Dead Man in the Yard

There was a dead man in the yard

this morning. I checked in my wallet for my latest picture of the front yard. I have a collection of yard pictures that goes back for years but I usually carry only one photo at a time. No, he was a new arrival. I called Sheila. Sheila is my ex-wife.

“Hon, I think there is a dead man in the yard.”

“How do you know he’s dead?” she asked, not “Who is it? Did you kill him?” Nothing like that. Sheila never went for the obvious: Old Pierce Willoughby passed out drunk on the way home from an evening at the Legion hall over on Fairview would have been so usual that she figured I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to call her.

“Uh, hold on, will you?” I set the phone down on the hall table and rummaged in a drawer for the mirror I kept there. The mirror had fallen out of Sheila’s compact in 1973; it was October and our first anniversary. I had promised to glue it back in place but never got around to it. I went out into the yard and knelt by the dead man. The dead man was of average height, or would have been if he had not been lying down, and dressed in that elegantly understated way favored by bankers and funeral directors. He had closely trimmed gray hair and a military-style moustache, also gray. I held Sheila’s pocket mirror under the dead man’s nostrils. I had seen Phillip Marlowe do this in a film once, it is a sure test for death. The mirror did not mist over. I went back to the phone. “Nope, he’s dead, alright.”

“Did you even give him a poke? No. Honestly, Harry Brackenfern, I am so glad we didn’t have any children.” I, too, was glad we hadn’t had any children. They would have been out of college and established in their own lives by now. They probably wouldn’t visit or write.

“Did you even introduce yourself; ask how he came to be lying in the yard? No—you just assumed that he was dead.” Sheila has a good head on her shoulders, always gets right to the heart of a problem. We divorced last year after a twenty-seven years’ separation. The judge made a joke at our final hearing, Sheila’s and mine, finalizing our divorce: “Separated twenty-seven years. You’re sure you two want to go through with this?” There had been a ripple of subdued laughter from the others in the court, all awaiting their divorces. Or dispositions on parking fines, parole violation, jailbreak, rape, murder, whatever.

“Go back there and introduce yourself; we teach by modeling.” Sheila meant role-modeling; she teaches kindergarten at the James A. Garfield School. She took a summer workshop on this very subject. I went back to the corpse in the yard.

”How do you do? I’m Harry Brackenfern and this is my house you have died in front of. What is your name?” No answer. I returned to the phone; Sheila had hung up. I would call her back tomorrow.
My ex-wife and I had not spoken face-to-face for over twenty years. I should have missed Sheila, not having her around the house and all, but our daily calls brought me a kind of release; a duty had been satisfied. Sheila must have felt the same way; she always answered. I kept busy with repairs and improvements—the little things which if not done, build up into big problems later on: clearing the eaves, getting the leaves raked and piled, having the garbage securely bagged.

Emma, the kid next door, Old Pierce Willoughby’s granddaughter, helped me stuff the body in a hall closet to get it out of the yard; there was always talk among the neighbors to consider. Things like property values and curb appeal.