from the tyranny of stratigraphy
The two men, both boys actually, looked at each other across the lunch room table, as they did every weekday morning, or had done, every weekday morning, for the past three years. Doggit wasn’t there. And they both knew he wouldn’t be coming back, ever. They both knew that he was no longer going to be around and that would change things, but they realized, with some surprise on both their parts, that the absence of Doggit wouldn’t really change things much and they would continue with their friendship in the same way and would do their work also similarly without him. But things would be a little different until Doggit was replaced.
One had a newspaper folded under his wrist which lay gently on the hard plastic surface of the lunch table. Because the paper was folded, all that could be read were the two words, “double homicide” completing a banner headline, the largest that either of them had ever seen in an edition of that little local paper. The table was yellow and the newspaper was stained with so much black that it was apparent that the stain was due to the boys handling of inks in the print shop and then handling the paper and wasn’t merely the smudge of the type.
Todd Wallace said, “Doggit’s gone.”
“For sure,” Pudge responded.
“I knew before the article happened. I was told from Doggit’s sister Nancy. She called me last night to say he wouldn’t be coming in to work for a bit.”
“That’s the understatement of the century and a half.”
“Yeah. She told me all about it. It happened late Friday night. Like after midnight. So it would a been Saturday morning actually. They were down on the golf course — off from Route 80. There by Lamb’s canyon.”
“I knew something was going to happen, and this weekend too.”
“Yeah, I, I did too.”
“She was telling him that he better either get her to the Temple or figure out a way to take care of things – like half his paycheck for his whole life, or she was gunna tell his father.”
“His father woulda beat the absolute shit right out from him.”
“Two times over.”
“I knew something bad was gunna happen but I never would a figured this.”
“Same.”
“I didn’t tell Nancy that we’d been talkin’ with Doggit about his situation with that girl.”
“Better stay out of it. What else did the sister say?”
“She said that Doggit was doing all right considering. That Doggit’s father had gotten him a lawyer from Salt Lake that they liked and thought might help, and that another lawyer was coming from back east to help too, for free too.”
“For free?”
“Yeah, this lawyer is gunna help with saying that it wasn’t the two murders, that it is, was only the one. Nancy also says there were a lot of questions about if Doggit coulda even done the one murder — the girl.”
“How could it be the one and not two? Iffin he did the one, he did the two?”
“It’s not about if he did the two. It’s about if the baby boy was a person yet.”
“Really?”
“Yea, and someone is coming from back east to say the boy, if it ain’t born, it ain’t a person yet.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“How come? Why would some lawyer come all that way just to say the baby weren’t a person before it got murdered?”
“They also got someone that saw them walking hand-in-hand, Doggit and the girl, – and stopping and kissing all the time – like they was totally in love with each other. That saw them kissing like that just an hour before it happened?”
“How do they know when it happened?”
“Don’t know, I guess from tests they do on the bodies, and also when they were found.”
“They found Doggit there.”
”No they found the girl and the baby inside. All cut to pieces, both, at least according to the paper.”
“Yeah.”
“Well Nancy thinks that if they get this back-east lawyer to make it just the one murder, that will help Doggit some. And maybe they can prove he didn’t have anything – to do with any of it.”
“Yeah, be half the trouble for Doggit. Where did they find him?”
“He was out drivin’. He said that after he left the girl he went out drivin’ and thinkin’ about what to do about the girl, the baby boy and the girl, both.”
“Drivin’ where.”
“Going south I guess, with a bunch of cash he took from his father and that 45 his father keeps under the pool table where the balls get stuck.”
“The pool table in Doggit’s basement.”
“Yeah.”
“How would a lawyer from back-east know if the boy was a murder or not? How could just some guy say if somebody’s a person or no?”
“Don’t really know. Just somethin’ I heard from the sister.”