The Body Human

“Somebody shot and killed Dr. Bennett behind the Food Mart on April Street!”
Ceci
Moore says breathlessly as I take the washing off the line.

I stand with a pair of Jack’s boxer shorts in my hand and stare at her. I don’t like
Ceci
. Her smirking pushiness, her need to shove her scrawny body into the middle of every situation, even ones she’d be better off leaving alone. She’s been that way since high school. But we’re neighbors; we’re stuck with each other. Dr. Bennett delivered both Sean and Jackie. Slowly I fold the boxer shorts and lay them in my clothesbasket.

“Well, Betty, aren’t you even going to
say
anything?”

“Have the police arrested anybody?”

“Janie
Brunelli
says
there’s no suspects
.” Tom
Brunelli
is one of
Emerton’s
police officers, all five of them. He has trouble keeping his mouth shut. “Honestly, Betty, you look like there’s a murder in this town every day!”

“Was it in the parking lot?” I’m in that parking lot b
e
hind the Food Mart every week. It’s unpaved, just hard-packed rocky dirt sloping down to a low concrete wall by the river. I take Jackie’s sheets off the line. Belle, Ariel, and Princess Jasmine all smile through fields of flowers.

“Yes, in the parking lot,”
Ceci
says.
“Near the dum
p
sters.
There must have been a silencer on the rifle, nobody heard anything. Tom found two .22 250 semi-automatic cartridges.”
Ceci
knows about guns. Her house is full of them. “Betty, why don’t you put all this
wash
in your dryer and save yourself the trouble of hanging it all out?”

“I like the way it smells line-dried. And I can hear Jackie through the window.”

Instantly
Ceci’s
face changes.
“Jackie’s home from school?
Why?”

“She has a cold.”

“Are you sure it’s just a cold?”

“I’m sure.” I take the clothespins off Sean’s t-shirt. The front says
SEE DICK DRINK. SEE DICK DRIVE. SEE DICK DIE
. “
Ceci
, Jackie is not on any antibiotics.”

“Good thing,”
Ceci
says, and for a moment she studies her fingernails, very casual. “They say Dr. Bennett pr
e
scribed
endozine
again last week.
For the youngest
Nordstrum
boy.
Without
sending him to the hospital.”

I don’t answer. The back of Sean’s t-shirt says
DON’T
BE A DICK
. Irritated by my silence,
Ceci
says, “I don’t see how you can let your son wear that obscene clothing!”

“It’s his choice. Besides,
Ceci
, it’s a health message. About not drinking and driving. Aren’t you the one that thinks strong health messages are a good thing?”

Our eyes lock. The silence lengthens. Finally
Ceci
says, “Well, haven’t
we
gotten serious all of a sudden.”

I say, “Murder is serious.”

“Yes. I’m sure the cops will catch whoever did it. Probably one of
those scum
that hang around the Rainbow
Bar.”

“Dr. Bennett wasn’t the type to hang around with scum.”

“Oh, I don’t mean he
knew
them. Some low-life prob
a
bly killed him for his wallet.” She looks straight into my eyes. “I can’t think of any other motive. Can you?”

I look east, toward the river. On the other side, just visible over the tops of houses on its little hill, rise the three stories of
Emerton
Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital. The bridge over the river was blown up three weeks ago. No injuries, no suspects. Now anybody who wants to go to the hospital has to drive ten miles up West River Road and cross at the interstate. Jack told me that the Department of Transportation says two years to get a new bridge built.

I say, “Dr. Bennett was a good doctor.
And a good man.”

“Well, did anybody say he wasn’t? Really, Betty, you should use your dryer and save yourself all that bending and stooping.
Bad for the back.
We’re not getting any younger. Ta-ta.” She waves her right hand, just a waggle of fingers, and walks off. Her nails, I notice, are painted the delicate fragile pinky white of freshly
unscabbed
skin.

“You have no proof,” Jack says.
“Just some wild su
s
picions.”

He has his stubborn face on. He sits with his Michelob at the kitchen table, dog-tired from his factory shift plus three hours
overtime,
and he doesn’t want to hear this. I don’t blame him. I don’t want to be saying it. In the living room Jackie plays Nintendo frantically, trying to cram in as many
electronic explosions as she can before her father claims the TV for Monday night football. Sean has already gone out with his friends, before his stepfather got home.

I sit down across from Jack, a fresh mug of coffee cr
a
dled between my palms.
For warmth.
“I know I don’t have any proof, Jack. I’m not some detective.”

“So let the cops handle it. It’s their business, not ours. You stay out of it.”

“I am out of it. You know that.” Jack nods. We don’t mix with cops, don’t serve on any town committees,
don’t
even listen to the news much. We don’t get involved with what doesn’t concern us. Jack never did. I add, “I’m just telling you what I think. I can do that, can’t I?” and hear my voice stuck someplace between pleading and anger.

Jack hears it, too. He scowls, stands with his beer,
puts
his hand gently on my shoulder. “Sure, Bets. You can say whatever you want to me. But nobody else, you hear? I don’t want
no
trouble, especially to you and the kids. This
ain’t
our problem. Just be grateful
we’re
all healthy, knock on wood.”

He smiles and goes into the living room. Jackie switches off the Nintendo without being yelled at; she’s good that way. I look out the kitchen window, but it’s too dark to see anything but my own reflection, and anyway the window faces north, not east.

I haven’t crossed the river since Jackie was born at
Emerton
Memorial, seven years ago. And then I was in the hospital less than twenty-four hours before I made Jack take me home. Not because of the infections, of course—that hadn’t all started yet. But it has now, and what
if next time instead of the youngest
Nordstrum
boy, it’s Jackie who needs
endozine
?
Or Sean?

Once you’ve been to
Emerton
Memorial, nobody but your family will go near you. And sometimes not even them.
When Mrs. Weimer came home from surgery, her daughter-in-law put her in that back upstairs room and left her food on disposable trays in the doorway and put in a chemical toilet.
Didn’t even help the old lady crawl out of bed to use it.
For a whole month it went on like that—surgical masks, gloves, paper gowns—until Rosie Weimer was positive Mrs. Weimer hadn’t picked up any mutated drug-resistant bacteria in
Emerton
Memorial. And Hal Weimer didn’t say a word against his wife.

“People are scared, but they’ll do the right thing,” Jack said, the only other time I tried to talk to him about it. Jack isn’t much for talking. And so I don’t. I owe him that.

But in the city—in all the cities—they’re not just scared. They’re terrified. Even without listening to the news I hear about the riots and the special government police and half the population sick with the new germs that only
endozine
cures—sometimes. I don’t see how they’re going to have much energy for one murdered small-town doctor. And I don’t share Jack’s conviction that people in
Emerton
will automatically do the right thing. I remember all too well that sometimes they don’t. How come Jack doesn’t r
e
member, too?