Spider Bones (5 page)

The exhumed coffin rested on the collapsible gurney on which it had ridden from the graveyard. Though fans did their best, the smell of mildew, moldy wood, and decomposing flesh permeated the small space.

Sugarman removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves. He and I donned gloves, aprons, and goggles. Beasley and Guipone watched from the doorway. Both looked like they’d rather be elsewhere. I hoped I was more discreet.

The old coffin was mahogany, with sculpted corners and a domed top, now collapsed. Both swing bars and most of the hardware were gone. The metal that remained was eroded and discolored.

I made notes and took photos. Then I stepped back.

Sugarman raised both brows. I nodded.

Crossing to the gurney, the big man inserted one end of the crowbar and levered downward. Rotten wood cracked and flew.

Kicking aside splinters, Sugarman heaved again. And again. As fragments detached, I tossed them to the floor.

Finally, sweat rings darkening both armpits, Sugarman laid down his tool.

I stepped close.

Guipone and Beasley moved in beside us.

Breathing hard, Sugarman lifted what remained of the top half of the coffin lid.

Beasley’s hand flew to his mouth.

“Sweet baby Jesus.”

T
HE FUNERAL INDUSTRY CLAIMS ITS PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
protect our dearly departed from the ravages of time. Coffin manufacturers offer vaults, gasket seals, and warranties on the structural integrity of their caskets. Morticians tout the permanence of embalming.

Nothing stops the inevitable.

Following death, aerobic bacteria begin acting on a corpse’s exterior, while their anaerobic brethren set to work in the gut. By excluding the former, airtight coffins may actually accelerate, not retard, action due to the latter. The result is liquefaction and putrefied soup in the box.

A simple wooden coffin, on the other hand, permits air passage, and thus, aerobic sport. The outcome is rapid skeletonization.

With most exhumations it’s anyone’s guess what lies under the hood. Bones? Goo? Some time-hardened combo?

Burned body. Forty years. Compromised box.

With this one I’d had little doubt.

I was right.

The coffin held a skeleton covered with mold and desiccated black muck. Below the pink-white outer crust, the bone surfaces looked dark and mottled.

“Dear God in heaven.” Beasley’s words came through a hand-shielded mouth.

Guipone swallowed audibly.

The remains had been casketed military-style. Though the traditional wool blanket shroud was now gone, rusted safety pins attested to its previous presence.

“May I see the file again?”

Sugarman retrieved a manila folder from the counter and handed it to me. This go-round I skipped the government forms in favor of the mortician’s handwritten account.

“Regrettably, record keeping wasn’t one of my daddy’s strengths.” Sugarman flashed what I’m sure he considered his “regrettable” smile. Probably practiced it in the mirror while knotting his somber black ties. “Such were the days.”

Not everywhere, I thought.

Pvt. John Charles Lowery was killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. (See army forms.) The body was flown from Dover, Delaware, to the Charlotte, North Carolina, airport. On February 18, 1968, accompanied by Plato Lowery, I met and drove the body to Sugarman’s Funeral Home in Lumberton, North Carolina.

At the request of Plato and Harriet Lowery, the deceased was transferred to a privately purchased casket and buried at the Gardens of Faith Cemetery on February 20, 1968 (Plot 9, Row 14, Grave 6). No additional services were requested.

Holland Sugarman
March 12, 1968

Note: Gravestone erected October 4, 1968.

Tossing aside Daddy’s useless report, I began pulling remnants of decaying fabric from the casket and dropping them to the floor. Lining. Padding. Head pillow. Blanket shreds.

Sugarman helped. The sheriff and lieutenant watched mutely.

The smell of rot and mildew heightened.

Within minutes the skeleton lay fully exposed, naked but for its postmortem armor of mold and charred gunk. The skull was in pieces. Every tooth crown was gone. As indicated on ident official Johnson’s diagram, the lower arms and hands and both feet were missing.

I evaluated the remains as best I could for compatibility with John Lowery’s known biological profile.

A faucet dripped. Fluorescents hummed. Beasley and Guipone alternated shifting their feet.

Pelvic shape said the individual was clearly male. A pubic symphyseal face suggested an age range of eighteen to twenty-five. Skull fragmentation made accurate race assessment impossible.

With a gloved finger, I scraped at one cranial fragment. Below the outer crust, the cortical surface was black and flaky. Again, consistent with Johnson’s report of body condition. The deceased had suffered a fiery event, either during or after death.

Besides the safety pins, the coffin contained one inclusion, an empty jelly jar with powder filming the bottom. No burial or dog tags, buttons, belt buckles, or insignia.

I made notes and took photos.

Finally, satisfied I’d missed nothing, I turned to Sugarman. The mortician donned new gloves, and together we maneuvered a blue plastic sheet beneath the bones. Then, gingerly, we lifted and transferred them to the new casket.

We all watched as Sugarman lowered and locked the coffin lid, then positioned the top of the transfer case. I helped twist the metal fasteners that held the thing shut.

Noticing the words
Head
and
Foot
stamped on the aluminum, I thought of the honor guard that would flag-drape the case, and of the respect with which it would be positioned in the plane and hearse.

It was five thirty when I finally washed my hands and signed the transfer paperwork.

We parted under the front portico. I thanked Sugarman. He thanked me. Guipone thanked all of us. If Beasley was appreciative, he kept it to himself.

Heat mirages shimmered above the parking lot. The asphalt felt soft under my sneakers.

Sensing movement, I glanced left. The driver’s door was opening on a blue Ford Ranger five slots down from my Mazda. A tiny alarm sounded, but I kept walking.

A man got out of the pickup and tracked my approach. Though his face was shadowed by the brim of a cap, I recognized the solid body and square shoulders. And the Atlanta Braves tee.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Lowery.” When I was ten feet out. “Too early in the year for such a hot day.”

“Yes, ma’am. “

“Could be a long summer.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Above the coal black eyes, yellow letters double-arced the green silhouette of a landmass.
Korean War Veteran Forever Proud. 1950–1953.

Though it was obvious Lowery had been waiting for me, he said nothing further.

Exhausted, dirty, and sweaty, I longed for soap and shampoo. And dinner. Under ideal conditions, the trip from Lumberton to Charlotte takes two hours. At that time of day I was looking at a minimum of three.

“Have you something to ask me, sir?”

“You gonna tell me what you saw in that coffin?”

“I’m sorry. I’m duty bound to keep my observations confidential for now.”

I thought Lowery would leave. Instead he just stood there. Moments passed, then he nodded tautly, as though arriving at a difficult decision.

“I ain’t much for words. Don’t talk ’less I need to. Don’t talk ’less I know who’s on the other end of what I’m saying.”

The old man wiped both palms on his jeans.

“O’Hare’s using my troubles to get his name in the paper. Guipone’s a moron. The army’s got a dog in the fight. I ain’t a churching man, so I can’t ask the Lord who’s upright and who ain’t. I gotta go with my gut.”

Lowery swallowed. His discomfort was painful to watch.

“I listened to what you said back at the cemetery. To what you said just now. My gut’s telling me I can trust you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’d appreciate you listening to what I got to say.”

“Shall we talk in my car?”

As I wheep-wheeped my door locks and cranked the AC, Lowery retrieved something from the dashboard of his truck. When he dropped into my passenger seat, a wave of cheap cologne and stale sweat rolled my way.

Not pleasant, but it beat the odors I’d just left behind.

Lowery pressed a gilt-edged album to his chest. Eyes fixed on something outside the windshield, he drummed callused thumbs on its red leather cover.

Seconds passed. A full minute.

Finally, he spoke.

“My mama give me a cracker of a name. Plato. You can imagine the jokes.”

“I hear you.” I tapped my chest. “Temperance. People think I’m a movement to reinstate prohibition.”

“So I picked good solid names for my boys.”

“Hard to go wrong with John,” I said, wondering at Lowery’s use of the plural.

“John wasn’t but five when he started collecting spiders. Lined ’em up in jars on his windowsill. Red ones, speckled ones, big hairy black ones. Got so his mama dreaded going into his room.”

I didn’t interrupt.

“Soon’s he could read, John took to borrowing at the mobile library.” The
i
in
mobile
was pronounced as in
spider.
“That’s all he talked about. Spiders this and spiders that. What they ate, where they lived, how they made young ’uns. Librarian got him every book she could lay hands on. I wasn’t working much, couldn’t buy.”

Lowery paused, gaze still on something outside the car, perhaps outside that moment in time.

“Folks took to calling him Spider. Nickname stuck like gum on a shoe. Before long, no one remembered nothing about John. Even his schoolteachers called him Spider.”

Again, Lowery fell silent. I didn’t push.

“Wasn’t just spiders. John loved animals. Brought home all kinda strays. His mama let most of ’em stay.”

Lowery turned toward me but kept his eyes lowered.

“Harriet. She passed five years back. Kidneys finally give out. Harriet was always poorly, even after the transplant.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Spider offered his mama one of his very own kidneys. That’s how generous that boy was.” Lowery’s voice dropped. “Didn’t work out.”

I didn’t interrupt.

“Spider had a twin brother, Thomas. John and Tom. Good, solid names. Tom’s passed, too. Killed on a tractor in two thousand three. Losing both her boys just took the wind out of Harriet’s sails.”

“Grief has consequences not fully understood.”

Lowery’s eyes rose to mine. In them I saw the anguish of resurrected pain.

“You find a jar in that coffin, miss?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

“I put that there.” He paused, perhaps embarrassed, perhaps regretting his disclosure. “Foolishness.” With a tight shake of his head, Lowery turned away. “I went out and caught a spider and tucked it in with my boy.”

“That was a very kind gesture, Mr. Lowery.”

“
My
boy.” Lowery thumped his chest so hard I jumped. “And he was growing into a fine young man.” Lowery’s jaw hardened, relaxed. “That’s why I’m going on like this. I want you to think of Spider as a person when you’re cutting him up.”

“Mr. Lowery, I won’t be the one—”

“His mama kept this.”

When Lowery leaned my way, the cloaked BO was almost overwhelming. Opening the album, he slid it toward me.

Each page held four to six pictures. Black-and-whites with scallopy edges. Baby and school portraits. Three-by-five drugstore prints.

I leafed through the pages, asking about people, places, events. Lowery gave short, often single-word explanations. Christmas of 1954. 1961. 1964. A trip to Myrtle Beach. Harriet. Tom. The house on Red Oak. The trailer at the lake. Each image included a younger version of the boy I’d first seen in Jean Laurier’s desk drawer.

One snapshot showed Plato and a woman I assumed was Harriet.

“Is this your wife?” I asked.

Plato provided uncharacteristic detail. “Harriet had real pretty eyes. One brown, one green as a loblolly pine. Damnedest thing.”

The next Kodak moment caught Spider, Plato, and Harriet on a pier. All wore shorts and light summer shirts. Harriet looked like she’d seen way too much sun and way too little blocker. A stack of creases V’ed into her substantial cleavage.

The second to last picture captured Spider under a balloon arch with a girl in glasses and hair piled high on her head. He wore a boutonniered white jacket. She wore a pink satin formal and wrist corsage. Both looked stiff and uncomfortable.

The album’s last entry was a formal portrait of a baseball team, twelve uniformed boys and two coaches, front row down on one knee, back row standing. A printed date identified the season as 1966–67.

Again, Plato’s answer was unexpectedly long.

“This was took Spider’s senior year, before he went off to the army. He weren’t much for sports, but he give it a shot. Mostly rode the bench. That’s him.”

Lowery jabbed at a kid kneeling in the first row.

I was raising the album when Lowery yanked it sideways.

“Wait.” He held the page out at arm’s length, drew it in, then out again. This time the finger-jab indicated one of the kids standing. “That there’s Spider.”

I understood the source of Lowery’s confusion. Both boys had the same dark hair and eyes, the same heavy brows curving their orbits.

“Wow,” I said. “They could be brothers.”

“Cousins, down through Harriet’s side. Folks used to confuse ’em. ’Cept Spider got the green eyes from his mama. Reggie’s was dark like mine.”

The image was too faded, the faces too small to note the difference.

“Thick as thieves, that pair,” Plato went on. “Reggie’s the one talked Spider into joining the team.”

The old man took back and closed the album. There was another long, long silence before he spoke again.

“My daddy fought in France. I did my duty in Korea. Got three brothers was army, one navy. Their sons all joined up. Not bragging, just stating a fact.”

“That’s admirable, sir.”

“Spider went off to Vietnam, come home in a box.”

Lowery inhaled through his nose. Exhaled. Swallowed.

“I’ve always had faith in the military. Now—”

Abruptly, he reopened the album, yanked out the team photo, and thrust it at me.