But the newscaster’s face turned serious as he continued. “But some critics are charging that the Body Farm’s research isn’t just macabre, it’s disrespectful—and possibly even unpatriotic. From Nashville, Athena Demopoulos reports.”
The image switched to a row of neat white headstones in a military cemetery. Then the shot tilted up and widened to show many more tombstones, all identical, and a woman—my new nemesis—walking between them, speaking directly to the camera. “Most veterans rest in peace after death,” she began, “buried with honors in military cemeteries like this one in north Nashville.” The screen showed close-ups of several tombstones, then switched to four photographs of soldiers in uniform. “But for these four Nashville-area veterans—men who were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country—there is no peaceful burial. By rights, they should be here. Instead, after death, their bodies ended up at a gruesome Knoxville facility known as the Body Farm.” The peaceful cemetery images were replaced by sinister-looking shots of the Body Farm’s main gate and fence—wide shots, then close-ups zooming in on the gate’s rusting padlock, the heavy steel chain, and the barbed wire and concertina topping the fence. Then—in a sequence that Buck, the PR staffer had shot—I appeared on-screen. Walking up to the gate, I unlocked it and stepped inside, then closed the gate, vanishing from view. “The Body Farm is the creation of this man, Dr. Bill Brockton,” the reporter continued, “a University of Tennessee anthropologist whose obsession with death and decay drives him to perform macabre experiments on human bodies—including these four Nashville-area veterans. Dr. Brockton refused to allow us inside the grounds of the ghoulish facility.” Once more—this time in slow motion—I stepped through the gate and closed it, as if I were closing it in Athena’s face—“but reliable sources gave Channel Four disturbing details of the indignities inflicted upon the dead. Human bodies are tossed on the ground to rot. The remains are infested with insects, preyed upon by scavenging animals.”
Suddenly the screen filled with the face—the tear-streaked face—of a thirtysomething-year-old man. The shot widened to show him walking across lush, carefully clipped grass, between tidy rows of tombstones at the Nashville military cemetery. “But one man is vowing to set things right, for his grandfather and other veterans as well. Adam Anderson—grandson of Lucius Anderson, one of the four Nashville veterans at the Body Farm—says he’ll do whatever it takes to get his grandfather back and give him the dignified burial he deserved.”
“It ain’t right,” the young man said, shaking his head and wiping his eyes. “He served his country. He deserved better than this. We got to put a stop to this.”
“Anderson isn’t the only one ready to do battle over the treatment of veterans’ bodies,” Demopoulos said. Now the camera showed a portly, glossy-haired man striding into an office lined with law books. “He’s found a powerful ally in Wayne Wilson, a state senator from Jackson, Tennessee.
“I was shocked,” Wilson pronounced, “to hear what’s being done to these veterans—and to other deceased individuals—in the name of science.” He added, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not antiscience. There’s a place for it. But this isn’t science; this is just morbid obsession. And I believe the people of the great state of Tennessee would want their elected representatives in Nashville to right this grievous wrong.”
I practically leapt up from the sofa. “Grievous wrong!” I sputtered. “What a load of crap! I’ll give you some grievous wrong, all right!”
“Shhh,” said Kathleen. Latching onto my arm, she pulled me back to my seat beside her and patted my leg.
The footage cut to a close-up of Athena Demopoulos’s face, filled with compassion. “Adam Anderson says he’s grateful for Senator Wilson’s vow to help. He just wishes it had come sooner—in time to help give his grandfather dignity in death.”
The shot widened to show Anderson standing beside her in the cemetery. “It just breaks my heart,” Anderson told her, “that they’re allowed to treat him that way . . .” He wiped his eyes again, and Athena leaned closer, handing him a tissue and giving his shoulder a comforting squeeze. “It breaks my heart they’re allowed to treat anybody this way,” he said, his voice breaking. She nodded earnestly, then—when he put his face in his hands and wept—she enfolded him in a hug. Then she stretched out one hand, fingers raised and spread wide, to block the camera’s view—a gesture the lens captured in loving, lingering detail throughout her final, somber line of voice-over: “Athena Demopoulos, Eyewitness Four News.”
Kathleen had been right: The story wasn’t been as bad as I’d thought it would be. It was worse. Much, much worse.