The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

by Norman Partridge

  Well, Billy had never seen a pink bird. Never heard one, either. Maybe it was a pet. Mr. Jefferson had a daughter who went to school with Billy. A sharp-tongued girl named Joleen who hated Billy. Maybe the bird belonged to her.

  The pink bird came straight at Billy. It dive-bombed him, circled high and came at him again.

  Usually Billy did not shoot at birds. Old bottles and cans were his favorite targets, maybe a discarded monster model now and then. But when the pink bird came at him a third time, he shot it out of the sky.

  Wounded, the bird crashed to the ground. It beat the dirt with one broken wing, unable to right itself.

  Billy approached the bird cautiously, because now he recognized the sound of its skreegh. Now he recognized its words.

  “Billy… Billy… help me—”

  He nearly screamed. The pink bird was some kind of freak. He stared down at it. Angry blue eyes stared up at him. Human eyes.

  The pink bird was not a bird at all.

  It had no beak. Only a mouth.

  “Billy… I need to get to the mine…”

  The bird had Joleen’s mouth… and Joleen’s voice.

  Though it was not really like Joleen’s voice at all.

  “.. .the mine, Billy,” the voice said. “I have to go. I have to fly… follow the trail… follow the others to the black river… find the home of the three-headed dog and…”

  Billy was frightened. He wanted to run.

  He did.

  “Billy, you little—”

  He ran faster. He outran the awful tiling’s words.

  Billy ran all the way to Gordon’s house. He did not notice the broken pane in the kitchen window. He burst into the house without thinking.

  No one seemed to be home.

  And then Billy heard a voice coming from upstairs.

  The voice of the man in black.

  The day before, Gordon had said that the man was only playing a prank to scare them away from the mine.

  The man did not sound like he was playing a prank now. Gun in hand, Billy crept upstairs, following the man’s voice. He could not understand everything the man said. At times the man whispered too low for Billy to hear. Other times he used words that Billy didn’t understand.

  But Billy understood most of the words he heard. Most importantly, he understood what a soul was.

  He’d heard his parents talk about souls taking flight to heaven. He’d never heard them speak of souls taking flight to hell, the way the man in black did. Normally, Billy would have thought that such talk was a bunch of mumbo jumbo. But when Billy looked into Mr. and Mrs. Rogers’ bedroom and saw the nest with the three hideous eggs and the big ugly blackbird perched over them, he was so frightened that he might have believed anything.

  The bird saw Billy before the man did.

  One quiet clack of its beak and the man in black turned to face the boy.

  He smiled at Billy, winked at the bird.

  “This boy is troublesome,” the man said. “Kill him.”

  The bird’s black wings flapped like torn shadows as it rose from the bed.

  Billy pulled the trigger and a BB punched the creature hard in the chest.

  The bird dropped to the bed.

  The man in black screamed a harsh, “No!”

  Before the word was out of the man’s mouth, Billy had grabbed the nest. He charged downstairs and ran all the way home.

  He noticed many strange things as he ran. He saw many broken windows in his very quiet neighborhood. He spotted many tangled nests resting on the rooftops.

  Each nest was a crazy quilt of everyday items. Clothes and ribbons, telephone cord and clothesline, sharpshooter medals won in battle and bits of dismembered dolls long buried in sandboxes and weatherbeaten cowboy hats worn by boys who rode wooden ponies. But one thing was the same—every nest that Billy saw cradled one blood red egg for every occupant of the house on which it perched.

  Billy wondered what would happen when those eggs cracked open. He remembered the things the pink bird had said “…the mine, Billy. I have to go. I have to fly… follow the trail… follow the others to the black river… find the home of the three-headed dog and… ”

  The mine… a trail.

  A black river and a three-headed dog.

  A trail to hell.

  And a pink bird. A creature that carried Joleen Jefferson’s soul.

  There was no nest on Billy’s house. This was a good sign. Maybe it meant that it wasn’t too late.

  Billy got a few tubes of BB’s from his room. Then he opened the safe and stole his father’s hand grenade.

  He pedaled to the mine, all the while telling himself that he was crazy. He didn’t want to believe that there could be other things like the pink bird. But when the egg in his backpack started to crack, and when he heard another voice, the voice of Gordon’s dad…

  Billy held tight to his BB gun.

  He watched the skies. There were no birds at all.

  He listened. Not a single chirp, or caw, or skreegh.

  Billy managed a deep breath.

  By the time he gulped it down, the sky was alive with sound.

  The sky was a rich red scream.

  Hidden by the surrounding forest, the man in black watched the cave.

  The blackbird sat heavily on his shoulder. Sharp talons speared his flesh. The bird’s blood dripped down its thin legs, between its talons, soaking the man’s clothes, mixing with the blood that flowed from the puckered wounds it had torn in the man in black’s flesh.

  The man in black did not mind the pain. He was an army. Armies engaged in war. There was pain in any war.

  There were also captives. They flew above the man’s head now, following him to the cave. Hundreds of pink things born of the blackbird perched on the man’s shoulder. Hundreds of them flapping overhead, screaming in fright as their blue-veined wings drove them toward a horror they would never escape.

  Hundreds of souls bound for hell.

  Hundreds of captives bound for a world of pain.

  This was a small town. Nothing more than a trial run. The man in black would have liked a larger challenge.

  Still, there was the boy to consider.

  After all, he had wounded the blackbird.

  And he still had his BB gun.

  Yes, this was indeed a war.

  In a war, there was pain. In a war, there were captives. But there were also casualties.

  Billy stood at the mouth of the cave. He fired the gun again and again and again. The pink things plummeted from the blue sky and crashed to the earth. Many of them screamed his name as they fell.

  The voices were all at once familiar, yet unfamiliar just the same. Voices that had encouraged Billy and comforted him and taught him many things. His little league coach’s voice, and his piano teacher’s voice, and the voice of the man who sold ice cream from the back of a battered truck on summer afternoons.

  Not all of the pink things screamed his name. Many darted past him with only a flutter of leathery wings, while others shrieked miserably as they disappeared into the black pit.

  Billy could not shoot all of them. He could only fire the gun so fast.

  Tears burned his eyes and his aim was poor.

  Still, Billy tried his best. But the mouth of the cave was open, open so very wide. The other day, the silence of the open mouth had bothered him. But now it did not. Now he understood it.

  The mouth was not open to speak.

  It was open to swallow.

  Billy reloaded his gun and continued firing.

  Soon he stopped crying.

  Soon his BB’s were gone, and the sky was a pink canvas of writhing, naked wings.

  Soon the man in black strode through the dark trees that ringed the cave.

  Billy watched the man smile. Overhead, the souls of Billy’s friends and enemies and people he had never met and would never meet raced past him like some strange airborne river.

  Billy dropped his rifle and raised his father
’s hand grenade.

  The man in black’s smile did not falter.

  “I’ll stop you.” Billy screamed above the deafening pink scream. “I’ll stop them. Don’t you think I won’t.”

  “And you’ll do it all by yourself,” the man said, still smiling. Billy nodded.

  The man chuckled. “Then you too are an army of one.”

  “Sure I am.” Billy bristled at the man in black’s mocking tone. “I am an army of one. Just ask your bird.”

  As if on cue, the bloody creature tumbled from the man in black’s shoulder and dropped lightly upon a blanket of small pink corpses.

  Tiny bones crunched underfoot as the man crossed the pink blanket. But he never looked down. Not once.

  Cool air rushed past Billy, sucked into the cave like a breath. He retreated into the darkness of the cave, a torrent of pink things choking past him overhead, the grenade gripped tightly in Ms hands.

  The man in black was silhouetted against a pink sky, sunlight flashing through a thousand furious wings behind him, nothing on his shoulder at all. He said, “The time has come to discuss the terms of your surrender.”

  Billy pulled the pin from the grenade. “I’ll see you in hell first.”

  “If that is the way of it,” the man said, “then I imagine that you will.”

  The mouth of the cave was silent.

  The man in black said not a word.

  Words were useless in this land of shrieking souls.

  The man looked to the trees. Dark, gnarled branches, heavy with tortured pink things.

  Each one, waiting for him to move.

  Each one, waiting to follow.

  The man brushed dust from his dark clothes. Still, he did not rise from the rock on which he sat. The exploding grenade had torn the rock from the collapsing mouth of the cave like some great broken molar.

  And now the mouth was closed.

  The man in black’s master would feast no more today.

  But this knowledge did not trouble the man in black, for he knew well that there were many other caves in this land.

  So he sat upon the broken rock, and he listened to the pink things screeching in the trees, and he watched the skies.

  Soon enough they came. Four of them, flying from the west.

  Three landed in the trees. Their screams sliced an awful counterpoint to the cries of their cursed brethren.

  The fourth broke off and flew to the man in black, who raised a beckoning hand.

  The creature landed on his shoulder, its small talon’s scrabbling over his flesh for purchase.

  The man in black stroked the tiny tiring, for this creature was different from the others. Once, twice, his hand traveled its trembling body. Pink skin smooth under his fingertips… then black down… then stiff black feathers…

  The man smiled and closed his eyes.

  In his mind’s eye he glimpsed a brave boy framed by the ravenous mouth of a cave. And then the mouth closed, and swallowed, and the brave boy was gone, torn to shreds by granite teeth.

  And now there was a blackbird perched on the man in black’s shoulder.

  “What are you?” the man asked.

  The brave boy answered in a voice that was all at once familiar, yet unfamiliar just the same.

  “I am an army.”

  (For Bill Schafer)

  WRONG TURN

  The thing is, they really weigh on you. That’s why digging up the dead is so tough.

  And my father was a real backbreaker. I’m speaking figuratively, of course. I mean, I can’t remember the last time I held a shovel in my hands, and I’m not a dirt-under-the-fingernails kind of guy. I’ve never played things that way. I’ve always liked to think that I used my head.

  Not that I’ve gotten much of anywhere in thirty-five years. The trust fund my mother set up after she remarried has kept me afloat, but I think my monthly stipend equals the average take an inventive person can snag with welfare and food stamps. I’m certainly not one of those rich sons of privilege who motor around Maui with a windsurfing rig when they’re not busy hitting the slopes in Aspen or Vail.

  Dad’s name hasn’t hurt me, though. There are still plenty of people who remember it. It’s funny — people forget directors and writers and producers, but get your face up there on the screen and you’ll be remembered for a long time, even if your claim to fame is portraying a long string of heavies and sad-eyed losers in poverty row quickies. I’ve made more than a few dollars by being the son of a movie star, even if Dad was a star in a lesser constellation.

  Then again, most people remember Dad for the things he did when there weren’t any cameras in sight. That’s what puts the old shine in their eyes.

  Tom Cassady — my old man. Me — Tom Cassady, Junior. I guess Dad wasn’t the most inventive guy in the world. He actually had a dog named Rover.

  But Dad did leave me the name and all the baggage that goes with it. That, and his face. Hard little eyes and pouting lips on a face that is otherwise completely boyish, even when I skip shaving for a day or two. Give Kurt Russell a bad attitude and you’ve got me. I don’t have Dad’s signature broken nose, of course — remember, I use my head. And I doubt that I’ll ever acquire the puffy, dissipated look he had after he got out of prison, the look that made him a primo heavy in his second run at Hollywood, because I don’t drink much.

  But like I said, I’ve made some money with Dad’s face. It’s a handsome face, and I take care of what’s under it. I pump iron, keep my tan just a shade this side of narcissistic, get my hair styled every other week and my back waxed at the same interval. You’ve probably seen me on TV. Lathering my manly chest with Irish Spring. Whipping a bottle of Sharpshooter barbecue sauce from a holster while I wear a squint that would have pleased Sergio Leone. Big hands with manicured nails dishing Happy Chow for some generic Rover. You’ve probably seen me, or at least significant portions of my anatomy.

  But you didn’t know who I was.

  I didn’t know either. That’s why I dug Dad up. I wanted to find out.

  I wrote the book. It was my idea. Cassady: a Life on the Edge. After I sold it, the publisher brought in a pro to rewrite it, a guy who’d ghosted books for several bulimic actresses, a gay running back, and a hamster that spent four years in the White House — in a cage, not in the oval office. The ghost spent a week with me, and I didn’t shut up the whole time. I learned more about myself in that week than I’ve learned in thirty-five years of living. Even now, I think of the ghost’s quiet questions, questions that had always been in my head but had never escaped, and my tongue gets dry.

  The ghost tried to interview my sister, but Jo wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Anyway, he rewrote the book. Just a few minor adjustments. Punched up the prose. Punched up the title. That’s publishing talk. Changed the title to Killer Cassady.

  As it turned out, I didn’t write what was in that book, but it all came out of my mouth. I’ll admit that. And even with everything down in black and white, it came out of my mouth over and over. I toured twenty cities in fourteen days, and my mouth was dry in every one. Then I spent a week under the lights with the syndicated television mud-slingers. And everywhere I ran in those three weeks— lips flapping, sucking air and trying not to sweat as much as I tried to smile — my dead father rode me piggyback.

  The book tour climaxed on the day before Father’s Day. That was the publisher’s plan — as if people were really going to chose a book like mine as the ideal gift for dad. I took my last round of questions in a Chicago studio. Sitting there with a guy who wore too much Jovan Musk and a gaggle of housewives who seemed fascinated and repulsed in equal parts.

  Mr. Jovan Musk worked up to it, lobbing a volley of soft questions my way. And then he asked me, “Do you think your father exploited the fact that he was a convicted murderer to further his career?”

  I didn’t even blink. I took it just the way Dad would have in one of his movies. I answered in a solid, studied whisper, equal portions of sorrow and
shame in my voice.

  And then Mr. Jovan Musk hit me with the follow-up question, the one that surprised me.

  I took that question Dad’s way, too.

  The next time I saw him, on television that afternoon as I passed through O’Hare, the talk show host was wearing a couple of Popsicle sticks on his nose. The sticks were held in place by a generous smattering of gummy white tape. He looked kind of like Lon Chaney, Junior as the Mummy.

  And then I got off of a plane in Reno and it was all over. Or it should have been. I drove to Lake Tahoe, stopping only for gas and a quick bite. I had to use folding money because my credit card had expired while I was on tour. That’s the great thing about expense accounts. Live on one long enough and you lose track of your own money.

  I awoke the next morning in the A-frame cabin I’ve owned for ten years, only to find the red light on my answering machine flashing wildly. I hit the play button and listened to the first three messages. Two local TV shows and a radio call-in show in Sacramento, all wanting me to keep on talking.

  I cut the messages short. It was Father’s Day, but somehow I didn’t want anything to do with my father. Three weeks carrying him on my back, a year digging him up while I wrote the book. I didn’t even want to look in the mirror, because I didn’t want to see his eyes staring back at me.

  So I climbed out of bed and went downstairs.

  And my father was sitting there on my couch, watching me, his hard little eyes peering over a copy of Killer Cassady.

  His pouting lips twisted into that signature grin that always spelled trouble in his films. Wounded, hateful, proud — all at the same time.

  “At least you spelled my name right,” he said, rising from the couch. He straightened his jacket — very shiny sharkskin, the color of a hammerhead — and loosened his skinny black tie, and the way he moved he might as well have said I’m ready to get down to business.

  I hadn’t said a word, but my throat was dry. I didn’t know what to say, but my mouth came open.

  And then I realized that his voice was all wrong.