left too long in the sun. Flies buzzed in agitation.
Cupping a hand across my mouth and nose, I peered in.
Flies danced in threads of light slicing in through gaps in the boards. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the dim interior.
“Perfect,” I said. “Picture fucking perfect.”
11
I WAS STARING INTO A PRIVY.
At one time
All that was gone now. What remained were dried and shriveled pest strips, a rusted flyswatter, two nails driven into a board at sitting height, a pile of splintered wood, and a chipped and flaking wooden pink oval.
A pit approximately two feet square yawned through an opening in the floorboards at the far end of the shack.
The stench was familiar, bringing to mind privies in summer camps, national parks, and Third World villages. This one smelled sweeter, softer, somehow.
My mind added a string of expletives to those Ryan and I had floated during our walkabout with Boyd.
“Crap!” I said aloud for emphasis.
Not three months earlier I’d been up to my elbows investigating debris in a septic tank. I’d vowed never to slog through feces again.
Now this.
“Crap! Crap! Crap!”
“Not very ladylike.”
Larabee craned over my shoulder. I stepped aside. Behind us Boyd continued his frenzy and Ryan continued his attempts to calm him.
“But entirely apropos.” I slapped a mosquito that was lunching on my arm.
Larabee stuck his head into the privy, pulled it back quickly.
“Could be Boyd was just rocked by the smell.”
I scowled at Larabee’s back.
“Could be. But you’re going to want to check it out,” I said. “Make sure no one’s been pissing on Jimmy Hoffa.”
“No one’s been pissing on anyone in here for some time.” Larabee let the door bang shut. “The grand-finale whiz probably took place during the Eisenhower years.”
“Something’s going bad in that pit.”
“Yep.”
“Suggestions?” I backhanded gnats from my face.
“Backhoe,” he said.
“Can we take a look in the house first, try to estimate when Farmer John splurged for the indoor pipes?”
“Find me one human bone, I’ll have CSU shooting close-ups under the sink.”
A metacarpal came up with the seventh scoop.
Joe Hawkins, Ryan, and I had been working the privy for three hours. Bucketful by bucketful, the pit was giving up its treasure.
That treasure consisted of shards of broken glass and china, scraps of paper, chunks of plastic, rusted utensils, animal bones, and gallons of deep, black organic matrix.
The backhoe operator would scoop, deposit, and wait. Hawkins would triage bones to one pile, household debris to another. Ryan would transport buckets of compost to my screen. I’d sieve and rummage.
We were growing optimistic. The skeletal part of the treasure looked strictly nonhuman and purely culinary. And, unlike Boyd’s discovery at the McCranie hedge, the privy bones were devoid of tissue.
These animals had been dead a long time.
The metacarpal turned up at 3:07 P.M.
I stared at it, searching for something to allow me doubt.
There was no doubt. The bone had been part of a thumb. A thumb that could hitchhike, twirl spaghetti, play trumpet, write a sonnet.
I gave in and closed my eyes.
Hearing footsteps, I opened them. Larabee was circling the pile of wreckage that until hours earlier had been the outhouse.
“How’s Boyd doing?” I asked.
