Sunken Graves Read online

  Jennings had been a trigger-puller, carrying an MK18. He’d been good with it and still possessed an M4, a purchase he regretted. But he wouldn’t defend himself against this man again. “Thank goodness I didn’t shoot my eye out.”

  “Why didn’t you become a male nurse after? There’s still time.”

  “Dad,” said the boy.

  “It’s okay, son. Daniel and I are joking the way adults do. Testing mettle.”

  “We should talk about Benji.”

  “His name is Benjamin.”

  “I don’t mind, either way,” said the boy.

  “Your name is Benjamin, son, and it matters. Look at Daniel. Little things add up to big things. He introduced himself as Dan. Dan. Dan the injured platoon medic. You wish you’d gone in as an officer, don’t you, Dan.”

  “Benjamin is failing my class and he can’t play football,” said Jennings, hiding behind the boy and his grade book. “Want to talk about that?”

  “Yes we better. No child left behind, Daniel, and yet here we are. You’re failing my son. What do you intend to do about it?”

  “I intend to teach him well and fairly grade all the work he turns in, Mr. Lynch. My room is used for a study hall during lunch for students with late work. Benji’s welcome to attend.”

  “He’s welcome to attend.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your faith in the purity of the system feels like baby powder. How generous of you, Daniel, putting in extra time. Going the extra mile. But it’s taking a toll. You look tired. The first year is hell, isn’t it.”

  “It’s a lot.” Jennings nodded. “Here’s the plan, Benji. Or Benjamin. You come to my room for lunch the next two weeks and get your late work done. You should be passing by then.”

  “But the football game’s Friday,” said Benji.

  “Work quick. You can do it. I’ll help.”

  “He’s playing in that game, Daniel.”

  “Kids don’t play if they have a D or F, Mr. Lynch. Not my rules.”

  “Benjamin’s other instructors have a background in education. And he’s passing those classes,” said Lynch.

  “He got lazy in my classroom. It happens.”

  “Maybe you’re too busy being fun. You know what’s not fun, Daniel? Football. It’s work and it matters. A contest among men, and Benjamin already has interest from several ACC institutions as a junior. He’ll be playing football on Saturdays at the Virginia Military Institute and he’s playing in the game on Friday.”

  “He’s got four days. He can do it,” said Jennings.

  “Of course he can do it. It’s not Benjamin whose got’damn ability is on trial.” Lynch’s face reddened and he stood in a rush. The movement of air brought the scent of heavy cologne to Jennings. It nauseated him. Lynch took a moment to tug on his cuffs and pull his suit jacket into place and Jennings knew he was talking himself out of taking a swing. Lynch inhaled and exhaled through his nose, the way a bull snorts, and a drop of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He snapped a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at it.

  Benji saw his father’s blood. “Dad, it’s okay. You should go. I’ll do the lunches and get my grades up. Besides I’ll be late for dinner. Okay? We should go.”

  Jennings stood too. He couldn’t do it as quickly and Lynch was taller by four inches. So was Benji. The Lynch boys were long-limbed and thick.

  And hirsute.

  Lynch said, “We’re done. I need to visit the lovely and lonely Ms. Hathaway. I noticed her car still in the parking lot.” Lynch looked down at Jennings, an angry crimson grin, and he stuck out his hand and Jennings shook it. There was no contest of strength. No pressure. Jennings felt like he shook hands with a mannequin. “Here’s some advice, Dan. Your career in education will be a lot like your career in the military. It’ll be difficult and you’ll be paid shit. You need to be careful, else it’ll be short. So tread lightly, keep your gun oiled, and make friends with the General.”

  Jennings gave him a polite smile in return. He let go and wiped his hand on his pants.

  “Bye Dad.” Benji grabbed his stuff. “See you, Mr. Jennings.”

  He hustled out and Lynch followed him to the door. Lynch had car keys in his left hand, the same hand holding the handkerchief. On his keyring was a large fish hook. He was scraping the pad of his thumb across the sharp barb over and over.

  Lynch pinned Jennings with a mocking smile, the kind a bear gives a salmon flopping on a rock.

  “Not bad, Daniel. You reek of sweat and fear but you didn’t break.”

  “I don’t break, Mr. Lynch.”

  “We just met. Give me time, I enjoy the process.”

  Jennings maintained the cold smile.

  Lynch left the room like a tornado lifting into the clouds, sunlight returning.

  Jennings lowered into the chair again and his thighs began to shake.

  3

  Some men have to pay for it.

  It’s not too late to be a nurse. A male nurse.

  Your grandfather must be turning in his grave.

  Jennings was still sweating ten minutes later. Lynch had gotten personal quick, that’s what caught him off guard. Lynch questioned his masculinity, ridiculed his education, pointed out he wasn’t measuring up to his family, and threatened his job. Smiling during the entirety.

  Jennings had endured worse. The Army paid men specifically to scream awful things, to break him down. It had worked too, turning Jennings into mush for days at a time when he was twenty-three. But that had been…professional and institutionalized. Mistreatment with construction in mind. He came back stronger.

  The encounter with Lynch felt like being flayed by an abusive family member.

  Jennings hadn’t known how to counter. How far could teachers retaliate? How much scorn absorption came with the job? Jennings had felt lost. On a battlefield with no weapon, just dodging fire.

  No wonder Ms. Pierce had been scared. Whatever the rumors were she mentioned, Jennings already believed them.

  Poor poor Benji.

  And poor Ms. Hathaway. Lynch referred to her as lonely and lovely. If he was a woman that’s the last thing he’d want to be called by Peter Lynch. Maybe he should check in…

  Jennings shoved himself up. He reached the door in time to see the man himself stroll out of Ms. Hathaway’s classroom. Lynch was humming, having spent ten minutes with the lovely and lonely. He turned down the hall, away from Jennings, toward the distant parking lot. Two young men in the hall, coming from afternoon theater, watched him plod by like a troll.

  Jennings waited until Lynch rounded a corner.

  He wasn’t hiding from Lynch. But he wasn’t not hiding either.

  I’m a Green Beret avoiding a parent.

  Former Green Beret.

  A support soldier. A medic. Those damn rifles are heavy.

  Daisy Hathaway’s room was two doors down, the opposing side of the hall. History on the northern side of Ol’ Monty, English on the southern.

  Hathaway was sitting behind her desk and she jumped when he knocked.

  “Oh, Mr. Jennings, it’s you!”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She stood and released a sigh of relief. “Good. I thought he came back.”

  “Lynch? I just met him."

  “He told me.”

  “Did Lynch inform you I’m not a man?”

  “He…seemed displeased. But he mentioned you have a respected military family,” she said.

  “Which I don’t measure up to. I shook his hand and now I need a shower.”

  Hathaway gave him a slow nod. “I understand. I hate hate hate that man.” Jennings was two years her elder but they were that realm of adulthood where age blurred with merit and experience to create new hierarchies. In teaching, she outranked him. He remained at her door. She said, “Reggie Marks, the history teacher before you, he used to cry after Mr. Lynch’s conferences. He taught Benji’s older brother.” She came around her wooden desk, leaned back against it, and cr
ossed her arms. “Mr. Lynch asked me out again. Just now. Do you know what he said? He said one day I’ll be Mrs. Lynch and then I won’t have to worry about my student loans.”

  “Wow.”

  “Right? Wow.”

  “Not worth it, if it was me.”

  She grinned. “Not enough money in this world. I can hear, actually hear his hair growing. It sounds like a snake.”

  “His mouth bled while he was in my room.”

  “I’ve seen that. Stains between the teeth. Like he’s a werewolf,” she said.

  “Benji’s passing your class?”

  “Yes. I’ll be honest. Sometimes when I’m grading his papers I’m more lenient so I don’t have to conference with that disgusting man. I had the pleasure twice last year.”

  “My next conference, I’ll give you a heads up so you can hide.”

  “I sat behind my desk because he stares at my legs.”

  Everyone stared at her legs. Jennings’ colleagues, the men, raised the subject at least once a month. After four years in the Army, including a month in Landstuhl, a military hospital, deprivation had surely skewed his scales, but Daisy Hathaway was the primary reason Jennings got out of bed each morning without depression. He did his best to keep his eyes up and not stumble through his words.

  She was smiling and he realized he’d missed a question, lost in revere.

  “I’m sorry, say it again?”

  “I said, I would think Captain America wouldn’t stress over a lecher like Lynch,” said Hathaway.

  “I would be, ah, Staff Sergeant America. Doesn’t have the same ring. Having a shield would be nice, though.”

  “Don’t expect to get any protection from the administration. They’re beholden to his deep pockets. Last year I informed Ms. Pierce that Mr. Lynch was acting inappropriately toward me, and she suggested I toughen up. And that I shouldn’t bring it up with Dean Gordon.”

  Jennings pinched at the bridge of his nose.

  “Good grief.”

  “Did he say you were doing a good job?”

  “He said, Not bad, Daniel.”

  “He always made Reggie Marks cry and then told him he was doing a good job. Good job, Reggie, keep at it, Reggie. And then he had Reggie fired.”

  The school’s custodian came in to collect trash. They said hello and he did his job quickly and left, his bin squeaking down the hall.

  Jennings said, “I’m new at this, Ms. Hathaway. Do you change grades when a parent gets upset? Do other teachers? He all but demanded I alter scores on PowerSchool. That seems corrupt.”

  She took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling for her answer. Jennings kept his eyes on her face.

  “Here’s the answer, Mr. Jennings. Do you want to keep your job? If so, you have to play their game. You have to do your duties well. You have to please the parents. You have to kiss the ass of the administration. And do it all with integrity because we still have to live with ourselves.”

  “This is only your third year?”

  “I sound like an old shrew, don’t I. But the stupid game is worth it because I love teaching.”

  “You’re saying I should change Benji’s grade.”

  “No. I’m saying… A student’s numeric grade reflects more than their academic achievement. I mean, sometimes it reflects a teacher’s bad mood on certain days. So if you wanted to change it, no one would blame you,” said Hathaway.

  “I’d blame myself.”

  “Then there’s your answer.”

  “Benji is a good kid.”

  “He is. I heard his brother was different but I like Benji. Don’t change the grade, Mr. Jennings. You’d hate yourself, I can tell.”

  Jennings nodded. She was right, the idea felt akin to a police officer accepting his first bribe, the initial step down a dark alley.

  She said, “It’s still the first semester. Don’t lose heart yet. You’re better company than Reggie.”

  He grinned, feeling like an expanding helium balloon. “Yes ma’am.”

  “We’re the same age. Stop calling me ma’am. If you don’t, I’ll call you Captain America more often. I can tell you don’t like it.”

  “You know what?” he said.

  “What?”

  “I think you should marry Lynch. You’re made for each other.”

  Although Hathaway laughed at it, a cringing laugh, he wished he’d kept quiet. Stupid joke.

  She said, “Want to hear something strange? Mr. Lynch told me how much I owe in student loans. And he was right! He’d looked it up somehow. So gross.”

  “That means he was at a computer, thinking about you, researching you,” said Jennings.

  “I know!”

  A lengthy pause. He was out of words but he didn’t want to leave yet. Wanted to keep talking. The silence was brutal, though, and Hathaway looked like she was waiting.

  He turned to go.

  Stopped.

  “I heard there’s rumors about Lynch? Nothing confirmed.”

  She did a shrugging motion. “There’re a lot of rumors. Look him up on Google sometime. He beats his boys to toughen them up, someone told me. Maybe that’s the rumor but I don’t think it’s a secret.”

  “He abuses his children? You’re sure?”

  “No. I’m repeating gossip.”

  “Handle him. That’s what Ms. Pierce told me. Handle Mr. Lynch. You think she was referring to child abuse?”

  “I don’t know. I know she can’t handle him. That’s one reason you were hired, I guarantee it. They’re hoping you, a Green Beret, can,” said Hathaway.

  “A discharged Green Beret.”

  “Survive your first semester. That’s my advice, Mr. Jennings. Put on your own oxygen mask first, like on an airplane. Then deal with the people around you.”

  “That’s a superb analogy. I’m impressed.”

  She smiled at the compliment.

  He returned to his room to pack. Everywhere he looked he saw Daisy Hathaway. She was superimposed into his vision, an improvement over Lynch.

  4

  Roanoke County was located in a vast valley created by the farthest eastern ripple of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The city’s population was one hundred thousand and the surrounding county was another hundred thousand.

  The Academy aimed to reach two hundred students by its fifth year, including room and board for one hundred and forty—the remainder would be day students. Aggressive figures but the board of trustees’ vision was solvency during the second half of the decade.

  Currently in its fourth year, enrollment numbers were low. Building prestige, it turned out, didn’t happen overnight. The Academy had one hundred thirty-five total, with eighty boarding. Despite operating at a loss, the numbers were better than pessimists predicted. The boarding school venture would survive, though, as long as the benefactors didn’t balk.

  Daniel Jennings lived on campus in the New River Dormitory. His suite was on the main level, and he existed in that hazy realm of being a full-time dorm parent despite his job description insisting he wasn’t. He rotated evening dorm duty with two other boarding faculty members, Mr. Barry and Mr. Hogan. During the first three months he’d taken two students to the emergency department at Carilion Hospital after midnight, victims of stupidity and cruelty. Jennings slept fitfully, ready for an alarm, waking each morning groggy and relieved that the students hadn’t maimed one another.

  He woke before six Tuesday, still raw from Lynch’s mauling. He pulled on track pants and prepped for jogging. The last thing he did before stepping out the door, he turned on his coffee maker. The dining hall’s tasted like gruel.

  The night had turned the planet wet and cool, and he shivered on his way to the track. The Academy trees were immature, planted only five years ago. Nothing like the grand flora of Episcopal High School or Woodberry Forest. Styling itself as a future ivy league prep school, the Academy’s actual ivy was in infancy, halfway up the portcullis.

  The nascent grandeur filled Jennings with hope.r />
  He jogged the track eight times, conceding inner lanes to the cross-country team. He focused on stride symmetry and arm carriage, aspects of running that still eluded him. Eight circuits equaled two miles and he did it in twenty-two minutes, drenched and shaky after. The cost of running was enormous and he’d never reach his previous endurance, no matter the progress with symmetry and trust.

  He hated his limp. Lynch was right, it made him stick out.

  Aching, Jennings walked unevenly back to his suite, grateful for the welcoming scent of coffee. With his hands he removed his right Nike and then detached the running prosthesis from his left knee. To jog, he wore a black carbon fiber Ottobock, like a curved blade. His knee throbbed from the pressure within the socket and he rubbed it, ignoring phantom pain in his left foot—the foot he’d left behind in the sand of Afghanistan.

  He hopped to the coffee maker and poured a mug. Let it cool on the counter as he showered.

  He dressed and attached a walking prosthesis to his left knee. Instead of a curved blade, it consisted of a liner, socket, shin tube, and foot. He slid the foot into a sock and shoe and he stood, shifting to get comfortable. The locking pin clicked. It’d been a year since the transtibial amputation and he still felt closer to natural wearing hardware. A fake leg was better than no leg.

  He examined himself in the mirror. Jennings had gained over half of the atrophied muscle back since the hospital, within ten pounds of his Special Forces weight. His hips and shoulders were level, a significant improvement. He brushed his short brown hair back, which had no effect.

  He felt okay. He looked okay.

  He looked like he was supposed to.Like he was an instructor, not a hollowed out man.

  A fake life was better than no life.

  No, it wasn’t fake. It was new. Like the school, Jennings would probably survive this beginning.

  Eyes forward. Ahead of him, greener pastures. He’d do life right this time.

  Jennings drank his coffee, watching more students arrive, and he felt better with his gaze off himself.

  Jennings’ first period of the day was full of sleepy juniors dressed in khakis and long-sleeved school polos. Benji was in the class and he didn’t make eye contact, resting his chin in his hand and staring down.