Dear diary,
On the morrow, we awake in our creaky bed in the garden of Eden. I check to make sure our parents have not yet escaped from out of their cradle that is endlessly rocking; then I look out the window at our backyard and remark: “The grass is dry, because we haven’t seen rain in ages.”
“Also because of Global Warming,” Tara adds, stretching beside me and then propping herself on an elbow to look outside. “Hey,” she points, “what’s that?”
“What’s what?” I say, scanning the landscape.
“Up there, by the shed near the top of the hill. It looks like a body.”
I now spot what she’s referring to. “My gosh,” I say: “you’re right — that looks just like a human cadaver. What do you think it is?”
“Let’s have a look,” Tara climbs out of the bed covers and pulls on her bathrobe.
I put on my bathrobe as well and follow Tara outside to get a closer look at the mysterious object.
While we’re walking, I say: “Do you think that the being who owns this body that we think we saw is actually dead, or just sleeping?”
“Why would he or she be asleep?” Tara squints at me while walking briskly towards the site. “You think someone just climbed over our fence and decided to take a nap, for no reason, up near the top of our hill, in our backyard, on the prickly dry grass? That doesn’t sound too comfortable to me.”
“I mean, maybe they were drunk,” I say, trying to keep up with Tara’s pace. “Plus we always leave our gate doors open, so they wouldn’t need to climb over the fence…”
“Oh my!” Tara sez, having reached the dead body: “this is definitely a dead body.”
I finally catch up and look down and gasp. “O my gosh, what should we do now?” We both stare, noting that the corpse has androgynous facial features and is clothed in a fashion that’s neither masculine nor feminine. I clutch Tara’s arm and ask, “Do you think it is male or female?”
Tara crouches down close to the cadaver’s face and tilts and moves her head very slowly this way and that, apparently looking for any telltale signs of gender. “Hmm, I don’t know — it’s not easy to say.”
“Should we have a look?” I suggest.
Tara turns fully around and stares at me for a moment. “I just DID look,” she replies.
“No, I mean unbuckle the belt and unzip the zipper on the jeans and…”
Tara stands and slaps her hand on my mouth so that I shush. “Absolutely not. We need to bury this soul, and then notify the authorities of our finding.”
I shrug. “Alright. Let’s go get the shovels.” I turn and begin to head towards our garage, and Tara joins me. As we walk, I add: “I hate to see our morning ruined by investigative interviews and paperwork, but I suppose you’re right.”
We return to the corpse and begin to dig in our backyard: our plan is to make a hole exactly six feet deep, and lengthy enough to allow the dead body to lie comfortably upon its back (we’d rather avoid having to crumple it into the fetal position, to make it fit).
As we are digging, our neighbor Joe opens his French sliding glass door and steps out onto his deck. He is wearing his bathrobe and sipping from a coffee mug.
“Up early?” Joe sez. “Doin’ some landscaping work?”
I stop digging for a moment and stand and turn to Joe, passing my arm over my forehead to wipe the sweat from my brow. “We found a dead body in the yard,” I shout.
“A corpse?” sez Joe.
“Yeah, a fresh one,” I say; then I return to digging.
“Ah,” sez Joe. He sips from his mug and watches for a moment before returning into his house.
After about a quarter of an hour, we’re halfway done digging our hole. Joe now comes back out of his French sliding doors and remarks:
“Hey, did you know that, according to ancient folklore, if you discover a dead body in your yard, it means that you will have more than seven years of bad luck?”
I wait for a moment and look at Tara, to see if she is planning on answering Joe; but she remains silent, so I say:
“No, that’s for mirrors.” And I add: “If you shatter a looking glass, you get seven to ten years of hard time. However, even if the same were true about human cadavers, the curse would not apply to us, cuz we only inherited this body — we weren’t the cause of its death.”
Joe nods. “True, true; I didn’t think of that.” Then he returns back inside.
Eventually the hole is almost the proper size, so Tara and I work out a way of placing the corpse in the ground:
“Listen, here’s what we’ll do,” Tara sez. “I’ll take the body by its boots, and you get your arms underneath its shoulders, while supporting its head against your chest. Move slow, and don’t strain — just holler if you need to stop and rest.”
We follow this plan and lower the deceased into his or her perma-home.
“Now it’s time to shovel all this dirt back in,” sez Tara, gesturing to the pile of soil that we removed from our yard to make the grave.
“Alrighty,” I say.
When we finish, there’s a little mound of earth at the top of the site, roughly the length of a short human body.
“Good job,” Tara sez. “Shall we make breakfast now?”
I nod and we go back into our house.
We make biscuits from scratch, and gravy using vegetable broth. Then we call the police. We tell the cops about the body that we found in the backyard earlier, and they send two officers out to our house to record our account.
“So where’d you say that you buried the body?” sez the taller officer.
“Out back, up near the top of the hill, by the shed,” answers Tara.
The cop writes this down on his mini-notebook.
“And was the corpse a male or a female?”
“We’re not sure,” I say. “The sexual characteristics were uncertain.”
“Uncertain?” the officer repeats. “Then do you mind if I write ‘Not Applicable’ in the blank next to gender?”
“No, that’s fine,” I say, raising my brow to appear more innocent.
“Alright, I think we got all the info that we need,” sez the taller officer. “You folks have a nice day.”
“You too,” I say, as the policemen turn to leave.
“Nice place you got here,” sez the shorter cop, as both officers are stepping out the front door of our house. These are the first words that this shorter cop has said during the entirety of the visit.
“Thanks!” I wave.
This same shorter cop holds the front door open while he adds: “I like the pictures that you have on your walls.”
“Ah, thanks,” I keep waving, and I nod again.
“That big photograph of the deer right over there, and also the painting of the pair of grouses next to the seashell on the beach. Those are my favorites.”
“Oh, that’s good to know,” I say. “I’m not much of a grouse man myself, so I wasn’t sure if the background was intended to be realistic, or if the artwork was supposed to be more of a fantasy romance.”
The shorter cop frowns and shakes his head firmly: “Nah, there’s grouses on the beach,” he sez; then he begins to let the door close. “Goodbye,” he waves cheerfully, and the door finally shuts.
“Well, they were fairly nice,” sez Tara. “That wasn’t too bad.”
“Yeah, they both had a really good bedside manner,” I say with a sigh; “I presumed that there would be a lot more paperwork; but that was merciful. They did an efficient scrutinization.” I check my wristwatch: “Jeez, I might even still have time to think up another line for the song that I’m writing.”
“Let’s hear what you got so far,” smiles Tara.
“OK, it’s only three lines tho — they go like this:
Too-loo-weet! Eez-eet!
Chak-chak! Chow-week!
Cook-a-doo, cook-a-doo, cook-a-doo!
“That’s as far as I got,” I shrug, “before getting distracted by the day’s first event.”
“Sounds good,” sez Tara. Then she smiles brightly and adds: “Hey, I think I just lightbulbed an ending for your stanza.”
“Seriously?” I say, running to fetch my laptop computer that has the songwriter’s software loaded onto it. “Please share,” I say, with my fingers poised over the keyboard.
“Alright, here goes,” Tara clears her voice, “First I’ll sing the part that you already wrote; then I’ll keep going and unveil my suggested conclusion. — So it starts out like so:
Too-loo-weet! Eez-eet!
Chak-chak! Chow-week!
Cook-a-doo, cook-a-doo, cook-a-doo!
After waking in bed,
We dated two cops;
But before all that happened,
Lo: back by the shed
On the grass of our yard
We found a dead body!
I knelt to inspect it
And noted as follows:
It was still damp with blood. Only the head, wings, and legs remained untouched. All other bones had been carefully stripped of flesh. What was left smelt fresh and sweet, like a mash of raw beef and pineapple. It was an appetizing scent, not the least bit rank or fishy. I could have eaten it myself if I had been hungry. [*]
“That’s it,” sez Tara. “What do you think?”
“I love it!” I say, while typing madly to make sure I record all these additional lyrics; “it’s the perfect song for the perfect day.”
[* NOTE. Tara’s part of our song interpolates a quote from The Peregrine by J.A. Baker — it’s from the end of the December 18th entry in Part 3: “The Hunting Life”.]
No comments:
Post a Comment