Doodad didn’t hear the pop of the .20 gauge but he couldn’t miss feeling the gun’s recoil as the stranger rocketed backwards off his narrow wooden front porch into the weeds that made up what with some attention might have been called his front yard. Shreds of the paper road map the guy must have been holding in his hands when the blast hit him fluttered about in the early morning breeze. Some of them finally came to rest here and there in the yard and a few wafted gently down onto the body.
The body didn’t move. The fingers may have made the beginnings of a clutching motion as if to recover and fold the shredded map but if that was the case their movement was concealed by the uncut weeds and thus was not discernible.
He hadn’t taken the two porch stair steps to the ground yet and from the slight elevation of the porch he could make out the surface of the red gravel county road that ran past his raw fence post-and-barbed wire gate. Someone had lifted the baling-wire loop off the latch post that normally kept the gate closed.
A pale green passenger van sat parked at the bottom of the slope that ran from the front of the old house to the road. The sun was up but not yet visible. Glare off the clouds drifting slowly southward reflected in the glass of the vehicle’s windshield. Because of this light he couldn’t see if there were any people inside.
Finally, moving jerkily like a stork attempting to hide a fish somewhere safe but doing a poor job of it, he managed to lean the shotgun against the front door jamb. In just the brief moment it took him to accomplish this task he heard a car door opening and when he looked in the direction of the downward slope at the intruding van a woman was standing outside it on the passenger side, shading her eyes with one hand. Then she turned back toward her open door and appeared to say something to someone inside. This conversation went on for a while as if the person or people she was speaking to were receiving instructions they did not care for and were putting up an argument, then the woman closed her door and began walking up the slope through the weeds. She had been wearing a kind of sun visor made of plastic and straw but she took this off and used it to swat at a swarm of grass gnats that formed a cloud around her pantlegs as she pushed her way toward the porch through the weeds and wildflowers.
When she got close enough she waved the straw visor in Doodad’s direction and called out a greeting. “Too bad the yard man quit, ain’t it?” she said, snorting a little from having to raise her voice. “Good help’s hard to find but harder to keep!” She kept on coming. He knew in just a few seconds she would spot the corpse, but his limbs would not respond to the panicky urging of his brain and besides, it was too late now to do anything but stand there and wait for whatever came next. He put his hands in his front jeans pockets but these almost immediately felt like handcuffs so he put his hands behind him like a soldier at parade rest but the invisible manacles wouldn’t go away. In a few seconds she was there.
“Well it’s not fall yet, is it?” she said brightly. “Air hasn’t got that nip yet, but we know it’s coming!”
He heard himself make some kind of sound, but he knew it wasn’t speech. He tried again but with the same result. The woman waited. She didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. By some faint buzzing sounds that seemed to hover in the morning’s overall stillness it became apparent that some passing flies had discovered the body.
Finally he managed to produce a slight noise that at least broke the silence. Making some sort of apology for the killing was beyond his powers. It was all he could do to somehow acknowledge it.
“Did you say ‘rain’?” said the woman. She glanced at the clouds drifting overhead. “Nope, don’t believe it will, just yet. If that’s what you said.”
“Man,” he managed to gasp, forcing the word past his constricted throat muscles. His narrow shoulders twitched, and for some reason he repeated the word as if to assure himself he could. “Man,” he muttered again, then inexplicably, he bowed at the waist.
“Yes, I see that,” said the woman. She still fanned her legs with the sun visor, as the cloud of gnats had not moved on. “You’re a man. Now we’re getting somewhere – and that was a lovely bow! Finding a gent with manners these days is ’bout as hard as finding a good yard man!”
She exhaled forcefully, clearing her throat. “Progress is being made and I’m excited to be a part of it! You’ve admitted to being a man, and I think we can just accept the assumption that I’m a woman, so what say we keep this ball rolling and move on along to who’s who? You got a name, cowboy?”
Doodad still had his hands stuck in his back jeans pockets. The question didn’t register very much in his mind even though he felt pretty sure he had heard it correctly. “Doodad,” he said, almost whispering.
“Do what?” said the woman.
He said the name again, just barely louder than the first time.
“Doo-dad…?” she said. “Well, ok. That ain’t much of a name, but what do I know? Say, how’d you end up with a tag like that? Somebody musta picked you out at a flea market, once they ran outa fleas. Places like that got lots of doodads. And, it coulda been worse,” she said. “They mighta named you Whatnot, but we can discuss that once we make a decision on the disposal of Jed, there,” and she nodded in the general direction of the man’s body still lying partially concealed by the weeds. “Maybe if enough flies show up they’ll carry him off and save us the trouble,” she said.
“By the way, you can call me Fanny,” she said. “It’s short for Frances, but I never liked Frances. They used to make movies about a talking mule called Francis and I didn’t want nobody making talking mule jokes about me all the time so I started getting everybody to just call me Fanny.”
Doodad’s voice began to show signs of resurrection. “Ok,” he said. Up until now he hadn’t thought about it much because of his other more inwardly-oriented struggles, but he had been so sure Fanny was the man’s wife and that she would be inclined to make a scene he hadn’t stopped to consider what to do if nothing much was made of the incident. While he considered the slowly unfolding twists and turns of the morning’s activities Fanny walked over to the corpse. “I never really trusted a .20 gauge,” she said. “Still, it’s a lot neater than my daddy’s old .16 was, or a .12. Either of those woulda put a hole in you you could make a birdhouse out of — the .20 is just a lot cleaner.”
She nudged the stiff with one of her burlap sneakers but it didn’t move. “He always was a tub of lard,” she said. Then she added, “–not fat per se, though. He was just heavy. He took up all the space, any room he was in. Gonna take quite a hole to cover him, I reckon.”
Directly following this statement both of them heard one of the parked van’s doors slam and saw two children come running toward the house. One was a little girl who looked to be maybe nine years old, followed by her brother who might have been two years younger. The girl’s brownish hair was done up in two braids that bounced as she ran. The little boy was wearing a cheap red cowboy hat that looked like it came from a roadside souvenir shop, with a cord on it that passed under his chin that made him look as if the hat had trapped him like an unwary rabbit caught in a snare. “What happened to Daddy?” shouted the girl. “How come he’s just layin’ there? Why can’t he get up?” The little boy slowed his running at the sight of the body and once standing over it, stuck his thumb in his mouth.
“Who told the two of you to get outa the car and come up here?” said Fanny.
“It was gettin’ hot in there,” said the little girl. “Who’s that funny-looking man?” she said, pointing at Doodad, who had backed up the porch steps as soon as he saw the two children approaching.
“That’s Mr. Doodad,” said Fanny.
“That’s not a name,” said the little girl.
“Well, that’s what we’re gonna call him,” said Fanny.
The little boy picked up one of the scraps of what had been the road map and solemnly studied one of the drops of blood that had begun the drying process, spreading into a little rosette on one side of the worn paper. His sister noticed what he was doing and smirked. “He’ll play with any old piece of junk,” she said.
Fanny looked at Doodad standing on the porch, shielding the .20 gauge shotgun from the children’s gaze. “You got any little shovels?” She said. “We’ve got some unfinished business here.”
Doodad was still trying to catch up with her mental sprinting but was failing at it so far. “Shovels?” He said.
“Yes,” said Fanny. “They look kinda like hoes but the blade is bigger and it ain’t bent as much. Most people use them to dig holes. I thought the kids and me might do us a little digging.”
“I don’t want to do any digging,” said the little girl. She looked at her little brother. “Let him do it,” she said. “He’s so dumb he’ll do anything.”
“Got some in the shed,” said Doodad. His voice had begun to recover. It sounded reedy and high but because he almost never spoke aloud due to the dearth of even occasional visitors to his decaying house, he didn’t notice that it was peculiar.
“Well, good,” said Fanny, who also ignored the quality of his voice. Almost nothing any man had to say affected her enough to cause a shift in the direction of her plans, so she kept her interest focused on the work at hand.
“I said I didn’t want to dig,” said the little girl. She was kicking at the dead man’s right boot but without much interest.
“This won’t be just digging,” said Fanny. “We’re gonna look for treasure while we do it. I bet there’s some buried treasure out here somewhere. We could be the first ones to find it – it would be ours!”
“Then I’ll dig,” said the little girl. “Dibs on the first bag of gold we find.”
Pressing the shotgun vertically against his chest with both hands, Doodad stepped off the porch and around one corner of the house then headed for the shed that sat on a little rise behind and to the side of it like a battered model for a homemade mausoleum.
“Remember, shovels!” Fanny called after him. “Show back up with a hoe and you’ll be making a second trip!” She never minded repeating instructions because experience had taught her the naked truth of Out of Sight, Out of Mind. Even a man with a responsible job of some kind, accustomed to either giving or at least following orders, was apt to forget or simply ignore whatever a woman told him to do. Just a little time in Doodad’s company had convinced her that he might just wander off into the woods down some cowpath or other and not reappear for hours, if he came back at all. And, she didn’t want to have to get back in that van and take to the road again with the two children clinging to her like lost kittens. She was as lost herself as dumb Jed had been, pulling off the road here in the middle of nowhere and fumbling with his aging paper road map, then stumbling up to ask directions of a bizarre tongue-tied killer equivalently lost, though obviously in a different way. Though Jed was certainly no great loss in any way that mattered, she was still somewhat jangled by having to switch tactics so suddenly in order to deal with such a radical swap of her day’s fortunes. Soon all of them would have to eat, attend to their toilet needs, wash if possible, and find shelter of some kind until she could gather sufficient mental space to decide what might come next. She would need some money, too. Between them she and dead Jed possessed no more than a few dollars, mostly pocket change. She didn’t want to sell the van. Being without a car almost anyplace in America was like accepting that the only sensible choice remaining was to jump off a cliff into the bottomless void, especially for anyone with nothing left before them but the road.
Fanny was accustomed to being forced to think on many levels at once, though. It was what made her a survivor, and she had sense enough to realize the value of possessing such a talent. She had married five husbands so far and was an eligible widow again, having been given no more than a few brief moments to adjust to the change and once again formulate a plan on the run.
This Doodad character really didn’t seem like a totally bad sort either, despite his halting breathless speech and the silly nickname. She figured some crazy relative had hung that moniker on him when he was a baby and like so many things that never make any sense, it had stuck. Though he had gunned down poor, clumsy Jed for some inexplicable reason, he had exhibited signs of contrition for the deed and was already showing himself amenable to following her orders. His house was in a deserted spot on an obscure country road and it was apparent that there was no wife ruling the premises and as far as she could tell, no family to get in the way. She noticed the roof was made of heavy tin sheeting and showed no signs of rust and so they would be out of the rain. There was a brick chimney so the place would be warm in the winter, at least in one room. A shortwave radio antenna was banded to a vent pipe not far from the chimney – she assumed they would have some contact with the outside world and any news that could be brought in by whatever means existed inside the place that could make that happen – probably some kind of a radio, she imagined. If there was no TV she could find the nearest town and buy some comic books and board games for the kids. It was all starting to come together a little, at least enough that she felt her neck and shoulder muscles begin to loosen a bit, a relief after the unforeseen events that would continue to encroach upon setting her new plans in motion until the leftover mess could be cleaned up.
The children lost interest in Jed’s body and found places to sit on the porch. It was high enough off the ground that they could swing their feet and they did this while Fanny paced a bit as she waited for the shovels.
Doodad arrived at the storage shed and propped open the sagging double doors so there would be enough light inside for him to find things. He got a rag and wiped down the barrel of the .20 gauge pump then laid it on two pegs mounted high enough on one wall that the kids couldn’t reach it without stacking up some boxes or digging out the rickety stepladder buried under a pile of other dusty junk in the back of the shed.
He found two little trenching tools he figured the kids could use. These were shovels with their blades double-bolted to the handles and equipped with sturdy threaded rings that locked the blades in place, and he selected a broad-bladed gardening shovel for himself. In the Army trenching tools were used to dig latrines, as the blades could be locked into their rings at right angles so they could be used for chopping and hollowing out the ground. There was an old wheelbarrow lying upside-down on a pile of mostly shattered flowerpots and as a second thought he retrieved it and decided he would use it to lug the shovels and move the dirt they were going to dig, along with anything else Fanny might decide they needed to haul away.
When he appeared back in the front of the house Fanny was sitting on the porch and the kids were not in sight. “They wanted to go play in the back of the van,” she told him. “They’re city kids. None of that kind can wait to do one thing. You and me can start.” She was quiet for a few seconds then added, “And we can finish too, is my guess. I’d rather, myself. Make it a game and we’ll be out here ’til Kingdom Come.”
Doodad remained silent. Throughout his childhood when the old folks were still alive and while he served his short tour in the Army, he had always had to wait for everything. He had learned to never ask for anything and as a result his possessions were few. His Grandpap’s old International Harvester truck sat in the barn he used as a garage and he had a shortwave radio he had ordered by mail and assembled himself and there was a refrigerator and an ancient stove and his grandparents’ sticks of antiquated furniture. Replacing any of it almost never crossed his mind.
He listened to a nightly shortwave broadcast called The Survivalist in America and based on recommendations that were part of the show had ordered a year’s supply of freeze-dried food he kept in a cardboard box under the bed. It was the only food he had in the house. The show’s host, who called himself Master Sergeant Buddy Strong, had also recommended that true American survivalists move to remote living locations and arm themselves against unexpected visitors pretending to be tourists asking for directions or else traveling salesmen. “Bust them before they bust you,” said Sergeant Strong. “Hesitate and it’ll be Too Late,” was another adage. That was when Doodad began keeping the loaded .20 gauge propped behind the front door.
“Let’s do ‘er,” said Fanny. “I’ll carry those shovels. You can tote what’s left of Jed, there.”
The man’s body was almost stiff by this time and Doodad had to tilt the wheelbarrow nose down and wrestle it far enough into the bin to be able to use the rear barrow rests as a fulcrum point and let the booted feet stick out the front as he pushed down on the weathered handles to force the weight to balance. He discovered it was easier for him to walk backwards and pull the load along rather than attempt to push it up the slight weedy slope to the back of the house.
Fanny was standing where there was a bare spot. “Why not here?” she said. “We might scare us up some buried treasure while we’re diggin’ ‘taters.”
They each took a shovel and started digging. Doodad found he preferred one of the trenching tools even though it was much smaller than the garden shovel and he had to bend over almost to the level of the ground to get enough power to loosen the soil for Fanny to shovel away from the slowly-deepening and lengthening grave.
They dug until the hole was about up to their waists before they began slowing down and then finally just stopping the work. “I’m beat,” said Fanny. She was thinking how it would have almost been better if Jed was still alive to do the digging; it was the kind of job he was good at. He would’ve dug the hole down to China if she told him that was what was needed. What they had succeeded in finishing here would have to do, though. They had struck clay down in the hole and it was slow going once that happened. “This is good enough,” she said.
Something stirred in Doodad’s mind, a memory of something he had heard his grandmother mutter every time she thought about how their frowsy wildeyed daughter had dumped him on their doorstep and disappeared on foot down the rutted gravel road. “The Whore of Babylon,” she had hissed, “–will burn in Hellfire for all Eternity.” The day of his arrival they left him in his basket on the porch until sundown possibly waiting for the daughter to return and claim him, but the grandfather finally decided to bring him inside as night began falling.
“The Whore of Babylon will burn in Hellfire for all Eternity,” he murmured as Fanny, breathing hard, was trying to wrestle the wheelbarrow and its burden into a place where she could lift up on the handles and allow gravity to do its work and help her dump the body.
“Well, neither of us has to worry none about that,” she said. “Ain’t neither of us the whore of anything and even if we were, God has a lot more important things to do than bother with the likes of us. Speaking of, I plan to put the van up here in that old barn once we’re done with this, and then me and the kids will stay here a while and keep you company.” The body finally slid into the grave with a quiet thud, where Jed lay on his side as if lying in a comfortable bed in a bedroom in a decent home somewhere. The jolt of the landing made his eyes close and even from the short distance away where they stood, he looked asleep. “Earth to earth,” said Fanny. Then with neither of them adding any other words to that, they covered their work and even shaped the dirt on top into a low mound, which they sprinkled with handsful of light gravel and then added a few larger stones they found lying in the weeds nearby. When they finished it just looked like a raw place with some stones on top of it.
“It don’t look like the kids will get their treasure after all,” Fanny said. “Hope it’s deep enough the coyotes don’t decide to come dig him back up, tonight. Guess we’ll hafta wait a coupla days on that, then we’ll see.” A thin sliver of moon began rising over some trees where the empty property was bordered by the woods the evening was already causing to turn black. “He was my fifth,” she said. “Jed. The others was just like him, when I look back on it. It’s only when I try to pretty up the memories that there’s hardly any difference between a-one of them and the next one. My old mama used to say, ‘Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other,’ whenever somebody would ask her something she didn’t see the sense of.” She stood looking toward the slow moonrise for another moment, then turned back toward the peeling house and the weedgrown slope running downhill to the gate and the road. “Those kids,” she said, and started walking toward the green van, looking at the ground as if any secrets it concealed might spring up out of the earth at any time to confront her.
Doodad cleaned off most of the clay from the shovels by holding one shaft in each hand and knocking the backs of the blades together, then he loaded them into the wheelbarrow and trundled off in the direction of the shed. He was still struggling to arrange his thoughts into words in some sensible way, though with less urgency than before since Fanny said God was too busy to bother with any of them. From that he had determined not a-one of them was going to burn in Hellfire.