No hundred yard touchdown dance, no ninth inning grand slam could come close to the communal energy generated by two beings challenging fate and their own desires as they attempted to kill each other. The spray of blood, the stench of escaping fluids, the screams of despair and victory, all coalesced beneath the great tin roof, turning the locals into something primal, something old—something that was necessary to keep hidden, lest civilization become jealous.
And all of it came from Elias.
The man, his father, his father's father, all with the same name, had been Pit Bosses. Dicky had heard from someone that the custom had come from Old Europe, Elias' family barely escaping and reinventing themselves in a new America. Dicky knew The Pit was an old thing. It had to be. The emotions generated by the entire mechanism were too elevated to have been missed and discarded by history.
The fish had long ago gone bad, the convection of the trunk melting the ice and heating the fish. But the fish were the least of his concerns. Hours had passed, Willy Pete was nowhere to be found and Dicky was becoming more aggravated as he saw the investigation unfold.
The two deputies who'd finally arrived seemed extremely disinterested. One fat and one thin, they seemed more like inbred Laurel and Hardy parodies than bona fide law enforcement officers.
"Does your friend like to drink?" asked the thin one. His lips were curled around a matchstick. He spoke very slowly as if he was afraid that if he talked any faster, it would light.
"No."
"Doesn't like to drink?"
"Well, yes, but we weren't drinking today."
"You weren't drinking today," repeated the fat one.
"If he likes to drink so much, how do you know he didn't bring himself a bottle, drink it down and slip into the river?"
"I didn't say he likes to drink so much, I—"
"Does he like to do drugs?" asked the fat one.
"No, he doesn't like to do drugs."
"Not even a little pot? Everyone likes a little pot now and then." He grinned at his thinner partner, revealing a mosaic of yellowed teeth.
"I don't know," said Dicky.
"So he might have been getting drunk and doing drugs back in the woods and you'd never know it."
The accusation sent Dicky's blood off the scale.
"Did y'all ask permission to fish the banks?" asked the thin one.
"You know you should have asked permission. I suppose you didn't see the No Trespassing signs, neither? Around here we allow a certain kind of mountain justice. Mainly cause of big city drug dealers coming up and growing their devil weed. Then there's pig rustlers."
"Pig rustlers?" asked Dicky, his jaw dropping.
"Yep. Pigs are the lifeblood of most of the farmers up here. You steal their pigs, might as well be stabbing them in the stomachs."
The questions went on for another ten minutes. Inane and insane, the deputies sought excuses rather than fact. It was obvious they didn't want to find his missing friend or didn't care.
The Low Man had no name, at least none that Dicky knew of. At first, the only evidence Dicky had that he wasn't alone was the midnight howls, screeches of not quite human rage rattling the wooden walls that separated him from the next stall. Later, as Dicky healed from his own modifications, wounds tightly wrapped in gauze, flitting in and out of consciousness, he saw him....it. The only evidence of humanity upon the ruined features of the other stalking pitfighter was the head. As The Low Man plodded past on the callused stubs of half arms and half legs, he transfixed Dicky with a dead gaze, blue eyes to blue eyes, humanity a vague memory.
The Low Man was what Dicky would become. The Low Man was a survivor, a player in Elias's game who had beaten the odds and reigned as champion. Dicky felt dull respect for The Low Man, his victories demonstrated by the scars and the ruin. But Dicky held himself back. He watched The Low Man whenever he had the chance, for he knew, as an animal knew, that for Dicky to win, he and The Low Man would eventually meet.
By Dicky's third fight, he was no longer the stumbling foal that Elias had delivered from an upright life. No longer was his body merely an engine to propel a mouth. It was as if his training wheels had been cast aside, leaving him unfettered and able to improvise. Instead of rushing in and snapping wildly until his teeth connected with flesh, he learned to use his weight, his new balance. He learned to lean into his opponent. To butt heads, whipping his own around on his long neck and ending with a snap as the top of his head caught the tender flesh of his opponent. He learned how to bury his head into steaming bowels and chew until the digestion he tasted became his own, the long tendrils of his opponent's guts whipping as he propelled himself into a feeding frenzy.
By his fifth fight, Dicky learned how to become an animal. They'd chosen a Rottweiler to be his antagonist. He'd been mauled by the larger creature, the fight lasting almost an hour as he learned to grip and bite and hold and wait for an opening with only his teeth as a lever. The animal had almost killed him.
His seventh fight had been his first human opponent.
Dicky quit fishing after Willy went missing. When he wasn't working at the garage, he'd mope around the house pretending he enjoyed WWF or building things that he never quite finished or the unending drudgery of lawn maintenance. It didn't matter what he did, really. Just so he'd make it to the odd weekend where he was able to get away and drive up to Jacob to resume his search for Willy.
He just wouldn't give him up. No matter what the deputies said, there was no way Willy had smoked, doped and drunk his way down stream. Even given the billion to one chance that had happened, they'd surely have found his body by now. It was as if Willy Pete had been abducted by aliens. Dicky had laughed at the prospect a hundred times before, but lately, he found himself glancing more and more towards the sky. How a healthy man could just come up missing was impossible.
Dicky knew there had to be a reason. He knew that aliens had no part in his friend's disappearance. So that left Jacob Mountain. His friend was still somewhere there amidst the tall pine, the clenching kudzu, the pig farmers and the shadows between the trees that hinted at answers to his questions.
Dicky remembered a neighbor he'd had growing up—an old fellow who'd been an infantry soldier in Vietnam. Pretty much at the bottom of the food chain, the man had somehow managed to make it out alive and whole.
Dicky remembered how the man had a flag pole in his front yard. Instead of hoisting the American flag, however, it was the black and white POW flag that snapped in the breeze from morning 'til night. Every day the man would drink himself stupid on the porch of his trailer staring up at that flag and speaking to it as if it were his long lost friend.
One rainy afternoon when Dicky had been locked out of his house, he'd taken sanctuary under the old man's eaves. Only four in the afternoon and the man was already gone. Tears streamed from his cheeks, the never-ending waterfall fueled by the gin and tonics the man sucked down one after the other.
"They never did find him. They said he got blowed up. He never got blowed up. He was captured is what happened. The government don't believe me, say he was blowed up. He was captured is what he was and now they won't let him go."
Dicky had been twelve and hadn't understood.
"I'll come find you someday," said the old man to the flag. "Someday, when they let us back into Vietnam, I'll come find you." Then his eyes sought the horizon and his lips found the liquor.
Dicky used to think the man was just another crazy old drunk. How a man could pine for another man just wasn't right. Men didn't have relationships. Men weren't allowed to love each other.
But that was before Willy Pete went missing—Willy Pete, a man that he loved as a man loves a man.
The captive seemed barely twenty. His long brown hair was a sticky matte of mud and leaves. His beard was a sparse straggly mess that sought a maturity it would never achieve. He was naked save for a pink bikini Elias had made him wear. Oddly, the young man kept adjusting the top as it sagged against his skinny chest. H
e seemed more concerned about his nakedness as he stumbled around The Pit in his attempts to get away from Dicky who chased him barking and laughing in his own pitfighter serenade.
The young man, however, failed to understand the reality of the moment. Instead of attacking, he kept screaming and begging for the crowd to stop applauding. His eyes were wild, probably like the first time he'd hit acid and traveled a less lethal chemical byway. When the young man wasn't rearranging the bikini to cover his chest, his hands were batting savagely at the air as he attempted to shoo away a creature that wouldn't shoo.
He'd been hitchhiking, said Elias during his announcement to the crowd. A stereotypical dropout who felt he knew it all and would show the world, the slender young man seemed willing to do anything, be anything, if only the terror would stop.
Maybe a year ago, Dicky Sims would've cared, maybe he would have even found a way to allow the boy to live, but now the kid was just a number—an important number, a lucky number. This young man was number seven and Dicky's first human being.
Dicky had been chased by a dog once. He'd been minding his own business, taking a shortcut through a neighbor's back yard when his legs, whisking through the weeds, had disturbed the rabbit dreams of the German Shepherd who'd been sleeping on the porch. His only warning was the growl of anger as the animal leapt from the top stair, launched itself into the air where it landed, took three steps and bit deeply into his leg just above his ankle. Even the sight of a dog afterward made his leg twitch, his heart skip, as he wondered if this one might just...snap.
Now, Dicky was the dog and amidst the cheers of the crowd, he bit down with his file-sharpened teeth into his opponent's ankle. Instead of struggling and kicking out, the young man fell to the sawdust of the pit where he curled himself into a ball and wailed. He must have thought it was a game. He must have thought it wasn't real. Whatever it was that he thought, his terror ended when Dicky Sims reached his neck.
"You know, too many people go through life not even knowing why they're here. Their entire existence revolves around finding things to do and places to do it. It's not often when a person gets to choose who they are. So often they become who others make them be."
The rank smell of too many people thickened his breaths in the tin-roofed barn. Titters escaped several in the crowd as they watched a clown play Pin the Tail on the Donkey— only in this game it was the captive who was blindfolded. The clown, probably a farmer in white face, big red shoes, nose and a top hat, danced in and out of the area where the captive's ankle chain would allow him to move. Already four tails were stuck to the captive's behind, each injection of the long needle eliciting a screech which elicited even more titters from the crowd who awaited the main event.
"What about him?" asked Dicky pointing to the captive. He'd had his first break in the investigation of the disappearance of his friend. He'd allowed himself to be talked into the barn, the place Elias called The Pit. He'd been told he'd find out what happened to Willy Pete. He'd been told his life would change.
"He's the same way. He drifted through life, going from town to town. Drifting, drifting..."
The audience cheered as the clown leapt in, removed all of the tails from the captive's behind, and left The Pit, somersaulting through the wide, low exit door.
Dicky saw the lady who'd been behind the cash register at the market. He saw the teenager with the wandering eye who'd filled up their tank at the old gas station. Some others he recognized from the streets and porches he'd passed in his search for Willy. The people here seemed to be as normal as apple pie, except they were here in this distinctly abnormal place.
"He was the kind who'd never find himself. The kind to make it to the big city and become a Bench Sleeper or a Squeegee Man. He had no drive. Without the necessary outside influence, he'd never be able to become anything else than what he was."
"And so you're gonna change him." Dicky couldn't help but get angry. Is this what happened to Willy? Had Elias judged his friend like this hitchhiker had been judged?
"Sure. Why not? Someone has to. He certainly won't do it himself. It might as well be us."
"What gives you the power?" asked Dicky.
"It's not about the power. It's about being here to guide him."
"Hello? Who's there?" came the voice of the hitchhiker. Members of the crowd stood and placed fingers to their lips bisecting grins of barely suppressed excitement. A collective hush gathered within the Tin Barn. "I can hear you out there. Can you help me?"
"You see," continued Elias in a rough whisper, "his life was really over a decade ago. Back when he probably told his Mother to get lost and his Father to fuck off. Back when he decided he knew everything and society had nothing to offer."
"I think you're crazy," said Dicky.
"We may be, but what if we aren't? What if we've figured it all out?"
"Please. Please. It hurts," cried the young man, staggering against the wooden wall of the pit. His head rebounded with a hollow thud.
"You're gonna learn hurt, boy," said a thin old man in a Skoal Cap who immediately drew glares from the crowd.
"But you know, we need people like him," said Elias. "We need people who bob up and down in the shallow end of the gene pool. You see if it wasn't for these rejects, we'd have no one to compare to when we say someone is good. Even in the end, we need people like him. He makes us who we are. He makes us good."
"I don't get it. All of this just to make you feel good?"
"That's not all of it, but it's a part. The rest of America and the world spend every waking hour trying to invent new ways to be happy. Ahh," said Elias pointing towards The Pit. "Look now. Here's our hero. You might call him an intermediary or you might call him a monster. It doesn't even matter. He'll conquer anything you place in front of him."
Dicky Sims jaw fell wide. Stunned was too simple a word to describe his inability to translate what he saw. Certainly, the figure that crept through the low door was a demon out of some lost Christian fable.
—a man whose legs and arms had been long ago removed at the mid-joints, making his movements chitinous as nubs balanced and pressed at the earth. He was naked except for a thin piece of cloth which bound his penis in a fold and tuck. Puckered scars stood out at odd angles upon the creature's oiled skin. His head was shaved. One ear was missing, the other half-chewed. Stitched lacerations stood out like zippers upon its cheeks and nose.
"You see, everyone has a use."
So horrid was the creature's face, Dicky turned away his eyes seeking anything to dislodge the image. Even as he tried, however, he failed and was forced to stare. Sharpened teeth were clearly visible through the space where lips had been. Whether the ghastly visage was the result of a battle or surgery or a defect of birth, Dicky Sims didn't know. What he did know was that whatever humanity the thing had once aspired to, its chance was forever lost, for a creature that could not smile, could not love and it was this singular ability to love that was at the core of humanity. Amidst his disgust, Dicky felt a small sorrow.
"Who is he? What is he?" he asked, watching as the thing began to pace one side of the pit, its nose raised sniffing the air.
"Does it matter?"
The clown crawled through the entrance and stood. The creature ignored him as the clown, smiling and waving at the now cheering crowd, removed the chain from the captive's legs and hands. He said something to the boy and leered. He unbound the hands and then, with a single military salute, tumbled back and out of the low door.
The crowd became silence as they waited.
"Did this thing kill Willy Pete? Is this what happened to my friend?"
The young man turned, cocking his head as if he heard The Low Man. He began to kick at the air, shouting, "Who is it? Leave me alone?"
"Take off your blindfold, stupid," shouted a young boy from the crowd. The men guffawed and the women laughed. The kid's mother mussed his hair.
As the young man reached back to undo the tie, the crowd fell silent again. H
is hands were shaking and the knot seemed almost too difficult a navigation for his fingers. Finally, he loosened the tie. As he pulled away the cloth, The Low Man growled. The young man spun towards the sound and shrieked. His arms windmilled as he stumbled backwards into a wooden wall of The Pit. His shrieking continued as he turned and clawed at the wood, fingernails breaking. The crowd surged with their laughter at the sport of it all.
"Jesus! Who are you people?" asked Dicky.
"Just normal, hardworking folk."
This was anything but normal. Dicky found himself transfixed as he watched The Low Man creep across the breadth of the pit towards his prey. Without pause, The Low Man bit into the young man's calf, shook his head violently, and came away with a chunk of meat.
The crowd roared.
"We call him The Low Man," said Elias directly into Dicky's ear so he could be heard.
"Is he the one who killed Willy?" Dicky shouted back.
"He was responsible, yes." Elias' eyes were on the actions taking place in The Pit.
"You brought Willy here?" Dicky was focused on the man's lips. He wanted to make sure he understood.
"I did."
"Did he come willingly?" He knew the answer before he asked it. His hands shook as he fought to control their intended murder.
"Not exactly."
"Jesus. You bastard. I can't believe you're admitting it."
Elias' gaze snapped from The Pit to Dicky. His smile wavered, but then fixed itself. "Why not?"
"Wait until the police get a hold of you."
Appalachian Galapagos Page 11
