The Bone Yard (21 page)

“Speaking of processing,” Vickery said. “The identification lab in Gainesville hired a new director yesterday. Board-certified forensic anthropologist.”

He named the man. “Oh, I know him,” I said. “He’s good. Almost as good as our Tennessee graduates.” More laughter.

“He called me today,” Vickery continued. “Not surprisingly, he’d like to hit the ground running on this. He suggested you wrap up the excavations here and send the remains to Gainesville for processing.”

“Have they got enough graduate students to handle it all?”

“He says they do.”

“Sounds like a winner to me. Believe it or not, I do actually have a job in Knoxville.”

“Sure you do,” he cracked.

The crime-scene techs and I spent the next three hours packaging skeletal material for shipment to the Gainesville lab for processing the next day. It was nearly midnight by the time we reached the Twilight Motor Court. Eighteen hours had passed since I’d closed the ill-fitting door of bungalow number three in the predawn darkness. If someone had told me at the time that I’d look forward to returning to the musty room and crawling beneath the stained bedspread, I’d have laughed. Yet here I was, eager to lean into the rusty, dribbling excuse for a shower, scrub off the day’s worth of sweat and dust, and then sink into the dank, lumpy mattress.

I left my grimy clothes on the bathroom floor. The floor was dirty, but at least I could
see
the film of dirt on the linoleum and gauge its depth. The nastiness lurking within the shag carpet, on the other hand, was unfathomed . . . and possibly unfathomable.

I reached behind the slimy shower curtain and twisted on the taps all the way. The pipes groaned and clanged, and a trickle of reddish brown emerged from the showerhead. I let the water run while I brushed my teeth at the sink. By the time I’d finished brushing, the shower was running clear, more or less, and lukewarm.

Half the shower curtain’s rings had ripped through the plastic. Carefully, so as not to tear the rest of the curtain loose, I slid the rings along the rod to open the curtain.

The motion of the curtain unleashed an explosion at my feet. I yelled and jumped back just as a four-foot water moccasin—its body as thick as my wrist—thrashed furiously in the tub and then turned and struck at the thin film of plastic between me and him.

I fell back against the sink and then—as the snake reared up, cobralike, and opened its mouth wide—I pulled my legs up onto the counter. “Stu!” I shouted. “Stu! Can you hear me? Stu!”

A minute later, I heard a knocking at my door.

“Stu? Help!”

The knob rattled and the door scraped across the carpet. “Doc? You got a mouse?” I heard a chuckle.

“Stu, have you got your gun?”

“Doc?” The panic in my voice finally registered with him. “What’s wrong? Is somebody else in here?”

“Not unless you count a big cottonmouth,” I said. “It’s here in the bathroom. It’s in the tub at the moment, but I’m thinking it could get out pretty easily. Be careful.”

“Okay, I’m coming that way,” he said. “Exactly where are you?”

“I’m up on top of the sink, where any sane person would be.”

“Don’t move. And make damn sure to let me know if that snake starts over the side of that tub.”

“Trust me, Stu, the whole county’ll know if that snake starts out of the tub.” Moving slowly, I wrapped myself in a towel.

I could hear his breathing as he approached. “All right, I’m getting close to the door. He’s staying put?”

“Yeah, he’s still wiggling around some, but he’s still in the tub.”

Stu’s head ducked quickly around the door and then withdrew, then reappeared more slowly, and he stepped into the doorway. Just as he did, I heard Angie’s voice coming from the doorway of my room. “Hey, guys?”

“We’re in the bathroom,” I called. “Me and Stu and a huge water moccasin.”

Either the news of the snake or the silhouette of the gun in Stu’s hand made a big impression on her, because she exclaimed, “Oh,
Jesus
.” After a moment, she added, “Stu, how good a shot are you with that?”

“Well, I keep qualifying every year,” he answered without looking around, “but they’ve never thrown a pissed-off snake at me on the firing range.”

“I’ve got a shotgun,” she said.

“A shotgun? Where? In the Suburban?”

“In my hand.”

“
What?
What are you doing with a shotgun in your hand?”

“Well, right now, I’d say I’m coming to kill a snake with it. Unless you’d rather take the shot with your sidearm.”

“Hey, be my guest.”

“Okay, here I come.” I heard the unmistakable
click-slide-click
of a shell being racked into the chamber of a pump-action shotgun. “I’m right behind you, Stu. Is your safety on?”

“It is now. Is yours?”

“It is. All right, you want to trade places with me?”

Stu’s head disappeared, and an instant later, Angie’s took its place. She eased through the doorway, the shotgun angling upward across her chest and left shoulder. Slowly she lowered the barrel toward the tub and snugged the butt of the gun against her right shoulder. I heard the slight scrape of the snake’s scales on the bathtub; I heard the deep breaths Angie was taking through flaring nostrils; I heard the metallic click as she released the safety. “Doc, you might want to cover your ears,” she said. Moving almost imperceptibly, she leaned closer to the tub, close enough to see the snake.
“Damn,”
she said, “that is one mean-looking snake.”

Maybe it was the vibration of her voice, or maybe it was a slight movement of the barrel; whatever it was, something triggered the snake again, and as I watched in horror, it whipped around and lashed directly at Angie.

I
was alive, but I was blind. No, actually, I was
not
blind, I realized as the smoke and my mind began to clear and I saw light streaming through the doorway from the bedroom beyond; I was in darkness because the bathroom lightbulb had shattered when Angie had fired the shotgun.

“Talk to me,” I heard Stu calling. “Doc? Angie? Are you okay?”

“I’m all right,” I said. “But I’m not so sure about Angie.” She was slumped against me, her body rotated from the recoil of the shotgun. “The snake was going for her when she pulled the trigger.” Suddenly I had a bad thought. “Stu, watch out. I’m not sure about the snake. It’s too dark and smoky in here for me to see.”

“I’m watching out,” he said.

Angie groaned and stirred. “Wow,” she said. “Remind me not to do that again.”

Stu appeared in the doorway with a flashlight, whose beam—a solid-looking shaft of light in the smoke—darted back and forth from Angie to me to the wreckage of the bathtub. “You all right?”

“I guess,” she said. “Not sure. A place on my right leg hurts. I might be snakebit.”

“Doubtful,” Stu answered. He bent down, and when he straightened up, he was holding a foot-long piece of the snake’s tail. It was the only piece of the snake that the shotgun blast hadn’t shredded. “Angie, one; snake, zero.” He played the light slowly over the tub, which had been reduced to fiberglass splinters, then added, “Bathtub,
minus
one.” He turned and shone the light on the shotgun, which Angie was holding loosely, the barrel pointing at the floor. “That’s a Mossberg 500 tactical, isn’t it.” He wasn’t asking; he was pronouncing. “That thing packs a punch.”

Angie nodded. She stared at the shotgun as if she were staring at a ghost. The peppery odor of gun smoke hung heavy in the air; underneath that scent, subtler but unmistakable, was the metallic tang, the rusty taste, of blood. The taste that would have hung in the air at Kate’s house.

It was true, what Angie had said at Shell’s a few days before. All roads—or at least this road, smelling of blood and brimstone—led to her sister.

It also, I realized, led to my father.

Remember me, remember me, remember me.

Chapter 23

I
did end up getting a shower; the manager of the Twilight—whose anger at the damage done by the shotgun was tempered by his fear of a cottonmouth lawsuit—grudgingly put me in bungalow number two, which was a dead ringer, stain for stain, for number three. But I did not get the several hours of sleep I’d hoped to get.

Instead, I read the next entry from the diary, which Vickery had handed out at the end of the day. I should have known better than to read it so late at night. Like the television documentary about the lost boys of Sudan—the haunting film that had kept me awake the night I’d first arrived in Tallahassee—the diary was the stuff of nightmares. It
would
have been the stuff of nightmares, that is, if I’d been able to sleep after reading it. Surely the boys of the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory and the boys of the Bone Yard had also earned the label “lost.”

Buck wasn’t even over his beating when it happened. He still had scars from the worst of the cuts the strap give him, and he still walked with a limp. But he was getting better.

We were standing up to leave the dining hall after supper last night, and I was right across the table from him. Cockroach come and stood behind him. Looks like you made a mess at your place, Bucky boy, he said. Look at all those crumbs. And you spilt some gravy on the table. Dont you know thatll ruin the damn finish? Nobody had been talking, but the room got dead quiet now. Im sorry sir, Buck said real fast, I didnt mean to make a mess. Ill clean it up right now. He swept the crumbs into the palm of his left hand, then wiped the gravy with his right hand. Cockroach leaned down and stared at the table, then stared at Buck. Does that look clean to you, Bucky-boy? Look at that stain. Buck licked one of his fingers and went to rub the spot. Goddammit boy, Ill teach you to spit on a dining table, Cockroach said. Please, sir, Ill clean it up real good, spic n span. His voice sounded like somebody had a hand around his throat and was starting to squeeze it. Tell me how you want me to clean it. Cockroach didn’t answer, he just kept staring at Buck. He had a mean look in his eyes and a little smile on his face that was scary. Buck started to cry. Do you want me to go get a wet rag and scrub it? Ill put soap on the rag. Ill clean the whole table. Its too late for that, said Cockroach. Please, sir, Buck said. Just let me scrub the table with a clean rag and some soap. Please.

Shut up, said Cockroach. You need a lesson in manners. Buck started to shake, and then I heard a wet, dripping sound. Goddammit, boy, now look what youve done. Youve went and pissed your pants, you little sissy. He looked around the room. The rest of you boys, yall get on back to the dormitory. I went last, and when I looked back, I saw Bucks knees start to buckle, but Cockroach grabbed him by the arm with his one good hand. Dont make me drag you out of here, boy, he said. You stand up straight and you walk, or Ill make you wish you could walk tomorrow. Walk, Buck, I prayed. He did, stumbling along, Cockroach still digging those five fingers of his into Bucks arm.

They didnt head for the shed like I thought they would. Instead he took Buck toward the office, but they didnt go inside. They went around the corner to the back of the building. All the other boys had went inside by now, but I didnt, instead I snuck down toward the office, hiding behind one tree and then another. When I got to the building, I squatted down and looked underneath the floor, through the crawl space. I saw legs, Cockroach and Bucks legs, and a parked car. Then I saw another mans legs step out of the car. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled under the building so I could get close and see what was happening.

I wished I hadnt.

They washed him off with a hose, and then they started talking about doing things, things I knew had happened to some of the other boys. The man with the car said how about if I take him for a little joyride, bring him back later?

I dont care, said Cockroach. Take him wherever you want to. Just get him back before morning.

Come on boy, said the man. Lets go for a ride. He reached down and pulled Buck to his feet. Get in the car.

Wait a minute, said Cockroach. You best put him in the trunk.

No, said Buck. Dont put me in the trunk. Please dont. Cockroach took a step toward him, and then I heard a slap and Buck fell to the ground again. You shut up, faggot. You get in that trunk. And you do whatever this man tells you to do, or youll get a lot worse strapping than what you got before. You hear me? Buck didnt answer, and Cockroachs leg drew back for a kick, but the other man stopped him. He hears you, dont you boy? Dont you? Buck nodded, still crying.

Take him, then, said Cockroach. But boy, remember this. If you say one word about any of this itll be the last thing you ever say. The very last thing.

Then I heard the trunk of the car come open, and the two men lifted Buck off the ground, and I heard the trunk slam shut. The man got into the car and started it up and drove away slowly. Cockroach stood and took a piss in the mud puddle where the hose was still going. I crawled back to the other side of the building and skedaddled back to the dormitory.

It took me a long time to fall asleep. Buck still wasnt back by the time I did. But he was in his bed the next morning when I woke up. There was clean pants at the foot of his bed for him to put on. But there was blood on his sheets and blood on the back of his shorts.

I wish I had a gun. I wish I could kill Cockroach.

Chapter 24

I
t was still dark when we left the Twilight at 5:45
A.M
. We were waiting at the door of the Waffle Iron at six when the dead bolt snicked open and a waitress let us in. She looked tired, as if she were just finishing a busy shift rather than just starting one. She probably thought the same about me. We snagged half a dozen sausage-and-egg biscuits to go and ate in the car as we took the blacktop out toward the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory. The biscuits were hot and flaky, with a golden crust that still retained a bit of crunch. My lap was soon covered with crumbs, but I knew that before long, biscuit crumbs would be the least objectionable contaminants on my clothing.

T
he buzz of Angie’s cell phone woke me during the morning’s briefing. Between my lack of sleep and the steady hum of the printer in the command post, I’d barely sat down before nodding off.

Angie stepped outside to take the call. Through the window, I saw her pull out a small notepad and make notes as she cradled the phone between her shoulder and her ear.

Stevenson had dug up an old newspaper account of the fire at the school, which he handed out. According to the story, the fire began in the school’s main building—the structure housing classrooms, administrative offices, and sleeping quarters for the staff—and quickly spread, as embers were carried aloft by the heat and the wind, to the boys’ dormitory, the chapel, and the outbuildings. Spared from the flames, by virtue of being upwind, were the school’s Negro facilities.

The story named the guard and the nine boys who’d died in the fire—three of whom, Hatfield had told Vickery, were buried in the school’s pipe-cross cemetery because no one had claimed their bodies. So the crosses, apparently, marked “acceptable” deaths, accidents and illnesses for which the school and its staff would probably not be held accountable in any serious way; the Bone Yard, on the other hand, was the closet in which the school’s dark skeletons had been carefully hidden.

When Angie stepped back into the command post, she caught Vickery’s eye and gave him a look that indicated she’d just heard something interesting. He pointed at her with his cigar. “What’s up?”

“Two things,” she said. “I just got a call from Steve Hobbs, in Latent Prints. Steve examined the note that was on our windshield last week. The one that said, ‘Find the Bone Yard.’ Steve treated the note with ninhydrin and got some prints off the paper.”

I raised my hand like a student in class. “Let me guess. They were mine.”

“Some of them,” she said. “Not
all
of them. He ran them through AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. And he got a hit. A really interesting hit.”

“Define ‘interesting,’ ” said Vickery.

“They matched a guy named Anthony Delozier,” she said. “White male, age fifty-nine. Been in and out of prison his whole life. Most recently at the Florida State Penitentiary, in Starke, for aggravated armed robbery.”

“So if he’s locked away in Starke,” asked Whitney, “how’d he put the note on your windshield?”

“He was released three months ago.”

“That
is
interesting,” Vickery agreed.

“Here’s the most interesting part,” Angie went on. “Forty-six years ago, at age thirteen, he was sent to the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory for truancy.” As she said it, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

“Where’s he now?” asked Vickery.

“Havana.”

“Cuba?”

“Florida.”

“That’s a lot closer. Smaller, too.” Vickery assigned one of the agents to track down Delozier; meanwhile, Angie pulled a stack of pages from the copier and began passing out handouts.

“Flo, in Documents, just sent us the last of the diary,” she went on. “She thinks it sheds light on the fire that burned down the school in 1967.”

Skeeter, I cant stand it no more, Buck said. He didnt look at me. I just cant stand it no more. Still not looking at me. If I dont get out of here Ill be dead in a month.

It scared me, him talking like that. Partly it scared me because escaping was hard and dangerous. There wasnt a fence around the school, at least not a fence you could see. But sometimes its the fences you cant see thats the hardest to scale. In six months only two boys had tried to get away. One of them come back missing an eye and the other one come back dead. They said he drowned trying to swim across the river, but Id seen that boy swim, and he was part fish. He never drowned. Not unless somebody helped him do it.

But I knew it was true, what Buck said. If he didnt get away he would be dead soon. That was the part that scared me worse, the truth of it. When I went to regular school I saw how teachers picked out some kids as the smart kids and some kids as the dumb kids, and some kids as the good kids and some kids as the bad kids. Once a teacher decided what kind of kid you were, all the other teachers treated you that way from then on. Like you had a big sign on your back saying smart or dumb or good or bad. Same thing in here, only nobodys sign said good or smart. They just said bad or worse or worst. For some reason Bucks sign said worst. I dont know if that meant Buck was the worst or his punishment was worst. Both I guess. No matter what he did hed get singled out and taken down.

Here, I told Buck, take this. I handed him the compass I wore around my neck. You might need it to find your way.

Find my way where, he said. I don’t know where to go.

Anywhere but here, I told him. Pick a direction, any direction, and just keep going.

That was yesterday.

When I woke up today, Buck was gone.

I was glad, but I was also scared for him. Hoping he’d make it. Afraid he wouldn’t.

I was taking out the infirmary trash today when Cockroach called to me from across the yard. Come on over here, boy, he said, I need you to haul something to the dump.

Will it fit in this trash can, I said. Its only about half full.

Hell no it wont fit in that trash can, he said. Set that down by that tree there, I need you to come do this first.

Yessir, I said, putting down the can. What is it?

Youll see soon enough, he said. Come on.

He started walking toward the beating shed. I had a bad feeling in my stomach, like a buzzards claw was wrapped around it and was squeezing. Mr. Cochran, sir, am I in some kind of trouble, I said. He turned and looked at me, his eyes squinting narrow the way they do when hes thinking about getting mad. Not yet, he said, but you are fixing to be if you dont hurry up and do what I say. Yessir, I said. Im coming right now.

I followed him into the shed.

It smelled real bad in there, like puke and sweat and piss and shit and rotten meat all mixed together. It smelled like something had died in there.

With his one hand, he pointed to the iron bed beside the far wall. Get that mattress off that bed, he said. It’s a mess. Haul that down to the dump, then come on back up here.

Yessir, I said, and went to get the mattress. It was covered with blood, spatters of blood all over it, and then a big dark spot in the middle, where it looked like a puddle of blood had soaked into the mattress. It was still wet and shiny. I said, what happened, sir? A boy asked me too many damn questions, he said. Now get that out of here before I make you lie down on it and take a strapping.

I grabbed the foot of the mattress by one corner and pulled it off the frame and dragged it across the floor toward the door. Well, shit, said Cockroach. I looked around and saw that the mattress had left a smear of blood on the floor where I had dragged it. There was blood under the middle of the bed, to, where it had soaked clear through the mattress and dripped on the floor. Im sorry, sir, I didnt mean to make a mess, I said. I thought sure Id get a hiding now.

But he let me keep dragging the mattress across the floor and on out the door. I had just got down the steps when he stepped outside. Wait a minute, he said. I held my breath. That things liable to attract all sorts of varmints. Buzzards and rats and what-all. Youd best burn it. You ever burned brush or trash before, boy? Yessir, I said. You ever used gasoline to do it? Yessir, I said. Alright. Heres some matches. Theres some gas over in the tractor shed by the lawn mower. Its in a gallon glass jug. Use some of that to get it started. Dont use much, just about a cup of it. Be sure you cap that jug and set it way off from the mattress before you strike that match. Strike the match and throw it while its still flaring. You dont want to be leaning over that mattress when the gasoline catches fire or youll burn up. Understand?

Yessir, I said, Ill be careful.

I drug the mattress down to the dump, just like I had the other one. It was heavier than that first one, because of all the blood that was in it. I laid it on top of the burn pile and went back to get the gas. The glass jug was nearly full, and it looked just like apple cider, so I unscrewed the cap to make sure it was gasoline. The smell nearly knocked me down when I took a sniff. The day was hot and I could see the fumes swirling up out of the neck of the jug and into the air, like smoke only it was clear. I took the jug down to the dump and poured gas onto the mattress, trickling it all around the edges and then pouring more onto the bloodiest spots. I didnt pour out but about a cup, on account of Cockroach had warned me not to use much.

Then I screwed the cap on tight and set the jug way over behind a pine tree before taking the box of matches out of my pocket. I could see fumes swirling up from the mattress, making the air shimmer. I lit a match and held it while it flared, then threw it at the mattress. But it went out before it ever got there. I tried another one, and this time I threw it as soon as I drug it across the box. But I was nervous, so I didnt press hard enough, and the match just flew through the air without lighting and plopped onto the mattress and lay there. The third time I pressed harder. I heard the match scraping as I drug it across the sandpaper and flung it away from me, then I heard it sputter as it started to catch. It flared up in midair with a bright flame, and even before it hit the mattress there was a whoosh and a wall of heat hit me in the face and knocked me back. I think maybe it burned my eyebrows and eyelashes some, but I wasnt hurt, just surprised that so much heat could come from so little gasoline.

As the mattress burned, I thought about Buck laying there bleeding to death, and it made me sad. Then I thought about Cockroach beating him, and it made me mad. I wished that Cockroach was the one on the mattress, not Buck. And thats when I got the idea. I thought about it the whole time I watched the mattress burn.

I poked around the edges of the dump and pretty soon I found an empty bottle. Jack Daniels Tennessee Sipping Whiskey. There was a few drops left in the bottom of the bottle, and it was the same color as the gasoline, but it smelled different. Apple cider, gasoline, whiskey. Hard to tell them apart by looking. Easy by smelling.

I wedged the empty whiskey bottle down between some big roots then brought the jug of gas over and started pouring, I had to pour real slow because the mouth of the whiskey bottle was a lot smaller than the mouth of the jug. But I didn’t spill much, and pretty soon the bottle was full up to the bottom of the neck. The gallon jug was about half empty now, I hoped Cockroach wouldnt check to see how much Id used. I capped both bottles and headed back from the dump. I started worrying about how I could hide the whiskey bottle. So I took off my t-shirt and held it in my hand so it hung down and hid the bottle. Up close, you could tell I was hiding something, but if somebody just saw me from across the yard Id probly be okay.

Just as I got to the tractor shed, Cockroach yelled at me from across the yard. Hey, boy. I set down the jug and hid the whiskey bottle and my shirt behind a post. Let me see that jug. I held it up for him. Bring it on over here. I walked across the yard with it. Shit fire, boy, did you pour half a gallon of gasoline on that mattress after I told you not to use much?

Nossir, I said. The jug tipped over and some of the gas spilled before I could catch it. Im sorry, sir. I didnt mean to spill any. I didnt use too much, I did just like you said. Just enough to make that mattress burn good.

He looked at me like he was trying to decide whether to believe me. Wheres your shirt, boy? Did you burn that up?

Nossir. It was hot with that fire, so I took it off. I just laid it down over there in the shed. Ill get it when I put this gasoline back where it goes.

He frowned at me. You was best friends with that boy run off last night, wasn’t you?

You mean Buck, sir? We got along okay.

You a faggot too, boy? He licked his lips when he said it, and I felt the buzzard claw grab my stomach again.

Nossir, Im not a faggot.

You look like a faggot to me, boy. Maybe we need to find out if your telling me a lie.

Nossir, I said, I wouldnt lie to you, Mr. Cochran.

He didnt say anything for a while. Just kept looking at me. Alright, go on now. Its almost dinner time.

Yessir, thank you sir, I said. Ill just put this back and get my shirt and go get cleaned up for dinner.

I took the glass jug back to the shed and set it down beside the lawn mower. Cockroach had walked away, so I picked up the whiskey bottle of gasoline and covered it with my shirt again. Then I walked back to the dorm. But first I stopped at the chapel to pray. Please god, I prayed, help me kill Cockroach. Then I hid the whiskey bottle behind the radiator.

Does god answer prayers? He never has answered any of mine before.

Put wings to your prayer, the preacher said in chapel last Sunday. What that means, he said, is work to make them come true.