[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Doesn t take more than a day or two for fluids to start leaching out, I
agreed. You fish out the staples so they don t go back to the family?
That, she said, and so they don t dull the blades of the processor. I ll
show you that in a minute. She stirred around a bit more, snagging a zipper
and a few buttons. Here you go, a Cracker Jack prize, she said. She fished
out a short metal bracket drilled with four holes, a scorched screw threaded
through each hole. She must have had a plate in her arm or leg, she said.
Do you get a lot of orthopedic hardware?
More and more, seems like.
As the Baby Boomers start to die off, I said, I bet you ll see even more.
All those joggers and tennis players and downhill skiers going in for new
parts. What do you do with stuff like that?
We bury it, she said, unless the family asks for it.
So if somebody had a pair of artificial knees and the family wanted them,
you d send em back?
Absolutely, she said. She took a hand broom and swept the crushed bones into
a small mound, then unhooked a large metal dustpan from a peg above the
workbench. Bracing the bone fragments with the broom, she slid the dustpan
underneath, scooping nearly everything into it with one quick, efficient push.
Then she slid it backward about a foot and carefully swept the remaining dust
into it.
At the left-hand end of the workbench was a large metal pot, the size and
shape of a restaurant kitchen s stockpot. This is the processor, she said.
You see the blades there in the bottom? I looked into the vessel and saw a
thin, flat bar attached to a bolt at the center. The pot was roughly fifteen
inches in diameter; the bar reached about halfway to the sides of the pot.
Both ends of the bar had shorter bars attached to what appeared to be bearings
or pivots. If you flip that switch, you ll see how it works. She nodded
toward a toggle on the wall just above the container. I flipped it up, and the
blades jolted into motion. I caught a brief glimpse of the shorter bars
flipping outward toward the rim, and then the whole whirling assembly
disappeared, the way an airplane propeller disappears at full throttle. I
flipped the switch off, and the blades spun down, the centrifugal force
keeping the shorter bars extended until the assembly coasted to a stop.
That blade assembly looks like what I feel when I jam my hand down into my
garbage disposal to untangle the dishrag, I said, giving an involuntary
shudder. You could sure lose a hand in there fast. She nodded again, then
tipped the dustpan into the pot. She started an exhaust fan above the
processor, then switched on the blades. A plume of dust eddied upward as the
blades chewed through the chunks of bone, sending a swirl of powder and small
bits of bone up the sides of the vessel. After a half minute or so, she
switched off the motor, and the pulverized material settled, the blades
sending smaller and smaller waves spinning through the powder as they slowed.
She grasped the two handles of the pot, gave a twist to release it from the
central shaft that came up from the motor underneath, and hoisted the pot up
to the workbench. Then she tipped it into another hopper, this one emptying
into a bag of clear, heavy plastic that was cinched to its spout. She tapped
the side of the hopper to coax the last bit of powder to fall, then unhooked
the bag, dropped in a small metal identification tag, and sealed the bag with
a twist tie.
Where does the tag come from?
I make those here, she said. Each body gets an ID number, which goes in the
file and on this tag.
Just like at the Body Farm, I said. You ve got a good system here.
Well, I ve had twenty years to work out the kinks, she replied, laughing.
The bag was already inside a black plastic container, measuring about six
inches by eight inches wide and eight or ten inches tall. She folded down the
box s plastic lid and snapped it shut.
Could I ask one more favor?
Page 29
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]