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In the bucket is a yellow-black human hand.
"Is that a real actual hand of someone?" says Amber.
"At first I thought glove," Gelton says. "But no. See? No hand-hole. Just solid."
He pokes the hand with a pen to demonstrate the absence of a hand-hole.
"You know what else I'm noting as weird?" Giff says. "In terms of that former smell? I can all of a sudden smell it again."
He sniffs his way down to the bucket.
"Yoinks, similar," he says.
"I doubt this is a Safety issue," says Rimney.
"I disagree," says Giff. "This hand seems like it might be the key to our Possible Source of your Negative Odor. Milton, can you show me the exact locale where you found this at?"
Out they go. Rimney calls me in. How the hell did we drop that fucker? Jesus, what else did we drop? This is not fu
I eat lunch in the Eating Area. Little Bill's telling about his trip to Omaha. He stayed at a MinTel. The rooms are closet-size. They like slide you in. You're allowed two Slide-Outs a night. After that it's three dollars a Slide-Out.
Rimney comes out, says he's got to run home. Val's having leg cramps. When she has leg cramps, the only thing that works is hot washrags. He's got a special pasta pot and two sets of washrags, one blue, one white. One set goes on her legs, while the other set heats.
With Rimney gone, discipline erodes. Out the window I see Verblin sort of mincing to his car. A yardstick slides out of his pants. When he stoops to get the yardstick, a print cartridge drops out of his coat. When he bends to pick up the cartridge, his hat falls off, revealing a box of staples.
At three, Ms. Durrell from Environmental calls. Do we have any more of those dioxin coloring books? Do I know what she means? It's not a new spill, just reawakened concern over an old spill. I know what she means. She means Do
I'm in Storage looking for the books when my cell rings.
"Glad I caught you," Rimney says stiffly. "Can you come out to Missions? I swung by on the way back and, boy, oh boy, did Elliot ever find something amazing."
"Is he standing right there?" I say.
"O.K., see you soon," he says, and hangs up.
I park by the Sputnik-era jet-on-a-pedestal. The fake pilot's head is facing backward and a twig's been driven up his nose. Across the fuselage some kid's painted, "This thing looks like my pe
It starts to flurry. Giff's been at the grave with a shovel. So far, it's just the top of the jockey's head sticking out, and part of the enclodded guy's foot.
"Wow," I say.
"Wow is correct," Rimney says.
"Thanks be to Scouts," Giff says. "See? Footprints galore. Plus tire tracks. To me? It's like a mystery or one of those deals where there's more than meeting the eyes. Because where did these fellows come from? Who put them here? Why did your office smell so bad, in an off way similar to that gross way that hand smelled? In my logic? I ask, Where locally is somewhere deep that's recently been unearthed or dug into? What I realized? The Dirksen. That is deep, that is new. What do you think? I'll get with Historical tomorrow, see what used to be where the Dirksen is at now."
I helped Rimney get Val home from the hospital after the stroke, watched the two of them burst into tears at the sight of her mechanical bed.
He looks worse than that now.
"Fuck it. I'm going to tell him, trust him. What do you think?" he says.
My feeling is no, no, no. Giff's not exactly the King of Sense of Humor. Last year, I was the only non-church person at his Christmas party. The big issue was, somebody on Giff's wife's side had sent their baby a stuffed DevilChild from Hell from the cartoon "HellHood." The DevilChild starts each episode as a kindly angel with a lisp. Then something makes him mad and he morphs into a demon and starts speaking with an Eastern European accent while ru
"As for me and my house, this little guy has no place here," Giff had said. "Although Cyndi apparently feels otherwise."
Cyndi I would describe as pretty but flinchy.
"Andy doesn't see it as the Devil," she said. "He just likes it."
"Well, I do see it as the Devil," Giff said. "And I don't like it. And here in this house a certain book tells us the role of the father/husband. Am I right?"
"I guess so," she said.
"You guessing so, like Pastor Mike says, is sympromatic of your having an imperfect understanding of what the Lord has in mind for our family, though," he said. "Right? Right, Pastor Mike?"
"Well, it's certainly true that a family can only have one head," said a guy in a Snoopy sweater who I guessed was Pastor Mike.
"O.K., tough guy," Cyndi said to Giff, and stomped off, ringing the tree ornaments.
I can see Giff's wheels turning. Or trying to. He's not the brightest. I once watched him spend ten minutes trying to make a copy on a copier in the Outer Hall which was unplugged and ready for Disposal.
"Wait, are you saying you guys did this?" he says.
Rimney says Giff has a wife, Giff has a baby-would a transfer to the Dirksen be of interest? Maybe Giff's aware that he, Rimney, knows somebody who knows somebody?
"Oh, my gosh, you guys did do it," Giff says.
He lets the shovel fall and walks toward the woods, as if so shocked he has to seek relief in the beauty of nature. Out in the woods are three crushed toilets. Every tenth bush or so has a red tag on it, I have no idea why.
"All's I can say is wow," Giff says.
"They're dead, man," Rimney says. "What do you care?"
"Yes, but who was it shaped these fellows?" says Giff. "You? Me? Look, I'm going to speak frank. I think I see what's going on here. Both you guys took recent hard hits. One had a wife with a stroke, the other a great tragic loss of their parents. So you got confused, made a bad call. But He redeemeth, if only we open our hearts. Know how I know? It happened to me. I also took a hard hit this year. Because guess what? In terms of my wife? I'm just going to say it. Our baby is not my baby. Cyndi had a slipup with this friend of ours, Kyle. I found out just before Christmas, which was why I was such a fart at our party. That put me in a total funk-we were like match and gas. I was so mad there was a darkness upon me. Poor thing had bruises all up her arms, due to I started pinching her. In her sleep, or sometimes I would get so mad and just come up quick and do it. Then, January tenth, I'd had enough, and I prayed, I said, ‘Lord, I am way too small, please take me up into You, I don't want to do this anymore.' And He did it. I dropped as if shot. And when I woke? My heart was changed. All glory goes to Him. I mean, it was a literal release in my chest. All my hate about the baby was gone and all of a sudden Andy was just my son for real."
"Nice story," says Rimney.
"It's not a story. It happened to me for real in my life," says Giff. "Point is? I had it in me to grow. We all do! I'm not all good, but there's a good part of me. My fire may be tiny, but it's a fire just the same. See what I mean? Same like you. Do you know that good part? Have you met it, that part of you that is all about Truth, that is called, in how we would say it, your Christ-portion? My Christ-portion knew that pinching was wrong. How does your Christ-portion feel about this sneaky burial thingy? I mean honestly. In a perfect world, is that what you would have chose to do?"
This catches me a little off guard.