The Grapple

The wind was blowing from the field. Dowling’s nose wrinkled. So did Jethro Gwy

“Shut up,” Major Toricelli said, his voice hard and flat.

“I think we’ll keep going,” Dowling said. “We’re almost there anyhow, eh, Clancy?” He gave Gwy

“No!” Gwy

“I wonder why not,” Dowling said. Jethro Gwy

“Yes, sir,” Clancy said, and he did.

“Well, let’s get out of here and have a look around, shall we?” Dowling descended from the command car. He waited for the mayor to join him. Plainly, the mayor didn’t want to. Just as plainly, the savage expressions the U.S. soldiers wore told him he had no choice. Looking as glum as a man possibly could, he got down, too. Major Toricelli followed him.

“Come over here, God damn you.” Toricelli shoved him toward that trench, which hadn’t been covered over like the rest. “Take a good look. Then tell me you didn’t know what the hell Camp Determination was up to.”

“Please…” Jethro Gwy

Even in October, curtains of flies buzzed above the trench. Crows and ravens and vultures flew away as the men approached, but they didn’t go far. The rations were too good for them to want to leave. The stench was overpowering, unbelievable; it seemed thick enough to make the air resistive to motion. Dowling knew it would cling to his uniform, his skin, his hair. He also knew he would have to bathe several times to get rid of it.

“Go on,” he said harshly. “Take a good look.”

Gwy

“Well?” Dowling said. “What do you think, Mr. Gwy

“I had no idea,” the mayor of Snyder gasped, and then he leaned forward and threw up. He was neat about it; he missed his shoes. Wheezing, coughing, spitting, he went on, “Honest to God, I didn’t.”

“You lying sack of shit.” Dowling pointed to the closed trench beyond this open one, and then to the next closed trench, and then to the next and the next. “What did you think they were doing here? Ru

“I didn’t ask any questions,” Gwy

“That sounds a little more like the truth, anyway-not much, but a little,” Major Toricelli said.

“Not enough,” Dowling said. “Nowhere close to enough. Come on. Let’s go back to the command car.”

“Can we head back to town?” the mayor asked eagerly.

“Not yet, Charlie,” Dowling said. After they got in, he told Clancy, “Go on all the way up to the first trench.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver said.

Again, Jethro Gwy

Bulldozers had scraped off the dirt from part of the first trench. The bodies in there were a couple of years old. They were mostly bones, with rotting clothes and bits of skin and hair here and there. Halloween in hell might have looked like this.

“They’ve been doing it ever since this camp opened up, for the last two years or so. How many bodies are here all told, do you think?” Dowling said. “And you have the brass to try and tell me you didn’t know what was going on? God, what a shitty excuse for a liar you are.”

“What a shitty excuse for a human being,” Toricelli said.

Gwy

“And do you know what the best part is?” Major Toricelli said. “Once your smokes here were dead, the guards had people who went into their mouths with pliers or whatever the hell and yanked out all their gold fillings. Waste not, want not, I guess.”

Gwy

“It’s the God’s truth, Mr. Gwy

Had Gwy

The dry heaves were nasty. Dowling watched without sympathy till Gwy

“Well, I had a pretty good notion they were,” Jethro Gwy

“You passed by on the other side of the road, like the priest in the Good Book,” Dowling said in a voice like iron.

By then, Gwy

“I’ve got one more question for you. Then I’ll take you back to town,” Dowling said. “Why don’t you like grubbing gold out of Negroes’ mouths once they’re dead? They don’t need it any more then. Isn’t killing ’em what’s really wrong?”

“You know, I never looked at it that way,” the mayor of Snyder said seriously. “I mean, they’re just a pack of rebels and troublemakers. But this…” He gulped. “It’s different when you see it with your own eyes.”

“You liked the idea. You didn’t want to know what it meant, that’s all. Or have you got the nerve to tell me I’m wrong?” Dowling asked.

“No, that’s a fact, a true fact,” Gwy

“Well, what the hell are they, then?” Dowling demanded. When Jethro Gwy

Gwy

Having shown Jethro Gwy

“I thought you might say that,” he told them.

The truck driver drove them to the mass graves. They turned pale even before the stink started filling the back of the truck. All but one of them vomited at the first trench. Two women fainted. So did one of the lawyers. The doctor passed out when he heard about taking dental gold from the corpses.