Juan said.
“Well, school kids aren’t as smart as us,” said Taylor, without realizing he had winked.
They loaded a couple of crowbars and a rusty hatchet onto the wagon.
“Did you ever like school?” Juan asked. As sullen as he tried to be, he was not comfortable with silence unless he was busy repairing equipment.
Taylor considered the question. He had graduated from university twelve years ago. Memories of high school had seemed to grow more fuzzy, but much warmer with each passing year.
“It was fun,” he answered finally.
“It’s boring,” the teenager said with a shrug. “My mom used to make me go. But they’d kick me out. And then they’d pull my Dad into the office to tell him how bad I was. And I’d get some time off and I’d go to work, which was what I wanted anyway. I hated it there.”
“You’ll have to finish high school if you want to get to college, you know.”
“I don’t see what good that does either. You used to work here when you were my age. And then you went to university, right? And now you’re back. If school is so great, why are you here with me?
Right back where you started from.”
“You can’t gauge your life by what you think other people are doing,” Taylor said, staring at the youth with all the seriousness he could muster. “You’re good with machinery, you know. With a little education or an apprenticeship, you could get yourself a good job. There’s more to life than working for farm minimum wage, you know.”
“I like farms,” Juan replied. “It’s better than working in a factory.
Besides, I want to go back to Mexico one day and work on my own farm.”
“But with an education…”
“I don’t care about an education. And if an education is really so great and working on a farm is really so bad, what are you doing here?”
Taylor paused for a moment before answering. Of course he could not tell his young friend the truth, but he wondered for a moment how it would sound to any ears but his own: You see, I killed someone.
A boy. It was an accident, but I took his life away, and knowing what I did took all the life from inside of me as well. I came here to escape the silence it filled me with, so I could work my body to exhaustion and so I could sleep again through the nights…
Taylor shook his head. “I like it here too,” he said. “But don’t expect me to be here for long. I have another life, you know. Some people take cruises. Some people go to Florida for a few months. I just wanted to get out of the city and get away from the stress for a while. And with an education, I can go back anytime I want. And that’s the point.”
“But we’re both here the same. I like it here better than school, but I didn’t have to go to classes to get here. That’s my point.”
Juan beamed at himself, clearly proud of his reasoning. He glanced up at Taylor’s face to see if he had succeeded in irritating the older man.
“If we’re both the same,” said Taylor, “why is it I’m driving the tractor and you’re standing in the back?”
This wiped the smile from Juan’s face. He fished a pack of Black Cats from the pocket of his plaid shirt and lit a cigarette with a wooden match. He lumbered onto the back of the tractor, standing on the hitch that joined the wagon and holding onto the back of Taylor’s seat.
“All set. Let’s go!”
Taylor started up the engine, and the old tractor bucked and groaned to life. The exhaust pipe rattled and spewed a blue cloud of diesel smoke which lingered in the still air. As he eased the tractor into gear, Taylor stood in his seat to avoid the cloud of smoke until he had passed through it.
Emerging from the shadow of the warehouse, Taylor immediately felt the soft caress of the morning sun on his back. He was looking forward to taking off his shirt soon. He longed to feel the full weight of the sun on his skin.
Juan was soon grumbling and battling his grip on the seat as the tractor crossed the first series of ruts and potholes in the dirt path. Taylor decided to take it easy on Juan and drove slowly in second gear between the blossoming grape vines as he edged his way towards the river. He savoured the smell of the wet grass, and even the smell of the diesel exhaust mingling with the smoke from his cigarette, which he held between two fingers on the top of the steering wheel.
As he rounded into the clearing and the river came into view, Taylor could smell the green stagnant water and the lingering odour of dead fish that seemed to always follow a long, hard rain. The river odours soon began to blend with the smell of charred wood and wet ashes as they neared the pump-house.
And then another smell took him by surprise. Taylor tossed his cigarette aside to let it sizzle out in the damp grass. He took the tractor out of gear, denied the engine fuel, and turned off the engine. He stood in his seat to avoid the last gasp of exhaust fumes as he listened through the sudden silence that lingered in the eerily still morning air.
“Don’t move,” he said to Juan.
Taylor inhaled deeply through his nose a second time. As soon as he filled his lungs, he grimaced with the realization of what he had just breathed in. Thick and acrid, it stung his nose and throat.
He knew this sickly, familiar smell all too well. It was already deep in his lungs, in his own body. Mingling with the odour of burnt lumber was the stench of charred human flesh.
Already Taylor’s thoughts were on Anna Wagner, the young girl who had disappeared the week before. He turned his head away, exhaling forcefully to get it out of his body, but it was too late.
The odour was deep inside him now. His stomach clenched as he brought his hand to his mouth and started to cough—a deep hack that brought the blood to his head and made his sides ache with the strain.
Juan had already scrambled down from the wagon hitch and was walking towards the old pump-house a dozen yards away. He stopped and spun around, stepping back towards the tractor, covering his nose with his shirt collar.
“Gawd! It reeks!” he shouted. “What is it?”
Taylor wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his plaid shirt. “I told you to stay back, Juan.”
The sullen teen stepped behind the tractor. “Shit,” he groaned.
Taylor sat back in his seat, taking deep, measured breaths. The smell coming from the pump-house left little doubt as to what was inside, but as long as he stayed on the tractor and didn’t approach any closer, he could hold onto the last flake of hope for a few more seconds. He could hope he was wrong, that it was some dead animal inside. As the seconds quickly passed, however, his hope could not last against the certainty of what was waiting for him inside the blackened pump-house.
Taylor glanced at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. Only a few minutes ago, it had promised to be a beautiful day. Much more than just the day had been shattered, Taylor was certain of that. He directed his gaze to the riverbank where the willows, pines and poplars framed a small patch of goldenrod and purple liatris. A large crow was perched on the
