"I . . ." Ashvarinda began, weighing his danger against the bad karma of lying, and choosing the future benefit over the present peril. "The bodies . . ." he whispered. "I had to dispose of the bodies. . . ."
"Bodies!" Alex shouted. "There's more than one? You bastard!" He grabbed Ashvarinda by the back of the head and began pounding his face against the hard earth.
"Ja, it's just like ye figgered." Schilder nodded as Clayton came up behind the others. "Dat gottverdammte monster got drunk on de moonshine, ant he raped and killed the Ostlich girl!"
Blood was pouring from Ashvarinda's mouth as his voice gurgled, "Ostlich . . . Ostlich girl ... no, no, wait, I thought you meant . . . wait, you are making a mistake. .. ."
But a blow to his head sent him spinning down into unconsciousness just as the door opened again and Vernon Sweet came out onto the porch. "Hi hi hi, hello," he said cheerfully. His look of childish trust shifted to one of utter dismay when he saw his friend lying motionless on the ground. "Rinda!" he cried and attempted to run forward.
He was grabbed on all sides and dragged from the porch toward the oak tree near which he had dug up the moonshine two days earlier. "Rinda!" he cried again, and then his frightened eyes grew hard and fiery as his voice sank to a guttural snarl. "Rrrrrindaaa," he said again, and then began to claw at the hands of his captors with unexpected strength.
The men were shouting so loud that they had not heard the change in his voice, but there was no mistaking the strength of his arms as he flung them away from him; and as four and then eight and then twelve members of the mob attacked him, he began snapping at them with the long, almost horizontal teeth that seemed to have sprung from his champing jaws. His bulbous head whipped left and right as his teeth snapped shut on empty air, unable to find the soft flesh it was seeking as the men avoided his jaws, tied the rope around his long thin neck, threw one end over the branch of the tree, and hoisted him upward.
"Grab his arms!" someone shouted. "Don't let him get his hands on the rope!"
Two men ran forward, each one grabbing an arm, and Vernon swung them back and forth in an attempt to dislodge them. For a moment it seemed that either the branch or the rope would break, but both held firm, and soon Vernon's desperate motions grew spasmodic and intermittent, and then they ceased.
Silence.
The onetime search party, onetime lynch mob resumed its previous character. Seventy individuals stood and watched as the body of the man they had just hanged swung slowly at the end of the rope. The creaking of hemp against wood whispered horribly in the profound quiet.
"What should we do now?" Bruno asked after a few long moments.
No one answered at first, and then Alex Brown said, "We put their bodies over there, in the barn, and we burn it down." No one responded to his suggestion, so he repeated it forcefully. "I say we put them in the barn and then we burn it down."
Mutters of agreement dropped like lead from the mouths of the others, and they wordlessly set about lowering the body of Vernon Sweet from the impromptu gallows. They carried him into the old barn that stood some fifty yards from the house, and then placed Ashvarinda beside him. It took a few minutes to find enough loose dry wood to ensure a raging blaze, and then fires were set in the barn and along the exterior parameter. They stood and watched as the flames billowed up, and then Old Man Schilder barked, "Let's get out of here. Ve wait avhile, den ve call de fireman, before de whole forest burns." They all moved quickly back into the woods, back toward the body of Sarah Ostlich and the shocked, grieving father who was kneeling beside her. Alex grabbed Clayton by the collar of his jacket and said, "You're part of this, too. You keep your mouth shut."
"Sure, Al, sure," he replied softly. Alex released him and went off after the others. Clayton watched the fire for a few moments and then emitted a long breath. "Holy shit," he muttered. Then he walked back into the woods.
No one remained to see the flames licking up from the walls of the old barn to the roof and thence up into the bleak autumn sky. No one remained to see the timbers crash into the inferno as the barn collapsed into itself.
And no one remained to see the dark shape moving through the flames.
II
Freak Show
I am he whose gaze destroyeth hope
as soon as hope cloth bloom.
I am he by none beloved,
and cursed by all that live.
--MIKHAIL LERMONTOV, The Demon
Chapter Eight
November 26, 1968
It was almost five o'clock. Sean Brenner's appointment with his probation officer was supposed to have been at four, and she had not yet arrived. He sniffed in annoyance, lighted another cigarette, and slumped down in the uncomfortable plastic chair in the anteroom of the probation office. He glanced up at the clock. "Fuckin' bitch," he muttered. Does she think I got nothing better to do than sit around waiting for her to show up?
He looked up as his probation officer came striding briskly down the hallway. Deborah Steyert was a woman who deliberately understated her attractiveness, perhaps as a means of counteracting the male tendency not to take attractive women seriously. She was dressed simply, almost austerely, and her long blond hair was pinned up tightly in a chignon. During his first meeting with her, Sean passed the time fantasizing about what she would be like under other, less official, more intimate circumstances. Today he was too tense to do anything other than act annoyed.
She nodded at him as she unlocked the door to her office. "Come in, Brenner," she said.
As he seated himself in front of her desk, he said, "You know, Mrs. Steyert, I've been sitting here since three forty-five. . . ."
Steyert sat down at her desk and took some papers from her briefcase. Without even looking at Sean, she said, "Well, if you hadn't been selling Methedrine, you wouldn't be sitting here at all, now would you?" Sean did not reply, and Steyert looked up at him. "Would you?"
He coughed. "No, I guess not."
"No, I guess not, too," she said, leaning back in her chair. "As it happens, one of my juveniles was almost killed by her father this afternoon, and I've been at the hospital with her. I hope that's a good enough excuse for you."
"Yeah, yeah, sure," he muttered, taking out a cigarette.
"Do not smoke in here, please," she said crisply. He put the cigarette away. "What have you been doing since we last met?"
"Nothing much," he replied. "I started work today."
"I know. I called. What about before that?"
"Nothing much." he repeated. "Hung out with my friend Artie. Drank a little beer, watched some TV. Went to the movies."
"Uh-huh. What movie did you see?"
He paused. What film that he had already seen was playing locally? "Ah . . . Yellow Submarine."
"Uh-huh. Go to any bars?"
"No."
"Any pool halls?"
He laughed. "No."
"Smoke any pot?"
"Of course not. I don't want to screw up my probation, Mrs. Steyert. I'm not stupid, you know."
"You aren't unintelligent," she conceded, leaving Sean to mull over the difference. She stared at him for a long while, tapping the tip of her pen on the desktop with maddening regularity. At last she said, "You know, Brenner, I can't for the life of me understand why they gave you probation."
He sighed. "Come on, ma'am, it was a first offense...."
"Yes, but not a first offense for smoking marijuana or shoplifting. A first offense for selling a dangerous, addictive, potentially deadly drug is a little bit different. Methedrine is not marijuana, you know."
Sean smiled despite himself. "I know."
Steyert frowned. "Yes, I'm sure you do." She leaned forward and stared him in the eye. "Brenner, you're not fooling me. You know that with our limited budget we can't keep an eye on you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You or any other of the degenerates the courts have decided to turn loose. But let me warn you, my friend. One slipup, just one, and I'll see that they slap you into t
he penitentiary so fast you won't know what hit you."
"Look, ma'am, you're not being fair," he whined. "I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, ain't I? I don't know why you're so down on me."
"Because you don't fool me a bit," she repeated. "All you're interested in is getting off probation so that you can go right back to being what you've always been, a lazy, self-indulgent, parasitic child."
He bristled. "What is this, some weird new sort of pep talk?"
"Don't be flippant," she said evenly. "I deal with probationary cases all day long, but they aren't kids like you. They've started life with two strikes against them, and sometimes when they fight back, they break the law. I don't approve, mind you. I'm not one of these people who believes that poverty excuses crime. But it does explain it. I can understand and even sympathize with people who are born in the middle of crime and violence and then struggle and claw to survive. But you!"
"Look, Mrs. Steyert—"
"You're nothing but a spoiled brat, Brenner, you and a million kids like you, always looking for the easy way, always avoiding responsibility, treating everything like a joke."
"You see me laughing?" he demanded. "You see me acting like I think it's funny being here?"
She appraised him coolly. "Not at the moment, no. Let's just hope you understand that a good lawyer kept you from getting the punishment you deserve. You might not be so lucky next time, so there had better not be a next time. You understand?"
"I'm hip," he muttered. "Can I go now?"
"Go where?"
None of your fucking business, he thought, but instead answered, "I'm tired. I been working all day. I want to go home and go to sleep."
A low, sarcastic laugh accompanied her response. "Yes, I'm sure. Okay, Brenner. Be here at four next Thursday. And keep your nose clean."
Sean rose to leave. "Yes, ma'am." The moment he walked through the door of her office he was filled with an intense, if temporary, euphoria. From early childhood Sean had been a rebellious, disobedient, insolent boy, and it was only now in the wake of arrest and trial and probation that he found himself having to be at least marginally courteous to people in positions of authority. He had no practical experience in being anything other than snide to them. Thus it was as if a weight had been lifted from him as he walked down the stairs from her office and out onto the cold street.
He left the Kew Gardens judicial complex and went to the nearest bus stop on Queens Boulevard. He lighted yet another cigarette and let it dangle from his chapped lips as he thrust his hands into the pockets of his short leather jacket and jumped up and down a few times in an attempt to keep warm in the early cold of late November. He squinted up the broad street in the direction of Jamaica and saw his bus approaching from the distance.
It was a forty-minute bus ride down Queens Boulevard to Grand Avenue in the slowly moving rush-hour traffic, and then a half-hour walk up through Maspeth to the aging apartment building where Russell Phelps, Peter Geerson, and their friend Artie Winston shared two small rooms with each other, with a plethora of urban insects, and with whatever it was that they occasionally heard scratching behind the walls. I suppose you get what you pay for, Sean reflected as he pressed the downstairs buzzer. Russell, Peter, and Artie were paying seventy-five dollars a month.
He unwrapped his long scarf and pressed the buzzer twice more. At last the responding buzzer sounded, admitting him into the dirty, decrepit lobby. He walked quickly up the three flights of stairs and knocked on the door.
"So, Sean!" Russell said as he opened the door. "Come on in and do a doob."
Sean entered to find Artie Winston sitting on the floor, a well-polished and obviously cherished Gibson acoustic guitar lying to his right, a bowl of dust-fine marijuana to his left. "Hiya, Artie," he said, sitting down beside him and pulling off his boots.
"How is our redoubtable felon?" Artie asked as he carefully rolled a generous line of pot in the cigarette paper.
"Funny," Sean muttered. "Real funny."
Artie ran his tongue along the length of the joint, lighted it, and handed it to Sean. "So how was the dragon lady tonight?"
"She don't like me, that's for sure."
"You blame her?" Russell asked, sitting down on the floor with them. "Most of the people who know you don't like you." He laughed.
Sean shrugged as he toked on the joint. "So most of the people I know don't have any taste." He passed the joint to Russell and then turned to Artie. "Where's Peter?"
"Over at the lab at school," Artie replied, taking off his thick round glasses and attempting to clean them on his grimy shirt. "He should be back here by now. We have to leave for Zoli's."
"You playing there again tonight?"
"Yup."
Sean nodded. "That's great, really great. I always figured you'd be able to get something going with your music if you set your mind to it. I never could understand why you were wasting your time with college. You're too good a musician."
"Thanks," Artie replied, "but I don't have any illusions about it. I'm good, I know that, good on the guitar and I sing good, too."
"And you're modest," Russell observed.
Artie ignored him. "But there are probably a hundred thousand guys just as good as me, and ten thousand who are better, and of those ten thousand there are probably no more than a few hundred who are making a living."
"Making a living!" Sean exclaimed. "Who's talking about making a living? You got a place to crash, you're never short of dope and acid, and you could get laid every fucking night if you weren't so shy around girls."
"I'm not shy," Artie responded defensively. "I'm just selective. And anyway, that may be all I need now, at twenty-one. What about when I'm forty-one?"
Sean frowned and waved away the objection. "By the time you're forty-one, you'll be rich and retired."
"Just like you, if you marry Becky," Russell observed.
"Cut it out," Sean said.
"I can just see it," Russell went on. "You and Clay and Becky living your laborless fantasy just as our society finally comes to its senses and abolishes private property."
"That'd be nice." Artie nodded. "I'd hate to have to get a regular job."
"Tell me about it." Sean sighed. "You know what I have to do all day? I stuff junk mail into envelopes. Eight hours a day, stuffing junk mail into envelopes. Jesus!" He turned to Russell. "Doesn't it get to you, getting up every morning and going into that high school to teach?"
Russell did not reply, and Artie chuckled. "Russell is, as they say, between positions at the moment."
Sean looked over at his friend. "You got fired?"
Russell sighed. "Yeah."
"What for?"
"Oh, I tried to organize an open forum on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and I got into an argument with my chairman and the principal."
"Let me guess," Sean said, taking the joint. "You got all upset and flew off the handle and started yelling at them, right?"
"Basically."
"What did you say? Did you insult them?"
He shrugged. "I suppose so."
"'Whoremongers of the capitalist vampires' was the operative phrase, I think," Artie offered.
Sean smiled. "Good move." He felt himself relaxing, a combination of the marijuana and the comfortable company of his old friends. "Want me to get you a job?"
"Packaging junk mail? Forget it. I'll just go on unemployment."
"I'd love to do that, but my probation officer won't let me."
The door opened and Peter Geerson walked in. "Hiya, guys," he said cheerfully.
"Bout time," Artie said. "We gotta leave in a few minutes."
"So roll some joints and let's go," he replied. "Just let me wash the monkey shit off my hands."
"Cleaning the animal cages again?" Artie asked as he began to roll the joints.
"Yeah," Peter said as he disappeared into the bathroom. "Grad assistants get all the glamorous jobs."
Russell decided to be merciless. "You know, Pete, I th
ink that short hair really looks good on you."
"Fuck you, asshole," Peter called out from the bathroom.
"Been thinking about getting mine cut real short, too."
"Fuck you, asshole," Peter repeated.
Sean tossed the burned-out roach into a nearby ashtray. "Did he have to get his hair cut off for this graduate-assistant thing?"
"Hell, no." Artie laughed. "Pete's a sailor."
"A sailor! What are you talking about?"
"Well," Artie said as he licked another joint along its seam, "he had his draft physical last week down at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, and the poor son of a bitch passed it."
"Pete's 1-A?" Sean was astounded.
"Yeah, but because he can still claim to be a full-time student . . . you know, the master's-degree program and the graduate-assistantship and all that shit . . . he was able to join the navy reserve. That gives him a breather while he pays off a shrink to say that he's . . ." He paused, and then shouted, "Hey, Pete. What's your shrink saying's wrong with you again?"
"Chronic immaturity," Peter replied over the loudly running water that was splashing into the sink.
"Yeah, right," Artie went on. "But he's still got to go to the navy-reserve meetings every week, and he had to get his hair cut."
"That's really a bitch," Sean muttered, shaking his head. "Why didn't he do what you and Russell did, take some speed before his physical so his blood pressure was high?"
"I was gonna do that," Peter said as he walked out of the bathroom, wiping his hands on his shirt, "but my Meth dealer got busted."
Sean laughed softly. "Sorry 'bout that."
"Helped one of us, anyway. With a felony conviction on your record, you don't have to worry about getting drafted."
"I'd rather not have the record," Sean said. "It'd be easier just to get fucked up for the physical."
"It's funny, isn't it?" Artie mused as he unfolded another rolling paper and began deftly to pour marijuana into it. "Of all the people we know, only Mario couldn't beat the draft. I mean, me and Russell did the Meth thing, Buzzy and Tom convinced the draft board that they're allergic to milk, Doug convinced them that he had like terminal hemorrhoids, and when Clay went in for his physical, he wandered around Fort Hamilton all day jerking off until they threw him out."
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