Soil (4 page)

“Reason I ask,” the deputy said, “is this one that wandered off is a black dude from Ohio. His family's looking for him. They're worried he might have run up on some trouble down this way. Some folks still think it's a death sentence to send a Yankee black man down South. Ignorant people mostly.”

Mize had a pained, quizzical stare on him. “There's been several parked on the roadside there, fishing out of my field,” he said finally. “I spoke to a few, just to run them off. I didn't detect any accents or see anything that led me to believe they were an Ohio sort. They all sounded like local fools and lurkers.”

The deputy imagined fishing in a bean field and laughed. He exaggerated a bit, hoping it would relieve the tension, but Mize bristled as if he were the subject of ridicule. Shoals studied him. He searched for common ground but felt no kinship, which made that between them all the more exotic.

He wanted to know more. “What all were you growing?” he asked, turning to survey the field.

“A little bit of everything,” Mize said.

“What's all that metalwork?”

“A trellis for watermelons.”

“I'm no farmer, but I know watermelons don't grow up.”

“It was a watermelon tree. I was experimenting with different growing techniques for small-space cultivation.” Mize began describing his alternative methods and biointensive ecologies. It all sounded fairly new-age to Shoals, who believed he was dealing with a recreational drug user. If not a tweeker, then possibly a late acid freak with pickled senses, but most likely just a stoner. Probably if he tromped around a bit on the property he'd turn up a few plants
out among all the scrub, maybe back in the pasture behind the house. He wouldn't go snooping as long as the guy remained civil.

Mize had loosened up a bit talking about his farm, and Shoals thought it safe to pry. “You raising all this just to eat yourself?”

“Yeah, mostly. Some to sell.”

Shoals looked him over, then back at the field. “Looks like you might go hungry this winter.”

“You never know,” Mize replied. “We might all go hungry.”

“Not me. Hell, I got Mickey D's in town. And a freezer full of deer meat at home.”

“Maybe not, if gas prices keep rising. The trucks may decide it's not worth hauling that junk food all the way down to Mississippi. The dominoes fall in elaborate patterns. Next thing you know, the power company can't supply your electricity and your freezer dies. What will you do then, Deputy?”

“Sounds pretty far-fetched.”

“Actually, that's the simplest of scenarios. This little rainy season was a trial run.” The subject's gaze became more focused and intense. Shoals had pushed the right button. “We're just getting warmed up here with all that's about to go down.”

The deputy plucked his chin. “What's about to go down, friend?”

Mize cocked his head, as if sensing the deputy's disbelief. Maybe he never believed that a simple servant of the county had the capacity to imagine large-scale environmental devastation. He gave a halfhearted response, describing the litany of natural cataclysms forming in the atmosphere and oceans. Mankind's demise was closer than anyone believed, he said.

“You sound like one of those global warming conspiracy theorists,” Shoals replied.

“Damn right,” Mize said. “But it's nature's conspiracy, not mine. She's had her fill of us. Look around you, man.”

Shoals gave a smart-ass nod to his left and right and then shrugged. “You never seen a flood? You think just cause it's hot in September? This is Mississippi, man. Surely you know, we specialize in this shit!”

Mize shook his head. “Whether or not you believe it, the earth is warming, the ice caps are melting, the seas are dying. And all the while, mankind is like a child kicking the legs on the table where this house of cards sits. Not that it matters, really, because the sun is growing restless too, of its own accord. One day it will be obvious even to the most fervent deniers. All I can say is, hold on for the ride.”

Shoals was wearing his best grin. “I don't mean to punch holes in your boat, Mr. Mize, but I think you're seeing things through your own troubles. Your situation here probably seems worse than it is. Just cause it's your first time to get flooded don't mean it's the first time there's ever been a flood. Your number just came up is all.”

Some folks couldn't see the forest for the trees. Shoals could tell by Mize's empty glare that he wasn't buying it.

“You ever listen to Hotdog and T-Bone in the morning?” the deputy asked. He guessed from Mize's stubborn silence that he had not. “Well, they had a scientist on just the other morning, fella said there's no more hurricanes on average now than there was a hundred years ago. Said the ocean temperature might've gone up a degree or two overall in the last hundred years. It's all part of a normal pattern, or how'd he put it? ‘Abnormal is normal.' People are just freaking out over the same things people have been freaking out over for thousands of years.”

Mize looked down and shook his head, a big knowing smile like everybody else in the world was such a fool.

“Some'll tell you this whole global warming thing is just a means to promote worldwide government,” Shoals continued. “You think you got trouble with the ice caps, buddy, wait till you got some ayatollah or some damn prime minister from Russia calling all the shots, telling you you can't burn leaves in your backyard or can't flush but every other shit.”

“Look, sir,” said Mize in a superior huff, “you can take your cues from Hotdog, and I'll take mine from nature and the world around me. It's telling me all I need to know, and with all due respect, I don't have time to worry
what anyone else thinks about it. Now, I think I should get back to my work. I wish I could help you today, but I sure can't.”

The deputy shook his head, unruffled. “T-Bone,” he said finally. “He's the smart one. Hotdog is there for comic relief.”

“Sounds just goddamn hilarious. I'll be sure and give them a listen,” said Mize with snide deference. “Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to something. I'll give you a ring if I run into anyone from Ohio.”

Shoals had hoped he could delve a little deeper, but the conversation was obviously going no further. He had a fair sense of the man's disgrace.

“Will you do that?” he said, handing him a business card. “And, hey, sorry to hear about your marriage. And your crops, of course.”

“Thanks,” said Mize with a queer glare.

“Don't mention it,” Shoals said. He stood there a minute, nodding, searching for the final word. “Be damn, I sure didn't expect to run into Mitchell Mize's grandson today.”

With that, he climbed into the Boss and cranked the engine, gave it a few good carbon-spewing revs before retreating down the gravel driveway, screeching out onto the county road, and letting the engine unwind along the highway back to town, wide open to his next curiosity.

5

Some two weeks later and long past midnight, Jay emerged rigid and encumbered from the aluminum toolshed like something out of a science-fiction movie, all clad in dark rubber waist boots, black turtleneck, and gas mask, haloed in a dim red glow. In the grip of his heavy chemical gloves he held a musty brown tarp, which he dragged into the yard and unfurled, shaking out the pits of water and thumping off the slugs. He folded it into a tight square and wedged it down the front of his waders.

Inside the shed, the four-wheeler sat parked in silent collusion. If the deputy returned to investigate, it wouldn't take long to figure out the vehicle did not belong to him. “Where did you get it?” he would ask, and Jay would be forced to confess the ridiculous truth—“It just showed up here, don't know whose it is.”

He'd discovered it in his driveway back in August, before the flood. It was in good shape—a couple of years old, empty rifle mount, a few bungee cords wrapped around the rear rack. The key was in the ignition. He left it overnight to give the rider time to return, and when it hadn't moved the next day, he cranked the vehicle and rode it to the end of the driveway and up and down the road, trying to flush out the owner. Days and weeks passed. No one showed up to claim the vehicle, so he assumed it for himself, his distrust over its presence slowly giving way to his joy in possessing it.

In hindsight, Jay wondered how he'd ever justified keeping the vehicle, or how he would have explained it to Jacob, who would have been out of his mind to ride it. Finders keepers didn't cut it. Putting all the pieces together, it
seemed unlikely that the machine and the body were unrelated. The question was, had it been left by the man in the field, or by the person who killed him?

A new theory surfaced regarding the deputy. Originally Jay had dismissed him as a complete rube, assuming the lawman had been operating on a misguided hunch, or else wanted a piece of the Mize family legacy. But as the picture came clearer into focus, it occurred to him that the deputy's visit might have been a setup. This corpse could just as easily be the deputy's handiwork. Maybe he had not been investigating a missing-person case at all but instead trolling for someone to pin this on. Who better than an outsider with murder in his blood? Once he'd found his mark, all the deputy had to do was dump the body in the owner's field, wait to get the call, or else just wander out when the water got low and make the discovery on his own.

Enlightened by this new wrinkle, Jay convinced himself he had to move the body immediately, this very night. It couldn't wait until morning if he hoped to avoid scrutiny—from traffic on the road, clever Hatcher across the way, rangers in the woods, or helicopters and crop dusters in the sky. Even satellites and unmanned drones observing the earthlings from above. Nothing could be left to chance.

He set off down the gravel driveway against the thrum of crickets and frogs and miserable birds. The red-lens flashlight allowed him to see only a few steps ahead. He'd purchased the light in town at the Army Surplus and Survival, where he made regular supply trips. The proprietor, who had humped up and down Vietnam on recon missions, told him the red beam was shorter than standard white. It didn't affect night vision and made it difficult for enemies to spot in the bush.

Jay used the light to find his way back to the willow, where he climbed inside the boat and untied the rigging. He switched off the light and pushed off into water so black and devoid of reflected light that he could only trust it was there and not some dream substance over which to row. He dipped the racket with delicate strokes, careful to make the tiniest of trickles, a sound impenetrable against the din of midnight. The boat nudged against something in the dark, and he shone his red light to reveal a scaly body floating
facedown. His eyes adjusted. It was only drifting timber. A few strokes later something brushed his arm, a figure looming port side in the water, and he nearly tumbled out of the boat with fright. It was only his drowned tomato vines, planted in high dirt mounds and rising up like gray wraiths crucified on crossed stakes.

Halfway across the flooded field, he pulled down the gas mask and let the scent snag him like a towrope. He waved the red light over the water. There it was, just as he'd left it—half-submerged, broken and putrid in the terrible summer lake. A dozen or more frogs, feasting in a cloud of flies, bounded from the corpse's head as he approached. He pulled up his mask and sat there for a time watching it through the mud-smeared plastic visor, trying to win familiarity, wondering how he would accomplish what he had come to do.

The longer he sat and imagined it, the closer he came to talking himself out of it. He might be inviting more scrutiny, possibly even arrest, by moving the body. If indeed the deputy had planted the corpse here, would he, upon discovering it had disappeared, simply move on, relieved to find his deeds vanished? Or, once convinced of Jay's complicity, would he hone in and press for an investigation? Jay felt hemmed in, outfoxed by this cunning redneck. He'd been so distracted by his own misfortune and abandonment that he failed to see the trap that had been laid for him.

As he sat there appalled, with insects devouring him cell by cell and the rotten stench penetrating his mask, he settled on the only unassailable fact amid the tangle of bitter prospects—no body, no crime.

Jay stepped out into knee-high water, reached deep into his rubber pants, and produced the tarp. He unfolded it with deliberate care, wincing at every deafening crinkle, and spread it full inside the boat. He turned to the corpse, tried to study it with forensic interest. It could have been the black man from Ohio. Something in the remaining shape of the melted wax face. The skin was brown, but so was everything out here in the muck. He abhorred its lipless, skeletal grin. All dignity had been erased from this person and hence from all humanity.

He was unsure what gesture to make toward it, unsure even how to make
his body move in its direction. It was so grotesquely decomposed that he imagined it would fall to pieces in his arms like a slow-cooked stew bird. He tugged at its arm halfheartedly, but it wouldn't budge. He reached deeper for a grip on the torso, but it was snagged on something underneath and wouldn't yank free. He shoved and pried until the corpse wriggled as if it had woken up. A belch of obscene rot surfaced and slithered up under a broken seal beneath the mask. Jay turned and lifted the headgear and puked up his starving insides.

He walked away several steps and removed his gloves, dipped his hands into the water and brought the cool liquid to his face. His throbbing heart stole breath from his lungs. He heaved and thought he'd puke, but instead he burst into tears, a reflexive sobbing beyond his control, just the body performing a necessary function. It wasn't sadness for the dead man. He was too amped on fear and dread to summon the slightest empathy. Perhaps it was only emotional exhaustion or a tragic loneliness and bewilderment. What was he doing here? Would he have taken this same recourse had Sandy still been around? She'd always brought a calm sense of reason to his manic fixations.

And what about Jacob? What example was this for a boy? Would he be down here stowing a rotten corpse into their fishing boat if his son was up the hill, asleep in his bed?

He could find a million reasons not to do this, but then he noticed the subtlest shift of royal blue light on the horizon, the sudden vague outline of trees in the distance, and he was back on task. Night was escaping. Neighbors and scavengers would soon be on the move. One pair of eyes was as good as a thousand. The sun would rise and continue slurping up the lake, exposing the perception of a crime. Someone else had done this, but it belonged undoubtedly now to him.