middle of the night—had never crossed my mind.

  “There’s more and more of it going around,” he said. “We even had a staff meeting about it at work. Someone got access to Harrigan’s cell phone. Cloned it. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sure, but Daddy—”

  He squeezed my hand. “Someone hoping to steal business secrets, maybe.”

  “He was retired!”

  “But he kept his hand in, he told you that. Or it could have been access to his credit card info they were after. Whoever it was got your voicemail on the cloned phone, and decided to play a practical joke.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “Daddy, we have to check!”

  “We don’t, and I’m going to tell you why. Mr. Harrigan was a rich man who died unattended. In addition to that, he hadn’t visited a physician in years, although I bet Rafferty gave him hell on that score, if only because he couldn’t update the old guy’s insurance to cover more of the death duties. For those reasons, there was an autopsy. That’s how they found out he died of advanced heart disease.”

  “They cut him open?” I thought of how my knuckles had brushed his chest when I put his phone in his pocket. Had there been stitched-up incisions under his crisp white shirt and knotted tie? If my dad was right, then yes. Stitched-up incisions in the shape of a Y. I had seen that on TV. On CSI.

  “Yes,” Dad said. “I don’t like telling you that, don’t want it preying on your mind, but it’s better that than letting you think he was buried alive. He wasn’t. Couldn’t have been. He’s dead. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like me to stay home today? I will if you want.”

  “No, that’s okay. You’re right. I got spoofed.” And spooked. That too.

  “What are you going to do with yourself? Because if you’re going to brood and be all morbid, I should take the day off. We could go fishing.”

  “I’m not going to brood and be all morbid. But I should go up to his house and water the plants.
”

  “Is going there a good idea?” He was watching me closely.

  “I owe it to him. And I want to talk to Mrs. Grogan. Find out if he made a whatchacallit for her, too.”

  “A provision. That’s very thoughtful. Of course she may tell you to mind your beeswax. She’s an old-time Yankee, that one.”

  “If he didn’t, I wish I could give her some of mine,” I said.

  He smiled, and kissed my cheek. “You’re a good kid. Your mom would be so proud of you. Are you sure you’re okay now?”

  “Yes.” I ate some eggs and toast to prove it, although I didn’t want them. My dad had to be right—a stolen password, a cloned phone, a cruel practical joke. It sure hadn’t been Mr. Harrigan, whose guts had been tossed like salad and whose blood had been replaced with embalming fluid.

  * * *

  Dad went to work and I went up to Mr. Harrigan’s. Mrs. Grogan was vacuuming the living room. She wasn’t singing like she usually did, but she was composed enough, and after I finished watering the plants, she asked if I’d like to go into the kitchen and have a cup of tea (which she called “a cuppa cheer”) with her.

  “There’s cookies, too,” she said.

  We went into the kitchen and while she boiled the kettle, I told her about Mr. Harrigan’s note, and how he’d left money in trust for my college education.

  Mrs. Grogan nodded in businesslike fashion, as if she’d expected no less, and said she had also gotten an envelope from Mr. Rafferty. “The boss fixed me up. More than I expected. Prob’ly more than I deserve.”

  I said I felt pretty much the same way.

  Mrs. G. brought the tea to the table, a big mug for each of us. Between them she set down a plate of oatmeal cookies. “He loved these,” Mrs. Grogan said.

  “Yeah. He said they got his bowels in gear.”

  That made her laugh. I picked up one of the cookies and bit into it. As I chewed, I thought of the scripture from 1 Corinthians I’d read at Methodist Youth Fellowship on Maundy Thursday and at Easter service just a few months back: “And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.” The cookies weren’t communion, the Rev would surely have called the idea blasphemous, but I was glad to have one just the same.