Mr. Shivers

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  The boy’s father tells him to go into the house and fill a sack with rolls and jerky. The boy does so, and as he stands in the kitchen he watches the men working through the window. One man takes the pail with the animal’s organs and sets it down by the back door. The boy continues his work, but then he hears something. It is the wind, or so he thinks, yet he hears it again. He goes back to the window. There is nothing there except the pail and the late setting sun, stretching out the shadows.

  But then the boy sees him. It is the stranger, casually walking to the pail, yet he turns to see if he is being watched. Satisfied that he is not, he takes a small handkerchief from his pocket and walks to the pail, looking in. The boy withdraws, stooping to watch and not be seen. The man’s eyes dart through the bucket, and the boy sees they are alight with wild delight, even hunger. The man looks about once more. His chest is heaving and he is sweating slightly and as he reaches down into the bucket his hand shivers. He picks something up, something hard and gray and red, and the boy sees it is the pig’s heart. The stranger gazes at it, treasuring it, and swallows nervously. His head darts around, checking behind him, and then his mouth opens, opens more than any mouth should, revealing newspaper-gray teeth and a dull, sandy tongue, and he bites into the heart, ripping and tearing with his neck, and his head snaps back with his mouth full and his lips watery-red.

  The boy ducks down, panting. He calms himself and listens. The man is still outside. The boy hears rustling, then footsteps trailing away, but the boy is unable to move from fear. He wants to run to his father but he does not. He does not want that man nearby any longer than he needs to be. And he does not want his father to know what he has seen. The image of the man’s face still lingers in his mind, the way his face became distended and unearthly in his ecstasy.

  The boy steels himself. He walks out front. The stranger is there, speaking amiably with the men. His hands are not red, nor is his mouth, and he is not quivering anymore. He looks nothing like the man in the window. Instead he looks stronger, more alive and alert, like he has been rejuvenated by what he has done here. He glances at the boy approaching, his eyes still dead and distant, and reaches out to take the sack from him.

  “I thank you kindly,” he says. “It is good to work with one’s hands. Sometimes you forget what you excel at, or what you are here for.”

  “That may be so,” says the boy’s father. He does not notice the way the boy pales when he draws close to the stranger.

  The stranger waves to them, tosses the sack over his shoulder, and walks back toward the road, heading southwest. He kicks up a trail of dust as he walks, red clouds going waist high and swallowing him. The trail hangs in the air as he walks away and the boy watches it disappear.

  Connelly and the others listened as he finished his story.

  “He ate the heart?” asked Pike.

  “Yes sir,” said the boy softly. “Just as sure as I’m alive and breathing, he took that heart and bit out of it like it was a great big apple. And he stowed it away in his kerchief and took it with him. I checked. It wasn’t in the bucket.”

  They were silent as they thought about this.

  “Any of you ever hear of him doing that?” said Connelly.

  They shook their heads.

  “I heard of injuns doing that,” said Roosevelt. “With buffalo. They eat them ’cause they think it’s holy. They think they’re eating its spirit.”

  “Maybe the man is deluded,” said Pike. “Maybe he believes that stuff.”

  “If he’s a cannibal I never heard of it,” Hammond said.

  “No,” said Pike. “No, I expect we wouldn’t.”

  The boy looked at him. “He didn’t steal nothing from you all, did he?” he said quietly.

  “He did, in a way,” said Hammond.

  “You did right,” said Roosevelt to the boy. “You did exactly what I would have done. You had to get him out of there so he wouldn’t harm any of yours.”

  The boy whispered, “Will he… Will he come back?”

  “No,” said Roosevelt gently. “No. Once he’s gone, he’s gone. He doesn’t come back. He never has.”

  “I just never seen a man’s face look like that. He was so happy and so crazy. All over a heart.”

  “You say he went to the southwest from your farm?” said Connelly.

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s that at?”

  The boy told them.

  “And he’s going by foot?”

  “Yes. He may hitch a ride, I don’t know. Ain’t a real popular road, but you never know.”

  “What’s southwest of your farm?” said Pike.

  “Farmland, mostly. Odd town or two. Cutston is down that way, I think. Drought’s hit them pretty bad, though. Just like the rest of this place.”

  “I see.”

  “Can I get my nickel now, mister?”

  “Sure, sure,” said Roosevelt, and he flipped him the coin.

  “Thanks much,” the boy said.

  “Take care, now.”

  He stood and walked away across the fields and into the night.

  “He ate a heart,” said Hammond quietly.

  “I think he would have eaten the damn thing alive if he could’ve,” said Roosevelt. “Jesus. This guy’s crazier than a rat in a tin shithouse.”

  “Watch the language,” said Pike absently.

  “So he’s mad?” said Connelly.

  “It would seem so,” Pike said. “You heard the boy. He was overcome. He had to take a bite, like a naughty boy stealing goodies. He has no control over himself. Whatever drives him does so whether he wants it to or not.”

  “And he’s worked in a slaughterhouse before,” said Roosevelt.

  “The world is his fucking slaughterhouse,” snarled Connelly.

  The men stopped, unsettled by his fury. They watched his rage mount and then dissipate.

  Hammond said, “Why did he come to the slaughter in the first place?”

  “He’s attracted by things like that, I’d guess,” said Pike. “I expect he enjoys the experience. After all, they say porkflesh is the closest to a human being’s.”

  Hammond shivered. “Jesus.”

  They didn’t speak for a while, thinking to themselves.

  “Let’s make camp while we can and get some sleep,” said Pike. “We’ve got a long walk in the morning.”

  They withdrew into the fields, away from what was left of the carnival, and began to bed down without a fire. Roosevelt walked off into the brush and came back with a handful of sticks and reeds. Connelly watched as he sat down and began to weave something, setting the twigs together and then wrapping the reeds around the joints. He worked quickly, and soon Connelly saw that he was constructing a little man-shape, a small idol with spindly legs and a fat grass body and a small, blank thumb of wood for its head. He took a handful of earth in his palm and spat in it and smeared it about until it was a black paste. He rubbed some of the paste into the little idol’s head and then blew on it until it was firm and then he scraped out two eyes. He nodded and pressed the little figure into the earth next to where he lay so it stood upright.

  “What is that?” asked Connelly.

  “It’s my watcher,” said Rosie.

  “Your what?”

  “My watcher. It watches over me in the night. Then if anything bad’s going to happen it’ll happen to him instead of me.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll take my suffering for me. In my place.”

  Rosie rolled over and soon was asleep. Connelly stayed up, looking at the little idol. It seemed strange, but the idol appeared different now that the mud had dried. Its face had more detail and its limbs were not as spindly. It looked more solid. More alive.

  Connelly lay back and slept. In the morning when they awoke the idol was in ruins, limbs broken and its body frayed and the mud that made its face scratched and patched. Connelly thought about asking Roosevelt about it but did not.

  CHAPTER SIX

  T
hey made their way southwest along the road. Trucks and jalopies drove by but none offered rides and soon they stopped hailing them. Each time they passed Connelly saw the dirty faces of young children staring out at them before they disappeared in a cloud of dust and exhaust.

  The dust was getting worse, as was the drought. It was like they had landed on the moon. Everything was red and brown and the dust got finer. Simply walking kicked up dust that went up to their shoulders, and it stained everything the color of clay.

  One night they walked off the road and camped in a field next to an old tank. They ate chicken and beans they had traded for along the road and Roosevelt produced a harmonica and proved himself to be an enthralling player. They listened as they warmed themselves by the fire.

  “How’d you learn to do that?” said Connelly.

  “In the stir,” said Roosevelt. “They tossed me in for a nickel spot back in Chicago for assault. Just a barfight, some guy’s leg got broke. Got out in a year, things were too crowded and I was on good behavior. But then, everyone’s spent at least a little time in the clink.”

  “No,” said Connelly.

  “I haven’t,” Hammond said.

  “Or I,” said Pike.

  “Oh,” Roosevelt said, frowning. “Well, I guess, um, in certain circles in certain cities it’s just common.” And he went back to playing softly.

  “I had a neighbor who could play like that,” said Connelly. “Maybe he learnt it in jail. We’d hear him playing at night through an open window, and we’d sit and just listen. I like to think he knew we were there. Like he waited for us to get ready for dinner and chose that time to play.”

  “Do you miss it?” asked Pike.

  “Miss it?” said Connelly.

  “The stationary life. Home. Do you miss it?”

  “Yes. Yes. Of course I do, yes.”

  “I can’t remember mine, sometimes. It was so long ago. I was just a boy, fresh out of the army and hopping around to revivals. I remember girls with pigtails and eyes like honey. I remember the smell of bread baking. But everything else is lost to me. What else do you remember, Connelly?”

  He thought. “Laughter.”

  “Laughter?”

  “Just laughter. And my daughter’s eyes. They were green.”

  “What happened to your wife?”

  “Nothing. I still have her. She’s waiting on me. I’m going to go back to her, if she’ll take me back. Once this is done I’ll go back. And everything’ll be all right. Just like it was before.”

  Pike and Roosevelt glanced at each other. Then Hammond got up and strode away from the campfire. Connelly watched him go and looked at the others, surprised.

  “He gets that way,” explained Roosevelt. “He’s younger than he looks. I don’t think he’s yet twenty-five.”

  “He’ll come back,” said Pike. “He’ll be here in the morning. It must be a strange thing to be so young and know that you cannot have much of a normal life. In ways he has maybe lost more than the rest of us.”

  “No,” said Connelly. “He hasn’t.”

  Pike nodded. “I suppose not.”

  Eventually they lay down to sleep once more. And as Connelly’s eyes shut he saw the desert.

  White sands stretched to piercing blue horizons. Overhead the sun beat down, white-hot and unyielding, and as its rays fell upon the sand flats it made them glitter like snow. Harsh mountains lined the distance, muddy-brown and mutinous, and the wind barreled across the desert strong enough to knock a man over.

  Connelly blinked, astounded at where he was. Yet somehow he knew he was waiting for something. Something was coming.

  He saw it far away. Movement. Something small. He squinted at it but could not see it for the sun. It came closer, and soon he realized it was a man. A young man coming his way, directly toward him, and as he neared Connelly saw he was tall and pale and naked, and streaked with blood. He half strode, half staggered across the sands to Connelly, his arms dangling by his side, his crop of blond hair shining in the sunlight, his blue eyes agonizingly sad. The trail of his footprints wound away through the desert. They were red.

  He walked up to Connelly and looked into his face.

  “The world is changing,” he whispered.

  Then there was a clap of thunder like the sky was breaking. Connelly awoke and nearly screamed. He looked about. The fire had died down. Roosevelt and Pike were asleep, but Hammond was sitting cross-legged across from him, watching.

  “Bad dream?” he asked.

  Connelly nodded.

  “What happened?”

  He did not answer, just shook his head.

  “What happened?” asked Hammond again.

  “There was a desert. A young man, covered in blood. And he… he told me the world was changing, and I woke up.”

  “Well, it sure is, isn’t it.”

  Connelly looked down at Hammond’s hands. Roosevelt’s gun was in his lap.

  “What you doing with that?” he asked.

  “Holding it. Getting the feel of it.”

  “Why?”

  “We didn’t come all the way out here to yell at him, did we?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You ever kill a man before?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. I wish I had, though. Just so I could know. But I guess he’ll be a good start.”

  “You going to practice on us?”

  “No. I just like holding it. Just to know that I can. I can’t say why, but it makes a man feel good to know that he can kill another. Not that he will. But that he has the capacity. You know?”

  “I guess.”

  “You know, the hobos said you can get safe passage from Mr. Shivers, but you got to be careful.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You got to walk out to the crossroads on a moon-filled night with no clouds in the sky, and you go out and find a stone and write your name on the bottom of it and bury it in the road. He comes in the morning, leading his line of men he’s taking off to hell, and he’ll read your name and then you can pass through that town easy and you won’t get harried by him or whoever he’s running.”

  “Go to sleep, Hammond.”

  He turned the gun over in his hands. “I can’t.”

  “Try.”

  “All right. I’ll try.”

  “Well. Good night, then.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Good night.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  They kept going southwest and managed to get a ride from a truck driver who had already delivered his payload of chickenfeed. They went some twenty miles crouched in the back. They climbed down where he turned off the road and headed to the highway and he shook his head as he drove away.

  As they walked a car coming from the opposite direction pulled over. “I’d head back if I was you boys,” a man shouted at them from the window. His family was in the back and all his belongings were strapped to the roof.

  “Why’s that?” said Roosevelt.

  “Storm’s coming. A duster.”

  “A what?”

  “A duster. Dust storm. You won’t be able to see three feet in front of your face tomorrow if you keep going.”

  “Thank you,” said Pike.

  “You boys not going to stop?”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  “You all are nuts,” said the man as he rolled up his window. “Bugshit. Just nuts.” The wheels spun and he careened down the road.

  “Bastard doesn’t even know how to drive,” said Hammond. “And he’s calling us nuts.”

  They kept going. As midafternoon came they passed over an old road and a crumbling gully. There they heard a muffled shouting from far to their left. Pike motioned off the road and they stepped quietly into the cover of the weeds as Pike looked over the top.

  “What was that?” said Hammond.

  “Some people are camped along the road, I’d say,” said Roosevelt. “Just off to the south of us.”

  “So?” said Connell
y.

  “I don’t like this,” said Pike. “This whole area’s deserted, especially after that fella who told us about the… the…”

  “The duster.”

  “Right. Could be cops, could be bandits.”

  “Bandits?” said Hammond, and laughed.

  “I’ve seen them before. Hell, I’ve been robbed by them before. And if there’s as many migrants all over the place as it seems then the cops are sure to be frothing at the mouth.”

  “Pretty sorry bandits or cops, talking so loud,” said Roosevelt. “We could hear them from miles away.”

  “Maybe so. But I still don’t like it.”

  “I could go take a look,” said Connelly.

  “What?” said Pike. “Take a look? What do you mean?”

  “I mean I walk up to them and look at them and if I don’t get shot then I guess things are okay.”

  “That sounds like a terrible plan to me,” said Roosevelt.

  “I don’t see what’s wrong with it. I don’t think it’s cops or outlaws. If it’s cops I’m going to see my sister in town and if it’s robbers I don’t have much to rob, now do I? Just look at me. And it’d be a lot of work to rob me for a whole lot of nothing.”

  “He’s got a point,” said Hammond.

  “You serious about going?” said Roosevelt.

  “Yeah. Suppose so.”

  “Well, here,” said Roosevelt, and he took out his gun and held it out to Connelly.

  “Jesus!” Connelly said. “Get that goddamn thing away from me!”

  “What? Why, what’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s a gun, that’s what’s wrong with it. I don’t know nothing about no guns.”

  “It’s for protection. Just carry it and flash it so they know what’s up.”

  “If they see me walking toward them with a gun in my hand they’re likely to shoot me dead. I like having my head on my shoulders and I like the teeth I got. I’m not waving a gun at anyone.”

  “Well, damn,” Roosevelt said.

  “If that’s settled,” said Pike, “we’ll stay here and watch you go. You get into any trouble, Mr. Connelly, you holler like you’ve been struck by lightning and we’ll come running.”