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Dink was stuffed into that barrel real horrible — his feet were even up with his face as if they had been shoved in there after the rest of him, and his face was rolled over on one side.

“Pete,” I said, all quavery and sick inside, “let’s get out of here.”

He saw the wisdom of that and we lit out of there. Too scared to pass the house again (it looked the most ominous thing in the world now) we went the other way, went clear across the breadth of the farm and took the long way around back to town. We found the sheriff up on Dooley’s porch with the men. Pete hailed him down and we walked a little ways into the shadows.

“Sheriff, we’ve found something of interest,” said Pete. The sheriff looked at him kind of skeptical.

“Of powerful interest,” I said, and he looked at me too. He was a big man. He had on a slouch hat, the brim hung low over his face.

“Such as what?” he asked.

“A dead body,” said Pete.

The sheriff never said another word, but he put his hands on both our backs and began pushing us along in the direction we’d come, doubtless taking for granted the body was that of Eddie Larsen, never even asking of us who, just pushing us on through that dark.

When we got up to the Mattick place he said, “Here?”

“In the shed,” Pete said.

“In the shed?” the sheriff asked, incredulous.

“Yes sir,” Pete said. “Tucked into the barrel there.”

The sheriff headed for the shed. I liked the way he walked; he didn’t care if he made noise or not. The one light was still on in the house, but Mattick didn’t come out. The sheriff went into the shed and made for the barrel and had him a good look. Then he swore and said,

“That ain’t Eddie Larsen — that’s Dink O’Day.”

“He buried an empty box, Mattick did,” I said.

That seemed to make the sheriff real sore and he headed right off for the house. While we were walking across the yard, Mattick opened the door and stood there in the lighted doorway. I guess that for a second he didn’t know who it was because he said out,

“Is that you, doctor?”

Then the sheriff, still walking, in powerful motion now, sure and steady and resolute, said, “What do you need a doctor for, Jack?” Then he was on the porch, in the light, facing Mattick, bigger than Mattick, and stronger, and with the badge, the authority; so when Mattick saw the shed door hanging open and he tried to break away he never had a chance, the sheriff moving — countermoving — with him and catching him by the arm and throwing him against the wall. Mattick gave the sheriff a fierce look like a caught animal.

“Dink died of a fit, eh?” the sheriff said. “Maybe from your fit, eh?” he said taking Mattick by the shoulders and pulling him away from the wall and then throwing him back against it again.

“Lay off, Rice,” Mattick muttered.

Then the sheriff collared him good and led him off while Pete and me followed behind and Pete said:

“I’ve got it half figured in my mind.”

But I couldn’t figure it nohow and when it was all told then Pete confessed that it had been too complicated even for him to have totally figured.

What it was was this, as we heard Mattick tell it in the jail to the sheriff and all the others:

Mattick had caught Eddie Larsen in his shed trying to steal some cider and had lit out after him with a rifle. He shot him down and killed him. Then he’d sent Dink over to that doctor in Little Village, the other side of the marsh, and sold the doctor the body (the doctor was known to rob graves to get cadavers to do research on). Then Dink started getting frisky about it and tried to squeeze a little money out of Mattick and that had set off Mattick’s fierce temper and he had choked Dink to death and then on the day of the funeral he decided he might as well sell Dink’s remains to the doctor too, and so that was why he had planted the empty box. He’d been waiting for the doctor to come that night when we were there.

After it was all said and Mattick was locked up, the men took Pete and me over to the Dooley House for a sarsparilla drink. It was then that Eddie Larsen’s father (after vowing to skin that doctor) said,

“It has just occurred to me, gentlemen, we all owe Jimmy Grover an apology.”

“Wherever he is,” somebody said.

“I know where he is,” piped up Pete.

“Where?” old Larsen said.

“Well,” said Pete, “I’ll tell you, but it seems to me the last thing I heard you say regarding Jimmy Grover was that you was giving two hundred dollars for him.”

When everybody finished laughing at the one we had on him, old Larsen said,

“Well, boy, I had offered that money to see a man hanged. It’ll do my heart better to see him not hanged; so the money is still good.”

Then the fastest thing anybody in Capstone ever did see was Pete and me rush out of there to fetch Jimmy from that loft and bring him back to respectable society.

Bodies Just Won’t Stay Put

by Tom MacPherson

This story might well have been titled, The Green-Thumb Burials, or The Case of The Well-cared-for Lawn. Those of you who must mow lawns — and your number is legion — will surely see the relationship between this arduous sport and murder.

This will be the last season that Dorothy goads me into turning over the back lawn. I’ve lost count of how many successive Septembers she has gotten me to sow new lawns, back or front or both. Each fall I gripe that it’s me we’re killing, not the crabgrass. It was inevitable that one day I’d realize that her gardening would kill me if I didn’t kill her first. So this year we will turn over the back lawn again, but when I seed it, Dorothy will be lying underneath.

My twist to this familiar plan is so foolproof that I’m sorry I didn’t think of it one, two, five years ago. Each year Dorothy nags until I agree to hire old Krajewski to bring in his rotary plow and turn over either or both lawns. Then, while she spends the next four days at the flower show in Newark, I spread fertilizer and seed, and water every four hours. This September I’ll help her pack her bags, then just before she leaves I’ll rap her over the head. I will dig a trench in the newly turned-over lawn, put her in, then the next morning I’ll do my seeding. The quick germinating ryegrass in the seed mixture will sprout within three days. By the fifth day, when I will have to report her missing because she didn’t return from the flower show, the lawn will have a uniform stand of young grass.

Old Krajewski turned over the back lawn just before supper. We knew he’d do it late, for he forces himself to give his truck farm a full day’s work before he hires out for odd jobs. By the time he had it raked smooth it was getting dark.

After supper I carried Dorothy’s bags out to the garage and put them in the car. I didn’t back the car out; instead I abused the starter while alternately flipping the ignition key off and on, off and on. As I knew she would, Dorothy got impatient waiting on the driveway.

“Oh, Miller,” she snapped, “you flooded it.”

As I slipped out of the driver’s seat, I heard her clacking into the garage, her hard-hitting heels spelling out her exasperation. It was now 7:31. I knew Marion Gorton would have sprinted to her kitchen window, for the ninety seconds duration of the first commercial on Wagon Train. She would have heard me working away at the starter, and most likely she had seen Dorothy make her bad-tempered entrance into the garage.

I moved around the front of the car to open the door on Dorothy’s side. As she stooped to climb in, I hit her one solid crack with the oscillating sprinkler. It wasn’t through a diabolical sense of revenge that I used the sprinkler; it just happened to be handy, hanging on the exposed 2x4 studs. Dorothy went down soundlessly, and I slammed the car door shut.