Page 14 of Cold, Cold Bones

Spiderwebs clogged each of the shed’s corners and trailed in billows across its sloping ceiling. Brittle leaves and yellowed newspapers lay mounded at the point where the walls met the floor. As outhouses go, this one scored zero for ambience.

I banged the handle of my flashlight against the shed’s exterior. Did it again. No small furry creature skittled out in alarm.

Deep breath, then I stepped up into the privy. Despite the cold, my nose detected a pungent odor. Familiar. Strong.

“No,” a voice in my primitive brain protested.

“Yes,” my olfactory lobe countered.

With growing dread, I inched forward and shined my beam into the heart of the beast.

My stomach went into a tuck.

Over the years, the privy must have served as a depository for trash deemed unsuitable for normal disposal. The mound in the pittopped out at a full six feet below the level of the hole. Protruding from it I could see a toaster, a segment of garden hose, a very badly treated umbrella. The rest of the fill I didn’t want to consider.

The item that I assumed triggered the gut-tuck lay atop the heap, brilliant white in the beam’s small oval dancing along its surface. The object was spherical, its outer surface glossy and crinkly and bearing a logo.

I was staring at the thing when I felt the shed teeter and heard the thud of Slidell’s feet on the floor. The tobacco and sweat smells emanating from his overcoat mingled with those already tainting the air.

I moved sideways. Slidell stepped forward and peered down through the hole.

“Sonofafreakingbitch!”

“I thought you’d say shit.”

“What? The whole world does standup now?”

“Can you reach it?”

“Oh, now thatisfunny.”

Slidell backed out without turning around. I heard him shout a command, then he reappeared at the open door.

“The boy genius is going to find something to reach down in there.”

The boy genius took almost forty minutes. During his absence, I shot pics and recorded notes. Slidell butt-leaned a giant pine, alternating between checking his phone and thumbnailing some intruder troubling his molars.

George returned carrying a long wooden pole capped with a small brass hook.

Flashback. A nun at St. Margaret’s Elementary reaching to lower the upper half of a very large, very old window.

Yep. Weird where your brain takes you at times.

But George hadn’t fully thought his plan through. There was no way the pole would fit into the shed. Believe me, we tried.

Cursing, and flushed so deeply I feared a cardiac episode, Slidell strode to the 4Runner, stripped off the malodorous coat, and openedthe back. After a great deal of furious gophering around, he rejoined us with a small handheld saw.

“Cut the goddam handle!” Thrusting the tool at the boy genius.

Clearly, George wasn’t a do-it-yourself guy. The process took a full seven minutes.

No one made a move.

“Fine. I’ll try to snag the thing,” I said to George, not wanting Slidell’s sweaty bulk with me in the small space. “You provide lighting.”

Looking like I’d told him he was needed at a leper colony, George pulled his Maglite from his belt and stepped into the privy. I followed with the truncated pole.

While George had been away, I’d viewed my new images by spreading each with a thumb and forefinger. When enlarged, they’d shown knotted handles at the top of what I guessed was a plastic pharmacy or grocery bag. My plan was to hook one or both of the loops.