Book II
Chapter Thirteen: October 9th, 2009
At 9 a.m. sharp, Nick Hastings pulled his City and County of Broomfield pickup truck into the southeast cloverleaf at Wadsworth and US-36. This was the job site, alright. A few people were already milling around, dodging prairie dog holes and informally inspecting the wrought iron fence and twin headstones that marked the grave. The low black fence still had a bit of red ribbon entwined in it from the Fourth of July decorations that had adorned the spot a few months earlier. A woman in a long winter coat was carefully removing the ribbons and tidying the grave -- the grave that Nick had been sent to exhume. Directly in front of him, a photographer had just exited his older model Subaru station wagon and was taking a couple wide shots of the activity before approaching the group.
The grave site, which sat in the center of the cloverleaf, was one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of things that looked normal until you thought about it. What was a grave doing in the middle of an exit ramp from a highway?
This grave, of course, was the final resting place of none other than Shep the Turnpike Dog. The legend goes that Shep wandered onto the job site during construction of the Denver-Boulder Turnpike back in the early 1950s. And then he just stayed. The toll booths had to be manned twenty-four hours a day, and even the most hardened toll collector isn’t going to turn down canine companionship in the wee cold hours of the morning. Dogs make everything better, Nick thought.
Old Shep died in 1964, and they buried him here in the middle of the cloverleaf. He got a wrought iron fence, two grave markers, and someone even anonymously decorated his grave on holidays. Now it was 45 years later, and the task fell to Nick Hastings to exhume the remains. The federal stimulus money had finally come through, and the old, wobbly bridge over the turnpike was going to be replaced before it fell on some unsuspecting commuters.
Nick’s job today was to move the fence and gravestones from the cloverleaf to the grounds of the Broomfield Depot Museum about a mile to the north. This suited Nick just fine. It was light duty, as far as he was concerned. But he didn’t much care for the next part, where he had to dig up the remains and hand them over to the old veterinarian to cremate them.
Nick pulled on his work gloves and grabbed a shovel and toolbox from the back of his truck. By now a crowd of about a dozen people had assembled around the grave. The woman who had removed the ribbons from the fencing was now stooped low and pulling a few weeds from the gravesite itself. “In twenty minutes I’ll be digging that ground up,” Nick muttered, too far away for anyone to hear him. “But go for it, lady.”
It was unseasonably cold and misty this morning, and the assembled crowd were mostly wearing winter coats. On Nick’s second trip back from his work truck he saw a dark SUV pull slowly onto the shoulder from US-36. A middle-aged man hopped out of the driver’s side and retrieved a wheelchair from the back. He snapped the chair open and carefully helped an elderly man climb down from the rear passenger seat. The man pivoted slowly into the newly opened wheelchair. An elderly woman sat motionless in the passenger seat, intently watching the scene at the gravesite.
Nick made quick work of the fence. He had it disassembled and folded into the back of his pickup in about ten minutes. He dug up the gravestones and left them on the side of the grave for now. Then Nick looked up at the gaggle of people and asked, “Should I dig him up now, or do you want to say something first?”
“Go ahead and dig him up,” the woman who removed the ribbon said. “It’s a cold one today.”
“Is he...is he in a box, or a bag or somethin’?” Nick asked.
“That’s the funny thing,” the old vet piped in. “No one seems to remember. Just dig lightly after about a foot until you find something.”
The dry, hard-packed earth was tough at first, but Nick found what he was looking for about two feet down. His spade hit an old wooden crate and splintered a piece of wood from one of the cross supports. Nick cleared the top of the box and dug out the dirt a couple inches around each side. Then he got onto his knees, reached into the freshly dug hole and began to pry the box loose from the soil.
“Hold on! I need to document this for the archives,” a young woman, about Nick’s age, interrupted as she pulled a small digital camera from her coat pocket.
“Smile, Nick!” she called, as the flash popped and caught a picture of Nick turning his head awkwardly toward her with his mouth three-quarters open and his eyes closed.
“Oh, your eyes were closed. Let me take another!” she yelled.
Nick brushed the top of the box clean with his gloved hands, tilted himself toward the camera, and gave a warm, wide smile which instantly transformed him from a disaffected city worker into an active participant in the history of Broomfield.
“That’s more like it,” the woman said happily and she clicked the shutter, and there was another pop of the flash. She took a couple seconds to review the results and exclaimed, “That’s one for the archive!”
Nick nodded, still smiling, and returned his attention to the job of exhuming a dog buried on this spot about the same time that The Beatles played Red Rocks.
Teresa Thompson was the woman with the camera. Everyone called her “Ray.” Nick went to school with her. They weren’t friends, but Nick liked her. She was always nice to him. A lot of those honor roll types never gave him the time of day. But Ray was on a group project with Nick in a history class freshman year about Sherman’s March to the Sea. They got an A, and Ray said “Hi” to Nick in the halls ever since.
After college, Ray came back to Broomfield to run the Depot Museum. She was always in the paper giving talks dressed up as the pioneer women of Broomfield and telling stories about the Grange Hall or the pickle factory. If it happened in Broomfield, Ray knew about it. And she could tell you the stories for hours. Truth be told, Nick thought, some of those stories were pretty cool. He especially liked the one about the “greatest horse in the world.” Some rich guy in Broomfield a hundred years ago bought a horse from France or Germany or somewhere. Nick forgot the details. But the guy calls this horse “the greatest horse in the world,” and people go nuts for it. They made postcards of the horse and everything. Folks a hundred years ago got pretty excited about the strangest things, Nick thought. Then he remembered that he was in the middle of a small crowd of people digging up an old dog on a cold rainy day. “People don’t change,” Nick thought. “Not that much, anyway.” And he turned his attention back to freeing the box from the earth.
“Mind he doesn’t nip you,” the old vet chuckled. “Old Shep was a rascal.”
Nick looked up from the hole, smiled at the old vet, and wiped some sweat from his brow. He noticed the older man in the wheelchair. The other man from the truck had pushed him about halfway up to the gravesite. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry, so Nick turned back to his task at hand. The elderly woman stayed behind in the car, still watching intently. No one in Nick’s group paid any attention to them.
As Nick worked, he noticed Ray quietly pulled her camera out of her jacket pocket, but she kept it low at her side so no one would notice. When a small gust of wind came up, Ray turned and secretly snapped a picture of the man in the wheelchair and his entourage. Then, just as deftly, she returned the camera to her pocket without anyone noticing.
Ray looked around to be sure that no one had seen her. That’s when she caught Nick’s eye and cracked a wry grin. She gave him a wink and turned to the woman who had cut the ribbons from the wrought iron fence. “Nancy, do you think our mystery person will continue to decorate Shep’s grave when he’s at the depot museum?”
“I should hope so,” the woman replied smiling. “It’s quite the tradition.”
After a couple tugs on the wooden crate, Nick managed to free it from the earth. Nick set the crate to the side of the hole and brushed cakes of hardened, clay-rich soil from the box. He looked up at the assembled group of dignitaries, awaiting his next instructions. And they just mostly looked back at him, unsure what to do next, themselves.
Ray said nothing, but she snapped another photo.
The old vet broke the silence, “Great! Would you mind just popping him in the back of my car, and I’ll take him from here?” he asked.
Nick carried the crate over to the vet’s station wagon and loaded Shep into the back. The veterinarian thanked Nick warmly, shook his hand, and climbed into his car. Turning back to the gravesite, Nick could see that the rest of the crowd had dispersed. Nick thought it was all a little anticlimactic, and that maybe there should have been more of a ceremony or at least some solemn words.
Ray gave Nick a wave from about 30 yards away as she opened the door to her car. Nick waved back. She pulled out her camera and took a picture of Nick. Then she turned slightly and took another photo of the man in the wheelchair. After that, she climbed in her car and drove off.
By the time Nick returned from the vet’s station wagon, the pair from the SUV had finally managed to dodge the prairie dog holes and roll up to the gravesite.
“Morning,” Nick said and nodded. “I’m afraid you missed the show. What there was of it, anyway.” Nick started to load a shovel full of dirt to fill in the hole. He saw Ray’s car drive off, but he could swear that she was craning her neck to see what was happening at the gravesite.
“Keep digging,” the old man in the wheelchair rasped at Nick. It wasn’t a request. It was a demand.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Nick replied. “But I’ve got to fill this hole in and get the rest of this stuff to the museum.”
“Keep digging!” the old man said again, his voice was stronger and clearer this time. He must have been a hundred years old. The skin on his face and hands was as thin as tissue paper and spotted with age. He looked so fragile. Nick thought that a strong wind might just blow him to dust.
“Please,” the middle-aged man pushing the wheelchair interjected. “My father’s traveled a long way. Can you humor him...er, us?”
“Why not?” Nick said, and he tossed the shovelful of dirt aside. “What am I going to find down here, treasure? If it’s treasure, I want my cut,” Nick joked. He dug his spade in the grave and removed a generous amount of earth.
“A foot,” the old man rasped impatiently. And Nick wasn’t sure if he was supposed to dig down another foot or if he was about to discover a human foot buried in the soil. Reflexively he checked the feet of both men to make sure that they were intact. Nick then glanced to the SUV where the old woman sat impassively in the passenger seat. She raised an oxygen mask to her face and drew in a deep breath, all the while never taking her eyes off of the scene unfolding in the middle of the clover leaf.
Nick dug down and soon something loose and metallic scraped against his shovel. Gold metal flashed in the dirt when he pulled back his spade, and for a second Nick thought that he actually had found a buried treasure. He reached into the hole and pulled out a handful of loose dirt and old, rusty Coors bottle caps.
Nick smiled and shook the dirt from the three bottle caps in his hand. “Is this what you’re looking for, old man?” And he showed him the Coors bottle caps.
“Hands.” The old man commanded. And Nick knew exactly what to do next. He dropped down to his knees and began to dig out dirt and bottle caps from the grave site. “Like a dog,” Nick thought.
Reverently, almost ceremoniously, Nick carefully placed all of the bottle caps into a small pile. After several handfuls, his hands scratched against a fabric covered in dark grease. It was so slick that Nick couldn’t get a good grip on it. So he dug around the whole object, maybe a foot in width, grabbed it with both hands, and was able to hoist the whole thing out of the ground. Bottle caps rattled back into the hole as he brushed the dirt and caps from the outside of the fabric.
Whatever this thing was, it was wrapped in several layers of greasy canvas. It was decayed and worm-eaten, but mostly whole. Nick unwrapped several layers of the greasy canvas until he found an old flour sack more or less intact. He could feel through the sack that it was an old, hardbound book. Maybe a Gutenberg Bible or some other valuable antique. Nick began to look for a way to open the sack, but it had been sewn tightly shut at the ends like a Christmas gift.
“No!” the old man said. “Don’t open it.” Nick began to hand the sack with the book to the middle aged man, and the old man refused. “No. It’s yours now. Call him. It’s time.” And at this the man began to cough and wretched forward violently. “Call him!” he shouted through his coughs.
“That’s it, Dad,” the middle-aged man said, “We’re getting you back into the warm car.” The middle-aged man quickly wheeled the coughing old man around and started towards their car. The old woman sat in the passenger seat impassively.
“But wait!” Nick yelled back. “What do I do with this? Who do you want me to call?”
“Call him!” The old man managed to yell one more time. And then he collapsed into a fit of coughing.
Nick stood at the grave, holding a heavy, old book wrapped in a flour sack, and carefully watched as the middle aged man swiftly loaded his father into the car. He soothed his coughing, and then quickly packed up the wheelchair.
All this time the old woman stared directly at Nick with the oxygen mask again held to her face. It wasn’t a menacing look, Nick thought. But he couldn’t tell what she wanted. The middle aged man put the SUV into gear and began to merge back into traffic. Loose gravel spun out from underneath the tires as the SUV accelerated quickly.
As they drove off, Nick saw the old woman pull the oxygen mask away from her face. And she was smiling.