What the Dog Knows (34 page)

“Scientifically, it's almost impossible to explain,” Arpad Vass said. “It's long gone, so what could they possibly be picking up?”

•  •  •

Scarcely had she spoken, when a stiffness seized all her limbs; her bosom began to be enclosed in a tender bark; her hair became leaves; her arms became branches; her foot stuck fast in the ground, as a root; her face became a tree-top, retaining nothing of its former self but its beauty. Apollo stood amazed.

—Apollo and Daphne,
Bulfinch's Mythology
, 1913

When I watch well-trained cadaver dogs work a possible clandestine burial site or define the outer perimeters of old cemeteries—throwing their heads, staring up into the trees, even putting their feet up to try to climb them, and bringing their noses deep down into tree roots growing out of depressions in the earth—I'm fascinated. I tread more lightly in those spots. As one handler in Mississippi, Gwen Hancock, whispers when she accidentally steps in the shallow depressions of the nineteenth-century cemetery she and other handlers discovered by accident in the woods behind her house: “Please forgive me. Thank you for letting us train our dogs.”

I wanted to say similar thanks when I got invited on a small expedition to a possible cemetery site in South Carolina. I had watched Kathy Holbert and Lisa Higgins and a number of other experienced handlers work their dogs on possible grave sites in West Virginia and Mississippi; Solo hadn't been with me. Then cadaver-dog handler and anthropology graduate student Paul Martin invited us to South Carolina.

Early-morning mist was still hanging just above the Great Pee Dee River on the border between North Carolina and South Carolina. A February mist with a bite to it. On a little bluff overlooking the river stood one lichen-covered stone, placed there by the Daughters of the American Revolution some time in the 1960s. The DAR had hoped, in planting the stone, to mark an abandoned cemetery that might include the body of Revolutionary War Captain Claudius Pegues Jr., who fought alongside the wily Francis Marion. Marion, the Swamp Fox, led
a group of backwoods soldiers against the British, often escaping into the underbrush or marshes—which was how he got his nickname: “As for this damned old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him,” swore British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton.

Claudius Jr. died in 1792, less than a decade after the war of independence was won. He was reportedly buried here. The bluff overlooks the once-huge Pegues family cotton plantation, the site of the only prisoner exchange during the Revolutionary War. But perhaps Claudius wasn't here at all. Putting a stone marker on a spot doesn't always make it so.

Claudius Jr.'s great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Pat Franklin, stood at the edge of the woods, her gray hair swept up in a loose Gibson-girl knot. Pat wasn't familiar with cadaver dogs; nor was her longtime friend and fellow genealogist May MacCallum. But after May read about dogs finding graves, she did her research, and ultimately, they called Paul.

Pat was uncertain how the family records, letters, wills, and oral history coalesced. Her grandmother always told her “the old burying ground” was at the Charrows, where we were now, looking over the river, and that a coach whip snake guarded the spot. A coach whip snake is long, fast, and smart, with large dark eyes and scales that look like braided leather. It will chase you, whip you to death with its tail, and then stick the tip of its tail up your nose to make sure you're not breathing.

Childhood fears gone, Pat wanted to know where her ancestors lay. Claudius Jr., his wife, Marcia Murphy, and perhaps four infant children might rest in front of us in the woods. Two children died the same year they were born; two were dead by the time they were two. Had they lived, they would have been heirs to a large cotton plantation. Their wealth didn't spare them the early death that greeted so many infants. Some took their mothers with them. One record indicates that Claudius Jr.'s mother, Henriette Pegues, may have been
buried here just days after she gave birth to an infant girl in 1758. The records don't show what happened to the little girl, but Claudius Sr.'s will mentions only two sons—directly, that is. Claudius Sr. gave his servant woman Cortney and her son, Martin, to his son, William, as slaves. He also gave Cortney her own slave and directed that a house be built for her and Martin. He stipulated that the two of them were to be set free when Martin was twenty-one, and that Martin be given tools and taught a trade. Cortney and Martin then disappear from the record.

I couldn't quite countenance, looking across the land, that both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War took place here, that people who had fought in the revolution for independence from England were the same people who kept slaves. And that their slaves kept slaves.

Solo whined loudly in the car. He was a cemetery novice and would not get to go first, which irritated him greatly. Paul Martin would start with Macy, one of his veteran cadaver dogs. Paul started working on ancient human remains more than ten years ago, and it has become both an intellectual and a training challenge for him. A bit more sun, Paul said, and the scent would start rising and moving, if scent were there. Too much sun can burn it off. There's a sweet spot for grave work.

Arpad Vass observed the following about using dogs to find more recent, clandestine burials, and Paul was applying the principles to older remains: Humidity should be between seventy and eighty-five percent. Check. Ideal soil type: sand and humic. Check. Temperatures at fifty-three degrees and rising. It was colder than that, but otherwise, we were searching in conditions that were well-nigh perfect, according to Arpad's calculations, although I didn't know if the barometric pressure was falling, as it should be.

Macy looks more like a cross between Old Yeller and Gollum than a Labrador. He's slippery and primitive, with amber eyes, a reddish-dun coat, and ribs sticking out; though he eats constantly, he runs it
off. He had raw spots on his pink nose that morning from butting his wire crate door repeatedly in his eagerness to get out. Macy banged in joy as Paul approached the crate; as soon as the latch turned, Macy shot out into the woods. Paul followed more slowly, then stood amid the oak, beech, sweet gum, black cherry, and sycamore trees. Calm and quiet, he watched Macy dash around the perimeter of the area like a surveyor on methamphetamines.

“Too far,” he said in his nasal, lilting voice as Macy dropped out of sight down the bluff toward the river. It's a term that Lisa Higgins uses, and I had started using it with Solo. It doesn't mean “come.” It means “start to circle back.”

Macy was working hard, snorkeling scent in the leaves without finding anything. It was too cold. He ignored Paul and didn't ask to be rewarded. After ten minutes, Paul put Macy up. We would have to wait until the sun penetrated the canopy. In the meantime, another glade beckoned, where it was warmer than it was on this crest. Down the gentle hill, where the cotton was harvested months before, lay the “black cemetery”—covered with periwinkle and abandoned but with stones that dated through 1910. A number of former slaves became tenement farmers and stayed during Reconstruction and beyond. Pat and May have worked to record this cemetery as well.

Paul turned to me. “Why don't you go get your dog?”

Solo was ecstatic to be out of the car, whirling and barking sharply, coming back to hit my leg. I offered him water, since he had been panting in excitement. He wasn't interested. He dashed down the hill, ignoring the rough cotton stubble, and into the woods and underbrush and tangled periwinkle at the bottom. Scent must have called to him. By the time we entered the woods, he was already working. Solo had never been exposed to gravestones, except for a hasty search of a modern graveyard; he had no reason to suspect they had any significance. Given how they were scattered, neither did I. Nonetheless, in one spot, I could hear Solo snorkeling from twenty feet away. He did his down
alert, staring at me. He was surrounded by periwinkle and daffodils, and I saw several tilted headstones under the vines. “Reward him,” Paul said. I did. Solo alerted seven or eight times. Paul estimated that at least seventy-five people were buried at this larger site. Pat doesn't know how far it goes back. The DAR has not put a stone marker here.

It was now midmorning, so we moved back to the top of the hill, where we expected fainter scent because of the age of the burials, if they were there. Paul took out Macy again; ten degrees warmer, and Macy's behavior change was astonishing. He alerted several times. We started to notice shapes and depressions that had been covered with leaves. Paul pointed them out to Pat and May. The more oblong and rectangular, the more likely. Possibly up to six adults and five children, Paul estimated.

Paul then ran Jordan, his other Labrador. She was soft and black rather than hard and amber, like Macy. She alerted repeatedly in the deep leaves, in a couple of spots where Macy had alerted, in a couple of new places, where we could then see depressions. Both dogs worked the area in ways so similar that I marveled. Macy was fast, Jordan much slower. Nonetheless, the same depressions seemed to hold scent. The two Labradors threw their heads around the same trees, went down to the same holes, and did their final alerts in four or five places.

I could hear Solo howling. Paul turned to me, and I freed Solo from his Camry prison, letting him run into the little woods. I stood well back. It didn't matter. His work overlapped Macy's and Jordan's—several alerts and head throws in the same places. I was no longer surprised.

We had finished searching for the day. We placed flags, and the work of measuring began. Pat and I went to poke the depressions shallowly to see if we hit stone; markers could have become buried underneath the humus of the woods. Burials of the era tended to be at least four feet deep, so it didn't feel as though we were poking at the dead.

May was happy for her friend. “We don't care who is who. Now
we can lay it to rest.” Pat and her family were planning to put markers there.

Solo was lying off to the side, panting, his tug toy in his mouth. The leaves where he had flung himself were disturbed. Beneath them, I saw a hint of white. A tiny violet. Pat looked at it and smiled.

“It's called ‘spring beauty.' ”

My little witch, who lived life every day, has traveled on, taking a huge part of my heart with her. Fair winds and following sails, Strega. Buon viaggio.

—Kathy Holbert, 2012

Sweat poured down Danny Gooch's face. He'd just removed the suffocating decoy suit and rolled up his soaked dark blue T-shirt sleeves over the tops of his shoulders, exposing the dark-blue-inked portrait of a Dutch shepherd head on his bicep.

One of the handlers shook his head in dismay. “Paisano,” he said.

Danny's flat white teeth flashed as he pulled back his lips in a grimace. “Hey, you know what Kimbo would have done? You know what Kimbo would have done?”

Everyone standing there knew what Kimbo would have done. Earlier, Mike Baker had decoyed, stashing himself underneath the composite tile floors in an abandoned laboratory building. Watching him thread himself into the small space, more cramped than a coffin, gave me claustrophobia.

Dogs are object-oriented. Once the less-experienced patrol dogs realized Mike's scent was somewhere in the room, they went to look for him behind doors. One leaped repeatedly at the large refrigerator unit in the room; Mike's scent had crawled up its side. Several other dogs figured an interior hallway window was the key. They kept levitating toward it, hoping that a person would materialize on the other side. The idea that someone could hide literally under their paws flummoxed them.

Dark little Kimbo, who looked more like a Tasmanian devil than a Dutch shepherd, would not have been fooled. He would have smelled Mike in the small holes in the particleboard, then tried to dig him out of the floor with his claws and teeth, with Danny making sure he didn't entirely succeed. Mike muttered one night, while watching Kimbo enter a deserted cigarette factory in downtown Durham, stiff-legged, ready to rumble: “If you're going into hell, that's the dog you want in front of you.”

Kimbo wasn't there that night to show them how it was done. Danny retired him when he was twelve years old, older than most patrol dogs. Kimbo's toughness kept him going; he was finding dropped guns until the end.

Sometimes retirement is planned, as it was in Kimbo's case. Danny's new patrol dog, Rin, a handsome dark German shepherd, is a third again Kimbo's size, a happy and all-around fine dog. Danny, a Malinois and Dutch shepherd snob, had to dial back his faux anti–German
shepherd rhetoric—too soft, too slow, too big—although because it was Danny, the dial didn't move too much. Kimbo stayed at home in an increasingly customized kennel space, getting spoiled by Danny's daughter, who sneaked him into the house when Danny was at work.

Waiting too long for a dog to retire is a big mistake. It shows when K9 officers look with almost tender pity as a dog's back leg starts to shake when it should be solid, or when a decoy gives a dog less of a swing on the bite sleeve because he's worried about hurting the dog. That protective feeling can get officers injured.