A Living Grave by Robert E. Dunn Read Free Book Online Page A

Angela Briscoe was found. It was written on the back of a photocopy. When I turned it over I got my first really good look at Cotton James Lambert. My first look at him had been when he sped away after leaving Nelson Solomon in the dirt by the side of the road.
    At least we had a string to begin pulling, but not much of one. Lambert’s rap sheet had his affiliations, but nothing about being part of an organized gang. He could have been recruited since he was last arrested or during his last stay in jail. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that he ran with the same group as the guy I’d seen on Angela Briscoe’s street. I searched the system for a name on anyone using the alias Leech. Nothing.
    I hadn’t heard anything on that BOLO, so I left myself a reminder to check on it in the morning. After that I went through voice mail. I should have been more careful.
    The first message was from Major John Reach. I didn’t catch what he was saying; in fact I hit the delete button as quickly as I could. It didn’t matter. His voice fell over me, a heavy blanket of darkness that brought the fear with it. I had to get out of there.
    As I went for my truck, I folded up and tucked the photocopy of Cotton Lambert’s intake photos in my pocket. I felt like I was dragging a train of fear behind me. Searching my mind for a handle that offered a little control, I found instead a bright smile and shining eyes: Nelson Solomon. It was a surprise, but a nice one and I held it as I drove out of Forsyth to Rockaway Beach.
    My eggs and grits seemed like a million years ago and I hadn’t eaten anything since. I lied to myself that I would feel better if I ate something. It was an easy lie because I would feel better seeing Uncle Orson and he had the food.
    There was a military tradition in my family. It went beyond the Army into which I had been born. On my father’s side, his father and uncles had all served in World War II. They had been Army, Army Air Corps, regular Navy, and the Seabees. My father followed his father into the Army, but Uncle Orson, a man who said he wanted nothing to do with following, chose to enlist in the Marines in 1964. He was on the northern perimeter when the NVA hit Con Thien. Every sunrise after that night of flamethrowers and knife fighting was a gift he made the most of. Orson retired as a master gunnery sergeant and never put the uniform on again. Every year, though, he has his dress uniform cleaned and altered if needed. It’s always ready for a call to duty or his funeral. He won’t be buried in anything else.
    Both my father and his brother had seen combat and come back grateful but changed. My father romanticized and surrounded himself with the best of that world. He went to reunions and visited the wall. His dreams were a darkness buried so deep he convinced most of the daytime world they did not exist. Uncle Orson wore his dreams of elephant grass bent by helicopter wash and burning hooches billowing with the smoke of rice and human bodies on his skin. They were scars cut into his skull by Zippo tracks and young boys with AK-47s screaming their death in black pajamas. All of it was lit up by the muzzle flash of M16s in a nighttime ambush. He didn’t romanticize; he drank. I come by it naturally.
    Uncle Orson loved the corps but he understood the spine of the thing was violence and raw force. It had no real ethics and it had no regrets. There were just the dreams of veterans. I could tell him things that would have shattered my father. And I did.
    That was why on nights like that one, when the fading blue of a summer sky burned red ocher on the underside of high clouds, when I see the color bleed and the air fill with blowing dust, I go to Uncle Orson. He sees his own ghosts.
    Like so many times before, I didn’t remember driving to Rockaway Beach or walking up the swaying suspension walkway of the dock. One moment I was in the truck trying to hold on to the