All this made that particular noonday moment of solitude on the ranch one of Sanford’s bright ones. He sat on the floor of the feed room in a ray of warm sunlight, staring at his book for the week—it was Sanford’s last copy of the magical stories of the American Old West by An Old Scout. A man so wise that he could have been a shaman of the West. And maybe he was. Now that it was time to dive into the story itself, Sanford read the title out loud, just to make himself as ready as possible: “Young Wild West at ‘Forbidden Pass’ and How Arietta Paid the Toll.”
He spent several minutes studying the book’s cover, an action scene that showed Arietta directing her men to haul the bad guy up from a ravine with a saddle rope. Oh man, did the captured guy look mad! But in the background he could see that the bad guy’s two armed pals were still guarding their hostage, Young Wild West, who stood tied to a tall stake. The painting was so lifelike, so appealing, that Sanford could practically lean forward and fall face-first into the scene. He unintentionally whispered the opening lines as he read them: “Young Wild West was beyond a doubt the greatest and best known of the heroes of the Wild West, and though but a boy in years, he had made a name for himself that many an elder person would have been proud to own.”
He had to stop right there, just to chew on that one. To think: out of all the heroes of the Wild West, here was this guy Young Wild West, only a boy in years, but he had made a name for himself that “any elder would be proud to own.” How would it feel to be such a boy? What could that possibly be like? The image was so wonderful that Sanford bounded after it like a puppy chasing a horse. With that single sentence, the world of An Old Scout gained itself a new resident.
Car sounds pulled at his attention. Uncle Stewart was brilliant at picking bad moments to show up. He heard the chattering engine of the perpetually overheated Buick. Sanford immediately scanned the second paragraph of the story as quickly as he could, unwilling to break the spell, like somebody waking up from a dream of treasure and trying to bring it back in their hands: “He had earned the title of the Champion Deadshot of the West by his remarkable skill with the rifle and revolver, and he was ever ready to defend the title against all comers.” Sanford could practically feel how fine it would be to have such supreme confidence, such lethal capability, and yet to be restrained in one’s powers—unleashing them only against the forces of cruelty and injustice.
But he already understood that there was a more immediate problem and that it could no longer be denied. Uncle Stewart was back.
And with that, Sanford’s silvery moment shattered. He quickly forced himself out of slow mode. In the next second, he was back up to full speed while he closed the book and looked around for a good hiding place. It was important to keep this special book out of Uncle Stewart’s awareness altogether: it was bad enough to lose the moment, but he had no desire to listen to another belittlement of An Old Scout’s writing. He tucked it under the first unopened feed sack and stepped out of the feed room and into the main yard.
He saw the Buick pull to a jerky stop right in front of the house, throwing up a cloud of dust. Uncle Stewart spotted him and tooted the horn with about a dozen short blasts. He even honks like he’s crazy. I hope he doesn’t have new adventures to tell me about. Sanford was sick of hearing Uncle Stewart’s tales of stalking and accosting young boys.
“Sanford! Get over here now! Now, now, now! Sanford! Sanford! Get over here!”
“All right!” Sanford dared to let himself sound a bit irritated while he trotted up to the car. “What is it?”
Uncle Stewart hopped out, reached in and pulled a large tar bucket up off the floor in the back, and Sanford instantly recognized the sweaty glow and foul body odor that were the lingering traces of his demonic episodes. It was as if he stank of being down there in Hell itself with all the burning sulfur. But the truth was worse: that smell only came from Uncle Stewart, all by himself.
A dirty towel covered whatever was in the bucket. Uncle Stewart stared down at it for a moment, then raised his eyes and showed a face that Sanford knew as his Evil Little Girl. “Oh Sannn-fooord,” Uncle Stewart sang out. He held out the bucket to him. “I brought you a present. …” The sound of his voice cut at the air like a heavy saw on sheet metal while he repeated, “I brought you a pres-ent!” Sanford took a few steps over to the bucket, choking down the familiar urge to run.
Uncle Stewart’s face shone with a sickly-looking sense of delight while he snatched the towel away. An electric charge filled the air while he waited for Sanford’s response. Sanford looked into the big bucket. It was a furry dead animal, covered in blood. The dead animal was covered with some very long fur, almost like human hair. But when he moved closer, he saw that the very long fur actually was human hair. It was black hair, like Indian hair, matted with blood.
His stomach felt like it was full of ice water, but the rest of him was still not sure. He inched even closer, which delighted Uncle Stewart so much that he looked as if his head could pop off with all the fun of it. He started a long, low giggle, just barely under his breath, and kept it up like it was part of his breathing process—giggling on every exhale while he awaited Sanford’s reaction to the contents of the bucket.
Sanford saw that the hair was attached to a scalp. So the dead animal in the bucket was covered over with a human scalp. So that’s it? That was why Uncle Stewart was giggling so much? But no. A part of him knew there was more. It would not release him. By the time he was within three feet of the tar bucket, Sanford’s eyes could no longer assist him in denial. They saw what was truly there. It was not just a human scalp; the hair was attached to an entire head. The head was attached to nothing.
For another second or two, Sanford’s brain sent back demands to the eyeballs for a correction, but the object kept on being the freshly killed, severed human head of a boy or a young man. The skin was dark, like a Mexican or one of the local natives, but that could have just been the blood.
“Hey, Sanford! Do not puke! I mean it, stop! Nooo…. There. Good. Now, hold your cookies down and listen. First things first: I did not do this. Here, sit down on the front bumper, there. Yeah-yeah, sit down. You ready? Good. Now: all right, I did it.”
He grinned and raised his open right hand. “But with a valid explanation, Your Honor. It was a clear case of self-defense, and there is not a jury on the entire planet Earth who would find me guilty of a single solitary thing. The simple fact is that all the trouble of the enormous expense of an arrest and a long trial would be a public waste and a crying shame, because I would only be pronounced innocent and sent freely upon my way with the final verdict. Anybody with half an ounce of respect for society would skip the whole thing and save the civic resources for something that matters!”
“Uncle Stewart?”
“I know, I know. I’m getting to it. Anyway, there is one thing you need to understand about American law, my friend, and that is this: self-defense is a perfect defense. You are allowed to defend your life! From anyone who would take it. Or even do you harm.”
“But Uncle Stewart?”
“I know! Now. Here’s all you need to remember about this, because Lord knows, you don’t want to be dragged into it and get yourself involved.”
“How can I be involved? I don’t even know what you’re—”
“Shut it! Shut it. Right now. I’m warning you.” He paused to take a deep breath, slowly let it out, then went on. “Here, as I was trying to say, is all that you need to know: I was visiting a Mexican friend of mine this morning at his mining operation when the man who used to own this head appeared with a gun and attempted to take over the claim at gunpoint. He did not realize I was there, so I stepped out from hiding and shot him to save my friend. The law allows this. It is the same as self-defense, which is the perfect defense in this country whether you are aware of that or not.”
“That man tried…. You….”
“No! This man earned it fair and square. I already disposed of his body,
so think about that! He was bigger than you and he’s already all gone! Ground up! Chewed up and spit out and stomped into a mud-hole and then walked into the dirt. You hear me, darling boy? These are my powers. I mean, where do you think his body is, if I didn’t make it vanish? Answer me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess, God damn it! Don’t get on my raw side today, Sanford Clark.”
“Did you drop him down a mine shaft?”
“No! God!! Hell no! Are you calling me a fucking idiot? Who would do that? Would you? Oh, would you really? Because people go down in those things all the time, Sanford! Think about it for one half of a second, will you? It does not count if you simply leave the body where it gets found in two weeks. You know what it means if you do that?”
“I don’t have any idea about that.”
“It means that you spend two weeks walking around like a man with cow shit for brains because you think you have gotten away with something, when in fact all you are doing is biding time until the cops come for you and you swing for it! Ha!” Uncle Stewart made the face of a dead man swinging from a noose, just for fun, sticking out his tongue and holding his breath until his skin turned reddish blue.
Sanford was surprised by how realistic it looked. It was just like watching him die on a rope. He felt a huge nervous laugh that needed to explode out of him, but he did not dare to show any sign of amusement or Uncle Stewart could take it wrong. He released a forceful belch, then coughed and farted at the same time, and it was a little better after that.
Uncle Stewart loved it. “Ha-ha-ha! You are disgusting! What woman would ever marry a pig like you? Anyway, the thing to understand about the human head is that nothing is harder to destroy. And that, my friend, is the answer to your question.”
“Which one?”
“Your question about why I have the head with me. Actually, two answers. One: take away the head, a body is harder to identify, especially if you mess up the fingers. This helps to make sure that you do not waste civic resources on pointless trials that the state cannot win. Two: the head comes out better if you give it special treatment. Depends on how you get rid of the body. In today’s case, we do the head on its own, and no, I did not and would not ever throw a dead body down a mine shaft. Why wouldn’t I just lug it over to the county sheriff’s house and dump it on his lawn? That story ends the same either way you tell it.”
“Uncle Stewart?”
“I’m getting there. Jesus Christ! So even though it is so tiring to hold this bucket out to you, I am still holding it out to you because I am waiting for you to accept my gift.” But he broke out laughing and fell stumbling over that one for a moment before he could gather himself up and continue. “No, no. It is. It is a gift, sort of, in a certain way. This is part of your continuing education then, yes? You learn how to burn up a human head in a hot bonfire that you keep stoked up all afternoon until I say it’s done.”
He sat the bucket at Sanford’s feet and gave him a friendly pat on the back. “Come on, we’ll use the dry duck pond. I’ll help you get a good blaze going.” He walked away toward the dry duck pond out in back of the ranch house.
“What, you want me to burn up that head?”
“Don’t worry.” He kept on walking. “I’ll get you started. Then I need a nap. Bring the bucket.” He kept going and did not look back. Sanford moved sideways toward the bucket. He leaned over just far enough to get his fingertips around the thick canvas strap that served as its handle, then tensed his arm muscles, his shoulders, his back, his waist … and slowly stood, picking it up.
It was not heavy at all. Maybe ten pounds or something like that. He could carry it with his arm straight out, which is how he got it from the front yard around back to the pit. The fire there, as Uncle Stewart predicted, burned hot all afternoon with Sanford doing the stoking.
By the time darkness set in for the night, Sanford was sitting half-paralyzed in the passenger seat of the big Buick while they roared down the highway to Los Angeles. He tried to listen to Uncle Stewart, who was doing his old trick of talking just barely louder than the sound of the wind so that you had to strain to hear him. Something about popular music and young people today. Sanford couldn’t stay with it. His mind’s eye was flooded with the day’s images.
The horror of the burning face quickly gave way to the unifying realities of heat and flame. The day was spent keeping the fire going underneath a black chunk of something or other that could have been a hundred different things besides a person. Uncle Stewart woke up late in the afternoon and came out to have a look. He told him that any more fire was a waste of time. The bones were burned down as far as they would go.
Sanford stared out at the road ahead and tried to blink the images out of his eyes—Uncle Stewart sitting on the back porch drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola, watching Sanford carry out his order to drop the roasted skull back into the tar bucket and then pound at it with a fence post. Blow after blow after blow until it was a shattered pile of black and white bits. By the time he was finished, his arm and shoulder muscles were burning under the exertion and Uncle Stewart was satisfied that there was nothing left to recognize. He ordered Sanford to get washed up and into clean clothing while he took the bucket of skull bits away somewhere. He was back again by the time Sanford was cleaned up and ready to go. Minutes later, they were in the car heading west.
Now his uncle was talking to him. He knew that it was important to listen and not get caught with his attention drifting, which was a form of personal insult—as Uncle Stewart had stringently reminded him on so many occasions. The images, however, would not leave him.
“Hey, bonehead! Anybody in there?”
“What? Sure I am. What.”
“Time for rehearsal! Remember the importance of an alibi? We are now putting that to work for us. We shall give a much better story to Mother and Father, just in case any police defectives ever ask them anything about it.”
“Why would they?”
“Who knows? Don’t change the subject.”
Sanford found a certain degree of comfort in stupidity around his uncle and played dumb as much as he could get away with, but Uncle Stewart seldom put up with it, so he had to dish it out a little at a time. He decided to try some. “Why do I have to rehearse anything?”
“The story, Sanford. The alibi. Hell. Shit. I’m talking to myself here, aren’t I?”
“No. No you’re not, Uncle Stewart.”
“We rehearse because you are going to be the one to tell them. You’re only fifteen! You haven’t grown at all since you got here, so you still look like a boy. They’re going to just naturally want to believe you! Why can’t you appreciate the power that you have? I could beat them until they scream for mercy, and believe me, I’d do it if I had to, but that still won’t make them look believable if a cop starts asking questions. You, on the other hand, can hand-feed them your own shit and tell them it’s an ice cream sundae—and they are going to believe you. And this story, oh man, when you give them this story, they are going to swallow you up whole because they could never imagine that you would come up with this. Understand? We reinforce each other here! Keep each other out of jail!”
“Why would I go to jail?”
“I’m not sure that grinding up some guy’s head is completely legal, moron.”
“He was already dead when you brought him here! And you killed that guy in self-defense! We were saving them from wasting money on an investigation.”
Uncle Stewart stared at him for a good three seconds before he threw back his head, placed the flat of his palm over his chest, and screamed with delight. He screamed a complete lungful of air and then took a deep breath and screamed a second time. After that he dissolved into his steamiest Nasty Little Girl laugh. He steered the car with one hand and leaned over to Sanford and fondly struck him broad-handed across the temple. But he was feeling so good at the moment that he didn’t strike him all that hard.
Tho
ugh the blow was not as bad as others, Sanford made sure to slump against the side of the seat and did a few of those twitches that happen when you start to go unconscious after getting hit. Uncle Stewart loved those. He didn’t like to knock you out, because then you were no more fun than a dead person. The amusement was in taking you right to the edge and keeping you there, knowing that there was nothing you could do, no matter how hard you wished you could stop it.
The twitching stopped the assault right away while Uncle Stewart pulled back to admire his handiwork. “Listening now? Good. That’s all you have to do. Because I am going to give you a story that we can all live with. They think they can’t spare me any more money right now; but I think that by the time we come back home, I’m going to have a pocket full of cash for our extra operating expenses.”
“What expenses?” Sanford asked, concerned that this might mean that he was supposed to cut the level of the feed rations that the hens needed to continue producing eggs.
“Private ones. You’re too young to concern yourself over it. All you do is repeat what I’m going to tell you. And do it like it’s coming from you. You want to be in the movies? This is your first acting job. Now say it exactly the way I’m going to tell it to you.”
“He did what?” George Cyrus Northcott asked, squinting at Sanford in concentration. Sanford and Uncle Stewart sat across from him in high-backed guest chairs while they unwound their story. Grandma Louise sat next to Grandpa George on the old horsehair sofa. She balanced the porcelain saucer on her knee while she held the tea cup in one hand and sopped at the saucer with her handkerchief with the other. She did not appear to be listening.
The Road Out of Hell Page 10
