Killing In The Country

Joe Kovac: A young man was dead in the leaves beneath a pecan tree.

For four days, his body lay face up on some irises near a patch of wild daffodils just off the porch of a mud-colored, Depression-era house.

More of a shack now, the house is being plowed under by nature, shrouded in privet, all but invisible to passers-by.

The crumbling dwelling's last resident, a woman in her 80s, had lived there on Zebulon Road for ages with no running water. She moved away more than a decade ago. In the remains of the front yard, there's a smashed Sylvania television set, a 1978 model, near the spot where the young man from Macon bled out.