The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

by Norman Partridge

  I guess I’d never considered the business end of the proposition.

  The studio laid it on heavy with my family back in Indiana. The body of his car was aluminum, you see. It couldn’t stand up to such a battering. It’s so tragic. What a future he had, and to be left a cripple. Brain-damaged. Horribly disfigured. Better to place him in a private sanitarium. Let the world think him dead. The fans would pry, you understand, torture him. This way he will always be young. And the desert is such a peaceful place.

  Things have been quiet for a long time, but it’s never quiet inside my head. I always demand blue sheets on my bed. When I sleep, I dream of Joselito and Granero and Maera — Hemingway’s bullfighters, all three buried long ago in the rich soil of Spain. I dream of these men in their suits of light, and of angry black eyes and sharp horns.

  The walls of my room are a bright and cheery yellow.

  Evenings I watch the desert sky. On temperate nights the nurses wheel me outside, my faded red windbreaker draped over my shoulders. Wonderful colors bleed overhead, night after night. Always something different, if you’re willing to watch. Sometimes the sky is as red as blood, but it never seems to make any difference, even though I keep hoping that it will.

  I miss the color of blood. Real blood, I mean. I remember the hot brightness rushing out of me as the broken steering wheel speared my chest, remember how I painted myself and painted the Spyder and how the speedometer was masked by a curtain of blood. I remember staring down at the torn pieces of flesh that clung to the twisted metal and clung to my bones and knowing that every piece belonged to me and every drop of blood was mine and everything around me in that moment was as simple and clear as the waxy red shine of that stubby red crayon down in Texas.

  And then they came and scraped me out of the car and stitched me back together. And in time the angry scars faded from scarlet to dull, dusty purple. All of it happened so fast, really, and then it was over.

  And there was no turning back.

  Like with Layla and me. I know that I was right about her and all the others, and about being hungry.

  Like I said: once you get something, you’ll never hunger for it in that same way again.

  But that doesn’t mean you won’t be hungry.

  The walls of my room are a bright and cheery yellow, and the sheets on my bed are blue, and the sky is often as red as blood. But I know that my life is a dull, dusty purple — the color of a scar — and a blood-red sky can never change that.

  Because in this desert the blood in the sky dried long ago.

  And the fog never comes.

  MINUTES

  11:59.

  Moonlight filtered through the oatmeal-colored drapes, bathing the bed in an amber glow. Under the covers, Susan Hunter tossed and turned, caught in the grip of a nightmare.

  Outside, the sound of gravel crunching beneath heavy boots.

  Susan awoke. Her eyelids, smeared with runny mascara, flashed open. Empty green eyes in goblin-black pools.

  The sound. Crunching. Giant iron fists smashing tiny, bleached skulls.

  A temple bell rang. Soft. Then loud. Soft, then loud.

  Susan’s breath caught in her throat.

  On the bedroom drapes, a shadow.

  The oily shadow boiled across the translucent drapes. Susan shook away her dream of giant fists, tiny skulls, and temple bells.

  The shadow loomed larger.

  Susan heard footsteps on the gravel path.

  Crunch. Crunch. Giant fists. Tiny skulls.

  Moonlight pooled on the bedroom floor. Susan clutched the down comforter; she could sense someone staring through the tiny crack where the drapes didn’t quite meet.

  “Randy,” she whispered. “There’s someone outside.” Her hand slipped across the sheets, searching for her husband’s callused fingers. She was ready to forgive every angry word he’d spoken earlier, forget all the biting remarks that had made her cry and —

  A cold, empty space where Randy should have been.

  Instantly, Susan knew that she was alone in the house. She shivered. Her wedding ring felt like a band of ice.

  Damn him. Damn Randy Hunter. He’d slipped out to the bar. He wasn’t going to protect her. She’d have to suffer for his crime all over again, and this time he wasn’t even going to share the punishment.

  Susan wondered if the man outside had planned it that way.

  12:00.

  Gravel crunched beneath heavy boots.

  A brass wind-bell rang in a willow tree. Soft. Then loud. Soft, then loud.

  Willow branches swayed; their twisted black shadows crept fingerlike across the drapes and scratched at the shadow.

  Suddenly, the shadow melted away.

  A booming slam. Metal smashing metal.

  A scream.

  Quietly, Susan picked up the phone. She punched 9, then 1, then hung up, knowing that the law wouldn’t help. Sheriff Conrad hated Randy and pitied her. He’d ask why Randy couldn’t investigate the noises. He’d want to know where Randy was.

  Susan pictured Sheriff Conrad’s stern, cynical face. “In my opinion, judge, Mr. Hunter shows little remorse for his actions. He seems to think that this awful accident was a case of simple bad luck. He doesn’t want to recognize that his drinking was the cause… his neglectful behavior... his childish disregard.

  Susan drew a deep breath, telling herself that she’d only seen a shadow, and that the scream could have been a bobcat.

  Or a drunken farm worker on a midnight tear. Or —

  Susan didn’t want to think about it.

  God, why do we stay here? The middle of nowhere, the back road to hell—

  Gravel crunched. The shadow was back, but this time Susan could make out a head, a torso, and arms.

  Runny mascara burned Susan’s eyes. She waited for the sound of shattering glass.

  The shadow’s left arm came up fast. Something squealed against the windowpane and Susan buried her face in her mascara-stained pillow. When she looked back at the drapes, the shadow was gone. Three heavy lines were smeared on the window, straight lines that left crooked shadows on the pleated drapes. Two were horizontal and parallel; the other was vertical.

  Next to the lines, Susan could make out a fat circle. She watched as a cobweb-thin drip rolled through its center, transforming the circle into a “0.” Her body tightened as she remembered the angry neighbors she’d seen at the courthouse, many of them carrying posters with a red “0” painted over her husband’s name.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered. “Randy isn’t even here. Leave me alone.”

  12:01.

  A wind-bell rang.

  The willow-branch shadows scratched at the lines and the circle. Another booming slam. Metal smashing metal.

  Another scream.

  Susan squinted hard, fighting back tears. She wished that she’d hidden Randy’s car keys, but deep down she knew that hidden keys wouldn’t have stopped him. The fancy dinner that she’d prepared, now sitting cold on the kitchen table, hadn’t kept him home. Neither had the sexy dress, or the make-up. Her special efforts had only made things worse.

  Because they’d never let Randy forget. He hadn’t meant to cripple the Maltin girl. If she hadn’t tried to pass him on that bridge nothing would have —

  “Leave me alone!”

  “But don’t you understand, Randy? We’ve got to talk about it. You just can’t shut me out. I’m your wife, Randy. I want to know what you’re thinking. I love — ”

  “Don’t say it! I’m tired of talking. No one fucking listens! I talk and talk and nobody hears one fucking word!”

  Flashbulb images she was unable to forget: Randy’s hand rising, shaking, nails chewed to the quick, knuckles gnawed bloody; Randy’s hand, tan and steady, holding the wedding ring; Randy’s hand floating in the air, a thing somehow separate from her husband; Randy’s hand, now a fist, punching the kitchen door; Randy’s hand wiping away her tears.

  Susan wiped her crusty mascara. Now t
here were more tears.

  The shadow was back.

  The squealing sound. Susan made herself look. Two more smears on the window, two more snaking shadows projected on the pleated drapes. One vertical. One horizontal.

  Susan bit her lower lip. No one tried to understand Randy’s side of it. Everyone in town had liked him before the accident, liked her too, but they were both treated like ghosts afterwards Randy apologized, but he didn’t seem to understand that apologies couldn’t cover the thing that he’d done. And nobody wanted to hear Randy whisper that the accident was just a bad break, something that could have happened to any of the folks who spent their weekends drinking in the local bars. No one wanted to think about that.

  But Randy could think of little else. Excuses held his guilt at bay. And now one of Randy’s old friends was here at the house, scrawling something on the window, stirring Randy’s guilt.

  Hurting Randy; hurting Susan, too.

  And that was a big part of it, wasn’t it? Because Susan carried Randy’s guilt, too. It ate at her, devoured parts of her that she knew she could never get back. It stole her smile and ripped the life from her eyes. She couldn’t even look at her neighbors anymore, and every time she drove Randy’s dented Camaro into town she felt a little sick.

  “I understand.” She’d said that to Randy over and over until it didn’t mean anything anymore, but no one had ever said it to her. Because no one wanted to understand what hell was really like, not unless they had to.

  Another booming slam. Another scream.

  The oily shadow. The squealing sound. Two more thick circles appeared on the window, one above the other, connected by a vertical line.

  Tears spilled down Susan’s face.

  A wind-bell rang.

  The willow-branch shadows scratched at the lines and the circles.

  12:02.

  There was one bar — a dive out by the highway — that would still serve Randy, and Susan remembered the phone number. She pressed the receiver to her lips, whispering under the covers. She prayed that no one was staring at her through the crack between the drapes.

  Susan remembered the staring eyes of the Maltin brothers burning holes in Randy’s back as he stood before the judge. She remembered the two bearded men holding their sister’s prosthetic hands, patting them, squeezing them when the judge announced the terms of Randy’s probation.

  She remembered wondering if the Maltin brothers thought that metal hooks could feel.

  “I’m sorry, Miz Hunter, but Randy left a good hour ago,” the sleepy barkeep drawled. “Ain’t he come home? Hey, listen, if anything happens he wasn’t at my place tonig — ”

  Susan dropped the receiver.

  12:03.

  Gravel crunched.

  A wind-bell rang.

  Another booming slam. Metal smashing metal. Another scream.

  Crying.

  Susan’s heart thundered. The scream. The crying.

  Randy.

  Unsteadily, Susan rose from the bed and drew a flannel bathrobe over her slim shoulders. She stared at the drapes, trying to separate the tangled shadows from the thick, painted lines on the glass.

  Randy’s work-boots crunched over the gravel path. His shadow melted across the window.

  Susan pulled a cord and the drapes whispered open.

  Randy swayed in the bright glow of the full moon, a relieved smile knifed across his sweaty face. His battered, yellow Camaro was parked on the lawn directly behind him, the hood open and smeared with blood. Randy raised the smashed mess that had once been his callused right hand and pressed it against the bedroom window. Splintered bone and torn flesh squealed wetly across the glass, leaving a bloody trail.

  Susan sank into the shadows, unable to look away. The horrible squealing sound screamed in her ears.

  A backward “e” appeared on the glass.

  Finished, Randy stumbled across the gravel path and, one last time, slammed the Camaro’s hood. Metal smashed metal. He sank against the bloody grille and sobbed.

  Susan moved to the window, reading the backward writing. Two words.

  Forgive me.

  A brass wind-bell rang in the willow branches above Randy’s head. Whimpering, he wrapped his ruined hand in his shirttail and closed his eves.

  Susan’s hands trembled. Black shadows slithered around her fingers and poured, like cold blood, over her delicate wrists. She winced. The tiny bones beneath her palms grated like sharp stones. Her fingers throbbed.

  Staring at her husband, Susan curled her fingers into fists and embraced the pain.

  WHERE THE WOODBINE TWINETH

  When the war was over the living came home. Not a rifle among them but those that had been transformed into crutches or canes, but rifles would not have mattered to men who were tired of war and wounds and death. Their bellies were empty and they broke their swords into plowshares, and they embraced a land they remembered and people they could not forget and wished the simple wish that they had never gone to war.

  Of course, the dead came home, too. They came at night, and warily… their bellies bloated with grave worms, their hearts as heavy as fallen fruit. They marched in tattered battalions beneath willows that whispered in the sultry summer wind, and they paused at forgotten crossroads bordered by thorny brush and bayonet bramble, and they marched on and made their camps in cemeteries where mortal footfalls were seldom heard, far past the place where the woodbine twineth.

  That was how it was with the living and the dead. But others came home, too. Men like John Barter. Barter had seen many places since leaving the South. Places to the north, places with names that he could never forget. Gettysburg… Cemetery Ridge… Devil’s Den…

  But John Barter did not speak of those places. He spoke hardly at all. He came home with a mouthful of bone buttons that he had sliced off a Union sergeant’s uniform. He chewed and sucked those buttons all the way from Virginia, tramping the lonely miles in sunshine and in shadow, and he came home with rags on his feet and seven toes, and he came home with a sword that was as sharp as an officer’s tongue.

  He came home with a fiddle, too, an instrument given him by his wife on the day of his enlistment. A single nail pierced the fiddle’s neck, the wood scissored around it like the slivered hand of Jesus on a crucifix. Still, the fiddle made sweet music. All Barter’s comrades said so… both the living and the dead. Even a Yankee at a distant outpost could be moved to tears by the sound of Barter playing “Aura Lee” on the eve of battle.

  So Barter brought the fiddle home, just as his wife knew he would. He carried it all the way from Virginia wrapped in a mildewed regimental flag, and her heart beat a little faster at the sight of the instrument in her husband’s hands. Of course, the nail that pierced the fiddle’s neck had rusted since she had driven it home on that far-off day, but she had expected that. Time rusted all things.

  Her name was Loreena, and she was a woman only seven years gone from a country very different than this one. That was the reason she knew the things she did. In Loreena’s country, the land was so very green and the shadows so very long that in the end everything was nearly black. Heavy clouds held the people to the land and did not let them stray, but the clouds could have been as heavy as iron and still they would have been unable to hold Loreena. She was a woman made for other places, and she did not fear the heavens and she did not fear the earth.

  Loreena did not fear much of anything. Not the living. Not the dead. As a girl she had learned many secrets from her grandmother, a woman who spoke only in whispers. Loreena kept those whispered words in her head and in her heart. She listened to them still, as she practiced the craft her grandmother had taught her. The old woman’s whispers told her that the world held a place for all things, and Loreena wanted nothing more than to stake one small corner of it for her husband and herself, for she loved John Barter as she could love no other.

  When Barter’s ragged feet crossed the threshold of their cabin. Loreena took the fiddle from his hands. Even
before they embraced, she took it. Barter’s picture hung on the wall, secured by a nail grown nearly as rusty as the one that pierced the fiddle. Barter hardly recognized himself, for the picture had been made before the war.

  Loreena took that picture off the wall as if it were something dead and threw it into the fireplace. Then she grabbed Barter’s fiddle by the neck — as if it were something alive — and she nailed it to the wall in the picture’s place. Finally she parted her husband’s lips with gentle fingers and, one by one, took the bone buttons from his mouth and placed them on the mantelpiece.

  Still, John Barter did not say a word, so Loreena kissed him deeply, and she kissed him long. And when their lips parted she stripped the ragged uniform off her husband’s back and tossed it into the blazing fireplace, and then she took off her clothes and guided her husband’s fingers over her naked flesh until they found the tight circle of silk around her neck.

  Barter’s hands circled that ribbon and his fingers disappeared in Loreena’s long black hair, and beneath that hair at the back of her neck his fingers found a black velvet bag knotted to that silk ribbon, and in that bag were eleven nails — just a little rusty — that pricked Loreena’s neck on moonless nights and brought bad dreams.

  But now those bad dreams were banished… or so Loreena thought. For she believed in magic. And she believed in a twelfth nail that had bound a portrait to a wall of the home she shared with John Barter, just as she believed in the power of a thirteenth nail that was driven through a fiddle’s neck.