Oo-oo that smell
Can’t you smell that smell?
Oo-oo that smell
The smell of death surrounds you.
Lynyrd Skynyrd

There’s a deathly smell in our backyard. It fills my nostrils with its stench and my heart with dread.

Our neighbors on both sides have recently begun landscaping their yards. I’m hoping that the foul odor is emanating from the fertilizer that one of them used. I know better, of course. And the truth is making my heart race and my stomach twist with anxiety.

The fear I’m experiencing is akin to the terror felt by the protagonist in Edgar Allan Poe’s, The Tell-Tale Heart. He killed an old man, dismembered him, and buried him under the floorboards. Even though he knew the old man was dead, he was driven mad by the sound of thumping, which he believed was the beating of the dead man’s heart.

My heart thumps wildly every time I step outside and am assaulted by the pungent aroma of decay, which sends me running back inside.

I know that smell. I’ve smelled that smell. A once-living being is rotting in my family’s yard. It’s only a matter of time until the jig is up.

Many years ago, my husband and I took the subway from Manhattan up to the Bronx to visit his mother. We had to walk several blocks from the subway to her house. As we walked down a short block, we were overcome by a vile aroma. We hurried down the block and soon forgot all about it. Then, the next day, we saw on the news that we had walked past a car that had a dead body in its trunk. The body had been in there for weeks.

Decades later, I still recall the foul air surrounding that car. And now it’s back. In our yard.

My fear is that it’s coming from the grave we dug for our dog, Rudy, last August. He died rapidly and unexpectedly on a Sunday evening as the sun was setting. The grave we dug was about three feet deep. We didn’t have time to dig any deeper. It was getting dark and flies were landing on him. We wrapped him in his vinyl wading pool and buried him before any nocturnal animals or vultures could become curious and pay us a visit.

The next day, the top layer of soil had sunk a bit, so we spent the next few days adding dirt to the top of the grave. No animals disturbed it. No rank aroma arose from the grave for the rest of the summer and fall. Then winter froze the ground and we felt confident that we were out of the woods, and Rudy was part of the earth.

But now, I wonder. Maybe the pool delayed his decomposition. Maybe he thawed out this spring and is just starting to decay. Maybe the vultures are on their way. Maybe the police are on the vultures’ heels.

There’s only one thing to do: buy especially offensive fertilizer and spread it all over the yard. We’ll have to do it every week, until the original stench dissipates. It’s going to be hard to differentiate between the two stinks. I guess we’ll have to fertilize forever.

At least we’ll have a legitimate explanation for the rancid cloud enveloping our home.