In reply to:
Hey, it's detective fiction. One of the purposes of great detective fiction is to make you grin. That sentence is a very good example of the kinds of sentences that are supposed to make you grin. Instead of manipulating your emotions with grisly descriptions, the detective writer introduces the grisly, but with a comic twist. This sentence not only gives you the disembodied arm, which is detective writer humor through word choice, but also gives the pecan tree, which is detective writer humorous use of supplied detail. When I read the sentence cold, I immediately thought, "Oh, here's a detective story writer."
The pecan tree is a joke? Why? The setting is a town called Austin in Texas in the 1880s. I just assumed that it would be hard to put down an unattached arm you happened to have about you in a public park in that time and place without it being near a pecan tree (not that I have much idea of what a pecan tree looks like or how common they are -- I assume fairly common because pecan pies seem to be a common comestible).
No, my quarrel was with disembodied. My immediate association for a disembodied arm would be a seance or something of the sort with an arm floating about by itself or brushing unseen against the participants. If I was playing word association with disembodied I would probably reply voice.
Bingley
