He got out and went cautiously up to the tent. He didn’t take hold of the flap. He stood a respectful distance away and called out.
“Miss Constable. Miss Jones.”
Sunset and Hillbilly and Karen were sitting on the business side of the tent playing cards. They got up and went out. It was raining lightly.
Zendo had moved back to his truck, and was holding his hat in his hands, turning it like a steering wheel. The rain was running down his face and his clothes were damp with it.
“Zendo,” Sunset said, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, ma’am. I ain’t seen no ghost. I seen something worse.”
Karen, much to her dismay, was made to stay at the tent. Sunset and Hillbilly followed Zendo in Clyde’s truck. Hillbilly drove. They followed Zendo to the tree where they had first spoken, pulled up under it, parked and got out.
Zendo had unharnessed his mules, tied them to two separate trees near the oak to keep them from crossing up. His plow lay on its side, a middle buster attached to it.
Zendo came over, said, “I’ll show you now.”
He started walking, and they followed.
“I done decided to bust up a bit more of my land. Add a few rows here closer to the woods, to where I found that jar with the baby in it, and, well, my plow cut into it.”
Zendo was pointing.
They looked down. There was a dark, round object sticking out of the ground and the top of it was covered in something stringy and oily. It had been cut open with the plow and it was dark inside where it had been cut, looked like old wet cork.
“Is that some kind of vegetable?” Hillbilly said.
“No sir, it ain’t,” Zendo said. “Come on around here.”
They followed him. “Look down there now.”
Sunset squatted, turned her head. The big turnip had an eye socket. It was full of black dirt. Below the eyes was a flap of nose and below that a lip, and part of it was gone, and what was left looked to have dried up like a worm on a hot stove. The lip was curled in such a way Sunset could see dirt-stained teeth.
“My God,” she said.
“Is it a watermelon?” Hillbilly asked.
“No,” Sunset said.
“Naw, it ain’t no watermelon,” Zendo said.
Hillbilly bent over, looked, said, “Nope. Not a watermelon.”
It was long, slow, and careful work because pieces of it kept coming off, but when they dug the body up, they found it had been planted straight down, like a post.
The corpse was covered in something black and sticky. Zendo said, “That’s just the way that baby was in the jar. All oily.”
“Is that in your soil?” Hillbilly asked. “That oil?”
“Ain’t no oil in this soil,” Zendo said.
“No maggots,” Sunset said. “So it may not have been here long.”
“Reckon it’s that oily stuff. It’s kept the body from rotting outright. Or some of it. Maggots done eat what they gonna eat. Rest, they leave alone.”
“Who’d think a maggot had taste buds,” Hillbilly said.
“Way the weather is, hot as it is,” Sunset said, “it still amazes me it ain’t nothing but bones.”
“There ain’t no way figuring weather or what it’ll do,” Zendo said.
“Body ain’t got no clothes on,” Hillbilly said, “but I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman.”
“It’s a woman,” Zendo said.
“How do you know?” Hillbilly asked.
“Hip bones, way they spread,” Zendo said. “She probably done had a baby.”
“I wonder if she was white or black,” Sunset said.
“She was white,” Zendo said. “That stringy stuff on top of her head ain’t colored hair.”
Sunset took hold of the hair, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. It was coated in oil, but it was fine and smooth.
“Probably right,” Sunset said. “You got some kind of sheet or old blanket or something, Zendo? Something we could carry the body out with?”
“I can go up to the house and look,” Zendo said.
“Would you?”
When Zendo drove off, Hillbilly said, “He sure is certain it’s a white woman. I can’t look at that hunk of rotten meat and tell much of anything. But he knows it’s a woman and he knows she’s white.”
“Think he would come and get us if he did it?” Sunset asked.
“Could be to throw us off.”
“No,” Sunset said. “He’s as nervous and messed up about it as we are.”
“Killers can feel bad about what they done… What do you think this oil business is about?”
Sunset shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s odd. And that baby was coated in oil. I don’t get it. And why in the hell are they burying them here on Zendo’s patch of land?”
“You’re too innocent, Sunset.”
“I don’t think I’m near that innocent anymore,” she said.
“Watch out for Zendo. I don’t trust him.”
“I think he’s all right,” Sunset said. “We take the body in, don’t mention anything about Zendo or where we found it. Just say it’s law business for now. Okay?”
“All right.”
They waited about fifteen minutes before Zendo showed up with a ratty-looking patchwork quilt. “We had this for the dog to lie down on. I didn’t want to use a new one. Will this be all right?”
“Sure,” Sunset said. “She won’t mind.”
They managed the corpse onto the blanket, loaded it into the back of Clyde’s pickup, drove it into Camp Rapture. They found Reverend Willie Fixx at his house eating a meal.
“Well, now,” Willie said, holding the door open, his mouth shining with grease from his meal, his eyes roaming Sunset’s body from head to toe and back again. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Jones? You coming to be baptized? I don’t believe you ever was, not even when you was a little girl. I got a robe you can wear, we can go down to the creek where it’s deep and do it.”
“I’m here on law business,” Sunset said. “This is Deputy Constable Hillbilly.”
“Hillbilly,” Willie said. “I was trying to remember what I’d heard you called. I thought it was Bum.”
“No,” Hillbilly said. “That’s my usual occupation.”
“Law business, you say,” Willie said.
“That’s right,” Sunset said. “You’re the only one I knew to come to, since you fix dead bodies up for burying. Maybe I should have gone to the doctor. I wasn’t sure.”
“Body in the truck?”
Sunset nodded.
“Who is it?”
“Don’t know,” Sunset said. “Thought you might be able to help me there. Find out how she died, who she is.”