World Made by Hand: A Novel

by James Howard Kunstler

  Nobody was arguing, of course. Least of all me and Loren. Nobody in the seats made a peep.

  "That's how it is," Wayne said. "Always has been, always will be. Anyway, these two come up from town. This one on my left here, he says he's the new mayor down there in the Grove. That right?" Wayne stepped my way, to see if I was paying attention, I guess. "You hear me? I axed if that's how you represent yourself?"

  I didn't answer.

  "Whatever. I hope politics don't ruin him. I forget his name. Fiddler Joe, I call him, because I seen him play once at a Harvest Ball up to Hebron or White Creek or some damn place. I forget. He's good. Got-damn good fiddler. You could use coaching on the administration of justice end of things, though. You could study with me at five hundred dollars the hour. Have your secretary call my secretary and we'll see what we can get going. Anyway, this other fella to my right. You going to tell me your name?"

  Loren didn't speak either.

  "All right. Well, I just call him Preacher Man. He's a minister down at the main church there in town. He says he's the constable now too. Can you imagine that? A man of God serving the very ones that want to deprive somebody of his property and his freedom. It just don't add up. But I'm only a common man. What do I know? I'm common as dirt, ain't l?" Wayne said and started circling around the stage toward Loren, for whom he now seemed to have a special animus, judging by his increasingly loud voice. "And if I'm common as dirt, you all out there must be dirt too, because, after all, I am your chief, I am your fearless leader, I'm of you and you're of me. So we must all be ... dirt," Wayne said, spitting out that last word as his anger ratcheted higher. "What do you think, Preacher Man? Are we beneath you as the soil is beneath you?"

  Loren remained silent.

  "Well, I intend to show you what we're made of tonight by giving you a lesson. It ain't Sunday, so this won't be a Sunday school lesson, exactly. Maybe it's philosophy. There's some biology involved, so put in a bid for science too. I really don't know. Education was never my strong suit. Except for shop class. I gotdamned excelled at taking things apart-though I didn't much care for putting them back together. Anyways, the aim here is to demonstrate what is in God's realm and what's in man's, and maybe how they shouldn't run together in one person 'cause you will only end up confusing people while coming to grief yourself. By the way, this lesson is free of charge. Before I'm done with you, I imagine you will be speaking to God in person. You might ax him how he came to put you in such a pickle."

  Wayne stooped down and glared into Loren's eyes.

  "How dare you serve me with papers? You nor nobody else down in that town will ever even think about doing it again." Then he stood back up. "Okay, boys. Bring out the glory wheel."

  Four stagehands brought up some kind of hulking wooden apparatus from the rear, behind the stage. There was a steel pipe running into a hub at center that they fitted into a hole in the floor at center stage. The apparatus proved to be a plywood wheel about eight feet in diameter. Once they got it in place, they spun it around. It clattered noisily along the floorboards on casters. On the top surface of the wheel stood a simple wooden contraption that I quickly understood to be a set of stocks, with holes for the arms and one for the neck.

  "There she is, friends," Wayne said. "The Round Widow, Proud Mary, the Devil's Dance Floor, the Prayer Stool, the Old Rugged Redeemer-we have lots of names for her. Some of the folks out in the cheap seats have rode on her, since this is the approved method for settling the accounts of misdoers hereabouts. But you two are the first outsiders to get in on the action-except for a stray picker or two over the years, and they hardly qualified as people. Boys, help the Preacher Man up onto her and make sure he's comfortable."

  Several of Wayne's men freed Loren from the chair that he was bound into and steered him onto the wheel. They had to shove him down to get him to kneel before the stocks, and he resisted as they forced his head and hands in the slots and bolted the top down.

  "There's no point putting up a fight, Preacher Man. I guarangot-damn-tee that this will go better if you just let go and relax. That tension works against you. Think happy thoughts. Like you just got a hand job from some parish lady in the-"

  "Fuck you," Loren said.

  "Huh?" Wayne said.

  "You lowlife piece of shit."

  "Ouch! My ears suddenly hurt," Wayne said. "What a way for a preacher man to talk. And there are children present." Wayne slunk catlike across the stage toward me and bent down close to my face. "Does he talk to your homefolks like that?"

  I didn't say anything. I didn't want to say anything.

  "Can't hear you, Fiddler," Wayne said. "Well if he don't talk that way to the homefolks then I suppose he saves it for the likes of us. That's interesting."

  An indignant murmur ran through the crowd, then whistling and some shouts.

  Wayne slithered back toward Loren in the stocks. He took something out of his pocket and stooped down to apply it to Loren's face. It turned out to be a florid red lipstick-whenever they took a house apart, they came up with all sorts of things-and he painted Loren's face with it, giving him a red clown nose, red lips, red eyebrows, and two red clown dots on his cheeks.

  "Don't you look purty now?" Wayne said, standing aside for the audience to see. More whistles, cheers, and catcalls, and cries of "Get 'er done, Wayne-o!" Wayne kicked the edge of the wheel into motion, shoving it round and round until it picked up speed. Soon Loren became a blur. I stopped counting after fifty revolutions. After quite a while, Wayne applied his foot as a brake to bring the wheel to a stop. As he did, and then brought the stocks back facing front, Loren could be seen vomiting.

  "That's disgusting!" someone shouted from the audience.

  Wayne seemed to inflate his chest, then leaned down to face Loren.

  "Look what you done now," Wayne said. "Goodness gracious what a mess. Could we get a mop up here, please? I guess this explains why you went the church route instead of astronaut training`"

  That was the moment when Loren spit into Wayne's face.

  The crowd howled. Whatever Wayne said was lost in the welling noise. Meanwhile, he reared back and smacked Loren's head with the back of his hand and must have whaled on him five times more in each direction until blood the same color as the lipstick ran out Loren's nose and mouth. One of Wayne's men came forward with a mop and pail and handed Wayne a wet rag to wipe the vomit and spit off his face.

  "Bring the got-damn instruments out here," Wayne shouted. "Let's get this underway."

  Another man brought up a canvas tarpaulin. He laid it on the stage floor next to Wayne and opened it up. Inside was an array of items that might be used to punish a captive human body.

  "You know, when you spit in my face, you spit in the face of everyone out there," Wayne said to Loren. "This isn't a democracy, exactly, but we do share the common burdens and enjoy the common benefits of life. So, here's how we'll do it, Preacher Man. I'm going to ask every one of my people to come up here and address your ass however they deem fitting, by whatever means they like. That sound okay to you? No, don't answer, it doesn't matter anymore what you think. Like I already said: try to relax, think happy thoughts, and go with the flow."

  Wayne bent down and rummaged among the various implements at his feet, picking them up one after the other.

  "Listen up, people. What we got here: a nice ash broomstick, a horsewhip, a light carriage whip for you ladies, a brass curtain rod, a canoe paddle, a length of rubber hose with some fishing sinkers inside, and last but not least, a genuine Adirondak brand, official American League centennial-year f Ingo bat-this here's probably a collector's item. Now, those of you that want a turn, form a line on this side of the stage, and we'll get 'er done in a nice, orderly, systematic way. Just remember, only one stroke per customer allowed. No hogging the spotlight. We don't want to be here all got-damn night. I'm sure we'll get the point across, which is: if you come up this way trying serve any got-damn papers impinging on the personal or property rights o
f the sovereign individual, then your sovereign got-damn ass will be mine."

  Wayne spun the wheel half a turn so that Loren was facing the rear of the stage with his rear end presented to the audience.

  "Step right up," Wayne said. "The glory wheel is now open for business."

  A line formed quickly leaving the seats about three-quarters empty. Most of those in line were men and boys, and those who remained in the seats mostly women and girls. The first to swing at Loren was the middle Zito boy, the one who had shaken a piece of sheet metal as a percussion instrument earlier in the evening. He chose the brass curtain rod and laid a stroke full force against Loren's behind. Loren endured it stoically, as well as the next several. But then the hulking Bunny Willman stepped up to the stage. He didn't pick up any of the arrayed implements. Instead he reared back and delivered a fierce kick, with a heavyweight workman's boot, right in the cleft below the cheeks where Loren's privy parts were tucked in. Loren gave out a bellow of a kind I don't think I'd ever heard come from a human being. And so it continued for a good twenty minutes. At some point about halfway through, a red stain appeared on Loren's pants. The blows from the last ones on line were as vicious as the early ones. As the line wound down, Loren had gone from emitting a shriek at every blow to issuing a barely audible grunt. The blood had spread across his behind and began seeping down the legs of his pants, on the inside of his thighs. The very last person on line, the woman named Brenda who had answered the door to Wayne's abode hours earlier, actually broke the ash broomstick, she swung so hard.

  "Don't worry, I'll just deduct it from your pay, darlin'," Wayne said as he resumed his position front and center. "I was going to lay a stroke or two on you myself, maybe even ram the back end of that horsewhip up your bunghole for good measure, but my people have spoken so eloquently by their actions that I really don't think it's necessary. Anyway, it made me tired just watching all that." He kicked the wheel so that Loren came around frontwise again. His head hung limply in the stocks.

  "I suppose you can guess whose turn it is now," Wayne said, stalking over my way. I was numb all over. I couldn't feel my hands or feet. My pulse pounded so loudly, I thought the top of my skull might blow off. "Yeah, that's the bad news," Wayne said. "It is your turn. The good news is, I ain't going to make you ride Old Mary. I thought to myself, maybe I should fetch a claw hammer and take it to his hands, you know, bust 'em up so bad he'd never hold a knife and fork again, let alone a freakin' musical instrument. But got-dammit, I like you too much. For all the got-damned trouble you cause me, Fiddler Joe, I like the way you play that thing and I don't want to hurt you because we need all the got-damn good music we have around here-and besides, you ain't as mouthy as your compadre here. So I'm not going to hurt you. Physically. But I do want to give you a lesson that you ain't likely to soon forget. And if I do see your ass up this way again, I promise I will ream it out good and got-damned well next time plus break every last one of your golden fingers. Let's see that bucket, boys."

  Wayne's factotums brought up a big white joint-compound bucket and set it down between where Wayne stood and where I sat. It reeked.

  "What I got here is a generous dip of outhouse slops," Wayne said. The crowd cheered and applauded. "You still have nice bathrooms down in the Grove, I hear. Town water an' all. Well, things are a little more nitty-gritty up here, you know. All that heat we've been getting has worked this stuff pretty ripe. I can hardly stand it myself. I thought this might be a nice way to make an impression on you about overstepping your jurisdictional lines and at the same time offer a little memento from us to take back home with you. Or all over you, I should say. Anyway, here she comes. I'm sorry we couldn't serve it up fresh and warm for you. Bodie, Pinky, get 'er done."

  Wayne stepped back gingerly where nothing would splash on him and let the other two do the pouring. It took two of them to hoist the heavy bucket above my head.

  "Take her nice and easy, boys. Let him enjoy the flow of it."

  The stuff ran down into my shirt and pants and over my eyes and lips, liquids, solids, and all the stuff in between. After a while, it just felt cold splashing over me. Finally, the two men turned the bucket over my head and left it there. I could hear the crowd yell its approval before I shook it off and heard it bounce across the stage. I struggled not to inhale or ingest any of the filth that was dripping off my face.

  "Whooooo-weeeee," if you aren't the very lily of the dell," Wayne said. "Okay, everybody, that's the end of tonight's feature presentation. The show's over. Thanks for coming and let's keep up that artistic community spirit. Anybody wants a musical instrument, we got all kinds over to the general. Guitars up the ying-yang. Tubas. Clarinet. Whatever. Just come by and put in for it. Those of you who would like to sign up to perform in next Tuesday night's show, go see Brenda at my place. She's always there at suppertime between sundown and full dark. For Pete's sake, you Zito boys, learn another song or two. And practice, practice, practice! Get some gotdamn discipline, why don't you. Goodnight everybody."

  There was a final smattering of applause. The filth still dripped off my ears and chin. I tried to spit out what was on my lips without getting any inside my mouth. I barely noticed that Wayne had cut my bonds until he said, "Go help your compadre, Fiddler. Get him up and get gone before I change my mind and kill you both."

  Once I realized my hands were free, I desperately tried to wipe the stuff off my face. By now, they opened the top of the stocks on the wheel and Loren had slumped off into a heap below. I knelt down beside him on the wheel.

  "It's me, Loren. Can you hear me?"

  He squeezed his eyes and nodded, and then yielded to a spasm.

  "I think they're letting us go."

  "It hurts real bad," Loren said. His voice was a croak.

  "Try to get up. I'll take you back."

  I reached under his armpits and jerked him to his feet as though he were a two-hundred-pound barbell.

  "Oh, Jesus," he said.

  "Can you walk?"

  He limped two steps with my assistance.

  "I ... think something's ... torn up inside," he said.

  "Put more of your weight on me."

  Wayne had left the amphitheater. A few of his people still milled around, both onstage and off in the seats. They simply ignored us. Several men were mopping up the spot where my chair had been. Loren took tiny shuffling steps, grimacing, and contorting his head to the side in pain.

  We struggled down the three stage steps, then off to the side of the amphitheater, uphill through the dust and weeds toward the village gate. Stragglers stood still and stared as we passed by. A few registered looks of disgust. One of the few young children there spit at us. A woman stepped forward and held out a raggedy T-shirt full of holes. I took it and wiped as much of the filth off my face as possible, though my hair was still full of it. When we got up to the gate I had to stop and throw up. But then we passed under the rampant motorcycle and onto the road, and I actually believed they had let us go for real.

  Loren was in a lot of pain as we made our way down the road. He groaned continually and now and again cried out and cursed. I propped him up as best I could, but he stumbled several times. He said he could feel blood running down his legs. It seemed to take forever to get to the old bridge over Black Creek. We agreed to stop there. A path well trodden by fishermen led from the road down to the bank. The moon, now clear of the treetops, cast enough light to see by. I helped Loren down the path. The stream had a gravel bed, and there was a little beach beside a pool on the upstream side of the bridge. I left Loren there so he could drink some water while I went to wash the filth off myself downstream. The creek was no more than knee deep and quite chilly. I scrubbed as much as I could without soap and soaked my head, but the stench stayed with me. Then I went back to help Loren wash off. Finally I helped him struggle out of the water.

  "I can't walk ... the rest of the way," he said. He was breathing in gasps. "You're going to have to ... send somebody up to ge
t me in a ... a wagon or something. Let's not even ... argue about it."

  "All right. Hold still a moment."

  I hitched up a leg of his pants. The moonlight did not pick up color very well, but I could see a rivulet of something darker than water run down his leg.

  "How am I ... doing?"

  "I think you're still bleeding some."

  "I think so too. Before you go ... get me a good stick. For the coyotes."

  "All right."

  I found him something like a war club. He said he didn't want to sit, it hurt too much, so I helped him creep over to a clump of alders he could hold onto and sort of lean on. I assured him I'd be back soon and left him there by the bridge in the moonlight. I doubted anyone from Karptown would come looking for us again. They'd had all the fun and excitement they needed.

  It had been a long time since I ran any distance, but I jogged most of the way back to town. Much of it was downhill. I went directly to the high school and banged on the door at the front entrance, which was locked, naturally. I knew they ran regular watches around the building. In a little while, one of the brothers appeared. I didn't know this one's name, but he seemed to recognize me. He let me in. I asked him to get Joseph. He went directly. Two minutes later, Joseph strode down the hallway, lifting a suspender into place, with Elam right behind buttoning his shirt as he walked. I told them what had happened to Loren and me up at Karptown. Joseph said Brother Jobe had left him with instructions to help if I called upon him. I told him to get somebody over to Doctor Copeland's, tell him to have his wife prepare for surgery, have her fetch Bobbie Deland over to assist, and for Jerry to report here to the school with his wagon as soon as possible, to get Loren down.