”The first clue was a tooth, its bloody root still attached, on the narrow carpeted stairway to the second floor. We had come in through the gloomy, darkened first floor of the house, cluttered with the ordinary clothes-food-paper disarray of day-to-day life. Off the hall between the living room and the kitchen, the stairway took two sharp turns upward, and we found the tooth on the first landing. There didn’t seem to be any possible way it could have been blown down two ninety-degree turns to wind up where it was.” [page 143]

It is an unfortunate aspect of life that death is all around us. People die every second of every day here in America; sometimes, violently so. Other times, people essentially fade away, until friends and neighbors become concerned enough to check on them. Some people die in weird and strange ways (from autoerotic asphyxiation while wearing GOP-issued woman's underwear), but those are pretty rare (we think). Some die in the arms of lovers or others unknown to immediate family. Some die in rooms that are rabbit warrens of clutter and collections. Some die on the porcelain throne reading a magazine; one last bowel movement before the death collector came calling. And, others commit suicide in horrific and awful fashion.

But, however people die, there is a need to return the place and space of their death back to zero, back to some sense of ordinary even if that’s only the physical space. [The spiritual space is left undone.]

And in the age of AIDS, HIV, all sorts of Hepatitis and other blood diseases, there is a need for the cleanup to be done a certain way. Gone are the days when church groups would clean up after a death, and no longer can coffee grounds be used to soak up blood and body fluids. Nowadays, people call a company like Aftermath, Inc., a bioremediation company that shows up after the police have left, to deal with scenes of horror and return them to some sense of normalcy.

Gil Reavill, in his book, Aftermath, Inc.: Cleaning Up After CSI Goes Home [2007, Gotham Books, 298 pages] set out to understand the workings of the nation’s first bioremediation company and get behind the yellow tape for a look at what is involved in this type of work. The founders of the company, Chris Wilson and Tim Reifsteck, gave Reavill unlimited access and employed him as a technician. So, yes, Reavill, even with his gag reflex at full throttle, was able to visit the actual scenes described in the book and deal with the consequences.

The result is a book that is at once macabre and black humored, but also poignant and deeply felt. There is an underlying altruism at work in Aftermath’s daily work life, and Reavill never once finds the techs he works with being disdainful of the victims and their families. Sure, there are a number of jokes about strange circumstances and such, but that’s with reason; a necessary coping mechanism for anyone employed in this field.

Reavill doesn’t go as far into the inner financial workings of Aftermath, however. He sees the work they do as the more interesting aspect of the story. Aftermath, based in the Midwest, is mostly a word-of-mouth company. By law, police departments and emergency workers can not deal with them directly so they win most of their work by other channels.

Their workers are considered independent contractors; they are paid by the job not a salary. Reavill doesn’t explore that issue in depth, which leaves the reader hanging a bit. It seems very strange to me that the people who clean up after some of the most horrific tragedies in life are not employees but seemingly itinerant workers, traveling from town to town, from one bloody aftermath to the next. There’s a strange dichotomy at work there; a commentary on the plight of the American worker as well.

Reavill does go on tangents in the book; interesting ones, but off the main story as well. He recounts some of his personal history and memories of Wisconsin, his first death where he knew the victim; stories of Ed Gein (naturally) and riffs on the book Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy, which made a lasting impression on Reavill. The book would have been shorter without these intrusions, but perhaps, not as personally involving. [Three stars]

Sources
http://www.aftermaththebook.com/2007/05/blog-post.html; http://us.penguingroup.com



Recommended: Yes