Several of the others muttered in agreement. Most of them were acquainted with her-and it crossed my mind that some of them knew her maybe too well, though they’d never own up to that now. But even with the face mostly eaten away by the damp and the worms, we all could tell it was her.
One of the searchers said, “How did she die?” He wasn’t talking to me, though, so I didn’t answer.
“Doctor’s on his way,” the Colonel told him. “We ought not to touch the body overmuch till he can examine it.”
“You reckon she was carrying a child?”
I had to put my hand across my mouth to hide a grin. What would that have mattered-to Tom or anybody else? Why, Lotty Foster had five young’uns by as many fathers, and nobody had bothered to marry her. If Laura Foster had been the Colonel’s girl or the daughter of a lawyer or a doctor, then there’d have been a hue and cry if she fell pregnant, and the poor fellow courting her would have been hauled before the justice of the peace at the business end of a shotgun for a hasty wedding. But Laura’s good name was in the mud long before Tom Dula ever took up with her. She had no more notion of chastity than any of the other Foster women, which is to say: none at all. Were these graven fools really thinking that Tom had killed her to keep from having to marry her? Why if she had put such a notion to him, he’d have laughed in her face-or else told her to saddle that baby on one of her many other lovers.
I didn’t say any of that out loud, though. I could see that the sight of that bony little corpse was already making the searchers forget the real girl they had known all her life. By the time they had given her a proper funeral and commenced to heaping cabbage roses on her grave, every one of them would be remembering Laura Foster as a pure and beautiful maiden, a princess right out of a fairy story. T’would be no use trying to remind them what she was really like. She had been replaced by a changeling, and they had already forgotten the real girl.
“Wait for the doctor,” somebody said. “He’ll know.”
They left her there right where they found her, so as not to disturb her before Dr. Carter got to see her. One of the deputies untied the bundle of clothes, though. On the morning Laura went missing, Mrs. Scott had seen it slung over the bare back of that mare, and that was how she had come to ask where Laura was heading. Considering that the bundle was all that Laura Foster had in the world, it was a sorry little parcel, indeed. A few scraps of raggedy underclothes, a wooden fine-tooth comb, a yellowed cotton nightdress… it wasn’t much to show for twenty years of living on this earth, but I wasn’t sorry for her, for I had no more possessions to my name than she did, and maybe she had all that she deserved, at that.
The men stood around smoking or talking quietly to one another, and they all turned away from the sight of Laura’s body lying there in the hole. I suppose it seemed uncivil to them to be carrying on with the small pleasures of living in the presence of one who could no longer enjoy them. It wouldn’t have put me off my feed to look at her, but there were pleasanter sights in the wildwood, and nobody had anything to eat, so I walked a little ways away from the grave, and sat down in a patch of sunlight, thinking I might close my eyes and rest until the doctor came. It was only then that I remembered that I had not screamed when they showed me the corpse. I cannot weep, but I wished I had remembered to scream or make like I was going to faint. Somebody might remember that I did not act affrighted enough and hold it against me.
Finally we heard shouts from the field below that told us the lawman was back, bringing Dr. George Carter in tow. When they finally reached the laurel thicket where we were congregated, the doctor stood there alone for a moment, looking like a lord, sleek in his black cloth suit and string tie, and his shiny black boots, while the rest of the men were in ordinary work clothes, and muddy from a morning spent combing the woods. I raised my hand and gave the doctor a little wave, because, after all, I was his patient, and I had been seeing him regular these six months or so, but he looked right on past me as if I had been one of the hounds. Maybe he thought I was mixed up in the killing, or maybe he thought my pox made me not fitten to associate with, or maybe he just didn’t see me. I didn’t care much; he had other things on his mind.
Colonel Isbell went forward and shook Dr. Carter’s hand, and the rest of the crowd parted as if he was Moses, and he walked over to the open grave and knelt down beside it. He stared down at the sorry little heap of flesh for a minute or more, but all he said was, “Well, now…,” and he blinked his eyes a time or two real fast. I don’t reckon doctors cry, either.
Gently, without another word, he began to examine the body, and the rest of us edged forward again so we could watch what he was doing, but not so close as to be noticed and told to step back. I couldn’t see much, on account of the hole the body was in being so deep, and the doctor’s back being in my line of sight, but at least I could tell he had peeled back the material of that rotting checkered dress, and he was probing her chest with his fingers, trying to find some sign of what had killed her.
At last he stood up, drew a white linen handkerchief out of the pocket of his coat, swabbed his forehead, and then wiped his hands again and again on it. He addressed his remarks to the Colonel, but loud enough for the rest of us to hear. “Well, the body is that of Laura Foster, as I am sure you know already.”
They nodded, and somebody muttered, “Didn’t need a doctor to tell us that.”
Colonel Isbell’s expression didn’t change. “How long has she been dead?”
“Oh, since the last morning she was seen, I have no doubt. That body has been in the ground there a good three months.”
“Can you tell what killed her, then?”
The doctor nodded, and motioned for Colonel Isbell to kneel beside him at the grave. Then he reached down, and lifted a bit of the rotting cloth on the bodice of that checkered dress. “There’s a slit here. Do you see it?”
Those closest to the grave leaned over to get a look, and the rest of us hung back, listening. The smell from the open trench hung over us like a thundercloud, and few cared to get any closer to the source of the stench. Back in June when the laurels bloomed, the scent of their pink flowers might have covered the smell of decay, but now at summer’s end the odor of death had no rivals. I had seen all I wanted to, and smelled more than that, but I still wanted to hear what the doctor made of the matter.
“This cut was deliberately made. You can just see the corresponding wound in the flesh beneath it. Here, someone help me to remove these clothes so that I can get a better look.”
The Colonel stepped away, and let one of the farmers in the search party assist the doctor in his grim task. A few men looked away, from modesty, I suppose, but though there might have been a few among them that would have liked to see Laura Foster naked while she was living, the sight of her now roused in them nothing but disgust, or perhaps, in the weakest ones, a stirring of pity. One or two sodden old fools even wiped away a tear.
I had got accustomed to the smell now, so I edged past the squeamish ones for another look.
When her naked breast lay open to the air, the doctor put two fingers into the hole in her flesh, and poked around a bit. Then he put his face down close to the wound to peer inside. Nobody moved or spoke. We just waited to hear what he would say.
Finally he motioned for Colonel Isbell to take a look, and we heard him say quietly, “Something sharp-I should say a short-bladed knife-was thrust up through her breast, here between the third and fourth ribs.”
“Into her heart?” said the Colonel.
“Well… I cannot be sure. If the blade was thrust straight in, it would have missed her heart entirely. But if the knife had been held in a slightly elevated position, it would certainly have cut the heart. The body is so badly decomposed that I cannot tell which.”
“But that’s what killed her, then?”
“If the knife missed the heart, it need not have been a mortal wound, but if the heart were punctured, then it would have necessarily been fatal.”
“I hope she did not suffer.”
The doctor made no answer to this, which made me think that he knew very well that she had. Before anyone could ask again, someone called out, “Was she with child?”
Dr. Carter sighed, and shook his head. “Again, I cannot know for certain. If she was less than ten weeks into her term, then there would be no trace. You see the state of the body.” He shrugged. “If she were more than ten
