Go to Hart Island for the body
Illustrations by Aurora Andrews
The ferry to Hart Island was a miserable one. Corpses don’t mind choppy water, and the rain can’t bother them none. I, on the other hand, was no chipper skipper, and as soon as we set sail, I started to doubt the whole expedition. Was I really trudging all the way past City Island, to a potting field in the farther corner of the Bronx, to sort through stiffs and pick out a winner? What was in it for me? She was pretty and maybe, if she saw the stiff, I might get the chance to console my client in a more personal way. Let’s be straight: I was in it for the possibility of a sympathy lay. Her boy dead, my heroics save him from an unmarked grave. The thought that an “I’m sorry for your loss” hug might turn into a naked embrace kept me warm on the god-awful sail. I doubted it would play out that way, but these days, I needed all the chances I could get.
As soon as I got off the boat I remembered what was here: mud, prisoners and bones. The mud was a result of the on-again, off-again rain we’d had all week, the prisoners had been ferried over from Rikers to dig, and the bones...the bones were everywhere, bodies in pine boxes of all shapes and sizes, the blocks stacked and shuffled to best accommodate the negative space of the long, deep ditches where they’d be laid to rest.
More bones followed me off the ferry. The plank-bound bodies were lifted by tanned, tired prisoners, who carried them to the dock and then to the flat crest of the hill. Only after watching the whole procession did I realize I had been traveling with Charon, and it sent a shiver up my spine. I went to find the man in charge. The prisoners pointed me towards a gray man with a shovel in his hand. He noticed me and threw his grizzled chin up in a “come hither” way. As I approached, I wasn’t sure if I should call him the overseer or undertaker, so I just called him sir.
“Hello, sir. I came to ID a body and bring ’em back to the family.” He didn’t put down the shovel.
“Sure fella.” He eyed me with disconcerting suspicion. I figured I looked good compared to an island full of corpses and prisoners. What the hell could I do to a bunch of unclaimed bodies? “You’re telling me you didn’t come to scavenge the gold out of teeth, and snag shoes for reselling? Yeah, right, buddy. Times are tough all over, but I can’t allow you to steal from the dead.” His shovel swung up, its menacing tip, caked with dirt, much closer to my nose than I’d ever want to see it. I stepped back.
“No, you got me all wrong. I’m a private eye, see, out here on a case. I’m looking for the floater they got out of the river yesterday. He came in earlier this afternoon.”
“Look. I don’t care what your story is, once the bodies come to Hart Island, they don’t leave. You, on the other hand...” He started waving the shovel back and forth like it was some sort of clock-cum-wrecking ball. Clearly this man’d spent too much time in the trenches. I’d have to try another tack.
“Just let me have the fucking body. I’m friends with Officer MacDougal.”
The shoveled dropped with a clank, and his face brightened at the mention of the officer. “Oh, you a friend of Mac’s? Hell, why didn’t you say so?” He started walking into the field, and indicated I should follow. “Sorry about that. With the Depression, you won’t believe the kind of crazy stuff I have to deal with....”
Between the entrance to Hart and the trench where my guy was waiting, we traversed the largest municipal graveyard in the world and my guide covered some of the island’s more nefarious moments. His history was a bawdy mix of necrophilia, dental theft, incantation of the dead, voodoo, and a story about some kind of evil sculptor. “He said he wanted to use human bones in his new piece. Can you believe it?”
Throughout the tale, I nodded appropriately, gasped at the right times, and generally tried to avoid the pungent death that hung thick in the air. We reached a fresh stack, and as soon as he pulled the lid off a box marked 2/13/32 #284, I knew it was my guy. No sense in lingering, so we doubled back to the office to fill out the necessary papers. On the way, we passed piles waiting to go into the ground. For a flash, I wondered who they all were, but the thought passed. Only one body on this island had a broad paying, and I’d found him. With all the necessary lines signed, letters crossed and dotted, I bid my adieus to the long-faced graved diggers. With a smile and a wave, the overseer assured me the body would arrive on the mainland tomorrow.
