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sink too
deeply into the marsh to walk.
Kimberly and Natasha had discovered the bog on
the island last summer when they were looking for a private place
to sunbathe nude. They’d taken Kim’s boat out to this island, sure
to be vacant, since all it really was, was marsh. Not likely any
families water-skiing from it, and no fishermen would come ashore
there. The marsh solidified about fifty feet in, and there they put
their towels and opened the wine and had themselves a fun day and
an allover tan. Not that Natasha needed a tan, but she seemed to
enjoy being naked as much as Kimberly enjoyed Natasha being naked.
Anyway, as they were exploring the small island, they found a hole
in the middle of it, and inside was a deep well of blackish-green
slime. Stagnant bog. Natasha, who owned the motel with her husband,
and heard all the fishing stories, said that the bog was thick and
mucky. And when Kimberly thought of a place to stash Cousins’ body,
she thought immediately of thick and mucky. It was perfect.
Once they were again on solid footing, they
threaded the pole through Cousins’ bound ankles and wrists, and
hoisted him back up on their shoulders.
“Tell me again why he went to jail?” Natasha
asked.
“Robbed the mini mart and made his getaway on
his snowmobile. Left tracks right to our apartment.”
“Too stupid to live.”
Kimberly agreed. She slowed down as they neared
the bog. She could sense it. She could smell it. She did not want
to fall into it. Natasha said it was like quicksand; the more you
moved, the deeper it sucked you down. They lowered Cousins to the
ground, then Natasha picked up the bamboo pole and probed the
ground in front of them. But when they got to the bog, they could
see it. It was dark black in the night, as if it sucked the
struggling moonlight right down to be eaten by turtles, too.
They went back and dragged Cousins as near to
the edge as either one of them wanted to step, and then Kimberly
picked up the pole and began shoving his body closer.
“Want to say a few words?”
Count on Natasha to sense gravity in the absurd
situation.
“We could have been a family, Cousins, if you’d
have been a little smarter,” Kimberly said. “And it’s mostly my
fault for making a bad choice. I wish you well on your journey
through the afterlife, and God have mercy on all our souls.”
Natasha nodded. “Amen,” she said.
Kimberly pushed until Cousins began to disappear
into the muck. The back of his head and his shoulders floated like
polished ivory in the moonlight.
“Push him under the edge,” Natasha said. “His
body has to go under the island.”
Together they maneuvered Cousins’ remains to the
far side of the bog, and then poked at him until he completely
disappeared under the grass.
When he was gone and didn’t come back up,
Kimberly’s knees gave out and she sat down hard and began to
cry.
“Do that at home,” Natasha said. “I’ve got to
wash my clothes and get cleaned up before I go home to Mort. I
smell like bog.”
Kimberly put her fears and broken heart and
emotional exhaustion on hold for one last trip across the lake. She
promised herself that once she got home, she could break down and
it could last a while.
But, in the morning, she realized she had to act
completely normal, so she got up, showered and dressed, and opened
up the dress shop like she always did. Nothing could look out of
the ordinary.
She figured two weeks with the turtles and
crayfish and she’d be home free. If Cousins didn’t emerge within
two weeks, if some fisherman needing an emergency field toilet
didn’t come upon him within two weeks, she would be fine.
It was going to be a long two weeks.
By the end of the day, she hardly believed it
had happened. She had decent receipts with all the tourist ladies
in town, keeping themselves busy spending money while their
husbands spent their days on the water. She was dog tired by the
time she locked the front door and turned the Open sign