He unloaded a pick and two shovels, leaning them against the bumper. A black plastic tarp lined the trunk. I started to shake. Beads of sweat popped out on my forehead.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," I said.

There was a long silence.

"I'm sorry," Danny said. "But it's better this way in the long run."

SEVEN.

CARRYING THE TOOLS, WE MADE OUR WAY BY THE GLOW OF A penlight on Al's keychain.

"Jesus," Danny said, stopping to free a thorny branch caught in his jacket. "You know what this jacket cost me? Nice flashlight, limp dick. I should've brought my iPod. We'd have more light."

"Fuck off, Curran," Al said. "You want someone seein' us out here?"

"Nobody could see us in these woods no matter what we carry," Danny said.

"That's what somebody says," Al said, "right before they get caught."

I walked in silence behind them, a shovel over each shoulder, trying to imagine what we'd be digging up-money, or guns, or maybe even a stash of drugs. But I couldn't forget Al and Danny talking about "them" or how that word called to mind the strange excuses Al had made at the bar a few nights ago, how he talked about putting people to bed. I kept my gaze trained on Danny's dark form in front of me. That's your brother, I kept telling myself. You can't get him out of it if you don't know what he's gotten into. You wouldn't be here with this shovel, I told myself, if you'd done your job and stood between Danny and the needle like a big brother is supposed to.

After what seemed like a good half-mile, we finally broke into a clearing. Al and Danny set down their tools and stood on either side of me, picking sticks and dead leaves from their clothes.

We'd arrived at the edge of a lumpy field, the whole thing overgrown with monkey grass and tall dandelions. I swore I heard rats rustling around in the weeds. The half-moon hovered atop the black trees in the distance, casting everything in a faint, pearly glow. Tiny, swirling shadows darted across the stars. Bats.

Across the field loomed the shadowy ruins of a large, abandoned building. The windows were either boarded or shattered. The bell tower had fallen, now a pile of rubble among many other strewn over the grounds. Despite the damage, the building still resembled what it had claimed to be: a hospital. I turned to Danny and Al.

"I know this place," I said. "This is fucking Bloodroot."

"No shit," Danny said, staring at the building. He chuckled under his breath. "I wondered if you'd remember."

I looked down at my feet. "Oh, shit." I started dancing around on the tips of my toes, looking for a clean place to put my feet. "Danny, fuck, Danny, we're standing in the graveyard."

The graveyard where the doctors buried the children who died under their care. The children no one claimed. Dozens of them.

Al was already striding purposefully across the field, his penlight focused on the ground. He looked back at us. "Tell your ghost stories later, kids. We got work to do."

I threw down my shovel. "All right, fuck this. You had your fun, Danny. Nice joke. C'mon, Al, you can quit playing around. You scared me, all right. Ha, ha. Now let's go."

I expected Al to walk back to us, shoulders shaking and head hanging as he laughed. I knew Danny had told him when suggesting the prank about how when we were kids, Danny used to lead me through the woods of Willowbrook Park to the Bloodroot children's asylum.

Danny and I would exit the woods and hide behind the low stone and mortar wall encircling the graveyard. From there, we tried to glimpse the resident freaks. Danny would yelp that he'd seen someone in a window, naked and deformed, staring blankly through the glass, but by the time I found the right window, the vision had always disappeared. When Danny bored of this game, he introduced another, more exciting competition. Without warning, he'd leap the wall and sprint across the graveyard, tap the nearest marker and run back to our hiding place. We dared each other to see who could run deepest among the graves and touch the marker standing the farthest away. Danny always won.

Once, I thought I had him. An older brother can only take so much ribbing from his younger, and in a fit of daring I not only touched the farthest marker but circled the graveyard twice before tearing back to the wall and tumbling over it to land right on top of Danny. Not only had I thought him beaten, I thought I'd added a new level of danger to the game, an act that was almost exclusively Danny's purview. Instead of laughing or congratulating me, Danny just stared me down, anger boiling in his eyes.

He leaped over the wall and ran across the graveyard toward the crooked plywood cross I had touched. He reached it, plucked it from the ground without breaking stride and circled back for the wall. Shocked, I stood openmouthed as he ran to me, laughing so hard he could barely breathe and holding the cross in front of him like a relay runner's baton. On my side of the wall, I backed away, hands in the air. I knew instinctively what he wanted. My role in the game, as always, was to repair the damage he had done. I was to run back and replant the cross. I wanted no part of it.

Panting, Danny stood on the other side of the wall, holding the cross over it. He was sweating, clumps of his black hair sticking to his forehead. He waved the cross in the air before me, as if he was playing with a pet and the moving object would incite me. All I did was back away toward the woods. Danny didn't say a word, but the anger reignited his eyes. With savage blows, he smashed the cross on the wall. Splinters sprayed everywhere, landing on our clothes and in our hair. I jumped around in circles, swatting at the splinters as if Danny had dumped a box of spiders over my head. Danny laughed. I didn't say a word to him all the way back through the woods.

From then on, when our folks took us to Willowbrook Park, I refused to follow Danny into the trees. Instead, I went fishing for perch and bluegills in the weedy pond while my folks shared a beer or two at a picnic table. I figured Danny went back to the graveyard. He's only eleven, I told myself as I watched my bobber dip and jiggle in the water, how much trouble could he really get into? But I was afraid to ask what he did there by himself. Not afraid enough, though, to go looking for him.

Now, here we were, standing in the graveyard again. It had taken a lot of years, but he had maneuvered me back here. To one of the few places where I had told him no. Well, this night could be like that afternoon. I wouldn't take what he was trying to hand me, not the cross, not the shovel, or anything that came with it.

I tried to push past Danny and go back to the car but he grabbed me hard by the arm and pulled me close to him.

"This isn't a joke, Kevin," he said. "Get your head outta your ass."

Before I could answer, Al's shovel broke open the earth, the scratchy ring of the blade biting the dirt silencing every cricket in the field, freezing whatever crawled around in the weeds. Al dug for several long seconds as Danny and I glared at each other. The strokes of Al's shovel sounded in my ears like the chimes of a clock. Danny's eyes begged a promise from me like they did when we were little: I need you with me on this. Don't tell Mom and Dad. I took a deep breath.

The scent of freshly turned soil filled my nose.

"There's no way I can be involved in this," I said. "There's just no fucking way."

"You're here," Danny said. "You already are involved."

"I'm not doing it," I said. "I'm not digging up these kids' graves. It's sickness. Maybe I can't stop you, but I'm not doing it."

Danny released my arm. "Christ, we're not digging up these kids. What kind of monster do you think I am?"

Al threw down his shovel and stormed over. "What the fuck? I could use some help over there."

He turned on me. "And this fuck, you told me he'd be cool." Al spoke to Danny but poked me in the shoulder as he did it.

Danny smacked Al's arm away. "Watch yourself, this is my fucking brother you're talking to.

He's just in shock. He thought we were digging up the kids."

Al spat at his feet. "What the fuck for? What the fuck I want with a bunch of dead retards?

That's gross. He always think the worst of people, your brother?"

Danny bent down and picked up my shovel. He handed it to me. "Al, he's good, I swear."

"Totally," I said. "I'm good."

Al looked back and forth between us like we were kids he'd caught in a lie and he was too exasperated to argue. "Break it down for him," he said to Danny. "Then get over there and help me."

Danny watched Al until he went back to digging and then turned to me.

"Remember the other night in the bar," Danny said, "when Al talked about putting the kids to bed?"

I nodded.

"That was a figure of speech, kind of," Danny said.

"We're digging up bodies," I said. "Bodies Al buried out here the other night."

"Yes," Danny said.

"Christ Almighty," I said, wiping my hand down my face. "Just tell me, Danny, tell me they aren't really kids."

"Fuck, no. You think I'd be involved in that kind of work?"

I didn't know what to think. "Who are they?"

"Don't worry, they had it coming."

"Al killed them?"

"I'd say the odds on that are seventy-thirty against," Danny said. "Al's a loyal, obedient soldier but in case you hadn't noticed, he's kind of a moron. He does mostly disposal work."

"And you ended up in this how?" I asked.

"I owed Al a favor," Danny said, looking over at Al. "It's a long story. Look, I wanted to ease you into this, that's why I showed you my apartment, took you to the park, but I couldn't find the right words. Then, well, circumstance conspired against us. You gotta tough this out. I'll help you through the aftermath. But if Al thinks you're weak on this, it puts both of us in danger."

Too dumbfounded to speak, all I could do was nod. Twelve hours earlier I was lecturing about Common Sense in class. Now, I was digging up murdered people for the Mafia, or the Devil, or whoever. With my brother. What the fuck?

"Lead the way," I said.

Danny held two bandannas in his hands. He poured cologne into them. "Take one. Wrap it over your mouth and nose."

I did as he said. The cologne made my eyes water.

"It's better than what we're about to smell," Danny said. He handed me a pair of black gloves.

"You can have mine."

I pulled on the gloves and followed Danny across the graveyard, toward the sound of Al's shovel tearing at the ground.

I ONLY PUKED TWICE.

When Danny's shovel blade pierced dirt, tarp, and flesh and cracked a bone, I threw up Santoro's glorious steak into my bandanna and down the front of my shirt. Al laughed, joking about popping my cherry as I retched on my knees. Danny rubbed my back, gave me a piece of gum and a cigarette. I hadn't smoked in two years but I took the cigarette gladly. I had the smell of myself to contend with now, not just the bodies. I smoked the entire thing without removing it from my mouth, afraid to touch anything with my hands.

I retched again when Danny and Al heaved the second body onto the ground at my feet and the head rolled away from the corpse, leaving a glistening trail in the grass like a slug. Al apologized as he darted after the head. He grabbed it by the hair and the face stretched like putty.

"What's the fucking point of that?" Danny asked. "If you're gonna bury the head and the body together. Defeats the whole fucking purpose."

"I buried 'em like I got 'em," Al said, clearly embarrassed.

We carried the bodies back to the car one at a time, Al at one end and Danny and me at the other, mud and gore sloshing around inside the tarp. We managed not to drop the loose head.

At the car, Danny and I heaved the dead into the trunk. Al arranged them so they fit better. After I tossed in my puke-stained shirt and bandanna, Al slammed the trunk closed. We washed our hands and faces with water from a plastic gallon jug Al had in the car. Danny stripped off his Tshirt and gave it to me. Al walked around the other side of the car to take a leak. Danny and I leaned against the hood, me wearing his T-shirt, him there in a wife-beater and a black suit jacket. His cuffs glistened in the moonlight. He didn't seem to notice. Ladies and gentlemen, the Curran brothers. Just another night out on the town. I took another smoke from my brother.

"How you doin'?" he asked.

"I'm completely fucking numb," I said. "So I'm either in shock or an emotionless, soul-dead sociopath."

"I'd put the odds at ninety-ten in favor of the former," Danny said.

"I think I hate you for this," I said. "I think I'm unbelievably pissed off."

"We're almost done," Danny said. "Then we can sort this out between us."

"Sort this out? Jesus, Danny. It's not like you stole my Halloween candy."

Danny handed me a bottle from inside his jacket. I drank the whiskey down until my eyes watered. The liquor tore my empty, sick insides to shreds. But I held it down. Al had climbed into the car. He had the stereo turned on low.

"I am done," I said. "I'll fucking walk home from here if Al won't take me back."

"You don't want to go home," Danny said. "You think you do. You think you want to go home, drink all the beer in the house, crawl into bed and pretend this never happened. But it did. You need to be with us when it hits you. And it'll hit you tonight. The last place you want to be is alone."

"Maybe that's true," I said. "But I won't want to be around you and Al."

"Who else is there?" Danny asked. "Who else knows what you went through tonight?"

I spat on the ground. I took a deep breath. The smell of the dead and their graves clung to me.

"Tell me we're not on film."

"You think I'm out of my mind?" Danny said, chuckling. "I don't record anything I do."

"Let's get this fucking over with," I said. "Get in the car."

Danny didn't argue. I climbed into the backseat and slammed the door closed behind me. I thought Al might gripe about it but he just threw the car in reverse and backed us out along the trail. We didn't hit a single tree on the way out. I knew that Al's talent for reversing down a dark and narrow trail came from an abundance of practice.

When we made the asphalt, Al swung the car around. "Double-check our clearance for the dump," he said, leaning on the gas.

Danny pulled his cell from his jacket. "I'm thinking about a table for two . . . Okay. No problem." He turned to Al. "As long as we get there within the hour. That's when his replacement comes on."

"Good, good," Al said. "We'll be in and out before he even gets off."

AS IT WAS FOR everyone else who lived on Staten Island, the dump was a regular part of my life. I passed it going to the mall, the movie theater, and the bowling alley. On any trip from the southern end of the island to the north, the dump was impossible to avoid. But despite having grown up with the dump, I had never been inside it.

A few times when we were kids my father drove out there to toss old furniture or a broken-down appliance. My mother had never let us go. As kids, we thought mountains of trash translated into acres of undiscovered mysteries. The dump reminded me of the ancient ruins I read about at the library. Danny just wanted to get dirty. But Mom wouldn't see it our way; she couldn't stomach her sons being that close to so much filth. Every kid heard the rumors about the Mob stashing bodies out at Fresh Kills. We all secretly dreamed of discovering one, like finding a fossil, and of being a player in the drama that followed. The find would imbue us with a neighborhood notoriety we both craved and feared. It felt like a gyp to me then, being deprived of my shot at stardom.

Now, as Al turned off the service road and into the entrance to the dump, I couldn't believe that me, my kid brother, and one of our high school pals were about to bury our own gruesome treasure. I was fulfilling one childhood dream that would've best been left forgotten.

The Charger's tires crushed random bits of glass and plastic as Al slowed under the choleric lights of the guard booth. He rolled down the window and a damp stench wafted into the car. I gagged and wished for a cologne-soaked bandanna. Al and Danny didn't flinch. Danny lit a cigarette and passed it back to me. I took it gratefully. The guard scrawled on something with a pen. He handed Al a yellow ticket that Al placed on his dash.

"Just in case you pass someone on your way out or back," the guard said. "Not likely, though."

He leaned forward, trying to get a better look at me. "Who's the third?"