I originally posted this about four years ago. Something about the pumpkin reminded me of it, so even though there's no accompanying photo, I thought I'd repost it anyway: Yesterday morning I awoke to a smell not unlike my dogs' anal glands. I thought to myself, wow, Peaches certainly was munching her ass this morning. Strange that I didn't hear her.
I fed the Peach, leashed her, then took her out front to begin our walk, as I do every morning. I stepped out onto the front porch and noticed that during the night a ripped-up towel and what appeared, from a distance, to be a chunk of carpet, had appeared on the front lawn. Peaches and I decided to inspect the items closer. Yes, that was a towel, covered in dirt and discolored from bleach. But the carpet revealed to have bones sticking out of it. Peaches slowly began to inch her body close to it, as though she was going to roll in it. "No Peaches!" I pulled her back just in time and she begrudgingly sat on the sidewalk while I continued to look at the boned carpet and towel.
It was then that I noticed a hole that had been dug up by some sort of animal during the night. Suddenly it all came together. Several years ago someone must have buried their dead dog under the tree. For whatever reason they decided that burying it one foot beneath the surface of the ground, wrapped in a towel, was hygienic enough. In the heat of Wednesday, however, the stink of the rotting animal, which had up to this point been kept decently preserved under the shade of the tree, began to fill the air, beckoning the nighttime scavengers to unearth the mystery. The scavenger had either chewed off its head and left the rest of its body for me to dispose of, or...
Perhaps the dog never had a head and was buried under the tree to end a curse! Maybe the dog was roaming the neighborhood, chasing kitties and scaring children, and a witch told my neighbor with the American flag that the only way to destroy the dog and its endless wanderings was to bury it under a tree on a hot summer night!
But probably not.
So Peaches and I left the corpse and continued on our walk. When we made the circle back to the house the smell was so overwhelming that I found myself trapped in a convulsion of gags. I could barely make it up the front porch and into the house. However disgusted I was by the odor, I knew something had to be done. Sure, I could leave it for the neighbors, but the smell was increasing and filling up the house.
Breathing through my mouth, I got the rusty shovel out of the side yard and approached the corpse. The dog must have been a terrier of some sort, judging by the size of its body and tail. I assumed that a corpse would be light, considering the creatures that eat its insides and the time it had under the ground to turn into earth. But this thing was so heavy that I wasn't sure if I'd be able to keep the body from falling off the shovel as I carried it around the block to the dumpster.
After several minutes of failed scooping, I managed to get the body mounted on the shovel in such a way that it was balanced, and I covered it with a black trash bag to avoid questions on my way to the dumpster.
Grunting and panting, the shovel extended straight out in front of me, with the tips of the bones sticking out from under the trashbag, I stepped off the sidewalk to let a jogger pass me, wondering what the scene must look like: it's 7:30 in the morning and a woman in Business Casual is carrying corpse on a shovel down the sidewalk.
I turned the corner into the alley and avoided eye contact with a man walking toward me, who glanced and frowned at my bundle on the shovel. Now I had to figure out how to get the lid of the dumpster up, without risking losing the body from the shovel. Delicately I lowered the body and set the shovel on the ground. I got the lid off the dumpster to rest against the wall, then picked up the shovel again. Since I'm pretty short and the dumpster is pretty high, I didn't know if I'd be able to thrust the corpse over the lip. Certainly I did not want to see what the underside of the body looked like.
Slowly I raised the shovel, tilted it, and the body sank into the trash, covered by the black trash bag.
I didn't bother disposing of the tattered towel or filling in the shallow hole with dirt.
I kind of regret getting rid of it before taking time to examine it. If I were braver I would have dissected it or set it aside where I could watch it decompose in peace. Instead, the headless dog will be buried among all of our useless crap. But I don't feel guilty about disrespecting the dead. The dead are beyond that.
Nguyễn Trọng Tuyển in Phú Nhuạn district, Saigon
