It wasn’t coupons.
There was a small, yellowed skeleton, blackened in spots. The skull was turned toward me. Some of its teeth were milk teeth. Probably a male, though I was no expert on that. Eight, nine years old. From the forehead to a spot square between the eyes, the skull was cracked like the Liberty Bell. The legs had been sawed off at the knees so that it would fit in the trunk, and the arms were pulled free at the shoulders, twisted from their sockets like chicken wings. Beneath and around the bones were moldering magazines, and I realized that much of the smell was from rotting paper, but that certainly wasn’t the whole of it. The bones were old, however, and most of death’s stench had long left them, and perhaps what I did smell on the bones was not death at all, but mold.
We held our positions for a while, soaking it in. Leonard got one of the newspapers and crunched it over his hand and made a makeshift glove out of it. He got down on his knees and reached inside and picked up one of the arm bones. When he lifted it, it pivoted at the elbow and some of it powdered and fell back in the box. The bones that made up the hand broke loose from the wrist and rattled back into the box, fragmenting pages from one of the old magazines; the fragments wisped and fluttered like a shotgunned bird.
Leonard held the arm bone and looked at it for a while, then carefully put it back. He used the newspaper to get one of the magazines out of there. He dropped it on the floor. Pages came apart and powdered the way part of the bone had powdered.
The magazines had been mostly photographs. A lot of the photographs were still visible. I didn’t like them. They were of children, male and female, in sexual positions with adults and each other. Leonard got out a couple other magazines and put them on the floor. More of the same. They were even some with children and animals.
I looked at them longer than I wanted to, to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing, then I squatted back on my haunches and took a deep breath. The breath was full of rotting paper and that other smell.
Leonard picked up the magazines and returned them to the trunk. He dropped the newspaper he was using as a glove inside and closed the lid of the trunk and put the padlock on it and locked it.
He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants and walked around in a small circle, then went to the desk chair and sat down and turned the little fan on his face. He was breathing as if he had just finished a hard workout.
“Uncle Chester,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”
I don’t know how long we stayed like that, me on my haunches, Leonard in the chair, the fan blowing on his face. Finally, I said, “It may not be like it looks.”
“How can it not be like it looks? This is the key he left me. It goes to the trunk and it’s got what it’s got inside. That skeleton is a kid’s skeleton.”
“I know.”
“And those magazines. That filth… Jesus, was he getting even with me for being gay? Was he telling me he was a sicko, because he thought I was? Or did he get so far gone in the head he thought he had him a real treasure here? That I’d be one happy sonofabitch to have it. What did he do? Get this out now and then, look at the skeleton, the magazines? Jack off?”
“You’re jumping pretty far.”
“I’m jumping where there is to jump. The sick fuck had the gall to criticize me, and he was… Jesus, Hap. You think there are others?”
“I don’t know what to think. But you’ll need to tell the cops.”
“Yeah, they’re so fucking efficient. Jesus, Hap.”
I stood up slowly. “You could just put the trunk back in the hole, you know. He’s done what he’s done, and now he’s beyond punishment and can’t hurt anyone else. You could just go on with things.”
“You don’t mean that?”
“No… Just a small, sad part of me means it.”
“This child needs to be identified. There might be others. Jesus. How long could this have been going on? There might be a whole slew of bodies under the house here. They could have been down there when I came for summers. He’s up here teaching me to tie a fishing fly, reading me a story, tucking me in bed, and underneath our feet, children are rotting.”
“He was sick in the head, Leonard. You know that. It could have just happened recently.”
“That only makes it a little better. Shit, it don’t make it any better… Don’t tell Florida. Not yet.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Christ.”
“Tell you what, Leonard. Let’s put the trunk up for now. Nothing can be changed tonight. Absorb all this best you can. Tomorrow, after Florida leaves, we’ll do what you want to do. Of course, once the police know, it isn’t a secret any longer.”
“Yeah. Help me with the trunk, Hap.”
We put the trunk back. Leonard put a few boards over the hole and we stacked some of the newspapers over that. When we were finished, Leonard said, “Thanks, man.”
“Not at all.”
We washed up and I got that drink of water I’d been wanting. I went back to the bedroom.
Florida had kicked off the sheet again. She lay on her back. Her face was smooth and beautiful, and her lips fluttered slightly. Her breasts and pubic hair caught my attention, but somehow, having seen what I had just seen, I couldn’t hold any sexual interest.
I took off my clothes and eased back in bed and lay on my back and watched the fan go around and around. I listened to the wind in the bottle tree and hoped the souls of the drug dealers were being sucked inside. I wondered if Uncle Chester’s soul had gone in there, the soul of his victim… or victims.
I thought about the trunk and the magazines and I thought about Leonard. The world had certainly come down on him. I thought about the child’s skeleton and what the child had been like when he was alive. Had he been happy before it happened? Thinking of Christmas? Had he been sad? Had he suffered much? Had he known what was happening?
Across the way, in the crack house, I heard someone laugh, then someone said something loud and there was another laugh, then silence.
The shadows changed, broadened. A slice of peach-colored light came through the bars and fell across the bed and made Florida’s skin glow as if it had been dipped in honey. I watched her skin instead of the fan, watched it become bright with light. I rolled over and put my arm around her. Her skin was warm, but I felt cold. I got up and got the sheet and spread it over her and crawled under it and held her again. She rolled against my chest and I kissed her on the forehead.
“Is it morning yet?” she said.
“If you’re a rooster,” I said.
“Umm. I’m not a rooster.”
“I noticed.”
“Your breath stinks.”
“Not yours. It’s sweet as a rose… Of course, it’s growing by the septic tank.”
“You know, you’re my first peckerwood.”
“And how was it?”
“Except for the itty-bitty dick part, great.”
“Nice.”
“I’ll show you nice. In a moment.”
She got out of bed and pulled the sheet off and wrapped it around herself. “I’m going to brush my teeth. Right back. Then you’re going to brush your teeth.”
“Are we going to check for cavities?”
“There’s one cavity I’d like you to look at,” she said, and left the room. I actually began to get the trunk and the body and the magazines off my mind. At least off the front burner.
When she came back, she said, “Leonard’s up. He always get up early?”
“Sometimes.”
“You think we woke him up last night? You know, we were kind of loud.”
“It’s OK. Why don’t you take off the sheet?”
“Teeth.”
I went and brushed then. I heard Leonard in the newspaper room. He seemed to be pacing. The old floorboards squeaked.
When I came back to the bedroom, Florida had taken off the sheet and was lying in bed with an unwrapped rubber on her abdomen, a folded pillow under her ass and her legs spread.