The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

by Norman Partridge

  No. Not the earth. That whimper came from his throat.

  It wasn’t a whimper of pain. The digging man was lost. Utterly. Completely. He knew that for sure and for certain, and that was what made him whimper. He’d been somebody when he came to this place. Somebody strong. And before that, he’d been somebody else. Somebody who wasn’t strong. But the Chinaman had changed him. The Chinaman had given him a pair of boots with teeth that could bite the earth and make it whimper. And it was the hell of losing that strength that made the stranger whimper like a motherless child.

  He scooped a shovelful of dirt out of the hole. The Chinaman. He seemed a real memory. White hair and coffee-colored eyes that were as pretty as a woman’s. The Chinaman didn’t seem like someone the black man would imagine. Down South, he’d never seen a Chinaman at all. Down South, there were white folks and colored folks, and he’d seen plenty of both in his time.

  That was another piece of it. He punched the shovel into the earth and the crown of thorns bit his wrist.

  Not a crown, a bracelet.

  No matter. Down South, he’d seen a crown of thorns. Down South, there was a church, and in that church was a preacher named Stackhouse, and that preacher named Stackhouse had carved himself a black Jesus with a crown of thorns that made you ache with pure misery could bring Satan’s own bitch to her knees like a gentle lamb. And that preacher named Stackhouse had had himself a son, a boy who didn’t want to have any lamb in him at all. A good-for-nothing lay-about who would do, but not do right. A boy who’d read, but wouldn’t read the good book. He’d read books stolen from the homes of indecent white folks. He’d work his fingers, but he’d work them around a deck of cards or a bottle, not around a shovel or a hoe.

  But the black man held a shovel now, so that preacher’s boy couldn’t be him. Still, the memory seemed so real. And the name was so familiar. Stack…

  What was it, now? Just there on his tongue a second ago, and now it was gone.

  Stack —

  “Stackalee… ”

  The Chinaman’s voice echoed against the walls of the hole, and the black man glanced at the four dirt walls surrounding him before he realized that the word had spilled from his own lips.

  And then he remembered other words. Words heard out the backside of that church Down South, linked up so that they made stories. Stories about an eternal bad man who wore an oxblood Stetson, a man who made church-going women slick between the legs with a sharp glance, a man who shook up the earth with his feet, a man who scared a preacher’s youngest son but scared him with a fear that made his blood surge with all the power of a river come springtime.

  “Stackalee.” The name was on the digging man’s lips, and it seemed to fit there, just the way a man fits a woman.

  He sucked a deep breath. His blood surged. Suddenly, he knew why he was here in this hole with a shovel wired to his hand. He’d made a little mistake, and now he was paying for it with his sweat and blood. The men who’d put him here figured that he could never do what they’d asked of him.

  The men? No, that wasn’t right. The man. That fiery Southern preacher, him so high and mighty, speachifyin’ and preachifyin’. “Dig your hole deep, sonny boy. Gonna take a deep deep hole to hold all your shameless sins.”

  Oh, he could dig a hole deep, all right. Man name of Stackalee, he once dug a hole straight down to hell just so he could kick the devil’s brimstone ass. A man with fanged boots stitched by a Chinaman, he could put the bite to a shovel with those boots, make that shovel work a damn sight harder. Especially if his name was Stackalee.

  “That’s my name,” the man said, no whimper left in him. “Yes, that’s who I am.”

  He punched the shovel into the ground, again and again, and each time he brought it away he expected to see the white face of Satan beaming up at him from below.

  Things didn’t work out that way, though.

  Because, the first time he looked up, expecting to see the unforgiving sun wearing its implacable mask of indifference, there was old Satan, above him, waiting.

  Staring into the pit.

  Smiling.

  The white goblin was gone now.

  Lie was alone.

  She wasn’t supposed to be alone. But neither should she have lain naked in the white goblin’s bed, nor bear the marks of his teeth and lips upon her body. Father’s dark man was to have protected her from all of that. Him, with his six-gun and his magic boots.

  But Father’s dark man was outside, digging in the earth like a mole.

  Father had made the magic boots. Stitched them from the bodies of living bats that jerked and screamed when the dark man pulled the boots onto his feet for the first time. Father had promised that the boots would give the man the strength he had long wanted, and the man saw soon enough that Father’s words were true, because soon enough the dark man’s six-gun thundered and his enemies fell.

  With his fist the dark man crushed a deputy’s skull — not surprised to find that he could do such a thing, but certainly astonished to find that the simpering idiot actually had a brain inside his head. With nothing more than a sharp glance he severed a hangman’s rope, and the thunder in his boots turned the stone walls of a jail to powder and pebble.

  Father took the dark man’s money. Not only for the boots — there was the high price of a fugitive’s room and board, the higher price of silence. But Father told the man how he could get his money back. The man agreed with nothing more than a nod, and in that moment Lie had felt the power of the stranger’s razor-edged glance cut straight to the secret depths of her heart. She had felt, just for an instant, that a man who looked into her soul with such eyes could deal with a goblin who wrote letters that stank of lust and misery. Maybe Father could outsmart that monster, after all. Lie hoped so. For that monster, Father said, dined on human flesh, calculating the riches of a hundred men on an abacus of human bone. That monster, Father said, would fall before no ordinary man.

  But what would Father say now? His terror in fanged boots was digging in the ground like a railroad coolie. What would Father do if he saw that? Cut off the dark man’s feet with his ceremonial axe, the way he had taken the herbalist’s tongue?

  Would Father leave her here with the goblin who ate the flesh of humans?

  No. That could not happen. The very idea of being trapped in this furnace of a place chilled her, like a hot breeze sliced cold as it gusted through a forest of stone cemetery monuments.

  Lie had no faith in her father, a man who had used her as a poker chip. But her faith, somehow, swelled with the power of a razor-edged glance that could never be held.

  Until she looked through the window.

  And saw the pale goblin holding a gun in each hand.

  And her dark man.

  And his blood.

  The men had split the buck’s face into a dozen pieces — at least, that was the way it looked to Midas — but damned if the hardcase couldn’t still manage an uppity little grin.

  “That’s enough, boys.” Something about the buck had suddenly made Midas all twitchy, and he wanted to conclude this matter and get on with the business at hand. “Now, do like I told you.”

  “Damn thing’s gonna fall apart if’n we try to move it,” said one of the men.

  “Bullshit,” said another. “Didn’t fall apart last week when you pushed it over. And that was with me in it.”

  “You mebbe got a point there.”

  Everyone laughed. Even the buck. But when Midas’ men stopped laughing, the buck didn’t. His belly heaved until his eyes filled with tears. Midas waved his men to work with his six-guns, but that only made the buck laugh harder.

  The deadliest gunmen within a hundred miles heaved and struggled like a bunch of field hands, easing the old outhouse from above its horrid well. Midas planned to relocate the communal privy nearer the men’s quarters, and it looked like it was going to be rough going. One of the pistoleros slipped and nearly fell into the brimming shit shaft, grabbing the teetering stru
cture for dear life, his gun-hand suddenly the home of a half-dozen splinters. Rivulets of blood wept from the buck’s split lip but still he smiled full and wide, tittering like a schoolgirl as Midas’ gun-dogs pulled their compadre from danger. “Smells like the gate of hell itself,” one of the men said, and the buck whispered, “Oh, you don’t know, you just don’t know.” And then the buck glanced at Midas, who stood in front of a brand new outdoor privy with a quarter moon cut in the door and

  MRS. MIDAS GERLACH

  PRIVATE

  inscribed just below it, and he looked at the hole he’d dug in the hard earth of Fiddler and he laughed and laughed.

  The gunmen moved the pristine outhouse over the freshly excavated hole. The buck was nearly busting a gut now, tears spilling from his brown eyes. The entire display was an affront to Midas’ sensibilities. He had to make the buck understand, because he didn’t want this kind of thing happening in front of his men. “Death isn’t a laughing matter,” he intoned. “You should go to your grave with dignity. Your last action, digging this hole, has been a noble one. After all, the poets of the Mysterious East tell us that there is no nobler effort then the shielding of true beauty from the undeniable vulgarity which thrives within this vale of — ”

  The buck howled and hooted.

  Midas’ guts were as tight as fiddle strings. He knew his men had noticed his distress, and that wasn’t good. But there was something about the stranger’s roaring laughter that burrowed under his skin like a ravenous tick. And the stranger’s eyes were just as bad, all proud and haughty, cutting at Midas with little razor glances.

  Midas resolved to hold firm. “Now you hush up,” he ordered. “You’re acting like a scared woman. Act like a man.”

  Again a razor glance slashed him, and then the buck shook his head. “Oh, I won’t do that, boss, ’cause I ain’t no man. You’re about to find that out.”

  Now it was Midas’ turn to laugh. “Hear that boys? He ain’t a man, huh? Well… hell… I guess that is pretty plain to see after all.” The men chortled and guffawed, taking his meaning. “So, boy… why don’t you tell us just what you are?”

  The buck spit a red glob into the dust. “I’m a goblin killer,” he said, kicking up a swirl of bloody dust with his shaggy boots.

  The men went at him again, a whirlwind of fists and feet. But the buck refused to fall, and they backed off instinctively — tired, hot and confused — and when they had backed off the buck was still there under the hot sun, just as before, dust swirling around him, the look on his face all grit and sand and vinegar.

  For a moment, it was quiet.

  A low cloud of red dust hung between Midas and the stranger. Neither man blinked. There was no question who the stranger was looking at, no doubt about what he saw.

  Midas waved his guns.

  The men pulled the buck to the edge of the brimming pit, the heels of his scruffy boots not more than an inch from the precipice.

  Midas took aim.

  Two sharp clicks sounded as he cocked his pistols.

  For a long moment, everything was very quiet. Midas smiled, letting the ominous silence hang there between him and the buck.

  And then the buck’s shaggy boots started to scream.

  Lie turned away from the window just as the white goblin cocked his pistols. She could not bear to watch her dark man die.

  She wanted to weep, but this was no time for tears. There was no time for anything now. No time for sadness, no time for dreams. Only time to take what Father wanted. Take as much of it as she could carry.

  Find a horse.

  Escape before the white goblin came for her.

  She moved on her tiny feet as always — slowly, carefully. Even the smallest steps were excruciatingly painful, each one a sharpened shard of bamboo piercing her foot. She was as unsteady as a babe, but she did not stop, did not allow herself to fall.

  Across the room she moved. Slowly, carefully. She reached the palace of the Empress Dowager and removed the structure’s roof.

  Inside was the stink of the white goblin’s gold.

  Gold coins. Paper money, too.

  And on top of it all, an abacus made of human bone.

  Lie’s breath caught in her throat. She snatched up the horrid thing and threw it against the wall. The abacus shattered. Pieces fell, scattering across the floor. Only when the last sliver of bone rolled to a stop did she breathe again.

  Slowly, carefully, she moved to the closet. Opened the door. Rummaged around.

  The carpetbag she found in one corner stank of the white goblin, but it was empty. Soon she had filled it. Some gold, but mostly paper money. Riches as light as foolish laughter.

  The goblin had burned her clothes, but it took no time at all to slip into one of his shirts, which on her was almost as long as a dress.

  Fistfuls of gold coins had rolled into one low corner of the room, a magical pond shimmering there. Paper money was scattered on the floor like the leaves of autumn.

  She knew that she should find a match. Burn some of the paper money. An offering to the Gods, for luck… But what she needed most of all was time. Only time could make her luck.

  Lie knew no God of time, so she hurried onward.

  Midas prodded the stranger’s shaggy boots with the barrel of his pistol. Stitched wings flapped madly. Beady red-black eyes glared up at Midas and his gun-dogs. Angry shrieks spilled from midnight lips. Razor teeth chattered like castanets as two-dozen tiny mouths snapped open and closed, longing for the taste of human flesh.

  “Jesus!” one of the gun-dogs said. “His boots are made outta bats!”

  Midas whispered, “I’ll be damned.”

  “That’s a fact,” the stranger said.

  Midas sneered at the black gunman. Four of the gun-dogs had ahold of the boy, pinning him to the ground. He wasn’t going anywhere, him and his smart mouth.

  Midas grinned. Suddenly, he was real disinterested in the gunslinging buck.

  The buck’s boots, though… now they were another story.

  Again Midas poked at the fanged horrors, running the pistol barrel through a wave of bristly black hair, over a ridge of dangerous teeth. One of the hideous little mouths snapped closed, taking hold of the gun, chewing, razor teeth squealing over polished metal.

  A held breath escaped Midas’ lips. Hell and damnation. He couldn’t believe it. Down in his drawers, his beaver rifle was getting real stiff, just the way it did when he got to studying one of those mail-order catalogs from the fancy ladies’ footwear emporiums back East.

  Squinting, Midas studied the sin-black soles of the stranger’s boots from heel to toe. The rancher’s eye was well-trained when it came to such matters, and these gunboats appeared to be just about his size.

  Such magnificent footwear could not be consigned to the bottom of a shit shaft, that was for damn sure.

  “Get them things off his feet,” Midas ordered.

  The gun-dogs regarded the writhing horrors — leathery wings flapping against tight stitches, teeth whipsawing this way and that in all those awful little mouths, nasty little screams slicing the evening air.

  In a couple of eyeblinks, almost every hand had found a pocket in which to hide.

  Midas spit in the dirt. “Damn your yella hides, boys.”

  Red Bailey was the only gun-dog to be cowed by the insult. He snatched a bowie from his boot and offered, “Maybe I’ll just take ’em off at the nigger’s ankles.”

  “We’d still have to get his feet out of ’em.”

  “Then how about I just slice the damn things apart,” Red said. “We can sew ’em back together later.”

  “No.” Midas scratched his chin. He needed some answers. Maybe there was a trick to getting the damn boots off of the buck’s feet. But if there was, the buck wasn’t going to tell him about it. And the threat of another beating was useless, because the buck had already stood up to the best they could offer. Besides, the poor boy had to know by now that he was bound to die, any way you fi
gured it.

  A grin creased Midas’ face. He should have thought of it before.

  “Don’t do a thing ’til I get back,” he said, starting toward the house.

  Lie slipped into the hallway, one hand on the wall, one hand holding the carpetbag. Swaying on her tiny feet, but moving forward. Gritting her teeth against pain that sliced and stabbed. Searching for a way out of the house other than the front door.

  There were many rooms in the white goblin’s house. Too many. Like a Chinese palace where the rooms connected in almost impossible ways, designed by crafty architects who hoped to trap an eternity of luck.

  Somewhere far behind her, she heard the front door opening. Then she heard the white goblin’s voice. “Those boots your nigger is wearing,” he said, and Lie heard his footsteps whispering over the Indian carpet in the main room, his boot heels ringing on the hardwood hallway that led to the bedroom. “I like the goddamn things. I really like ’em.” She listened as the bedroom door squealed open on dry hinges. “I want you to come outside with me, show me how he takes ’em off without getting his fingers chewed down to the nub — ”

  The white goblin’s footfalls stopped suddenly. Lie could imagine the twisted expression on his face, his anger boiling as he realized that she was not in the bedroom.

  His voice was like thunder. “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!”

  She stumbled down the hallway, searching for an exit, each step agony. Behind her, heavy footsteps shook the house. Still, she did not slow her pace. Not until the white goblin himself turned a sharp corner. Not until his great shadow covered her like a shroud.

  He made a grab for the carpetbag, but Lie refused to surrender easily. She forced him to fight for it. He had to pry it from her hand, finger by finger.

  His free hand closed around her neck. “I paid for you!” he shouted. “You’re my property! Lock, stock, and barrel! That’s the deal!”