Buried Stuff

by Sharon Fiffer

  “Fuzzy said his great-grandkids stay out here when they visit from Montana. His granddaughter-in-law and grandson run for the nearest motel to get away by themselves, and the kids come out and have a ball, living in the cabin,” said Nick, who had followed his mother inside and watched her take in the space with her picker’s eye. He knew she had already sized up the cast-iron pans as collectible and was dying to see if the tins of spices over the stove were as old as they looked. Even the few dusty books by the bed looked like they had been placed by a propmaster on the set of Little House on the Prairie. Nick knew his mother was aching to open the trunks by the wall and examine the underside of the hooked rug in front of the washstand.

  “Lula says we can use the bathroom in the house, too, Mom, but I told her Dad and I wouldn’t need it,” said Nick.

  Jane raised an eyebrow.

  “We’ve got some light out here if we want it,” said Charley. He pointed out a large cord that was taped along the entrance to the cabin. It was an industrial-size extension cord that Fuzzy had run out from the house. There were two lamps plugged in, a small table model from the fifties by the bed and a forties floor lamp with a lush green shade standing in the corner. Jane hadn’t even noticed the lamps as out of place. They fit in with the furnishings, and she hadn’t thought twice about how they might be lit.

  “We have a couple of lanterns and some battery-powered lamps with us, too, for the tent,” said Charley.

  “I’m not afraid of the dark, Charley,” said Jane, about to launch into her litany of all the things she wasn’t afraid of. Which was her roundabout way of avoiding thinking about all the things that did frighten her. The two-page color illustration of snakes in the S volume of the encyclopedia, Marilyn Manson, unlabeled canned goods, illness or injury be falling her family, ski lifts, and body piercing below the neck.

  “You really going to sleep in this hole?”

  Jane hadn’t heard Nellie come up behind her—people never heard Nellie creep up behind them—and she jumped when her mother’s voice barked in her ear.

  Oh yeah. And Nellie. Jane was a little bit afraid of Nellie.

  Jane backed out of the cabin, thinking about how best she might defend its rustic beauty to her mother, who was eyeing suspicious holes in the walls and pointing out mysterious small tracks left in a thin layer of corner dust—all details that Jane would have preferred not to notice. Nellie liked to explore every nook and cranny that might hold something dirty, germ laden, or disgusting. Anything Jane’s mother could wipe away with a rag and a bottle of Pine-Sol was the treasure she wanted to find. Sure, Jane could look all she wanted for a wooden library card catalogue; and if Nellie were anywhere in the vicinity, she would creep up right behind her daughter, pulling out each drawer and going for the corners with a Q-tip and a bottle of disinfectant.

  Her dad, Don, was a little easier on dirt and a whole lot easier on Jane. Jane could hear him just outside the cabin. Instead of coming in for inspection, he was looking at the hole in the ground with Nick.

  “I don’t get it,” said Don. “What’s stopping Fuzzy from selling his own dirt?”

  “If there are bones here, Grandpa, something important. It might be a historical site that is protected, and Fuzzy can’t do anything to the land.”

  “Protected by who?” asked Don.

  “The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency,” said Charley, coming over to shake Don’s hand.

  “When any property owner or developer turns up something unusual,” Charley began. He was interrupted by Nick who offered, “Like bones.”

  He sounds so cheerful, Jane thought. Is that because he takes after his father, who looks for ancient skeletons, or because he takes after his mother, who finds fresh corpses?

  “If human remains are found, the coroner has to be called and the police. If it turns out that it’s not a crime scene, jurisdiction is under the Human Skeletal Remains Protection Act.”

  “Still doesn’t sound much like a who,” said Don.

  “The who would be the director of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. He’d have to call the shots.”

  “It’s Fuzzy’s dirt, isn’t it?” asked Nellie. She and Jane joined the rest of the family, all of them now looking into the hole in the ground. “He owns it. He paid for it. He farms it. He tracks it into Lula’s kitchen and the EZ Way Inn every day. Who the hell has a right to tell him what he can and can’t do with it?”

  Jane pictured Nellie somewhere in the mountains of Colorado with a caveful of canned goods and a shotgun on her shoulder. Yes, her mother could easily be a survivalist. She didn’t even have to close her eyes to conjure it. Clutching her bowl of potato salad and squinting up at Charley like he was the “guvmint” come to collect back taxes or bust up the still.

  Charley, obviously not realizing how much damage she could do with a bowl of potato salad if she believed it was her only weapon and he was the enemy, ignored the fire in her eyes and looped his arm around her shoulders.

  “Nellie, you wouldn’t want somebody rearranging your bones or, worse, tossing them into the trash heap if you had been minding your own dead business, resting peacefully in your family cemetery, would you?” asked Charley.

  “I’m going to be cremated,” Nellie began. Jane had heard this speech a number of times, after every wake, after every funeral. “I don’t want anybody looking at me and saying it’s so sad and she had a hard life and look how old she looks and she really suffered and …”

  “Maybe they won’t say anything like that, Nell,” said Tim, who had stopped off at the food table and was carrying a plate heaped with chips and dip and salad.

  “Maybe they’ll take one look at you, all decked out in your Sunday best, wearing rouge and a smudge of ‘Cherries in the Snow’ on your lips, a little iridescent green on your lids to bring out the green in your …”

  Jane and Charley watched Tim look off into the distance, waxing poetic, and looked back at Nellie, who was now stoking the fire in her eyes.

  “Listen to me, Tim Lowry, you call me ‘Nell’ one more time and they’re going to be talking about how you looked laid out with barbecue sauce all over your face and coleslaw in your hair.”

  Jane gave her mother round one, but was relieved that Tim had gotten her off track in the great cremation speech she gave every chance she could. A half-second later Jane had to give Nellie round two as well when her mother started up again, undeterred.

  “I want to be cremated, you hear me? Everybody here is my witness on this. Nobody looks at me and moans and groans over me when I can’t look back at them. Hear me? I want to be cremated,” Nellie said.

  Don looked at his wife with the same even stare he had been giving her for forty-five years. “Should we wait until you’re dead?”

  “I don’t even know you, but I believe you and will honor your wishes if I should be in the vicinity.”

  Jane, Charley, and Nick and Don, Nellie, and Tim all turned away from the taped-off hole in the ground. The man who had spoken had a small, gray goatee, carefully parted hair, and wore a suit and tie, even though the evening was warm and most of Fuzzy and Lula’s guests had arrived dressed pig-roast casual.

  “I’m Dr. Jaekel,” he said, a defiant edge in his voice. He looked directly at Tim, sensing the quickest mouth and the most ready smart-ass in the crowd. “J-a-e-k-e-l, and no, my assistant is not Mr. Hyde. I assure you, I have heard every permutation of the joke.” Dr. Jaekel held his hand out to Charley. “I’m acting coroner for the county. Borrowed while Kankakee’s own good doctor is on vacation this month.”

  Nellie circled him like a bantamweight.

  “Who died?” she asked.

  “Many people, every second,” he said. Jaekel looked toward the hole in the ground. “Not necessarily, however, where we’re standing.” He sighed and Jane couldn’t tell whether he was relieved by his own pronouncement or disappointed that he was currently surrounded by living bodies. “Professor, may I have a word with you in private?” />
  Jane and company watched Dr. Jaekel steer Charley to the other side of the taped-off area.

  “There’s a man who had to grow up to be coroner. That sad, droopy face,” said Jane. “Did you see his hands?” Jane watched him clench and unclench his long, bony fingers as he talked to Charley. When he pointed at the table full of bones and rocks, he jabbed the air, hurting something invisible to everyone but him.

  “Yeah. Looks at you like you’re not quite interesting enough to him yet,” said Tim, “predead and all.”

  The yard was full of people waving to one another and filling plates with food. All the men seemed to be wearing hats identical to Fuzzy’s, and all the women carried large, disposable foil pans. Jane squinted a little and tried to make this into the kind of jolly, rural homecoming she liked to imagine.

  “What do you think, Timmy? Is this more like the clambake from Carousel or the big dance in Oklahoma?

  Nellie and Don began to inch closer to the crowd, and Nick was crouching over one of the mounds of dirt next to the hole. Tim looked over the crowd of people, grim-faced men, shaking their heads over weather or unemployment or the Cubs or the White Sox, and the bustling women, hand-wringing over the children or the grim-faced men.

  “The cemetery scene from Our Town,” said Tim.

  Jane saw two unlikely guests approaching Don and Nellie. She could usually pick out nonlocals because of the way Nellie eyeballed people she hadn’t known for sixty years. But even without Nellie’s suspicious posture, Jane would have picked the taller, older one of the pair as a visitor. The man had a city haircut and shiny, black shoes that screamed out-of-towner.

  “Joe Dempsey,” the taller man announced. “Don and Nellie, I’ve had the pleasure, but maybe you could introduce me to this beautiful daughter of yours,” he said as Jane moved closer.

  Sales. He has to be in sales, Jane thought. Just as Jaekel might be pegged as a coroner, Jane thought she could peg Dempsey. He was as angular as Jaekel, but he caressed the air with his hands, making graceful gestures that drew everyone around him into his circle. He was used to being thought charming. Jane watched Nellie toss her head when he smiled at her. Nellie never trusted moustaches. She had always told Jane that men grew facial hair to cover something up, no other reason. Even Dempsey’s pencil-thin moustache would raise Nellie’s suspicions. Jane wasn’t suspicious of the moustache. Dempsey was in his midsixties with a beautiful full head of silver hair; he would want to cultivate as dapper a look as he could. Who could blame him? It was his manner of conversation that Jane noted. He didn’t speak; he announced.

  “My associate, Michael Hoover,” Joe Dempsey said loudly, waving his arms and presenting the shorter man with a kind of formal flourish. Hoover, younger by twenty years, dressed more casually in khakis and a sport coat, looked hungry, thirsty, and anxious, in that order. He nodded, licking his lips.

  Fuzzy yelled to them to come over and fill their plates, and Jane realized she was starving. The two men headed toward the food, but not before Dempsey took Jane’s hand as if to kiss the back of it. He didn’t complete the act, but smiled and told her she was a darling girl. Jane was about to follow them to the picnic tables and find out who they were and why they had ended up at Fuzzy’s pig roast when she noticed Tim motioning to her from the door of the cabin.

  “Timmy, you already have your food,” she said. “I’m going to go and find Nick …”

  Jane followed as Tim backed into the cabin and pointed to the small table under a crude, almost blacked-out mirror. He had set a small tray out with a bottle of Grey Goose; two glasses; a jar of tipsy olives; fat, juicy, vermouth-soaked bites; colorful plastic picks. Under the table was an ice chest. Tim fixed them both a drink and clinked his glass to hers.

  “Here’s to innocent bones and profitable gazebos.”

  “This is so sweet, Tim. You thought of everything,” said Jane.

  “Yeah, there’s beer in the chest for Charley and soda for Nick.”

  Jane sipped her drink, feeling warm and loved and happy down to her toes. This is what mattered in life. Scrounging stuff and solving mysteries was all well and good, but this is what mattered … being with family and having a best friend like Tim.

  “You’re going to need the booze, honey. This place is a dump.”

  Charley poked his head in, nodded to Tim, who reached down to grab a beer for him.

  “Janie, we have got to get people away from the site. If we stay around here, everybody and his uncle will stroll over. Jaekel’s ready to call in the police to clear the area. Why, I don’t know, since he and I both know there’s probably nothing … still, a site is a site. I don’t know what Fuzzy was thinking, inviting all these people,” Charley said.

  “Fuzzy thinking,” said Tim, “oxymoron or apt description. You be the judge.”

  Tim assured them he’d lead the way back to the food and tables Fuzzy and Lula had set up closer to the main house and down by the cornfield and went out. Charley stopped Jane at the door, stretching his arm across the opening.

  “You okay? Staying out here and all?”

  “Charley, I love the cabin. This is a great little vacation, and you can teach me about what you do at a site. Watching you and Nick will …” Jane stopped. Charley was looking at her with … what was that look? He was smiling and with every second his eyes were locked on hers, they seemed to probe deeper. Oh yeah, Jane remembered that look.

  “Charley, are you feeling”—Jane began, then wondered what a noncorny, nonloaded word was for an old married couple like them—“amorous?”

  “I am always feeling amorous,” said Charley. “All men are.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Jane.

  “True. Women stop seeing it, that’s all. You find other things to look at.”

  Maybe Charley was right. Jane had been looking around a lot lately. Right now, though, she couldn’t take her eyes off his.

  “I’m crazy about you, Jane.”

  “I’m crazy …,” Jane began, but was interrupted.

  “Mom, Dad, I’m going to get food with Grandma. She says you guys better come on because the moochers are going to eat the pig down to the tail in a few minutes.”

  “Okay,” Jane and Charley answered together.

  “He’s one of the other things I look at, right?” said Jane.

  “Right and proper,” said Charley, kissing her on top of her head. “I love watching you watch him.”

  “I think the great outdoors and a digging site brings out the Harrison Ford in you,” said Jane. “Not that I require movie star mystique.”

  Charley cleared his throat and stood a bit straighter. He looked over at the site and saw that it was clear of onlookers. Everyone, captivated by the smells that were now almost overwhelmingly delicious, had headed back closer to the farmhouse. Charley took Jane’s hand and led her outside to the taped-off area.

  “What do you see, Jane?”

  “Besides the obvious?”

  “Obvious first. That’s often the most important,” said Charley.

  “You sound like Oh,” said Jane, and imitated the soft-voiced detective. “See what’s there, Mrs. Wheel, see what’s there…. Okay. A hole in the ground. About five by five, maybe five or six feet deep.”

  Charley, holding her hand, walked her over to a shed on the opposite side of the hole. A tarp had been tied from the shed roof, extending a shaded, covered area about three feet from the small building. Two picnic tables were next to the wall and on them, small bones were laid out, some stones, a few pieces of metal.

  “Is this the find? It seems …,” Jane began.

  “Paltry for the amount of commotion it caused?” asked Charley.

  “Small, I was going to say small.”

  “Yeah. There are a few other things in the boxes, but not much more. Look at this, though. It took Nick a few minutes. I’ll give you five,” said Charley. “Even without a bone map, you can do this.”

  “Bone map?” asked Jane.

  “W
hen bones are found, if we’re the ones finding them, before removing them we sketch out exactly how they’re situated in the ground. Gives us the clues to construction, to the events surrounding the death—you know, how the bones ended up there before they were bones, when they were animal.”

  “Charley, these aren’t human bones. Look at the little leg. Legs. There are four of them,” said Jane.

  “Yup,” said Charley.

  Jane fingered a few of the stones on the table, then picked up one of the bits of rusted metal. “The metal’s definitely old. Hard to fake rust this dark. You know when people try to make new ironwork look old, they always try to rust it up, but it’s always too red. Look how dark this is,” said Jane, rubbing at it. “There’s a little hole, here,” she said. “Oh.”

  “Are you calling for your detective partner or do you get it?” asked Charley, laughing.

  “Wouldn’t you think Fuzzy and Lula would remember what this is?”

  “And it is?” he asked.

  “Their dog. It’s his little tag and his skeleton, right?” “Cat. Tag’s maybe ten or fifteen years old. Hard to see the date, but you can make out the name.”

  “little OTTO,” read Jane. “Poor baby.”

  Charley told Jane that she shouldn’t mention it to anyone at the picnic. He didn’t want to embarrass Fuzzy, and besides, there were some other things that had been dug up he wanted to take a look at in the light of day.

  “Jaekel knows of course. Told me he took one look at the bones and couldn’t believe anyone had called him and asked him to drive thirty miles to look at a long dead family pet,” said Charley. “He assured the police it wasn’t a crime scene, but there are a few fossils and something that he thought might be a stone ax head. Probably what Fuzzy hit with his gardening equipment.”

  “Is it anything?” Jane asked.

  Charley shook his head. “Not sure. Jaekel was stuck though. Even if the bones just belonged to Otto the cat, once someone calls something like this into the state, there’s a mile of paperwork to get the land cleared.”