by Youers, Rio
He was coming at Adam Nichols like a trusting drunk who finds a friend and knows the friend will see him home.
“Get that one,” said Jordan, the American college professor. “That one is yours.”
Yes, Adam Nichols thought, the old man is mine. We have talked about goats and cats and doves.
Adam Nichols sighted. He took in a breath and held it. He waited.
The old man stumbled toward him.
Come, old man, Adam Nichols thought. Come with your chest burst apart and your terrible appetite. Come with the mindless brute insistence that makes you continue. Come to the bullet that will give you at least the lie of a dignified ending. Come unto me, old man. Come unto me.
“You let him draw too close,” Miguel said. “Shoot him now.”
Come, old man, Adam Nichols thought. Come, because I am your luck. Come because I am all the luck you are ever going to have.
Adam pulled the trigger. It was a fine shot. It took off the top of the old man’s head. His glasses flew up and he flew back and lay on the fogheavy ground.
“Good shot,” Jordan said.
“No,” Adam said, “just good luck.”
3.
In A Hole In The Mountain
It is not true that every man in Spain is named Paco, but it is true that if you call “Paco!” on the street of any city in Spain, you will have many more than one “Que’” in response.
It was with a Paco that Adam Nichols found himself hiding from the fascist patrols. Paco’s advanced age and formidable mustache made him look Gitano. Paco was a good fighter, and a good Spaniard, but not such a good communist. He said he was too old to have politics, but not too old to kill fascists.
Adam Nichols was now a communist because of some papers he had signed. Now he blew up things. For three months, he had been to a special school in Russia to learn demolitions. Adam Nichols was old enough now to know his talents. He was good at teaching young people to speak Spanish, and so for a while he had been a bored and boring high school teacher of Spanish in Oak Park, Illinois. Blowing up things and killing fascists was much more interesting, so he had gone to Spain.
There were other reasons, too. He seldom let himself ponder these.
The previous day, Adam Nichols had blown up a railroad trestle that certain military leaders had agreed was important, and, except for old Paco, the comrades who had made possible this act of demolition were all dead. The fascists were seeking the man who had destroyed the trestle. But Paco knew how to hide.
Where Paco and Adam were hiding was too small to be a cave. It was just a hole in a mountain side. It was hard to spot unless you knew just what you were looking for.
It was dark in the hole. Paco and Adam could not build a fire. But it was safe to talk if you talked in the same low embarrassed way you did in the confessional. Because they were so close, there were times when Adam could almost feel that Paco was breathing for him and that he was breathing for Paco. A moment came to Adam Nichols that made him think, This is very much like being lovers, but then he decided it was not so. He would never be as close with a lover as he was now with Paco.
After many hours of being with Paco in the close dark, Adam said, “Paco, there is something I wish to ask thee.” Adam Nichols spoke in the most formal Spanish. It was what was needed.
Gravely, though he was not a serious man, Paco said, “Then ask, but remember, Comrade, I am an aged man, and do not mistake age for wisdom.” Paco chuckled. He was pleased he had remembered to say “comrade.” Sometimes he forgot. It was hard to be a good communist.
“I need to speak of what I have seen. Of abomination. Of horror. Of impossibility.”
“Art thou speaking of war?”
“Si’ “
“Then dost thou speak of courage, too?” Paco asked. “Of decency? Or selfsacrifice?”
“No, Viejo,” Adam Nichols said. “Of these things, much has been said and much written. Courage, decency, selfsacrifice are to be found in peace or war. Stupidity, greed, arrogance are to be found in peace or war. But I wish to speak with thee of that which I have seen only during time of war. It is madness. It is what cannot be.”
Paco said, “What wouldst thou ask of me?”
“Paco, “ Adam Nichols said, “do the dead walk?”
“Hast thou seen this?”
“Verdad. I have seen this. No. I think I have seen this. Years ago, a long time back, in that which was my first war, I thought I saw it. It was in that war, Paco Viejo, that I think I became a little crazy. And now I think I have seen in it in this war. There were others with me when we went to kill the dead. They would not talk of it, after. After, we all got drunk and made loud toasts which were vows of silence.” Adam Nichols was silent for a time. Then he said again, “Do the dead walk?”
“Thou hast good eyes, Comrade Adam. Thou shootest well. Together we have been in battle. Thou dost not become crazy. What thou hast seen, thou hast seen truly.”
Adam Nichols was quiet. He remembered when he was a young man and his heart was broken by a love gone wrong and the loss of well holding arms and a smile that was for no one else but him. He felt worse now, filled with sorrow and fear both, and with his realizing the world was such a serious place. He said, “It is a horrible thing when the dead walk.”
“Verdad.”
“Dost thou understand what happens?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me.”
“Perhaps.” Paco sighed. His sigh seemed to move the darkness in waves. “Years ago, I knew a priest. He was not a fascist priest. He was a nice man. The money in his plate did not go to buy candlesticks. He built a motion picture theater for his village. He knew that you need to laugh on Saturdays more than you need stained glass windows. The movies he showed were very good movies. Buster Keaton. Harold Lloyd. Joe Bonomo. John Gilbert. KoKo the Klown and Betty Boop cartoons. This priest did not give a damn for politics, he told me. He gave a damn about people. And that is the reason, I believe, that he stopped being a priest. He had some money. He had three women who loved him and were content to share him. I think he was all right, this priest.
“It was he who told me of the living dead.”
“And canst thou tell me?”
“Well, yes, I believe I can. There is no reason not to. I have sworn no oaths.”
“What is it, then? Why do the dead rise? Why do they seek the flesh of the living?”
“This man who had been a priest was not certain about Heaven, but he was most definite about Hell. Yes, Hell was the Truth. Hell was for the dead.
“But when we turn this Earth of ours into Hell, there is no need for the dead to go below.
“Why should they bother?
“And canst thou doubt that much of this ball of mud upon which we dwell is today hell, Comrade? With each new war and each new and better way of making war, there is more and more hell and so we have more and more inhabitants of hell with us.
“And of course, no surprise, they have their hungers. They are demons. At least that is what some might call them, though I myself seldom think to call them anything. And the food of demons is human flesh. It is a simple thing, really.”
“Paco––”
“Si’ “
“This is not rational.”
“And art thou a rational man?”
“Yes. No.”
“So?”
“‘The Living Dead,’ maybe that’s what somebody would call them. Well, hell, don’t you think that would make some newspaperman just ecstatic? It would be bigger than ‘Lindy in Paris!’ Bigger than “
“And thou dost believe such a newspaper story could be printed? And perhaps the Book of the Living Dead could be written? And perhaps a motion picture of the Living Dead as well, with Buster Keaton, perhaps? Comrade Adam, such revelation would topple the world order.
“Perhaps someday the world will be ready for such awful knowledge, Comrade Adam.
“For now, it is more than enough that
those of us who know of it must know of it, thank you very kindly.
“And with drink, and with women, and with war, and with whatever gives us comfort, we must try not to think over much about what it is we know.”
“Paco,” Adam Nichols said in the dark, “I think I want to scream. I think I want to scream now.”
“No, Comrade. Be quiet now. Breathe deep. Breathe with me and deep. Let me breathe for you. Be quiet.”
“All right,” Adam said after a time. “It is all right now.”
A day later, Paco thought it would be safe to leave the hole in the side of the mountain. They were spotted by an armored car full of fascists. A bullet passed through Paco’s lung. It was a mortal shot.
“Bad luck, Paco,” Adam Nichols said. He put a bullet into the old man’s brain and went on alone.
X
“You’re really not helping me. You know that.”
“Bad on me. I thought I was here for you to help me. My foolishness. Damn the luck.”
“I’ve decided, then, we’ll go the way we did before, with electroconvulsive therapy. We’ll…”
I am for god’s sake 61 years old and I am going to die because of occluded arteries or because of a cirrhotic liver or because of an aneurysm in brain or belly waiting to go pop, or because of some damn thing––and when I die I wish to be dead to be dead and that is all.
“––a series of twelve. We’ve often had good results––
and, believe me, I am not asking for Jesus to make me a sunbeam,
I am not asking for heaven in any way, shape, or form.
Gentlemen, when I die I wish to be dead.
––particularly with depression. There are several factors, of course––”
I’m looking for dead, that’s DEAD, and I don’t want to be a goddamn carnival freak show act and man is just a little lower than the angels and pues y nada and you get older and you get confused and you become afraid.
“We’ll begin tomorrow––”
no bloody chance because now the world is hell and if you doubt it, then you don’t know the facts, Gentlemen. No bloody chance.
We ended the war by dropping hell on Nagasaki and on Hiroshima, and we opened up Germany and discovered all those hells, and during the siege of Stalingrad, the living ate the dead, and tata, Gentlemen, turnabout is fair play, and we’re just starting to know the hells that good old Papa Joe put together no bloody chance and we’re not blameless, oh, no, ask that poor nigger hanging burning from the tree, ask the Rosenbergs who got cooked up nice and brown, ask––Welcome to hell, and how do you like it now, Gentlemen?
When the world is hell, the dead walk.
XI
When they returned to Ketchum, Idaho on June 30, the old man was happy. Anyone who saw him will tell you. He was not supposed to drink because of his antidepressant medication, but he did drink. It did not affect him badly. He sang several songs. One was “La Quince Brigada,” from the Spanish Civil War. He sang loudly and offkey; he made a joyful racket. He said one of the great regrets of his life was that he had never learned to play the banjo.
Later, he had his wife, Mary, put on a Burl Ives record on the Webcor phonograph. It was a 78, “The Riddle Song.” He listened to it several times.
How can there be a cherry
that has no stone?
How can there be a chicken
that has no bone?
How can there be a baby
with no crying?
Mary asked if the record made him sad.
No, he said, he was not sad at all. The record was beautiful. If there are riddles, there are also answers to riddles.
So, so then, I have not done badly. Some good stories, some good books. I have written well and truly. I have sometimes failed, but I have tried. I have sometimes been a foolish man, and even a smallminded or meanspirited one, but I have always been a man, and I will end as a man.
* * *
It was early and he was the only one up. The morning of Sunday, July 2, was beautiful. There were no clouds. There was sunshine.
He went to the front foyer. He liked the way the light struck the oakpaneled walls and the floor. It was like being in a museum or in a church. It was a well-lighted place and it felt clean and airy.
Carefully, he lowered the butt of the Boss shotgun to the floor. He leaned forward. The twin barrels were cold circles in the scarred tissue just above his eyebrows.
He tripped both triggers.
The Finger
MATT HULTS
1.
Through some ironic twist of fate, the phone call from the morgue came while Jim Cooley sat watching Frankenstein on one of the cable channels.
“It’s me,” Stuart said when Jimmy picked up the receiver. “I got one. How fast can you get down here?”
Jimmy straightened up in his seat, letting the half-eaten bag of Crispy Pork Bits fall to the trailer’s floor. “Hot damn, Stu, are you serious?” he asked. “When’d he come in? Where’d they find him—”
“I’ll fill you in on the goddamn details when you get here,” Stuart interrupted. “Harrington just went out to lunch, so we have less than an hour to do this.”
Jimmy grinned. “We’re really going through with it?”
“I guess so. Meet me at the back loading dock by twelve-thirty or the deal is off!”
He hung up.
Outside thunder rumbled across the sky like the footsteps of an angry god.
Jimmy continued to smile as he replaced the handset, then slapped his hands together with a jovial whoop of delight. “Hot shit!” he cheered. “The little bastard did it!” He jumped up from the couch and grabbed his jean jacket off the wall hook as he hurried out the door.
2.
Three inches of rainwater sloshed along the gutters and burbled around the storm drains as Jimmy guided his rusty Mustang down the alley that serviced the back side of the Hewitt County Municipal Building. The parking area at this end of the lot boasted twenty spaces, but only two other vehicles currently occupied the asphalt; Stuart Wyllie’s dented red Honda and a 1988 Ford that made up the third unit in the HCPD’s trio of squad cars.
Jimmy parked next to the sunken driveway that gave access to the lower loading bay of the building and got out. The rain continued to come down like a busted water main, soaking his shoulders and hair as he ran to the back door.
He rapped on the steel. “Yo, Stu? Open up, man!”
He knocked again when no one answered, letting his gaze flick to the old squad car as he waited. A smile crept onto his face when he thought of when he’d etched his initials in the vinyl on the rear of the driver’s seat back when the car had been new.
The door clicked and flew open.
“What the hell?” Stuart asked. “I never told you to knock!”
The kid glanced around like a mouse in a cat kennel as Jimmy stepped past him, into a green-tiled hallway outside the morgue office.
“I’m due back at the hospital as soon as Doctor Harrington returns,” Stuart reminded him. “We don’t have much time!”
“Don’t shit yourself,” Jimmy told him. “Now, what do you got for me?”
Stuart eased the door into its frame before speaking, and when he did, he kept his voice low. “Mexican male, no ID. Sheriff Picket said a trucker found the body under the I-30 overpass around four o’clock yesterday morning. He’s guessing the guy’s an illegal thumbing his way north.”
“Kick ass!” Jimmy cheered.
“Keep your voice down!” Stuart whispered, glancing up and down the corridor.
“Yeah, yeah—what else?”
Stuart ushered him inside the empty office, toward a door across the room. “We got him fresh,” he said, snatching a manila folder off the desk as they passed it. “Harrington pronounced the cause of death as heart failure two hours after they brought him in, and we just got the toxicology and blood work reports back from HCMC: negative across the board; aside from being dead, he’s as healthy as a horse.”
“Ah, man, this is friggin’ perfect!” Jimmy agreed.
Stuart pushed through the door of the autopsy room and led the way past the central operating table and body hoist. Jimmy shivered as the first drops of adrenaline hit his veins. His neck hairs prickled on end the way they did in his childhood, when his mother would drag him to the doctor’s office with an ear infection or pneumonia. Cold sweat sheathed his palms as his eyes drifted over the various items in the room: the table, the scales, the shiny stainless steel containers. The drive over had been easy enough—even a bit exciting—but now his emotions sobered as the reality of what awaited him began to sink in.
Stuart unlocked another door, and they stepped into the cooler. Six stainless steel storage lockers took up the far wall, but only one displayed an information card in the holder on the exterior of the door.
“This him?” Jimmy asked.
Stuart gestured to the locker’s handle. “Be my guest.”
Jimmy reached for the handle but stopped short before his fingers touched the metal. He glanced to Stuart, to the purple latex gloves he wore, and with a smirk of self-admiration, he slipped the cuff of his jacket over his hand. “Can’t be too careful.”
He opened the door and rolled out the retractable table.