9. The Walking Man
John Hunt slightly slowed his impeccable black Mercedes to better watch the scruffy old man walking along the roadside with his crooked wooden walking stick. It was the same as every other morning: the same man, same crooked walking stick, and same stretch of highway full of other commuters. The old-timer appeared to be pulled along by the stick as he held it at arm’s length, as if the stick was taking the man for a walk rather than the other way around.
As on several previous mornings the man suddenly paused, and the knobby walking stick swept up and pointed straight at Hunt as he drove past, picking him out from among dozens of other commuters in their speeding vehicles. The old man directed an icy stare at Hunt as the Mercedes swept by him, eyes wide showing dark-pupils within white, flashing from behind curly grey tangled hair and beard which parted to reveal a mocking, knowing, tooth-gaped smile. That's what had first gotten Hunt’s attention three weeks earlier, that cold glaring stare and mocking smile, performed as if the man knew him and hated him.
“Shit!” swore Hunt. The man had done the same thing every morning for the last two weeks, and it was beginning to rattle him. Instead of mentally going over his upcoming work-day as was his usual habit, he again reviewed the walking man situation.
Was the man hiking for his health? Unlikely, Hunt reasoned. Instead of tell-tale sweat-clothes and Nikes, the man wore simple khaki cotton work clothes and work-boots plus an old beat-up brown coat and red baseball-cap. Everything he wore looked filthy, stained and torn. Whatever else he was, the man was obviously poor; a blue-collar nobody, possibly even homeless. Underachievers like that used all their energies just to survive; they didn't have the time or money or brains to keep healthy by doing things like going on walks. They got only what they deserved: to be used and used up by more important people like John Hunt. People with game.
Was the man walking to work? Possibly. The man looked to be in his sixties but was easily still vigorous and spry enough to be working. He was animated actually, as though he was driven by some sort of deadline. And probably strong. He was six-foot-one or two though he walked bent over, and a muscular looking couple of hundred pounds: probably at least forty pounds heavier than Hunt.
Where was he walking to work? There were a couple of auto-repair shops a few miles further down the road and nothing much else. This man probably walked to one of those each morning, Hunt guessed.
He smiled. The man was too damn poor to even buy a car, yet he actually repaired cars to earn his meager living. Hunt appreciated the irony of it. He had known many people such as this. The big dummy would push himself each day to fix the cars of his betters until he dropped dead, leaving destitute an equally stupid wife and even stupider kids. Such people died early but not quickly enough to make up for their mindless breeding habits. One morning Hunt would drive by and the walking man just wouldn't be there, he'd be a forgotten rotting corpse in a cheap casket somewhere, or a specimen used for cutting practice at some yuppie-populated medical school.
Meanwhile the man probably pointed at every luxury car that he saw, that had to be it. He had just enough brains and gumption to feel and display jealousy and bitterness towards his betters.
As an experiment, the next morning Hunt managed to position his car in a pack containing another Mercedes and a Lincoln. The man would surely point his stick at the first classy vehicle he saw, Hunt wagered. Third in the tight-knit caravan of glittering opulence, Hunt reasoned that on this morning he would be totally ignored.
But he wasn't. The walking man disregarded the Lincoln and then the black Mercedes that was identical to his, and then pointed at Hunt! The incident sent a chill down Hunt’s spine, distracting him the entire remainder of the day from his used car sales efforts and costing him and his company money.
The man knew him; that had to be it. He was probably one of the hundreds of suckers that he had screwed over, either through car sales or through one of his many previous shady careers or side-line businesses, one of so many victims that Hunt didn't recognize or remember him. Well, the hell with him! He was John W. Hunt, untouchable and safe living in his limited-access neighborhood, working at his place of business and commuting in his Mercedes, while this walking man character was a nobody. So what did it matter what he was up to? Let him point his sticks and make faces 24/7 for all the good it would ever do him. That's all he could do, this ineffectual nobody. He wasn't worth worrying about.
Hunt did worry though, as day after day the walking man persisted with his antics. Hunt tried to avoid the man by driving to work an hour or two earlier or later and it made no difference. Driving further from the roadside in the passing lane made no difference. Wet downpours were ignored by the walking man. One day Hunt bought a very different looking car, a white Lincoln, and feeling like a fool, he drove past the walking man while wearing a wig and fake beard and mustache. Even that made no difference whatsoever; the man was still there along the same infernal stretch of road, pointing his damn stick at Hunt and mocking him as he sped by. One week he tried driving a different car every day from his used car inventory, some of them junkers that he feared would fall apart during the commute, and it made no difference.
Spooked, Hunt hired a detective agency. Inside a week he was reading a thick report on Mark Jenkins. Surprisingly the walking man had been a big-time Wall-Street stock-broker until twenty years ago. Then after a fire in his home he inexplicably dropped out of sight. Weeks later, his name began appearing in area newspapers. He allegedly saved a ten-year old boy from drowning and found a five-year old girl that had been lost in the woods. He foiled a bank robbery and helped a woman give birth on a city bus. This do-gooder was a hero dozens of times over since he left Wall Street.
He was also a dead-beat and a recluse with no remaining immediate family or friends. His wife and kids left him shortly after his career failed. Jenkins currently lived off welfare checks in a run-down trailer park, ten miles from the commuter highway that he hiked to each weekday, apparently solely to point his stick at Hunt as he drove by. Hunt was amazed that Jenkins had an old trailer to live in, and that he owned a phone.
The detectives could find no previous connection between Hunt and Jenkins, despite two additional weeks of annoyingly intrusive and expensive investigation. In the end they recommended that Hunt simply ignore the man. He was a harmless fruitcake, they told him.
Ignoring him wasn't good enough for Hunt. Jenkins had annoyed him for too long. He phoned the man. "This is Hunt, Jenkins. I don't know what you're up to but I want you to stop it now. Do I make myself clear?"
Jenkins laughed maniacally and hung up. The next morning the walking man was at his post along the highway again. Hunt pulled over and parked. Jenkins looked even scruffier and crazier close up. His clothes were torn and dirty, his long hair and beard filthy, his eyes wild and tortured. But he was no longer an unknown terror to Hunt, now he was just a man, a real man with a name and past that Hunt knew and could use. Less than a man, actually; Jenkins was a has-been. The stick that Jenkins pointed at him was crooked, old and ordinary looking, like Jenkins. Hunt wondered why he had ever worried about this fool. "What do you want from me, Jenkins? And why?”
Jenkins smiled grimly, his few teeth discolored and rotting. "I want redemption from God, though this is clearly not yet the day. You sir, will aid in my redemption when the time comes. Ask not what you have done to me, a stranger; ask what you have done to yourself to earn a blazing touch of Hell."
"Exactly what do you want from me?" Hunt repeated, still looking for a more sensible answer.
The big man shook his head. "It would do you no good now to know more. Knowing makes no difference. You could move to the Brazil jungles or the Himalayan mountains and it wouldn’t matter. Nothing makes a difference. You'll see." Nodding, he smiled his crazy mocking smile and laughed. "I can feel it, Hunt. You are the one, you are an evil sinner, you are my final redeemer, praise be to God! I will save you, but you will save me!"
Having sati
sfied his curiosity, Hunt returned to his car and drove away, convinced now that the man was completely loony tunes. The detectives were right. As long as that crazy man merely pointed a stick at him, what harm was he doing? Hunt had been thinking of having Jenkins roughed up or something through his mob connections but that wouldn't be worth it. Physical violence wasn't his style anyway; there were always easier and safer ways to break people. In this case nothing was needed; Jenkins was already broken. Broken and inconsequential.
Out of curiosity Hunt waved at Jenkins on some mornings, looking for some reaction, but the gesture seemed to make no difference to the hiker, who always simply pointed the stick at him and smiled as though he knew some secret.
Traffic was heavy one morning, and Hunt didn't even look for the crazy walking man who had after three long months had become just another meaningless roadside feature. The truck changed lanes too abruptly for him to react. In slow motion to his racing mind, the Lincoln clipped the massive rear-end of the truck and then spun off the highway to plow into a steel guard-rail. In seconds Hunt was painfully pinned behind his steering wheel, as fire spread around him. His legs felt crushed. Someone tried to open his car doors, but they were hopelessly mutilated and jammed. He would surely die now, Hunt knew.
Suddenly the already cracked windshield was being smashed away by powerful blows. It was a fiery eyed, revelation spouting, grinning Jenkins that smashed clear the windshield and pried back the steering wheel with his walking stick. Hunt helplessly looked into the man's maniacal, gleeful eyes and felt his strong hands pulling him from the wreck. The last thing that he remembered before he passed out was the old man's joyous laughter.
The next days and nights were painful, fuzzy, and delirious. A nurse showed Hunt a newspaper story about his accident when he had regained his senses. Jenkins was a hero yet again. News reporters interviewed Hunt. What did he think of his wonderful rescuer Mr. Jenkins? Amazing coincidence him being there, wasn't it? Hunt mumbled the expected responses.
The nightmare started the night before he left the hospital. It was a double feature. In it Hunt witnessed a young woman being brutally attacked in a parking garage, and then an infant was trapped in a burning building. In the dream he witnessed the events not as a detached on-looker, somehow he first became the woman and then the child, and their terror and pain were his own. He woke screaming the tortured cries of the child and the woman.
He was relieved to find himself sweating but still alive and whole. But he was astonished to find that the old walking stick was lying across his chest and clutched tightly in his shaking hands. The stick and Jenkins had saved his life, but just as assuredly he knew that they were somehow now the source of his torment, for the nightmare had been impossibly odd and real. He rose from his hospital bed, unsteady on legs still in partial casts, and angrily stumbled out of the room, intending to unceremoniously fling the stick down the hallway. But he noticed then how good the knurled old hard wood felt: comfortingly solid, smooth, and warmer than human flesh. His still mending legs ached, but as he held the stick by its thick, twisted, thick end and let the tip reach the floor, he pressed down with it, relieving some of the pressure on his mending right leg.
He resolved to keep the thing just long enough to give it back to Jenkins personally. He got dressed and checked out of the hospital quickly, still clutching the stick. It still felt strangely good to hold it, but now as he walked with it, the stick seemed to pull him this way or that. When he left the hospital it decisively lurched off to the left when he turned right, as if it were alive and wanted him to follow its will. He forced it to go right, but it vibrated menacingly in his hand, as though providing a warning.
The damn thing was cursed somehow. It took all his willpower to enter the taxi and direct the driver to Jenkins’ trailer. There he’d rid himself of the stick and Jenkins.
In the taxi the stick seemed to lose its power and will to influence where Hunt went, but it lost as well its strange ability to comfort him. Hunt immediately felt claustrophobic, and he opened the cab windows to no avail. Somehow although he was wide awake and in the daylight, the terror of his dark nightmare was returning to him. He could hear screams as ghostly shadows reached for him, dark shadowy fists and feet and as well as bright red fire. He could feel brutal blows and a tearing at his clothes, feel the searing heat of the fire as he choked on its smoke. He panted, coughed, moaned, and ranted as he clutched and waved the stick. By the time the cab reached Jenkins' trailer the screams of the victims of the nightmare were again his own.
After he crawled out of the cab it shot away without even waiting for payment, though Hunt hardly noticed. It was good to out of the cab and walking with the stick again; the nightmares vanished almost instantly. The walking stick apparently wanted him to walk, not ride about in cabs.
The old trailer park was nearly deserted, the vacated parking spaces strewn with empty cans, discarded chairs and mattresses and other assorted trash, as though the former occupants had first lightened their loads before making a hasty retreat. There was one remaining trailer; the Jenkins trailer. Barely the size of even a decent living room, it was as decrepit an abode as Hunt had ever seen. Rust was its primary color; remaining original paint chips had faded beyond possibility of identification. Old boards of different sorts were nailed over broken windows. Yet the trailer was actually colorful, due to hate-filled graffiti, mostly spray-painted in blood red, that covered most of it; all apparently threats from neighbors to maim or kill Jenkins in one way or another. A yard-high, crude wooden cross was nailed to the door.
The stick wanted to walk in another direction, but Hunt forced it and himself towards the trailer, even though as he did so the stick vibrated and he began to faintly sense distant screaming and the smell of burning human flesh.
When no-one answered his knocking and shouting Hunt entered through the unlocked door, almost gagging on the stench inside the cramped quarters. A couple of bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling lit the inside. They revealed that the trailer had even more graffiti inside than outside. Neatly hand painted on the metal walls, ceiling, and floor were strange ancient runes of many kinds, including what could have been Egyptian or Mayan or who knows what. On little make-shift shelves and hung with course twine tied to nails driven carelessly into metal and wood-paneled walls were icons from dozens of faiths from Christianity through Zen-Buddhism. To the far end of the trailer hundreds of books and papers were strewn haphazardly on a small table and the surrounding floor. Many of the books looked ancient, with leather binding and crumbling yellow pages that were marked with bookmarks, Post-Its and scribbles, as though some titanic term paper were being assembled from arcane knowledge.
Jenkins himself, decked out in disgusting old jeans and what perhaps used to be a white T-shirt, slept soundly on a tiny fold-out cot in the midst of the mess, snoring away merrily. The hair on his head was much the same, foot long and tangled, though much cleaner looking, otherwise Hunt mightn’t have even recognized him, for the grubby beard and mustache had been completely shaven off. Jenkins looked ten years younger. A big empty wine bottle lay next to him. Waking the man proved almost impossible, but at last the dark eyes sparkled open wide and he smiled warmly. The tortured, wild look was gone. "Thank God, it's over at last!" he announced. "I haven't slept that good in over twenty years." He sat up, yawning and stretching contentedly as he watched Hunt with amusement.
"I didn't sleep well at all last night," responded Hunt testily. "I don't know what kind of witchcraft you're working here, but you've made a big mistake in targeting me, Jenkins."
"I didn't target you, you're responsible for that. I don't know what you've done to deserve it and I don't want to know. I don't know anything about you at all other than the fact that I saved your life and that you're an arrogant bastard. As bad a man as I used to be myself, maybe."
Hunt swung the walking stick up and placed it none-too gently across Jenkins' lap. "This is yours. If you give it to me again you'll be sorry
. I'm a powerful man, Jenkins, you don't want to mess with me."
Jenkins laughed, shaking his head. "I didn't give it to you. My penance is complete, for which I thank God profusely. But yours is just starting, Hunt. You were saved but you weren't deserving of it, so now you have a price to pay. The stick means nothing to me anymore. Try to leave the stick with me if you want, it won't make any difference at all." He stood up straight, towering over Hunt, and placed the stick on the floor gently with its knobby head propped up against a wall. "I couldn't keep it now if I wanted to. But you won't want me to, you'll find. In fact, I doubt you'll even want to leave this trailer without it."
Facing the big man, Hunt was suddenly aware of how empty his hands were now without the stick. Jenkins seemed to fill the small room with his barrel-like chest and his thick, muscular arms. Why hadn't he thought to bring the pistol from his office? No matter, his business here was ended; he had returned the stick and said what had to be said. He wouldn’t pay any attention to whatever nonsense Jenkins spouted. He backed away towards the still-open trailer door, but as he did so his fear inexplicably increased.
The air, already summer-heavy and Jenkins-putrid, seemed charged with some indefinable negative energy. To one side, from at the edge of his field if vision, a wall of smoke and flame materialized and moved towards him. He could feel a wave of searing heat hit him, as though next to him a huge blast-furnace door had opened. A massive bodiless fist came at him from the other side, as though to knock him in the jaw. The blow never seemed to physically land, but pain shot through him as though it had, and he staggered against the opposite wall. The wall was hot as a steam iron, and burned through his shirt to singe his arm and shoulder. He sank to the floor, screaming.
Dimly as from a great distance he heard a voice, Jenkins' voice, pleading. "Take the stick man, or you'll suffer the fate of the victim. The stick is your only hope."
The stick stood propped against a wall where Jenkins had placed it, only a few feet away from him. Choking from the smoke, Hunt could only crawl to it agonizingly slowly, as fire burned away his clothes, and bone-cracking blows rained down on him from all directions.
When his hand grasped the stick at last, the pain drained out of him immediately. He stayed there on his hands and knees resting for long moments, astonished to find that he and his clothing seemed to be undamaged.
He felt the rage build in him. This was all some sort of cruel witchery; Jenkins had hoodwinked him again somehow. He spring to his feet with the stick and swung it at Jenkins' head with all his might. "Die, witch!" he shouted.
Jenkins fell senseless to the floor with a moan, while Hunt stood over him and lifted the walking stick to strike him yet again. He’d kill the bastard and end this! But the stick suddenly twisted in his hands and struck his own head. His mind went blank.
He woke up screaming in pain and terror from the nightmare blows and burns, but with the re-assuring feel of the stick in his hands.
Jenkins stood over him, seemingly none the worse after the blow he suffered from Hunt. "Hunt, you're lucky you didn't kill me, you stupid bastard! You'd have upped the price you'll have to pay for sure. Now get out of here."
Hunt got up and stumbled out of the trailer, using the stick. It seemed to move just before he took each step, pulling him along. As Hunt let it walk him past a blackened barrel obviously used to burn rubbish, he yanked it up and broke it in half over his knee, then dropped it in the barrel and tossed a burning cigarette lighter after it. Fed by old boxes and other trash, flames quickly ignited in the barrel.
Grinning, Hunt bounded two steps away, and then sank to his knees in pain and terror. He was again being attacked and burned by invisible demons. But he resisted the impulse to retrieve the burning stick. As the fire flared up, burning everything within the barrel, seconds were like hours, each filled with crippling agony and horror. But when Hunt finally passed out from the pain he was smiling. He had destroyed the stick. He was free!
He woke up screaming as fists pounded him and fire burned his flesh. The nightmare had returned, worse than ever. The walking stick, whole and not even singed, was in his hands. Though his body convulsed with pain he stood up and let the stick lead him for a step or two. All pain vanished.
A few feet away Jenkins sat in an old lawn-chair watching him and laughing.
“You unholy bastard!” swore Hunt. “I’ll get you for this.” He lifted the stick and took a step towards Jenkins as though to strike him again, but the stick vibrated wildly and an invisible fist and a sudden wave of heat knocked him off his feet. He scrambled up in hasty terror and turned away from Jenkins, letting himself be led away by the stick while he caught his breath.
Amused, Jenkins shook his head. “What hit you just now? A car? A bullet? The actual event is close at hand Hunt, if it’s so real for you. But it will be even more real yet to you, if you don’t stop it.”
“Stop it?”
“How’d you get so rich without brains, Hunt? The stick is your guide. Let the stick lead you to where you can stop whatever it is you’re supposed to stop. Save whomever you’re supposed to save. You’re going to be a hero.”
“And if I don’t?” asked Hunt, though even as he asked the question he was pulled again by the stick, and his feet took more steps away from Jenkins.
“You’ll die with the victim, of course. Haven’t you been listening? Have you got shit for brains, man? This is twenty years of experience talking, and that’s more help than I had from my own predecessor. You should pay closer attention.”
“I don’t believe you. I’ve felt a beating and fire but I’m not really injured. This is all some kind of chicanery.”
The big man nodded. “So you have learned a little. If you don’t save them you’ll die with them all right, but only in a manner of speaking. Stick in your hands or not, you’ll feel their death as yours. You’ll struggle hopelessly for your last breath and the last beat of your own heart. After the pain, the life and warmth and light will fade from your body and brain in a sleep of death. But then you’ll wake screaming from your next nightmare. You’ll wake screaming in pain and terror every single time you try to sleep. Worse yet, if you don’t save the life you are supposed to, you’ll add to the debt of sin you owe, and the stick will require several more years of service from you.”
Hunt let the stick slowly lead him towards the street and away from the old trailer park, but he still turned his head back towards Jenkins. The old man sat relaxed and smiling in his lawn-chair and made no move to follow. “But how do I stop it?” Hunt pleaded.
“You don’t; you learn to live with it," Jenkins shouted in reply. "That’s my best advice. It’ll let you go on your merry way when you’ve changed your heart and paid enough. Hey, just look how wonderful things have turned out for me!” He stood up slowly and folded the wood-framed lawn-chair, then walked with it to the fire and held it in the flames. It caught fire quickly.
“Help me!” Hunt yelled repeatedly, as the walking stick led him steadily away. His steps had taken on an animated, urgent cadence, similar to that of Jenkins in weeks past. He still twisted his head around to watch as Jenkins reached the trailer and threw the burning chair through the still open door. In seconds, flames and smoke engulfed the old trailer.
Hunt was by then so far from him that Jenkins couldn’t make out what words the new walking man was shouting anymore. Instead, he heard his own calmly beating heart and the soft rustle of leaves in the wind. He walked away slowly in the direction opposite Hunt’s, smiling and standing tall, and breathing deeply of air more fresh and clean than he remembered it ever being, and reveling in the warmth of the sunshine on his face. He took his time. For the first time in two decades he had no particular place to go.
****
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