Holiday of the Dead (56 page)

“The U.S Government,” Jerry said.

It seemed odd to me at the time. Why would the U.S government want to study rotting bodies? What more, why did they have to study them up here in Canada? “Where do they get the corpses?” I asked, wondering if my brother was pulling my leg, something he’d taken pleasure in doing on several occasions in the past.

“Where do you think?” he replied getting up. “You want another one?”

I shook my head and finished what was left of my beer then handed him the empty bottle. “I don’t understand.”

“How do you think I know about the island?” Jerry asked. If he winked, I couldn’t see it in the dark, but it seemed an apt way to end his sarcastic question. I looked out on the lake and watched a long thin reflection of the moon as it danced upon drifting waves. I tried to imagine an island out there in all that tranquillity, lined with the bodies of people who’d spent large sums of money under what I could only assume were false pretences. A short clamour was followed by the sound of my brother sliding the patio doors closed. He sat back down next to me and handed me another beer.

“That’s highway robbery,” I said and then added, “If you aren’t full of shit, at least what they’re doing is.”

“I swear on Mom’s grave little brother,” he said, twisting the cap of his bottle as he leaned towards me. He whispered, “It’s a military operation under the guise of a private corporation.” I could smell the beer on his breath as I searched his eyes for sincerity, but like the imaginary wink I was certain had been there only moments earlier, the sincerity had remained hidden in the night. “Think of it like a post-mortem tax donation of sorts.”

“Why would the government have to do something out here that they could just as easily find out in a laboratory?” I asked, cracking my beer open.

“You can’t recreate Mother Nature’s effect on a dead body in a laboratory.” Jerry said tapping his fingers on the table. “You have to put them out in the environment.”

“I won’t deny I’m intrigued, but it in no way lessens the fact that it’s great to see you and your family again. You can pick our vacation spot next summer, on one condition of course …”

“What might that be?” I asked as I took a swig from my bottle. Beer ran down my chin onto my shirt.

“There’s somewhere for us to go fishing …”

We spent yesterday lolling around the cabin; our original plans to tour the local goldmine quashed by a rash of intense thunderstorms that all but tore the roof off. Our two families had become one again, and we rode out the storms playing Uno and Mousetrap with the boys – the power remaining out for hours at a time. Jerry continued on, drinking beer like a trooper, but I was too hung over after the late night prior, and chose to cleanse my palette on a bag of pretzels and a six-pack of Orange Crush, much to my brother’s chagrin.

‘
What a pussy’,
he’d muttered.

At one point during that afternoon, Jerry took me aside and showed me something he made me promise to forget I ever saw. It was the photocopy of a military map he’d brought with him from Boulder. It was a satellite image that looked like something you could get off of Google Earth though he insisted Raindance Island would never appear on such a public search engine, as it was not for schmucks like me to see.

On the black and white map Jerry circled our cabin with a highlighter. He unfolded the paper two more times and pointed at a small island approximately thirty-two miles from the shoreline where we were staying.

“That’s a long way to venture,” I said

“I got a GPS, don’t worry,” Jerry insisted. “We’ll have to bring an extra container of gas though, just in case …”

I should have known at that point that Jerry’s excitement was an indication there was more to the detour than my brother was letting on. He saw dead bodies all the time at work so why the insistence to see more, especially while on holidays? I considered that perhaps he felt this was somehow a gift to me – a gesture of sorts, two brothers on some kind of
rite of passage,
some Tom Sawyer-like adventure. Maybe if we were thirteen – but now, as both of us flirted with our forties – I was no longer so certain.

It was just last night that we retired early to bed, each of us anticipating what I can only assume were very different outcomes of our fishing trip. Early Saturday morning we awoke to find individual lunches packed by our wives. They’d been left on the shelf in the refrigerator, and under each paper bag lay a drawing in crayon, our kids’ renditions of what two fools might look like pretending to be outdoorsmen. Jerry’s son Jonathon – the fledgling horror fanatic, drew my brother frantically fighting to get a fish off his hand, little drops of crayon blood dripped from his yellow fingers. Beneath it Jon wrote
‘Don’t get bit by the piranhas’
in bright green marker. The pictures gave us both a good laugh as we made coffee in the quiet of the cabin. I felt like a kid again, back in St. Norbert Manitoba, where the two of us often woke early as boys to sneak out to the Red River, launching our canoe just as the sun came up, rods and reels – cheapies bought at Canadian Tire – resting in the length of our vessel.

The gentleness of this morning had put my mind at ease, and my paranoia of Jerry’s preoccupation with Raindance Island subsided with the arrival of a spectacular sunrise – the taste of coffee still fresh on my tongue. We loaded the boat making sure we had all the essentials: the beer to feed our pleasure, the music to induce our memories, and each other’s company to re-establish what had always been, the most influential relationship in all my years alive. I packed my lunch bag into the cooler and closed the lid, placing the picture my son drew in my pocket with the map of our pending journey.

On the way to the boat-launch Jerry explained what he had in mind for the day.

“We’ll head out to Raindance Island first, just to take a look. I can’t imagine they post any security there. As I said – it’s out of the way and doesn’t even show up on most maps. Which reminds me, did I bring the map?”

“I got it – good thing I’m here, eh?” I said, pulling it out of my pocket. Jerry switched his satellite radio to a Blues station and we listened to Muddy Waters while I unfolded he map to take a better look. In the top right corner of the page were the words:
Operation Prairie Flood
.

“I brought my camera too, not too often you get to see a body farm. There should be a dock there where we can anchor and take a look around.” Jerry said; his eyes remained on the road.

I didn’t like the sound of that. “You look around all you like. I’d sooner stay in the boat.”

“What are you twelve? Come on little brother, live a little.”

I studied the map until we arrived at the boat-launch. Jerry turned off the radio and adjusted his mirrors as he backed the truck down the cement ramp in the early morning light. “That’s weird,” I said noticing something peculiar on the map. “I think I can make out a couple of tiny boats near the island – they’re marked with X’s on the bows.” I put the map down and leaned my head back, realizing I was in Jerry’s line of view. “You sure they don’t have any security sitting on that corpse farm? They are military …”

“The satellite takes a new picture every four hours. Someone could have been there dumping bodies off or taking decomposition readings at the time the photo was taken but it’s the weekend now, and it’s early. Worst case scenario – we see people walking around, we just cruise on by.”

“As simple as that, eh?” I said, always amazed at his ability to avoid concern.

“You worry too much,” Jerry said, putting the truck into park. He opened the door and as he stepped out onto the cement pad, he smiled. “Live a little bro. There’s a container of gas in the back of the truck, you mind grabbing it?”

Jerry made it seem logical at the time. I am a worrier by nature though I have to admit, as we put the boat in the water, I felt no such anxiety. I was in no hurry to see dead bodies certainly, but above that – I was feeling rather excited about the adventure we were embarking on. We would go to the island, Jerry would see what he needed to see, and we could get down to some fishing. Still, looking back I struggle, wondering if there’d been any inkling of instinct that I’d ignored, not that it really mattered anyhow. I suppose what happened – happened. Dwelling on it was becoming a pointless endeavour, no help to me at all. Nothing would change the fact that Jerry – my only brother, was no longer amongst the living.

It happened rather fast actually; one large gasp of air and it was over. Jerry’s chest remained extended; his eyes open, his stiff fingers appearing to clutch imaginary weapons. A tear formed in my eye as I glanced down at my watch. Jerry’s son and wife would be sitting down to supper with Andrea and Joshua and they’d be wondering where we were. I reached for one of the paddles and found the broken one covered in blood and matted hair. I dropped it and found the good paddle resting beneath Jerry’s leg. With a gentle tug, I pulled it from under his body and placed it in the water. Pointlessly, I attempted to paddle in the direction of the cabin, thirty-odd miles away. It was insanity to think I would be able to get us anywhere at all with the limited amount of time I had left, and as my mind continued to race, the boat went nowhere. I dropped the paddle next to my brother’s body and placed my hands atop my head utterly defeated. Around me, the lake stretched for miles. I collapsed into the driver’s seat of the boat feeling helpless.

The venture to Raindance Island had taken longer than we’d first anticipated. On the map you could not make them out but in order to get to our destination we had to manoeuvre through two separate narrows – one of which took almost an hour, the other just under twenty minutes – but still a setback nonetheless. The cattails were so high, we could not see over them, and if not for the GPS we may never have found our way through the maze of tributaries at all. I doubted now that I could make it back to those narrows before sunset, even if I could get the motor going again – and if by some miracle I did manage to get back there, I’d likely get swallowed by those narrows and lost forever anyway.

It certainly didn’t help that the GPS started acting up shortly after we arrived at the island and had not worked properly since. Jerry thought maybe it had been zapped by some kind of military surveillance or anti-radar – I don’t quite recall just what he said now – all I did know was that one good paddle did me no good at all. I was stuck, along with my dead brother, in a hellish nightmare I wanted out of desperately.

I eventually concluded I had little choice but to wait out the approaching darkness and try and make it until dawn. Certainly by morning, Andrea and Jackie would have a search team out looking for us, maybe even an airplane. Mind you, we were miles from where we were thought to be fishing, but boats drift … right? I left my faith in that single notion as a swarm of mosquitoes had their way with me. With every inch the sun dropped below the tree line came a thousand more buzzing attacks. Frustrated, I rifled through my duffel bag until I found some bug spray and coated my skin with it, feeling the sting as it came in contact with my sunburned flesh.

Surveying the horizon one last time I let go with a desperate holler for help and listened to my own pathetic voice echo off the endless water. In the distance a Raven took flight from a tree as I watched, wondering like a child if it was leaving to tell the others of the meal my brother had become for the taking. My eyes fell on Jerry’s body and I sat back down as the boat rocked to and fro.

“I don’t want to throw you overboard Jerry, but what you said scared the hell out of me. If you’re planning on turning into one of them things, do it now. I don’t know if I can handle it in the dark.”

Jerry did not respond, though his body released a gassy belch to which he showed no sign of embarrassment, nor did he chuckle the way he would have had we still been kids, and he’d still been alive. I covered my nose and made a desperate attempt not to inhale the foul odour as I juggled the few options I had left. I had to get that motor started or I would be in for a long and traumatic night – the odour alone was enough to change my mind.

I stepped over Jerry’s body and tilted the outboard back up out of the water, lifting my nostrils disgusted as the decapitated head wrapped between the blades of the propeller snarled at me.

“Hello Dolly …”

Her good eye focussed on me as I locked the motor in place and found the broken paddle, flipping it around so the jagged wooden edge could be utilized as a spear. Holding my breath, I began poking at the fleshy mess. Her mouth – all teeth but little left of lip still managed to let out a gruesome howl as I jammed the paddle into her cheek, chopping her face ragged but not loosening it in any way that would be advantageous to my situation. As I worked on her I sweated, and as I sweated, the bug spray wore off and the swarm of mosquitoes had its way with me all over again. Wearing on my sanity even more than the annoying hum of the swarm was the glaring eye of the woman; still so very much alive and beautiful. The green iris followed my every move, judging me and sizing me up. Had I the nerve I would have stuck the broken handle right through that eye, but I could not. I concluded that what was left of her could not harm me in any way, for it was nothing more than a crushed and ribbon-cut piece of rotting meat. I found out quickly how wrong I could be.

As I poked the broken paddle against her head one last time, I came into direct contact with bone and felt the pain reverberate up the handle of the paddle into my wrists.

The pain was excruciating and I’d had enough. The eye – the remnant seer of someone’s daughter, or mother, or sister … seemed to enjoy my distress. With a temper saved for madmen, I lost it. I raised my foot up and with one solid kick dislodged the head from between the blades of the propeller nearly slipping into the lake as a consequence of my success. Grabbing onto the edge of the boat sweaty and angry, I regained my composure and watched the mangled head flop into the water and slowly float by, the eye forever gazing back at me like a large insect nesting in a scalp of curly black hair.