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And some bones have a story to tell.
I was uniquely capable of jobs like this.
Working with the dead was as difficult as you might expect. It took a certain kind of person to do it. For some, it was a family thing. Something they were born to do, like with Gus’s family and their funeral home. George had always known he’d be a funeral director, and although he occasionally regretted it for the long hours and difficult clients, I didn’t think he’d ever sincerely wished to do anything different with his life. Other people, like my best friend Bethany, fell into it, and just knew that was her calling.
I went into deathcare because of Granny. Granny had been a midwife when she was young. And she came from a long line of midwives, too. This was back in Culver’s Hollow, when my mama was still a girl. And before that, even.
Granny said she’d been attending births since before she was old enough to know how those babies got put up inside those women, but no one questioned her young presence in the birthing rooms, so long as she unbraided her hair and loosened any ties on her dresses or laces on her shoes before she entered, as was the custom in the area.
But I grew up a long way from Culver’s Hollow, and a long time from it, too. Appalachia in the 1960s wasn’t much different from Appalachia in the 1860s, but Nashville in the 1990s didn’t have the same cultural paradigms, even if they still ran strong in my family. I couldn’t simply train as a midwife at my granny’s knee, just like loosened apron strings couldn’t “unknot” a laboring woman’s body.
And, at some point, I noticed that people around me had a tendency to die.
My parents had already done it. Daddy died in a drunk driving accident when Mama was pregnant with me, and Mama died of an overdose when I was seven.
When I was in kindergarten, my teacher died of cancer. I didn’t know it until third grade, though, when some kid in my class was going on about someone’s cousin being married to Mrs. Green, who had taught my class, and “didn’t know she had colon cancer until it was too late.” A long-term substitute had come to finish out the rest of the year and, after that first week, none of us even remembered we’d started with Mrs. Green.
Then my pediatrician got into a car wreck. My school bus driver had a heart attack while she was driving the bus. Luckily, one of the older kids knew how to steer the bus safely enough to the side of the road so we didn’t all die.
There was Granny’s bank teller at the credit union she went to every Friday. The checkout lady at the Food Lion we saw every Saturday, the woman who cut my hair and permed Granny’s, and that wasn’t even counting a whole host of Granny’s elderly friends.
Granny got wise to the fact that, between the two of us, we seemed to attract death–or really, dying people. Instead of walking with women through the births of their babies, she started walking with people as they moved onto the next life. And she took me withher whenever she could. Nobody called her a death doula back then, but I always thought she must have inspired the title.
It was only natural that I’d continue her work after she died. And it was only natural, since death followed me seemingly everywhere I went, that I’d start cleaning up after death.
That’s what had led me to the Body Farm, and what had eventually led me here, to this forest, where Chris and I had been helicoptered in this morning.
But since being married to Gus, picking up the pieces after death was finally starting to take a toll. I didn’t want to be out here in the heat, hundreds of miles away from my husband, categorizing bone fragments. I wanted to be with him, discoveringourbones. Watching him scrunch up his nose at the musky scent of the valerian tea I offered him before bed or spending the evening weeding our garden. I wanted to twine our legs together, watching Netflix on the couch, hoping this might be the night it led tochilling.
A few days into the job, I was squatting in a clean spot on the grass outside the unit. The door slammed. I was staring into the grass but saw nothing until two blue-bootied shoes stepped into my field.
“I think our part’s done,” Chris said, peeling off his gloves. His glasses were askew. He was in desperate need of a shower, and there were black circles under his eyes. I had no doubt I looked very much the same. After spending days in a mortuary truck, we’d tagged and sorted and X-rayed every bit of tissue we could identify. I didn’t think I’d looked in a mirror in three days. I certainly hadn’t slept in the lumpy roadside motel bed.
“Thank God. I just want to be home.”
“I’ll drive if you want to share a rental. I’ve been dreading a visit with my parents. Seems like now’s as good a time as any.”
“Sounds perfect. As long as you don’t mind if I fall asleep against the window. I’m exhausted.”
He smiled. “Dec, I’ve known you for how many years? Twelve? I’ll be surprised the day you don’t fall asleep as soon as you get in a car.”
Gus
Voices carried from thefront porch, along with Decca’s keys jingling in the lock. I fisted my hands in anticipation while pacing the kitchen floor.
I hadn’t seen her in days. I was used to seeing her face, listening to her routine in the morning, which started with a multi-step skincare regimen and ended with her tipping her oatmeal pot upside down to let it drain on the dish rack before picking up her ruck sack for a day in the field. I was used to the unpleasantly witchy smell of her indie perfume oil. Frankincense and rose like we used in church, but mixed with something earthy and dark. Even her godawful perfume was starting to grow on me.
Tonight wasthenight. I hoped. I couldn’t take it much longer, being physically separated from my wife. I was ready. I needed to hold her. To start learning her body and all the ways I could get her off. Needed to bury myself inside her and feel her legs squeeze me. I’d finally decided to believe George and Dad and Decca and God, who’d all thought my hesitation was pointless.
I just hoped this dinner was enough of a date night. I hoped I remembered what to do. What if I forgot what a clit looked like? What if I was too rough? What if I came the second I was inside her?
Well, that last one was a given. I’d just have to find other ways to make it up to her while I rebuilt my stamina.
The door squealed on its hinges as Decca stepped in, dropping her bag with a thud and rubbing her eyes. Seeing her was like putting on my reading glasses after not realizing how long my eyes had been burning. A cool balm that soothed a sting.
The man breezing in behind her, laughing at her joke, was not so soothing.
“Hi,” she beamed at me, bubbly and buoyant despite days in the field of a mass casualty event and hours of travel. “It smells amazing. Gus, this is my good friend Chris. We met forever ago when he did his post grad work at the FAC, and now we work together sometimes on DMORT cases. He does teeth.”
