The Issues of Life

My attention was ceased from woolgathering by a big black woman in a cherry red dress walking right up to Metgar and kissing him passionately. As I reeled in my jaw from the dooryard, Metgar said 'Good afternoon' to me and my father and followed that red dress to an unknown destination, leaving Edgar to tell both their parts of the story. Once he and my father finished snickering at Metgar and telling some off color jokes, Edgar talked about finding Mabel for half an hour after which none of us felt like laughing anymore. Picture if you dare, a tan skinned nineteen year old woman floating in a river wearing nothing but an old wool pea coat about five sizes too large for her frame. Beneath that coat, the flesh of the girl is gray mottled; fish chewed, and waterlogged, but through all that bruises on top of old bruises are evident. Her eyes open and staring at the sky through a red haze of broken capillaries and her tongue protruding grotesquely from her mouth seems to scream manual strangulation even if her killer had not bothered to leave a nylon scarf embedded in the flesh of her neck. What was worse was the body of her new born child cradled and tied in her stiff arms.