one and a two andâ. Waterlogged and rigor-stiff, the girl is heavy as a slab of stone. We heave her onto the grass. Her inert body looks as incongruous as the sculpture of an anchor displayed on shore.
When I return that night, the fire is already a thick column of light. Daniel stokes the white-hot embers and slots several plank-like pieces of wood across the top. âThis is going to be good,â he keeps repeating to nobody in particular. He pulls his black mane into a ponytail and promenades around the blaze, surveying it from every possible angle. Itâs unclear whether he knows what heâs doing or is simply excited to be in control.
Nycette smokes an extra-thick joint. Her pupils are tiny buoys of blackness in a sea of glitter. She stands over the body, confidently preparing the spirit inside for its journey to the heavens according to a set of half-remembered precepts. âWe name her Mama Cocha,â she says. âWe give her the name of the Incan sea mother.â She solemnly drapes her own shell necklace around the girlâs swollen throat. It almost covers the purple ring of clotted bruises.
Isaac stands with his back to the fire. The rippling shadows make his features flicker like an old tube television caught between stations. âYouâre really okay with this?â he asks me. There is something unsettling about the ceremony, but I donât want to break rank with the group. So I shrug my shoulders and act as if none of it really matters.
Time to put the body on the pyre. Isaac refuses to touch it on the grounds that heâs decided this whole idea is totally sick. So Nycette and Daniel hoist the corpse between them. They look queasy wrapping their fingers around the clammy, bloated limbs. The fresh air has accelerated the decomposition process. The body has pickled and the skin has started to suppurate. The mottled flesh is inhuman. They awkwardly swing the corpse back-and-forth to gain momentum. They toss it atop the fire.
It rolls off. The body lies face-down on the ground. Daniel and Nycette pick it up again, trying not to seem distressed. They get a firmer purchase on the arms and legs. Choose a better angle of approach. Pitch the body with more force. But it takes three more tries before the dead girl lies on her back atop the pyre. Her empty face stares up at the blinking stars. Flames conflagrate beneath her body, separated by only a few wooden planks. Itâs a breathtaking sight. The girl looks almost majestic. I think that claptrap about the spirit might be true after all.
Then the stench. As the flames blacken the boards and catch the corpse, they unleash a consuming odor. A mixture of the raw and the curdled: Overripe fruit and mold spores; singed hair and meat rot; fresh blood and smeared shit. Thereâs a perfume-like undercurrent, a sweet tang thatâs briny. Itâs the sort of smell you can only fully register in the back of your throat as you start to gag. I smother my face with my shirt and retreat to the edge of the clearing.
Isaac screams: âSomebody take the body off the fire.â He hops in a mad circle around the flames, trying to leap close to the pyre without getting burned. Panic blurs his features and thereâs a horrified glaze to his eyes. âCâest impossible to stop,â Nycette says. âHer spirit is still trapped inside.â And it really is too late. The girlâs body is completely charred. Sheâs a glowing cinder.
I shimmy up a tree to escape the smell. This is my first funeral. As I watch, part of me wants to obliterate the experience from my memory but part finds it exhilarating. I canât take my eyes off the blaze. Itâs several minutes before I realize whatâs missing: None of us are grieving. Daniel grimly stokes the fire, determined to finish the job. Nycette chants a round of basic incantatory stuff, trying to splice into some primeval spiritual current. Isaac curses us all
Magnus Linton, John Eason
Chris Kyle, William Doyle