ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Story
by Emily Shelton


Washington, Interstate 82, North                            Q101 FM


                          “...who shot you?...”



An older couple finds the foot on a fishing trip; it gets caught on the husband’s line. Just bones, but they could tell it was a child’s – oh, Jesus. At first the cops have no idea what to do with it; were there any local missing children? Plane crashes in that region recently, in the last five years, ever? The newspaper gets wind of the story and prints an article about the discovery on the front page. A call comes into the police station that afternoon, from a man with a beige voice. He thinks the foot belongs to him. “You what, excuse me?” asks the woman manning the line. “You’re missing your...” The man corrects her. “No, no, it’s not mine. But I did have it in my possession.” This, obviously, presses to be cleared up immediately. Dr. Holabird comes in for an interview with the cops, patiently takes pains to explain. An orthopedic surgeon, a routine procedure, a relatively rare deformity. He was engaged in some research; the child’s foot was purely for educational purposes. Took it home, put it in his freezer, but wouldn’t you know it, of all things, the freezer broke. After fifteen good years. He didn’t have many options, but he did have a clinical intelligence, and contrived a solution – to put the foot in a crab trap, lower it in the lake, and wait. It must have gotten loose somehow and washed ashore.

The cops and the district attorney froth at the mouths for weeks, grappling with the law’s slippery tentacles. Failure to properly dispose of body parts, of pathological waste? Civil penalties of ten thousand for every day of violation, plus a criminal sentence of up to twelve months? Even after Dr. Holabird’s lawyer negotiates a plea to lesser charges, they feel edgy, congested, so constipated in the chest they can’t even cry. The couple who found the foot spend a lot of days on the phone with distant family, telling them they love them, and to take good care. The newspaper tracks down the parents of the child the foot belonged to, and asks them how they feel. The little girl is alive and well. She has a prosthesis, and no training wheels.


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