Letter to Belinda (16 page)

“Okay, my crews will be back by about 7 in the morning. Good evening, Ma’am.”

“Yes, good evening to you!”

She stood on the deck and watched as they shut down the generator, and the lights died. They stowed their tools, then headed for their trucks, and left. She waited fifteen, twenty minutes, in case someone forgot something and came back after it. Then she walked up the driveway in the dark to lock her gate. She didn’t want anyone coming in on her unexpectedly. She noted the almost full moon that was coming up in the east, already shedding light across her back yard. Would that be enough light? Probably not, because she wanted to be sure of what she was doing. She got back to her house, and went to the bedroom to change into her work clothes, which she already had laid out. She picked up her work gloves from the utility room, and went out on the deck.

She had already assessed that she was going to need her digging fork, and several of the contractor’s empty five-gallon buckets. But first she needed light.

She went to the contractor’s generator with a flashlight, and saw how to start it up. It started just like a riding mower. She opened the choke, and pressed the start button, and it shattered the silence when it came to life. She adjusted the choke and stabilized the engine, and the flood lights illuminated the entire pool area. Noisy and bright, it caused quite a disturbance. It was a good thing her only neighbor was dead.

She threw the buckets and digging fork into the bottom of the pool, and then climbed down the ladder. She already knew where to dig, because she had been watching. She knew that this area had no pipes, and that the gravel was deep enough to bury the body. She had to move some of the loose reinforcement rods they had laid out, in order to roll up the plastic sheets that covered the gravel. She started digging with the fork, and was horrified to realize that the gravel was packed so tightly that it was going to be very difficult to dig. She climbed out of the pool and got a pick out of her tool shed, and it worked better than the fork, but it was still difficult. Sweat poured off her, as she labored to loosen the gravel, and then hand-load it into the buckets. She toiled frantically for almost an hour, and only had the hole about half-dug, before she stopped. She looked at her watch and realized that there was no need to panic. Though it was tough, she had plenty of time. It was only 10:30.

She climbed out of the hole and went to get a drink of water. She rested on the deck railing and looked into the hole. It would have been a lot easier to let Travis do this, but that wasn’t an option. He was gone to England, and this was
her
project. She had killed him, so it was up to her to clean up her own mess. She was just glad that Travis had told her how to do it, or else she would have done something stupid, and gotten caught. Actually, she wasn’t out of danger yet, was she? Only if everything went as planned! Endowed with a new sense of urgency, she put down her glass, put her gloves back on, and returned to hole.

She toiled for over an hour, digging non-stop at the hard packed gravel. It was amazing that loose gravel could be as hard packed as this was. Now she understood why they used the hydraulic jackhammer to pack the gravel. It made it as hard as concrete. She had tenaciously dug out a roughly five foot long, by three foot wide hole, down all the way to the sandstone bedrock, which was about three feet deep. Then she stood up to look at her work, and to straighten out her sore back. As she caught her breath, she asked herself a strange question:
What’s
a
pretty
gal
like
you,
doing
in
a
place
like
this?
What
got
you
to
this
point?
You
are
out
here
in
the
middle
of
the
night
burying
a
body,
which
you
have
sawed
up
like
a
pile
of
fire
wood,
with
a
CHAINSAW!
You
cut
up
another
human
being
with
a
CHAINSAW!
What
got
you
to
this
point?
Stupidity,
just
plain
and
simple!
Doing
things
that
you
knew
better
than
to
do!
No
self-control.
Apparently
no
morals!
My
God,
you
are
trying
to
raise
your
two
girls
to
do
right,
and
then
you
do
something
like
this?
What
would
you
say
to
them,
if
THEY
had
done
something
this
stupid?
There was no answer to that one. She had herself completely stumped. The only possible answer was, that they could never, never find out about this, or else she would never be able to stop them from doing whatever stupid things
they
decided to do. And knowing them, if they found out about this, they would do something that was totally ‘off the wall’ stupid, just because they knew that she could not say a thing about it. Teens were that way, especially
her
teens. They were quick to jump on anything that smacked of parental hypocrisy!

Oh well. She glanced at her watch. Time to get back to work. And it was time to do the dirty deed of hauling the body. The almost full moon looked down on her accusingly.
The
Man
in
the
Moon
sees
everything,
doesn’t
he?
Good,
bad
or
indifferent,
he
sees
it
all!
What
would
he
say,
if
he
could
talk!
All
the
dirty
deeds
he’s
seen!
Humph!
No
doubt,
he’s
seen
what
I’m
doing
now,
a
thousand
times
or
more!
He’s
seen
millions
of
lovers
falling
in
love!
He’s
seen
it
all!
Well,
he’s
about
to
see
one
more
body
go
into
the
ground!

Reluctantly she climbed out of the hole and headed for the freezer. She stopped on the back porch to gather her courage.
Girl,
just
get
him
under
that
concrete,
and
this
whole
nightmare
will
be
over!
She went to the kitchen to get a roll of black garbage bags. The box said ‘maximum strength, for no messy spills’.
I
certainly
hope
there
are
no
messy
spills,
she thought.

She opened the freezer door, hoping that he was gone, and all she saw were bags of frozen vegetables. She had bought the vegetables and packed them in around the body, to keep someone from seeing the body, if they should look into the freezer. She opened one of the garbage bags and began throwing in bags of peas and carrots, baby limas, chopped turnip greens, broccoli and field peas, until she had it as full as she dared, then started filling another bag with the same vegetables, when an arm appeared. She unceremoniously grabbed the hard frozen arm, pulled it out of the mix and dropped it onto the wooden porch floor. Next she found the head. She tried not to look at it as she picked it up. With her leather work gloves, the head felt no different than a frozen pork shoulder. She put it into one of the bags of vegetables, to keep it cold. Then she saw the severed penis, so small and insignificant, yet the root cause of this entire mess. She threw it into the bag too.

That revealed the torso, the biggest part to be handled. She pulled it loose from the surrounding vegetables and slipped a garbage bag over it, then tested the strength of the garbage bag, by pulling it out of the freezer by it. She positioned herself to pick up the dead weight, and carried it across the porch, down the steps, and threw it into the hole. She climbed down into the hole and lugged the torso into her hole, and positioned it there, still in the garbage bag.
There,
the
biggest
piece
is
in
place!

She returned to the freezer, saw the arm still lying on the porch, and opened another garbage bag to put it in. She dug in the freezer, and found both legs, and the other arm, and put them all into the same bag, and lugged it to the pool as well. She threw it in, then climbed down and lugged it to her hole and placed it. There was plenty of room for the remaining bag. She was climbing out of the pool to get it when the phone rang.

Who
could
that
be
at
this
hour?
She raced to the kitchen to answer it.

“HELLO!” She realized too late that she had answered with an almost fanatical tone.

“Mom, is that you? This is Fay.”

She couldn’t believe it. Her girls
never
called. Why, in God’s Name, were they calling her now?

“What do you want, Fay?” Her voice was still much too intense, and her irate tone scared Fay.

“Mom, are you okay? Did I interrupt something?”

“What? No! What could you possibly interrupt me from doing at one in the morning?”

“I don’t know, it’s just that you sounded . . . I don’t know. I thought you might have a friend over, or something.”

“Me? A friend?”

“Yes, Mom, like a man-friend?”

“No! No, I was just watching TV. A really scary movie!”

“What’s the name of it?”

“I don’t remember!”

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?”

“Chainsaw? Why . . . what do you mean? Why are you calling Fay? Do you need money? Have classes started back yet?”

“No, the classes at Georgia Tech don’t start for another two weeks. No, the reason I called is that, . . . well, I hate to have to tell you this, but we sort of wrecked our car!”

“You ‘sort of’ wrecked your car?”

“Well, totaled it, actually.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“I’m okay. I was driving. But Kay had to go to the hospital. The paramedics said she might have had a concussion, so they sent her there as a precaution.”

“Kay had a concussion? Oh my God! Where are you, Fay?”

“Right now we are at the Regional Hospital in Marrietta. Look, I don’t think it’s bad, but they want to keep Kay overnight for observation. So I thought I had better at least call you to let you know about it.”

“Well yes, of course! So, this hospital is in the town of Marrietta?”

“Yes, just outside of Atlanta.”

“I know how to get there. You stay at the hospital with Kay, and I will be there in three hours.”

“No, Mom. You don’t have to come here, really. She’s okay!”

“If they are keeping her overnight, then she’s not okay! And I want to be there to see for myself! You stay there at the hospital, and I’ll meet you there!”

“It wasn’t our fault, Mom.”

“What?”

“The accident, it was the other guy’s fault. He ran a red light and T-boned us in the intersection. They said he was killed.”

“None of that matters right now. I just want to be sure my two girls are all right. I’ll be there in three hours.”

She hung up and went to change clothes, but then remembered what she was doing before the phone rang. She had to finish what she was doing, before she left for Georgia. Disposing of that body seemed almost petty, compared to what had happened to her daughters. She didn’t know what she would do if something happened to her twins. For the past eighteen years, as the world had been unkind to her, the twins had been her main reason for living. No, she wasn’t a perfect parent, but she had done her best, with what she had to work with, and she loved her twins more than anything. Right now, her only thought was to put this stupid Judge where the sun didn’t shine, and get over to Marietta to see about her girls.

She picked up the remaining bag of parts, and slung it over her shoulder, and headed to the pit. There were several bags of vegetables in the bag with the parts, but that was okay, because there was plenty of room left in the hole. She doddered down the ladder and packed the final bag into the hole, then dumped two buckets of gravel back into the hole over the bags, and worked it down into the nooks and crannies. A third bucket was required to bring the level up with the rest of the bottom of the pool. She stood back and looked at it, and was impressed. No one would suspect that something had been buried there.