The Throat Read Online Free PDF Page A

bent over the long black bag. There were fabric handles on each
end, and the zipper ran from one to the other.
    I grasped the zipper and promised myself that I would not close my
eyes. Behind me, the men took a collective breath. I pulled the zipper
across the bag.
    And I almost did vomit, not because of what I saw but because of the
dead boy's stench, which moved like a huge black dog out of the opening
in the bag. For a second I did have to close my eyes. A greasy web had
fastened itself over my face. The gray ruined face inside the bag
stared upward with open eyes. My stomach lurched. This was what they
had been waiting for, I knew, and I held my breath and yanked the
zipper another twelve inches down the bag.
    The dead boy's mud-colored face was shot away from his left cheek
down. His upper teeth closed on nothing. A few loose teeth had lodged
in the back of his neck. The other tag was not in the cavity. The
uniform shirt was stiff and black with blood, and the blast that had
taken away the boy's lower jaw had also removed his throat. The small,
delicate bones of the top vertebrae were fouled with blood.
    "There's no tag on this guy," I said, though what I wanted to do was
scream.
    Di Maestro said, "You ain't finished yet."
    I looked up at him. A big fuzzy belly drooped over his pants, and
four or five days' growth of beard began just under his rapacious eyes.
He looked like a fat goat.
    "Who cleans these people up?" I asked before I realized that the
answer might be that the new guy does.
    "They make 'em presentable at the other end." Di Maestro grinned and
crossed his arms over his chest. The tattoo of a grinning skull floated
over a brown pyramid on his right forearm. Millhaven, my Millhaven, was
now present all about me, the frame houses with peeling brickface
crowded together, the vacant lots and the St. Alwyn Hotel. I saw my
sister's face.
    "If you can't find the tag inside the shirt, sometimes they put 'em
in the pockets or the boots." Di Maestro turned away. The others had
already lost interest.
    I struggled with the top button of the stiffened shirt, trying not
to touch the ragged edges of flesh around the collar. The odor poured
up at me. My eyes misted.
    The button finally squeezed through the hole, but the collar refused
to separate. I pulled it open. Dried blood crackled like breakfast
cereal. His throat had been opened like a surgical diagram. A few more
teeth were embedded in the softening flesh. I knew that what I was
seeing I would see for the rest of my life —the ropes of flesh, the
open cavity that should have been filled with speech. Lost teeth.
    The tag was nowhere inside his neck.
    I unbuttoned the next two buttons and found only a pale bloodied
chest.
    Then I had to turn away to breathe and saw the rest of the body
squad going efficiently down the rows of bodies, dipping into the
unzippered bags, making sure the names matched. I turned back to my
anonymous corpse and began fighting with a shirt pocket.
    The button finally passed through the buttonhole, and I pushed my
fingers into me opening, cracking it open like the pocket of a stiffly
starched shirt. A thin hard edge of metal caught beneath my fingernail.
The tag came away from the cloth with a series of dry little pops.
"Okay," I said.
    Di Maestro said, "Attica used to shake down these units in five
seconds flat."
    "Two seconds," Attica said, not bothering to look up.
    I got away from the gaping body in the bag and held out the
unreadable tag.
    "Underdog's a pearl diver," di Maestro announced. "Now wash it off."
    The stained, crusty sink stood beside a spattered toilet. I held the
tag beneath a trickle of hot water. The stench of the body still clung
to me, as gummy on my hands and face as the film of fat from ham hocks.
Flakes of blood fell off the tag and dissolved to red in the water. I
dropped the tag and scrubbed my hands and face with PhisoHex until the
greasy feeling was gone. The body squad was cracking up behind me. I
rubbed my face