Where There's a Will

“Which is where you make yourself throw up after you eat.”

“Mm-hm.” He yawned, scratched his back against the post, and straightened up.

“But she was supposed to be this big, strapping kid. Aren’t bulimics underweight?”

“Interestingly enough, no. They’re never very much underweight, and usually above average weight, actually. You see, they don’t do it all the time. They go on periodic binges where they overeat, then make themselves vomit. You’re thinking of anorexics, who starve themselves or make themselves throw up or take laxatives or whatever, but they do it day in, day out.”

John cocked an eyebrow. “They’re never underweight?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“No.”

“It’s impossible to have a bulimic who’s skinny?”

“That’s right, because technically you can’t be a bulimic and an anorexic at the same time, so if a bulimic is morbidly underweight, she’s automatically classified as having anorexia, not bulimia.”

John, who had thought he was closing in for a rare Socratic kill, was clearly disappointed. “That’s ...but that’s...”

“That is a salutary example of one of the tools of modern science,” Gideon said. “We experts use it all the time. It’s known as disposing of nonconforming data by means of semantic recategorization.”

“Science,” John said, shaking his head. “It’s wunnerful.”

“Hey, we’re done!” one of the brothers yelled from the plane as it neared the pier. “Got some good stuff for you.”

Gideon got up, stretched, swished some water around his dry mouth, and went with John to meet them. This time they tied up and Lyle quickly climbed down holding a small mesh basket. “Possible personal effects,” he said.

In the basket were the bent, lens-less frame of a pair of wire-rimmed glasses; a few coins—two quarters, a dime, a penny; a lidded coffee mug with a hula dancer on it; an enameled metal tourist souvenir, probably a trivet or a wall ornament, in the shape of the Big Island, complete with its two white-capped volcanic peaks in relief; a black plastic comb; and the rubber heel of a boot or shoe.

The Big Island souvenir was snarled in a crumpled tangle of gray duct tape, which Gideon picked at and managed to unstick.

“Amazing,” he said. “This stuff really does last forever.”

“That and Twinkies,” said John.

Some of the metal objects had a layer of green patina on them, but otherwise everything was in fairly good condition, and the ornament, the mug, and the glasses could well turn out to be helpful in identification. No bones, however, and Gideon had a hard time hiding his disappointment.

“Well, this is good,” he said. “Somebody might remember some of this. See anything you recognize, John?”

John fingered the glasses. “These, maybe,” he said doubtfully. “I don’t know.”

“We can do better than that, prof,” Harvey said, jumping down onto the pier. “Lookee here, what we found jammed down under the right rudder pedal on the co-pilot’s side.” In his hand was a sodden, water-blackened cowboy boot, swollen and distorted, and missing its heel, but with the intricate stitching still in place. “You’ll love this.”

“A boot?”

“No, no, boot-shmoot, take a peek inside.” He tipped it so that Gideon could look into the top.

And there, nestled deep within, was the skeleton of a right foot, or at least all that could be seen of it: the talus and the calcaneus, the two uppermost bones of the human ankle and foot. There was little doubt that the rest of the foot was there, too. The bulky talus and calcaneus, their anatomical relations to each other only minimally disturbed, blocked the opening, and with the leather whole and the sole of the boot still attached, there was no place for the other bones to go.

“Hey, how about that?” he said, his enthusiasm reviving. The twenty-six bones of the foot and ankle were far from the most useful parts of the skeleton when it came to ageing, sexing, and so on (given his druthers he’d naturally have chosen a skull or pelvis or even a femur), but he had long ago found that there was always— always—something to be learned, whatever turned up. And a complete foot was not to be sneered at.

The boot, oozing water, was placed, sole down, on the massage table. With a pair of metal shears from the plane, Gideon sliced it open from the top down, first at the back, then down the front, and then—very carefully— over the instep, while John held it upright for him. When he had finished, he peeled the halves of leather apart, snipping a little more at the sole where it was necessary to get the halves completely spread. The few falling-apart shreds of sock still present were picked off and put aside.

“Wow,” breathed Lyle.

“Whoa,” said Harvey. “Fantastic.”

The skeletal foot, ossa pedis, lay upon the bed of clean, moist, white sand that covered the sole like an illustration in an anatomy text. Only a few of the phalanges—the toes—had been disarranged. The four men silently admired it for a few seconds, until Harvey abruptly sang out: “Lunch time, we got chicken fingers, we got barbecue chips, Twinkies, uh, we got Ding Dongs, uh, uh...”

“You got Ho Hos?” John asked hopefully.

“Of course, Ho Hos. Uh, Zingers, uh—”