Finding John Doe

Part One, Hide and Seek

"Dave. DAVE." Sensing fear in his voice, I yelled back, "WHAT IS IT TEDDY?" "There's a dead guy over here," he said. That's my brother Teddy—he always had a wild imagination. "DAVE, COME QUICK."

We were in the woods just down the road from where our grandparents lived. It was the summer of 1954. Our parents always shipped us off to our grandparents for the summer. It wasn't a bad deal. There were many kids to play with, and Grandma spoiled us with all of her homemade baked goods.

I got to Teddy just as the Campbell twins, Kari and Kevin ran up. Kari screamed. The sight of the body stunned me. Lying face down, his dirty gabardine trench coat concealed any wounds or blood. We couldn't see his face, but we were sure he was dead. Teddy ran to Grandma, and she called the police. By the time they arrived, more kids and some parents from the neighborhood had gathered around the body.

The police pushed everyone back and turned the man over. His face was pale and drawn. He was an older white man with gray hair and a slight mustache. Leaves stuck to his face. Now that he was on his back, we saw that he was extremely thin. His baggy clothes showed a lifetime of wear and needed cleaning. The blowflies were at work. His eyes were open and staring at me. They were electrifying and knife-like – I was transfixed.

Doc Wilson arrived. He was a family doctor who moonlighted as the county coroner. Doc made his initial examination and couldn't find any apparent wound. The cops searched the body's pockets and didn't find anything. No wallet. No money. No identification. They asked folks in the crowd if they knew the man. No one recognized him.

Someone in the crowd asked, "Where's his car?" It hadn't dawned on the cops that this guy was in the woods on the edge of Charleston Road and no car in sight. With an embarrassed look, the sheriff barked to his troops, "Find the goddamn car."

After a time, an ambulance arrived, and they loaded the body and took it to the community hospital for autopsy. Then the sheriff questioned all the gawkers for clues. No one knew anything. They said they came by because of the kids and the sirens.

Then he approached Teddy and me and the Campbell twins. Some other kids had bunched around us.

"What were you all doing in the woods?" he asked.

"We were playing hide and seek," I told him.

"Did you see or hear anything before you found the body?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Did you hear any strange noises? Did you see any other strangers? Did you see the man walking about in the woods before you found him dead?"

The answer to all was no. The sheriff's gruff questioning frightened Kari, and she started to cry. Some of the other kids began to panic. The sheriff said that it was useless to try to get any information out of us. He broke up the crowd and everyone cleared out.

At the morgue, the coroner's attempts to identify the man were fruitless. His fingerprints didn't match any in the Harrison County police files. The coroner determined that the man had died about 48 hours before we found him. There was no evidence of foul play; therefore, the coroner ruled that the cause of death was exposure to the elements.

The police placed a news story in the Herald-Star, included an artist's drawing of the dead man's face and asked for help to identify him. No response. They ran the same story and picture in the Wheeling News-Register. No response there either. This shook me. Cadiz was the county seat and was a relatively small town. How could someone die in the town and no one in Cadiz knew him, and no one in all of Harrison County knew him?

That evening after dinner, I followed Grandpa to the front porch. He liked to smoke a Chesterfield or two after dinner. I asked, “How could someone live and die in a community as small as Cadiz and no one knows the person?” "Well," said Grandpa, "maybe the person wasn't from around here." I said that I thought he must be from around here because there was no sign of a car so he must have walked to the woods. "Or maybe someone brought him to the spot on the road and dropped him off," added Grandpa. I said that I just think if a man had lived, he had a history. Maybe he had family.

Then Grandpa said that some people read only the obituaries. He suggested we write an obituary and take it to the newspaper. We could say that he was about 60 years old and died of natural causes in Cadiz, Ohio, June 23, 1954. "But what about a name?" I asked. "The police can't find out his name. No one in the county has suggested a name." Grandpa thought for a moment. He took a few puffs of his cigarette. He leaned forward and said, "Let's name him what the police call him. Let's name him John Doe."

Part Two, Road Trip

I've hit middle age, and that event still haunts me. My wife, Nora, thinks I should get over it. Teddy thinks about it only when I bring it up. Then he says something like, "Oh for God's sake – get a life." But I can't let it go. John Doe's eyes still cut through me. Besides, to be remembered is to have lived. That's why I took the road trip to Cadiz.

When our parents would send us to Cadiz back in the 50s, we went by train. In those days, you could send kids alone on the train and not worry. The porters were always helpful and protective. It was a great adventure. It usually included one over-night on the train. We ate dinner in the dining car, and when we wanted to go to sleep, the porters would convert the Pullman sleeper berths for us. Later, President Eisenhower's interstate highway system turned our great train adventure into a grueling, non-air-conditioned 12-hour car ride.

Today, that 12-hour ride has turned into eight hours and isn't so grueling in my Camry. The interstate is greatly improved—lots of fast food joints and gigantic truck stops. It was about three in the afternoon as I pulled onto the Cadiz Holiday Inn Express lot. After I settled in, I headed to the Harrison County Courthouse.

At the courthouse, the guard at the front deck directed me to the office of the Vital Records Registrar. As I approached the counter, the clerk looked up and offered to help me. After explaining my reason for being there, she led me to the archives. She pointed to filing cabinets way back in the corner. They were more like those old wooden card file drawers in a library. And for good reason – the death records from the 1950s and 60s had been handwritten on index cards. She said that I could use the table back there.

So, my search began. It didn’t take me long to find the "John Doe" files for 1954. Thumbing through the cards, I finally found my John Doe. I took down the information regarding the cemetery and the plot number and headed to the cemetery.

I opened the door to the cemetery office and introduced myself to Mr. Owens, the caretaker. He was gaunt, short and very friendly – like he was glad to see a living person. In telling him my story, I emphasized that my goal was to collect some DNA to try to track down family of the dead man.

Mr. Owens said, "Well, you will need a court order, the coroner to extract and analyze the DNA and I can arrange for the exhumation. The cost of the exhumation varies depending upon the condition of the coffin and other uncertainties. I'll need to rent a special backhoe. The fee for an exhumation usually runs between $3,000 and $4,000. I don't know what the coroner will charge to extract and analyze the DNA. You might even have to send it to Columbus for the analysis."

I figured the exhumation would be expensive, but I didn't think about the legal steps, which would take forever to hire a lawyer to file the motion and wait for a judge to get around to issuing an order. The wheels of the legal system turned slowly.

Nora already thinks I'm crazy. Maybe I am. I didn't have the time to wait around for the court to operate. I decided to head home with the realization that I will never find out who my John Doe was.

It was still early in the day, so I felt it is was a good time to explore the town to see what had changed and if I could find anything familiar. Driving through downtown, gone was the movie theatre where they would give away place settings of cheap china with the purchase of a certain number of tickets. The telephone office that strikers had bombed when the phone company hired scabs had been replaced by a strip mall. The drug store where I tasted my first root beer float was now a vacant lot.

I found a decent diner, ate dinner and headed back to the motel. On the way, I saw an adult movie house. I had never been to one before, and no one here would know me. So, I thought why not, I took in a movie.

The movie had been running for about a half hour. It was boring. I needed to go to the john. While I was washing my hands, some punk hits me on the back of my head. My head was throbbing.

"What'd you do that for?" I yelled.
"What do you think dumb shit? Give me your money."
"You'll have to take it from me."
"My pleasure," he said with a grin.
We swapped punches. I was putting up a good fight with my mugger and was getting the better of him. Then he pulled his knife. A thrust to my gut then to my chest. To my surprise, I was on the floor, and this punk was going through my pockets.

They always say, "Don't fight with a mugger – give him your money." So, what did I do? I fought with the mugger. I'm such a putz. Have you heard of buyer's remorse? That's what I had, because there I was on the floor of a filthy men’s room in an adult movie house lying in a pool of my blood. I tried to yell for help, but I was too weak.

At last, someone found me, and the ambulance was on the way. I hoped they would get there before it was too late. I started to feel very cold. I couldn't feel my hands or feet anymore. I felt dizzy and weak. The medics and police finally arrived. They went through my pockets. The cop called me a John Doe. A JOHN DOE! I thought to myself, of course, why wouldn't he call me a John Doe – he couldn't find my wallet. That punk took it. If I hadn't been so weak, I would have told him I'm not a John Doe. I had a name and a wife and family. I had a home with an address.

I had hoped that after a night at the hospital, I'd be strong enough to tell them who I was. Then the paramedic took out a body bag. I thought why was he doing that? I thought I'm not dead. I couldn't be. It was a mistake. I could see everything that's going on. I could even see me on the floor. That was odd … it was as though I had a bird's-eye view. So, this is what an out of body experience is like?

The paramedic zipped up the body bag and off I went. Nobody was in the back of the ambulance with me to monitor my vital signs. The driver wasn't using the siren. It finally hit me that I must be dead. I wanted to shout that I may be dead – BUT I'M NOT A JOHN DOE. They didn't know who I was or where I lived. A maddening stream of thoughts ran through my brain: They'll bury me in a pauper's grave. How will my wife know what's happened to me? This can't be happening. How ironic ‒ I came here to find out about my John Doe, and I ended up being a John Doe.

Things were moving quickly. In the morgue, I wondered if my John Doe sojourned in this same morgue. Could this have been the same drawer where he was stored? Although it is obvious that S.O.B. stabbed me to death, the coroner felt that an autopsy was in order. They were wasting so much time. They needed to find my killer and find out what he did with my ID. I was not a John Doe.

Part Three, No Place like Home

Thank God, the next morning they found my wallet in the dumpster outside the adult movie house. The sergeant said that the punk took all the money and credit cards, but he left my driver's license. Now they could send me home to Nora.

Time had no value, no significance or substance – it was irrelevant. It was like cutting from one scene in a movie to the next. An instant ago I was in Cadiz in the morgue, in another instant, I was back home at the funeral home.

I saw Nora and Bobby my 30-year-old son. He was really a handful when he was a teenager. A regular James Dean character. He drove his sister crazy. But he straightened out and eventually became a partner in his law firm. My daughter, Emily, was out in the hall trying to corral her two kids.

The service was starting, and the rabbi was chanting El Malei Rachamim, the Memorial Prayer. Next, everyone rose to recite Kaddish Ytom, the Mourner's Kaddish. When we were at the cemetery, as is the tradition, the mourners were lining up to bury me, shovel after shovel of dirt. I've done that dozens of times myself – I've buried many friends and relatives. Even though I wasn’t with my body, I could hear the clumps of dirt landing on my coffin. I never realized how loud the clumps of dirt could be as they smashed down on the wooden coffin. The sound seemed to be drumming done … done … done.

The rabbi announced the hours that Nora and the kids would receive visitors each of the days of Shiva. Shiva, the seven days of grief, begins immediately following the burial. Friends and relatives had ordered Shiva trays from the kosher deli, trays of a variety of food, such as bagels and lox, cream cheese, pastries, salmon, chicken, corned beef, salad – enough to feed Nora and the kids for a week. The women of the synagogue's Chesed Shel Emet (act of true kindness) committee had already arrived at the house setting up the food, made sure the mirrors were covered and prepared hard-boiled eggs – a symbol of rebirth.

I could tell that Nora was getting better day by day as visitors came and went, sharing good memories and thoughts. Just as her spirit was picking up, my brother retold Nora about the time he found a dead guy in the woods when we were at Grandma's house. I don't know how that story was supposed to cheer her up. Sometimes he is a bigger putz than me.

Time was quickly melting away. We arrived at the last day of Shiva. Shiva seems like a long and drawn out process. But the purpose is to help the mourners move from grief to mourning and to help unite the fragments of the departed soul, liberate it and send it off to be with God.

Shiva ended in the morning. After minyan – the morning prayer service – the family got up from "sitting" Shiva and walked out of the house for the first time in a week, symbolically returning to the world.

I started to feel strange. I didn't feel cold anymore, but I didn't feel warm, either. I wasn’t sure what I felt. My soul circled the room, the view of my family was becoming more distant, but I could still see them. Nora, Bobby and Emily were having a good laugh.

The room was getting very bright. It was so bright that Nora and the kids were washing out. My soul was moving on. I began to feel that liberation. I no longer had a care in the world.

Then I saw hundreds of people milling around. Out of the crowd, a very thin man in a gaberdine trench coat with a slight mustache approached me. His piercing eyes that had haunted me all those years were smiling as he welcomed me.
# # #

Short Stories

Finding John Doe

By Max Brown

Management Team

Board:

Team Members and Writers

Short Stories Finding John DoeBy Max Brown

Management Team

Board:

Team Members and Writers

Short Stories

Finding John Doe

By Max Brown