Brendan DuBois - Dead of Night

I grabbed the shovel and went back into the hole, feeling emboldened now. I didn’t know who I was going to uncover, what I would find or how I would react, but Miriam was there, Miriam had prepped me. It would be all right. I carried on digging, the stench now trying to overpower the peppermint still wafting through my nostrils, and then I winced and my stomach heaved as the shovel struck something soft and yielding.

Now Peter was there, saying, ‘Hold on, try this,’ as he passed down a long-handled spade. Everyone was clustered around the hole, blocking most of the light, but I didn’t care. I was the center of attention, I was doing something real, doing more than just record words or images, and I kept those thoughts in the forefront of my mind as I moved the spade around carefully, scraping away more of the dirt. I silently said a prayer for whoever I was uncovering, and I pledged the pledge of the young and innocent, that I would help make the guilty pay for what they had done to the people in this little farmhouse.

‘I’ve got a head here,’ I said. ‘Give me some more light, please.’

The crew backed away and I felt an irrational sense of accomplishment, because they were doing as I requested. I worked on as painstakingly as I could, uncovering the eyes, the long heavy nose, the rest of the short-bearded face, and—

I said something loud, dropped the spade and recoiled, trying to get out of the hole. I fell back into the mud. The crew clustered around, looking at what I had uncovered as Peter grinned down at me.

‘Congrats, Sammy,’ he said in a sarcastic tone that I didn’t like. ‘You’ve dug up a bloody cow.’

We made our camp that night in the dirt turnaround in front of the burned-out farmhouse. By the time we had gotten out of that muddy field and had cleaned up and established what was really there—two dead cows and a calf—dusk had come, chilling the air. Charlie told us it was too dangerous to ride back to the motel and we were too tired to complain that much. Sanjay said, ‘I thought this area had been pacified,’ but Charlie, who was cleaning his weapon on the hood of one of the Land Cruisers, replied, ‘Daylight you can pretend all you want about how safe things are out here, but I don’t like the dark. We start out now, we’ll be in darkness in less than five minutes, going back with headlights and tail lights bright and shiny, telling the world our business. Sorry, Sanjay, that ain’t gonna happen.’

So we moved the vehicles around so that they were in a triangular formation, to provide some semblance of protection, and the tents and mattresses and sleeping bags were brought out. Nobody suggested spending the night inside the farmhouse or the bam, and I didn’t find that surprising. While we were unpacking one of the Land Cruisers, Peter leaned in and said, ‘We could have had proper beds and hot water tonight if it hadn’t been for you and your bloody dead cows.’ I pretended not to hear him and took out a bundle of aluminum tent poles.

The tents were set up near the Land Cruisers and dinner was a quiet affair, with Peter muttering about how bloody unfair it was to have to cook supper when he had been digging out three stinking cows just a few hours earlier. His attitude was reflected in the food: sticky pasta and lukewarm tomato sauce, eaten off metal plates. I sat by myself, leaning up against one of the Land Cruiser’s tires, exhausted. My back ached, my wrists throbbed and it hurt even to move my fingers. A small fire was set up in the middle of our little camp, and Charlie was in charge of it tonight, making sure it didn’t get too large, too bright. It was nothing like the cheerful blaze we’d had the night before in the motel parking lot. It was a tentative, frightened fire that didn’t do much except light up the immediate surroundings.

Jean-Paul broke away from the group, came over to me and sat down. He passed me a small metal cup and I sipped it, and started coughing. ‘What the—’

‘Some cognac, that is all,’ he said. His voice had a touch of humor in it. ‘Everyone gets some cognac tonight, no matter what the High Commissioner thinks about consuming alcohol while we are working. We worked pretty hard today, especially you.’

‘Thanks—I think.’

‘What do you mean, “think”?’

‘I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic, that’s all,’ I said. ‘Peter and the rest of the team look like they’d get me on the next airplane to Toronto if they had their choice. All that work this afternoon, over three dead cows. And to top it off we get to spend the night here, instead of at the motel.’

Jean-Paul said, ‘We had no way of knowing what was in that gravesite. We would have been remiss to drive away and leave it. And don’t be so sure that we would have gone back to the motel. Charlie might not have allowed it. So we were doing our job here today, and doing it well. You have no reason to feel bad. Tomorrow we will keep on working.’

‘Site A, am I right?’

I could sense his shoulders shrug. ‘Among other things. We will look for Site A, sure, but we will do other work as well. We should not flit from village to village, town to town, without having better information. And the information we have about Site A is nearly nil. But unfortunately there is plenty of work to be done up here. Just be grateful we are not down south in Manhattan, eh?’

I shivered, thinking of what had happened there. ‘You’re right. I’m glad I’m not in Manhattan.’

‘So true,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘It is so bad down south that it is said you can smell the bodies from many kilometers away, even before you get to the new Ground Zero. Be thankful you are here. At least the air is clean, for the most part.’

I finished off the cup of cognac and passed it back to Jean-Paul. ‘Thanks.’

‘You are so very welcome.’

Sleeping arrangements that night were standard, as when we’d camped out before. Miriam and Karen shared a tent, while Sanjay and I shared another one. Peter and Jean-Paul shared the third one, while Charlie made do on his own, like he always did. As far as tent-mates went, Sanjay was all right. He didn’t snore, though sometimes his legs did kick around a bit as if he was restless at night—dreaming, I guess, about far-off India or nearby Karen. He had an irritating habit of getting up early, murmuring to himself and then getting dressed in his sleeping bag before barreling out of the tent as though he was late for a train. But tonight we both crawled into our sleeping bags and murmured a ‘good night’ to each other without saying much else. I curled up on my side on the thin mattress pad and tried to sleep, still wearing my pants and shirt and socks. The sleeping bag was clammy and cold, and I curled up, trying to warm myself, knowing that the darkness was out there, like it always was.

But I was too tired to sleep. My body ached and my back and my hands and my neck were stiff. All I could see in my mind was the face of that poor dumb cow, slaughtered for who knew what reason, and then probably buried by some kind neighbors who were tired of seeing the bloated bodies slowly decompose in the field. As for the people who lived here, who knew? Perhaps the documentation work that I had done today would end up helping some family in some other country, looking through the pictures of the house and the clothing, to determine what had happened to their loved ones.

I turned over in my bag, stared at the blank tent wall. I blinked my eyes and tried to think of back home, safe and cool Toronto, tried to think of something that would soothe my mind and ease me into sleep, but that didn’t work either. I wanted to think about the Star and my buds there and the night life on the weekends and clubbing in the John Richmond district. But instead Father barreled into my thoughts, and in my mind’s eye I saw the red face, the white handlebar mustache and gray-stubbled head, and heard the comment, always the same comment: ‘Screwed up again, eh, boy? Not going far in this world if you keep screwin’ up like that.’ Good old Father, who had wanted his son to join the family business—the Canadian military—but the boy had disappointed him by entering journalism instead.