Slow Kill - Michael Mcgarrity [78]
When they arrived at Fort Bayard, Grant had to see it, so Kerney took a quick swing through the grounds. He drove by the three-story, ugly block hospital that had been built years after the fort had been decommissioned, and then on to the charming quadrangle where a bronze life-size statue of a buffalo soldier firing a rifle over his shoulder stood on a pedestal.
A row of officers’ quarters, stately Victorian houses with two-tiered porches, lined the street, and the restored post headquarters building, low-slung and sturdy with a wide veranda, sat at the far end of the quadrangle. Behind the building, the Pinos Altos Mountains rose up, masking from view the high wilderness of stream-cut canyons, vast upland meadows, and rugged summits that ranged for hundreds of thousands of acres along the Gila River watershed and continental divide.
“This really is an architectural treasure,” Grant said.
“I’ve always thought so,” Kerney said, remembering the times he’d visited in the past, first as a child with his parents and later on when he and his best friend, Dale Jennings, had competed in the state high school rodeo championships in nearby Silver City.
At the national cemetery, a Veterans Affairs official up from Fort Bliss met them. Looking none too pleased, he guided the way to the Spalding grave site, with a backhoe and a private ambulance following behind.
Evergreen trees scattered across the grounds interrupted the stark lines of gray headstones. The brown earth, almost barren except for sparse native grasses, seemed in somber harmony with the scattered trees.
Kerney signed forms and the backhoe operator went to work, carefully trenching and piling excavated dirt into one large mound. The engine’s sputtering carburetor and the whining of the hydraulics put Kerney on edge.
He wondered why the noise bothered him so much. Was it because he wanted the dead, many who’d seen so much violence and had been killed in battle, to rest quietly? Or was it also because of his own lingering sense of guilt about the men in his platoon who never made it home from Nam?
The thought hit Kerney in the gut, and feelings he thought he’d resolved long ago resurfaced, pushed away the emptiness, and brought back vivid flashes of combat. He could feel his mouth grimace, his jaw tighten.
Digging stopped when the casket was uncovered. Chains were secured to the casket fore and aft, and slowly it was lifted out of the grave onto a waiting gurney.
The backhoe operator shut the engine down and the silence only somewhat eased Kerney’s mood. He watched Grant stop the ambulance driver before he could push the gurney toward his vehicle.
“Might as well take a look before we cart this back to Albuquerque,” Grant said matter-of-factly, brushing dirt off the casket lid. “No sense wasting our time.”
Frozen in place, Kerney watched Grant unfasten the casket lid and push it open.
“There’s no skull,” Grant said.
Kerney approached slowly and looked inside at an assortment of bones, wondering if they represented a soldier unaccounted for and still carried as an MIA, one of the 1,800 Americans killed in Vietnam that had yet to be identified, perhaps a man from his regiment or company. Suddenly, putting a name to the remains became as important as confirming that George Spalding was still alive.
“We got a sternum, two sets of tibias and fibulas, one femur, one humerus, assorted ribs, a scapula, two ulnas, iliums—both with an attached pubis, a collarbone, a radius, and a hip joint—that’s it.”
Grant looked up from the casket. “No skull, finger, or foot bones. Maybe somebody didn’t want these remains to be positively identified.”
“That could be.”
Grant gave Kerney a questioning glance. “Are you okay with this?”
“I’m fine,” Kerney replied, his voice cold and distant.
Grant put on gloves and picked up the radius bone. “According to what you told me, Spalding was killed in a chopper crash that