A Slow Growth on the Soul

By the time the volunteer ambulance rolled up to 37 Onnit Road the window of opportunity had closed-- not the one to save Gary Schlecker's dwindling life; the one to justify turning the lights and siren on while escorting his body to whatever white, sterile walls awaited it. That was the only reward in a case like his, especially if you'd ever loaned him money or bought him a drink.

"Here, Sam. Wipe this under your nostrils," Lonnie said as he handed Sam a jar of Vick's. He conjured it from under the passenger's seat of the meat wagon after it pulled into the driveway. "The cops on Gary's porch have that twisted look on their faces. It's gonna be a ripe one."

Sam spun off the lid of the pungent cream and spread an over-zealous, two-inch length of blue well past the edges of his nose.

"You're the best tech this town's got, Lon," Sam said matter-of-factly.

Little tricks like the Vick's impressed those who worked with Lonnie. He never discredited their claims, but deep down in his simple, suburban heart he knew that he was an observer, not a genius. He saw the odor-fighting trick on a detective show once. The hip, shoulder-holstered cops applied the ointment under their noses before fingerprinting an especially rancid crime scene. He made a mental note of the technique before retiring to bed next to his slightly overweight wife. I'll wow them with this one, Lonnie thought as he drifted off to the pleasant land where his thirty-year mortgage didn't exist. The monsters of dreamscapes didn't work in the medium of paper. For Lonnie, Sam, and most other men in their tax bracket with similar IQs, the worst things encountered during sleep consisted of the fairer sex and younger versions of themselves. Tight-bodied cheerleaders had transformed into cottage-cheesed soccer moms in the familiar scenario that the game of life churned out over and over. Quarterbacks retired to armchairs and beer packed on pounds with a vengeance. It seemed unfair to all parties involved, including the electric company. Few folks over thirty had their weekly consummation without turning the lights off first.

The things they could've done. The places they could've gone. The love they could've made. The horror of the long list of possibilities crept into Lonnie's distracted mind as he and Sam walked to the back of the ambulance.

"Gary's better off," he slipped, half-consciously.

"What's that?" Sam asked. The overabundance of noxious chemicals under Sam's nose was beginning to affect his brain slightly. It was a side effect Sam looked forward to every time. An innocent buzz was one of the many simple pleasures that Gary would no longer be eligible to enjoy. He'd gone and died. Safer, but limited. It seemed a fair trade to those who knew the score, or could at least read the board. Lonnie was one of the latter.

The two men wheeled the stretcher to the side entrance of the house. Anyone from town could tell that the door near the stone porch was the one to use. Only new delivery men bothered with the one out front. Sgt. Daniels was wiping sweat from his forehead with what looked like a lace handkerchief. No one questioned Sgt. Daniels when it came to his decisions.

"My mouth won't do your eyes justice," the sergeant said in his guttural voice. "And it smells even worse than it looks. You may want to..." but he trailed off after noticing the streak across Sam's oblivious face. "Take a deep breath before you go in there. It looks like old Gary's been gone for awhile, maybe more than two weeks."

"Yeah, haven't seen him at O'Malley's lately," Sam blurted out, instantly regretting his statement and hoping that no one could smell last night's folly on his breath.

"Hasn't been to church much, either," Lonnie said as he locked eyes with the chief. "At least not according to the bingo demographic." Sam exhaled lightly. He loved going on calls with Lonnie. He could get him out of anything.

"You boys leave the investigating to me," Sgt. Daniels told the two unlikely small-town paramedics. "We're all done in there for now if you'd like to dignify the deceased."

That last phrase was one that always stuck in Lonnie's head. It sounded so grandiose, gave his part-time role a true sense of meaning. There were nights when he considered the legitimacy of the siren rides that led right to the morgue. The front page of the 'Herald' was a better place than the obituaries, but someone had to bring them there-- 'them' being his neighbors. "Dignifying the deceased" was about as good a way as anyone could put such a morbid task as corpse removal. Lonnie wondered if Sgt. Daniels had coined the term himself in his years on the force or if it came pre-packaged in some little-known law enforcement handbook.

He doubted that Sam or any of the other volunteer ambulance drivers had the same line of thinking. He doubted if a lot of people thought much at all. It all started with the eyes; sight, an awakening. Too many people wore blinders complacently. Half as many over-indulged in their not-so-innocent thrills of choice. Sam wasn't alone in his cups. Lonnie was alone in his skull. Even his well-meaning wife couldn't help that. She could barely work off last winter's hibernation roll that had formed around the waistline of her jeans. Lonnie didn't begrudge her that. Truth be told, he'd always liked his women a pinch on the plus side. Skinny people, like Sam's habit of chewing gum religiously on every morning call, couldn't be trusted.

"Let me get the door for you gentelmen," Sgt. Daniels said as he turned the volume knob on his radio all the way to the right, putting himself on the grid once again.

The medical examiner was packing a bag of instruments as Sam and Lonnie rolled the stretcher through the kitchen. Neither of them knew his name. He worked for the county and was not as permanent a fixture as Sgt. Daniels. His title sufficed. The harbinger of death was not someone with whom any small-town locals wanted to be on a first-name basis.

"If the fall didn't kill him, the black mold would've," the M.E. uttered. "Another few months at best." His tone was frighteningly professional. It justified the sentiments held by the two men there to collect their neighbor.

"And all this time I thought it was only smoker's cough," Sam whispered to Lonnie, trying not to speak loudly enough to give their ominous colleague a reason to chat any further.

Lonnie maintained his silence. There was a level of reverence he believed should be present when performing such a task. Gary's last passage through his doorway would be an honorable one if he had anything to say about it, or not say; but when they reached the bathroom where Gary's body was sprawled out on the floor that silent state of grace changed.

"My God. Gary's a flower pot," Sam blurted. It was true. Their deceased acquaintance was face-up, mouth gaping, vast expanse of black mold creeping from his throat. It spread down from his face and covered the linoleum floor around him. The shower curtain that he'd grabbed and pulled down in an attempt to break his lethal fall covered his naked body. All that protruded was that cracked, gushing head and the mold to which it gave birth.

"Looks like all the drywall's going to have to be ripped out," Sam said as he locked the stretcher's wheels. Lonnie usually had to remind him to do so, but that was not the case for a change. "They'll probably need a barrel of bleach to scrub this place, too. Once that black mold gets into a house it's almost impossible to..."

"Sam. Shut up and help me lift him," Lonnie said. Sam lowered is head and complied. There'd been enough speculation for one day. It was time to do what they'd been called to do. Silence was golden and Gary was dead and nothing anyone could say would change either of those facts.

Sam reached through the shower curtain and grabbed the backs of Gary's calves with his rubber-gloved hands. There was an unmentioned understanding that Lonnie always lifted the top half of the body, no matter whom he was working with that day. He seemed like a header.

"One. Two. Lift," Lonnie said, his hands hooking Gary's armpits, as they hoisted him onto the stretcher. They covered the body with the white sheet they'd brought in and prepared to wheel Gary out to the daylight. For some reason, as was normally the case, they both paused and turned back towards the spot where the corpse had lain for two solid weeks. The mold hadn't grown on the floor that Gary's body had covered, leaving a perfect outline of his final pose in the form of a white-on-black silhoutte on the cheap linoleum flooring.

Sam couldn't bear to keep it inside of him. It was worth another scolding. Out with it he came. "It's sort of beautiful, Lon."

"Yeah. It sort of is."

And the two of them turned and rolled Gary home.