How Not to Bury a Body in Missouri
16 Minute ReadIf you’ve never tried to dig a hole in Southwest Missouri, I don’t recommend it, however, in the unlikely event you are trying to bury a body late at night, you should know a few things.
Missouri is where I have called home for most of my years and where I learned about life as a young boy. It has always been a shattered state, the people broken and put back together like the sedimentary rocks that hold up our roads and homes. It is situated on an ancient geologic structure called the North American Craton and is filled with as much sedimentary rock as the people are with sentiment. The most important geological processes that leads to the creation of sedimentary rocks are erosion, weathering, dissolution, and precipitation. This list is as much meteorological as it is symbolic. The ground is rich with limestone hidden within layers of dirt, spread around like raisins in an oatmeal cookie and it splinters with each violent stab from your shovel. The metal skips and scrapes, chipping the rocks, echoing through the air as an anthem of failure and futility and reverberating pain up the wooden handle and into your hands, biting your bones.
When you look around the beautiful, rolling hills and the peaceful farm fields, it’s easy to forget the history that has made the ground so opposing. For thousands of years the ground has eroded under our feet and compressed back together carrying the skeletal impressions that reflect the organisms that produced them and the environment in which they were produced. The battle for our land has been fought, explored and bargained for by names like Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Lewis & Clark and Daniel Boone. During the first year of The Civil War, 42% of all battles were on Missouri soil. It was the third-most fought-over state of the war, after Virginia and Tennessee, with more than 1,000 battles taking place here. That doesn’t include all the violent acts that were committed by pro-slavery bushwhackers and anti-slavery jayhawkers.
Our deepest layers of earth are filled with the blood and sweat of its people dug in like ticks, deeply loyal to their beliefs. Our trauma and tears have burrowed into the soil and dripped through the cracks and voids fossilizing along the walls of the thousands of caves that have formed under our feet. The stalactite ceilings are outstretched arms desperately reaching for the ground so they can rest in peace and start healing, but instead have become frozen monuments of proof that painful memories never settle, they only create a void deep within echoing the past; museums of our emotions.
THE INCIDENT
The gravel of our neighbor’s driveway shifted under my feet. Our house sat on a hill, sloping down to the road, with a large ditch and a bridge that provided safe passage out. It was next to a field that flooded two or three times throughout the spring and summer each year, washing away our driveway and we’d have chalky white gravel delivered to replace the casualties, until one time, when my father couldn’t afford it anymore and the white lines representing pride in home ownership were slowly replaced by dandelions, creeping bellflowers and perennial broadleafs until the driveway just slowly disappeared. The entirety of it camouflaged with the rest of the yard. I could tell Mr. Maruszak had just replenished his gravel as the depth of it felt meaty under my shoes.
The red taillights illuminated Lady’s corpse, eyes black and lifeless, highlighting her broken neck and breathless body, fur matted from the neglect we often show aging dogs who lose their ability to make us laugh. I knelt down to be sure, stroking her face hoping for a sign of life. This wasn’t the first time she had been run over, but now, it was the last. Inside me, acidic, ball peen hammers sprinted through my blood banging against my skin, rhythmically beating against my temples and I could feel a shift in my presence, my emotions spinning on a merry go round. I cursed my lack of patience and the hatred I felt from living in a house that required me to bolt out the door as soon as I got a “yes” so I wouldn’t have to fight another fight or be criticized for the lack of whatever I was missing from my personality repertoire, which my mother would carefully bake into a sentence like, “we didn’t raise you to be this way.”
Yes you did. This is exactly how you raised me.
I cried uncontrollably for a moment, shame clouding me with no umbrella of forgiveness nearby, the tears crashing into the soil forming another cave below. Then, it suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea what to do with her body and that pissed me off because that meant I had to ask my parents for help, beholden to whatever ideas they had, knowing that I would disagree with it. And, now, I was never going to make it to Bubby’s party.
I wasn’t even suppose to be driving their car.
It was Wednesday, July 4th, 1990. Bubby was having a 4th of July party and I was running late from my shift at the Waffle House. My mother insisted I drop off my sister and her friend, Jessica, somewhere, I can’t remember where, but I know that I didn’t want to do it. I owned a 1971 Triumph GT6, which was the size of a roller skate, too small to carry three of us, so I borrowed my parents Chrysler Lebaron. My father idolized Lee Iacocca, the man who saved Chrysler. I backed out of the driveway a little too quickly. There was a small ditch between our pavement and our neighbors driveway, which we were using now since my father never filled in the gravel again from the last flood. The bump was harder than usual, but I was going pretty fast, so I ignored it. I put it in drive and headed down the driveway, only my back tires popped up again. I knew. I just knew.
I jumped out of the car and there she was. I had a small moment of hope because we had run over her numerous times in the past. She always lied right behind the tires of the car in the garage. Her hips were so calloused, that often times, we would forget she was there and run over her, but she was never hurt. She was just stuck under the car and we’d have to jack up the car and pull her out and so I was hoping that maybe this was another one of those times, but I could tell that it wasn’t.
I had just done the unthinkable and run over my dog twice. I backed over her and then put the car in drive and ran over her a 2nd time.
Laurie and Jessica got out of the backseat and stared at the gruesome scene, but I don’t remember anything they said or felt. They become a blur in my mind blending into the darkness, swaying with the trees until they dissipate like the dew. I know it had to scare my sister, but I didn’t console her. We didn’t do that in our family. I was focused on the energy awaiting me in the house. I knew there would be no hugs, no shoulder for my tears to land on, only anger at being bothered or the guilty stare from my mother before her voice sang “Oh, Brian,” with her octave starting high and then dipping low on the Brian to let me know just how disappointed she was, accompanied by words like, “why didn’t I look behind the car, Lady is always behind the car and you are just so selfish because you just had to get to that party, I hope you’re happy.” Yes. So happy.
Everyone, at some point, starts to pull away from the life they were given and venture into a world they create. For some, they are filled with excitement as their family helps them launch into the atmosphere with confidence and a soft pillow to land on in case your outstretched arms can’t quite grip this new reality. Others might bite into an anxiety filled pastry sprinkled in dread and doubt wondering if they even have many roads less traveled to choose from. Earlier that year, right before my graduation, I had told my parents that I didn’t want to go to college, but instead wanted to go to LA and try and become an actor. My mother yanked away the soft pillow and reminded me that I spoke too fast and my voice was too nasally and what did I really know about acting? So, my expectations of this conversation were extremely low.
I imagine my parents, like most people, started with the intention of living a simple life inside the bubble of the American dream advertised from birth. My father, perched on his riding lawn mower that he couldn’t afford without that credit card with 14% interest, manicuring the lawn on a house with a 30 year note backed by a bank telling him how lucky he was to have their support all the while telling him to stay put. Go no further young citizen, this is the American Dream! The whirring of the engine spinning the sharp metal blades around and around, lulls him into a deep meditation driving in circles in front of his house on his yard cutting his grass growing on his soft dirt below being fertilized by his squishy worms all paid for from a job that he tolerates to give him enough money to take care of his 2.4 children and 1.6 dogs and allowing him to buy more and more shit creating more and more stress until fear overwhelms him and the picture of that simple life he once had is now distorted with fear and tears and the full awareness that this is never what he wanted and he spews these new beliefs onto his children. Maybe he dreamt of sitting around the dining room table - laughter bouncing in the air, playing board games and telling stories of yesteryear while helping his offspring have a better life than he had. But then life gets in the way and the stress pushes down on you, torquing the beliefs you once had into jagged, bent scaffolding that held up your hopes.
A life of being told that you can do anything, just not that. And now, I was sitting on the ground in tears aware that I still needed their validation and approval and yes, their god damn help with my dog that I just killed.
THE BURIAL
I walked into the garage and opened the door. I could see my father up the stairs sitting on the couch. My voice was shaking as I choked out the words, “Dad, can you come here?”
He sat there, eyes glued to the TV. “What do you want?”
“Will you please just come here,” I asked again. Surely he could hear my voice and know that I was hurting.
“No, BJ, I’m watching TV. What do you want?” We didn’t have a way of pausing TV back then. If you left the show, you would have to wait until rerun season to watch it and since it was July, Dad was probably already watching the rerun. There was no internet to tell you what happened. No ticktock or Youtube for someone to share their shock and awe of who slept with who or who the killer might be. Maybe next week you could pick up a magazine that would tell you the latest, but not likely. And if Dad was watching a rerun and he missed it, then that rerun would be gone forever like mist evaporating into the air until it was picked up in syndication which wouldn’t happen until the show was finished running years later. Ah, the old days of TV telling you what day of the week it was.
“Dad, please come here. It’s important.” I was trying as hard as possible to hold back my tears and my grief. Throughout the years, when my father would see me breakdown it would make him terribly uncomfortable, like a grenade had gone off around him and his quick temper would strike out at the vulnerability I was wearing and his inability to fix it. Deep within his soul, it was based on love, but the message was soaked in fear and shame.
“No! What do you want,” he screamed.
I broke down, my words barely understandable and wailed, “I killed Lady!”
His head, always on a swivel, slowly turned my way. “Oh.” His eyes softened and he stood up and came down the stairs and into the garage where he saw Laurie standing by the car, the red taillight making it look duplicitous, framing it like a crime scene. He bent down and looked at her, feeling her furry chest to see if she was breathing.
He stood up and looked at me. “She’s dead.”
“No shit!” I shot back.
“How can you tell, she always looks that way.” My mother had made it outside to help out with her dark perspective. “Well, except for her head facing the wrong way.”
“Jesus, Mom.”
Laurie cracked an uncomfortable laugh through her tears and then went back to crying.
My dad took it all in and said, “Go get the wheel barrel and we’ll roll her out back and toss her over the barbed wire fence.”
What in the hell was he talking about?
“We are not just throwing her out back for her to rot,” I told him. “That’s awful.”
“Ok, then let’s put her in the trash can.”
Lady was easily over 100 pounds. There was no way she was going to fit.
Laurie objected, “We can’t put her in the trash can!” Laurie once cried for hours when she accidentally lopped off a mole’s head with the weed eater. The trash can for our dog? She wasn’t having it.
“Why not?”
“She’s our family! We can’t put her in the trash can,” Laurie exclaimed.
“Jim, I don’t want to walk into the garage and see her staring at me every day until the trash comes.” I imagined Lady’s head, tongue hanging slightly to the side, lid raised up, peeking out of the metallic trash can. That felt like a real possibility and something that my mom might be on board with if she could be there watching when the trash guy pulled up and walked into that horror show. Besides, it was Wednesday and trash came on Monday so she would have sat in our garage for close to a week! All of this seemed plausible.
“What do you want to do, then,” he asked. The anxiety was rising in his voice. Everyone was silent. It seemed obvious to me, but I waited for a few moments to see if my parents were going to say it. Either they didn’t want to hassle with it or they really didn’t think of it as an option and I was a little dumbfounded how long we sat there, waiting for some one to adult.
So I finally said it. “We have to bury her.”
“Now?” I knew it. I could tell Dad wanted to fight this, but he could see that Laurie and I were not going to waiver and though we had fought many a fight over much less, this was a battle he chose to concede. He went to the shed and came back with a shovel and a big, black trash bag. Lady was heavy and dead weight is always heavier. Dad picked her up and I put her in the bag, but she barely fit. Dad tried to tie a knot, but it kept coming loose and her nose peaked out while he carried her down the hill into the flood zone where he figured the earth might be more forgiving. It was not.
After an hour of digging, he put his shovel down, lit a cigarette and said, “That’s far enough.”
I looked at the hole. The moon was almost full and provided quite a bit of light and it was obvious to me that this hole was not near deep enough. Dad picked Lady up and laid her gently into her grave. The trash bag did not disappear and her head, now fully out of the bag, sat above the grave like a headstone. I stared at him and watched as he contemplated his decision. I asked, “What are you doing? That’s not deep enough.”
“It’s fine,” Dad said.
“You can still see her head.”
“We can cover her with enough dirt.”
“Where are we getting the rest of the dirt,” I asked.
“We’ll use the dirt that we already dug out.”
“Dad, there’s only enough dirt to fill back up the hole and she is bigger than the hole, so that isn’t enough dirt. We would need to dig another hole just to cover her, so we might as well keep digging this hole.”
“It’s fine, BJ.”
“No, Dad, it’s math.”
“Well, how long do you want to do this?”
“Until her head’s not sticking out of the ground.” I picked her up and moved her out of the grave, grabbed the shovel from his hands and kept digging. “You can go inside if you want.”
“You’re going to miss your party.”
“I don’t care.”
He didn’t leave. We continued for another hour. Dad laid her down again. I was concerned she still wasn’t deep enough, but her head wasn’t sticking out. Dad told me that it would be fine and I was too exhausted to argue.
THE RESURRECTION
The rain started on July 21st and didn’t stop for four days.
As the rains came, the area started to flood, starting in the field just north of our house until the land could absorb no more and when it was full it would roll into our yard, creating a strong current and continue down the streets flooding 8 or 9 houses deep. Most of the houses were elevated and safe and if the road didn’t flood, it would turn Farm Road 97 into a tourist attraction. But sometimes, even the road was covered up leaving us stuck waiting for the water to recede. Throughout the years, the floods had eroded a huge ditch in the north field, exposing all the rock hidden beneath our feat. This was a child’s dream as I could explore the area like I was Indiana Jones looking for lost treasure.
One morning, my mother yelled for me to come quick. I was in my room and her voice was high pitched and frantic. I raced down the stairs and she was standing in front of our living room window, staring at the water, the current was moving swiftly over our yard.
“Hurry,” she said, waving me over, cigarette dangling from her lips. I walked over and stood by her. She put her arm around me and pointed to a trash bag floating across our yard, Lady’s head sticking out. “It’s Lady,” she said. “It’s like Pet Cemetery.” She burst into laughter. “I’m so glad we buried her.”
“That is not funny.”
“Oh, come on. That’s hilarious. You were out there for hours digging that grave.” She could barely keep it together.
“This is why you called me over?”
“Listen.” She cocked her head sideways as if she was listening for a birdcall in the wind. “Do you hear that?”
“What,” I asked.
Doing her best ventriloquist impression, my mother made the sound of a whimpering dog and then in a high pitched whisper said, “Why did you kill me? Brian, why? Why? Why?”
I pulled away and looked at her in shock. She started laughing so hard that tears rolled down her face. She put her hand against the wall to hold herself up as if the humor was just too overwhelming that standing seemed impossible.
THE CARE PACKAGE
That fall, I started my first semester at the University of Missouri in Columbia. I had met a great group of guys in my dorm. Chris and Colby were from Cape Girardeau. Brandon and Matt were from Kansas City and Jay was from St. Louis. They saw me as a fun little trinket because they had never met anyone who had lived in a city that had less than 2,000 inhabitants. But what really intrigued them was my care packages from home. My mom would send her homemade chocolate chip cookies. They looked like little mountains of brown sugar, full of chocolate chips and they were as hard as hockey pucks. Growing up, I had always loved these cookies. When my mom made them, it was one of the few times that she left sarcasm and scare tactics in her pocket. She always let Laurie and I each have a beater from the mixer to lick clean and we would watch them rise in the oven with eager anticipation. When you dunked them in milk, they would soak it up like a farmer’s crop in a drought getting it’s first taste of rain in months. The milk would almost launch out of the glass and saturate the cookie that could barely hold onto its form. My memory of those cookies disintegrating in my mouth meant that my father was not home and my mother was not stressed and we were in a peaceful calm.
When the cookies arrived in college, the box had artwork. My mother had placed dog stickers all over it. The attention to detail was strong as she had gone out of her way to make sure the dogs weren’t just any dogs, but they were collies that were the spitting image of Lady. Next to each dog was a hand drawn speech bubble coming from the dog’s mouth saying, “Why, Brian?”, “I loved you”, “what did I do wrong” and my personal favorite, “I hope the party was worth it.”
My new friends gathered around, eyes wide and their mouths agape. A small laugh would creep out, not hysterically at first as they weren’t sure if it was appropriate. They looked at me to see my reaction and I told them the story. Each time we opened the boxes, a cloud of cigarette stench would permeate the immediate area. I never noticed it growing up and I wonder how badly I smelled like smoke when I was in high school, but now that I was away from it, the smell was nauseating. I would pull the cookies out and share with everyone and word of Judy’s care packages spread throughout the dorm, everyone caring less about the goodies and more about the psychological torture that accompanied them.
Once in a while, my other would call and my friends eagerly listened, curious about this woman who put these cruel stickers on my care package. The irony of cruel and care in one package did not go unnoticed. When I answered the phone, my mom started whimpering like a dog. “Brian, why did you kill me? What did I ever do to you?” Whimper. Whimper. Whimper. I would hold the phone up and people would grab it and listen in amazement. And after I hung up, they all agreed that they had to visit Willard, MO. A few weeks later, we did. I took them down to the zoo that was my life. Since I’ve been an adult, I’ve never asked any of them what they really thought at that moment when they heard my mom on the phone impersonating a dead dog. I’m not sure they would have known truly what they thought. I mean who knows anything at 18? But now, as adults, I would love to know.
My parents weren’t originally from Missouri, but you wouldn’t have known it. They bled in these hills the same as anyone and the depths of their feelings and thoughts were difficult to know, covered by mounds of limestone. You could chip away at them with questions or hugs, but the answers were just small slivers of the truth of them, their caves vast with pain. I don’t know if I’ve ever really known them and I have spent a great deal of my life longing for that connection. Maybe I should have dug longer and fought harder to let them know that I loved them even if I didn’t always know why? My sister and I carried that with us into the world, struggling to show each other love and others, including ourselves. She and I don’t talk today, maybe we don’t know how. Can we be real or do we always have to send a care package hidden by sarcasm and wit, never letting the warm, soft feelings of truly caring for someone show on our skin, uncovered, unprotected? Maybe the pain of never seeing our parents be vulnerable and real was too much for us to overcome. Maybe there’s too much limestone. I don’t know. If I push through, am I being weak or am I being strong? That’s probably too simple. It’s probably neither. Maybe I should have no expectations and concentrate on just wanting to have a relationship with my sister. It probably just takes a tolerance to deal with the stinging sensation you feel when you hit that rock and a willingness to take a few more swings of the shovel.