My wife was Jewish. Before coming to the United States, her parents lived 196 miles from the nearest concentration camp and 32 miles from the city where Adolph Hitler spent his youth.
My wife was born in 1956.
I showed Nadine a book on self-mutilation, letting her look at photographs of men who were so jaded, who so craved unique experience, that they mutilated their genitalia. She was fascinated by the subject, and she seemed particularly interested in a photo of a man's penis which had been surgically bifurcated and through which had been inserted a metal ring.
She told me that the concept of self-mutilation appealed to her. She said that she had grown tired of sex, that all three of her orifices had been penetrated so frequently, so many times in so many ways, that there were no sensations that were new to her. Everything to which she submitted was either a repeat or a variation.
I told her I would make her a new opening, a new hole, and I took her to the forest and I tied her to the cross-stakes and I used a knife to cut and carve a slit in her stomach big enough to take me.
She was still alive when I entered her, and her screams were not entirely of pain. She kept crying, "God."
My white semen mixed with her red blood and made pink.
I wanted to kill the doctor who killed my wife, but I saw him only once after her death and it was with a large crowd and the opportunity did not arise again.
So I rented a small apartment and stocked the shelves with medical books and arranged the furniture in a manner consistent with the way I believed a doctor would arrange it.
The apartment number was 56.
I made friends with a young man who, save for the beard, resembled my wife's doctor fairly closely. I invited the young man into my apartment, smiling, then I showed him the gun and told him to strip. He did so, and I made him put on the white physician's clothes I had bought. I forced him into the bathroom, made him shave, then made him put on the surgical mask.
I had purchased a puppy from the pet store the night before, and I had killed the animal by slitting its throat, draining the blood into a glass pitcher. I splashed the blood on the young man and now the illusion was complete. He looked almost exactly like the doctor who had killed my wife. I had written out the lines I wanted the surrogate doctor to say while I killed him, and I'd typed them out and had them bound in plastic.
I cocked the pistol, handed the pages to the young man, told him to speak.
End Exchange:
DOCTOR: I killed your wife.
ME: You wanted her to die!
DOCTOR: She deserved to die! She was a bitch and a whore!
ME: You killed my son!
DOCTOR: I'm glad I did it! He was a son of a bitch and a son of a whore and I knew I couldn't let him be born!
ME: That means that you deserve to die.
DOCTOR: Yes. You have the right to kill me. I killed your wife and son. It is only fair.
I shot him in the groin, shot him in the mouth, shot him in the arms, shot him in the legs, left him there to die.
In the newspaper article, it said he had bled to death four hours after the bullets had entered his body.
He had been a stockbroker.
I have clipped my toenails and fingernails once each week since my wife died. I save the clippings and store them in a plastic trash bag that I keep underneath my bed.
On the tenth anniversary of her death, on what would have been our son's tenth birthday, I will weigh the bag of nail clippings and then set the bag on fire.
I will swallow ten teaspoonfuls of the ashes.
The remainder I will bury with the body of my wife.
I will use the information gained from the weighing to determine the date and manner of my death.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated on the date of my birth.
My initials are J.F.K.
Cataloguing:
My store has sixteen nonfiction books containing information about llamas. There are five fiction books in which a llama plays an important role. All of these are children's books, and three of them are Hugh Lofting's Dr. Dolittle stories.
I have killed sixteen adults since my wife's death. And five children.
Three of the children were siblings.
The llama has changed my plans. The llama and the retarded boy.
I stare out the window of my store at the dead animal, at the retarded boy next to it, at the occasional gawkers who pass by and stop and whisper. I know that one of them, one of them over whom I have no control, will eventually notify the authorities and they will take the carcass away.
I cannot let that happen.
Or maybe I can.
For the presence of the llama in my alley indicates that I have done wrong and that a sacrifice is demanded.
But who is to be the sacrifice, the retarded boy or myself? Neither of us knows, and we stare at each other. He outside, next to the animal, me inside, with my books. Through the dirty window he looks vague, faded, although the llama still seems clearly defined. Is this a sign? I don't know. But I know I must make the decision quickly. I must act today. Or tonight.
I have measured the body of the llama and it is four feet, ten inches long.
Tomorrow is April 10.
Full Moon on Death Row
Some years ago, a British editor decided to put together an anthology for which authors would write stories based on titles the editor provided. The titles were all clichéd horror images, and the one assigned to me was "Full Moon on Death Row."
I knew I didn't want to feature a literal full moon or a literal death row. That would've been too easy. And too corny. As luck would have it, Dances with Wolves was on television, and I thought, Aha! I'll make "Full Moon" a Native American man's name. I got the idea for making "Death Row" the name of a street from the song "Sonora's Death Row," which appears on the great Robert Earl Keen Jr.'s album West Textures.
Unfortunately, the anthology never came to pass, the editor disappeared, and I shelved the story. This is its first appearance.
***
He saw the man in the casino.
Full Moon thought at first that he was mistaken, that it was only someone with a cowboy hat and dirty blond mustache who looked like the man from Death Row. But then the man turned to face him, staring from across the crowded gaming room, and smiled.
A chill passed through him. It wasn't possible, it couldn't be.
But it was.
It had been thirty-five years, and he himself had grown f from a frightened boy into the middle-aged manager of the tribe's gambling enterprises, but the man with the mustache had not aged a day and looked exactly as he had all those years before, the eyes staring at him from across the noisy smoky room, the same eyes that had haunted his nightmares for the past three decades.
And the man recognized him.
That was the scary part. The cowboy knew who he was. Amidst the turmoil of the room, the people walking from slot machine to roulette wheel to card table, the man stood still, unmoving, staring.
Smiling.
Full Moon looked away. He was sweating, and his legs felt weak. He knew as surely as he knew his own name that the man had not come here to gamble or drink or meet with friends or sightsee or hang out.
He had come for him.
Full Moon looked up, glanced across the room to where the man had been standing.
He was gone.
He saw the other two playing bingo.
Like their compadre, they had not aged a day. Both the man with the patch over his eye and the fat man with the beard looked exactly as they had over three decades ago.
When they'd killed his father.
Full Moon looked around for help, caught the eye of Tom Two-Feathers. He was breathing hard, his heart pounding, but he forced himself to smile at the customers and act as though nothing was wrong while he made his way to the side of the bingo board where Tom was standing.
"What is it?" Tom asked, frowning.
Full Moon gestured toward the le
ft side of the third bingo table. "Do you see—?" he began.
But they were no longer there.
He met that evening with the council, calling them together in a special meeting at his house. Rosalie made sandwiches, John brought beer. The atmosphere was supposed to be informal, relaxed. But Full Moon felt anything except relaxed. He had told no one of what he had seen, had spent the better part of the afternoon wondering what he should do, whether he should ignore it, forget it, tell no one, or announce it to everyone, and he had finally decided that the best course of action would be to lay it out before the council and let them decide what, if anything, was to be done.
By the time the men of the council pulled up in front of his house in two cars and a pickup, he was already starting to wonder if he had made the right decision. Maybe he should have kept it to himself. Maybe he should have discussed it with Lone Cloud first. But it was too late to change his mind now, and he had John get the door while he told Rosalie to either go into the bedroom or stay in the kitchen. "What?" She looked at him as if he had just asked her to strip in public.
"There's something private I have to discuss with the council."
"Private? What do you mean 'private'? There's something you can say to them that you can't say in front of me?"
"I'll tell you about it later," he promised.
"You'll tell me now."
He grabbed her shoulders, held her. "I don't want to fight in front of them. You know what they're like. And you know they don't like women to—"
"You could've told me earlier." She pulled away from I him. "What's with you tonight? Why are you so secretive? What's going on?"
"I'll tell you later."
"So I should just smile and bring in the sandwiches and | keep my mouth shut and leave."
"Exactly," he said.
"I was being sarcastic."
The front door opened. He heard John greeting the council members. "I know you were," he said, dropping his voice. "But please? Just this once? For me?"
She looked into his eyes, licked her lips. "It's bad, isn't it? Whatever it is, it's bad."
He nodded.
She took a deep breath.
"Please?" he asked.
She sighed, not looking at him. "Okay."
He smiled at her, gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. "I know you're going to listen in," he said. "But at least don't let them see you. Keep the kitchen door closed."
She nodded, kissed him back on the lips. "Don't worry."
He walked out of the kitchen and shook hands with Graham, Ronnie, and Small Raven before nodding to Black Hawk and offering the council leader a seat on the recliner. The old man sat down slowly and awkwardly, and the other council members waited until he was settled before sitting on the couch.
Full Moon was silent until John left the room, then came straight to the point.
"I've seen the men who killed my father," he said. "The men from Death Row."
Silence greeted his announcement. "They were in the casino."
Black Hawk shifted uncomfortably on the chair. "Mustache, Beard, and Patch-Eye?" "Yes."
Black Hawk and the others nodded, and Full Moon noticed immediately that none of them seemed shocked or surprised at the news. None of them seemed even skeptical.
"They looked exactly the same," he told them. "They have-not grown old."
Again the members of the council nodded, as though murderers who never aged were an everyday occurrence. He looked from Graham to Ronnie to Small Raven to Black Hawk. Something was going on here. Something he didn't understand. He could feel it in the air, a subtext to the silence. He glanced toward the closed kitchen door where he knew—he hoped—Rosalie was listening.
He cleared his throat. "Has anyone else seen them?" The others looked at each other, shook their heads. "It is only you," Black Hawk said. "You are the one." "Lone Cloud's father was killed there also—" "Have you spoken to Lone Cloud?" "No," Full Moon admitted. "Do not." "Why?"
"This is a council matter. You did the right thing in coming to us." Black Hawk leaned forward. "You have told no
one else?"
"No. But I'm going to tell Lone Cloud."
"You cannot. The council—"
"They killed his father, too. He has a right to know."
"What do you expect to accomplish by telling him?" Ronnie asked. "What do you think he can do?"
"It will only bring pain," Graham said.
"Well, what are you going to do?" Full Moon asked.
"What's the council going to do about this?"
Small Raven's voice when he spoke was frightened. "You are not going to go there?"
He had not known it until that moment, but, yes, that was exactly what he was going to do. "I have to," he said.
Black Hawk nodded. "It is right," he said. "If he saw them, he saw them for a reason."
"But—" Ronnie began.
Black Hawk silenced him with a look. "It is not for us to say."
"I'm telling Lone Cloud," Full Moon said.
Black Hawk nodded. "It is yours to decide."
After the council left, Rosalie emerged from the kitchen. She was scared but supportive, and he hugged her and held her and the two of them sat down in the living room with John and told him about Death Row.
It was after midnight by the time they finished talking and Rosalie was tired and wanted to go to bed, but Full Moon was still wide awake. He told her to go on ahead, he was going to stay up for another hour or so.
He wandered outside, looked up through the cotton-woods at the night sky. There was a warm desert breeze tonight and it carried with it the soothing sounds of the Gila River, many miles away.
Many miles away.
He thought of Death Row. He had not been back to the street, or to Rojo Cuello, since his father had been killed. Neither, to his knowledge, had anyone else from the tribe. It was probably a regular city now, like Tucson or Tempe or Casa Grande, with malls and subdivisions and cable TV, but for himself and for most members of the tribe, it was a bad place, an evil place, tainted forever by its history, its character determined by its past.
He had learned of Death Row from his father. He had been nine, maybe ten, when his father brought him to the hill overlooking the town and pointed out the street to him. It was called "Death Row," his father explained, because so many of their people had died there. Had been murdered there.
His father had been killed on the Row, he said. As had his father before him and his father before him. "They were killed in the street like dogs. Beaten and stabbed while other people, white people, stood there laughing." "But that's against the law."
"Don't make no difference on the Row. The law has no power there. Never has, never will."
"How old is the Row?" Full Moon asked.
A shadow passed over his father's face. "Old."
"How old?"
"It was here before the town. Rojo Cuello grew up
around it."
"Is it older than—?"
"It's older than the tribe," his father said, and that shut him up. Full Moon looked down at the street, and though he'd felt nothing before, there now seemed something sinister about the false fronts on the old buildings, about the wooden sidewalks and the hitching posts. It looked like a street out of a western, the type of movie he loved best, but at the same time it looked different, set apart from that glamorized screen world in a way that he could not identify.
Older than the tribe.
That scared him, and he wondered why his father had brought him there.
"I will die on Death Row also," his father said quietly.
Full Moon could still remember the horrifying, frightening feeling that had lodged in the pit of his stomach when his father spoke those words. "Let's get out of here," he said.
"It won't happen now."
"If we don't come back, it can't happen at all."
"It don't make no difference."
"Why?" Full Moon was cl
ose to panic, as unnerved by his father's attitude of resigned fatalism as by the substance of his words. "We could move. We don't have to stay on the reservation. We could move to California."
"No matter where I move, no matter what I do, I will have to return."
"If you know what's going to happen, then you know how to change it," Full Moon said.
His father shook his head. "If you know what will happen," he said softly, "it will happen."
He had been right.
He'd been killed on the Row less than two years later.
And Full Moon had watched him die.
He stopped the next day by Lone Cloud's house. "You heard?" he asked after his friend had opened the door, invited him inside, and the two of them were seated on the couch.
Lone Cloud looked away, nodded. "I heard."
"What do you think?"
"I haven't seen anything."
"I know that. But what do you think?"
"I think they killed our fathers. I think we should blow the fuckers away."
Yes. Full Moon found himself nodding. He'd known that he had to return to Death Row, but he hadn't known why he needed to return or what he was going to do when he got there. But this sounded right. No, it felt right.
"What if they're ..." His voice trailed off.
"Ghosts?" Lone Cloud finished for him.
Full Moon nodded.
"Dead or alive, we kick their asses."
Full Moon smiled. The smile grew. Then he started to laugh. He hadn't realized how tense he'd been, how tightly wound. This whole thing had frightened him more than he was willing to admit, and it felt good to laugh again.
Lone Cloud smiled back at him, but there was no humor in it.
Full Moon thought of the way the man with the mustache had smiled at him from across the casino.
His own smile faded, his laughter dying.
"We're going to kill those sons of bitches," Lone Cloud said.
Full Moon nodded. "Yes," he said.
But was that really what they should do? Was that what their fathers would have wanted? Revenge?
He didn't know.
He felt like a teenager again, unsure and indecisive. His father had not been there for his high school years, but Full Moon had always acted as though he was, behaving the way he thought his father would want him to behave, doing things that he thought would make his father proud. Somehow, though, he had always fallen short. It was not that he had not done well, it was just that he had the feeling that his father would have expected more from him.
The Collection Page 20
