by Chris Bauer
Such a cheerful young woman, Sister was, when first we met. Pudgy cheeks, bright, brown eyes, some straggling black hair escaping her headpiece and framing her light and sweet brownish face. A warm glow surrounded her. What made her leave? Why was she on those tracks?
The door to the morgue swung open. A young man in a white lab coat came over to Kerm and whispered in his ear, except me and Father could hear most of what he said because he was out of breath. Two words made me perk up: baby skeletons.
Kerm led Father and me down a hallway from the morgue, the hall’s cinder block walls painted white above black-and-white checker-boarded linoleum flooring. It was wide enough for the three of us to walk side by side with room left over for a gurney to roll past us, a covered body on it. The entire hallway stretch was spotless. Kerm spoke to me. “So you’ve lived in Three Bridges your whole life?”
“Most all of it,” I told him. No need to mention Pittsburgh or prison. “Much obliged you’re letting us see this.”
“You did a good thing volunteering to come down here. That monsignor of yours is a piece of work,” he said, stopping in front of a windowless metal door. He unlocked it and peeked inside. “And you didn’t get sick on me back there either, so I decided to return the favor, if you can call it that. Come in.”
We entered a well-lit room, about double the size of a hospital chapel. On the smooth cement floor were thin, overlapping canvases, forest green in color. What was laid out on them showed up real well. Tiny skeletons, all lined up, eight in each row, nine rows in total. More nightmare material.
There was room to walk between the rows, and this was what the young fella who fetched Kerm was doing, a pair of light green hospital booties pulled over his shoes. Two more young people in the room were dressed the same way, standing at attention against the wall. The three of them, two men and a woman, beamed like they were waiting for Kerm to put blue ribbons on their masterpieces. I could still smell some of the sewage. Kerm lifted his hand to direct us down an uncluttered path against the wall. He spoke to his assistants.
“Nice work, kids. I’ll be with you in a sec. Just wanted to show these men where we are in this case.” Kerm talked to Father and me as we walked past each row. “They’ve finished matching up what they could, bone to bone, on these infants. Over seventy skulls, with bones enough for sixty-four complete bodies. We didn’t try to match each bone to the correct body.”
He pointed to a row in the back, away from the others, in the far right corner. In it were bones and fragments of bones, all the pieces laid out separate. “The extra bones back there tell us the body count exceeds the sixty-four we have here.”
I walked farther toward the back of the room and approached a counter. On it sat two bone piles, the bones about the same in size as the bones in each of the assembled skeletons. “So do you know how they died?” Father asked.
“My opinion,” Kerm said, “based some on forensics but mostly on common sense, is they all drowned. We found no head traumas, no indications of strangulation in the neck area, nothing of this nature. Any bone breaks are consistent with those caused by brittleness due to decay.” Kerm raised his voice. “Ah, Wump, I’d appreciate it if you would step back from there, please.”
I stopped short of the counter but close enough to see what was on it. Two more babies, but these were real bodies, not skeletons. Two small piles of shredded cloth also sat on the counter, outside a row of surgical instruments laid out next to the exposed bodies. A lot of the material was soiled so bad it was black, except for a few places where you could see some blue.
Blue receiving blankets. For baby boys.
Kerm and Father filled in beside me. “Here’s where the logic kicks in,” Kerm said, with all three of us focused on the counter. “The victims behind us on the floor died sometime before the city rerouted the sewers and storm drains. That makes it at least thirty years.”
More than double that, Kerm.
“I was able to do autopsies on the two newer ones. Their cause of death was drowning. Two baby boys with no indications of illness.”
“How many boys, how many girls?” Father said.
“The structure of the pelvis would give that away, but only at an older age. Aside from the two newer ones, because there was no flesh on the bones of the other babies, there’s no way to tell the sex.”
“What about what they were found floating in?” I asked. “The sewage, I mean. Anybody looking at that as a cause?”
By now, Kerm wanted us out of here, directed Father and me to retrace our steps toward the door. “We’ve got chemists looking at its composition. The fact they were found in sewage had nothing to do with their deaths, in my opinion. The skeletons were probably in that walled-in, unused section of storm sewer and got swept away with new sewage when the walls collapsed. We let the sewer department people replace the brick wall at the north end, to keep it dry in there while someone checked for any more bones. We found little else worthwhile as evidence. But one thing’s for sure,” he said, pulling the door shut behind us. “Someone put a chisel to that wall to weaken it.”
So we heard, Kerm.
Kerm locked the door behind him and pointed to a stairwell he wanted us to take up to the first floor. For me, something felt very wrong. I caught myself staring at the locked metal door. “But, Kerm—”
“If you’re thinking something doesn’t add up,” Kerm said, reading my face, “you’re right. Those two babies drowned in the active part of the sewer, not in the closed-off and dry tributary the skeletons were in. The two bodies must have come in with the seeping sewage when the hole in the north wall got large enough.”
We exited the stairwell onto the first floor of the hospital. A flight of stairs didn’t take much out of me, and it didn’t seem to bother Father neither, but Kerm was all out of breath and coughing from the climb. “Damn cigarettes,” he said with his first full breath then waddled out ahead, toward the brightness of an outside exit. Being a hundred pounds overweight didn’t much help you neither, Kerm.
The exit door opened and the three of us squinted at the late-morning sun. The air still had a cool bite to it, typical for April. Kerm pulled out his pack of Pall Malls. Father and me declined; Kerm lit one up. “If you’re wondering why I let you fellas see all this,” he said, “it’s because I already reported my findings to my superiors, and released a statement to the news people.”
“What did you tell them?” Father asked. I was all ears.
“Official cause of death for two of the babies was drowning,” Kerm said, “but as far as the remaining seventy-two infants were concerned, they all died a long time ago, and a definitive cause of death can’t be determined. No doubt there was foul play involved, but I can’t be forensically sure with any of them.”
Kerm patted my shoulder. It was the kind of pat that said Thanks for everything, we’re done talking. “Much obliged you came down here to ID the sister, Wump. I’ll have someone call a cab to take you and Father Duncan back. I’m sure the sisters are wondering.”
The convent needed to be told about Sister Magdalena, but we could do that with a phone call. The doc just wasn’t seeing the whole picture. I may have been a kid through it all, but I’d seen a lot of what went on. This was about as long as I could go staying quiet.
“Kerm, you got somewhere inside the hospital we can talk? There’s some things I need to tell you. About what it was like growing up around here.”
Kerm stamped out his smoke, said okay, and ushered us back inside. I started telling him while we walked. “In the winter of 1910, I think it was, one morning me and an orphan friend of mine waited for our breakfast…”
…“You smell like flowers, Johnny.”
Heinie and me leaned our backs against the wall as the orphanage dining room filled up with kids all hungry and as sleepy-eyed as we were. I had on a pair of gray wool pants with white pinstripes and a pants seat a lot fatter than me, the legs so wide I could fit a whole shelf of candy in them on my next
trip to the general store. I slid down the wall to the hardwood floor, then curled my legs around in front of me, flapped them a couple of times. Heinie slid down the wall just like me, his shorter legs tenting upward until he saw how I had mine and sat with his the same way. The nuns hustled between the kitchen and the dining room setting up breakfast for us kids, thirty-six of us we were now. When we were all settled in we’d take up the table space in both rooms. Our hands were clean; washing up after our trip to the tannery had been easy today since most of the dog stuff we’d picked up was frozen hard as marbles.
I had my nose against my knee. “It’s these pants that smell like flowers. Used to be Mr. Pigholtzer’s.”
“Pine Box Pigholtzer? From the funeral parlor? But he’s taller than you. He’s a man, Johnny.”
“He ain’t taller than me no more. Ain’t taller than nobody no more.” I felt the fabric again. “These pants are made of wool. They’re better’n what most boys with parents get. Real warm, too.” I checked the doorway for what should have been the last of the sisters’ oatmeal trips from the kitchen.
Sister Irene entered the dining room carrying a steaming pot of cereal. A long, brown-handled knife was tucked through the front of her habit’s waistband, sticking up like a sword on some Arabian guard. She set the oatmeal pot at the edge of the table, bowls and glasses clattering, then left in a hurry through a different doorway. I leaned over to watch her. She stomped through two rooms till she got to the orphanage’s front door, where she wrapped a scarf around her neck and put on a heavy overcoat. She pulled some papers out of a desk drawer and stuffed them into her coat pocket, the other coat pocket getting the kitchen knife. Last thing she grabbed was a thick walking stick from an umbrella stand. She opened the front door and slammed it behind her.
“Where she going, Johnny?”
“I told her about the kid we seen this morning.”
“Oh.”
Me and Heinie shoveled down our oatmeal then asked to be excused. I grabbed a pair of coats and hats from the cloakroom. The two of us headed out the front door.
Chimney smoke rose above the gravy-brown, blanched bungalows of the tannery workers as Sister Irene approached their border, not looking mindful of us tailing her. She threaded her way through a bunch of men and boys all wearing dull work clothes and old turned-up overcoats beneath hand-me-down derbies, porkpies, and other make-do clothing used for headgear. The men were gathered near one of the grassy areas.
Sister reached a split rail fence and followed it a few hundred feet to the edge of the settlement to where she found the boy me and Heinie seen this morning, the kid still sitting on the frozen dirt, wearing a light jacket and pants too short to cover his legs. The kid was lashed with rope to the fence post at the edge of the grass, his skinny calves black with machine grease, his bare hands folded in his lap. Sister placed her hand real gentle-like beneath his chin and lifted his droopy blond head, could now see what we seen, his white lips cracked and caked, his ears too red to touch, his eyes swollen and dazed. The kid was older than me, looked maybe thirteen. She unsheathed the knife and quickly sliced through the ropes. When the boy was freed, she took off her coat and wrapped it around his shoulders.
“Where are this boy’s parents?” she shouted at the nearby crowd. “He’ll die in weather as cold as this. What’s wrong with you people? Where is his father?”
The men resettled their kerchief sacks and canvas lunch bags under their arms, the fathers in the crowd turning the shoulders of their gawking sons away from Sister and the boy, aiming them in the direction of the tannery. One arm rose from the center of the crowd, its fingers pointing past all the bobbing hats to somewhere behind Sister. “He’s a Zerhoffer,” said a voice, “und here the father comes.”
Sister rose to see a man with a forward lean that said he weren’t planning on slowing up any. She bent down again to hover over the boy then raised her head toward the shacks that surrounded the fenced-in grass area, where me and Heinie were both hiding.
Jesus. She was looking right at me.
“Johnny!” Sister Irene called. “Don’t think I don’t see you two boys back there. Get over here and wrap your scarf around this boy’s head, then rub each of his fingers to get the circulation going. Heinie, you go tell the sisters to bring a doctor back to the orphanage. Quickly, the both of you!”
We did as Sister said. The kid was nearly blue, his fingers stiff as tongue depressors. I put my gloves on him ’cause rubbing his fingers wasn’t doing enough.
Sister clenched her walking stick in its middle and high-stepped her way into Mr. Zerhoffer’s path. Pushing the walking stick across his chest, she forced him to stop. “How dare you do this to a boy—”
“Got nothing to say to you,” the boy’s father said. “He don’t want to work. We’re just teaching him a lesson. His momma will be out here to fetch him soon und clean him up, then she’ll drag him over to the tannery.” He leaned in the direction of me and his frozen son and snarled, “Where he better get back to scrubbing down the machinery und doing all his normal work, you hear me, boy!” Then, facing Sister Irene again: “You mind your own business, Sister.”
“So if the boy doesn’t want to work, you tie him up outside to freeze to death? You crossed the line, Mr. Zerhoffer. This is cruelty, plain and simple.”
“He is my boy. Mine,” Zerhoffer said, pounding his chest once. “I can treat my children any damn way I want, und you can’t do nothing about it. Get out of the way. I am late for work. Und you…”
Zerhoffer leaned over to me. “You worthless little shit-monger, you get your filthy fingers off my son.”
He lifted me by the front of my coat collar, raised me close to his face with one hand. “What were you doing, picking his pockets?” Zerhoffer slammed me down hard against the frozen ground. “I know what you need, boy.”
He slipped off his belt, folded it, and slapped it against the palm of his bare hand. Sister bolted forward, her hand fumbling in a pocket in her nun’s habit.
“That’s enough. Stop this! Now!” Sister approached Zerhoffer from behind, drew her hand out of her pocket. This gave me the opening I needed. I crabbed my way out of the man’s reach.
Sister Irene raised her fist in front of Zerhoffer’s face, a long piece of writing paper trailing from it. “You are dead wrong, Mr. Zerhoffer! I can do a lot about it. This is the last time you or any of your godforsaken friends will harm another child like this, unless you want to pay a fine. Or go to jail.”
“Go to jail? You are crazy, Sister. Go to jail for what?”
“I filed a complaint with the town. I know what’s going on around here. These children”—her tight fist jammed Zerhoffer’s shoulder—“are living, breathing creatures of God, all of whom deserve protection. They are not to be beaten senseless and left out in the cold if they can’t or won’t go to work. This is abuse,” she snarled, shaking her papers, “and this ordinance says the town agrees with me. I’m reporting you to the police.”
Zerhoffer threw the belt down, grabbed the paper from her and started mouthing the words on it. Soon a big grin crossed his face. “Ha. I see what it says, Sister. This is a goddamn joke. It don’t say nothing about no children. Says right here, ‘This ordinance,’” his voice boomed like a preacher from a pulpit, “‘is hereby invoked to make it unlawful to be cruel to canines, felines, and other animals.’ This ain’t nothing more than a cruelty-to-animals law, Sister. My kids are my property. I can scold them any damn way I want.” He leaned in, his face close to pressing against hers. “Long as I don’t hurt no dogs in the process.”
She leaned in even closer. “Read the rest of it.”
A putt-putting horseless carriage appeared at the southern corner of the shanties and made a sharp left off the main road. It bounced shaky-like as its tires dipped into and out of the nooks in the frozen earth, crunching their way toward us in the open space between the rows of houses. I got to my feet, took up a position on the other side of this Zerhoffer bastar
d who’d been looking to give me a strapping.
The Zerhoffer boy stirred. “C-can’t f-f-feel my hands, Pa…”
“The Church,” Sister announced, “had a judge make an addendum. It’s at the bottom.”
She squatted to take the Zerhoffer boy’s hands into her own, then she began reciting. “‘The rights of animals are hereby imparted to include the rights of human beings—’”
Zerhoffer threw the paper onto his son’s chest. “I saw what it says, Sister. I saw it real good.” The horseless carriage bounced to a stop behind them.
“No, you don’t see it, Mr. Zerhoffer.” Sister cradled the boy to her shivering chest, tried to get him to his feet. “We built the orphanage to give the poor an option, and more will be built if they’re needed. The Church can care for these children, can place these children, if people will let it. No more starving them or beating them if they can’t or won’t do a man’s job. And no more throwing unwanted babies into the rivers, or stuffing them into sewers and storm drains. I know what’s happening around here, and it must stop.”
“I need them wages, Sister,” Zerhoffer said, “und my son will do the job the Volkheimers tell him to do to earn them.” He searched the ground for his missing belt, turned left then right then left again, real clumsy-like on both feet. He leaned his puzzled head closer to the dirt to get a better look.
The perfect height for me.
Snap. I whipped the belt’s buckle across his eyes and screamed at him. “That’ll teach you to think you can strap me, you stupid fuck-face!”
“Johnny!” Sister screamed. “Stop it. Johnny!”
Zerhoffer covered his eyes with one arm while the other groped at me, but I circled away from him and to his left, still whipping blow after blow of belt leather and buckle iron against his head and face.
“Owww, you little orphan bastard! Owww…”