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by Ralph Robert Moore
The gullet was located three miles outside town.
Like all gullets, it had formed when an earthquake cracked open a length of
ground, the crack never closing. Over the decades, weeds and brush had
grown uncontrolled within the gullet, until it was packed with a thicket of
branches, both dead and green. It was impossible, looking at the tangle of
growth in the five foot wide split in the earth, to tell how deep it went.
Sheriff Corbett glanced at the hand-cuffed man standing next to him. 'This is
where you rolled the body in?'
Black hair sweaty on his broad forehead, the man nodded.
Corbett leaned his plain face forward, looking down into the mess of criss-
crossing branches. 'Are you sure he was dead when you pushed him in?'
'He was alive when I pushed him in, but I broke his body up so bad, I’m sure he
couldn’t have lived more than a few minutes. Down in there.' He raised both
bound wrists to wipe the sweat from his eyes. 'He couldn’t even move his arms
or legs to stop me from rolling him in.'
Corbett looked around at the surrounding fields, the near-distant hills, the
bright, blue California sky. Well, he wanted something different from Chicago.
Breathed out through his nose, glanced back at the long, jagged rift in the
ground. 'I don’t know if he’s still alive or not. I don’t know how deep this gullet
is, or if he even fell all the way down, or got tangled up somewhere in his fall.
But it looks like it’s relatively dry. If a place is dry, especially a place hidden
from the sun, a man has a better chance of surviving than if it’s damp. If it’s
damp, you get all kinds of additional problems.'
The man turned towards Corbett, handcuffs clinking, face the type girls like,
wide eyebrows, dark lips. 'Maybe I’m not guilty of murder? It’s like an assault
or something?'
Dead branches curled above the gullet, hanging downwards like hundreds of
dry fingers, green weeds and wild blueberry bushes packed between the
phalanges.
'If you roll a man into a gullet, you’re goddam guilty of something. If his bones
are as broken as you say, he wouldn’t be able to defend himself if any animals
came by. Blood all over him, unable to move, he’d be just what an animal
would want to find down there. The large animals may not have discovered
him yet. But the small ones might have. And if not the small ones, almost
certainly the tiny ones.' He looked at his prisoner. 'Hell of a way to end your
life. Rows of teeth chewing into you, burrowing down to your bones. If they
were tiny animals, that’d take a long time. Meanwhile, nothing to hear but
throats swallowing.'
'I was drunk. No excuse, but. Shit happens.'
Corbett leaned over the thicket-filled crack in the earth, wide hips bending,
eyes squinting. Touched, with the top of his right index finger, the tip of his
nose, which his daughter kissed each morning as she left for a school where
there weren’t drugs, or knifings. 'I have a rope in the trunk of my cruiser.'
'He’s probably dead.'
'I ought to send you down there.'
The handcuffed man grinned, big white teeth. 'You aren’t gonna do that.'
Corbett led the suspect back to the cruiser, putting a hand on top of his head
to lower him into the back seat, reaching in, bending over, snapping bracelets
around both ankles.
'How long you gonna keep me here?'
'Not long. I got a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich waiting for me. I’m going
down into that gullet to see if your victim is still alive. I’ll leave the back doors
open so you get cross-ventilation.'
Corbett opened the trunk of his cruiser. Inside, a long flashlight, green
blanket, oxygen canister, teddy bear, coiled rope.
A boy on a bicycle skidded to a stop by the white front of the cruiser, front bike
wheel raising dust.
The boy jumped off his bike, ran over to Corbett. 'That’s my daddy down
there!'
'What?'
'Jim Sawson.' The boy looked up at Corbett, exhausted blue eyes. 'He’s my
father.'
Corbett swung his head down in exasperation. 'You shouldn’t be here, son.'
'Is he still alive? Is that the man who beat him?'
Corbett put his big right hand against the boy’s chest, stopping him from
getting any closer to the prisoner in the back seat. 'You need to go back to
town. I’m in the middle of my investigation.'
The boy ran over to the edge of the gullet. 'Daddy? Can you hear me?'
Corbett trotted over. Grabbed the boy’s shoulder. 'Stay back from the edge.
You could fall straight down.'
The boy was crying, small hands making fists, frightened eyes looking up at
Corbett. 'Is my daddy down there?'
Corbett got on his haunches, red stripe down the outside of his uniform pants
crinkling. He looked into the frantic eyes. 'I honestly don’t know. I’m about to
get a rope from my cruiser and lower myself down, to find out. But you don’t
want to be here for that.' He put his hand on the boy’s slim shoulder.
'I’m not leaving!'
'Why don’t you sit in my cruiser and listen to the radio while I check this out?'
The boy’s head vibrated, little mind trying to decide what to do. He slipped his
shoulder out from under Corbett’s hand, ran off solid ground onto the snarl of
branches growing out of the gullet, losing his balance, stumbling onto his
hands. Looking down into the criss-crosses, he started crying. 'Daddy?
Daddy?'
With a loud crackle, dry branches giving way under weight, the boy dropped
down, blonde hair pushed up as it sunk past thick weeds, shampooed yellow
slithering under, until there was nothing left but the blue California sky and
vibrating seed tops.
'Shit! Goddam it!' Corbett stood, rubbing his palm over his mouth.
He rushed back to the opened trunk of his cruiser. Tied one end of the rope to
the tow hitch between the rear wheels, played out the rest of the line as he
hurried back to the gullet.
He looped the free end of the rope around his waist, made a square knot.
'Son? Can you hear me?'
No sound from the tangle.
'Son?'
He checked to make sure the square knot was secure. 'Can you hear me?'
He stood at the edge of the gullet, looking down at the luxuriant weed vines,
dead azalea branches, headless zinnia stems tall as a man.
'Are you all right? Can you climb out?'
Nothing.
‘Son?'
He braced his shoes on the dry ground, holding onto the rope with both hands,
looking down at the criss-crossed chaos of the thicket. 'Can you climb out?'
Nothing.
'Are you stuck? Reach up. Reach your hand up!'
A quiet rustle beneath the surface of the thicket, broad-leafed dandelions
pushing up, fingertips appearing in the center of the rise, a hand emerging,
rising, flexing its fingers as it rose up to the wrist.
'Is that you?'
Am I always going to be a coward?
Corbett hesitantly grasped the hand.
Another hand rose, grabbing onto his leather belt.
A third hand rose, grabbing Corbett’s shoulder.
Two rows of hands, a hundred hands in each row, rippled up out of the thicket,
walking upside down around Corbett’s clothes, pulling him down, yanking his
frightened face into, through, under the thicket.
The line of rope, one end around his waist, whipped down after him, tautening,
back of the cruiser lifting.
Inside the cruiser, the suspect woke.
Noticed the cruiser was rolling backwards, towards the gullet.
He had no idea why that would be happening. Sometimes, it’s not necessary to
know why. Shit happens.
He reached down in the back seat, pulling up on his ankle bracelets.
The cruiser whipped on its back tires across the dry dirt of the clearing,
heading towards the gullet.
He yanked up furiously on the chains, black floor of the cruiser buckling
upwards.
The cruiser tilted vertically above the gullet, like a gulp about to happen.
The iron base of the brace anchoring the chains of his ankle bracelets ripped
up off the cruiser’s floor, landing on his knees, bent metal square, loose screws.
Dead branches scraped up the side of the cruiser as it slipped down into the
gullet.
All the tinted windows burst inwards.
He wet his lips.
Everything rushed in.
And it was all damp.
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