LITMIR.BIZ

       12

      As the daylight drew to a close, the sun’s rays lengthened and turned the ranchland into a sheet of polished copper. Even peering through shades, Decker had to squint. Men were digging up parched ground, gingerly relocating mounds of pebbled soil. After the first inch, Marge explained, the earth gave way easily, and everyone suspected that there was something down below. She and Oliver had been sifting through the piles of dirt, making sure that nothing significant went unnoticed. So far, the yield was confined to beer bottle caps, soda cans, food wrappers, and cigarette butts.

      “They’ve been collected for evidence,” Marge said. “Should we need to, we can have the cigarettes sent for DNA testing to give us an idea about who’s been out here.”

      Oliver added, “We found the butts below the dirt, so they didn’t ride the wind to the spot. Someone dug this hole for a purpose.”

      “It stinks,” Marge said. “Mostly from horseshit.”

      Decker agreed, although the smell was a tad nostalgic, reminding him of his days as a single man owning a ranch. He wouldn’t want to go back, but the recollection was sweet. His nostrils also picked up skunk spray. He looked upward and saw a fleet of crows overhead. They cawed noisily, bothered by the posse below invading their wide-open space. There were also several raptors circling overhead, the up-tilt of their wings suggesting that they were carrion feeders as opposed to hawks that ate fresh kill.

      Crows ate carrion as well.

      Made him wonder. What did they know that he didn’t?

      The sun had dipped below the hills, crowning them in fiery gold. Dusk was starting to cover the remnants of natural illumination. Marge had set up a half-dozen spots powered by beefed-up truck engines. She’d need them soon, as daylight was becoming a fond memory.

      With nothing better to do than to watch the buzzards, Decker decided to be useful. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, crouched down, and began winnowing through a dirt pile. Though he needed to focus, his mind began to wander as the monotony of the task set in.

      It was Sabbath and he should have been home with Rina, enjoying good food and laughter and company over a bottle of wine. He should have been home with Hannah who was only a year away from college. There was so little time left with her, because his experience dictated that once kids left, they came back different. The love was still there, but the relationship changed irrevocably. They were young adults merging into the fast lane of life.

      Cindy had been financially independent for years, and since she married she was less in Decker’s consciousness. She was Koby’s responsibility, not his. Decker supposed he’d feel the same way once his other children settled down.

      His older stepson, Sammy, was on his way. A sophomore in medical school, he was engaged to one of his classmates, a lovely young girl named Rachel whom he met by happenstance at a busy restaurant. Jacob, the younger stepson, was a neuroscience major at Johns Hopkins with an eye toward graduate school. He was still with his girlfriend, Ilana, the two of them dating steadily for the last two years.

      Hannah Rose was the last stop before his barreling locomotive of child rearing came to an abrupt halt. His and Rina’s only biological child together, Hannah and her march to maturity not only represented that inevitable milestone of empty nesting, but signified the years of their cemented marriage. While he looked forward to calling his time his own, he knew he’d miss her terribly and he’d fret every time he got that nuanced phone call that told him that all wasn’t perfect in her life.

      Just as the stars began to flicker overhead, Wynona Pratt and her band of searchers came in from the field. She spied Decker and brought him up to date, handing him a map of the areas recently combed.

      “We’re going to reconvene tomorrow at nine to go over the last sector. I’ll do the entrances and the exits to the property at that time.” Wynona kicked the ground softly. “If you’re okay with it, I thought I might stick around to see what’s going on.”

      “Grab a set of gloves and help us sieve through the dirt.”

      As the night darkened, Marge turned on the spots, casting hot white light on the dig. The crew worked steadily for the next hour. As the hole grew deeper, it gave off a hint of odor.

      The crows had turned in for the night, but the buzzards still circled.

      The stink, faint at first, grew steadily stronger until everyone could easily discern it as the smell of rot. A garbage dump? In areas this rural, the local trash wasn’t picked up on a once-a-week schedule.

      Another twenty minutes of digging passed until someone held up his shovel and announced that he had hit something hard. As a flurry of people gathered around the spot, another digger proclaimed he had come upon something as well. From that point on, the work was more carefully crafted, going from shovels to trowels in order not to disturb or mangle what lay beneath the ground. The physical positions had shifted from backbreaking spading to knee-straining squatting as the group systematically began to remove dirt.

      The sky had become studded with twinkling lights. Crickets chirped, frogs croaked, and a distant owl hooted. Gnarled trees became frozen inky specters.

      And still vultures flew overhead, bathing in the artificial lights.

      Another hour passed before the ground started yielding its booty. Decker could make out several elongated skulls, large arcing ribs, and multiple femurs.

      A reliquary of bones.

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