We love road trips… but the Covid years sorta’ got in the way. So, last winter, we began planning a new excursion. We would drive straight to Texas, see one of my few remaining cousins (on my father’s side), then head down to Big Bend National Park. While I’ve been to Texas many times, I’ve never seen that corner. Our next stop was Guadalupe Mountains National Park, on the Texas/New Mexico border. From there we would visit a bunch of National Parks (and a few state parks), across New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. With room for unplanned wandering, we figured about a month—and eight-to-ten thousand miles.
On Monday, we got up at five AM, packed the car—including travel snacks and a case of wine. We’re not savages. Pointed the car SW, and hit the road. We encountered some very heavy rainstorms, so drove only a little over 700 miles the first day, stopping in Morristown, Tennessee. Fortunately, the rain abated—so we could walk to a restaurant from our hotel. When we finished dinner, around eight PM, the rain began anew. I foolishly chose to run toward the hotel.
Not prudent.
I slipped in the parking lot, and went down. Hard. I landed mostly on my face, ‘though my right hand, shoulder, and knee all collected bruises and abrasions as well. They were not as noticeable as my face. There were many cuts on forehead, right eyebrow, right temple, right cheekbone, one cut ran down the cheek beside my sideburn. I didn’t notice, at the time, but there’s even a cut on my right ear.
Karen—who, wisely, was NOT running—didn’t know what happened. I had just disappeared. I called for her to help me get up, and she led me back to the hotel through the lightning and downpour. We got just inside the front door and stopped.
I was bleeding profusely, didn’t want to make a mess of their lobby.
We waited there for EMTs to arrive with an ambulance. They packed me in and drove nine miles to the county hospital. We were there until around four in the morning, with x-rays and consultations and such… until the doctor said he was not qualified to stitch me up. They were sending me to the University of Tennessee’s Medical Center in Knoxville. The hospital was forty-three miles away, so Karen rode in the front of the ambulance, and I chatted about books with a very interesting EMT in the back. You never know where you might encounter another bibliophile.
We arrived around five, and Karen was taken to a waiting room. and my gurney was wheeled into tiny room thirteen. By then, we’d been up for twenty-four hours, though Karen tried, with little success, to nap in a small hard chair.
I got to explain what had happened, several times—once in answer to the question, “What’s the other guy look like?” It was a reasonable question, given my appearance. I looked like Chuck Wepner after a night in the ring with Muhammad Ali. I explained that “the other guy” was a parking lot, and I was pretty sure it was none the worse for the encounter.
I told one nurse that I was already familiar with UT Medical Center, but never expected to visit it. She seemed surprised that this obvious yankee would know anything about her hometown, so I explained thar I’d read a lot about the body farm, on the hill across the river. “Oh yes,” she responded, “we get a lot of…” She paused, searching for the next word. “Anthropologists?” I asked. “Yes, that’s it. I was about to say archaeologists, but that didn’t seem right.”
Archaeologists dig. Nobody digs at the body farm.
The plastic surgeon came in with a student (UT is a teaching hospital), and—between them—snapped a lot of tiny stitches into my face. Karen sat shivering on a chair, nearby, wrapped in a sheet. The hospital had run out of fresh blankets. She still hadn’t been able to catch some sleep.
I discussed, with nurses, and others, some various ways I could—in future—explain my scarred visage. “How about, ‘They’re just traces of an old duel in Vienna’?” Or, “I got it running the bulls in Pamplona.”? One tech suggested, “My eyebrow was shot off in battle.” That led to a discussion of various kinds of battles, foreign/military and urban/domestic. They led nowhere but left me wondering if my eyebrow would even grow back.
And if it did, would it leave me with a permanent quizzical or sneering expression? I suppose I’ll have to wait and see for myself. I suspect that I might even like it.
Since we’d arrived, in Knoxville, after two ambulance rides, our car was still at the hotel, forty-odd miles away. The hospital kindly arranged for an Uber to deliver us to the hotel. Our driver was very talkative, so I got to bask in her rich Tennessee accent along the way. After some thirty-plus hours, we finally slept. We stayed two nights there, resting up, before Karen drove us home. Anyway, I’m healing now (which means wearing a neck brace for six weeks; it seems, in the fall, I managed to make a crack in my naturally-fused ancient cervical vertebrae). If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that I should emulate Calvin Coolidge—who said, under different circumstances, “I do not choose to run.”
At least, events like this do provide some welcome “story fodder.” The story, below, however, was written long ago and appeared in the book Cenotaphs.
Exeunt Omnes
On the south bank of the Tennessee River, across from Knoxville, high atop Cherokee Bluff, a lovely grove of hardwoods is splashed with Fall color. To the west, large parking lots serve the University of Tennessee’s Medical Center. Not far from the east end of the parking lot, upscale condominiums boast tennis courts and an elegant in-ground pool, set right at the edge of the wooded copse. To the northwest, the university’s anthropology department houses a small research center.
The woods are an inviting place, with views, through openings in the trees, of the university’s gardens, right across the river. The crackle of fallen leaves, the twittering of birds, along with the delicious combination of warm sun and cool air, would make for a delightful autumnal stroll, either by U of T students or the residents of those condos.
No one promenades, or goes a-courtin’ in those woods.
While the grove offers a more than ample supply of private nooks and natural beauty, something is not quite right about the place. The air—which we’d expect to be perfumed with the mysterious October something-or-other that generates appetites, both romantic and gastronomic—is not what one would expect.
Something doesn’t smell right.
Nor are these woods unpopulated enough to encourage young people to commune with nature, or otherwise exercise their delicate sensibilities. This little patch of forest already holds too many people. And no, this is no confirmation of Yogi Berra’s famous quip, “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”
Instead, the woods have too far too many of the wrong kind of people.
While this scene is set in The South, don’t assume that remark has something to do with racism. It does not. It’s also not about class distinctions or educational differences (even if such unsavory prejudices tend to overlap). Nonetheless, the problem with walking in these woods is far too many of the “wrong sort of people” taking up space.
Dead people.
In this small wooded area—separated by a high fence from the University parking lot, and only two hundred yards from the aforementioned private pool and tennis courts—dozens of decomposing cadavers lie around, filling the air with their spectral, and noxious, presence. There is no way to ignore them.
When you drive there, you can always find an unoccupied spot in section G of the parking lot—especially in warm weather. “Ripe for the picking” has an altogether different meaning at the Body Farm.
Unlike the person, or persons, who hid Jimmy Hoffa away—and never wanted to see him—the folks who leave these bodies to the forces of nature are not so anxious for them to disappear. Rather, they do want them to disappear, but to do so in their own good time.
And they want to watch.
From time to time, the police find remains that have been lying around too long for indicators like body temperature and rigor mortis to help in determining the time of death. To help in police investigations, the forensics team of the UT anthropology department observes and documents the gradual disappearance of people who had already, in other senses, disappeared.
The Body Farm has two sources of fresh meat (a term they would never use): unclaimed, often unidentified corpses provided by coroner’s offices, or bodies of those who have arranged for their mortal remains donated to science.
It is reasonable to assume that the former might have disappeared, on purpose, during their lives. It could explain why there was no one to claim or identify them.
The latter have chosen to disappear more slowly—disintegrating naturally, over the more usual, and speedier, burial or cremation.
Either way, while they rest in pieces at the Body Farm, complex electro-chemical systems—who once were animate human beings—begin morphing into food for insects and bacteria. Afterwards, whatever remains is further reduced to various foul-smelling compounds. The aptly-named substances—cadaverine and putrescine—then break down into the basic elements that make up the universe.
Paid subscribers to these substack pages get access to a complete edition of my novella: Noirvella is a modern story of revenge, told in the style of film noir. They can also read the first part of Unbelievable, a kind of rom-com that forms around a pompous guy who is conceited, misinformed, and undeservedly successful. Both books are sold by Amazon, but paid subscribers get them for free!
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Too true, old friend... 'though I'm running out of viable body parts to barter for story ideas.
Some people will go to any length for new material! Hope your recovery is swift and uncomplicated.