The Road Out of Hell

by Anthony Flacco

  How long had he been in there? It could have been hours, judging by the feeling in his arms, hands, wrists, shoulders—they lay useless at his sides now, burning with exhaustion. It was very dark outside, early-morning cool. It had to have been more than half a day since Uncle Stewart began punishing him for sneaking off the property after he caught him trying to sneak back on. Sanford didn’t recall most of what had happened after the boiling water hit him, but his position in the pit gave him a general idea. Sanford knew that the trick was to stay away from that sense of doom and panic. Avoid it like a live wire. Keep breathing, keep reminding the lungs that he wasn’t really drowning.

  The dirt underneath him suddenly felt cold. A shiver rattled him, banging his kneecaps up against the boards. The place was so awful that he had to occupy his thoughts in some way just to stave off screaming. If he screamed, it might draw Uncle Stewart out of the house. If Uncle Stewart was not coming to release him, it would be to do something worse.

  Sanford helped himself to stay calm by going back to school on the topic of how to handle his uncle in order to avoid his temper and violence as much as possible. The obvious answer was to do whatever his uncle wanted, but that was a lot trickier than it sounded. Whatever Uncle Stewart wanted at any given moment was apt to change with his moods, and his moods were apt to change with a shift in the wind. So far, Sanford had found no way to predict what state of mind Uncle Stewart was going to be in at any time.

  Except for the past day after Sanford was caught returning from his brief flight, Uncle Stewart had begun to spend time away. It turned out that he hated the place just as much as Sanford had expected him to. The upshot was that Sanford at least got more time alone that way. Once Uncle Stewart’s car pulled down the drive and out onto the main road, there was always a small sense of safety in his absence. He was going to have to learn how to keep everything so well caught up around there that when Uncle Stewart came home there was nothing for him to do except play his fucking piano. Use boredom to encourage him to go somewhere else to pass the time while Sanford essentially ran the place alone. Under those circumstances, his hot and dirty chores were a welcome relief.

  He tried to turn his supine body over, but the space above him was too narrow, so he remained on his back and told himself that he wasn’t really in such a bad position. Maybe if things got too tough in there he could dig his way up the dirt sides of the pit and around the edge of the wooden cover. It would require a lot more strength than he had at that moment, however. Plus it was likely to get him killed unless he got all the way out of the pit and off of the property before Uncle Stewart came out to check on him. Which would do nothing more than put him right back into the same spot he was in when he gave up and came back. There was still nowhere to go, no one to tell.

  Calmness. He reminded himself that his main lesson in dealing with Uncle Stewart was to seek shelter in calmness. Don’t set his uncle off, and don’t allow his own fears to overtake him. Give himself a reason to stay calm. He reminded himself that at least his body was lying flat and stretched out straight. He closed his eyes and tried to forget the planks that sealed him in.

  The inside of his forehead became a silent movie screen. It was showing one of his favorite movies: the vast and wide open spaces of the famous silent film documentary Nanook of the North. It had come out back when he was eight or nine, and it still played in theatres all over Canada. Magnificent. He forgot where he was altogether and sank into the memory of the way the movie camera captured the Canadian plains country. He could see it so clearly, stretched out in all directions until the horizon became endless. The movie’s black-and-white photography had no soundtrack, but he had sat in the theatre for one showing after another. His imagination was as good as the real world, and in it he heard the movie’s roaring winds and felt the freezing ice and snow. Canada and the sweeping plains of the ancient Cree-Montagnais people had been his homeland, until he’d been kicked out for being worthless.

  His anger at being sent away was nearly gone, though. So much of what had happened since they left Canada only served to prove that Winnie was right about him, after all. It got hard to resent her, once he realized that. The thing that hurt him was to think about Jessie, his best friend in some ways. Jessie was one potential source of comfort who wouldn’t care that he was in the United States without authorization. It was not the sort of thing that would concern her at all. He felt certain about how strongly she would react if she knew how Uncle Stewart was treating him.

  But the rest of it. What could he tell her about it all that wouldn’t disgust her and cause her to turn on him? If she knew everything that had happened here, she might decide that Winnie had gotten it right about him when she sent him away.

  Then there was the way that his grandmother and grandfather just looked the other way if they happened to drop by while Uncle Stewart had one of his young Mexican boys there. He liked to pick them up and keep them around for a few days at a time. Grandpa and Grandma never questioned why the boys did no work, or why there was a different one there the next time they came. Uncle Stewart’s first attack on him back in Los Angeles had taken place at night, when both grandparents were home and supposedly sleeping. But they could have heard. They might know, even though they never did a thing to let on. Just like they might know exactly what it meant to see Uncle Stewart’s little “visiting workers” hanging around the place.

  Grandpa Northcott had stayed there overnight before the ranch house was finished, when the kid who was there at the time screamed half the night out in the henhouse. At one point Grandpa hollered that he was trying to get some Goddamned sleep, and except for that it was never mentioned again. The boy was gone when morning came, and nobody seemed to see a need to talk about it.

  The whole Northcott family—was there something wrong with them that was so bad and so strong that you could inherit it? Hell, maybe you could catch it just by spending too much time around them. How else could a group of people come to the point that they agreed to conduct themselves in that way? He had no other way to explain any of it. And if his grandparents were sick people and his uncle was a sick person and probably his mother, too—what did that make him? One of them? His gut reaction was outrage and denial that he could be cut from the same timber as they were. How could he be one of them? He tried the idea on for size, just to prove to himself that such a thing was ridiculous.

  So: one of them. He was there because he was one of them, was he? What bullshit! Who would ever believe that he was one of these people? True, they were relatives, even close family. But Sanford could feel it in his bones; he was not like the Northcotts, with their casual use of violence and disrespect. He felt revolted and shamed by their son’s uncontrollable sexual cruelty. Come to think of it, there was never a trace of any moral hesitation from his grandparents or his uncle, no matter what was going on. As for his mother, he tried hard to remember seeing Winnie show genuine concern over anything that wasn’t of immediate benefit to her.

  He latched on to the idea of being different from the Northcotts. Sanford squinted his entire brain and reasoned his way through it. If I were that kind of a creature, why would 1 want to get out of here so badly?

  And because Jessie’s opinion of things was important—in case he ever saw her again—he tried to assure himself as to why he was different from the Northcotts. What had he actually done? Nothing that was ever his idea. But you can’t prove where an idea comes from. There was a saying that he remembered reading somewhere; it could have been in the worthy writings of An Old Scout: “You are not what you say. You are what you do.” Fair enough, then. What did he actually do?

  What he actually did was each and every little thing that Uncle Stewart told him to do. Yes, it was only after taking those rough beatings those first few times; but after a while, he’d had to stop resisting. It was just too difficult to get any work done, carrying the dull aches and stabbing pains that always followed a bad one. So what he did was all the perv
ert stuff. There was no way for him to define himself without either figuring that into the picture or lying to everybody he ever met for the rest of his life.

  He went along with all of it. Didn’t he? Was he going to say that the threat of violence was an excuse for the fact that Uncle Stewart knew just how to rub Sanford’s body so that he could not control it at all? He had to get his jollies, as Uncle Stewart said, whether he intended to or not. He did not want to like it. In a life that allowed for no other source of personal pleasure, he still did not want to like it. In the isolation of a desert chicken ranch, in darkness, behind closed doors, within the utter secrecy he was forced to swear that he would keep, he did not want to like it.

  But the drive to feel something that did not hurt was too powerful to overcome. Sometimes, if he forced himself into his imagination, he could almost feel a female’s touch. The very idea would finish him off with a single sweet moment before the sourness of it choked him like a new cloud in an old outhouse. “You did it!” Uncle Stewart loved to taunt him. “You got your jollies! You like it too! God, oh God, you sick bastard! You should be thanking me! If it wasn’t for me, you’d never get any at all! You’d have to play with yourself in the henhouse! Hey chickens: the guy who feeds you is a sick bastard, ha-ha-ha!! Uh-oh!—the rooster is over there locking up the henhouse, ha-ha-ha! Cover your dick! Cover your dick! Our lead bird is crapping himself! Ha-ha-ha!”

  Was it true?

  It felt true.

  It was as if Uncle Stewart had stolen one of those wavy mirrors from a carnival funhouse and held it up to Sanford, pointing to the distorted image. This is you, Sanford. This is what you are. This is you. Because what else was he, after all? If he believed the writings of An Old Scout, “you are what you do.” That meant that if he really had no part in Northcott’s illness, then he ought to be able to go ahead and tell everybody what he had been doing there at the chicken ranch.

  Yeah, Sanford. Tell them who you are. Tell them you get your jollies! Try to tell anybody in the whole of God’s green earth that you didn’t like it! Hey, hey, now—get this, now. Listen to me. I want to tell you something: make sure you do it with a straight face, mm? Ha-ha-ha!

  Sanford came to recognize himself as a partner in the filth that went on in that place. The realization was so powerful that he abandoned the idea of trying to write another actual letter to Jessie, one using his own words and not the dictated pulp that Uncle Stewart had dreamed up for him to write. There was no way for him to tell her enough that would get her to do something on his behalf—without revealing things that would surely drive her away forever.

  A surge of despair completely swamped him. Uncle Stewart was deliberately holding him under now, tormenting him to his heart’s delight. He would keep it up until he decided that Sanford had paid his debt.

  But Sanford remained convinced that Uncle Stewart would release him from the pit soon. In spite of the fact that he was being held under an enforced mortal panic so primal and extreme that it came over him with sensations of drowning, a tiny spark inside him remained fairly cheerful. He knew that Uncle Stewart would pull him out of there before he let him die. Sanford’s labors were necessary to make the chicken ranch pay off, and the chicken ranch had to pay off so nobody else would have any reason to come scratching around into Uncle Stewart’s life. Looking into things.

  Paralyzed under boards in a pit, a part of Sanford remained ready to scream defiance into the face of his uncle, to bash his fingers flat with the lid of the keyboard on his piano if he got the chance. You can’t kill me you can’t kill me you can’t kill me! Because Sanford knew that he had a bulletproof ace up his sleeve: the work was never-ending in that place. Lazy Uncle Stewart barely knew where they kept things. And the one thing that you can count on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of chickens to never stop doing is eating—why, feeding time was already rolling around. The birds always started to peck around harder and harder as the seed ran out. That would soon be followed by the screeching objections of panicking birds, scrapping over the feeble remains. They would get each other going until the entire compound was singing out, screeching defiance at their mounting hunger, demanding that the food come to them. It was enough to make anybody within earshot want to peel off their own fingernails and jam the stumps into their ears.

  Therefore Sanford did not have to beg. He did not need to scream for Uncle Stewart to let him out. The noisy animals would do it for him. All he had to do was to stay alive for a while without breaking his fragile thread of calmness. He took his mind off of his fears by focusing mental telepathy onto Uncle Stewart. He had already gotten in some practice at it, because Grandpa Northcott had left the Psychic Card Game behind in disappointment one day after realizing that they were not the playing cards that he had intended to bring home. Those psychic exercises were a perfect way to pass the time without making any noise. He had learned the routine: Focus your thoughts. Keep the breathing deep and even. Picture yourself whispering directly into the other person’s mind. You need Sanford. You need his work. You can’t let him die out there. You need Sanford. You need his work. You can’t let him die out there.

  He kept up the monologue and left it running. After a while, he could tell that it was beginning to take effect. There was a truth in it that Sanford trusted even with his most primitive gut instinct: Uncle Stewart knew that his party would come to an end without him. And if Sanford disappeared, people might get curious. Maybe, at least. There was a risk that they would, however small it might be. A risk. Uncle Stewart would never be safe if he let Sanford die out there. Somebody would have to eventually ask about him, at least—wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t Jessie, at least? Jessie would.

  He had Uncle Stewart up his sleeve, therefore. He surely did not love him, but he had to keep him alive anyway. Sanford remained confident that he would not die that day.

  Six

  Over the next year and a half, life on the ranch settled into a pattern. Sanford tended to the farm and its stock. He was physically violated so often and with so many foul things that nothing was right with him down in his rear end. There was blood all the time, no matter what. His back still ached from the burn Uncle Stewart had inflicted on him. The petroleum jelly that he smeared on it every few days hadn’t helped at all; in fact, it seemed to make it worse. Every once in a while, Uncle Stewart would force him to write another letter home, and he complied to save himself another beating.

  Every few weeks, Uncle Stewart would disappear for a while and then return with a new Mexican boy. Each new boy lasted for a week or so before Uncle Stewart began to regard him as a liability. By then, they had always seen too much of him.

  Sanford had long since lost track of the number of boys Uncle Stewart had brought to the ranch, but he felt that he somehow gained an extra bit of weight with every one of them. The first few boys packed on the most weight, of course, but there was less each time. If there hadn’t been, he would have buckled under the load. By the time that the number of boys passed that first half dozen or so, he began to notice it pressing down on him.

  So far, Uncle Stewart’s habit while a new boy was there had been to allow Sanford to skulk off and stay out of sight. Sanford hustled to keep the place running and was glad for the chance to gain some little piece of consolation in the feeling that he was making himself indispensable while his uncle remained inside the house with his new prize.

  The recurring problem seemed to be that in order for Uncle Stewart to satisfy himself, to “really pull the weed up by the roots,” as he put it, he needed to reveal so much of his personal demon that the boys soon—without exception—began the long and familiar pattern of hollering in shock … then indignantly demanding … then screaming in terror … then begging for mercy … then blubbering like a child … until finally, inevitably, they fell into that shattered, infantile wailing that Uncle Stewart never failed to extract from each one. No matter where Sanford went on the property, he was never completely out of
earshot of the worst of it. Sanford never looked down on them for it. He had sung every one of those songs himself, been tortured in all the same ways.

  He hated the way it made him feel to hear the terrible noises, but the greatest damage was done by knowing himself to be relieved that it was somebody else’s pain and not his own this time. He cringed at the feeling of powerlessness and at his sense of personal cowardice; but the grim truth was that by the time the first year had passed, Sanford had come to take a degree of personal comfort in the terrible sounds. They meant that the demon was busy for a time. They meant that he could sleep—and that most of the time, anyway, Uncle Stewart would not show up to yank him out of his bed. Sanford could wake up to the roosters and not the monster.

  For a while, he had entertained vague hopes of somebody dropping by one day and overhearing the goings-on inside the place, but nothing like that had ever happened, not even after all this time. Sanford didn’t know whether or not the Devil really existed, but he knew from experience that demons were real, and that the one who lived there had the Devil’s own luck on his side.

  Sanford tended to move in slow motion when Uncle Stewart left him alone to do his work. He also felt things in slow motion that way, which made it better. He went even slower when his uncle was away from the ranch. By the beginning of 1928, Uncle Stewart was constantly taking day-long excursions, even a few overnight trips.

  On the first day of February in the mild desert winter, Uncle Stewart had been gone all morning by the time Sanford took a break for lunch, the way Uncle Stewart permitted him to do. He was moving at turtle speed by that point, allowing his muscles to move at an easy pace and basking in the sensation of relief at not having to push himself. The slow movement of his own body weight helped him to avoid feeling just how heavy he had become—hundreds of pounds at least. Sometimes he practically waddled when he walked. The new holes that he had to keep poking in his belt to tighten it were no indication of how he felt. These days, he could feel his weight shift from side to side when he walked.