Hadn’t they noticed a damn thing?
Out behind the barn the tilled earth stretched away, and I walked for a while in the muddy soil, remembering again the farms back home in Ontario, farms larger and better maintained than this one. But, even then, I felt a pang of homesickness as I trudged across the field, trying to clear my head. My fingers ached from working my equipment and my head ached from the helmet and my shoulders and back ached from the body armor, and for about the thousandth time since I came in-country I wondered why in hell I had volunteered.
Then I tripped and fell into the mud.
I stood up. ‘Moron,’ I said to myself, and I looked down, wondering what I had tripped over. Something in the dirt. I nudged it with the edge of my boot.
A woman’s shoe.
I stepped back as if the damn thing was electrified. I looked around this part of the field and saw that something was wrong, very wrong.
The dirt didn’t make sense.
All across the field were muddy furrows, running straight and true from the rear of the barn to the nearest fence. But in this place, where I had tripped, the dirt was different.
It had been disturbed, and recently.
I turned and ran back to the farmhouse. Halfway there my chinstrap came loose and I had to hold on to my helmet with a free hand while the mud stuck to my racing feet.
Peter frowned as he moved the thin metal probe up and down in the dirt. ‘Looks like we’ve got something here, Jean-Paul. Dirt’s moving around easy enough, and I’m getting soft resistance at the other end.’
Jean-Paul had another cigarette between his fingers. ‘Good. Miriam?’
She was on her knees in the mud, gently probing with a flexible thin hose that she dipped in and out of the dirt. The clear plastic tube ran back to a small open case, which she examined. There were dials and digital readouts and I stood there, still breathing heavily from my burdened run back to the farmhouse. Karen and Sanjay and even Charlie were standing nearby, in a semicircle. Karen and Sanjay looked angry. Only Charlie looked calm, but with him I would never think that I could guess what was going on behind those quiet eyes.
‘Decomposition gases,’ Miriam said. ‘There’s decaying flesh under here. Less than a meter, I’d guess.’
Another nod from Jean-Paul. ‘Very good. Peter, are there shovels in that barn over there?’
Peter stood there, the probe resting on his shoulder. He was staring down at where Miriam was working.
‘Peter?’ Jean-Paul asked. ‘Did you not hear me?’
At first Peter’s voice was so quiet that I almost didn’t hear him. ‘…Difference does it make, Jean-Paul? You know why we’re here, why another half-dozen teams are out wandering the countryside. Looking for Site A. Does this look like Site A? Does it?’
Jean-Paul took a drag from his cigarette. ‘No, it is not Site A. But it is something. We will do what we are tasked to do, and continue our work.’
‘But it’s a waste of time!’ Peter said, and I could make out Karen and Sanjay nodding in agreement. ‘We’ve got a week to find Site A, and we shouldn’t be wasting our resources here.’
Jean-Paul’s voice was quiet and firm. ‘You’ll have us leave them here, forgotten and in the muck?’
Karen spoke up in Peter’s defense. ‘No, we won’t forget them. Make a report and list this site for further excavation. We should leave here and get to work on finding Site A. This is just one more farm family, Jean-Paul. You know how important Site A is to the High Commissioner.’
Jean-Paul looked at all of us through his black-rimmed glasses. ‘Yes, I do. Perhaps better than the rest of you. And if any of you are someday assigned to supervise a field team, then you can do as you please. But this field team is under my direction. And I direct that we begin the excavation. Now. Understood? No more time for questions. No more time for back talk. Or you will be relieved of your duties and will be sent out on the next chartered flight to your respective home country. Understood?’
I wasn’t sure but I think Charlie was enjoying this little demonstration of the UN in action, for he turned away for a moment, as if to hide the amusement on his face. Peter muttered something under his breath, jammed the thin metal probe back into the ground, and strode over to the barn. After a minute or two he came back, carrying two shovels under his arm. He tossed one at me—which I caught, thankfully—and glared at me.
You found this spot,’ he said. ‘Least you could do is start digging.’
I said nothing, just took the shovel and got to work. A few seconds later Peter joined me.
The digging was hard going, even though it was clear that the soil had been freshly turned over. The earth was thick and muddy and wet, and large chunks of it stuck to the shovel blade. I found that after just a few minutes of work I was sweating underneath the body armor and my helmet. My hands began to get sore, and the sounds—the sickening squishing and plopping noises as chunks of mud were piled up to the side — were obscene. As Peter and I dug we kept quiet. Then Karen and Sanjay went to one of the Toyota Land Cruisers and came back, each carrying a long dark object, which they unrolled on the wet ground, speaking not a word. Rubberized body bags, in two sizes, for adults or children. How thoughtful.
I dug and dug, my wrists and hands aching, and I wished for a break. But I wasn’t about to give Peter the satisfaction of seeing me give up first, so I concentrated on the digging and every now and then raised my eyes to see what was going on around us. I saw Karen and Sanjay laying out the body bags. I saw Miriam looking at the readouts on her black box. I saw Jean-Paul and Charlie talking to each other in low voices. I saw another flock of ravens going overhead, croaking at us as they flew to sit in the nearby pine trees, to watch what we were uncovering for them.
‘Time for a break,’ Peter gasped, and I shoveled two more loads of muck out before agreeing.
‘Sure,’ I said, feeling good that I had outlasted our moody Brit. ‘Time for a break.’
Peter got out of the hole, walked to the side of the barn and leaned back against the dark wood. I stayed in the hole, toying with the soil. Miriam came over and said, ‘How are you doing, Samuel?’
‘I’ve had better days,’ I said.
‘Look, you see that?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Those white streaks, in the soil. Not good, not good at all.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shivered and then hugged herself. ‘Lime. Helps speed up decomposition. The militias do that to hide the evidence.’
I suppose I should have waited for Peter to return, but Miriam was looking at me and I felt like I had to do something. I started digging again and then it was as though the earth beneath me belched, for something foul and sour started wafting up. I gagged and clambered out of the trench, and Miriam called out, ‘Jean-Paul, we’re getting close now, very close.’
She reached into her coat pocket, took out a small container of a white salve. She unscrewed the top and said, ‘Over here, Samuel. Just for a moment. For the smell.’
Miriam delicately inserted her index finger into the open jar and pulled out a dollop of the salve on the end of her finger. She gingerly smeared the gunk on my upper lip, right under both nostrils, and a blast of peppermint seemed to roar right through my nose and into my head. I looked at the jar. Vicks VapoRub. She managed a smile and I smiled back at her, standing in a muddy field with the odor of decaying flesh now all around us, and the moment was so intimate that I wished I didn’t have to move.