Could there possibly be any more?

Although his mind said no, the short answer was yes. A lot more. A flatbed carrying wooden crates

eased off the ferry from the mainland, its cargo swaying slightly; the tie-downs holding. The truck

belched smoke rumbling slowly away from the dock as the ferry raised its gate, making quickly for

the opposite shore.

Third delivery this morning. When do they stop coming?

“Jonesie! We gave you that shovel for a reason and it wasn’t to lean on,” one of the guards

said through his silver-reflective sunglasses.

Edward Jones – the Ed Man to nearly everyone but that prison guard – startled from his

waking sleep, jerked, then hunched back over his shovel which was slowly (ever so slowly) turning

a hole into a trench.

And the Ed Man didn’t like the way it smelled.

The smell was the first thing he had been warned about. It seemed to increase with every turn of the

shovel; the stench climbing across his sweat-soaked body was the worse thing about Hart Island.

Forget the wooden crates with discarded, biodegradable contents. Forget the ten guards with tan

uniforms and guns and nightsticks and sunglasses hiding their eyes from the world. Forget that the

backhoe digging trenches could hardly keep up with the trucks from the mainland. Forget all of that

because the smell was the worst by far.

“Do’n you’se wor’y ‘bout him, Ed Man,” said a Bronx-laden slang in an orange jumpsuit,

who was helping four other jumpsuits guide one crate into a trench. “He do’n wan be here

anymor’n we do.” With that he slid deeper into the trench and another box quickly disappeared

from sight.

But the fact was Edward wanted to be there. Standing in the middle of Hart Island was

better than standing in the middle of his jail cell. So what if all he could smell was the decay of a

thousand bodies in pine box coffins. Wasn’t there another smell underneath the stench of death? A

smell nearly covered but brought to his nostrils in the cool breeze blowing off the Long Island

Sound? The smell of freedom. Almost freedom. There was still the matter of armed prison guards,

twenty-seven other inmates and nearly one mile of water between him and the nearest shoreline.

All things being equal though, he was free from the jail cell at least.

Serving his mandatory 90-day sentence on this island was a hell of a lot better than being

trapped behind concrete and steel bars. While it was true that burying John and Jane Doe’s all day

seemed like cruel and unusual punishment for someone busted for possession with intent, Edward

found it crueler still if he had to remain inside his cell. So, when prison officials came to him on the

twenty-eighth day of his unfortunate incarceration and asked him to fill in on the “Death Crew” for

another poor bastard who had taken ill, Edward nearly jumped at the chance.

Jumped? Did I really jump at the chance?

Not exactly. The Death Crew was, after all, the Death Crew. They sat together at chow,

smoked together in the yard and basically stayed away from everyone else. Or everyone stayed

away from them. The Death Crew was chosen not for their brain or their brawn, but for their

stomachs. It took a special man to bury forgotten souls in a small patch of ground and Edward

thought he could be one of those men. But he didn’t realize just how special he would need to be.

The Ed Man had already coughed up his breakfast by 9:45. He had been helping to guide a

coffin into a trench – coffins that were stacked three high, two across and 1,50 to a trench – when

his partner tripped and lost control. The coffin hit the ground with a grossly audible crack of its

pine boards – Edward couldn’t help but think of breaking bones. The top popped loose and its

resident stumbled halfway out into the mud of the trench. But it wasn’t the fact that relatively

young man had been dead for nearly two months that made Edward vomit on his shoes. It wasn’t

even that the corpse was missing an arm that had been quite clumsily removed.

It was the eyes.

The eyes – which were the first to be eaten by the same thing that was making the dead

man’s flesh crawl – stared at Edward with their black holes, boring through him until he opened his

mouth and his runny scrambled eggs came out. That’s when the face changed. As Edward doubled

over on his hand and knees, it changed.

“You’ll be here too, if you’re not careful!” the corpse screamed, its jawbone moving freely

though a hole in its left cheek.

It was then he ceased to be Edward Jones, or even the Ed Man. He was no longer a run-

down CPA who’d gotten bored with numbers and fascinated by bottles. He was just there, both a

port of and separate from himself at the same time.

He could see the corpse wasn’t actually talking. He could see that it wasn’t doing anything

at all. It simply was waiting for someone to help it back into its eternal home. Then that was all he

could see.

He passed out into his own vomit.

No one so much as snickered or pointed. That, above all else, wasn’t permitted. The guards

wouldn’t allow anyone on such a detail to make fun of the unknowns in the boxes or anyone who

became “overwhelmed” while they were trying to provide a peaceful ever after to someone they

didn’t know. Somehow, it would be inappropriate.

“You guys know what to do,” said the head guard carrying the clipboard.

That was all that needed to be spoken. Two orange jumpsuits eased their load into its place

in the trench and proceeded to remove Edward from his gorge. His arms over their shoulders and

feet dangling behind, the two hauled Edward the hundred yards or so to the shore. One swift move

and he was tossed into the murky water of the Long Island Sound.

The cold and wet forced Edward’s eyes open and water rushed into his gaping mouth. He

was already choking and spitting before he broke the surface. The two jumpsuits only stood and

watched as he gagged and splashed, searching for his legs and his breath.

“Thank you,” was all Edward could get out as the air pounded in his lungs and a new stench

wafted from his clothes to his sinuses. Edward’s reaction to the overturned coffin was common

place for Death Crew rookies. Even the two jumpsuits who threw Edward into the water had been

unceremoniously dumped into the Sound themselves – simultaneously reviving them and cleaning

their clothes.

When Edward realized that the two weren’t going to speak (more importantly that he was

still standing knee-deep in dark brown water), he trudged through the mud and onto the bank,

dripping from head to toe.

“Repor’ to the Cap’t,” said the black inmate on the right, pointing his arm, which was as big

as Edward’s thigh, in the captain’s direction. With that the two turned and went to resume their

task.

As Edward started for the green-painted school bus, he could see that some of the other

inmates had disposed of the mess created by the up-ended coffin. He was grateful for that at least,

although he could still see the corpse screaming at him despite the fact that his eyes were open.

“Don’t be embarrassed. It happens to everyone,” said Captain Miller, whose mid-Ohio

accent seemed strangely out of place on a piece of land right in between the Bronx and Long

Island.

“I...I didn’t think...that...” Edward didn’t like stammering, especially in front of the captain,

but it was all that he could manage.

“Every man here has been in that position before,” said Miller with frozen kindness in his

voice. “My guards even had to pick me up once.”

Edward stood there in awe. Captain Miller was more of a rock than a person. He had never

seen the captain smile; never even saw him talk too much to his own guards. Now he was telling

Edward that a dead body in a pine box had made his gorge rise and had caused him to pass out.

But they weren’t just dead bodies in a pine box were they. Oh, no. They were much more

than that. They were the homeless guy on the street, the drunk who’d fallen into the East River, the

woman whose body went unclaimed after her car accident. They were New York City’s cast-

aways. People the city had devoured and no one cared about.

They had come in droves and their numbers nearly filled the 100-acre burial ground. More

than one million dead had been laid to rest since the island was been converted to a cemetery in

1869. But they keep coming. Four out of the seven days a week – from the Bronx on Tuesday;

Staten Island and Brooklyn on Wednesday; Manhattan on Thursday and Queens on Friday

(Mondays were reserved for maintenance) – they kept coming.

Each box neatly marked with a number and placed into a mass grave marked by small

stones just in case someone did come to claim them.

Which did happen from time to time. About fifty bodies were exhumed each year for

various reasons. Some bodies were recovered after their families waded through a sea a beaucratic

red tape; others used as evidence in some form of criminal investigation. But most simply went

unclaimed, buried forever with thousands of others in the same situation.

And the workers – many of whom which were short term cons who had volunteered – went

about their business, earning their thirty-seven cents an hour, without giving the situation much

thought. Until they had to work in the northwest corner. That was where the shoe box-sized coffins

were kept.

Nearly half of the “residents” of Hart Island were babies. Most were still-borns that some

frightened teenage mother didn’t know how to deal with. Others were babies that mothers didn’t

what to deal with. Trashcan babies pushed aside with the common garbage by women who had no

intention of being referred to as “mom.”

No one spoke when burying the shoeboxes and everyone took care to not drop a single one.

Silence was the last respects paid by the prisoners. Silence, and many times, a stream of tears.

Of course, Edward hadn’t experienced any of this before. He had only heard, and that

wasn’t enough to prepare him for what he saw.

“You get used to it,” Miller said in the same ice water friendly tone. “Here, put this on.”

Miller threw another orange jumpsuit at his feet and Edward has suddenly aware that he

was standing there soaking wet. There was a light breeze from the water and, despite the fact that it

was early September, he was starting to get cold.

The jumpsuit dropped around his ankles with a slight splat. He had had to fumble with it for

a few seconds because of his shaking hands. But that was nothing like the fight that his shoes had

put up. The laces were corroded with mud from the Sound and it took a minute of pulling and

prying for finally get both feet free. His socks, needless to say, were no longer white, but a heavy

brown. The T-shirt clung to him, revealing never-developed pecks and a beer-gut that had slowly

started to form over the last year.

“Use this to dry off before you get dressed,” Miller said, handing over a “Property of Rikers

Island Prison” towel. “You’ll probably have to go without your skivvies for the rest of the day.”

Edward peeled off his undergarments, stood naked in front of Hart Island, its one million

residents, its twenty-seven inmates and its ten guards and didn’t care. He toweled quickly, more

because of the chill than anything else. The spare jumpsuit was baggy; designed to fit anyone if

called into action. But it was warm and it didn’t smell of his breakfast.

An hour later he had already laid fifteen coffins into a trench. Each one came and went

without incident, but Edward was more that a little skittish. The way those eyeless sockets had

looked at him, the way it had spoke to him.

“You’ll be here too, if you’re not careful!” it had screamed at him. But it wasn’t screaming

at him, rather to him. Edward hadn’t known the man, had never even seem him before. He was

probably homeless, like the many that Edward had passed on the street. Edward didn’t know him,

but if he didn’t straighten up, Edward could easily become him.

He used to be good at his job. The numbers just came easily to him. Numbers were always

easier to figure out than people. With his numbers, Edward was always guaranteed of getting only

one answer. People always had a knack of giving more than one answer, and it was usually one that

Edward wasn’t prepared for.

So he went about his job with certainty. He was, analytical? Always. Slightly on the boring

side? Most likely. Stupid? He never used to be. But it seemed that more and more, stupidity was

something that Edward excelled at.

“Watch it! This’ns heavy!”

The coffin Edward was guiding began to sway and in his haste to steady it, or get out of its

way before anything came out, his right foot tripped over his left. The result was him on his back,

arms supporting one corner of the coffin, beads of sweat pouring off his forehead and praying the

box wouldn’t open, all with the other three inmates who were helping him trying frantically to get

hold of the pine before it fell on Edward entirely.

At least the nails in the lid had held. Edward could already hear the owner inside screaming

to be let out. Let out to warn Edward of the perils of Hart Island. Edward thought he could even

hear the resident in the coffin below him clawing to get out, but it was merely the frantic feet of his

co-workers. The three struggled to the point where Edward could escape and then set the box down

in its resting place.

“Looks like you’re at the heart of most of the trouble here today, Jonesie,” said the guard

with the silver-colored eyes.

“Lord knows I’m tryin’ hard not to be,” Edward responded coolly, brushing the dirt off his

legs.

But the guard had heard the small hic-up in his voice. “I just hope that trouble doesn’t find

you more interesting,” the guard said.

Edward didn’t like that tone, but there was really nothing he could do about it. So he did the

only thing he could do, he pushed the coffin neatly in line with the others and, with a black magic

marker, neatly wrote “23-2-2” on the top. Plot 23, Row 2, two down from the top. Every box had a

similar marking. It made it easier.

Nearly two-thirds of the trench had been filled. The Crew had been working on it for almost

two weeks. The backhoe expanded the trench more each day, while part of the Crew came behind

and filled in the trench and laid the marking stone. It wouldn’t be too long before the entire island

would be filled with trenches and marking stones.

At best, it had five years of space available, probably less. City officials speculated as to

what could be done with the bodies once Hart Island had achieved its operational limit. Some had

suggested reusing the older parts of the cemetery. After twenty-five years or so, the bodies and pine

boxes would have completely decomposed, hence providing more space. However, that practice

had been given up long ago.

But what to do with Hart Island wasn’t the concern of Edward Jones and the others like him

that worked its land. They would already be out of prison (more than a few probably back in) by

the time that the island would have to close down. For most of the inmates on Hart Island, finding a

job was a much higher priority than how full some water-locked cemetery was.

Although the population of Hart Island – a population greater than all but ten US cities –

was something that had wandered into Edward’s brain. Actually, the thought was more like what

would be done with me if I died on the street and no one came to claim the body? Which spawned

another question: Would anyone come to claim the body?

These questions, the latter especially, plagued him. His wife had left and taken their eight-

year-old daughter more than a year ago when she found a baggy full of clumsily rolled “cigarettes”

in a shoebox He hadn’t heard from them since. Edward couldn’t blame his wife, he had wished that

he could have gone with her, but he was already in way over his head.

His affair with alcohol she could take, but that bag of white rolled paper was more than she

could handle. And her leaving was more than Edward could handle. He quit his job due to lack of

interest and had pretty much smoked up his savings. The exact time and place that he had sold his

first joint to that junior high school kid eluded Edward, but he knew that that moment, whenever it

was, was the beginning of the end. That kid had come back for more – and with some of his friends

– and Edward sold what he had, making a small profit on the side.

The junior high schoolers become high schoolers, which became college students. About

two months ago, the Ed Man had begun to associate with a lower class of people; people that he

and his wife and their friends hadn’t known existed no fewer than eighteen months ago. But these

people didn’t have any friends, only enemies. Suddenly Edward developed enemies. The kind that

carried a nine-millimeter and slunk around in alleyways and the kind that were issued .45s and

nightsticks and wore navy blue uniforms with silver-reflective sunglasses.

But it was his friend “Mr. Undercover Narcotics Officer” that had singled-handily landed

Edward smack in the middle of Hart Island wearing someone else’s orange jumpsuit because he

had thrown up on his. Edward hoped that it was for the best. Even as he sat in the holding cell, he

could see that he was back on the right road. The road that Edward hoped to would lead him to his

wife and daughter.

“Lunch!” The scream from the lieutenant resonated across the island.

Lunch consisted of a tuna salad sandwich on white bread with the crust removed, ten saltine

crackers, an apple, a small cup of chocolate pudding and a pint of white milk all in a brown paper

bag. The inmates sat on five picnic tables in silence while guards sat near the bus.

Edward didn’t care much for tuna salad but he ate it anyway. He hated the smell the most

but forced his nose closed and crammed the sandwich into his mouth. He ate around the rotten

piece of apple (God’s mouthwash was how his mother referred to them) and the saltines made him

thirstier than expected but it all tasted good. Edward’s breakfast had been spewed onto the island

and it felt good to have something back inside of him.

“Why you’se here?” asked the same Bronx accent who had warned him about the guard.

“You’se jus’ a one-day fill or you’se gon’a be here for while?”

Edward got a real glance at “Bronx” for the first time. He was practically young enough to

be Edward’s son – 19-years-old; 20 tops. Nearly all of his blonde hair had been shaved within a

quarter inch of his scalp and one eye seemed to be set slightly higher than the other. Outside of that,

Bronx looked rather normal. Not anything like a criminal at all. Then again, neither did Edward.

Edward looked dull; looked like someone who would have dirty sex with his secretary behind his

wife’s back (which he had done), but he didn’t look like a criminal.

“I don’t exactly know how long I’ll be here.” Which was the truth. No one had bothered to

tell him the duration of his stay. “Just heard one of the Crew had gotten sick and they asked me to

fill in.”

Bronx looked completely satisfied with that answer and resumed chomping on his tuna

salad.

“What chou’se in for?” The question came after a few seconds of thought. Edward guessed

that Bronx hadn’t seen too much of the inside of a school building. He had probably received much

of his education in the inner city.

“Possession with intent.”

“They nailed me for the same thing.” And with a wide smile, “But my only intent was to

smoke it.”

A few of the prisoners around the table laughed, which peaked the attention of the guards,

who set their meals aside in favor of concentrating on the five picnic tables.

“How long have you been on the Crew?” It was a question that Edward had asked to Bronx,

but anyone was free to respond.

“Been workin’ Hart I’Lan’ for five months now.” Bronx said. “And do’n wor’y. I did the

same thin’ you’se did ‘smornin’ for ah week.”

Edward could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks but was powerless to stop it. He knew

that Bronx hadn’t meant to embarrass him, but Edward’s involuntary puking had left a bad taste in

his mouth. Literally and figuratively.

The next forty minutes of lunch went pretty much the same way. Edward sat quietly eating

a meal that he hadn’t chosen for himself, answering the occasional question about some maligned

fact to do with his past, trying to avoid any unnecessary conversation. He truly did have no idea

how long he would be mining Hart Island and revealing any personal information about himself

might be damning in the future. That was a rule Edward had adopted when he first crossed into the

custody of Rikers Island Prison.

But the fact that the Ed Man wasn’t very talkative didn’t draw much attention. No one was

very talkative during lunch, a fact that Edward would learn over the course of the next several

weeks. No one really talked during the bus ride over in the morning, during work, during lunch or

during the ride home. Only when absolutely necessary.

The task awaiting Edward after lunch was easier on his stomach than his morning

undertaking. He had little way of knowing it, but the guards on Hart Island had a way of separating

the ones who could stomach the work on those who couldn’t. Instead of allowing Edward to put the

coffins in the trench, he was handed a shovel by the guard with the silver-reflective sunglasses and

told to fill in the trench with dirt.

The work wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t any easier, at least physically. The dirt weighed on his

back in a completely different way than the coffins had and a stitch developed faster than Edward

had expected. But he was away from the smell. In fact, he was working to cover the smell and that

was very important to him.

Edward and a “Drunk and Disorderly” worked fast to cover the stack of coffins, but not so

quickly as to catch the other inmates laying them to rest. The first shovel full of dirt clattered on the

wood boxes. But soon the brown covered the blonde pine and the dirt eventually quieted. Drunken

Disorderly didn’t speak and Edward wasn’t going to speak to him. The two just stood across the

trench from each other, shoveling and dumping, shoveling and dumping.

They had worked to fill in thirty feet of the trench in three hours. Needing only to fill a two-

foot high by six-foot wide space had seemed easy enough at first to Edward, but by the time he was

done, sweat was pouring off of him and his arms and lower back ached. Drunken Disorderly, who

was even more out of shape then Edward, had long since been huffing and puffing, collapsed to the

ground when the guard who had screamed for lunch screamed: “Quitting time.”

The few remaining coffins were placed in the trench and those that weren’t buried were

covered with tarps. The backhoe was shut down while the hand tools were locked into the storage

locker next to the “lunchroom.” With their work area cleaned for the evening – and patiently

waiting for them to return the next day – the prisoners gathered near the bus in two single file lines,

with Edward taking his lead from the others.

One-by-one Captain Miller went down the list of names on his clipboard, taking role before

anyone could get on the bus. With all twenty-eight accounted for – plus a quick head count for all

ten guards – the left line boarded the green-painted school bus and then the right. Edward, who had

gotten a good look at the bus during the morning commute, still marveled at the transformation

from how it looked when he was a kid.

The fourth and fifth rows of seat had been removed and in their place was a wall of chain

link fence. The guard with the silver reflective eyes opened the door in the middle of the fence.

Without instruction, the inmates funneled through and sat in the alphabetical order than they rode in

on. The guards then proceeded to take the seats in the first three rows in the front of the bus.

The ride on the ferry to City Island was quiet but bumpy. The water along the Sound had

kicked up into waves a few hours ago. The engine droned through the prisoners and Edward could

see that the noise and the waves had coupled to make one of the prisoners towards the front more

than a little queasy.

The entourage switched prison buses on the dock, from an ugly green to a slightly darker

shade, without incident. The ride to the Rikers Island Prison was less wavy and even Edward was

relieved. He felt that same sense, perhaps even a little stronger, as the bus passed through the gate

of the prison. He couldn’t explain it, but Edward was happy to be back. At least happy to be away

from Hart Island.

Dinner was mediocre, as it always was, but there was something different. Instead of eating

with the other guys from Cell Block E, Edward ate with the Death Crew. It was something he really

didn’t notice until he saw the other guys from Block E looking at him. But Edward got used to the

looks.

So used to them in fact that by the time his sixty days on the Death Crew was up, Edward

didn’t even notice any more.