The Road Out of Hell

by Anthony Flacco

  He accidentally made it worse by being too obvious about avoiding contact with the boy, to the point that Uncle Stewart noticed and called to him one night with a malevolent grin. He handed Sanford an opened can of beans and casually told him, “Take it out to the boy in the coop.” He offered no explanation, but he flashed that threatening look that Sanford had learned to equate with a warning. It usually meant that if he moved quickly enough he could get away without being struck, or at least not too hard.

  He took the can and walked toward the coop with a growing sense of unreality. Uncle Stewart’s way of carrying on was so strange—just as if nothing had happened. Sanford had no idea how else to react but to go along with it himself. He had already learned that whenever Uncle Stewart was in the mood to act civilized, it offered a moment of safety. It was always a good idea to stretch those moments out in any manner possible. So he carried the opened can as carefully as he could, making sure not to spill a drop or to do anything else that might set off another one of those animal frenzies.

  When he pulled open the reinforced door, he heard the soft whimpering sounds even before he entered. A bright shaft of light played across the floor and revealed a young Mexican boy. His face looked as if he might be a year or two older than Sanford, but he was just as small and thin. The boy’s appearance stopped him cold. He cowered on the ground as if expecting an attack. In that instant, everything that Sanford had managed to push out of his thoughts until then sprang up before him. The boy was in terrible condition, much worse than his own, with his face distorted under bruised and swollen flesh. Sanford realized that the boy was holding onto one of his arms as if it was broken. And then his eyes adjusted to the gloom enough to reveal that the boy’s legs were chained to a heavy post sunk into the hardpan soil.

  The post was new.

  Sanford’s legs began shaking so tremulously that he nearly fell over. He squatted onto the floor next to the boy and steadied himself with one hand while he set down the beans with his other. He held up both hands to the boy, palms open. It took the boy another moment to grasp that there was no attack coming. Sanford tried to give him a little smile, then picked up the can and held it out to him. The boy tentatively reached forward to take the food with his good hand. But when he leaned forward to accept it, he suddenly gasped and froze in place. His hand stopped in midair. He peered up and down Sanford’s body, taking in the sight of the torn clothing and of Sanford’s own bruises. In a flash, the boy’s eyes doubled in size and he blurted out something in rapid Spanish. Surprised and excited, he then gestured back and forth, crying “Yoomee, yoomee!”

  Sanford realized that the boy was trying to use English. “You me! You me!” It was enough. He understood. The knowledge was a blade through every comforting layer of denial that separated him from the situation. There was nothing that he could do to ignore it any longer. He was face to face with a terrified boy from another country who could just as easily have been him.

  His own pulse rocked him. It sent heated throbs through his face and his ears. He nodded to the boy and tried to encourage him by pushing the little offering of food closer, but the boy’s eyes flashed. He knocked the can aside and the beans cut an arc across the wall. The boy frantically indicated his chains, jabbering away in Spanish and forgetting any attempt at English. That didn’t matter; his meaning was plain: Get me out of here! Find something to break these chains! We both have to get away! You and me! We have to run! You and me! You and me!

  The boy lunged forward the full length of the chain and grabbed on to Sanford’s arm. But Sanford recoiled and backed away, unable to bear anyone’s touch, not even another boy who knew why he was hurting. He took another step back while the boy kept up his rapid-fire appeals. He studied the problem with the same sense that he used to study Uncle Stewart. The obstacles were plain: thick chain, steel padlock. He needed tools. It would take time. It would make noise.

  It would bring Uncle Stewart.

  He backed to the door, eyes riveted on the captive Mexican boy. The boy’s pleas rose to hysteria when he saw him start to go. Sanford tried to reassure him by holding up his hands in the same reassuring gesture, but he wasn’t clear on whatever it was that he was supposed to be telling the boy. Was the message that he should not worry? And why was that? If the message was that Sanford intended to come back with a hacksaw, then yes, he could do that. He could come back with the damned hacksaw. But then what?

  He had to think, make a plan of some kind, find a way to do this without getting both of them hurt in the process. Or worse. But Sanford was still in such rough condition himself that he was having a hard time getting his thoughts to stick together. He sensed that the only way for him to get enough time to accomplish anything was to go back to the campsite right now. Pretend that nothing unusual had happened out here. Keep Uncle Stewart happy as well as he could for the rest of the evening, and then after he fell asleep, maybe Sanford could find a way to get into town and somehow get somebody in authority to care about the fates of one young boy from Mexico and another from Canada, both of whom were breaking the law just by being in the country.

  By the time he returned to the campsite, Uncle Stewart had cleaned himself up and was getting ready for bed. His mood was still chipper. “Sanford! You can go ahead and get some sleep tonight, but as soon as you get up I want you to draw enough water from the well to get thoroughly bathed. Do it before you start breakfast, even. I want you in presentable condition.” He grinned at him and winked. “Getting tired of the dirty ones.” He stepped into the tent but left the flap up for Sanford.

  There was a blanket wadded up in a corner of the tent, so Sanford lay down on that spot and pulled it over to him. His body throbbed and burned in half a dozen places. The sting in his backside became more noticeable after he lay still for a while, but he wished so hard for it not to be there that his mind gained some power over the pain. It hovered at a tolerable level. Everything seemed safe enough for the moment. The sense of peaceful rest gave him a whiff of optimism. At least he was forming a plan, and that in itself was something. He extinguished the lantern. Now all he had to do was lie still and wait for Uncle Stewart to go to sleep, quietly cut through that boy’s lock, even if it took him all night, then figure out what to do about the boy and about himself.

  He made it a point to trick Uncle Stewart into thinking that he was falling asleep by allowing his breathing to fall into a deep and regular rhythm. The pretense got much easier. It became so effortless that he was unaware when fatigue plunged him into sleep.

  The sun was already an hour into the sky by the time the heat became intense enough to wake him up. He emerged from sleep like a man coming off a binge and sat up feeling thick-headed while he stared around the surroundings, wondering what was going on. He turned toward the tent. The flap was up. The tent was empty.

  The boy. The story began coming back to him, piece by piece, each one more painful than the last. The damned boy, he had failed to get the boy. He had allowed his exhaustion to ruin the opportunity to help that captive boy. And now Uncle Stewart would be wide awake and right there keeping his eye on both of them. Uncle Stewart. Sanford’s head finally cleared enough to realize that there was no way that Uncle Stewart would allow him to sleep this late if he was around.

  He turned and looked over toward the driveway. The car was gone. A stab of hope went through him. Suddenly it appeared to have been for the best that he had failed to take action while Uncle Stewart slept last night. Now he could make all the noise that he needed to get the boy’s chains off. He threw off his blanket and started for the henhouse, wincing at the pain in his legs and his butt. When he reached the henhouse door, he looked over his shoulder. There was no sign of Uncle Stewart or anybody else. It was safe to show his back while he turned to the door and opened it wide. Once again, sunlight streamed through the open doorway and fell across the thick post and the long chains.

  The boy was gone. More than that, the ground around the post had
been thoroughly raked over. Any sign that he had been there at all had been carefully removed. The sight of it hit Sanford harder than it did when he first discovered the boy, causing that swirling sense of unreality to return. It churned inside of him. Doubt followed on its heels. Had he dreamed it? It had all seemed so clear. Then he looked down at the coiled chains, real enough to restrain large dogs. The forlorn stray whose face he remembered so clearly was gone, but he had been there. The boy had been there.

  Sanford hoped that Uncle Stewart had taken the boy somewhere and dropped him off, if not exactly back to the boy’s home. He deliberately made a clear mental picture of Uncle Stewart pulling the big Buick over to the side of the road and letting the boy hop out. His uncle would have to drive away in a roar, of course, spinning his wheels and spitting dust, just to show contempt. But it would turn out all right. The boy would be safe: Uncle Stewart would be gone from his life, and all the boy would have to do was to keep quiet about it from then on. Pretend that nothing had ever happened. He felt confident that the boy would never say anything, any more than he himself ever would. Sanford had already discovered that shame is the most effective gag that there is.

  Besides, if he never told anybody—if not a soul ever found out—why, then it was almost the same as if it had never happened at all, wasn’t it? He turned and headed over toward the well pump, resisting the urge to lie back down. It was important to take that bath before his uncle returned so that he would be presentable enough to avoid setting him off.

  Three

  Uncle Stewart stayed gone all day, so Sanford took his work at a slower pace. He collected a few eggs to cook up for breakfast and then spent the rest of the morning watering and feeding the stock. A can of beans served as his lunch, after which he exhausted the daylight hours getting the last of the tall weeds piled into the fire pit. He was able to cut them down using a long scythe that was light enough to swing without much effort, but after a few hours it felt like it weighed as much as he did. His palms were blistered and sore when nightfall came, in spite of the strong work gloves Uncle Stewart let him wear.

  An hour after sundown, the temperature had dropped enough that he could tolerate the idea of a bonfire, so he put a match to the weed pile and then retreated to the tent to avoid the direct heat. Behind the canvas, he knelt down next to the stack of pulp books that he had brought from home. In spite of the weariness seeping into him, something in his brain would not allow him to sleep—he lacked any way of knowing when Uncle Stewart might come back, or what state of mind he would be in.

  The single oil lamp gave just enough light to read by, so Sanford picked up the next book in his reading pile. He was eager to lose himself in somebody else’s world. The good stories were always so much better than his own lurching thoughts. Even back at home, in the days before all this had started, he had loved leaving the world behind in favor of a good story, and it was all the more true now. Sanford’s measure of a truly great story was whether or not it was so absorbing that it caused him to forget that he was reading at all, so that he simply watched the story unfold within his imagination while his eyes followed along on the page. He loved it whenever a story took him completely away from daily life. Lately, any story at all was an improvement.

  The book for tonight was a story magazine called Wild West Weekly: Stories of Western Life, featuring a short novel, “Young Wild West and the Dynamite Gang; or, Arietta and the Robbers of the Golden Strip.” He felt his mood brighten. What a title! Why, there was everything that an avid reader could want: a hero whose name is “Young Wild West,” plus dynamite, robbers, someplace called the Golden Strip, and even a girl with the musical name of “Arietta.” Sanford figured that even for a reader who did not yet know how great she was, her name alone should have been a clue. It meant that this story was written by that famous western writer known only as “An Old Scout.” Sanford felt a burst of joy. “An Old Scout” was one of his favorites, this mysterious figure who had spent years and years penning an entire western series, just the way that he knew the West to be. Sanford loved them all. What a writer! He sat you down at his fireside and kept you there, rapt with wonder.

  “An Old Scout.” Sanford said the magical name out loud, whispering even though he didn’t need to. It felt as if he were invoking the name of a spiritual friend. Perhaps by entering An Old Scout’s world, he could pull in a bit of the mystical power that he had acquired during his years on the prairie. Sanford gently turned the book in his hands to admire the artwork on the cover. It was a vivid depiction of the Old West in all its glory. Where did they get artists who could create something like this for a book cover? Why, with only six or seven colors, a sprawling outdoor scene was rendered with such skill that Sanford felt certain it should be hanging in a museum. Maybe there were classes in school about “An Old Scout” in the higher grades that he hadn’t reached. He hoped so.

  In the cover scene’s foreground, two guys in bright red shirts hovered at the edge of a short cliff, getting ready to drop a large rock onto a group of bad guys camped below. In the background, Arietta herself was hiding behind a boulder and directing the men’s ambush. They were there to save the hero, “Young Wild West,” because he was tied to a stake in the bad guys’ camp. Sanford personally understood that scene so clearly that he might as well have been inside the picture himself, listening to his mother tell those guys what to do.

  There was a date printed across the cover. He read it out loud: “January 29, 1909.” It struck him that this story was already seventeen years old! Here he was, holding a book in his hands that had been printed before he was born, with a story that took place a century before that. The very idea felt as if it had a power of its own. He decided to read this one as slowly as he could, just to draw it out. “An Old Scout” always told stories that were well worth the effort, but they were never long enough.

  A flash of light caught the corner of his eye at the same time he heard the engine of Uncle Stewart’s car, followed by the crunch of gravel while it turned in from the road. Sanford sighed while he listened to it pulling down the bare dirt drive. The magical feeling dissipated with every sound from the car: pulling to a stop, killing the engine, the door opening, the door closing. The sound of footsteps approached across the newly cleared ground, drawing closer to the tent where Sanford waited, resigned. A moment later, the flap lifted and Uncle Stewart poked his head in. He was covered in sweat and reeking with body odor. He face wore a grin of pure delight. “Sanford! I’m glad you’re still up! It’s a beautiful night! Too lovely for sleep, don’t you think? Come on out for a while! We’ll sit under the stars and talk!”

  “Well, I was just gonna—”

  “What’s that you’re reading?” Uncle Stewart leaned closer to get a look at the book. “Oh, Jesus Christ! Another one of those westerns?” He snatched the book and tossed it over next to Sanford’s bag, then grabbed Sanford under the arm, ushered him out of the tent, and dropped him on the ground. Sanford tensed for blows that did not come. When he risked a glance upward, he saw Uncle Stewart standing with his hands on his hips, staring up at the night sky and taking deep breaths of the night air. “Ah! Just look at all those stars! Never got a night like this back up North, eh?”

  “It’s pretty good back home.”

  “Not like this, it isn’t. Just look at all those stars up there! I wonder that they don’t fall down out of their own weight!” He stopped moving and looked down at Sanford. “Tell me, Sanford, why do you read that pulp stuff?”

  “No reason,” Sanford replied. “I just like it. This one is a whole book, even though it’s pretty short. The writer is called ‘An Old Scout,’ because he used to be—”

  ‘“An Old Scout?’ That’s his name?” Uncle Stewart grinned broadly at that. Sanford felt a whiff of relief; at least he didn’t look mad. “You’re trying to tell me that you’re reading a book by somebody named ‘An Old Scout,’ are you? What kind of shit is that?”

  “It’s not
. There’s a whole series of—”

  “I was happier to see you reading those cheap detective novels. At least they have little tips and things that you can learn from. What does this teach you—how to skin a buffalo?” Uncle Stewart laughed out loud at the notion. But his laughter was a sure sign that he was in an unusually good mood. Sanford seldom saw him laugh unless someone was down and bleeding.

  Uncle Stewart began to berate Sanford’s reading habits again, but the remarkable thing was that this time, he didn’t actually seem upset. He went through all the motions of scolding Sanford, but he appeared to feel too good for his heart to be in it. Whatever had put him in such a good mood was clearly a powerful force. Sanford sensed that if he just played along, he might get through the night without any more trouble.

  Uncle Stewart continued his train of thought while he amused himself with a giddy series of clownish dance steps. He held out his arms and twirled like a happy girl who has just returned home from the big dance. “Sanford, if you have to read detective novels, try sticking to the good ones. Now, Agatha Christie has a new one called The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It’s brilliant! That’s literature, my friend, let me tell you! You know why? Don’t answer. I’ll tell you why some dumb writer who calls himself An Old Scout’ isn’t fit to use Agatha Christie’s bedpan.” Stewart kicked at him playfully, not hard enough to hurt. “Genius is why! Genius! Do you have any idea what I mean? When you read a great mystery by an actual writer, you get tips worth using because they’re coming from somebody smart enough to outfox the cops!”