The Shoveler
Every night, after dark, Dave heard the shoveling. It sounded like an ordinary garden shovel, and each scoop of dirt landed against the siding of his house like a targeted hail shower, outside the office room where he kept his computer. He had a light that would turn on in his office when there was movement, but the activity outside the window never turned it on. Nor was it detected by the outside security cameras.
In the morning, he would go outside to the source of the nightly shoveling sound, and he would find nothing. No holes in the ground, no dirt on the siding of the house. Nothing.
It always began around the time he was watching “Shooting with Sparky,” a video podcast about adventures in photographing birds and other animals at Sax-Zim Bog, 25,000 acres of bog and spruce forest, set aside for wildlife.
Dave had lived here for a year now, and was friendly with the next-door neighbors. He knew that if anybody knew anything about what was going on in the neighborhood, it was the kids. He always let their two young boys ride their bikes around his circular driveway, and their parents appreciated that it was safer than the road. When he saw the boys outside this morning, he summoned them over to the front door.
“Hi, guys. How’s your mom and dad?”
“They’re good,” they said simultaneously.
“Hey. I need some help. I’ve been hearing sounds outside my office window, kind of like shoveling dirt against my office room wall. If you guys see or hear anything suspicious, like between dinner and bedtime, could you let me know?”
“We’ll keep an eye out, Mr. Fenster,” Robin, the ten year old said.
“Okay, thanks. You can call me Dave.”
As the boys lay in their bunkbeds, later that night, they conjured up the possibilities.
“Remember the guy that fell off the rooftop when they were building Mr. Fenster’s house when we were just kids?” Robin asked. “It was a few years ago. Mom wouldn’t let us go over there ’cause we were too young. Jody, that kid in my class with the braces, said he died. He was an immigrant. Jody said he was Siamese, and never got his papers to be legal here.”
“Siamese? Where’s that?”
“Siam. They call it Thailand now. It’s in Southeast Asia,” Robin said. “The guy didn’t have any papers. The builder put a sheet over him and told the other workers to go home for the day. He dumped him in the foundation and poured a wheelbarrow of cement on top of him. The cement truck was coming the next day, and covered it over with more concrete.”
“Ewww. So there’s a dead guy under the house?” Jay, the eight year old said.
“His name was Mister Manoban. I’m sure he’s a skeleton by now, or a mummy,” Robin said “We should go over there tomorrow night and hang out. He might be haunting the place, and he only comes out just before dark.”
The two boys went over to watch for the shoveler, just after dinner, as Mr. Fenster went in his office to watch YouTube videos. Through the wall, the boys heard some Legal AF videos, and then Mr. Fenster clicked on Shooting with Sparky. Sparky’s subject was corvids. The crow sounds from the computer inside made Robin shiver. Suddenly, from the dim light, a bird flushed from the spot between the office window and the low bush outside the window.
“Did you see that?” Jay, the younger one asked. “I think it was a bat!”
“Bats don’t hang out on the ground,” Robin said. “Let’s go!”
They ran quickly and vaulted over the weathered split rail fence between the two yards.
“Could you tell what color it was?” Robin asked, as they went in the house. “I just saw blue and white.”
“Don’t slam the door!” Mom’s voice yelled from the kitchen.
“Yeah, right. Like you’re some kind of bird expert. It definitely was a bat,” Jay said.
“It’s harder to tell colors at sunset, but this definitely had blue on it,” Robin said.
“If it’s a bird, it definitely could be making the shovel sound,” Jay said. “Do you think a bird would try to dig up the dead guy buried in the foundation?”
(Jay thought that his frequent use of the word, “definitely” made him sound older.)
“No,” Robin said, his voice a little shaky. “Let’s go over there again tomorrow, after dinner.”
They went over to Dave’s house after dinner the next day and made themselves comfortable, sitting on the edge of the deck, where they had a clear view down the space between the house and the shrubs in the front garden.
They heard the “Shooting with Sparky” podcast beginning again. This time it was about loons, and their eerie calls.
“It’s getting too dark to see,” Robin said. “Let’s go home.”
“I can tell you believe what I said about a bird trying to dig up the dead body…just a little bit,” Jay said.
Robin suddenly pushed Jay and shrieked, “I think I saw Mr. Manoban!”
They ran home.
Robin actually began to think he saw Mr. Manoban.
That night, as they lay in their bunkbed, Jay said, “I think I smelt a dead body under Dave’s window. Do you think he can smell it?”
“He can’t smell anything. He smokes.”
“Oh right. I forgot about that.”
Saturday morning, at eleven o’clock Mom called down the hallway, “Breakfast’s ready. Are you guys gonna sleep all day?”
The boys came to the table, still in their pajamas.
“This is embarrassing,” Mom said. “What if your friends came over and saw you in your PJ’s?”
“We didn’t want it to get cold while we got dressed,” Jay said. “Cold bacon is the pits.”
“So that’s the kind of thanks I get?”
“No, Mom. Sorry,” Jay said.
“And Robin! Do you think the front lawn is a junk yard now?”
Get Barbaraj’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
“Sorry, Mom. I’ll pick up my bike after I get dressed.”
“And while you’re at it, could you pick up the mail?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Robin said.
The boys got dressed and Robin went out to get the mail. Mr. Johnson, an elderly neighbor was walking his dog and stopped.
“Hi Robin, what kind of mischief have you cooked up today?”
“Oh, the usual.”
Robin shrugged, and then he removed the mail from the box.
“Nice peaceful morning, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I think my brother and I will ride our bikes.”
“Be careful on this road. The cars just zip by. I’ve seen dead raccoons, and once a car hit a deer, just the other side of your house.”
“Oh, we just ride the loop driveway next door.”
“That’s nice that Dave lets you do that. It’s peaceful here, since Mr. Manoban died, Mr. Johnson said. “Mr. Manoban used to tease my dog, Rex would chase him, and Mr. Manoban would climb a tree to get away. That’s back when they were first building the house. Then, one day he leapt from the tree to the top of that two story frame of the house. He missed the rooftop, and fell to his death.”
“He must have been really athletic!”
“Some of the construction workers were sad, but I was glad that he was no longer teasing my dog.”
“They say he was buried in the foundation.”
“Oh?” Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Johnson’s dog, Rex took a dump on the lawn. He pulled out a plastic bag and picked it up. He almost dropped it by the hedge, but had second thoughts since Robin was watching.
Robin concluded that this is where all the poop filled plastic bags were coming from.
“Well? I’ll see you again sometime,” Robin said.
He waved a little wave, went back with the mail, picked up his bike, and went back inside.
“Mom! I found out who’s leaving the dog poop bags.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Johnson. He drops them behind the hedge. I think he used to drop them in Dave’s yard, because he said a construction worker used to tease his dog and then run away. It probably distracted Rex from his business, so he started using our yard.”
“Thanks, Robin, you have a new job now. You can get the mail from now on, and wait until Mr. Johnson comes by with his dog. That sneaky rascal. He won’t leave it while you’re watching.”
“Sure, Mom.”
The next morning was Sunday. Mom was up early.
As they ate breakfast she said, “I need to pick up your dad at the airport this afternoon, so get dressed and go play outside. I need to mop the floor.”
The boys rode their bikes around Dave’s driveway and noticed a light gray bird repeatedly flying from the big pine tree in front of his house to the spot in front of the office window. They put their bikes down, quietly sneaked up to Dave’s front deck and waited for the bird to return to the spot they had been watching for the last several weeks. It dug a hole, placed some pine nuts in it, and covered the stash with dirt.
“Birds are like dogs!” Jay said. “They bury their food!”
The bird flushed, and the boys jumped. Dave came out on the porch with his cigarette.
“You guys are bright and early today…What’s the occasion?”
“Mom’s mopping the floors,” Robin said. “We had to get out.”
Jay pointed at the bird and said, “I think the shoveling noise you hear is that bird.”
“Could be.”
“I think that’s the same bird I saw the first time we came over,” Robin said. “I thought it was blue, but sometimes things look different late in the day.”
“That’s a Clark’s Nutcracker. They bury pine nuts so they’ll have food for the winter,” Dave said. “Shooting with Sparky taught me that. Get your dad to watch it with you on YouTube.”
Jay asked, “Do you know about Mr. Manoban?”
Dave inhaled on his cigarette.
“Oh yeah…They buried him under the foundation. You think he’s trying to shovel his way out?”
“What do you think?” Jay asked.
“I don’t think a little Siamese cat could handle a shovel.”
The boys looked at him puzzled, as it sunk in. Then they both laughed, relieved, as if they were in on the joke all along.
Dave pulled out his wallet and handed them each a five dollar bill.
“Here.Take your dad out for a milkshake when he gets home. Thanks for the detective work.”
