Bickering ceased, returning focus to tending the rituals of the dead. Accusing.Įerily loud caws echoed from the canyon. So how had Albert Yellow Boy ended up in the middle of nowhere? What were the odds a couple of busy ranch hands would stumble over his body in this remote section of fallow grazing land? Like the kid’s neck had been snapped.ĭespite the sun beating down, a chill rippled through the air. There’d been no standing water in these parts for years. Heat mirages shimmered in the distance-a cruel illusion. Pine-tree-dotted hills and valleys of grayish gumbo made up the barren landscape. The body hadn’t been exposed long enough to bleach the bones white, but it’d been out here long enough to disintegrate into just another forgotten animal carcass. Without lips to hide behind, the crooked teeth stuck out like yellowed piano keys. Reddish-black hair floated loose around his skull, bits of leaves and insects trapped in the dulled strands. Poor son of a bitch had been emasculated before he’d had a chance to become a man.Ī hot breeze swirled chalky dust motes and scents of decay.īlack Air Jordan athletic shoes saved the boy’s toes the fate of his fingers: gnawed off clean down to the bone. The final indignity? The crotch of the athletic shorts were ripped away to reach the soft meat of the sex organs.
CANDYLAND CHARACTERS DUKE OF SWIRL SKIN
Shriveled flaps of skin resembling jerky hung from the jaw and cheekbones. A sunken hollow where the stomach had been. What the sun hadn’t cooked the animals had feasted on. The blazing sun and dry wind burn the most resilient flesh into dried meat. In the arid summer heat on prairie rangeland, a dead body doesn’t so much rot as it becomes petrified. They ain’t making any more of the stuff.” South Dakota born and bred-past and present-who know This book is lovingly dedicated to all the women in my family, The first book in the Mercy Gunderson series, 2009