The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

by Norman Partridge

  All my carefully considered words were nothing compared to that one-paragraph bombshell. I balled up my useless letter and shoved it into the pocket of my new jeans.

  An hour later I was safe at home, cleaning brake fluid from under my fingernails.

  I guess Anelle could handle her mom pretty well, because things got back to normal after her dad’s funeral. The red Pontiac had been wrapped around a telephone pole along with Mr. Carney, of course, but the insurance money bought Anelle a nice, sensible Volkswagen. The “FOR SALE” sign came down a week after Mr. Carney was laid to rest in the cemetery across the street — another good Tuesday for me — and I remember feeling that destiny was finally on my side.

  Not that things were perfect. Even though Anelle had transferred back to public school, she still wasn’t in any of my classes. And I couldn’t hang out at the gas station anymore, because Pete had been fired.

  I didn’t feel good about that, because it was my fault. Just two weeks before the crash, Pete had serviced Mr. Carney’s Pontiac. The brake fluid had been changed — Mrs. Carney had a receipt which showed that clearly. Pete was low man on the totem pole, and the owner was tired of him using so much time to work on his junkers, so Pete took the heat.

  So I had a tough time keeping up with Anelle. She didn’t show at any of the usual places. Her life was changing fast, and I knew that I had to do something dramatic unless I wanted to be remembered only as part of a bad experience. I remembered what she’d said about “cutting ties,” and I started to get the crazy notion that she’d been talking about me. I thought about her lips and the time that I’d kissed her, and I knew that I’d made too much of it. That kiss had been more like a handshake than a kiss that passes between lovers.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing her. I’d picture her closing her eyes, opening her mouth to mine as I pulled her close… I knew I had to make it happen, and soon.

  So I spent more and more time at the library, waiting. It seemed pretty futile, because lately Anelle wasn’t reading romances at her usual clip. I kept thinking about that line in the old Beach Boys tune: See she forgot all about the library like she told her old man now…

  One night I got involved in an exciting Western written by a guy named Ray Slater. I wasn’t really expecting Anelle to show up anymore, so I paid more attention to the book than usual, and I finished it just as the librarian started flicking the lights to signal closing time.

  I shelved the Western and headed outside, walking on pins and needles because my left foot had gone to sleep while I was reading. As I shuffled through the doorway, I looked up the street and saw a girl walking toward the library. The dull glow of a streetlight shone on her long chestnut hair.

  The girl looked a lot like Anelle.

  She passed into the shadows that lay between the streetlights, which were set at each corner. Her stride was slow and unhurried, and even in the shadows I could tell that the girl was Anelle. I’d seen that walk of hers in enough dreams to have it memorized.

  A car turned the corner and paced her, lagging a few feet behind, its bright lights turning Anelle into a silhouette. I couldn’t tell for sure what make it was — it looked kind of like a Chrysler — only that it had a bad muffler that coughed smoke.

  I started down the stairs, my eyes on the car, and I tripped.

  My sleepy foot went out from under me. I hit the stairs, hard.

  I was up in a second, but the car was gone.

  So was Anelle.

  All of a sudden I was thinking about the projectionist and the threats he’d screamed at Anelle. I imagined a prison break, a guy dressed in orange con clothes hot-wiring an old Chrysler. Crazy with fear, not feeling the pain of the ankle I’d twisted on the stairs, I half ran, half hopped to my Dodge and peeled rubber, certain that I could catch the other car.

  Three blocks later, looking up and down the main drag, I knew I’d lost it. My forehead was damp with sweat. I tried to calm down. I drove straight to Anelle’s house, hoping to put my fears to rest, praying that I’d see her waving to a friend as she opened the front door. But the house was quiet and dark. Even Anelle’s bedroom window was black; her frilly white shades were wide open.

  I knew that she wasn’t there, that her room was empty.

  I palmed the wheel and came to a stop at the mouth of the court, thinking that I should call the cops.

  Something red flashed in the cemetery across the street.

  Taillights.

  I rolled down the window and smelled heavy exhaust. Burned oil. It was a long shot, but I didn’t have much else. Killing the headlights, I pulled to the curb.

  I took a tire iron from under the seat.

  I’d guessed correctly. The car was a Chrysler. There were two people in the front seat, chest to chest. They leaned back as one, against the passenger door.

  Anelle and Pete Hatcher.

  If I would have given it a chance, it might have seemed funny.

  All Anelle’s not-so-subtle visits to the gas station, filling a gas tank that was three-quarters full, chatting up Pete the same way I chatted her up at the movies.

  All those romance novels that were going unread in the presence of the real thing.

  All that free labor I did for good buddy Pete, my unknown rival.

  All those kisses he was getting in the front seat of his latest junker.

  All those kisses I was missing.

  I don’t remember opening the car door, but I remember what I did with the tire iron, and I remember the way Pete whimpered.

  And I remember catching up to Anelle on her front lawn after Pete was dead. I grabbed her and held her close on the same spot where the “FOR SALE” sign had stood, thinking about all those things I wanted to tell her and the way I wanted to kiss her and the way I’d seen her kiss Pete.

  My fingers locked around her biceps. Panic swam in her green eyes. Her lips trembled.

  I said, “There’s something that I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time.”

  Those were the last words I ever said.

  Anelle’s lips parted.

  Her teeth gleamed in the glow of the porch light. Toothpaste advertiser’s wet dreams, every one.

  She started to scream then, and I jammed my mouth against hers because I knew this would be my last chance for that special kind of kiss that only lovers share.

  I did kiss her, and it was a lover’s kiss.

  I held her tight, my mouth to hers, not letting her breathe.

  When it was over, I fainted.

  They tell me that Anelle passed out at the same time, just a few seconds after she’d swallowed my tongue.

  BLACKBIRDS

  On an August morning in the summer of 1960, a man dressed in black shattered the kitchen window at the Peterson home.

  The house was empty. Major Peterson was at the base, writing a report on the importance of preparedness in the peacetime army. Mrs. Peterson was shopping for groceries. Their daughter Tracy was doing volunteer work at the local hospital.

  Billy Peterson was the youngest member of the family. He was ten years old. Like the rest of his family, Billy was not at home when the man in black shattered the kitchen window.

  Billy was pedaling his bicycle down Old MacMurray Road.

  Billy was pedaling very fast.

  Billy’s Daisy BB gun was slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing a small army surplus backpack.

  There were only a few things in the backpack.

  For one, there was a blackbird’s nest. In the nest were three eggs.

  And there were two more things. Two items that, just like the backpack, had once been the official property of the United States Army.

  One was a canteen, which Billy had filled with gasoline siphoned from his father’s lawnmower.

  The other was a hand grenade.

  The man in black had a pet of sorts. A blackbird which perched on his shoulder.

  A blackbird with a BB hole in its chest.

  But the bird did
not seem inordinately bothered by the injury. No doubt it was well-trained. It did not make a single sound. Its head mirrored the movements of its master’s, searching here and there as the man in black explored the empty house.

  But in the view of the man in black, the house was not empty.

  In his view, he was surrounded by the Peterson family.

  In his view, they were all around him.

  Mrs. Peterson’s coffee cup stood abandoned on the kitchen counter, bearing a stain of frosted pink lipstick.

  But the man in black passed it by.

  The scent of Tracy’s girlish perfume drew him to the upstairs bathroom. He touched her uncapped perfume bottle, touched the damp towel Tracy had abandoned on the floor, touched Tracy’s soap, touched the heap of girlish clothes she had tossed in the laundry hamper.

  And the man in black left the room.

  He followed the track of Major Peterson’s bare feet on plush new carpet until he came to the major’s walk-in closet.

  The closet held many uniforms. The man in black ran his fingers over these.

  When he was done, he did not leave the closet.

  Instead, he bent low and spun the dial on a safe which Major Peterson had bought at Sears.

  He spun the dial with a calm sense of surety.

  The numbers clicked into place.

  The man in black opened the door.

  There were many valuable things within the safe.

  But the hand grenade was gone.

  The mouth of the cave gaped wide.

  Billy knew that it was a mouth that could not speak.

  Shivering, Billy stared at it. He did not want to look away.

  He could not look away. That was what he had done just the other day. He’d been staring at the mouth of the cave, staring into that black mouth that could not utter a single word, when his buddy Gordon Rogers said something stupid.

  And, just for a second, Billy looked away.

  Just for a second. Just long enough to give Gordon Rogers a poke in the ribs.

  And when Billy looked back, a man was standing at the mouth of the cave.

  A man dressed all in black.

  Billy swallowed hard, remembering.

  He wished that Gordon were here.

  Maybe, in a way, he was.

  No. That wasn’t right. Billy knew that he was all alone now. Gordon was gone—as good as dead, really. And no one stood at the mouth of the cave.

  No one stood there dressed all in black.

  No one said, “Don’t you know that caves are dangerous?”

  No Gordon to answer, “If caves are so dangerous, what’re you doing in one?”

  “Guess,” was the single word the man in black whispered, but there was no one to whisper it.

  No one but Billy.

  He stared at the mouth full of nothing.

  “You’re a mining engineer,” he guessed.

  But no one shook his head, as the man in black had done. “You’re a spelunker,” Billy said.

  And no one laughed.

  “If you want me to ask, I’ll ask.” Billy said. “What are you?”

  “I am an army.”

  “An army?” Billy shook his head. “You’re just one guy!”

  “I am an army, all the same.”

  “From where, then? You don’t look like a Ruskie.”

  “I am not from Russia.”

  “Then where are you from?”

  The question hung in the air. The mouth of the cave yawned wide, but there was only silence.

  The man in black was not here.

  So he could not answer, “I am an army… from hell.”

  Being an army was an occupation fraught with hazards. Violence was often unavoidable. People lied. And reconnaissance reports were sometimes less than accurate.

  For example—there was no hand grenade in Major Peterson’s safe. Which meant that there was no shiny hand-grenade pin to be had.

  But the man in black found many other attractive things in the Peterson house. Things that could be of use.

  He found Billy’s baseball. The one with pretty red stitches sewn with surgical precision.

  He found Tracy’s jump rope. Tracy had abandoned it long ago, of course. But not so long ago as she might have wished.

  In addition to these things, the man in black found a towel used by both parents. The towel was the color of skin, and it bore telltale smudges of Mrs. Peterson’s foundation cream, and from it Mr. Peterson’s hair seemed to sprout, for just this morning he had trimmed his moustache before departing for the base, and the bristling hairs had adhered to the towel.

  The man in black bunched the towel between his large palms. Then he twisted it, as if wringing it out.

  Bunched again. Twisted again.

  He worked faster and faster. Strange shapes appeared in the material. Shapes vaguely recognizable, but only for a moment, and then they were gone.

  A nose. An eyebrow.

  A woman’s cheek daubed with foundation cream.

  A man’s graying moustache.

  The man in black smiled as he wrapped the baseball in the towel and snared it with the jump rope.

  Then he wrung the towel again, quite viciously this time.

  Almost sadistically.

  Soon the towel began to bleed.

  Blood spattered the carpet as the man in black crossed Mr. and Mrs. Peterson’s bedroom.

  Soon each and every drop had been wrung from the towel.

  The man in black shattered the bedroom window.

  No one noticed.

  No one was home.

  And the neighbors, the man thought with a wry smile, had flown.

  Billy was about to unzip his U. S. Army surplus backpack when something moved within.

  Billy gasped. The canvas material seemed to pulse before his eyes. He watched it, but he couldn’t move.

  Until he heard the sound.

  A faint cracking. The same sound Billy heard every morning when his father tapped a spoon against his soft-boiled egg.

  Billy knew he had to move quickly. He unzipped the backpack. He snatched at the nest made from Gordon Rogers’ Slinky and Mrs. Rogers’ measuring tape and Mr. Rogers’ toupee.

  He spilled three eggs from the nest.

  Immediately, he spotted the crack in the biggest egg.

  Another peck and it widened. Yet another peck and the crack was a hole.

  One more peck and something pink showed through.

  Something pink inside a blackbird’s egg.

  Something as pink as Mr. Rogers’ bald head.

  The hole in the egg was very tiny. Not nearly as large as the mouth of the cave. But the mouth of the cave was silent, and the hole in the egg was not.

  “Billy,” a voice whispered from within. “Don’t… please, Billy. For God’s sake don’t…”

  It was a tiny voice. Not like Mr. Rogers’ voice at all.

  Not really.

  Another tiny tap, like father’s spoon at the breakfast table.

  A crack rippled across the surface of the second egg.

  The smallest egg.

  Gordon’s egg.

  “Billy…”

  Billy jerked the canteen out of the backpack and doused the nest and all three eggs with gasoline.

  The box of safety matches was in his pocket.

  Soon they were in his hand.

  Soon the nest was a funeral pyre.

  It crackled and crackled. Blood boiled in the eggshells and sizzled away to nothing. Mrs. Rogers’ measuring tape and Mr. Rogers’ toupee were crisped to fine ash, and soon all that remained of the nest was Gordon’s charred and blackened Slinky, which didn’t move at all.

  Everything was quiet again.

  The man in black screamed.

  Sparks erupted from his shoulders and ignited the blackbird’s feathers and the bird screeched and took wing and crashed to the ground in a flaming, twisted heap while the man watched in agony.

  But he did not watch for long. Fiery
tongues leapt from his trouser cuffs and licked at his ankles. He ripped off his burning coat and tossed it in the corner. Hurriedly, he worked at the metal buckle of his flaming belt, his fingers blistering at the touch of hot metal.

  And then just that quickly the fire was gone, and he scooped his winged companion from the floor and smoothed its black feathers, and he knew that there had been no fire at all.

  No. That wasn’t quite accurate. There had been a fire. It had not been here, however. The fire had occurred elsewhere. The man in black and his winged companion were only being informed of it.

  Reconnaissance. Sometimes it was unreliable, and sometimes it struck a little close to home.

  The man in black picked up his coat, absently plucked lint from the sleeve, and slipped it on. The blackbird regained its perch on his shoulder.

  The man sighed. The boy was not stupid. That much was certain.

  In point of fact, the boy was very smart. But Billy Peterson was not nearly smart enough to tangle with an army of one.

  The simple truth of it was that Billy had appeared at the Rodgers’ household at a most inauspicious moment. He had seen the blackbird lay three eggs in a nest made from a Slinky, a measuring tape, and a man’s toupee.

  And he had heard the man in black utter words over that nest.

  The same words the man now uttered over a nest made from a bath towel, and a baseball, and a length of jump rope.

  A nest like a hundred others, all across town.

  Billy stared at the blackened remains of the Rogers’ nest. The eggs were cracked and open, like broken black cups. The things that had grown inside were dead. That was very good.

  Billy loaded his BB gun. He did not feel like a murderer. Still, he felt he should take the scorched nest to the cemetery and bury it.

  Maybe he should do that with the pink bird, too.

  Billy had noticed the bird just this morning. He had watched it take flight from a nest on the Jefferson’s roof, tiny veined wings fluttering.

  The pink bird was hard to miss.

  And the sounds it made. A series of shrill skreeghs.