An arm, a leg, five dollars, and a wife

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[EDITOR'S NOTE: This story, included only in the original manuscript Spinke sent to the Volkspresse, met indignant objection and irascible obloquy from the publishing house's senior editors. Because of its perspicuous presentation of illicit venereal encounters, the Volkspresse suppressed publication in the untitled collection of short stories claiming the "lewd and uncouth swinishness would affront the reader's noble sensibilities." We owe the availability of the manuscript from which the present edition is published to the expansive library of Earl Carl von Nußmutter, who purchased all of Spinke's journals, notebooks, marginalia, farciabilia, catspray, and other appurtenances from Spinke's widow after his mysterious disappearance in 1933.]


The Burial

Amos J. Spinke


     “That thing is pretty sweet. I mean, that’s like the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
     “Can I try it? I wanna make it do rocket fire power ninja attack.”
     “I’m using it right now.” The other kids surrounded Jackson with shovels and swim suits, looking at the thing. Sand was caked onto their little wet shins and forearms. “You guys can try it when I go in the ocean.”
     “Oh, man! Jackson never goes in the ocean!”
     “We’re gonna be waiting for, like, forever.”
     “I know.”
     “It’s so cool!”
     “I wish my mom would buy me one of those things. But she never would, you know why? I betcha those things cost a thousand million dollars.”
     “I betcha his costed even more.”
     “Put it in battle mode!”
     “Jackson’s mom is so cool.”
     “He even got the ultimate power one. You know how I know that? Because it has the red stripe, like on the show.”
     “Hey Jackson, don’t you wanna go swimming?”
     “Not right now.”
     “Can I hold it at least?”
     “I don’t want you to get sand on it.”
     Peter stared at the other kids from a distance. He was standing in the middle of the sand pit he was digging, and they could only see him from his pot belly up.
     “Hey Peter! Come look at this thing! It’s totally awesome!” Peter went back to digging. He worked mostly with his hands, dragging huge heaps of wet sand up the edge of the pit and into the hot sun. Sometimes, when he got tired, he would sit in the shade of the pit and use a plastic shovel to fill a plastic bucket, a more precise, but much slower mode of excavation. The edge of the pit was built up much higher than the rest of the beach, so that walking toward it, it looked more like a mound than a pit.
     Peter always dugs pits. Not for any real reason. Sure, he liked sitting alone, deep inside them, burying his toes into the cool, wet sand. It was the perfect hideaway from the relentless sun. But often, he would finish digging a large pit and start immediately on a new one, without really putting it to “use” at all. It’s just what Peter did at the beach.
     When the pits got really deep, like the one he was working on at present would soon be, Peter faced many construction challenges. First, the deeper a pit gets, and the steeper its walls become, the more difficult it is to keep sand from falling back into the pit during excavation. Sometimes Peter’s friends would run up to the edge of the pit and knock hours worth of sand down the sides. Second, as the sand mounds around the edges got higher and higher, it became increasingly difficult to get in and out of the pit. Therefore, Peter usually went to great pains to build at least one small pathway that had a much shallower incline than the rest of the pit wall. Also, Peter would often dig deep enough that the floor of the pit would fill with seawater, and he would continually have to use his plastic buckets to keep the pit relatively dry. The biggest challenge, though, was that early every morning, a large tractor would comb the beach and inevitably fill in Peter’s pits. So his creations never lasted. By the next day, no sign of any pit, no matter how deep or well constructed, could be found.
     It was a custom of Peter’s to wake up just before dawn and witness the destruction. The tractor would be humming along, and then it would spot the mound of sand just up-beach of its path, and it would jot over, examine the cavity, and nudge the massive pit walls back into the abyss, until the pit was merely a dent. Then on the next pass, the dent would level out as the sand combing erased the previous day’s markings and gave the beach the fresh, virgin feel of a winter morning just after a heavy show. Peter always watched the tractor fill in his pits. He loved it when a pit gave the tractor unusual difficulty, or when it had to make an extra pass to wipe out the pit’s memory. But by now the vacation was nearly two weeks old, and the tractor had become very accustomed to filling in the large pits that blemished this particular stretch of the beach. Sometimes it would drive straight over them, without even slowing down to admire the vastness of the pit, knowing that the sand knocked down from the walls would start to fill in the pit just in time to keep the tractor from tipping over. Peter felt slighted when the tractor acted so nonchalant. What if the pit was so deep, Peter thought, that the tractor would crash right down into it? Speeding toward his pits so confidently. It was just showing off.

     * * *
     
     Peter’s brother looked out the hotel window at all the beach-goers. His girlfriend sat on the bed in her white, two-piece bathing suit.
     “Is your whole family on the beach now?”
     He sat down next to her on the bed and kissed her. “Yeah. My mom brought her book so she’ll probably be there awhile.”
     “Should we go out there with them?” She laid back on the bed, her long hair spreading wildly across the sheets in little black curls. Her stomach sank in as she breathed.     Peter’s brother kissed her again. “We don’t have to.”
     “Do you want to eat me out?”
     Peter’s brother slid toward her tan legs and tugged off her bikini bottoms. He buried his hand inside of her and sunk his face in her wetness.

     * * *

     “Peter! Peter! Jackson’s going in the ocean and he left the sweetest most awesomest thing for us to play with. Come on!” The tow-headed kid squinted down at Peter in the pit. Loose white sand slid down over the dark, compacted walls as his feet edged closer. “Whoa. This thing is really deep. Why’d you put water in it? Are you making a swimming pool?” The tow-headed boy ran off.
     “Give me a try! Give me a try!”
     “Rapid speed power blast!”
     “Don’t drop it in the sand or Jackson’ll kill you.”
     The voices sounded far away from the watery depths. Peter climbed out along his exit ramp with another bucketful of water. The sun felt good. He was actually get a little chilled down from being down in the pit so long. He stepped back to admire his work. Jackson was splashing in the water behind him, alone, because all the other kids were playing with his toy. The steep walls of sand jutted out sharply from the beach around it. This was the biggest pit he had ever made.

     * * *

     Now Peter’s brother’s girlfriend had her top off as well, and Peter’s brother stared at her bobbing breasts as she worked her mouth vigorously on his erect penis. ‘She has such huge tits for a seventeen-year-old,’ Peter’s brother thought. ‘I’d really love to fuck her.’ She made him disappear into her mouth. ‘And she’d be so happy. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’d be so happy afterward.’ He put his hand into her thick curls and moaned. She kept her lips glued to him as he came into her. Then she crawled up his body and nuzzled her head on his shoulder. They lay silent for a moment.
     “That was great, baby.”
     “Mmm.”
     “I love you so much.”
     “I love you too.”
     “You know what?”
     “What?”
     “I think we should make love tonight.”
     “Tonight? But I’m sharing a bedroom with your little brother. And you’re just sleeping out here on the carpet.”
     “We can sneak away somewhere.”
     “I don’t know if I’m ready.”
     “You’ll love it.”
     “How do you know?”
     “I just know.”
     He pulled her closer to him and ran his hand down toward the small of her back.
     “I’m not sure. We’ve only been together for three months.”
     “Three months is a long time.”
     “I don’t know…”
     “Honey. Listen. Do you love me?”
     “Of course.”
     “And do I love you?”
     “Let’s hope so.”
     “Then that’s all that matters.”
     She played idly with Peter’s brother’s almost-flaccid penis. “I don’t know…  I don’t want to get pregnant.”
     “We’ll use a condom.”
     “Do you have a condom?”
     “I can get one.” He had brought some with him in his backpack. Ones that he had from before, from his last girlfriend.
     “Are you sure you really love me?”
     “Yes.”
     “And you won’t break up with me? Ever?”
     “No. Never.”
     She cuddled him nervously. “Well where are we going to go?”
     He scooped his fingers inside of her once again. “We’ll find some place.”

     * * *

     It was late afternoon and Peter’s brother and his girlfriend were holding hands and walking slowly along the beach. “Whatcha doing, Peter? You’re ruining your pit.”
     Peter was knocking the high walls surrounding the pit out onto the plane of the beach. He looked up at his brother, then scurried back down inside, disappearing from view.
     “Maybe we could sneak out here, in the middle of the night.”
     “On the beach? Everyone will be able to see us.”
     “No they won’t. They’ll be asleep.”
     “I don’t know…”
     “The beach is romantic. Under the stars…”
     “I don’t want people to see us…”
     They walked on, slowly, hesitantly.
     “PETER!” His mom was calling. “Peter, where did you go? The beach is closing!” She looked around anxiously for her missing son. “Peter, in a few minutes they’re gonna lock the gate, and then you’ll just have to sleep out here!” No response. She was now getting worried and she yelled at the other stragglers, most of whom she did not know. “Hey, does anyone know where my son went? Did he go in already? PETER!” Now she was stomping urgently through the sand, trying to peer into distance clumps of vacationers to see if her boy was among them. Nothing. “Oh, God. PETER!” There were very few people left on the beach. Jackson had brought his new toy to the swimming pool and all the kids were with him. Except for Peter. Maybe he went inside, Peter’s mother thought. And she started to leave the beach. But suddenly, Peter came bounding out of his pit. Without the mounds of sand surrounding the it, the giant cavity blended in with rest of the beach. He ran up to his mother. “Oh, Peter, there you are.” Peter looked back. Even he could not tell exactly where his pit lay. “Run and tell your brother we have to come inside. The beach is closing.”

     * * *

     Peter’s brother and his girlfriend were sound asleep as dawn approached. They lay curled up together in a couple soggy hotel towels, in the bottom of Peter’s pit. The sand tractor was about three hundred yards away along the beach, and Peter sat on the balcony, listening to the hum.
     It was still fairly dark. Peter could not tell at all where his pit lay, so well had he disguised it the afternoon before. He had gotten up especially early that morning, for he wanted to see how the tractor would deal with his beautiful little creation.
     The tractor was getting closer now, and Peter clung to the railing, leaning out for the best view. His eyes were fixed on the metal cage containing the driver, sticking out awkwardly against the tan surface of the beach. The tractor was an odd looking tool, really, much taller than it was wide, and it dragged behind it a thick bush of tangled seaweed caught in it’s rake. And it roamed along the sand in search of lumps to smooth out and crevices to fill. Peter trembled with excitement, awaiting the encounter.
     When suddenly, a head popped out of the sand. Then another. The driver rumbled past the hideout without noticing them, and while he was driving in the other direction, Peter witnessed two very familiar, and very naked bodies scamper across the sand to the locked gate. He glanced back into the room at his brother’s sleeping bag. Empty. He hadn’t realized before.
     As the two figures began to hop the fence, Peter turned his attention back on the vehicle approaching his hidden fissure. It steamed full speed ahead, engine pumping, throbbing. That thing has no idea what it’s getting itself into, Peter thought.
     Then unexpectedly it slid head first inside the hole, crashing with all of it’s force against the depths of the crevice. It tried to wrestle itself out, but each time the vehicle pulled backward, it would inevitably slam back down, rattling the pit’s walls and causing the sand to tremble. It was an epic struggle. The pit shook furiously each time the hard edges of the tractor provoked the sand with its cutting lunges.
     And soon the pit was ravaged. Too much rumbling and rocking had traumatized it, leaving track marks on its widened, mangled walls. The tractor had escaped and the driver climbed out of the vehicle, a bit light-headed. He looked, it seemed, right at Peter.
     From his place on the balcony, the terrified Peter jumped up, flicked on the light, and ran inside. The driver climbed back into the tractor and started filling the pit with fresh sand, slowly. Peter ducked under his covers, sweating. Pretty soon, he thought, there will be no trace of the pit. The beach will look like a untouched nature, they way it look when the explorers first landed here…

     * * *

     Later that morning, around nine o’clock, an angry fist rapped on the door to Peter and his family’s hotel suite. Peter’s mom answered and called back into the house, “You guys! The beach tractor driver is here and he says he needs to speak with one of you!”
     Peter’s brother’s girlfriend shot a glance at Peter’s brother over a bowl of cereal. She whispered. “Oh my God do you think he found it?”
     “I don’t know…”
     “I betcha he did. I betcha he saw us leaving and he looked right in that pit and saw that—disgusting—bloody thing and now he’s coming here to tell your parents—”
     “Shh. Settle down. I’ll take care of it.”
     “But he knows.”
     “No he doesn’t. How does he even know it was us?”
     “Right afterward, I saw your light come on, so I thought maybe I’d come have a talk with you.” The strange man’s voice wafted into the kitchen. There was a long pause. Peter’s brother swallowed a mouthful of Froot Loops.
     “Fuck.”
     “Your mom’s gonna kill us.”
     “Fuck.”
     “Go in there and explain to them.”
     “Explain what?”
     “Go in there and fix it!” She was crying now. Peter’s brother had no choice.
     “Okay. Mom.” He called to her as her walked bravely. “This may look bad, but it’s not what it seems—”
     “PETER!” She cut him off. “PETER GET IN HERE THIS MINUTE!”
     Peter leapt out of bed, his heart racing, guilt seething through his veins.
     “This man says that your pit gave him quite a scare.”
     “Look son, building a pit is fine. I know they’re lots of fun. But you have to keep them covered up, or else someone like me can fall right into one. You understand me? Your mother better punish you for this.”
     “You should have been more careful.”
     “Now listen. It’s not my fault your pit was out there just waiting from someone to stumble in. The thing came outta nowhere!”
     “You should have watched…”
     “Buddy, you can’t pretend that you weren’t purposefully sabotaging—”
     “But if you didn’t want to fall in…”
     “Don’t interrupt me.”
     “Sorry.”
     “Now look. I’m not hurt. So I’m not going to sue your family or anything. But you know what? You should be ashamed of yourself. Setting a trap like that for me. You can have a pit. Fine. But keep it covered. Otherwise my tractor just falls right in, it can’t help itself. It’s the laws of nature. Gravity. Now you’ve embarrassed your whole family. I can’t believe you kids these days. You should be ashamed of yourself.”