-3-

When Board walked Sadie down to the parking lot again in the morning, the rain had stopped and even dried up for the most part, and the sky over Coccyx was as bright as it got, and those two brothers/friends had laid their bicycles down and were throwing chunks of cinder block against the body of the dead Asian woman. A birch branch poked up out of her vagina.

“Get away from her!” Board shouted at them. “Go!”

“Calm down…jeesh,” said the boy who’d complimented him on Sadie. He gave the corpse a kick in the side. “She’s dead, seeee?” The other boy spluttered into laughter.

“I said leave her alone!” Board rasped, his heart beating so maniacally that he was feeling light-headed.

“Fuck you,” said the other boy, and he jabbed another branch into the curdled pudding of the woman’s brain.

Board was restraining Sadie with one hand—she was rising up on her hind legs, trying to get to the rank body to sniff it, or the boys to play—when he reached under his jacket and pulled out the .45 with the other. There was already a round in the chamber. He thumbed off the safety, raised the gun into the air, and fired it.

“Christ sakes!” the first boy yelped, scrambling to his bike and jumping aboard. He skidded on the dirt-filmed lot and almost lost his balance as he pedaled away.

“Fucking old homo!” the other fleeing boy yelled over his shoulder.

“Faggot!” the first boy called back.

Sadie had practically gone down on her belly at the explosion of sound, disoriented and terrified. Board didn’t feel much better than she as he slid the pistol back into its holster. It was a heavy, powerful thing—the sidearm of American servicemen through all four World Wars—and his slender wrist had been jolted by the recoil.

He looked up at the camera atop the lamp post. For a moment, he had wondered if his shot into the air might have hit it by mistake. Lucky it hadn’t. Lucky, he supposed.

Board approached the woman, having to drag Sadie back to her feet, soothing her impatiently, his heart still jack hammering. Now with his free hand, he took hold of the protruding birch branch and pulled it out of the woman, then tossing it into the grass. He kicked away a hunk of stone that lay across the woman’s ankle.

Her long black hair, clotted with macerated brain tissue, was still wet from last night’s rain, here in the gently rippling lattice of birch shadows. Flies had been joined by tiny ants. Her slack mask was swarming with thousands of them. In and out of nostrils, across the slab of meat that passed for her tongue. Like smallpox organisms—or soldiers—busy at work.

He hated to leave her this way, but what was he to do? Drag her home, store her in his house until the police could come for her? Bury her nearby in a shallow, temporary grave? He was too old to be digging graves. Too horrified to have her in his house. He didn’t want to touch her at all.

After Sadie had calmed down and concluded her business, he called the local police precinct again and asked for that same officer, Detective Chisel. He told Chisel what he had seen some local kids doing to the body near the old abrasives plant.

“Look, Mr. Board, I told you…we’ll get her, okay? We’re busy down here, ya know? She isn’t the only stiff in this city, in case you couldn’t guess.”

“But children are playing with her!”

“Tell their parents about it, then. It’s not a crime scene; we don’t have to preserve evidence. If she didn’t die of smallpox then there’s no threat of contagion. If it bothers you so much, Mr. Board, don’t go down there. I told you—you shouldn’t be on that property anyway. I could cite you for trespassing, ya know?”

“Sorry,” Board snapped, and hung up the phone.