The Body Catchers

Barney Collins was dead. He was as dead as could be, laid out on the cold metal table, naked and white. His potbelly sagged to either side, looking not unlike soft bread dough. Lawrence Moss snorted as he walked into the room, grabbed the chart that rested on top of Barney’s alabaster stomach, and with a cursory glance he made a smirk and threw it to the counter behind him. The fat ones were trouble simply from all the mass, and he’d had too many this week. Heaving a martyred sigh, Lawrence took a pair of powdery latex gloves from a box on the counter which now held Barney’s chart, and he grabbed a scalpel.

He didn’t think too much about Barney as he went about his work. He couldn’t afford to. If he did that for the ten to twelve bodies he’d be seeing that day, he would never have the time to examine and release them all. Barney’s chart indicated that body #1,376,211.cfd was a victim of an accident on route 201 over the weekend. The state police needed to determine the amount of alcohol in Barney’s system at the time of the accident. This should be a quick one, he thought with a little relief. He had two suspicious deaths and a heart failure to examine before lunch.

What Lawrence couldn’t see on the silver examining table was Barney. His dull eyes would never be opened again, his voice would never rise in the whiny, nasal tone he’d adopted as a small child to make himself heard over the din of his battling family. For Barney’s first three years on earth, the battling family members were his parents, Bonnie and Steven. After Steven left when Barney was three, never to return, Bonnie gathered Barney and his younger brother, Ronald, and moved back in with her parents. Then Barney learned to whine and cajole over the bickering of his grandparents and mother, not to mention a derelict uncle who lived in the basement. Barney never did real well in school, but no one in his life seemed to care too much so he knew it didn’t matter. He watched a lot of television and wished he were a wrestler or a pilot.

Ronald joined the army when he was old enough but Barney didn’t feel like it. No one ever told him he had potential or that maybe he could be a pilot; Barney forgot about that silly dream, anyway. He was fourteen the first time he got really drunk and he loved it. His mother told him he was going to kill himself one day, but he didn’t listen. And then on that fateful day in July, Barney’s mother proved to be right. Barney killed himself on route 201. Unfortunately, he also killed three other people.

Lawrence was relieved when Barney could be sewn up tight, and he moved on with his busy schedule, scrubbing himself thoroughly with the scratchy soap he was so accustomed to, then he grabbed another pair of latex gloves after switching on an old-fashioned transistor radio. He kept meaning to bring in a good cd player. He moved to another stainless steel table and removed a stiff white sheet, wiping his long forehead with a lab-coated arm. He needed to turn down the heat; he was getting warm and that meant bodies weren’t going to keep so well. He grabbed this woman’s chart off her dark belly while he whistled, bopping his dark blonde head to tinny rock songs. His long fingers grabbed another scalpel and set to work.

Mavis Johnson was only forty-nine years old when she dropped dead right in the middle of her kitchen, the one she’d redone, all in blue, just last month. She was fixing dinner for her grown daughter and her daughter’s children, four of them. They’d moved back in with Mavis, who cooked for them all the time, even when she didn’t feel like it. The kids loved to run all through the house screaming at the top of their lungs and it got on Mavis’ nerves, so two days before her arrival at Lawrence Moss’ table she screamed at them to cut it out, dammit. Her last words.

Mavis was born in the county hospital, the one for people without good jobs or insurance. She never knew her father real well because he wasn’t around much. For as long as she could remember, he’d come and gone from their ramshackle tenement in the heart of the city-gone more often than not. Mavis’ mother took in laundry from white folks and babysat to make ends meet; she never did believe in welfare. And they did all right, Mavis and her six brothers and sisters. They never went hungry-at least not that often-and they always had new shoes when they needed them.

Mavis’ mother dropped dead when she was fifty-one, when Mavis was already out on her own and a mother. The father of Mavis' children wasn't much better than her own father; he was gone more often than not, and when her oldest was big enough to take care of himself and his siblings, she went to work for the local Wal-Mart. And she didn’t do so badly, either. By the time she was forty she’d moved up to Supervisor. Her kids had boom boxes and new shoes.

Lawrence put the finishing touches on paperwork for Mavis Johnson and shook his head, wondering idly how many deep-fried foods it had taken for her arteries to look like the inside of a Crisco canister. He looked up when a whish of a lab coat caught the corner of his watery blue eye, and his face creased with interest. “Hey, Dr. Campbell. Coming in early today?”

Lisa Campbell spared Lawrence less then a glance as she walked over to a chart hanging just inside the door of the room, the master list. “Hardly early, Dr. Moss, and you know it. I was in a meeting.” She pulled her long, smooth dark hair behind her as she read, winding a band around it with the carelessness of one who’s done such a thing countless times. Lawrence watched her overtly, admiring her curvacious figure underneath the blasted coat.

“Anything new?”

“Not yet, but you know how it goes.”

“Yeah,” Lisa took in a weary breath, “I do.” She moved over to the counter, switched the channel on the radio, and grabbed a chart with a fluid motion.

“I’m headed for a coffee break. Anything I can get for you?” Lawrence walked a little close to her as he passed, brushing an arm against her back. She stiffened.

“No thanks. I’ve had enough coffee to keep me up through tomorrow.” She ignored his body contact, knowing from experience that arguing about his behavior would only encourage it.

“Okay. I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Sure you will,” Lisa muttered to herself as she read a chart, washed her hands, and grabbed a pair of gloves. She moved to the third stainless steel table and lifted the sheet, taking a moment to gaze into the face. She liked to do that before she cut into a body. This face, peaceful as they all were, was an older face, lined with experience and heartache, she supposed. Who didn’t have some heartache?

She couldn’t see the heartache, but maybe she felt it, because Belinda Shaw had more than would ever show. Her silvery hairdo, set just so, and her subtly made-up face hid much. She was a country club queen, a maven of charity work and philanthropic endeavors. But she could never take away her son’s drug addiction, her daughter’s alcoholism, her husband’s suicide.

Belinda was born with privilege that most can only dream about. She was sent to the best schools, given only the best tutors for horseback riding, dancing, and decorum, and she was married to the next best family in the area. She gave birth to first a boy, and then a girl, and traveled extensively while the best nannies raised her children.

She was a good woman, a smart woman, and while a piece of her knew that something wasn’t quite right with her life, she ignored the niggles and continued as she was expected to. Her husband was nice but not the love of her life. That had been a boy she’d met while in high school, a boy who’d been dangerous, a little crazy, and not at all what her parents wanted for their only daughter. So true to form, Belinda did what was expected of her and married a sweet, sappy man who came from “the right family.”

And no one knew about her indiscretions through the years, her escort service visitors in posh hotel rooms or those little trysts in dingy cars and back alleys. At least no one until now when, at sixty-three, she finally succumbed to a lifestyle that would shock her country club friends out of their skins–probably.

Lisa morosely wrote “gonorrhea” on the “cause of death” blank in the chart. This would certainly raise some penciled eyebrows, she knew. As she stitched up the thin, soft skin, Lisa looked into Belinda’s face, wondering what could possibly have been in her head, what would have prompted this seemingly perfect woman to ignore obvious symptoms of illness until she was here, in a cold room on a cold table, being examined to determine cause of death.

Lisa felt her stomach rumble and answered the call, slipping up to the hospital cafeteria, where she spied Lawrence inhaling a burger while speaking avidly to a young female intern. With a roll of her eyes she grabbed a salad and a glass of tea, sitting with other young doctors who took their careers as seriously as she did hers. It was always a little amusing mixed with annoying, however, when she had to answer the “where do you work” question. She heard every joke about pathology, every snark about “the basement,” every jab about the morgue until she could mouth the words as they were being uttered.

Back in the basement, Lisa picked up the chart she knew was next in line, ignoring three new lumps on previously emptied tables. Her work never ended. She threw back a sheet and wrinkled her nose at the rank smell of Donny Patterson. He was a skinny man, ribs poking through leathery, wind-burned skin. He looked far older than his fifty-odd years.

Donny was raised with a mother who stayed at home to raise him and his sister, and a father who went to work every morning and returned home every night. They didn’t talk much, but they didn’t fight much, either. Donny wasn’t a great student but he wasn’t a poor one. He was middle-of-the-road all the way. After high school he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, and while he was pumping gas at a service station Uncle Sam decided for him; he was drafted.

What he saw in ‘Nam changed him. Before that he thought he might be someone, maybe even a career soldier. But seeing babies die did something to a person, took away a piece of the soul that never did grow back. Up to the day he died he could smell burning rice patties when he closed his eyes and see dying babies when they were open.

His mother tried to help him. She let him live with her-his father died while he was over there. His sister tried to help him but he couldn’t stay with her for long. He got angry a lot and scared his niece and nephew. He had his own place for a few years, a one-room place not too far from his sister, but even that got to be too much, and he drifted. He drifted so much that he drifted onto Lisa Campbell’s stainless steel table.

Lisa took care of five more bodies before her day was done, and Lawrence cleared four. By the time they both emerged from locker rooms, freshly dressed, The room was again overflowing, but at least those were problems for other pathologists, the evening shift.

“How’s it going?” Lawrence grinned and slapped a high five with an older man, bearded and graying at the temples. The man laughed heartily and high fived back as he donned his own white lab coat over blue scrubs.

“Not bad, brother. How was the day?”

“Boring, as usual,” responded Lawrence. “Same old stuff.”

Lisa stared at the men for a moment before she slipped out and away for the evening, untying her hair as she went.

Lawrence, hands deep into his pockets, tripped out the side door and paused to light a cigarette. He blew smoke up into the sky, watching as dusk began to settle, as color exploded across the horizon. He thought about the evening to come; a raucous poker game with his buddies, maybe a visit to Dooly's Bar down the road. Maybe he'd even get lucky with Marva, the cute little waitress who'd been eyeing him for the last two weeks. He puffed on the cigarette some more before he threw it to the ground, a satisfied smile splitting the corners of his face as he pulled out his car keys. It was good to be alive.