Buried Dreams

by Tim Cahill

  The man releases the object and stands back to admire the results of his efforts. He is laughing softly to himself, but the hissing chuckles are interspersed with a certain wet snuffling, an injured child’s helpless sobs.

  Well, no one ever said learning was easy, and a teacher’s job is never done. No time to rest now. The man walks a step or two and selects another imaginary object, perhaps from the top of the bedroom dresser. He kneels on the floor in a straddling position and throws both hands up and then down. “This trick,” the teacher explains, “is called horsey. See, you’re the horse, I’m the rider, and these"—the man rocks back on his knees, a rider pulling a frisky horse to halt—"are my reins.”

  There is the sudden sound of gagging, a startled, strangled gasp.

  “Giddiyap, horse, c’mon.”

  “Oh, my God, you’re hurting me, please, you’re hurting me.”

  The man in chains kneels on the empty floor. He yanks his hands back occasionally, lets them fall loose in front of him, yanks them back, lets them fall loose. Now he leans forward and makes a cuffing motion with his right hand.

  “Faster, giddiyap, horsey.” Leaning back on his heels and yanking his hand toward him, he shouts, “Whooaaaa, horsey!” A swift, vicious pull on the reins. “I said, whoa, now.”

  “Tell me you love it,” he says, as if to a lover who likes it a little rough.

  “Tell me,” he says, breathing heavily, his tone a mixture of contempt and excitement.

  “Tell me you love it,” he says, a triumphant child making a fallen adversary say “uncle,” a rapist forcing his victim to admit to unfelt pleasure.

  He loosens the reins. The boy gasps for air, coughs, but whatever words he tries to say are mangled in his throat.

  Jack says, “Don’t you pass out on me now, you little son-of-a-bitch, don’t you dare pass out.”

  “Please,” the boy manages finally, “pleeeeeese. . . .”

  “Okay,” the man says, “okay, we’re done now. Just one more trick.” He drops the reins, looks behind him, and staying on his knees, shifts position somewhat. “What’s this?” he asks. Golly, his tone says, what a surprise to find something so large so deeply embedded in the horsey’s rectum. “We’ll just have to take this out and put it where it belongs.”

  The man snaps his fingers—he has just realized the obvious. “Let’s dump you off the bed,” he says, making the appropriate motions. Then he reaches down and mimes grabbing some object. “You shit and you’ll eat it,” he says, then yanks his clutched right hand upward with considerable force. He examines the imaginary object with some distaste and tosses it on the floor behind him.

  Jack stares down at absolutely nothing in total disgust. “I can’t look at that,” he says, kicking at the floor as if turning the boy over onto his stomach. “Ugh,” he says. “So dirty. John may be a goody-goody and Jack may be a killer, but they both share a certain love of neatness and order.

  The man sits in his chair. He has brought cigars and matches with him to the prison conference room, but he mimes peeling cellophane off an imaginary Antonio and Cleopatra. “Hey, kid, you want to hand me those matches on the dresser,” Jack says, clearly the superior fellow but one who is not above an occasional witticism.

  “I can’t. . . . I can’t move. . . . Oh, God, please . . .”

  “Forget it, asshole.” The man reaches over and grabs the imaginary matches, shaking his head in amused disappointment: kids today. He bends forward, hampered a bit by the manacles on his hands, and lights a nonexistent cigar, which he smokes importantly.

  “One more trick,” Jack says, moving back into his straddling position. He holds the cigar in his right hand, between the thumb and forefinger, then lowers it slowly toward the floor. “Does that hurt?” he asks, and he answers himself with a weak scream. He moves his hand lower. “You’d think it’d hurt more"—he holds the cigar motionless for a moment, just pausing for effect, then lowers it gently, experimentally—“here.”

  Another scream, one that goes on and on and gets progressively weaker and weaker.

  He holds the cigar up and to his right, as if over the boy’s face. It hovers there, ready to drop at any moment. “Tell me you love it,” Jack says in a threatening whisper.

  Pain has stolen the boy’s breath, and it takes him two false starts before he can say, “I love it, please, I love . . . it.”

  Jack lifts the cigar to his mouth and takes a long, satisfying drag, but it is an imaginary cigar, after all, and he is still able to mimic the sounds of a boy’s pained sobs.

  “You love it, huh,” Jack says, a father truly interested in a son’s reaction to new experiences.

  “God, no,” the boy says, pleading. “Please, no. If you’re going to kill me, kill me. Kill me or let me go, please. . . .”

  Jack nods to himself as if noting, for the record, this new element in the boy’s pleas. “Look, fucker,” he explains cordially, “I’ll kill you when I want to kill you.” He bends to smoke. His manner with the imaginary cigar—even hampered by the very real chains—is full of grand swoops and flourishes.

  “Hey,” he says, “you stink, and you’re still bleeding. Why don’t we clean you up.” Shifting position, Jack works intently for a short time, then says, “I got the board off. You can walk to the bathroom.”

  “I can’t. . . . I don’t think I can walk.”

  “Then,” Jack explains, exasperated—why, why do they have to make everything so fucking difficult—"crawl.” He puts the cigar in his mouth, rises to his feet, and strolls quite slowly, grandly, across the room, smoking in a contemplative manner and staring down toward his feet, as though at a boy crawling painfully before him.

  “That’s right. Right here, on the floor.”

  Jack kneels to turn on the taps in the tub. He glances down at the boy, puffs on his cigar, then disposes of it, perhaps in an ashtray, perhaps in the toilet. There’s work to be done now: a thorough cleansing, a purification. He extends his left hand, then pulls it back, and turns sideways while he makes gentle, circular motions. “That doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asks sympathetically, and he answers the question with a long, bubbling sob. “It’s just a washrag,” Jack says gently, “it doesn’t hurt.”

  This sudden sympathy opens the floodgates and the boy cries helplessly, more a child now than a man.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack says sincerely. “I’m really sorry if I hurt you. Tell me if I’m rubbing too hard. Is this all right?” He waits, as if for an answer, but the boy will not speak. “Say something.” There is no reply, and this annoys Jack. You do something nice for someone and they snub you. They just lie there with their eyes closed, hoping to pass out or die or some damn thing.

  “Please,” the boy says weakly but with the dignity of one who has made a difficult decision, “if you’re going to kill me, kill me now. No more torture.”

  Jack nods, as if in assent, then drops to his knees. “We got to clean your face,” he says reasonably. “First we got to clean you off.” He turns off the taps in the tub, which must be full now because his gestures are those of a man grabbing someone by the hair and plunging a head into the water. He holds the boy’s face underwater for several long moments and stares up to the ceiling.

  In John Wayne Gacy’s home, there was a single ceiling light in the bathroom, and Jack must be staring up at that bulb because he mutters, reverently, almost inaudibly, “Light.” The single word sounds like a prayer.

  Then, as if remembering a trivial but annoying matter— damn, left the water boiling on the stove, something like that—he tears his eyes away from the glowing bulb and lifts the boy’s head out of the water. Immediately, there is the sound of someone gasping for air, spluttering and coughing weakly.

  “Oh, God,” a boy’s voice pleads breathlessly, “oh, God, help me.”

  Jack holds the boy’s head—blond hair bunched in a huge right hand—and he stares up into the Light. “Yes, my son,” Jack says, as if intoning some liturgical ritual, “God wil
l help you.” These are the soothing words of a priest, a father’s blessing for the deeply troubled. “But first,” the father says, “you must be purified.” And he plunges the boy’s head back into the water and stares into the Light.

  There is a limit to how long a person can hold his breath, so that there would be bubbles rising up around the boy’s face by the time Jack lifts it from the water a third time. He allows the boy time to spit what water he can from his lungs, then holds the gasping, crimson face inches from his own.

  “Yes, my child,” Jack says, “God is here.” He can’t really help himself now: Jack just has to laugh in the boy’s contorted face. “But first you must be purified,” he says, thrusting the boy’s head back into the water. And the ritual goes on. Jack lifts his own head, lifts his mad eyes to the wonder of the Light.

  God is here: God the Father.

  When the bubbles rising up around the boy’s head become smaller and less frequent, when the boy’s body stops those annoying spasmodic upward jerks—the man in chains has been kneeling on the empty floor a long time—Jack drops his eyes from the Light. He pulls the boy from the water and dumps him on the floor by the tub.

  “I’m tired of this game,” he announces petulantly. “Get up.”

  Jack himself rises to his feet and stares down at the bare floor. “Can you get up?” he asks, but there is no answer. “Well, can you at least crawl?”

  When there still is no reply—only the prolonged sounds of helpless gasping—Jack smiles ruefully and shakes his head. He is a man unfairly put upon. Why must he do everything himself? He reaches down, grabs the boy by his blond hair one more time, and drags the limp weight of the body back into the bedroom.

  “Well, shit,” Jack says, staring down at the floor as if disappointed. Suddenly a new thought hits him. “I’m hungry,” he announces. “You hungry, kid?” A sly intonation to the voice: it is the same joke as before, just put another way.

  The man in chains shuffles across the floor of the prison conference room. He stands against the wall and mimes opening a door, a refrigerator door. Some good stuff inside. “You want your sandwich, kid?” Jack calls. But there is no answer, and he says, “I’ll eat it, then.”

  When the ham and cheese is finally eaten, it’s back to work for a bit. Just a few more things to clear up before bed. “Well, kid,” Jack says, rising from his chair and walking to the bedroom where the boy lies, “I gotta get up early tomorrow. Time for you to get out.”

  Jack yawns expansively.

  “I’ll go,” the boy says, still very weak, very obsequious. “I won’t tell anybody. . . .”

  “I know,” Jack says. “I know you won’t because there’s one more trick. You’ll love this. It’s the rope trick.” He turns and grabs two objects from some platform that stands just above waist level.

  Jack kept the necessary implements on top of Asshole John s bedroom dresser: the trick requires a short length of nylon rope and a hammer handle. John must have wondered about Jack’s tools sitting there on his dresser day after day. Did they have some relation to the strangled bodies he found in his home all those bad, hung-over mornings?

  “This is the last trick,” Jack says. He is a very sincere fellow, a little tired now, but this is a serious trick. “When we’re done, I’ll drive you back, okay?”

  “Yes,” the boy says, and there is fear and abject submission in that one word.

  “Lemme help you up,” Jack says, and he stoops, grabs the boy under the arm, and helps him struggle to his feet. “You going back to the Square?” Jack asks.

  “I . . . no,” the boy’s voice is unsteady, and it is likely that he sways from side to side, a severely abused boy, almost a child, barely able to stand.

  “Wait’ll you see what this rope does for you,” Jack says. There is a smirking and coarse sexuality in his tone, a nameless obscenity in his smile. “You’ll love this,” he says, his voice deep, not much more than a growl of excitement and anticipation.

  And now Jack is making all the requisite motions: He is Wrapping the rope around the boy’s neck, he is tying the first knot—cross one end over the other and pull gently. It is the same knot Asshole John makes every morning when he ties his shoes, the simple crossover knot that begins a process that holds the tongue immobile.

  “Noooooo?” A boy’s questioning plea: horror without hope.

  “Aw, c’mon,” Jack says, breathing heavily now, “stand still. It’s just a trick, for Chrissake. Feel how loose I’ve got it. It doesn’t hurt at all.” And then, lewdly, “Wait’ll you see what this does for you.”

  Jack, his breath coining in ragged gasps, places the hammer handle over the first knot, then carefully ties a second knot, precisely the same as the first, over the splintered wood of the much-used handle.

  “Oh, God, don’t . . . don’t hurt me any more.”

  “It’s okay. This is the last trick.”

  Jack turns the hammer handle once, twice, three times. He lodges the end of the handle behind the boy’s head and steps back to examine his work. The boy’s hands are cuffed behind his back and the hammer holds the rope tightly, but not too tightly, around his throat.

  It’s a game, the boy would have to think, only a game. He would believe this because no one dies when he’s eighteen; it’s just one of those sex games, one of those strange, bad sex games. That’s what it is, that’s what it has to be: one of those games people play, a sex-and-danger game. A game of fear.

  Maybe the boy already knows the game. You play it with a rope and slipknot: just loop the rope around the neck and pull during masturbation; time the ejaculation or orgasm to the point of passing out.

  But if the boy knows of the game—if he’s heard gossip about slipknots and ejaculations—there would be, in his mind, in his heart, a helpless explosion of hope. It’s just sex, and I won’t die. I can’t die: I’m only eighteen, and this is only a game, a trick, “the last trick.”

  “Please,” the boy says, whimpering, “please loosen it a little.”

  The man in chains takes a step forward. He grabs something—the hammer handle—and twists his hand as if turning on a faucet.

  There is a choking gasp, a few strangled words: “Oh, God, please help me, God. . . .”

  Jack turns the handle as if the motion costs him some effort. “God will help you,” he says, and there is, in his voice, the rumbling solemnity of an organ as played at solemn services.

  “God is here,” the man says, but there is, in his voice, a religious or sexual mania so overwhelming that it is difficult for him to catch his breath, and he sinks slowly, slowly to his knees. He is moaning now, a sigh beyond love or life, and yet, out of the same mouth, at the same time, there is a strangled gurgling as well so that it is difficult to know if the sound is a rush of passion or the rattle of death. They merge now—the gurgling, strangled sighs, the ecstatic moans of extinction and release—so that one sound is indistinguishable from another and they both come from the same mouth.

  Jack falls to his knees, his tongue loose inside a gaping mouth, the groan and gargle of his breath rattling in his throat until, finally, finally, with one last choking groan, it is over and they are both, man and boy, finally released.

  The man in chains kneels silently on the hard, empty floor. His head is bowed, as if in fatigue and satiety. John Wayne Gacy kneels in a bare prison conference room: he kneels like a spent performer, center stage, alone and waiting. Soon the spotlight will shrivel about him until there is only a single ray, like a halo, very bright. And then there will be darkness, and a moment for the audience to absorb the power of his performance. A moment only before they burst into frenzied applause.

  But there is no spotlight, and the man kneels silently, in his chains, his head bowed, as if in prayer.

  * * *

  * * *

  CHAPTER 26

  * * *

  * * *

  FIRST DAY OF the trial, the prosecution’s got Robert Egan, some cocky young lawyer who had never los
t a murder trial, standing in front of a jury saying that John Gacy was “rational and evil,” a premeditated murderer. John could hardly believe it. What did Egan think? Did he think John said to himself, “Who’s next?” The prosecutor showed “how nice and goody-goody” all the little shitheads were and how John sat around and figured, “You’re going in this grave, you in that one.” Jag-off Egan, the guy “could make a fortune writing fairy tales.”

  One of John’s attorneys, Bob Motta, made the opening statement for the defense. Yeah, he said, Gacy did it. But take a look at his house. Twenty-nine bodies, he sleeps with ‘em. That’s not evil, that’s crazy.

  Motta gets into this thing about how John’s sick and he oughta be put away in a mental hospital for the rest of his life.

  John figured, on that first day of the trial, February 6, 1980, that Motta scored the most points. He wanted to correct the problem, help John. The state was bent on revenge. God didn’t put people on earth so they could go around getting revenge. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Revenge don’t solve shit.

  Then, at recess, eating lunch by himself in the bullpen, the whole thing hit John. Both the prosecution and defense wanted to put him away for life. Sure, John knew that he’d never win on an insanity plea if the jury thought he was going to spend only a month, six months in some hospital, but Motta was so fucking convincing. John’s own lawyer really wanted to put him away for life. It was like his attorneys, Sam Amirante and Motta, were on the prosecution’s side. There was no one on his side.

  John felt dizzy then, and his nose began to bleed. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital, where the doctors said his blood pressure was a little high. They couldn’t find anything else wrong with him. They never could.

  The next day, it was all parents of these kids. Just mothers, mostly. The state had them on for dramatics and shit. Mothers breaking down on the stand, some of them phony as the day is long. This one who fainted, all they did, they asked her for a death study—When did you see your son last?—basic stuff. Then they showed her this bracelet they found on the kid when they dug him up from under the crawl space. She picks it up, says, “That’s Sam’s bracelet.” She’s crying in this phony way, all doubled up, then she sort of falls forward, pretending to faint right there in the courtroom. You could hear her head clunk on the witness stand.