The Lightning Rule

by Brett Ellen Block

  Greed had gotten the better of him during that particular game. Ambrose Webster was a colossus, an unfit match for Meers, the ultimate challenge. However, his size turned out to be the ultimate disadvantage.

  The sewer system was nearly a hundred years old, and while the newer lines could be considered cavernous at twenty-five feet high and half as wide, the original egg-shaped, brick-lined sewers by the zinc refinery measured under six feet tall and two across. Huge as he was, Webster was unable to maneuver through the older tunnels. Because they tapered at the bottom, he couldn’t maintain his footing. He would hit his head and stumble and cry. What a pity, Meers had thought when he caught up to him. The giant was blundering through the dark on his knees, pawing for the fallen flashlight. He was too frightened to run, even when he saw Meers coming.

  As a boy, Meers had watched his father put down a horse with a fractured ankle from a neighbor’s farm. His father nuzzled a revolver to the bony nub beneath the mare’s ear and pulled the trigger. The horse didn’t drop instantaneously. It wavered, then its knees folded and the mass of its body pitched to the ground. When Meers slit Ambrose Webster’s throat, he was reminded of the horse.

  Meers would only hunt with a knife. His gun was purely an instrument of motivation and a safety precaution. The Linder Crown Stag bowie he carried had been the star of his father’s collection. With its seven-inch blade, authentic antler handle, and solid brass guard and pommel, it was a handsome knife, efficient. For the scale of what Meers was hunting, the long blade was necessary to ensure a fatal blow versus a shallow cut. He always brought his father’s old Case XX folding pocketknife along too. The deep red bone handle and nickel silver inlaid shield made it a collector’s item. Meers cherished it more than the bowie. The pocketknife was tiny and artful and perfect, and it held fond memories. His father had let him use it to skin his first woodchuck.

  Neighbors had often hired his father to clear the varmints from their farms. With their sons off fighting the Great War, there was nobody to cull the woodchucks into check, and they would annihilate the crops, eating and burrowing to the point that the tractors collapsed through the thinned earth. The horse that Lazlo’s father shot had broken its ankle by stepping into the entrance to a den. Never one to turn down the opportunity to be paid to do what he loved, his father would go out to the farms weekly, balance a rifle on a fence post, and snipe the woodchucks from seventy yards when they stood on their hind legs to sniff the wind. The farmers let him keep the carcasses as part of his pay. When he got them home, he would pare the fur with the barbed, gut hook tip of a cocobolo knife and soak the meat in salt water for days. Afterward, it was still as tough as shoe leather and about as appetizing. Once his father began allowing Lazlo to skin his own woodchucks, the taste grew on him.

  Because his mother was dead, Lazlo’s father was his sole guardian. That precluded him from enlisting or being drafted into the service to fight in World War II, a depravation Eli Meers resented bitterly. Occasionally, Lazlo would look up from his schoolbooks in their old, two-room country home and his father would be staring at him as if he were a stain on the floor, a nuisance he had been stepping over all day and didn’t want to deal with.

  Barred from enlisting, Eli Meers took up a different cause. Wartime propaganda had labeled crows as “black bandits.” The birds were robbing the nation’s farms of vital grain needed for food production for the troops. A hunter’s patriotic duty was to destroy as many as possible, thus they were allotted priority in purchasing the limited supply of available .22 cartridges and shotgun shells. Eli Meers’s contribution to the war effort was killing three hundred crows single-handedly. Lazlo himself had shot at least a hundred. The numbers were a source of glory for his father, who normally wouldn’t have wasted the ammunition on something he couldn’t cook. Crows were not for eating. They fed on carrion, fouling their own flesh, so Lazlo and his father would leave the coal black carcasses in heaps under trees, a lure for other crows to consume.

  They hunted in the early morning hours, dressed in dark clothes, hats, and gloves with bandanas covering their faces, disguised as thoroughly as thieves. The sight of human skin in the murky dawn was the equivalent of light striking a mirror and could spook the birds from as much as a half mile away. Knowing that crows were wary creatures, they would find a ridge or mound of earth to act as a blind, then his father would mimic the crows’ two distinct caws. One was the fighting call of an angry crow coming upon an enemy, to which every bird in the area would hurry to its rescue. The second was a summons to birds that had strayed from the flock. Both would dust the crows from the trees or fields up into the sky where Lazlo and his father could blast them with their shotguns. The twelve-gauges put out a larger shot pattern, especially with a set of choke tubes, ensuring multiple kills. Lazlo loved to watch the crows drop from midair, pirouetting like falling bombs, then count how many they had killed. Paper decoys attached to trees or barbed wire fences with clothespins also brought them some success, but it was the birdcalls that were more reliable. To hear his father do them terrified and transfixed Lazlo. The sounds that emanated from his mouth were inhuman, haunting. Lazlo would often dream that an actual crow was poking its head from his father’s mouth, flapping to escape his lips. It was the only dream he ever had of him.

  Meers wondered what Calvin Timmons was dreaming about. He hoped the shock from the battery hadn’t hurt him too severely. He had tested the voltage repeatedly on his first pet, a black vagrant Meers had lured with a ten-dollar bill and kept in the cage for weeks, running tests. Despite being a drunk and living on the streets, the vagrant had a hefty build, making him a suitable subject. Dry runs with a regular car battery proved to be too mild, the sedation too brief. The truck battery had just enough kick to knock out Meers’s pet without impairing him, a crucial feature. He couldn’t allow his prey to be damaged or depleted or else he would have to nurse them extensively, and that would create a delay. The conflict was that the longer they stayed in the cage, the sooner they cracked. He had to pace things perfectly or they would get overripe. Frazzled nerves would render them careless.

  That was the fate that befell his first pet, the vagrant, who Meers had named John, for no other reason than it was common. Even sober, John was an unimpressive opponent, though he had his utilities. Meers performed various trials on him. He determined how much food was needed to sustain the man, how much to fortify him. He clocked how many minutes John could run in the tunnels before tiring and what, if any, injuries he sustained, such as cuts and twisted ankles. John would constantly try and talk to Meers, ask him his name, where he was from, why he was doing this, why him. When that didn’t work, John resorted to insults. He would call him a faggot or a sissy, desperate for any sort of response. Meers never answered. Not until the day he hunted John for real.

  “Thank you,” he said as he raised the trapdoor to the cage that opened into the sewer tunnel and let the man free one final time. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  John must have sensed that the rehearsals were over. That day, he ran fast. He ran for his life.

  Meers had spent months memorizing the tunnel system. He knew the layout by heart, where the tunnels widened and which got the heaviest runoff flows. He didn’t expect to keep up with his prey. His passion was tracking them and predicting their moves. If he lost the trail, he could return to a main tunnel to regain ground. Despite his maladies, Meers could travel swiftly through the constricted quarters. He wore a miner’s hat with a carbine lamp to free up his hands. The added benefit was that the light burned so brightly it blinded whoever looked directly at him. He didn’t see that as unsportsmanlike because he didn’t need the light. He could have hunted without it. If anything, he was helping his prey. They would know when he had caught up to them.

  When Meers finally caught up to him that night in the tunnels, John submitted to him willingly, panting, glad for it to end.

  “Do it,” he shouted. “Do it already.”

  So Meers did. He
walked right up to John and stuck the bowie knife through his stomach, aiming for a kidney, a wound that would cause him to expire rapidly. Meers felt the blade’s tip hit a vertebra, and John slid down the brick tunnel wall. He died within minutes, his blood draining into the sewer water. Meers stared at the body and waited to feel what he had the day he turned seven and his father took him squirrel hunting. He didn’t. He felt much more. He felt healthy, whole, increasingly alive with every breath that coursed through his wizened lungs.

  Meers cut off John’s head below the Adam’s apple and took it back to the zinc works. He dried the head in a cool, dark corner of the refinery the way his father dried opossum to prepare the meat. He wanted to preserve John as a game-head mount, like a buck or an elk. On the average mount, the only actual parts of the animal were the antlers and the skin. All of the organs and tissues were re-created with man-made materials. The eyelids were sculpted from clay, the soft tissues of the nose and mouth formed from wax, and the armature of the skull and neck were crafted from hard foam. Meers couldn’t remove John’s skull without damaging the skin, so he improvised.

  He doused the dried head in formaldehyde—submerging it in a container would ruin the effect—and mounted it on an iron stand that he welded himself. For the first few weeks, the face held its shape. The hair was lifelike, however the pallor grew gray. Soon the features began to slip. The ears shrank and crinkled as would dried leaves. The lips receded, teeth bared in a pained grin. Because the lower eyelids sagged and pulled away from the eyeballs, which had gone milky in the formaldehyde, John appeared to be staring with pupil-less eyes. The head was ghoulish, monstrous. Nevertheless, Meers could not bear to part with his memento.

  His oversight was that he had left John’s body in the tunnel. Due to the heat and the dampness, it promptly rotted, ratcheting up the stink in the sewers. By the time Meers thought to dispose of it elsewhere, it was too putrid to move. That was when he devised the harnesses. The notion of his hunting grounds being littered with human remains was repugnant to him, so he began dumping the bodies in areas close to where he had captured his pets to make the murders appear local. He also started keeping fingers as souvenirs instead of heads. Using his father’s cherished pocketknife, he sawed them from the hands of his prey. That was the true glory of the hunt: collecting his trophies.

  Taking the fingers was a safeguard too. Had the bodies been discovered decapitated, surely the police would have gone on the alert. Thus far, Meers hadn’t seen any of his pets’ names in the newspaper, not a single one.

  Calvin Timmons would likely fall into obscurity as well. Meers gave the sleeping teenager a final glance before leaving. He would allot Calvin the day to recuperate and regain his faculties. Tomorrow they would play.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The lines at the roadblocks were longer than they had been that morning. Cars were honking, and people were hanging out their windows to see what was causing the congestion. Emmett had taken that particular route intentionally in the hope that the same state trooper he spoke to earlier would still be there. Fortunately for Emmett, he was. Sunburned and worn out, the trooper waved the vehicles through the checkpoint one at a time.

  “Why we goin’ so slow?” Freddie asked from the floor, his shoulders crammed against the passenger seat.

  “Because of the barricades.”

  “Are there any tanks?”

  “No tanks. Sorry.”

  Some stores along the street had put up signs reading negro owned to dissuade looters. On the sidewalk, a black minister in a pinstriped suit was handing out leaflets. “Peace, brothers and sisters,” he preached. “Peace in the name of true Christian charity. Put down your guns and pray. The police don’t aim to hurt us. Stop your provocatin’ and pray.”

  Freddie spied over the dash. “Is he crazy?”

  Those on the sidewalks seemed to share Freddie’s sentiment. They steered wide of the reverend, as though he was begging for alms to feed the rich.

  “He certainly doesn’t have any takers.”

  “That guy still chasin’ us?”

  In his side mirror, Emmett had a clear view of the Oldsmobile coupe. One car stood between them. The driver was smoking, his Borsalino tipped over his brow.

  “Yup.”

  “So? You gotta another plan? ’Cause I can’t be squeezed in here all day, and I damn sure won’t fit in that cardboard box.”

  “I’ve got to gain us some ground.”

  “How?”

  “For starters, you’re going to have to put that box over your head.”

  “Nuh-uh. No way.”

  “State troopers are guarding this checkpoint. We can’t let them see you.”

  “Why not? Tell ’em to help my ass. Tell ’em to lock that guy up.”

  “What he’s doing isn’t illegal. They can’t help us, Freddie.”

  “Ain’t nothing illegal these days?” he huffed and hid under the box.

  The young trooper remembered Emmett. “Back again, Detective?”

  “I see you haven’t made it into the shade.”

  “I did. For a little while.” The other trooper had his Reising submachine gun on his shoulder and was sipping a paper cup of coffee under a store awning. “Not long enough.”

  “Can you do something for me?”

  “Sure thing, Detective.”

  “Don’t look, but there’s a guy in a blue Olds right behind me. You might recognize him. He came through this roadblock a couple of hours ago.”

  “Nasty fella. He cussed me for not letting him through quicker.”

  “Well, he’s a reporter. He’s been following me all day. I need to get this box to the Fourth and I’d prefer not to have him pestering me about what’s inside.”

  “What is inside?”

  “Hand guns. My private stash. Couldn’t hurt, right?”

  “No, sir,” the trooper concurred. “If you got ’em, use ’em. That’s what I say.”

  “Can you stall him? Give me a chance to get to the precinct without him on my tail?”

  “No problem, Detective. That’s the best part about having a badge, right? You can do whatever you want.”

  The statement nicked Emmett’s conscience. Like a paper cut, the reminder of frailty was more unpleasant than the pain. It was disconcerting how cavalierly the power they were entrusted with could be abused. That was how the riot had started.

  “Thanks,” Emmett told the trooper and drove on.

  “Can I take this off now?” Freddie said. “Well, can I?”

  “I’m thinking,” Emmett teased.

  “You a real barrel ’a laughs, you know that?” Freddie shoved the cardboard box off his head onto the seat. “We finally getting rid of that guy?”

  From his rearview mirror, Emmett watched the trooper flag his partner. The one with the Reising swaggered up to the passenger door of the Delta and rested the machine gun’s stock on the car’s hood menacingly.

  “Yeah, we’ll get a decent lead on him.”

  They zigzagged around the Central Ward to bypass the other barricades and parked on Boyd Street, close to the Hayes Home Housing Projects, where Emmett’s car could readily be spotted. It was the first place the guy in the coupe would look, so they had to move fast.

  “We have to hurry. Can you run?”

  Freddie stood and stretched. “I can always run.”

  They took off for the farthest building. Emmett led him through the fire door with the busted lock and into the stairwell. Both were winded. The humidity turned air into slush in the lungs.

  “What floor we goin’ to?”

  “Ninth.”

  Freddie gazed up at the looming staircase. “Can’t we take the elevator?”

  The risk of getting trapped in the elevator remained, but after the run, climbing nine flights was as unappealing to Emmett as it was to Freddie. “Depends on whether it’s working.”

  They went to the lobby. The elevator doors were open and the car reeked of liquor. Curse words were etched
on the walls. At knee height, a smiley face had been drawn in crayon.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Can’t be as bad as the stairs.” Freddie pinched his nose and stepped in.

  Emmett pushed the button for the ninth floor, then the doors rolled shut. The cables started to creak ominously, raising the elevator car.

  “Somebody doin’ this by hand?” Freddie asked in a nasal twang.

  The pulley tugged the elevator along at a steady, stuttering rate. “Feels like it.”

  At the fifth floor, the elevator stopped. The doors parted to reveal an elderly black woman with a cane waiting at the threshold. “Going down?”

  “Feels like it,” Freddie said, repeating Emmett.

  “We’re actually going up, ma’am.”

  “Damn,” she muttered, and the doors slid closed.

  “Damn is right. Stinks so bad in here it’s makin’ my eyes water.”

  The elevator reopened at the ninth floor. They hurried out. A baby was squalling somewhere down the hall, and glass from a broken wine bottle was scattered across the floor in front of an apartment as though someone had christened the door with it. Emmett and Freddie skirted the shards.

  “Nice place. Where we goin’?”

  “To see a friend.”

  “A cop?”

  “Definitely not a cop.”

  After the third knock, Otis Fossum unlocked his door. He was in his robe again, half asleep. He regarded Freddie with dreamy detachment. “Need another favor, Mr. Emmett?”

  “Believe me, it’ll be one you won’t regret.”

  Fossum let them in. “Worked a double shift last night Downtown. Had no idea what was happenin’ here. Saw all the burnt-up shops this morning. Was glad I missed it.”

  The riot touched everybody in Newark, even someone like Otis, whose world ran counterclockwise. Emmett made the introductions and pulled up some chairs. “Have a seat, Freddie. You too, Otis. This might take awhile to explain.”