They looked to their left at the sound of the voice. Patch-Eye emerged from the sheriff's office, arms raised in surrender. He began walking toward them, and there was something about the lack of hesitation in his movements, his obvious lack of fear, that made Full Moon uneasy.
Full Moon raised his rifle. "Stop right there!" he ordered.
The man continued walking.
Lone Cloud gripped his .45, straightened his arm.
"Wait," Full Moon said. "Don't shoot him. Let's hear what he has to say."
"Halt!" Lone Cloud yelled.
Patch-Eye moved toward them, arms still raised. This close, Full Moon could see that his skin was not all skin. Most of it was, but it was so old that it was cracked and split, and the fissures were filled with what looked like painted hair. It was as though the form they were looking at was a mask, a hastily repaired costume that hid the real creature within.
"I don't think he's human," Full Moon said.
"We killed the other two, we can kill him. Whatever he is, he can die."
Lone Cloud had not even finished the sentence when the knife sliced open his upper arm. He screamed, dropping the gun.
Patch-Eye stood unmoving, arms still raised.
Full Moon jumped back, startled. His grip on the rifle tightened, and he glanced quickly to the left and the right. Who had thrown the knife? Beard and Mustache were still lying on the ground. And Patch-Eye had had his arms up the entire time.
Or had he?
Full Moon had been half looking at Lone Cloud as he spoke. Could Patch-Eye have moved that fast, throwing the knife and then immediately putting his hands back up in the air?
"Why are you trying to kill us?" Full Moon asked.
Patch-Eye looked at him, smiling. "Why are you trying to kill us?"
"Why did you come looking for me?"
"Why did you come looking for me?"
"You killed my father."
"And you killed my friends."
"You killed my father's father. And his father." Full Moon swung the rifle over. "And now I'm going to kill you."
"This isn't part of the deal," Patch-Eye said.
"What deal?"
"This wasn't in the bargain."
Before Full Moon could ask another question, the man's face exploded in a spray of red.
Lone Cloud dropped the shotgun and fell to his knees. He rolled over on his left side, clutching his wounded right arm and closing his eyes. "Got the fucker," he said.
The wind was now completely gone. Full Moon looked from one body to another, then glanced down the street. Behind the windows of the buildings, he saw faces. The faces of the dead. Some were faces he knew, others were familiar but not immediately recognizable, related to faces he knew. One by one, they disappeared, winking out of existence like lights that had been switched off. The faces were still troubled as they stared at him, still frightened or in pain, as though their owners did not realize what had happened, but in the instant before they winked out of existence, an expression of gratitude passed over each.
Full Moon bent down next to Lone Cloud, and as he helped his friend stand and saw the dirt of Death Row blur and shift in his sight, he realized that he was crying.
He left Lone Cloud at the hospital in Rojo Cuello.
He'd planned to stay, to wait around until his friend's arm was patched up, but that was going to take several hours, and because it was a knife wound, the hospital was required to inform the police, and there would probably be several more hours of questioning.
Lone Cloud told him to leave, to drop him off and go.
To return and confront Black Hawk.
There was an ambulance in front of the casino when he arrived back at the reservation. Inside, a huge crowd had gathered around one of the blackjack tables, and Full Moon pushed his way through the gawkers until he reached the front.
"Jesus," he breathed.
John and Tom Two-Feathers moved next to him, and he turned toward them. "What is it?" he asked.
John licked his lips. "Black Hawk," he said.
Full Moon looked down again at the floor. All that was left of the council leader was a brown spiderlike thing that walked lamely around in a closed circle, hissing and spitting at those who looked upon it. The two paramedics, who had obviously arrived some time ago, stood with their stretcher, unsure of what to do.
This wasn't in the bargain.
Full Moon climbed onto the top of the blackjack table, raising his arms for silence. He glanced around the casino, making sure everyone could see him, and he told them what had happened. He told them of his father and his father's father and all of the other tribe members who had been killed on Death Row over the years, their deaths blamed on either outlaws or cowboys, whites or Mexicans. He told them what he had seen, what he had heard, what he had learned, and there was silence in the casino.
The thing that had been Black Hawk screamed, a high, piercing, almost birdlike sound, and Full Moon jumped off the table.
"This is for my father," he said.
He lifted his leg, brought his boot down hard on the creature's body. There was a loud crack and a lower squelching sound, and the hairy brown legs protruding from beneath his boot jerked once and then were still. Red blood spread outward in uneven rivulets, slowly pushing a gum wrapper and cigarette butt across the cement floor.
"What was he?" someone asked, and everyone looked around, searching the faces of the older people, who shook their heads, confused.
"Traitor!" White Dog yelled, and spit on the dead body of the Black Hawk thing.
The other council members, gathered behind the paramedics, were backing up, frightened by the mood of the room.
"Kill them, too!" someone yelled. A woman.
Jimmy Big Hands and White Dog grabbed Ronnie, the nearest council member.
"Let him go," Full Moon said quietly.
"What?"
"Let him go. Let them all go."
"But they knew!" White Dog yelled.
"They knew, but they are still here. They are not like him. They are like us."
He didn't like using words like us and them. It made him uncomfortable, and he thought of the whites on the Row who had stood and watched and laughed as his grandfather had been murdered in the street. But, like it or not, it was true, and once again he held up his hands. "It's over!" he announced. "Death Row is dead. It's over."
He looked around the room at the members of the tribe, the eyes, old and young, that were trained on him, and suddenly he felt like crying. Other people were crying already. Older people mostly. People who remembered. He saw the faces of the men and women he'd grown up with, his friends and family. He scanned the crowd for Rosalie but didn't see her.
"She's at home," John said, touching his elbow.
He nodded, and the crowd parted before him as he started to walk. The people were silent as he headed toward the door, and he walked out of the casino, outside, and into the sunlight.
He looked up at the sky, the sun, the clouds, breathing deeply, the tears beginning to flow.
His father, he knew, would have been proud.
The Show
In high school, a student in my class claimed to have seen a snuff film. No one thought he really had, but he traded on that story for our entire senior year. I didn't believe him either, but the idea haunted me, and when I was in college I decided to write a story about a teenage boy who watches a snuff movie. I had just seen Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd on TV, and it occurred to me that maybe snuff films were not murders staged specifically for the camera but were, like Sweeney Todd, filmed plays, events produced for live audiences that also happened to be recorded. I liked the idea of the boy going to a snuff "show," and wrote this story.
***
My parents were fighting again in the front of the house, my dad calling my mom a stupid boring bitch, my mom calling my dad a cheap insensitive bastard. I closed the door to my room and cranked up my stereo, hoping it would drown out the screaming, but t
heir words ran as an angry undertone to my music, the meanings clear even if the words weren't. I lay on the bed, reading a Rolling Stone, forcing my mind to concentrate on something else.
When the phone rang, I answered it immediately. I half hoped it would be for one of my parents, which would at least provide a momentary break in the battle, but it was only Jimmy. "Hey," I said. "How's it going?"
"Parents fighting again?"
"What else?"
He cleared his throat. "How'd you like to do something different tonight? I mean really different?"
"What?"
"I can't tell you."
"Knock off the crap."
"Look, do you want to do something tonight, or do you want to sit there alone and listen to them fight?"
He had a point. "Okay," I said. "What's the plan?"
"You just meet me at my house in fifteen minutes. I'll drive. We have to be there by eight." He laughed. "You're gonna love this. It's gonna blow you away."
My curiosity was stimulated and he knew it. "What is it?"
"You'll see. And make sure you bring some bucks. It cost twenty dollars last night, but the guy who took me said it's sometimes more." He laughed again. "See you."
I hung up the phone and slipped on my shoes. I pulled a shirt from the pile next to my bed, grabbed the pickup keys from the dresser, and carefully opened my bedroom door. They were still arguing, their screaming now more furious, their words more overwrought. They were in the living room, and I crept down the hall into the kitchen and snuck out the side door.
Outside it was still hot. The dry desert heat had not dissipated with nightfall, and Phoenix was not blessed with a breeze. Above me, the sky was clear and I could see billions of stars. There was no moon.
I pulled up in front of Jimmy's house five minutes later. He was already outside, sitting on the hood of his Jeep, waiting. He walked toward me as I hopped out of the pickup, his boots clicking loudly on the asphalt driveway, and there was something in his expression I didn't like. "All right," I said. "What're we doing?"
"We're going to a snuff show," he said.
I stared at him, not sure I was hearing right. "What did you say?"
"I didn't want to tell you until we were there, but then I thought it would be better to prepare you for it."
"A snuff movie? One of those movies that show someone actually getting killed?"
"Not a movie," Jimmy said. "I didn't say snuff movie. I said snuff show. This is a live show."
My mouth felt suddenly dry. "You're bullshitting me." "I'm serious. I saw it. I was there last night." "It has to be fake," I said. "It can't be real."
"It's real."
"I know a guy who saw one of those movies, and he said it was real cheap and amateurish. He said you could tell it was fake. I mean, if legitimate movies have a tough time showing realistic deaths, these guys with no budgets at all must be really bad at it."
"It's not a movie," Jimmy said. "And it's real."
I looked at the expression on his face, and there was no horror or revulsion in it. There was only an open interest and what appeared to be a look of excited anticipation. Jimmy was not stupid, and I realized that if he thought the show was real, it probably was real. I thought suddenly how little I really knew my best friend.
"Come on," he said, motioning toward his Jeep. "It's getting late. Let's go."
I shook my head. "I don't think I want to go."
"Yes, you do," he said. "Come on."
And I followed him to the Jeep.
We drove in silence. I looked out at the empty streets of Phoenix as we drove toward the outskirts of the city. I really didn't want to see this. But I remembered the time when Jimmy and I were both eight and we had seen an even younger boy hit by a brakeless Buick. The car had slammed into the boy's tricycle, and the kid had been carried halfway down the street, his head smashed into the vehicle's grille. I had thrown up then, as had Jimmy, and I had had nightmares for months. But in school, on my papers, I had drawn endless variations of the accident, and I realized that I was both attracted to and repelled by the incident.
Despite my conscious objections, I had a similar perverse interest in seeing the snuff show.
I was repulsed by the very thought of it, but I wanted to see it.
The buildings of the city became more run down and spaced farther apart. The fast food franchises were replaced by neon-lit massage parlors and bars. We traveled through one stretch of road which was still desert, though it was technically within the city limits.
Jimmy pulled into a crowded parking lot in front of a low pink building. A string of white Christmas lights hung in an inverted arc over the warped wooden door, and a faded mural on the side of the building had a picture of an eight-ball and a pool cue. The building was flanked on both sides by vacant lots in which tumbleweeds and cacti grew in abundance. Jimmy looked at me. "You have your wallet?"
"In my front pocket," I said. "I'm taking no chances."
We got out of the Jeep and walked across the gravel parking lot to the door of the building. Jimmy pulled open the door and walked in.
A table was situated right next to the entrance. On the table was a metal cashbox and two stacks of papers, each weighted down with chunks of rock. A fat, bearded man who looked like Charlie Daniels nodded at us from behind the table. "Thirty-five," he said.
Jimmy pulled two twenties from his pocket, and the man gave him a five. "Sign the release," the man said.
I paid my money, then looked over the form the man gave me. It was a pseudo-legal document which stated that I knew exactly what was occurring there tonight and that I was directly involved in the actions. I didn't know if such a document would hold up in court, but I understood that the people in charge were trying to intimidate the viewers from talking about what they'd seen. I signed on the line at the bottom.
The man glanced over the form. "Address and driver's license," he said, handing it back to me.
I felt suddenly afraid, intimidated myself, but I filled out the information anyway. I followed Jimmy down a short, dark hallway.
We went into a large, crowded room. In the center of the room, a woman was tied naked to a chair. Her mouth was gagged, but her eyes looked wildly around, as if searching for some means of escape. There were large bruises and welts on her white skin. Standing around the woman in a rough semicircle, quiet and shuffling, were thirty or forty people, mostly men, some women. Next to the chair, on a table, was a pistol, two knives, a screwdriver, a hammer, a hacksaw, and a length of wire.
Jimmy and I stood silently with the rest of the crowd. I felt suddenly sick to my stomach. I could see from the bound woman's frantic eyes that she was scared to death. She was about to be killed. And all of the people standing impassively around her had paid money to watch her die.
I stared at my shoes, looked around the unfurnished room, counted the cracks in the plaster ceiling—anything to keep from looking into the haunted eyes of the doomed woman. Once I glanced toward her, and I saw her squirming crazily, trying to release herself from her bonds, but the ropes were tight and the gag was securely in place. I looked quickly away.
Finally, a man came in and began setting up a videotape camera. He brought with him two sets of lights, which he placed at right angles to the woman. The room, which had been warm, grew even warmer with the lights, and the still air was heavy with human sweat. I was not sure I'd be able to stay for this.
And then the cameraman took off the woman's gag and she started screaming. Her voice was high, raw, filled with utter terror, and her screams came in short staccato bursts. The cameraman began filming. I put my hands over my ears. The people around me watched dully, their faces unreadable.
A man wearing a woman's stocking over his head came into the room and walked up to the woman. He pawed her naked body, touching her everywhere. She struggled so hard to get away from him that the chair tipped over. He calmly righted it and continued with his exploration of her body.
Th
e whole thing lasted little more than half an hour. The stockinged man used the hacksaw to cut off big toes and fingers. He used the wire to tie breasts. The smell of sweat in the enclosed room was soon overpowered by the stronger smell of blood and death.
The man used both knives.
She was already unconscious from the hammer blows when he shot her in the head.
I had seen it all, I had not thrown up, I had not turned away. But I felt filthy, unclean, covered with blood although none of the flying blood had touched me. The document I had signed had been right—I was part of the murder, I was responsible. And I felt as guilty as if I had been wielding the knives.
I said nothing to Jimmy on the way back, and I got into my pickup without even saying goodbye.
At home, my parents had finished fighting. My mom was sobbing in the bedroom, and my dad was drinking from a bottle and watching TV. He looked accusingly at me as I let myself in. "Where the hell have you been all night?" he demanded.
"Jimmy's," I said.
He turned back to the TV, and I walked down the hall to my bedroom.
In my dreams, the woman was naked and screaming and begging for her life. And I smashed her face with the hammer, bringing it down again and again and again.
I did not call Jimmy for two weeks.
He did not call me.
When Jimmy finally did call, his voice was worried, scared. "Did you get anything in the mail lately?" he asked straight out.
"Like what?"
"Can you come over?" he asked. "Now?"
I didn't really want to go over to Jimmy's, but something in his voice told me that I should. "I'll be right there," I said.
My parents were arguing again. Or rather, my dad was arguing. My mom was crying incoherently, obviously drunk. She had been drunk a lot this past week, and she had been less willing to engage him in battle than usual. I wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.
I drove to Jimmy's with the windows down. It was cooler tonight, and there was no need for the air conditioner.
He was again sitting on the hood of his Jeep, just as he had on the night we'd gone to the snuff show. Merely seeing him again made me feel unclean, brought back to me the horrible depravity of that night, and my stomach started churning. I remembered that he'd said he'd gone the night before, and I wondered if he'd gone since then. I could not imagine anyone wanting to sit through that butchery more than once.
The Collection Page 22
