Authors: Deborah Rogers
It was an all American house. A wagon wheel out front, stars and stripes flapping from a sixteen foot flag pole, a bespoke birdhouse, blue with white trim. If you looked in the distance behind the house, there was a church steeple too. Tuesdays and Wednesdays were Jennifer's days. She took the different bus route from school. Her mother insisted she not be in the house alone but come here to Mrs. Baker's instead.
At twelve, Mrs. Baker said Jennifer was old enough to look after the young ones so homework was left undone. Instead there were snotty noses to wipe and dirty diapers to change. Jennifer never told her mother what went on there, how they would be made to sit in the hard-backed chairs and listen to Mrs. Baker preach and thump the black leather bible as if it was the behind of one of the naughty boys.
And Jennifer never told her mother about the time when she got up from Mrs. Baker's prickly molasses sofa to warm a bottle for one of the under-twos and left a melon-sized starburst of red behind. Mrs Baker had called her back to look. "
Sinner
." She made Jennifer pray on her knees beneath the wooden crucifix on the back wall. "
Louder, sinner."
The other children did not even glance her way and continued to watch cartoons on the old television set that showed everything in a flickering green and yellow hue.
Afterward, Jennifer had run to the bathroom to check under her skirt and cried when she saw the bloody starfish that was her hand. She was certain she was dying from the inside out.
"
Hey
."
And there was that smell, like rust.
"
Hey. Wake up
."
And the sound of Mrs. Baker banging on the door, yelling for her to come and clean up her mess.
"
Jenny
."
Jennifer opens her eyes. Lenise. Who has a red starfish of her own smack in the middle of her chest.
"You fainted."
"What?"
Then she smells it, the blood, and turns to look. Hank is an island in a sea of crimson.
"Oh God, it isn't true."
"Get up," says Lenise.
"I'm going to be sick," says Jennifer.
Hank has one eye open and it's looking directly at her.
"No, you're not. Get up."
Lenise hauls Jennifer to her feet and Jennifer runs to the sink but nothing comes out then suddenly waves hit her but amount to no more than two slippery strings of bile. She reaches for the tap and slaps water on her face. It is blessed and cold and bracing.
"You killed him," she says, turning to Lenise.
"He did it to himself."
Lenise's eyes are unnaturally bright.
"You got the knife," says Jennifer.
"He would have killed us."
"I'm calling the police."
"They won't believe anything you say when they find the medication in his system. They'll think you've planned everything."
"I'm not taking the blame for this," says Jennifer.
"I'll deny it and there's nothing to say otherwise," says Lenise. "I did you a favor."
"You're joking!"
"I did you a favor and that was not without risk to my own life."
"I didn't ask for any of this!" cries Jennifer.
"Neither did I. You saw what happened."
Jennifer buries her face in her hands. "How could I have been so stupid to go along with this?"
"You think this is easy for me? I was betrayed too."
They fall silent and stare at the body. Blood is beginning to tighten in places.
"We need to work together," says Lenise. "No fighting. It's the only way."
"Oh God, what are we going to do?"
Lenise sits down. "We have to get rid of the body."
"Lenise, we can't. This is beyond us."
"There's no other choice."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this."
"Well, believe it."
Jennifer shakes her head. "This is already way out of hand. We need to own up."
"Own up? Are you crazy? We're not talking about a Snickers bar you might have stolen at the corner store when you were eight. This is homicide. A felony. We know it was self-defense but they'll say it's murder. You think if you tell them the truth – that you didn't
mean
it – they're just going to let you off the hook? No way – there's jail time here anyway you look at it."
"I wasn't the one holding the knife."
Lenise leans in close. "You don't seem to get it, Jenny. You're in this as much as I am, whether you want to admit it or not. There's a highly illegal surgical grade sedative in his system because of you."
"I don't care," Jennifer gets to her feet and picks up the phone. "This insanity stops right now."
Lenise snatches the phone from her hand.
"You will spend the rest of your life in prison. McKenzie will have no one. Is that what you want?"
Jennifer feels faint again. "Of course not."
"Are you on board, then?"
"This isn't some real estate deal, Lenise," says Jennifer.
Lenise slams her hand into the pantry door. "You know what," she spits, "maybe I should walk away right now, leave you with this mess, because I could do that Jenny, I could do that right now and where would that leave you?"
Jennifer glances at Hank's body and swallows. "Don't," she says.
"Don't what?"
"Don't go. I'll do it."
"Good," Lenise calms down. "Like I said we need to work together."
She takes a glass from the cupboard, fills it with water and drinks the entire thing.
She turns to Jennifer. "We better get started."
At first Lenise suggests the backyard given the practical benefits – it's close, convenient and easily controllable. Dig a hole in the ground. Put him in it. Job done. But Jennifer vetoes the idea. A grave where they had once held 4th of July BBQs and made snowmen at Christmas was way too sinister. And there were also the associated risks. What if Jennifer sold the house and the new owners wanted to put in a pool or add an extension? Imagine their surprise when they unearthed the remains of an adult male, all traceable back to Jennifer.
Then Lenise suggests weighing him down in a lake or some other waterway. It's an attractive idea. But Jennifer says no. While in theory it seems viable, in practice, there's too much risk – bodies stay submerged for a time but also have a habit of eventually rising to the surface.
Jennifer says no to a staged suicide too. The stab wound mean an autopsy could reveal an unexplained knick to a rib bone or some other injury that would give them away.
"You can't just say no to everything," says Lenise.
"I'm not."
"Well, I don't hear any ideas."
"We're overthinking this. We need to get back to basics," says Jennifer, "a grave in the forest. Natural decomposition. Throw in some lime to speed things up. Jesus, I can't believe I'm saying this."
"We don't want to be caught on camera buying compost at 3am," says Lenise.
"There's lime in the garage."
"Good. Are we agreed then?"
Jennifer is silent.
"Jenny?"
"Yes."
*
From the garage, Lenise retrieves six large black polyurethane trash bags, a bottle of bleach, scissors and rags. When she returns, she throws Jennifer a pair of kitchen gloves, and puts on a pair herself.
"We've got to wash him down to get rid of our DNA, just in case they find him, which they won't, but it's best to be thorough."
First they needed to drag him out of that pool of blood.
"You push, I'll pull," says Lenise.
Lenise covers the blood puddle with trash bags and tucks her hands under his belt while Jennifer braces herself at the small of his back.
"Go!"
He is heavier than they could have ever imagined.
"You're not pushing hard enough!" says Lenise.
"You need to pull more."
They try again but he could be super-glued to the floor.
"No wonder they cut bodies up," says Lenise.
They make another attempt. Movement. Just a bit. They get a rhythm going, shifting him an inch at a time, slowly but surely.
"That's enough," says Lenise, breathless.
The body is about two feet clear of the blood, an ever-decreasing red smear rainbows out from the spot where he fell to where he is now.
"How are we going to get him out of the house?" says Jennifer.
"We'll think of something. Give me the scissors." Lenise cuts off his clothes and the zip ties and shoves them in a bag. "I'll burn these later."
Then she soaks two strips from an old towel in bleach and gives one to Jennifer.
"Start from the bottom, I'll work from the top."
But Jennifer can't bear to touch him. The nakedness under the harsh kitchen light is disarmingly explicit. The body is like a poorly filled human suit. It's Hank, but it isn't. An imitation of the real thing. Jennifer has stepped into a dual universe.
"I can't do this."
"Yes, you can." Lenise kneels down and gets ready to begin.
"Wait," says Jennifer.
She goes to the cupboard beneath the sink, lifts a clean dishtowel from the drawer and places it across Hank's face.
They work steadily and methodically. Big toe. Buttocks. Chin. Clavicle. Earlobe. Elbow. The harsh solvent stings their eyes but they continue on until they are sure to wipe every part of the body. When they are done, they roll him onto three clean trash bags sliced open like tarps and get ready to wrap him. But Jennifer stops Lenise with her hand.
"What about the knife?"
"That's a point," agrees Lenise. "Away you go, then."
"Me? I'm not doing it."
Lenise shakes her head. "Oh, for heaven's sake."
Lenise reaches over and grips the plastic handle and pulls out the knife leaving behind a tiny chasm and a stream of claret. Lenise puts the knife in the same bag as his clothes for later disposal and they wipe him down again then remove the dishtowel covering his face, and fold the plastic around him, tying it in place with Home Depot garden twine until he looks like a trussed side of beef.
"How are we going to move him?" says Jennifer. "He might as well be a half ton of cement."
"I've got an idea," says Lenise.
She disappears and returns with the Aztec rug from the living room.
"It's a trick I learnt when I had to move a refrigerator on my own."
She lines up the rug next to the body then looks over her shoulder at Jennifer.
"Well, don't just stand there," she says.
They roll the body onto the rug and lie it flat on its back.
"Now we pull," says Lenise.
They each grab a corner and are soon out of the kitchen, down the hallway and into the garage. Lenise opens the trunk of the car.
"He'll be way too heavy to lift," says Jennifer.
"For God's sake, Jenny, try and be a bit more constructive would you."
Lenise bends down and wraps the body up in the rug as tight as she can, and together they angle the package upright next to the lip of the trunk.
"Push," says Lenise.
They both shove and the cylinder tips inside the trunk cavity.
Jennifer wipes sweat from her eyes and looks at Lenise. "Now what?"
"I don't like leaving McKenzie alone like this," says Jennifer, reversing out of the garage. "What if she wakes up and finds nobody's there?"
"It's a risk we have to take. The sooner we go, the sooner we get back."
They drive in silence through empty streets and it's not too long before they reach the entrance to Pine Ridge Forest. Someone has thrown a clod of mud at the sign and grey muck has dripped down to look like a reverse exclamation mark. Multiple unsealed roads lead to different parts of the forest – Horseshoe Lake, Sweetheart's Peak, a rocky outcrop called the Crow's Nest – but there's one spot Jennifer remembers from the early days when she went on a trek with Hank, McKenzie in a baby-pack strapped to his back. She angles the car onto the narrow gravel road and turns left.
Jennifer follows the unsealed road and a canopy of trees fish-bones around them. It's like driving into a cave. Trees either side are impenetrable and the further in they go the more impossibly dark it becomes. The car is an icebox and Jennifer reaches over to turn on the heater, but Lenise shakes her head.
"I wouldn't. Heat and bodies don't mix."
That's right, thinks Jennifer, there's a body back there in the trunk, her husband's body, she had almost forgotten. She glances at Lenise who is staring straight ahead through the windscreen. There's a dark smear across her neck and over her t-shirt. Jennifer examines her own face in the rearview and sees blood on her chin. She reaches to wipe it.
"Leave it," says Lenise.
Jennifer returns her hand to the steering wheel.
"I can't believe this is happening," she says.
"Keep driving."
The windscreen begins to mist and Jennifer winds down her window to let in some air. It's frigid and vital and Jennifer sucks in four large mouthfuls but it will take more than fresh air to make this nightmare go away.
"Do you even know where you're going?" says Lenise.
"It was a long time ago now."
"Stop here. It's as good a place as any."
"A little further on."
Another mile on and thick woods give way to trees in rows, all of them the same type, large and ancient, their barren winter branches gigantic fan-shaped skeletons against the night sky.
"What is this place?"
"An orchard. At one time, anyway."
Jennifer turns right and takes a smaller trail into a more private area. She cuts the engine. Through a break in a stand of California Redwoods, Stickle Creek swimming hole shines like a beveled knife.
"There," she says, pointing through the windscreen.
Right in front of them is a magnificent Arizona cypress.
*
They step out of the car. Somewhere close by water rushes beneath ice.
"What's that smell?" says Lenise.
"Pears."
Jennifer clicks on the torch and a beam of light hits the trees. Fruit, rotten and brown and bird-pecked, lies forlornly in the undergrowth. A smatter of wasps hovers over the fallen bounty.
"I'm allergic," says Lenise.
"To pears?"
"Wasps."
Lenise reaches into the back seat and retrieves two shovels and gives one to Jennifer. She probes the ground for the weakest part, but it's hard all over, so she moves away from the rooty portion of the ground, about two feet from the tree, and traces a large rectangle with her shovel.
"This will do."
Progress is slow. There are layers of leaves and undergrowth and earth and rocks. Their shovels barely penetrate the surface. But they keep going, their bodies soon hot with effort and the two headlights aimed their way.
Kush, slap, kush, slap
. The sound of slicing and dumping seems too improbable and loud in such a lonely place. Occasionally too, the metal lip of the shovel pings off a flinty rock and sparks a tiny ginger flash.
An unbearable thirst grips Jennifer. It's as if her body is depleting its water stocks with every slice of the shovel. She tries swallowing but her mouth could be full of sand. How careless not to bring water or sensible shoes or a sweat towel or anything necessary to digging a coffin-size hole in the middle of nowhere. She bites down on her tongue to generate salvia and imagines something chilled and wet and quenching. It even crosses her mind to eat one of those worm-ridden pears.
She wipes her sticky forehead with an aching arm and stops to look at the pit. They have barely touched the surface. "This is going to take forever."
"Stop moaning and get on with it. It's not going to dig itself."
On and on it goes. Wasps buzz and the forest creaks and the sweet-sour decay of fruit saturates their pores. Jennifer's upper back burns and her wrists scream but she keeps up with Lenise's frenetic pace, matching her shovel for shovel until, finally, the pile of dirt has grown to a large mound and there's a box-shaped hole.
Jennifer squints at the sky. "How much deeper?"
"We need to make it as big as possible," says Lenise, continuing to dig.
"There isn't time."
"Just a bit more."
"No!" Jennifer snatches Lenise's shovel away. "We need to get him in there before daybreak."
Lenise looks at her, eyes glossed with exhaustion, and wipes her nose with her knuckles.
"Who died and made you president," she says.
Jennifer backs the car as close to the opening as possible then joins Lenise at the trunk, and once again they face the mission of trying to move their leaden freight, by now growing stiff with rigor. They tug and pull and press and push but he's too heavy to lift over the lip of the trunk. Jennifer hears a sniff. Angry tears are running down Lenise's dirt-streaked face.
"Hold it," says Lenise. "We need to stop rushing, do a bit at a time like before."
They do and it works and they maneuver the body until it is a see-saw plank across the ridge of the trunk then tip it into the grave like a bag of bricks.
Lenise jumps into the hole and removes the rug and unties the string and unfolds the plastic. Jennifer sucks in a breath because it's a shock to see Hank's pale-skinned corpse, gleaming and translucent and too human, slouching there in that humus pit.
"Get the lime," says Lenise.
Jennifer does and they shake it over the body and begin to fill the grave.
"What about his truck?" says Jennifer.
"Give me the address where's he's staying and I'll drop it off once we're done here."
The process of putting the dirt back is quicker than removing it, but it's still hard work. They soldier on and it isn't long before they are on the homeward stretch. When they are nearly there Jennifer stops and stares at the hole.
"Jesus, Lenise. What are we doing?"
"Don't think about it."
"I'm burying my husband."
"I said don't think about."
Jennifer doesn't move.
"Hurry up," says Lenise. "We need to get back to McKenzie before sunrise."
Trying to ignore the blisters on the bridge of her hands, Jennifer forces her shovel into the earth and dumps the contents into the pit then does it all over again.
Soon the quality of the sky alters and the forest stirs and they are done. They change quickly into fresh clothes and bag up the ones they've been wearing for later disposal.
The mound looks too fresh so they cover it with branches and stones and armfuls of cracker-stiff leaves. But it still looks like a grave.
"Over time it will blend in," says Lenise.
"If nobody finds it before then."
"They won't."
They stand under the canopy of the Cypress and stare at the mound.
"We should say a prayer or something."
"He was a bad man, Jenny."
"Not always."
"He was. You just didn't see it."