by CC Abbott
Hoyt put his foot up on the bumper. "You need to keep out of police business."
"What business would that be?"
"Don’t act stupid, son, 'cause you’re not. I know your granddaddy's been sticking his nose where it don’t belong, and I don't appreciate it. I also know that you've been helping him."
Boone held out his hands, palms up. "What is it you think I'm doing?"
"There's a lot of things I can tolerate," Hoyt said. "Vigilantes ain't one of them."
Boone resisted the urge to correct his subject-verb agreement. "How do Eugene Loach and his boys fit into that equation? You say you don't tolerate vigilantes, but he's running a pogram against Latinos right under your nose."
"A what?"
"A pogram. It's an organized campaign of violence against an ethnic group. The words comes from Russian—"
"Boone, if me and your mama wasn't friends, I knock you upside the head." He stood ramrod straight, put a palm on the Glock, and stuck out his chin. "You just told me everything I needed to know. I'm going to say this once. You're just a college student, so you better act like one. Go to class, study hard, and all that bullshit. But that's it. I expect you to keep your nose clean and your ass wiped. Got that?"
Boone saluted. "Yes sir."
"Don't get smart with me, boy."
"No sir," he said and promised to do as he was told. But as he walked back to the Volkswagen, he could only think about the words, don't get smart with me, boy. Deputy Mercer had used the very same phrase.
He wondered how much difference there really was between the two men.
The yard around the Tin City property looked like Stumpy had been searching for buried treasure. The path between the main house and the tobacco barns was pocked with dozens of deep holes and mounds of black and white sandy dirt. Near the largest barn, the holes were fewer but larger, like the shape of a casket.
Cedar parked in an undisturbed part of the yard. "Somebody's been busy," she said as they got out of her VW.
"You have a gift for understatement." Boone spotted Stumpy's Airstream through the trees and started in that direction. "I didn't think Stumpy had enough motivation for digging."
Cedar clipped the leash to Chigger's collar. He ran beside her up the path, panting with excitement, savoring the luscious new smells on the wind.
No one answered the door when Boone knocked. He beat on the trailer and called, "Stumpy!"
The only answer was the echo of his voice.
"Nobody's home," Cedar said and popped down the steps of the small a rickety deck. "Let's go."
"You're not getting off that easy."
She walked backwards toward the path that led to her car. "Watch me."
"Then you," Boone said while pulling out his cellphone, "can call Abner and explain to him that we didn't get the finger."
"Chigger, bite Boone. He's a bad person."
Chigger yawned then took a great interest in the sole of Cedar's sneakers.
"Good dog." Boone rubbed his ears. "Come on, vicious, let's take a look around."
"Hey, don't call my dog vicious. You'll hurt his feelings."
"Who said I was talking to the dog?"
Cedar swatted at him, but he danced away.
"Coward," Cedar said.
"You proved my thesis," he said, right before he fell into a deep hole. He landed hard, the impact knocking the wind out of him and making his ribs scream. “Shit! That hurt.”
Cedar's head appeared in the blue sky above. "Are you okay down there?"
Her hair clung to her face, and she would have looked angelic if she had not been so worried. Chigger joined her, whimpering at the lip of the hole as his paws knocked loose dirt down on Boone's face.
"I'm fine." He had been lucky. The loose sand at the bottom of the hole, which was only about three feet across but almost eight feet deep, had cushioned his fall.
"You sure?"
He waved the hand. "Truly, I'm fine."
Cedar started laughing. "I'm so sorry. You lo-looked so funny falling into th-that h-hole. Bloop!"
While she was laughing and Chigger was barking, Boone took a closer look at the sides of the pit. There were similar markings on all of the walls, as if a mouth with ragged teeth had scraped them clean.
Stumpy hadn't dug these holes. Not by hand, anyway.
"When you're done with your fit of giggles," he called up, "could you get something to pull me out?”
"Okay," she said. "Be right back."
While she was gone, Boone took several photos with his cellphone camera. He also measured the depth of the cuts, which came up to the second knuckle of his index finger. Whatever Stumpy was looking for, he was using some heavy machinery. Maybe Stumpy, he reasoned, wasn't working alone. There were a lot of holes on the property, probably over a hundred, and they had been dug in a short amount of time. Then it occurred to him as Cedar dropped a coil of water hose down the side of the hole, maybe Stumpy wasn't involved in the digging at all.
Cedar had grabbed Stumpy's water hose, leaving it screwed into the spigot and counting on the brass couplings to hold Boone's weight. Using his legs to brace his back against the dirt wall, Boone crawled out of the hole, his shoulders digging through the loose dirt. As he rolled over, he saw tread marks in the ground.
"Let's go," he said as he dusted himself off.
"You're speaking my language,” Cedar said.
"After we get the finger."
"But you said—"
"I think Stumpy may have left before he expected to, which leads me to believe that a dismembered finger was not something he packed. He kept it in the freezer, right?"
"Are you insane?” I didn't go into his house. I stayed out on the porch.” She tied Chigger’s leash to a post on the rickety porch and followed Boone inside. ‘The container was cold, though."
The trailer smelled like Stumpy had been making soup with old shoes, and the air was thick with the scent of body odor and mold. Cedar pulled her shirt over her nose as Boone hit the lights.
"Ugh," she said. "I'm not strong enough for this. My stomach can't hack the smell."
"Fish sticks," Boone said as he opened the freezer door and Chigger barked.
“So the freezer’s empty?”
“Almost,” Boone said, pulling out a package of lightly battered cod fillets, which someone had sealed by folding the top flat and rolling it up. “It’s a box of fish sticks.”
He unrolled the box and shook the contents onto the counter, which also held several opened packets of ketchup, breadcrumbs, and an empty package of wieners. Three sticks fell out, followed by the finger, which was wrapped in plastic.
Cedar yelped but tried to cover it with a cough. “He put someone’s body part in with food? That’s just so wrong.”
“It’s a terrible way to preserve evidence, that’s for sure.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He slipped the digit into a bag and marked it. “At least he wrapped it in plastic.”
“Boone!”
“What?”
“You don’t think this is really, I don’t know, ghoulish? I mean, I’m okay with scientific inquiry and all of that, but that thing you just stuck in your pocket was once attached to somebody's hand. How can you not be totally disgusted?”
There was no way to explain it to her. It wasn't that death didn’t bother him. It did. But it was the ending of a life that ate through his gut, not the corpse that was left behind. It was something you couldn’t explain in the middle of a deserted, completely trashed trailer.
Clothes were strewn everywhere. The closest had been tossed, the side table drawers emptied onto the floor. Broke glass lay at the edge of Stumpy’s favorite sleeping post, the couch. It was hard to tell because of Stumpy’s underwhelming housekeeping skills, but the more Boone looked around, the more he was convinced that someone else had helped Stumpy redecorate.
“They were looking for something,” he said.
“Who?”
> Boone started down the paneled hallway. “The people who tossed this trailer. Look at this toilet.”
“How did we go from talking about human dignity to examining toilets?” She followed him to the bathroom. “Oh, that’s how.”
The toilet had been shattered. From the small wood splinters on the floor, Boone suspected the instrument of destruction was a baseball bat. The cabinets above the toilet had been tossed, too. A bottle of bowl cleaner lay on its side, leaking blue liquid onto a stack of brown paper towels.
“Let’s check out the bedroom,” Boone said as they backed away.
“Let’s leave instead,” Cedar said.
She didn’t wait for his answer. Boone heard the door slam, followed by the sounds of Chigger’s welcoming bark. He didn’t blame her for leaving. She was more evolved than he was in many ways, including having a higher sense of self-preservation.
Space in the bedroom was tight. The double bed took up most of the room, leaving space for only a narrow bedside table, which had also been dumped. The mattress was askew on the frame. From the marks on the ceiling, it had been lifted then dropped. A single, yellowed sheet lay rumpled on the floor in front of the closet. Inside the closet, there were no coats, no shirts, not even a coat hanger.
Empty.
This was no robbery. They were looking for something.
Boone had decided to take a closer look for clues in the kitchen area when Chigger yapped a warning bark. Peeking through the blinds, Boone looked out a grimy window and saw Cedar a few yards away holding onto Chigger’s lease. It was stretched taut, and the dog was growling. When Boone stepped outside onto the porch, he saw why.
A two-ton diesel truck drove across the overgrown yard toward the big barn. It was hauling a trench digger behind it, equipped with a scoop shovel. That answered his questions about what had made the holes. When two men got out of the front of the truck, it also answered the question of who.
They were Honeycutt and Semmes, independent contractors specializing in site clean up and debris removal.
What kind of debris, Boone wondered, where they removing this time?
“What business have you got being here, anyhow?” Semmes shouted as he approached them. He directed his question at Cedar, who was holding a very protective Chigger in her arms.
“You two’re trespassing on private property,” Honeycutt said, stabbing the air in front of Boone’s face with a meaty finger. “We ought to call the law and have you arrested.”
Though she wasn’t fond of burgled trailers, Cedar wasn't one to be intimidated by an enemy she could see, especially two middle-aged men who were obviously bluffing. Boone noticed older adults slipped easily into threats when they confronted young people. He wondered if they thought it was effective, because it never seemed to work.
“That’s our business,” Cedar said. “Call the sheriff if you want. There aren’t any No Trespassing signs posted, and we have a legitimate reason to be here.”
Semmes spat tobacco on the ground. “What would that be?”
“We’re visiting a friend.”
“Stumpy,” Boone said. “Have you gentlemen seen him recently?”
There! The thing he had hoped for. A look passed between the two men, a brief non-verbal communication that told him everything he wanted to know.
“Stumpy who?” Honeycutt said.
“What do we look like, the missing person department?” Semmes added. “You’re wasting our time, so beat it.”
Boone and Cedar agreed that they had places to be, as well. When they walked away, Boone thought of one more bit of information he wanted. “Who would that be?”
“Who would what be?” Semmes said.
“The company paying you to clean up their mess. Who’s that?”
Semmes laughed. “The man who owns it, dumbass.”
When they got in the car, Boone rolled down the window so that Chigger could stick his head out. Across the way, Semmes and Honeycutt were unloading the bobcat from its trailer. The bobcat was designed for moving a small amount of dirt very quickly. Not massive like a bulldozer or dresser, its lightweight and small relatively light bucket made it perfect for maneuvering through tight spaces. Like the spaces that separated one grave from another.
“You think they know something about Stumpy?” Cedar said as she drove turned in a wide arc and slowly drove below the outstretched arms of crepes myrtles.
“I think I know what they’re digging for, too.” The flatbed truck also held a pile of what looked like empty garment bags. One of the bags, however, was full. Boone suspected that it contained the object that had hit the side of Stumpy's trailer, an object that was missing a finger. Goose pimples formed on his forearms. In trying to solve one mystery, they had stumbled on another.
He smacked his forehead. How dense could he be?
“Well?” Cedar said when Boone didn’t continue immediately.
“From the size, shape, and pattern of the larger holes,” he said, “they’re looking for the same thing we are.”
"And that would be?"
"Bones."
“They are moving graves.” Cedar took a deep breath. “Illegally.”
She sat at the round oak table in the kitchen, next to Boone and across from Mom. Lamar leaned against the counters as he smiled at Chigger lapping up the bowl of milk he had given him.
Boone had decided on the way home to let Cedar tell Mom the news. She would believe it if it came from Cedar, who she considered far more levelheaded and trustworthy.
“Say that again,” Mom said, almost rising out of her chair.
Cedar repeated the whole story about Semmes and Honeycutt. She left out the information about the finger in the fish sticks. While she talked, Boone watched for Lamar’s reaction. He was listening, too, because he shook his head slightly when Cedar mentioned the part about Boone falling in the hole. But he kept a poker face the whole time and only moved when Chigger finished the milk. He picked up the bowl and rinsed it in the sink.
“The whole field is full of graves,” Boone said. “It’s not only a family plot, it’s an organized cemetery. From the pattern of the holes, the guys knew exactly where to dig.”
“Are you saying that the owners knew about the graves beforehand?” Mom said.
Boone shrugged. “I wouldn’t testify to that in court, but that’s what it looked like to me.”
“You’re sure?”
“The field looked like dominos.” If he closed his eyes, Boone could imagine row after row of graves and the footpaths that separated them.
“What about--” Mom wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “What about the headstones?”
Boone caught Cedar’s eye, and she shook her head once. “None,” he said and exhaled. “We didn’t see a single one.”
“That’s outrageous!” Mom stood straight up. Her chair flipped over behind her, and she threw her arms wide. “That is like spitting in the face of the loved ones who buried those people. And the law! They have absolutely violated state law! They can’t do this!”
“Sounds like they already did,” Lamar said.
“Call the sheriff!” she told him. When Lamar didn’t move fast enough, she grabbed the handset from the wall. “Never mind, I’ll do it myself. Some help you are.”
The call connected, and Mom stepped out on the porch for privacy.
Lamar swept Chigger up and carried him to Cedar. “Did either one of these men threaten you?”
Boone and Cedar shook their heads.
“They ordered us off the property,” Boone added, “and we left.”
Lamar sighed heavily. “You’ve got your mama wound up, that’s for sure. But I don’t know what can be done if the rightful owner asked them to do the work. It’s not illegal to move bodies in this state, just to do it without permission. Since those old boys let y’all walk around without a fuss, I’m thinking that they’re not too worried about being found out.”
"But these are graves," Cedar said. "There are peopl
e buried there. They can’t just, just move them."
Lamar scrubbed the top of his head with his hand. "Human remains are property like a house or land. They belong to the heirs of the deceased. That's the law."
Cedar looked at Boone, asking him is Lamar was right. He shrugged, meaning that, yes, he probably was.
"It's time for me to go.” Cedar excused herself. “I'm going to use the little girl's room first."
When she was out of earshot, Boone tried another tack with Lamar. "There are too many graves for a family cemetery."
Lamar waved the argument away. “Follow Cedar back to her house, just to be sure. No arguing now, not after what happened to that Japanese boy. Folks around here are acting funny. It’s smart to be careful.”
"Funny how?" Boone said. "You mean funny strange, not funny ha-ha, correct?"
"Some migrant workers ended up in the emergency room last weekend, all beat up. They wouldn't say what happened."
"Ready," Cedar called down the hall as she returned. Boone walked her out to the car. “Before I go, remember that we’re meeting with Dr. K tomorrow to put the final touches on my research project.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday, right?” Boone said.
“Doesn’t matter what day it is.” She gave a kiss on the cheek. “You made a promise, and you’re sticking to it.”
After escorting Cedar home, Boone decided that it was crucial to tell Abner about the graves. Since the old man wouldn’t answer his phones, Boone decided to make the drive to his house. But when Boone arrived, the house was dark, and the computer and television were off. Since his grandfather was an information junky of the highest order, Boone knew he was probably out for the evening. Abner still didn't answer his cellphone, so he left a message that the finger was safely stored and that there was more news to share.
It was well after dark when Boone left the driveway. He was traveling Highway 12 at sixty-five. There were no streetlights in this part of the county, which was still farmland due to frequent flooding, making the night even darker. It was so dark that he didn’t see a huge branch in the middle of his lane.
