Graverobbing

True story:

I went to Loki’s grave one night. Drunk in the dark woods. I swayed back and forth over his homemade headstone, weeping and wanting to pound my fist into the dirt.  To punch deep into the black soil and feel his fur for one last time. To have his smell on my hands. To bend his ears and rub them as he sighed.

I wanted him back.

So the next morning I called my friend with the tattooed neck and science degree.

“We’re going to get Loki,” I told him.

He didn’t question me. Just showed up at my house with his bucket and hacksaw. I grabbed my shovel and we went to the ravine.

“We might need to cut around the vertebrae,” he said, holding up the hacksaw. “Depending on how much he’s decomposed.”

We traded pulls on a pint of whiskey and made our way down the hill, making guesses on what Loki might look like now.

My friend figured he’d look like a ninety-year-old smoker. Sunken eyes, parched lips, and skin barely hanging off the bone.

I said that all his flesh would be gone, except maybe for stray bits fur.

We’d learn that neither of us were right.

First we moved the logs off his grave, placed there to keep the animals from digging him up.

“Two animals are digging him up now,” he joked.

It was the only time I laughed all day.

He shoveled the first spade of dirt and pulled up a healthy worm.

It was good dirt. Full of life.

“Loki reincarnate,” I said, taking the fat worm. I set him gently on the ground so he didn’t burst.

The second and third spade brought up even more thick soil and worms.

It was the fourth spade that made my heart sink. In it was a string of blue ribbon. The ribbon I had tied around a bunch of tiger lilies and put atop Loki’s body. The lilies had long decomposed, but the tight, knotted ribbon remained.

One, two more spades. My friend shoveled horizontally so as not to crush the bones.

As he got closer, he pulled out his pocket knife and started scraping away the dirt like an archaeologist.

I turned my back and sipped the pint.

“I see teeth,” he whispered. “Look at this.”

I didn’t at first. I wanted to keep the memory of my dog’s smiling face. That puppy-dog-look that Loki never outgrew. That noble and majestic beast.  A dog that everyone liked. A dog that knew more than he should. A dog that had a little something extra. Something you can’t breed or clone. Loki had that. Boy did he have it.

I slowly turned to see. In the dirt was a fang, along with a snout and eye socket. All attached to a skull  that was brown and black, like a museum fossil.

My friend jiggled Loki’s head a bit and then pulled it straight up, shaking off the clods of dirt. He peeled one small patch of fur from the cheekbone.

The skull was smaller than I expected. And it was missing the bottom jaw.

I thought about how many times I had stroked his head, felt his chin on my lap, and endured those teeth as we wrestled in the basement.

My friend pulled Loki’s bottom jaw from the dirt, and tossed the bone into the bucket.

Instantly we filled in the hole.

“I’ll clean this and get it back to you tomorrow,” my friend said.

I nodded. Not saying a word.

We finished off the pint and went home.

Walking up my front steps, my new dog greeted me. Bella, the Norwegian Elkhound. I knelt down, and petted her lovingly, feeling the skull beneath my fingers…our bones separated by thin layers of tissue and hair. So thin. So vulnerable…Skin is no match for dirt.

I pet her and told her I love her.

I wondered when I’d be digging her up to put her skull atop my bookcase.
- end -

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