Chickamauga

At first, Catherine Davis thought some kids had played a prank. On the front lawn of her Riverdale home were two piles: one a pile of thirty severed hands, the other a pile of thirty severed feet. Seated in a plastic chair at the centre of the lawn was a makeshift dummy sporting a detergent-jug head onto which a bushy black beard had been glued. Its torso was a sweatshirt stuffed with old clothes and its legs a pair of stuffed jeans. The dummy wore an apron with scarlet blotches and one of its hands (a rubber glove) held a hacksaw. Beside it an old hockey stick had been thrust into the ground with a sign that read “Chickamauga” fixed to it.