No Place on the Map

The day’s first dig was at the Edgell place in Fort Martin, an unincorporated speck so tiny it didn’t appear on our map. With Gary the Manchild as navigator it seemed we’d never find it. I’d spent the twenty-minute ride from the Super 8—where the Amerigas regulars picked up the Manpower temps like myself—wedged between Gary and the rat-faced, clever Jon. Before connecting to I-68, Gary shouted “Hootchie Mamaaaa” at a woman pumping gas. I struggled to keep my eyes open and my convenience-store coffee upright as my weary body transitioned from a short night’s rest to the prospect of another long day clearing loose dirt from trenches. A summer spent burying copper tubing to the regulation depth of eighteen inches, linking propane tanks to country houses. Flying down Route 50, Jon tapped the rearview, where his angular sunglasses hung by an elastic strap, and said, “That VW’s so far up my ass he can see nose hairs.”

“He’s so far up your ass he can smell shit,” Gary added.

We took the exit for Maidsville. The directions led us down a meandering road where birches blocked the view of houses, parting only for steep gravel driveways marked by mailboxes the way pushpins mark locations of unsolved murders. No mailbox marked the Edgell place. Jon stopped for directions at a house hidden by a weeping willow. The shirtless man pointed toward the driveway and warned it was a mess, that Edgell ran a junkyard. He advised us to back down, as Edgell’s junkyard was too crowded with rubble and salvaged cars to turn around the Ford F550 service truck, a vehicle of such terrific size that it garnered longing looks from jealous customers, most of whom had never ridden in anything larger than the F250. To climb into the cab required the assistance of a stainless steel step. The bed held a minicrane for the Ditch Witch, a trencher machine so big that hoisting it required the dropping of an outrigger to keep the truck from tipping.

Jon backed the service truck past rusting cars in various degrees of disrepair. Jon and Gary exchanged curious looks as Jon twanged “Dueling Banjoes,” the universal indicator, since the 1972 film Deliverance, that one has left civilization and entered the inbred backwaters of mountain morality. The driveway turned abruptly, as branches battered and scraped the side windows, speckling them with burst red berries, and emptied into a hollowed out valley above a creek. A tumbledown double-wide sat amid junked vehicles, littered among unkempt weeds, edged against waterlogged ruts. Radiating from the trailer, the vehicles traced orbits of increasing neglect. Further past the rust belt, squeezed beneath a dense canopy, a maple sapling sprouted from a 1955 Ford F100’s spider-webbed windshield.

Next to the trailer sat a canary-yellow Dodge Ram, nearly the size of our F550 and flawless save for the dented fender. Despite the small dent, the truck was as out of place among the wreckage as one of these rust and Bondo jalopies would have been on a showroom floor.

Jon shifted to park and left the engine running as he and Gary stepped out to inspect the site. Jon, who normally handled customer relations, said, “Gary, you can look at the inside, today. I’ll run the Ditch Witch.”

I switched off the air conditioner, put on my ball cap, and exited the truck into the unshaded hollow. The late-morning sun boiled the stew of mud and junk, releasing a heavy, damp stink. Before I’d even dropped the outrigger, I was covered in a film of sweat. I wanted to leave.

The Edgells’ trailer was as well tended as the surrounding yard. Unvarnished two-by-fours formed a triangle above the pink and purple porch. A swing hung above an empty ammunition box puffy from the rain. The grey floorboards were unattached at the edge, where they buckled despite being nailed into place. The trailer’s weight drove its supporting cinder blocks into the soft dirt, cracking the fake stone...