A twig snapped.
Paul looked up to see a gray dog standing on the opposite bank. A stray. It was gaunt with hunger and small enough to be confused for a possum. Its dark eyes bulged from its shrunken body. The dog watched Paul not with aggression, but with what Paul took as fascination. It lifted its nose and sniffed the air. It licked its chops with a pink tongue before letting its mouth hang open to display a dog’s smile.
He can smell the jerky.
Paul smirked. It was an amazing thing, considering Paul himself couldn’t smell the jerky and it’d just been in his own hands.
The dog took a tentative step toward the brown water. Its paw sank inches into the muck. It pulled back and tried again with its other foot, achieving the same result. Now it was wearing black socks. The dog looked curiously between its feet and the muck, seeming not to understand how the mushy ground had attached itself to him.
Paul laughed. The dog looked up and smiled again.
Paul twisted the handle of his fishing pole into the soft ground and produced his remaining jerky. “C’mere little fella,” he said, motioning the salted meat toward the dog.
The dog ignored the muck and started into the water, but then it froze, looking past Paul.
“Looky here,” a voice said from behind. “If it ain’t Faggot Constantine.”
Paul looked back to find his schoolmate, George Fickas. Adults would politely say he was big for his age. Paul would say ogre. George Fickas had a square head on top of no neck. His cantaloupe shoulders sloped down and away like they were just as scared of his face as everyone else. Following behind Fickas was his group of low-grade thugs, each one meaner and dumber than the next.
“Doing a little fishing, ladybird?” Fickas said.
Paul stood up and hid the jerky behind his back. If Fickas saw the meat he would bend Paul’s arms backwards before having it for himself.
“Yeah,” Paul said, “but I ain’t got no bait. Just hoping for a miracle, really.”
The dog mewled behind them. Paul closed his eyes; the damn thing would give him away. He could kill it for that.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Fickas said. He pointed at the dog. “If that ain’t the mangiest thing I ever saw.”
Paul slid the jerky into his back pocket and turned to the dog. It was now swimming across the river. The current wasn’t strong. The dog’s path was almost straight across as it hustled its little legs beneath the water.
A hand yanked the jerky from Paul’s back pocket. He turned to see Fickas holding it up in front of his face.
“You lied to me, faggot,” Fickas said. His Cro-Magnon eyebrows collided. “Not smart.” He closed his fist around the jerky and socked Paul’s guts. A cannon shot. Paul fell to the ground, his breath knocked away.
The dog arrived at the bank. It emerged from the river and shook off, spraying Paul with water. It trotted up and licked Paul’s contorted face.
“Here boy,” Fickas said. He was motioning the jerky toward the dog and backing away. His thugs all backed up with him. He made little whistling noises and the dog’s ears perked up. It left Paul’s side and followed Fickas with its tail whipping wildly.
“C’mere you little bastard,” Fickas said. A sneer came to his lips.
The dog marched forward with its tongue flapping out. When it got within a foot of Fickas, the boy pulled the meat away and kicked the dog’s ribs.
The dog yelped and rolled. It staggered to its feet with its tail now tucked between its legs. It looked between Paul and Fickas, confused.
George Fickas laughed with his hand flapped over his stomach. His thugs laughed, too, but Paul could see that most of them were faking it, too scared to defy their master’s will.
Fickas held out the meat again. “Here you go, boy.”
“Leave him alone,” Paul tried to say, but his breath was still gone. All he managed was a hiss. He struggled to his knees.
The dog took a small step toward Fickas, lowered its head, and sniffed the ground. It raised its head again. It took another step, sniffing at the extended meat. It cocked its head one way, then the other. It looked back at Paul, who shook his head no, but of course the dog couldn’t understand.
Paul closed his eyes when the dog opened its mouth to take the meat. He heard the dreadful crack of the dog’s rib bones breaking, followed by Fickas’ laughter.
The dog rolled and yelped again. It staggered to its feet but remained in a crouched position, whimpering and shivering.
George Fickas popped the jerky into his own mouth and laughed through slobbery chomps. He raised his fists above his head like a victorious boxer. The thugs clapped each other’s backs and said false things.
Fickas crouched in front of the dog, level with its eyes. He breathed a gust of jerky into its face and giggled. The dog took a step back, still trembling, still whimpering. Fickas shot out a big hand and grabbed the dog by the scruff, lifting it off its feet.
“Everyone takes a turn,” Fickas said, sweeping an arm toward his thugs.
The cowards exchanged horrified glances.
Paul came to his feet. He pushed through the crowd and tried to pull the dog from the bigger boy’s grip.
Fickas socked Paul’s mouth, sending him sprawling.
Paul’s lips thumped. Thick and bloody. Loose teeth. He struggled back to his feet. “Please.”
Fickas looked down at Paul. The dog hung limply from his clenched fist. “I’m not hurting him,” he said, “you are.” He nodded and the thugs were on Paul, corralling him in place. Fickas brandished a pot-roast-sized fist to show Paul what disobedience would bring. He dropped the dog from shoulder height. “Pick it up.”
Paul looked down to see that the dog’s eyes were glazed over from shock or pain. The gray fur around its mouth was clotted red. He picked it up and cradled it into his arms like a child.
Fickas clamped one big hand around Paul’s throat and walked him backwards into the river. Paul squirmed, but the bigger boy’s grip only tightened. Purple flashes across his eyes.
“Now,” Fickas said, “you drown that dog or I drown you.” He moved his hand to the back of Paul’s neck and squeezed. The hand felt as big as Paul’s father’s. Bigger. Fickas pushed Paul’s head down within a foot of the water. One thug cheered from the riverbank, but the rest had gone silent. The dog whimpered. It didn’t seem to understand why these giant things were out to hurt it. It licked Paul’s chin and reached a paw toward the boy’s face as if to try and know.
Fickas punched Paul in the kidney, a stinging thump that nearly made him puke. “Do it.”
“I can’t,” Paul screamed. “I ca-”
Another punch cut him off. Pain shot up his side and found his eye socket. Fickas pushed Paul’s head underwater and held it there. The world went mute. The dog squirmed and scratched. The way Paul was holding it, they were now both drowning. He pushed the dog out to the side, hoping it could swim off faster than Fickas could catch it.
The pressure came off Paul’s neck. He pulled his head from the water, gasping. He whirled around, searching. The dog was treading water. It couldn’t rightly see which way to go. The thugs watched in silence as Fickas recovered it. He shoved it back into Paul’s arms and again clamped Paul’s neck. He brought his lips close to Paul’s ear.
“The dog dies no matter what. Don’t be stupid and die, too.”
Paul moved the dog from his cradling arms into his hands. He looked into the confused, dark eyes to see the agony and confusion he would spend his days wishing he could unsee. He closed his own eyes and pushed the dog underwater, holding it there until its little paws finally stopped twitching.
4
The dead house stench was thick as butter. They had bagged Roy in dry-rotted burlap—the same body bag he’d worn like a cape in the yard. Through tiny holes in the bag he could see dots of flesh and hair, plus one dead eye staring down at him, not seeing. Roy imagined the man kneeling before some gates, more likely Hell’s black than Heaven’s pearly, his hands c
lamped together before him, begging. Roy longed to pinch the eyelid closed. He was lying face up with bodies beneath him and bodies atop, crushing down. He’d been tossed atop a stack of corpses in the night, but since the morning two more bodies had been added.
Blood dripped from a dead man’s wound. Likely his penalty for a crime less severe than the one for which he was originally imprisoned. It seeped through Roy’s burlap and was now dripping down on to his collarbone, adding a copper scent to the fetid air. Flies buzzed and swarmed the room like feasting Pagans. They touched down and launched, touched down and launched.
Overnight, Roy hadn’t allowed himself to sleep in case his body shifted or he snored, but he’d been able to relax his mind in preparation for what might happen outside the wall. It couldn’t have been later than eight a.m., but the day’s heat had already swooped down and perched on South Carolina like the Phoenix returned to roost. Roy’s muscles ached with the desire to flex and stretch out. The back of his head, his cheek, and mouth throbbed. The holes from his busted teeth dripped pus and blood. He held mouthfuls of the mixture until he absolutely must swallow. He closed his eyes and fought for some kind of rest. The tick-tick of dripping blood continued, each drip coming slower than the last.
He searched his mind for Jesse and found her. Just a girl, she stood shyly, head down, hands clasped before her waist, one ankle rolling nervously on her first day with the sideshow. She was eager then, not yet hewn and hardened by the entitled eyes of a thousand audiences. McLean announced he had picked her up at the Atlanta orphanage where they had just given a free performance. When he presented her to them he gave an impassioned speech about how she’d been abandoned by derelict parents and left to survive in an area torn by the Civil War battles of Peachtree Creek and Ezra Church.
Though McLean’s speech was stirring, everyone thought the girl’s presence was strange, for she wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t yet illustrated, wasn’t yet a performer. It seemed McLean had welcomed the normal girl without reservation. There were whispered accusations of the old man’s lust, of a slave girl, and worse.
Roy never fell into such gossip. In his estimation the girl was a freak in her own right—standing on the outside, just as they all were, only she stood on the opposite end of the scale. She had been treated differently, too, but because she was beautiful instead of ugly, desired instead of vilified. Women would naturally hate her. Men would either have her or hurt her. It was plain to see they already had.
That same night Jesse collected her first illustration. The tattoo artist thrust a leather bit into her mouth, telling her it was for the pain. She spat it out.
The dead house door creaked open. Roy heard shuffling footsteps and breathing. “Goddammit, Roy,” a voice said, “how’d you hold on for so long?”
Roy nearly gasped when he felt the man’s hand come down on the burlap over his shoulder. He put the voice together with the face he’d seen the night before. The mysterious man from the dead house window was Paul Constantine. His Cajun accent solidified it. On the road with the sideshow Roy rarely heard anyone speak with the same snipped words and Acadian lilt as he did. It was the voice of home.
“You were my best good friend,” Paul said. “As close as a brother. I’m sorry I never came to you, but I…” Paul paused and breathed deeply. Shaky. When he spoke again his voice took on a dreamy quality. “I was thinking about the first time I saw you, outside the school. You were shooting and rolling in the grass. Do you remember?”
Roy recalled Paul as the freckle-faced kid in that schoolhouse classroom. His had been just one face amongst many, but the only one that hadn’t pointed or laughed. It had been a muggy day in early September. The kind of day that made you wonder if the devil hadn’t netted a piece of Hell and dragged it up to Louisiana for you to cook yourself on. That morning Roy’s mother had walked him along the dusty road to the schoolhouse with a guarded posture. It was to be her son’s first day. As they passed strangers on the road she stiffened and her hand tightened around his own. Roy watched the people. They made pinched faces and averted their eyes.
The schoolhouse was a one-room building. It was green with white trim around the windows. The roof was sound and the outer walls were long, knotty planks. It seemed out of place in the gnarled bayou, like a pretty stone in a muddy palm. As Roy and his mother came to the edge of the grass, she stopped and knelt to her son’s level. “The world is full of fools, son. The idea is not to be one of them, understand?”
Roy didn’t fully understand, but he nodded just the same. In his eight-year-old mind, the world was full of gators and snakes and gunfighters and Indians, but fools? The word sounded funny to him. He looked again at the schoolhouse, this time expecting to see circus clowns flying in and out of doors and windows.
He waited outside as his mother went in to talk with the teacher, saying she’d be back to get him in a moment.
Play time.
Roy produced two thumb-finger pistols and began shooting at shrubs and trees turned Indians. They attacked him from all sides. Pow, pow, pow, their bodies fell, their war cries were silenced. He rolled and flipped, dodging bullets and arrows. He was Roy Crockett, son of wild west hero Davy Crockett, and every bit as strong and accurate with a gun.
He turned the corner and came to the side of the schoolhouse where there was a window. It was split into four panes by white shafts. Inside there were children seated, their faces distorted by the hand-blown glass. Their skin appeared smooth, the color of milk. Roy continued shooting and running, picking off the school kids as he strafed past the window. He barrel-rolled and came up, pistols blazing. One by one they went down, until he leveled his sights on a freckle-faced boy staring at him.
Roy lowered his pistols. He turned his back to the window. Apart from his mother and father, the boy was the first person that’d looked at him without blinking or making a face. He felt a new feeling, but he wasn’t sure where to put it.
“Look!”
There were the frenzied sounds of chairs scraping wood. The sounds hit Roy’s back and made him cringe. He turned to see all the children smashed against the window now, their faces no longer distorted, but clear and sharp. Their eyes widened and their jaws unhinged. There were clean faces and dirty ones, tall kids and short ones, boys wearing suspenders, and girls with pretty things tied into their hair. Some laughed, and some shook their heads and said words he couldn’t make out.
The feeling was fear, Roy decided. It welled up in him and made his heart kick his ribs. He backed away from the dozens of eyes, rounded the corner of the schoolhouse, and found some shade, a streak of shadow where he could hide. He leaned back against the wall and slid down to a curled position, his arms wrapped around his knees. His skin grew hot. His eyes threw water. He could hear a conversation inside the wall behind him. A man was speaking.
“This school is a place for people, not animals.”
There was a silent moment and then a slapping sound.
Roy’s mother burst from the schoolhouse with her spine broom-handle straight and her chin thrust out. She was trembling all over. She clasped Roy’s hand and dragged him across the grass toward the road. Her skin felt hotter than his own.
“You mad bitch!” came a voice from behind. “Don’t you bring that monster back here again, you hear?”
Roy looked back to see a man in clean clothes leaning out of the schoolhouse doorway. His collar was as white as the schoolhouse trim and high on his neck, pushing out reddish folds of skin. A blue tie was wrapped around his throat. It dropped down into a black jacket made to look like the man had square shoulders. He wore round spectacles that sat crookedly. There was a red handprint on his left cheek.
Was he a fool?
Roy looked again at the schoolhouse window. All the milky children were again seated and facing forward. All except the freckle-faced boy, who still watched him from close to the window, his eyes reading over Roy’s scales.
More footsteps sounded off in the dead house. Pau
l’s hand lifted from Roy’s shoulder. There were new mouths breathing. Paul said, “Let’s go, boys. They ain’t gonna hop on that cart by themselves.”
Roy felt one of the corpses above him slide away. He heard a thud as it slammed the floor. There was a dragging sound, a silent moment, and then another thud. He assumed the final sound was the body landing in the dead cart.
Roy was near the top of the pile now, but the cart would be loaded from top to bottom, meaning he would be beneath the majority of the pile on the way out. He steeled his aching spine, reminding himself he’d soon be free.
Another body slid off and was thrown into the cart.
Roy was next.
What if they could tell he wasn’t dead? Were the others stiff with rigor mortis where he was not? Did he smell differently?
Two hands gripped his ankles over the burlap. Strong as C-clamps. He was pulled to the ground. Two more hands came under his armpits. He was carried for a moment and then tossed on top of the pile in the cart.
More thuds, more dragging. Then the other bodies came down on him, each one crashing down harder and heavier than the last. Eight in total, five above.
The weight was unbelievable. Worse was the lack of air. Had he been claustrophobic he might have screamed. He tried to push his mind away, back down into that deep well. No dice. The pressure was like hands squeezing his lungs, choking his throat, thumbs in his eyes.
The cart jerked into motion. The bodies above him jostled and settled into their traveling positions. Time stretch and slowed. No light and no sound. Roy couldn’t steal a good breath. His chest trembled. He begged it to stop. His lungs fought to expand. He cursed them. His fingers curled and gripped the burlap on their own accord. His hands and feet ached to claw their way to freedom. He willed them still, imagining himself to be Henry, the Ossified Man, whose very muscles, tendons, and joints had grown into solid bone when he was a teen. McLean had picked up Henry at a sanatorium in The Indian Nation. He’d been left there by derelict parents to live out his days trapped in his own body. His Indian caretakers had been glad to rid themselves of a man they couldn’t fix—either through medical or spiritual methods—but who wasn’t soon to die. He was only to lie there eating their food and shitting himself for a lifetime. Henry’s sideshow act had been simple. Behind closed curtains he was brought in and laid down on a table, sideways to the audience. The curtain would draw back, a minute of murmurs would pass, and then two stagehands would come out to pick Henry up—one at his head, the other at his feet—and carry him away like a board to the audience’s gasps.
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