In our town, everyone said that Geist had killed Sommers, chopped up his body into cutlets, and ran them through the garbage disposal in his sink. Prosecutors must prove motive, means, and opportunity to establish the corpus delicti for homicide – at least, that’s what I have gathered from true crime TV shows. Geist’s hatred for Sommers (and vice-versa) was common knowledge, a conspicuous blood feud that had lasted several years. That Geist had the means to process Sommers into non-existence was also well-established: Geist had worked for fifteen years as a meatcutter in the Plant and, then, another 20 years as one of the USDA inspectors embedded in the work force to assure food standards compliance. He knew how to disassemble a carcass in an efficient and, even, relatively antiseptic manner. Opportunity was a no-brainer – the two men were next door neighbors with a common property line and, even, a single driveway over which they fought incessantly. So, when Sommers simply vanished and his wife moved to Florida, it was broadly surmised that Geist, in collusion with his wife, was responsible.
The quarrel was a typical small-town affair. Geist and Sommers graduated from High School together and had been football teammates. (Geist was a defensive lineman; Sommers played half-back.) They competed for the same cheerleader, although she spurned them both and married a college man who was three years older than her. Both of them went to work in the packing plant, a employer that had a standing job-offer extended to every single graduate of the town’s high school. The offer was seductive – the place was a union operation and, on day one, workers were paid the same wage that their father’s earned. On that money, you could buy a house, marry your girlfriend and raise kids with the hope of sending them some day to college and, also, acquire a snowmobile, motorcycle, even, a horse if that was your pleasure.
After a few years, Sommers, who was handsome, popular, and alcoholic, became a foreman. Geist accidentally shredded a couple fingers to the knuckles on his blade hand and, after a year of workers compensation, went back into the plant as a USDA inspector. Of course, he clashed with Sommers over meat quality and hygiene issues, rejected too many of the carcasses under Sommers command, and there were several celebrated fist-fights in the slaughterhouse parking lot. But both men had mortgages and needed their pay-check and so they patched things up and, even, became buddies of a sort. Geist was assigned patrol in a different part of the plant and so he didn’t necessarily clash with Sommers. Years passed and the two men moved onto the lake, buying, either by accident or intention (no one knew), property side-by-side across from the cove a mile away where the plant had discharged its gory waste-water before environmental regulation ended the practice. Geist’s son married Sommers’ daughter; the wedding was a little tense but everyone survived. Then, Sommer’s son married Geist’s daughter – everyone got along reasonably well and, although the cops had to be called to the wedding dance, this was due to a fracas among the groomsmen, something for which neither of the proud fathers could be blamed.
A few years after the wedding, Sommers’ wife divorced him – he was known to be tom-catting around town. Folks whispered that Geist’s wife hadn’t been immune to Sommers’ charms although this was just gossip. Officially, the cause of the feud was a fateful Super Bowl party in Sommers’ man-cave, that is, on the lower floor of his split-level that opened onto his lawn, a pretty meadow that was really a park with tall trees casting cool shade on the house and the lake-front with its modest, white-washed dock. At the time of the party, the lake was frozen, of course, and the back yard white with snow except where Sommers’ old Rottweiler, Duke, had decorated the frost with patches of yellow and brown.
Because of their rivalry, Geist had bet on one team while Sommers wagered on the other. (Neither team was from their State and so the bets were, more or less, abstractions calculated to lend piquancy to the big game.) Both men were recently retired and Sommers, who was customarily clean-shaven to excess, had grown a beard for the Winter. Sommers had a pretty face and, ordinarily, he didn’t want to hide it behind whiskers and, so, during his years at work (and as a downtown ladies’ man) he shaved his long, hard jaw so closely that his skin looked red and raw – although the complexion was, perhaps, due to booze as much as the razor. Sommers was tall and had smoked most of his life and so his voice had an appealing rasp. He had all of his hair, indeed, a shaggy mop of locks, and he was slender – Sommers said that he hadn’t gained more than ten pounds since his days as a running back for the Packers, the local High School team. Geist was shorter but solidly built, inclining in middle age toward corpulence. He had a big gut and waddled when he walked and was bald as a billiard ball, an effect that he enhanced by shaving off his eyebrows. People said that he looked like a villainous professional wrestler, although he had a nice enough smile and was well-liked. For many years, he had affected a big, grey beard that spread out over his cheeks and chin, although he kept his upper lip clean-shaven.
At the Super Bowl party, someone was teasing Sommers about his new beard. Sommers affected indignation and he said: “As soon as it gets warm, I’m shaving it off. I’m already tired of looking like an old bum.” The other men at the party glanced over at Geist who was, even, then, rubbing the whorl of whiskers on his chin. “What the fuck?” Geist said. “A bum?” Sommers’ team was losing and his wager, a couple hundred dollars, was at risk. “Yeah, I just get tired og feeling that this beard makes me look like some kind of fuckin’ bum.” “Are you saying I’m a bum?” Geist asked. “You said it, I didn’t,” Sommers replied. Geist said that he had to go outside to smoke a cigarette. This was odd because Geist didn’t ordinarily smoke.
“His feelings are hurt,” one of the men at the party said. Through the glass window overlooking the lake, Geist stood, hunched a little against the cold, his back to the inside of the house. Sommers’ Rottweiler, Duke, trotted up to Geist and bit him on the leg. It wasn’t a hard bite, more of a nip, but the dog was big and had sharp teeth. Geist came into the house cursing and said that Duke had bit him. “He bit your ass?” Sommers asked. “No, my leg,” Geist replied. Sommers told Geist to take off his pants and show them where the dog had bit him. “Fuck you,” Geist said. He stalked off and, at home, told his wife that he ought to get down his shot gun and go over to Sommers’ house and teach him a lesson. She told Geist that he should stop acting like a baby.
The next day, Sommers knocked on Geist’s door, holding a fistful of greenbacks due on the gambling debt. He said: “I was pretty drunk yesterday and don’t much recall what happened...” inviting, as it were, Geist to say that he didn’t really remember the preceding afternoon either. But Geist said that he goddamn well recalled everything, including the dog bite for which he intended to hire a lawyer. Sommers said that hiring a lawyer wouldn’t be a neighborly thing to do and he shoved the money at Geist. “Get that out of my face,” Geist said. Sommers turned around and scattered the bills all over Geist’s sidewalk and snowy front yard.
From that point, things went downhill. The two men shared a common driveway that split on the property line just before accessing the garages. Geist bought an ancient rust-bucket Suburban and parked it on the common lane, blocking Sommers so that he couldn’t get his SUV from his garage to the street. A couple of times, Sommers had a tow-truck called to tug the Suburban out of the way, sending the charges, each time, to Geist. Sommers didn’t pay and the tow-truck operator, caught in the middle, refused to respond to Sommers’ later calls for service. Sommers, then, bought a big pick-up truck with an extended cab and flotation wheels. Whenever possible, he left the pick-up blocking the single lane that led back to their garages. Geist, then, called the towing service and had the pick-up yanked out of the way. He also sent the bill to Sommers who, likewise, refused to pay. This happened several times so that the tow-truck operator also declined to respond to Geist’s calls. The cops had to be summoned. By this time, it was impossible to determine who was the instigator and so the investigating officers just ordered both men to start behaving like adults and washed their hands of the dispute. Geist acquired a huge RV and parked it so that Sommers could just barely squeeze by to reach his garage or the street. When Sommers pickup scraped Geist’s RV, Geist sued his neighbor in conciliation court. The judge, who knew of the dispute, declined to award damages to anyone and told the two men that they should act like adults and not children. There was a shouting match at the courthouse parking lot and both men claimed that the other had tried to run him over with his car. Then, someone busted out the windows of Geist’s RV and, even, poured kerosene through the broken glass into the vehicle. The cops were called again. They declined to investigate. Sommers’ Rottweiler got loose and pooped all over Geist’s lawn and flower beds. Then, Duke got sick and began to vomit blood. Sommers accused Geist of poisoning his dog. Geist said that he loved dogs and only wished that poor Duke had a better master. Both of them built fences, at least a foot taller than allowed by local ordinance, and so they accused one another of violating the zoning laws and, in fact, both fences had to be torn down at considerable expense. Sommers consulted with a lawyer about securing a peace bond against Geist. The lawyer said that Geist would just seek a reciprocal injunction, that the Judge would grant both petitions, and, then, issue an order requiring them each to surrender their firearms. Sommers liked to hunt and didn’t want to lose his right to bear arms, particularly since he might have to defend himself against Geist and so he cursed the lawyer (and the law) as useless and did nothing. Geist went to see the attorney across the street from Sommers’ lawyer and was given the same reasonable and circumspect advice. Geist, then, bought a pit-bull puppy and trained the dog to urinate on Sommers’ carefully manicured lawn. Sommers set out a meat treat for the dog liberally salted with broken glass.
At Thanksgiving, both men’s children staged an intervention. They told the two old men that their feud was tearing the family apart. The intervention ended with the two wives, sisters-in-law as you will recall, rolling on the ground clawing at each other’s faces. Both women lost sizeable hanks of hair in the affray and the cops had to be called yet again. At Christmas, there was no family gathering. A little after the Super Bowl, Sommers put his ice-fishing shack on a sled and dragged the little booth behind his snowmobile out to the middle of the lake. It had been a cold Winter and the ice was good and thick. An impromptu village of other ice-houses sprouted on the white, snow-drifted ice midway between the shore where Sommers and Geist lived and the lagoon, always ice-free under the brick ramparts and smokestacks of the slaughterhouse.
Like an avalanche, a blizzard roared out of the northwest. The winds toppled several of the fishing shacks on the lake and kicked them across the ice, and, then, everything vanished in gales of blowing snow. The storm lasted for two days and temperatures plunged far below zero and, even, after the sky had cleared enough to show blue overhead, ground squalls raged over the frozen lake so that it was dangerous to venture out into the howling wind and blowing snow. When the torrent of wind died down and the damage could be surveyed, streets and driveways were all filled with snow and the interstates scabbed with ice and Sommers’ ice-fishing house was simply gone. At first, it was thought that the shack had been knocked over by the tempest and blown to some remote corner of the lake, but the sheriff’s department, finding no one at home at Sommers’ house, searched the entire perimeter of the lake on snowmobile without discovering any trace of either the wood-lathe hut or its owner. Divers were summoned from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and they plunged into the lagoon’s murky water under the walls and chimneys of the packing plant but nothing was found there either. Sommers and his fish house seemed to have vanished without a trace. A couple months later, rumors abounded that Mrs. Geist had confessed some sort of terrible crime to her priest and, then, moved out of town.
This brings me to my part of the story. During a cold Spring, about a year after Sommers had vanished, I was called out to clear a clog in Geist’s sewer. I was a little apprehensive because word-of-mouth was that Geist had hacked Sommers into pieces, using super-sharp blades from the packing plant, and, then, flushed the chunks of the carcass through his sink-grinder into his sewer. In fact, a competitor plumber at the Moose Lodge told me that he had been called-out to Geist’s place to unplug a drain six months or so after Sommers vanished. According to this fellow, who was (I admit) drunk when I spoke to him, Geist’s house had funky smell and, further, he didn’t want the plumber to use a probe with a TV camera to ‘scope the drain.
“You know,” the man told me, “Geist is a baldy. Bald as a cue-ball. But he was wearing some kind of awful toupee and watching TV when I come to his place.” “A toup?” I asked. “Yeah, it was a strange-looking thing and I got to thinking that maybe Geist scalped Sommers and was walking around in his hair.” “Are you serious?” I asked. “Maybe,” the man said.
There wasn’t any trace of Sommers’ scalp at Geist’s house when I came out to unclog his sewer. In fact, Geist was quite obliging – he had parked his huge RV a half block from his home and I could use the driveway to access the side-door and steps descending to his basement. I shook Geist’s calloused hand and he led me downstairs to the scene of the calamity. The lower level of his house opened onto the green, slick-looking slope dropping to the lake and through the windows in the family room, I could look down to the water on which brownish islands of algae were floating. The air in the house was slightly sour, a tang a little like Parmesan cheese. In the family room overlooking the lake, everything was in perfect order – a couch on which no one had ever sat graced the opposite end of the room and there was a wet-bar with sports memorabilia on the wall, a big-screen TV facing the sofa’s gleaming upholstery (some kind of artificial leather, it seemed) and a high table with swivel pub-chairs around it. An iron gun-case like a bank vault and two mounted buck-heads with candlebra-antlers completed the ensemble. The place was spotless. A door opened into the utility room that comprised the other half of the basement.
The utility room was shadowy, unfinished with a naked concrete-block wall bulging a bit over the softball-sized drain, overflowing with water that had spread its tentacles across the cement floor. The floor wasn’t exactly level and so the puddle had an irregular shape, the sewer-water following depressions otherwise not visible to the eye – there was some kind of indigestible glitter in the water, the sort of metallic-looking sprinkles that you see sometimes on sugar cookies. The blot of the puddle caught the glare from the bare bulb overhead and reflected a greasy sheen.
“It’s raw sewage,” Geist said. “If you flush the toilet, it bubbles up right here.”
“You’ve got a clog,” I said. “That’s for sure.
The unfinished basement room was empty except for the vertical vat of the water-heater next to the box of Geist’s furnace and the matching tombstones of washer and dryer. On the opposite side of the room, there was a stack of garments, several suit-cases, and boxes of toiletries, as well as a silver dog bowl, a couple leashes, and a bag of unopened dog food. This stuff looked as if it had been shoved into the corner by front-end loader, as if Geist had not wished to even touch these items with his hands. The garments were dresses and pants-suits, obviously the possessions of Geist’s absconded wife. The dog bowl reminded me that Geist was supposed to have shot his wife’s pet after she fled the State. That’s what people said. Was it true? Who knew?
I splashed into the water and used a flashlight to probe into the pump-out. “There’s dirt in the water,” I said. “You maybe have a crushed pipe.”
I told Geist that I would go to my truck and bring down the snake and the camera-scope.
“I don’t know how murky it’ll be in the pipe,” I told Geist. “Sometimes, you can’t see anything.
“Just do your best,” Geist said.
Geist was sitting on a pub stool by the round table when I lugged the monitor and the rotary snake down into the basement. I set the monitor on its metal stand, screen tilted up so that I could see what was in the pipe. Geist stood nearby, careful to remain beyond the outer edge of the blot-shaped puddle. I put on my work gloves, engaged the rotary motor and fed the button-shaped camera on the tip of the blade into the flooded drain.
The cutter-head advanced without resistance. On the screen, I could see the sewer water swirling and red as blood in the light from the camera. A few black lumps lazily rotated in front of the camera and there was a drowned earthworm pink and hook-shaped toppling end over end in the illumined flood.
“You see the night-crawler,” I saw to Geist. He nodded and approached as closely as possible to peer at the screen.
“The visibility isn’t great,” I said, “but you can see a little bit.”
“I can see,” Geist told me.
The machine throbbed and the cutter blade rotated behind the camera, spinning the red water into vortices that sparkled with the sequin-like glitter. A few more worms rolled into view, expanding and contracting like jelly-fish, and, then, there were some delicate root-curtains, lacy tangles of black quivering in the water. The pipe was clay and seemed intact, although there were dark mud prisms between segments. I read the screen-gage – 12 feet, 13 feet, 14 feet.
At 28 feet, the endoscope stalled in front of a black clog, probably the size of a deck of cards.
“Here it is,” I said. Geist leaned over to look into the monitor. The machine coughed for a moment, clutched, and, then, the camera went dark for a moment. I felt the snake vibrate as the blade cut the clog.
Geist inhaled sharply and I heard his breath rasping over the back of his throat. He seemed to have something stuck in his esophagus and, as I turned toward him, he stood from where he had been squatting near the monitor, clutching his mangled hand over his heart. His mouth was open and his eyes were wide and his round, bullet-shaped head was trembling uncontrollably atop his neck.
“Are you having a heart attack?” I asked.
Geist made a sound midway between a word and gasp. He backed-up out of the shadowy room and I heard him tear open the door that led onto his back lawn. I looked down at the monitor – 29 feet and the black clog tilted across the pipe was gone. A cloud of specks, apparently from the clot through which the blade had clawed, spun into view, rotating past a fat worm and, then, a sarcophagus-shaped beetle that made slow orbits around the camera-head. I could see that the water was now receding down the drain, gurgling as it slid back underground.
I shut off the tool. Geist was sitting on a lawn chair on the patio overlooking the lake.
His face was white and I wondered if he was dying. His good hand kept wrapping itself around his mutilated paw, searching, it seemed, for the lost fingers.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m trying to catch my breath,” Geist said.
“Do you want me to call 911?” I asked.
“No,” Geist said.
“What happened?”
“I saw something,” Geist said. “It was on the TV screen.”
“What did you see?”
“A face, I seen a face,” Geist said. “It was someone I knew, someone I knew all my life.”
“There’s no face down there,” I told him.
“I seen it clear as I’m seeing you right now.
“Who’s face?”
“It don’t matter,” Geist said. “He’s in hell. I seen him there. His face is all red and swollen-up and his eyes are oozing and it’s like he’s praying because he’s now been put in hell.”
“It’s a sewer pipe,” I said.
Geist shook his head: “It goes into hell,” he said.
“I think I got the clog,” I told him. “It was 28 feet out.”
“That’s under my lawn,” Geist said.
“I can mark it on the grass with spray paint,” I told him. “There’s a transmitter on the tip of the camera. Do you want me to do that?”
He nodded his head.
“The sewer’s open,” I said. “It’s flowing. You don’t need to do anything else.”
Geist put both his hands up over his eyes and rubbed at his forehead.
“His head’s in hell,” Geist said.
I found the neon-orange spray paint in the back of my van and used my cell-phone to ping the transmitter. The locator wailed over the tip of the camera buried under his front lawn and I painted an “x” on the grass. Geist was still in the back yard. When he tried to stand up, his legs were unsteady and nearly toppled over and so he had to sit down once more.
I went into the utility room to retrieve my endoscope and the TV monitor. The screen showed an ox-blood-colored blank, a beetle with hook-shaped mandibles lying in the bottom of the pipe in front of the camera. Some glittery spangles glistened on the wet sides of the tube.
The light in the basement room was a little uncertain. Above the wall, windows inset in outsidde wells opened into the gloom of the utility room. The window-wells were festooned with spider webs and windows themselves were grimy and the light piercing through the dirty glass flashed a little, as if a cloud were passing overhead or the limbs of a tree intervening. In the flare of light on the monitor, I saw something, eyes and a mouth suddenly opened in horror. My heart skipped a beat. Then, I understood that the face on the screen was a momentary reflection, my own features showing on the mirror-like surface of the glass.
I went to the backyard and told Geist that he had probably just seen his own face reflected on the surface of the TV screen. He didn’t seem convinced. Although it wasn’t cold, he was trembling as if with frost-bite. “I saw myself just now, my own face” I said. “When I was putting away the tool. Scared the living shit out of me.”
“I don’t think that it was it,” Geist said. “But thanks for saying so.”
I didn’t have to go back out there. Neighbors told me that Geist dug up his front lawn in the area that I had marked with the neon-orange “x”. He dug deep and, even, used a back-hoe and people told me that most of the sod was wrecked and that he cut so deep that he killed a nice old red maple growing in his front lawn. His neighbors told me that it was like he was looking for treasure, but couldn’t find any.
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