I walk home across Byrd Park where dog used to retrieve Frisbee, ball, stick, anything, until she got too old. I imagine, if she were here, I’d talk it over with her. She’d agree, I imagine, that I can’t just let this thing go. She had a highly developed sense of fair play and a good heart. Concern for the law, not so much: no dogs are allowed in Byrd Park. The signs are everywhere, right next to the ones fantasizing about the speed limits. A few blocks away is a drug-free zone, in case you’re in the market.
By the time I get home, I’m pissed off. Nothing to go on? Why isn’t a dead man enough to go on? Anger seems to take the edge off the grief.
I sit in front of my computer and try to write for a couple of hours with a negative word count of 325. I quit while I’m behind. I call a former crime reporter I’m friendly with. He was recently downsized in the local newspaper’s successful attempt to make itself even more fluffy and irrelevant than before, while retaining its essential reactionary character, a task I would’ve thought impossible. I ask him if he can find out what the autopsy turns up. He calls the dead man “Juan Doe.” Ha-ha. He’s kind of a macho jerk, but a good reporter.
He calls back Friday evening. Usually dog and I would be out walking. I’m just sitting around thinking about that. My wife’s upstairs in bed, crying or sleeping.
He tells me about the dead man: “Crushed by something big, probably a tree, causing massive trauma. He was dead before he went in the water. Accidental death. The tree did it. Case closed.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“The wheels of justice, my friend.”
“How did he get in the water, when he was pinned under a tree with massive trauma?”
“Undetermined. The river did it. But he died on dry land, and he died slow. Somewhere between forty-five minutes and ninety minutes between trauma and death. He bled out. Within twenty-four hours of when you found him, probably less.”
“The river level hasn’t changed in a week.”
“Nobody wants this one. It’s got a bad smell to it. This way it goes away. Another illegal dies in a work-related accident. Tough break. Adios.”
Sunday morning I’m back at Texas Beach. Dog and I used to go upriver from here all the time. About a half-mile up, the outflow from the canal cuts off easy passage. The rocks are slippery as hell, so you can either trespass on the railroad tracks or wade in the shallows. It’s chilly, so I illegally trespass. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I suspect the dead man was dumped in the water somewhere on the north bank and floated down to Texas Beach. I guess I’m looking for the killer tree. Then maybe I’ll interrogate the beavers who chewed him out from under the killer tree and dragged him to the water after the muskrats emptied his pockets.
This is the wildest stretch of the park, spectacular towering pines, sycamores, oaks, and hickories. Woody Woodpecker and his girlfriend swoop through here often. It’s just a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the James and the CSX tracks. The old Kanawha Canal runs on the other side of the tracks, cutting off easy access. Dog and I spent many a wilderness hour here. I reach the end of park property, just opposite the three-mile canal locks and the old pumphouse, which have their own park.
Unfortunately, the only way to proceed west is to continue trespassing across the tracks. There’s a break in the fence, familiar to dog and me, a short jog away. She hadn’t been able to make the dash in a while with her stiff hind legs, and it turns out the fence has been repaired. I jog a little farther and scramble up the embankment into Pumphouse Park. The always short-handed Richmond police used to have undercover cops working the park looking to entrap gay men back before the Supreme Court decided homosexuality isn’t illegal after all. Amnesty for nature. What is the world coming to? Sunday morning, there’s nobody around but dog walkers, and they won’t care.
The canal continues west from the park all the way to the water treatment plant, the old towpath alongside it. It’s not clear to me who owns the canal and the towpath. They belong to history would be a truly Richmond sentiment. CSX, however, seems to be the ones putting up the No Trespassing signs. There’s a verse of “This Land Is Your Land” not sung much around the campfire that points out there’s two sides to such signs, the side saying nothing being the one belonging to you and me. I wanted to quote that neglected verse as an epigraph in a novel of mine a few years back, but I was told I’d have to pay the owners a few hundred bucks or it would be illegal. Woody Guthrie was dead by then. I’m sure he would’ve been amused at the ironies.
Stretches are overgrown with greenbriers, but I’ve brought a folding handsaw and gloves. Dog hated greenbriers and slunk along reluctantly when I’d get one of these bushwhacking urges, but slink along she did, through damn near anything. Dogged, they call it.
By the time I pass under the spectacular railroad bridge Richmond likes well enough to use on its logo, the worst of the greenbriers have thinned out. I’ve reached the limits of any exploration dog and I ever made. Before 9/11 my wife and I paddled a canoe up the canal, right through the water treatment plant. With a couple of portages we made it the length of the canal. Land passage is trickier, especially with a dog, but I’m dogless now, so I persist. The way becomes increasingly obscure and likely even more illegal, but I’m determined to find the truth, if not necessarily eager to confess how I get there.
I smell it first, the scent of fresh cut wood. A dozen trees of various sizes are scattered about like jackstraws. It doesn’t take long to figure out why. A house as grand as its view of the James stands on the bank above me. These trees were in the way. There’ve been a couple of cases in recent years like this: rich folks on either side of the river cutting down trees to get the view they paid for, willing to pay the fine and repent, claiming ignorance of the law. The rich don’t read the paper apparently. You see, it’s illegal to fuck with the watershed like that. Who better to do an illegal job than an illegal?
Every level of the house has a grand balcony of some sort. Windows gleam in the sun. All empty. No eyes at home. Maybe they’re looking to heaven in some slate-roofed church. I climb among the fallen trees. There’s sawdust everywhere. I approach a fallen sycamore trunk lying flat that comes up to my chest. About ten yards from the water, a hollow has been dug out of the sandy soil beneath it. I stare into the shallow recess, and I can hear the shovels hitting the dirt to make this hole with quick, frantic strokes. I buried dog in our tiny backyard. It’s probably illegal. I fought with my wife about it. She was probably right. I can’t say it’s actually delivered on the promised closure I’ve heard others say it gave them. Maybe I don’t want closure.
I crawl into the hole to see the underside of the sycamore, like a beached white whale, and there’s blood, has to be, soaked into the bark. The tree indeed did it. There are at least four distinct shoe tracks on the beach, not counting mine. There’s a furrow through the sand to the water. A beaver maybe, or a man’s heels. In the grass beside the furrow, I find an ordinary work glove like the dead man was wearing. A left. The river had an accomplice.
It doesn’t take long to find out who owns the house. I even have a nice Google Map photo of the place from space taken back when there were trees along the river. Naturally, I’ve heard of the guy. If you’re rich enough to have a big place on the river, chances are you’ve made a ripple. This guy’s more like a deep current. Lately he’s been riding that current right into the legislature. Illegals are his hot-button issue. His TV ad promising he’ll get tough on illegals has him in front of St. John’s Church where Patrick Henry made his treasonous speech.