Backfill

© 2001 Jess Butcher
All rights reserved.

"That's Buck Rutheford operating the excavator, I drive the dump truck, the rest of the help is temporary," the foreman shouts over the din of diesel engine clatter.

Rutheford won't glance toward the visitor. The operator's eyes are dark, his gaze steady, too steady on the load suspended beneath the mechanical arm he so deftly controls. His unyielding concentration serves as a barrier between him and the young police officer, a barrier he's learned to use to protect himself.

"How many of these tank swap-outs you do a month?" the uniformed officer asks as he jots in a small, black notebook.

"Five, six, if we're lucky. You know, there ain't many steel tanks left, but the EPA says you gotta cycle these fiberglass tanks every ten years or sink a monitoring well. Besides, convenience stores change hands a lot and the new owners never want to assume the liability of an old underground storage tank."

"JOB SECURITY, HUH?" The excavator's engine unexpectedly idles down and the sudden quiet transforms the officer's comment into an odd shout.

"S'cuse me for a minute," the foreman smiles. As the officer watches, the pot-bellied ballerina dances lightly over muddy ground, approaching the man seated in the operator compartment of the CAT 215.

The construction site is unremarkable. The old convenience store west of Memphis is being completely renovated. As the foreman leans inside the excavator for a brief conversation, workers on the ground use long poles to steady the twelve-thousand-gallon fiberglass fuel tank dangling from straps on the end of the excavator boom.

A moment later, the diesel engine roars back to high-idle and the foreman retraces his hard-hat pirouette to the point where the officer is standing. The policeman has moved a few steps nearer the frontage road and shades his eyes as he peers in the window of a dusty, blue pickup with the logo 'FUEL-CORP SOUTH' stenciled on the door.

"How many of these blue pickups does the company operate?" the officer inquires as he turns toward the foreman.

"Jeez, I don't know ... must be at least fifteen or sixteen, just around Memphis, I suppose—"

"Last night in a parking lot off Beale Street," the officer interrupts, "a witness claims to have seen a woman pulled, screaming into a blue pickup truck with a sign on the door. It may be nothing, but we're following up ... " the officer's voice trails off as he turns to watch the tank disappear below the rim of the deep, sand-filled crater.

The foreman gazes at the officer carefully. "Ya' think this has somethin' to do with that tailbone freak?"

As he speaks, bright blue eyes set deep and wide sparkle beneath the ridge of the foreman's protruding forehead. For months, the Memphis press has been abuzz with news linked to five, crudely severed human tailbones found in Memphis public parks over the course of the past two years. To date, no other body parts have been discovered and the newspapers have conjectured that a serial killer may be dissecting hapless victims, possibly local prostitutes.

Ignoring the question, the officer looks intently over the chubby foreman's shoulder, toward Rutheford in the cab of the earthmover.

"How long has he been working for you?" the officer asks.

"You mean, Bucky?" the foreman said, his tone taking on an air of important confidentiality. "Oh, I guess he's been with FUEL-CORP for five years or so ... ever since he got out of prison."

"He has a record then?"

"Sure, Bucky don't make no secret of it. He stabbed a guy at some topless joint out by the airport when he was a kid; fightin' over drugs or somethin', I think ... but he ain't no freakin' butcher, if that's what you're gettin' at."

"I'm not getting at anything, sir. I'm just following up on blue pickup trucks with white letters painted on the door. Rutheford ever have any trouble here on the job?"

"Listen, now," the foreman continued, growing visibly agitated, "Bucky there, he ... well, he did have a sort of disagreement with one of the other foremen last year. He got written up for it and transferred to my crew. I don't think it amounted to much more than a shoving match."

"You know what it was about?" the officer asked.

"Yeah, somethin' stupid about buryin' garbage at a site."

"Garbage?" the officer's faced showed concern.

"Yeah, you know, sometimes people throw junk in an open excavation overnight. We're not supposed to knowingly bury trash; the regs say we have to remove it, but I gotta' tell you, it happens all the time. The job boss saw Bucky backfill over some garbage bags and when he told him to dig 'em back up, Bucky flat refused; foreman wrote him up the next day."

"Does Rutheford have access to one of these pickups?" the officer asked, shifting, positioning himself between the foreman and the machine operator.

"Naw, he drives that old Cavalier parked over there. Only supervisors drive company trucks."

The policeman nods and turns toward the excavation, pausing for a long moment. As he watches, a ladder is lowered into the hole and several workers descend to loosen the tank straps and begin attaching the pump, valve, and filler assemblies.

"Listen," the officer finally says, turning back to the foreman and handing him a card, "this is only routine. I didn't mean to alarm you. We're just following up on blue pickups, that's all. But if you should happen to see anything strange—"

"Yeah," the foreman blurts out, "I'll call for sure if I see anything, anything at all."

"Looks like you are about finished up here," the officer says, opening his patrol car door and removing the baton from his duty belt.

"Yeah, we'll finish up tomorrow. We don't do the backfill until we give the sand a day to settle. It's gotta be 48 inches deep, you know, in case of a gasoline leak."

The officer nods. He's heard this process explained by other contractors before, but he wants to be certain. Above all else, his craft requires precision.

Dawn is approaching and a gray haze appears, a damp, opaque veil, edges draped gingerly over the muddy landscape. The specter of the police cruiser materializes, tires squishing through the mire, nudging the gray mist aside, seeking the edge of the trench.

The click of the trunk lock is alarmingly loud in the thick, pre-dawn hush: a picnic cooler; three black garbage bags, doubled to securely contain his filleted, gelatinous cargo. Down the ladder, one parcel at a time, the horrific tide shifts sluggishly in the officer's arms as he kneels and begins clawing at the sand.

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