The Grave Robber Journals

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.”

That’s what I heard on the radio just an hour ago, but here’s my question: since no one has ever left Earth, how can you know if that’s true or not? Isn’t it all a best guess?

Since Orson Welles performed War of the Worlds, every amateur scientist out there has been broadcasting commentary about space and time and aliens and spaceships. Personally, I know nothing about that realm. That was my old man’s field. All I know is dirt, and right now, it’s time to dig. And what a night for digging it is! I look up at the sky and grin. Yes, sir. There are so many stars and a moon so bright that my lantern isn’t necessary. The perfect night to sit on the porch swing, sip a bourbon, and listen to the wind rustling the dead leaves. Wouldn’t that be nice?

“Focus, Seth,” I tell myself. I have things to do. And so, I lower my suspenders and remove my collared shirt. I might be experienced at this work, but digging up bodies is still a physical endeavor, no matter how muscular you are.

“If Ma could only see me now,” I mutter as my shovel sinks into the ground. “You see me, Ma? You see your son?” I glance back up at the sky then snort. I doubt she’s up there. As much as she talked about holiness, there wasn’t a bit of kindness in her. I turn to look at her headstone just a few feet over and wonder if she knows what I’m out here doing.

“Son, you are too decent for this grave robbing business.” That’s what Pop said when he first learned of my skill set. Pop was a good man, my mother a terrible woman. The way I figure it, I turned out to be a terrible man with a good heart. Not half bad, I suppose. Besides, my little brother inherited Pop’s purity. You need a little grit in the family, and I'm happy to provide that to the Robinson clan.

Last week’s rain has made the ground nice and soft, and my shovel easily sinks into the ground. I’ll have the casket dug up in record time.

I robbed my first grave when I was just ten years old, so I’ve developed a decent flow over the years. Almost like the shovel is my dance partner. Not the career I envisioned; it guess it sort of picked me. But that’s a story for another day.

“Watcha doin’, Seth?” A familiar voice startles me and interrupts my rhythm. Boy, am I peeved. My kid brother is walking toward me like he’s strolling on a bed of angel wings. What a toad.

“Horatio, what did I tell you? Give me an hour, I said. Wash the dishes and keep an eye on Sheba. Isn’t that what I told you?”

“I was lonely,” Horatio says matter-of-factly and stands next to me.

“Lonely? I’ve been gone for ten minutes.” The church cemetery where we have our family plot is just a short walk from our house. I don’t usually dig up graves in our vicinity, seeing I could be spotted by nosy neighbors, but this is different. Special.

“There’s nothing good on the radio,” Horatio adds.

Of course. The radio. Horatio loves the radio the way I love a game of poker and a stiff drink. His favorite programs are the science hours. Pop died when Horatio was a baby, so all the kid has is a few photographs and his old equipment. He spends hours in the basement lab, going over experiments and inventions that hold no interest for me. With the radio blaring, the kid hunches over microscopes and test tubes and glass slides. He’ll spend an entire day messing with wires and batteries, hoping to create some life-altering invention. He’s so much like my old man, and most days, I love him for it.

Lately, he’s been reading Pop’s old lab journals. This morning when we were driving home from the Christmas Day celebration, he started yacking about Pop’s final experiment. Today, I actually listened.

“Why you diggin’ up Pop’s grave?” Horatio glances at the shovel and suddenly realizes what I’m doing out here. He doesn’t seem alarmed that I’m desecrating the family grave. It’s as if he found me picking berries and wants to know what I’m going to bake with them.

“It’s complicated,” I say and keep digging.

“Sheba ran away,” he says nonchalantly, and I cuss under my breath. Whenever I leave the house, my dog takes the opportunity to run off. When the crash happened and people began to go hungry, I got in the habit of keeping her locked up whenever I was away. A dog like Sheba could feed a hungry family for a good many days; if Horatio was starving, I’d probably do the same. Luckily, my robbery business ensures we’re never hungry, but it’s not like we're rolling in green.

“Horatio, I told you not to let her out when I’m gone,” I scold without breaking rhythm with the shovel. “Which way did she go?”

“Down towards the creek.”

“Well, go find her,” I instruct, but he doesn’t move. “Are your ears broken?” I stop digging and lean on the handle.

“How you think Ma would feel ‘bout you digging up Pop?”

“Same way she felt about everything. Pissed.”

Horatio nods in agreement. He has a big name, my kid brother, and it’s almost comical, being that he’s so small for thirteen. He looks like he can’t be more than ten, but he never seems bothered by his size. When he was born, I told Ma it was too big of a name for a little guy, but Ma never listened to logic.

“Come on, Seth. Let me stay and help. He’s my pop too.”

“You don’t even know why I’m digging him up.”

“I figure it’s for a good reason. I know people say you’re a scoundrel, but that’s because they don’t understand you.”

“Who says I’m a scoundrel?” I pause to wipe the sweat from my eyes. I’m not sure if I should be offended or not.

“Miss Pauline and Miss Nora and all the ladies from the neighborhood tea club. They say you’re a bad influence on me.”

“How would the tea ladies know what kind of an influence I am?”

“I have tea with them every Tuesday afternoon and everyone knows you’re a grave robber. They’re just too polite to say it to your face.”

“And just how do they know I’m a grave robber?” It’s not like I advertised it. There’s no sign on the front of the house saying “Grave Robber, Inquire Within.” I don’t even bother to address the fact that a thirteen year-old boy has a standing tea date with the neighborhood widows.

“Common knowledge,” Horatio says, his facial expression reminding me of Sheba when she's bored. “What did you think people thought you did for work?”

“Independently wealthy,” I say sarcastically. I don’t like the idea of people talking behind my back. Say it to my face and we’re fine, but this old biddy gossip really chaps my hide.

“So, why are you digging him up?” Horatio asks again, and I figure I might as well tell him. I’ll be needing his help anyhow.

“You know that last experiment Pop was working on-the one you’ve been obsessed with the past few days?“

“The Star Transporter.”

“Right,” I nod. “The Star Transporter. Since you started spending every last minute on it, well, I started thinking about it too, and I got to wondering if the coffin we buried Pop in wasn't a coffin after all.”

I rest my hands and chin on the shovel handle and watch Horatio work it out. When Pop was working on the Star Transporter, I’d been an idiot teenager. I was used to him droning on and on about experiments and inventions and all sorts of boredom. It wasn’t until Horatio showed me Pop’s drawings that I began to wonder about the coffin.

“The transporter. You think the coffin is actually the transporter?”

I shrug. “Ma told me it was a coffin. And you know how much effort Ma put into hard things. It seemed like the kind of coffin a man like Pop would be buried in, so I didn’t question it.”

“What’s it looks like?” Horatio leans forward and locks his eyes on the dirt flying behind me.

“You’ve seen the designs. Not an exact rectangle. It’s more like a long marquise with the Milky Way painted across the lid.”

“That sounds like the transporter to me. Pop had a theory that in the same way sailors use the stars for navigation, you could use them to open portals to reach other planets.”

“How?”

“That’s what I haven't figured out yet,” he says as if he's trying to decide which topping to put on his ice cream sundae.

Bam! The shovel hits something solid.

“You did it,” my brother shouts as if I’ve struck gold.

“Careful,” I say, holding out a hand. Where he excels in intelligence, my brother lacks in coordination. He broke both arms falling out of the town elm tree. He broke a leg when he fell off the sidewalk because he was reading while walking. The kid is an accident magnet. He’s Doc Larson’s most frequent patient. The last thing I need is him getting a concussion by falling into the grave and hitting his head.

“I’m not gonna fall,” Horatio says as if my concern is preposterous. This attitude is the kind of thing that makes me love and hate being his big brother. I try not to hover as he bends down and rubs his hand over the box like Aladdin trying to summon the genie.

“This is it, Seth. This is the box in Pop’s designs.” Horatio speaks in barely more than a whisper, and I feel a rush of excitement, and not just because I'll be rich if this thing works. Science was always been Pop’s thing, then Horatio’s. For the first time, I'm the one thinking about traveling to outer space, and I finally understand their obsession. Going to outer space would mean I'm not trapped in a life I didn’t plan. It means no more sneaking around in the dark, digging up caskets, and hoping for treasure.

“This is it,” I agree, even though I’m not completely sure what “it” really is, or if it even works. But as my kid brother and I gradually work my Pop out of the church cemetery and haul him down the hill in the moonlight, I begin to imagine a good future.

Sheba is waiting for us on the porch when we arrive home. What a relief. I found her when she was a puppy, whimpering along the Columbia. She looks part wolf and cries like a baby when she’s upset. She’s three now and spoiled rotten. This creature is my best friend.

“Don’t run away again,” I scold her so she knows I’m still in charge. We both know it’s not true, but we pretend as I rub her ears and feed her a big bowl of beef and pork from Pete down at the butcher shop. It’s Christmas. That’s what you do for your best friend on holidays.

“I’ll make dinner,” Horatio offers, so I take the time to shower off the grave dirt. Ten minutes later, we head down to the basement. Rather than spend our Christmas at a fancy parlor table loaded with turkey and potatoes and apple pie, my kid brother and I eat SPAM sandwiches and pour over Pop’s designs. Sheba monitors us with her baby lamb eyes. Like brothers from other times and places, Horatio and I consider the reality of space travel, and I deem it a pretty satisfying holiday for a grave robber. I have no way of knowing what we are about to unleash as we delve into my father’s work. That will come later. Tonight is for dreaming.