Pile of Leaves

Carl Abel was an odd combination of obsessive and disorganized. He didn’t want to call the city to pick up the leaves until he had raked and blown them all into the pile; therefore, he often forgot to call them at all until it was too late, and the large pile of leaves would sit out in front of their house for months into the winter. This aggravated the neighbor across the street, Emil Jones, and some other people, but what could they do, call the city themselves? The pile just sat there stinking and inviting neighbor kids to try jumping in.

They learned their lesson in the winter of 2002, when they finally had the pile hauled away, and there was a body found in it. It turned out to be an old man, Luther Frank, well known in the community; he was even a friend of Emil Jones, was known to go on hunting trips with him. The body was wrapped in a couple of garbage bags and was badly decomposed but when they took it to the coroner there hadn’t been a severe trauma of any kind; the best the coroner could figure, Luther Frank had died a natural death around October sometime. Luther’s house, across town on Pearl Street, was in fairly good condition, but empty; nobody had seen his wife since around October sometime. This raised some suspicion, but the widow Frank was a small woman; how could she drag this body into a pile of leaves, over here at the Abel place? It didn’t make sense. Nevertheless, she couldn’t be found; police set about trying to locate her while they pursued other leads.

Carl Abel blamed himself for the problem; he had promised his wife to have the leaves hauled away, and simply hadn’t done it. Now he lost sleep at night. Who could have put a body in his pile of leaves? His wife stormed around the house, angry, wondering if perhaps Carl himself had done it. Carl worked with the police to get to the bottom of the matter, explaining repeatedly that he had meant to have the pile removed, for months now, and simply hadn’t got around to it. Hadn’t touched it either. No, he hadn’t seen any suspicious activity related to the pile of leaves, nobody coming or going. It had been there from October to about now, early January. No, he had never met this Luther Frank guy, though he’d heard he was a friend of old Emil Jones, across the street. Emil, it turned out, was also gone; he also hadn’t been seen since October.

After some digging, the police came up with some information. The widow Frank, Ruby, had been located in Florida. She said that Luther had gone on a hunting trip with Emil Jones and Rory Baxter in early October, and she was so mad at him she had moved right out of the house, got a condo in Florida, and wanted to be good and rid of him, long gone before he came back from the hunting trip. The trip was to Canada, she thought, but wasn’t sure. She said they left in early October, maybe the 2nd, and were due back around the 14th, but she couldn’t swear to it, and didn’t care anyway; she considered herself rid of Luther, didn’t want to be there when he returned, and didn’t especially want to ever see him again, dead or alive. Sure, she was sorry he had died, but she hadn’t known that; didn’t know how it happened, where, or why. All she knew was that he’d left on this trip, and that was enough for her; she’d left him, started a new life in Florida, and didn’t especially care to return.

The police were startled at her story, but it seemed sincere; she was genuinely surprised that Luther had died; she explained how she’d come to move to Florida, and even showed documents related to her moving that probably proved that she had indeed moved as soon as he left for that trip; if they could show that he actually went on the trip at all, she was probably in the clear. They had a little harder time convincing her that she was still married, thus responsible for the house, the body, and the funeral, but eventually she came around on that, and came back to town, reluctantly, to deal with all three.

Emil Jones was still missing, but Rory Baxter, upon being questioned intently, told an interesting story. Yes, in fact the three of them had set out on a hunting trip to Canada. While in Canada, Luther Frank had died of a heart attack, naturally. The two remaining friends, Emil and Rory, had put him in bags, threw him in the back of Emil’s covered pickup and driven him back to the states together, but were stopped at the border. You can’t bring a dead body through this border, they were told. OK, we’ll leave it here, then, they said. No, you can’t do that either, they said. The two friends really didn’t know what to do. Eventually, after much wrangling, they were allowed to bring the body through. It was more aggravation than either man had bargained for; Rory maintained that his wife also was not crazy about the trip to begin with, and he himself had to go to work almost immediately upon their return. He realized now that he had been selfish, but they arrived in town Sunday morning in the middle of the night; he had to work in a few hours; he was hung over as was Emil, and he finally got Emil to agree to just deal with the body himself. Yet he didn’t know what Emil had done with the body, nor did he have any clue where Emil had gone. He had not been involved in putting the body in the leaves, he claimed; he knew nothing about it.

Emil, a retired firefighter, was finally found with a glazed look in his eyes, at a Las Vegas slot machine, running through his retirement fund. He was arrested and brought back to town, but eventually released with very little punishment. He verified the stories of both Ruth and Rory, but added another detail; he was fairly confident that that pile of leaves would stay there for another month or two, giving him time to simply flee; he knew they’d catch him, but just didn’t want to face the music at that moment, in the middle of the night on Sunday. The three of them had gone on many hunting trips together; had shot and skinned various animals, yet when death parked at their doorstep, neither Emil nor Rory had been very well prepared for it. Emil, however, was able to move back into his house and live another fifteen years or so there; people whispered behind his back, but he didn’t feel so badly about it, having owned up to his crime, and paid a modest price for it. From that fall on, Carl Abel was very prompt about his leaves; he didn’t let them sit for months on the curb, or even for a week, ever, and relations were actually much better between him and Emil as a result. Across town, Rory Baxter really needed a good hunting trip, but could no longer do it, and fell into heavy drinking and self pity. Eventually, his marriage also fell apart, and he too left town.

12-08