“On Saturday she would be worth five bucks, maybe,” Spit said and spat. Pause. “You want to wait till then, you can pay Freddy five bucks, I guess.”
“But…?”
“But lady, I don’t sell other people’s garbage. Ain’t mine to sell, though Freddy might believe ’tis.”
“Oh. I thought—well, I guess you don’t mind, then.”
“Nope. Take her away. Take it all. People throw too damn much out these days anyway.”
“You’ve got that right,” I said.
“Why just last week a fellow come in here with a couch—nothing wrong with it I could see. Freddy said he could sell it for ten bucks, easy. Just about shit when I give it to a youngster was getting married. What did you do that for? Freddy says. Went for me. Had to pull my gun on him. You seen my gun?” He reached into the back of the hearse and brought out a big old blunderbuss of a shotgun, which he showed off like it was a new baby. I gulped and stepped back.
“It’s all right. I ain’t aiming to shoot you. Use it to scare away the bears, mostly. And for protection. Got a lotta valuable things in this here automobile. Don’t want nobody sneaking up on me at night, eh?” He grinned again and spat before putting the hearse carefully into reverse and backing silently all the way up to where he had been parked before, near the dump hut. The hut was Freddy’s domain, and I wondered suddenly if Freddy also kept a gun on hand “for the bears”.
I took the tub, not willing to wait until the weekend, when it would cost me five bucks.
George drove slowly past the hearse which cradled the sleeping Spit. We didn’t want to wake him up. Spit probably wouldn’t care about Dweezil, but it is illegal to dump livestock (or deadstock, I suppose) at the landfill, and we wanted as few people to know as possible. Spit’s head was down on his arms, resting on the wheel.
“That can’t be very comfortable,” George muttered, as we headed for the “wood only” pit.
We put Dweezil in as gently as we could, out of respect perhaps, but also because a hoof sticking out would have given the game away. We threw the rotten lumber in on top of him, but George was a stickler for protocol, and the bag did look kind of obvious. I climbed in to move an old screen door on top as well. That’s when I found the body.
It was a man, about forty years old, definitely dead, with no feed sack to make him pretty. There was a tattered, meaty cavity where his torso had been, and the flies had found him. I gagged and called for George, scrambling up the steep sides of the pit as if the corpse might reach out and grab me.
I gabbled out the information, and George peered over the edge of the pit to have a look as I raced for Spit Morton and the hut phone.
Spit was unconscious—alive and breathing, but off somewhere in a place I could not pull him from. I tipped his head back and sniffed for signs of alcohol, which was a mistake, because Spit’s odour is ripe at the best of times. Then I noticed the lump on the back of his head, pushing up out of his matted hair like a turnip in a bed of moss. I probed it gingerly with my supporting hand. It was spongy.
Now, I am not a first-aid-y person, and he didn’t seem to be in any danger—that is to say, his breathing was regular and he wasn’t bleeding, externally anyway. I put his head gently back where I had found it and went to the hut to call 911.
Then I lit a cigarette and walked back to George. I suppose we were both in shock, because the first thing we did was to haul Dweezil up out of the pit and put him back in the truck. This, after all, was a police matter.
Two
Grant me a taste of your experience, stranger,
Give me a sip of your blood.
—Shepherd’s Pie
Police officers make me nervous. I could be driving perfectly legally, all the insurance and my license up to date, keeping to the speed limit—a responsible citizen in every respect, but the minute I see a police cruiser, my face flames red and my throat gets tight. I start to drive erratically, out of sheer nervousness.
It’s all that dumb power that gets me; men and women in uniforms with bored, bovine faces, carrying guns. I don’t see brave “Servers and Protectors”, I just see people in stiff blue hats who have every right to interrogate you if they feel like it. I’m the same with customs officers, and I am invariably searched at airports.
By the time the police finally arrived to deal with Spit Morton and the body in the “wood only” pit, I had worked myself up into a lather of fear. I was all for dragging Dweezil off into the bush somewhere and leaving him, but George would have none of it.
“They will be searching the area,” he said. “I’m the only goat breeder around here. They would know.”
“Get real, George,” I said. “As if the police, in the middle of a murder investigation, would give a damn about a dead goat.” Still, George wasn’t taking any chances.
I believed that George and I, as the first to find the body, would immediately become prime suspects. I’m no fool. I’ve read my Eric Wright and Sue Grafton. The police would ask us all sorts of awkward questions, they would go to my cabin and search it and they would find my modest stash of homegrown weed (kept for medicinal purposes only, you understand) and I would go to jail.
The police officers who arrived first were from Laingford, and they were both men. The thinner of the two, who introduced himself as Detective Becker, looked to be in his mid-thirties and obviously worked out with weights. He was wearing a short-sleeved uniform shirt, and the muscles on his arms were ropy and interesting. The other, from what I could see of him, weighed about three hundred pounds. He stayed in the car, talking on the radio.
I wondered if Detective Becker was any relation to the mogul Becker who owned the famous chain of convenience stores, and I asked him—you know, to break the tension, but he gave me a cold smile and said he wasn’t.
I gave him my name. Pauline Deacon. Polly, to my friends.
“Can I have your address, please, ma’am?”
“My, uh, mailing address?”
“No, your place of residence.”
This was a problem. My beloved cabin—George’s homestead—was not strictly legal. What I mean is, although I had been living there for a number of years, it wasn’t zoned as residential. There was no record, anywhere, that someone was living in George’s cabin. His tax returns certainly didn’t include that information, and although most of the locals with whom I was acquainted were aware of where I lived, they were very good about keeping it to themselves. I hadn’t filled out a tax return in years. I didn’t have a credit card or a phone. Actually, I didn’t exist. I liked it that way.
So, the question made me uncomfortable. I glanced at George, who came to my rescue, smelling trouble.
“She lives with me,” he said, his voice full of hidden meaning. Interesting, I thought. Why not? I took his arm possessively.
Becker’s upper lip twisted for a moment, and then he switched his attention to George.
“You live together, then, on the Dunbar sideroad.” He checked his notes. “Lot forty-two, concession six?”
“Correct,” George said.
“You married?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, detective,” I said. I could feel a hideous blush creeping up my body.
Not that the concept was wholly far-fetched. I mean, George was well into his seventies, but hard-bodied and more flexible than I was at six. He was probably quite capable of getting it up if called upon to do so. Our relationship was entirely platonic and the thought of being intimate with