by Tony Burgess
Mr. Oncet nods into the phone, then hangs up. He will join the team that is waiting on the riverbank to save little Madison.
Chapter 9
The sun is at the top of the sky, glaring down on the river where Madison and Idaho sit. The view from above, aided by the hot star watching, reveals a scene familiar to science students. You lay a piece of paper over a magnet, then shake some iron filings onto the surface. These filings quickly arrange themselves in furry lines that represent the magnetic field. Each speck of iron takes its proper place, unable to resist the draw of magnetism’s invisible attraction. From above we can see the people of the town crowding into the trees on either side of the bank, arranged in the perfect order of their arrival, in packs that are tightened by the strength of their desire to be here and to see Idaho Winter finally put down, taken out, destroyed.
Idaho and Madison cannot see them. They sit unaware of the masses they have drawn to their tender scene.
“I think, Idaho, that there is something wrong with the order of things,” Madison says. She puts her toes together over the water.
Idaho watches her feet and the shadow they cast, like dark socks waving in the stream’s current.
And then it all breaks.
Driven mad by the scent of Potato, the first hound crashes through the bulrushes. He bounds toward the boy, a massive beast with jaws flung open and nostrils soggy with murderous breath. Idaho falls backward from the log. He closes his eyes and covers his face, waiting for the mad hound’s mouth to crush his body. CRUNCH! CRUNCH! Idaho rolls to the side, feeling the teeth enter and join in his spine, then he lets himself go limp. What’s this? His eyes are open. He is breathing. How am I alive? The pain didn’t last. They didn’t reach me! he thinks. What he felt was the effect of his own imagination on his body.
He sits up quickly and pats himself. Nothing. No bites. No wounds. Then he hears a soft, unbearable, tiny cry. Madison is still sitting on the log. She turns to him, her face shimmering strangely and her lips white as white mice. Idaho pulls himself up to the log in time to see the giant dogs, all three, fighting wretchedly over some morsel in the water. They snarl and snap then toss the thing into the air. Madison’s little pink foot, small and perfect as a charm plucked from a bracelet, turns end over end in the cool air under the trees that hang over the river. Then the other one, her other foot, from the same bracelet, rises into the air above the clapping fangs of the hell-hounds. They did attack Idaho all right. They attacked the faint trace of him left on the soles of her feet. The kindness left there, really, the residue of the only sweet moment in his entire wretched existence, has become bait left behind for devil dogs. The town’s people’s faces hang in the trees like hundreds of clocks. The moment is too terrible. No one can move or speak. Even Madison has not moved. How can she? She has no feet.
Idaho stands. I have to confess this startles me, because I’m certain, as the story’s teller, that originally I had Oncet speaking first, before Idaho stood. But I could be wrong. Maybe Oncet speaks after Idaho stands. But then Idaho runs. He runs away. And this, dear reader, is very strange indeed. You may think running away is normal. You may even think it’s excusable. The poor boy is now indescribably unhappy and has no reason to believe he won’t be blamed for this shocking outrage. No, the fact that he runs away is strange for this simple reason: it’s not part of the story I was telling.
It was Oncet who was supposed to speak. I remember clearly now. He speaks and says something sad and true about the unfair way Idaho has been persecuted, about it being the direct cause of Madison losing her feet. That’s what he says. Then he goes on to say that the unfairness of this, the poor girl having to live a footless life, is an outward sign of inward blindness to the consequences of cruelty toward Potato. And then I had the townspeople sitting down where they stood, with baleful, regretful faces and heavy hearts, because the hatred they had nurtured in their souls had torn into innocence with such pitiless fury. This was the wide and important scene I was going to describe. You can see how satisfying it would have been. But instead, Idaho has stood, quite independent of me saying so, and fled the scene that I so carefully prepared. Back up over the bank and through the bushes he goes. I think it’s ridiculous, but I follow him. Behind me I hear the girl’s screams. She’s screaming! That was absolutely not part of my story, I swear. Something has gone terribly wrong.
As I chase after Idaho, the goldenrod whipping my legs and the horrible flies beating into my cheeks, I hear an angry roar from behind. The town is chasing him, too! I look over my shoulder and catch a glimpse of them, rocks and sticks swinging over their heads, as they take off after the fleeing boy. This is appalling. They’ll surely kill him, instead of, as I had carefully planned, sitting in a healing circle and saying how sorry they were about being so mean. His heart was to be reborn then, at that moment, like a terrible villain that sees the world anew and becomes the best person of all. That’s what was supposed to happen and I was going to throw in a special operation where they attach Idaho’s feet to Madison’s legs and everyone in town offers to push his wheelchair for the rest of his life. It was to be the greatest story of human redemption ever told! Weak, old Mr. Oncet shoving Idaho’s chair up the ramp at the library. There wouldn’t be a dry eye. My story was going to change lives. But no. Not now. Now, he’s run off to who knows where and the town appears to have become even more murderous. And that poor girl is lying on her back, waving two sad stumps at the sky and, no doubt, cursing everyone.
I scramble up a sand dune that leads to a soccer pitch and spy Idaho at the far end, moving fast between the goalposts and out onto the empty road. Empty, I think, because everyone has joined the rioting mob, pounding like wild horses up the stream toward me. Idaho climbs aboard what looks like a moped parked on the street. I run as hard as I can but the machine whizzes off, disappearing toward the edge of town, in the direction of his house. I am out of breath. I have been running in a story that I should merely be telling. I should be sitting comfortably, gathering my thoughts and carefully laying them into neat sentences, not doubled over on a sports field that had only been a passing detail in the story I was telling a moment earlier. I have to keep moving, because honestly, the angry villagers behind me have lit some branches on fire and are waving them menacingly as they approach. I can’t say for sure that they don’t mean to do me harm as well. Curious that I’m a me now, another person out in the open, exposed to the violence of the narrative, but there’ll be time, later, I hope, to examine exactly how my story broke apart. I run to the side out of their path, hoping they’ll just miss me. And they do. They stampede like a frantic herd, thundering the ground with heavy feet and shattering the air with wide warrior mouths. I seem to have filled this story with quite an impressive cast of characters.
Actually, I can’t be sure, but it looks like there may be more people here than I remember. I can’t be certain of anything now. I wait until the mob disappears up the middle of the road and around the corner, then I approach a car parked by the field. The windows are down and keys lay on the seat. Things just seem to fill in their own details around here. I hop in, start the car, and then race up toward Glen Avenue, where I can, if I’m not mistaken, overtake the townspeople and get to the Winter house before them.
Chapter 10
The front door of the Winter residence is open. The hallway is littered with corn husks. Blood-spattered cobs. There was a part of this story where Early sewed corn husks directly into the skin on his son’s back — a kind of fall jacket, for when the weather got colder. I know I thought of it, but I can’t be sure if I put it in. Doesn’t matter now. I hear the hall closet door click as it closes.
“What do you want?”
Early is inches from me with his long streaky mug of evil, the sickly sweet breath of rotting meat. I really wish I’d made him into a more helpful character.
“I want . . . I want . . . to help.”
It’s
all I can say. I’ve never written dialogue for myself. Being confronted by an unsavory character from your imagination has a way of twisting your tongue.
Early grunts and closes an eye. He sucks brown spit off his lip through a filthy gully in his gums. I don’t know what he’s going to do. I can’t take any chances. I shove him as hard as I can. Both hands plow into his chest and he goes back. Crumples and falls. He’s weaker than I thought. I feel the long hook of his yellow toes scratch my shins as I dive for the closet door, open it, and fall headlong into its darkness.
Idaho is sitting on the floor, his eyes peering out from under the heavy coat hanging above him. We stare at each other. My breathing seems loud. I swallow. He leans forward to see me.
“Who are you?”
I don’t have a clear answer. This is definitely an area I don’t work in.
“I’m nobody.”
Idaho locks his eyes on me. They’re slate gray. I didn’t know that. Or, at least, you didn’t. That is to say, I’ve never described them before. How can something I invented be put together with details that were not put there by me?
“You’re somebody. What are you doing here?”
I look around. The closet is dark. Our faces are lit from below by a soft light coming up from under the door. I rub my chin to appear like I’m thinking. I have some beard growth. I shudder, wondering how my own details are emerging. From where? What are the rules here?
“When you were five you wanted to make everyone disappear, so you spent three entire days with your eyes closed.”
Even in the dark I can see the color leaving Idaho’s face. “How do you know that?” he says.
I smile, trying to appear friendly, sympathetic.
“When you opened your eyes to see if the world was still there, your shoes, the only pair of running shoes that were ever bought for you, were gone. Your eyes opened and the shoes had vanished. They ran away from you. That’s when you knew that it wasn’t just people that were cruel. So was the inanimate world. Things hated you, too.”
“Who are you?”
I lower my head some. He has never experienced respect before. I figure I’ll give him some now, just to ease us along.
“Who are you?”
“I’m a writer.”
“How do you know these things about me?”
“I wrote them.”
He pauses for a moment. This isn’t something anyone should believe very quickly. If I told you that everything about you had been just made up by someone, that all of your thoughts, all of your memories, even the things you chose to say had been invented and that they weren’t real, that you weren’t real, would you believe me? I don’t think so.
“I believe you.”
He believes me. Just like that.
“Are you sure?”
He is sure and I think I know why. I think it’s possible that this is the first believable thing he’s ever heard. I have to admit, I have played pretty loose with old Idaho. Disappearing shoes and mad conspiracies of loathing — these things lack a certain veracity. His world, as I’ve written it, isn’t particularly credible. It would appear he has suspected as much all along. He is giving me a very nasty look.
“Why?”
I smile again. I’m trying very hard to appear on his side. “Why? Well, that’s a good question. Storytelling is what makes us human. It’s what separates us from beasts. It makes us who —”
“No. I mean, why did you make my life so miserable?”
“Well, that was all going to end soon. If you had just gone along with it for —”
“Gone along with it? Gone along with it? The crossing guard directs traffic to run me over! People raise dogs for the sole purpose of killing me! My story is so cruel it isn’t even believable!”
“No, maybe you’re right. Maybe I went a bit too far, but that’s what people want now. There’s an expectation that children be treated poorly in their literature. Everyone wants to see children treated badly. So that . . . well, so that when they triumph over evil we all feel lifted up. It’s inspirational.”
“A dog ate my only friend’s feet off because they had my scent.”
“Yes, you’re right. I agree, it’s bad. I’m possibly not as good a writer as some of those others. And so some of these things may seem a little coarse, a little extreme. But these terrible things aren’t for no reason!”
“Oh, really?”
“Really. There’s a scene coming up with Madison in the hospital explaining how you had cleaned her feet and everybody’s saying, ‘You mean he’s really a nice kid?’ and things like that — everybody totally changing their minds about you. They declare a special Idaho holiday where everybody in town is encouraged to take a neglected child out to lunch and, I have to tell you, if the story has been a little less than subtle in places, you’ll forgive it all when the love starts flowing in the streets. You’re the hero, Idaho.”
I grin. I feel pretty strong about this story and I guess, even though I’m spoiling the conclusion right now, it feels pretty good to be personally delivering this news to Idaho. After all, I am the one who makes it all meaningful in the end. Why not get a little early satisfaction?
Idaho isn’t smiling. He has a dark look in his eyes. And then a little twinkle. There, it’s beautiful. It’s so wonderful to see him rising above the suffering as I guide him to a better place. Maybe this is a better book now.
“It’s all made up? Everything that goes on out there is just what you came up with?”
“All made up,” I laugh. “It’s sunny today, because frankly, I’m terrible at describing weather. It bogs me down.”
“And nobody out there knows this?”
“Well, honestly, this business with you knowing is a bit shocking. No, I really don’t quite know what to make of you right now.”
“Maybe it’s time I made something of me.”
“Well, yes. That lesson is implied by the end of the story. You are freed to be yourself and to be who you want that to be. You know, morals to stories never bear much scrutiny. It’s enough to just picture us all at our best in the end. Something like that.”
Idaho’s twinkling eyes dart to the door then back to me. And then he pushes me over. I fall onto the closet floor. The door open and closes. He’s out!
I lie there for moment, astonished. My hands are on the floor. I feel a fine dust. How does dust get here? I can see there being a floor. I mean when you say there’s a closet, the generic parts are implied, right? A floor, coats hanging, some shoes, and a few boxes perhaps — these things are filled in automatically when you put the closet in the story. But dust? More like sand, really. How are these details getting in?
I stand, pushing coats and kicking boxes. I will have to find my way out of here, slip past people and retrace my steps to where this began. I’d like to believe that I’ve fallen asleep or something, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. This is still a book, isn’t it? You reading. Me here. Because here I am. Standing in the dark. Dark. That’s a good word, isn’t it? It’s not often we see the process so clearly: you above, and the word below, and then, even further below, me. Only, I’m not supposed to be here. My story is supposed to be here. I’ve got to get out.
I push the door slowly, to peer out first. I don’t want to run into Early. I wish I had kind of toned some of the meanness down.
No time to say for sure.
The door only opens a smidge and then it hits something. I push a little, and it makes contact with something soft, but it won’t open any further. I crane my head around to see. It is a wall of scales. Scales the size of plates. That’s what it is. I think we can dispense with the usual niceties of description, don’t you? I’m not making things up anymore. I didn’t put this scaly wall here, blocking my way. It’s not even particularly easy to describe. Greenish-blue. I put my hand out to touch. The wall’s
rough, almost sandpapery. It suddenly moves. The entire wall moves, dragging loose skin against the door. The skin breaks and starts gathering in the doorway as the wall slides along. I think it’s shedding. Yes, that’s it. It’s using the door to hold the old skin back as it pushes forward. Shedding. I think that this wall must be a snake. A giant snake. The biggest snake ever.
Idaho.
Idaho is making things up. He put a giant snake here to keep me captive. I pull the loose skin down around my feet and push it to the back of the closet, and then I throw all my weight into the door. It opens a smidge wider. I roll through. I hear a noise. It’s a girl crying. There’s a girl crying up ahead. Oh, Idaho! What have you done? I run from the room, into the hallway. The snake is slithering beside me, its body as long as the building, as high as my head. The hallway shouldn’t be this long! The girl’s screams grow louder. Then I reach the snake’s head. Only it’s not a head.
The snake’s neck tapers into a torso: the upper body of Early Winter. He’s flailing and shrieking and hammering the ground with his fists. His voice has a hideous highness because his mouth has been shrunk to a tiny hole under his nose — a little whistle hole. Through it comes a terrible piercing tweet as he writhes and twists on the end of a vast serpentine body. His eyes are closed as he winces. Pain. Then I see across to the other side of the snake. His hound is devouring the part where snake becomes man. Its slathering jaws are sinking in and shaking the flesh between the two, the snake part and the person part, and blood and orange fat is sliding down onto the floor. I cannot bear to watch for another moment. This is the most horrid scene I could ever imagine. But I didn’t imagine it, did I? This is his work, Idaho’s doing. The first thing he imagined. His cruel and hasty revenge thought up on the spot as he left the closet. By the look of it, he didn’t give it much thought. It wasn’t thought out at all; it was a sudden grotesque feeling that must have just sprung to life. I cannot stay here. The mindlessness of this scene frightens me to the core.
