Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales

by Norman Partridge

  The grinning head swiveled on a scrawny neck. The thing's nose and eyes were gone, just empty holes, but its jagged teeth remained, along with lips that were as dry and black as dead worms. Swatches of dusky skin clung to its bones like cheap wallpaper hung by the devil himself, and Jackson prayed that the creature would fall apart if it moved again.

  His prayers were not answered. The thing's bony fingers worked back and forth, sawing through his leather boot. Its mouth opened, papery lips shredding, and it reached out for Carolina, too.

  The gunman's pistol thundered six times. Dust puffed from the thing's back and bullets screamed over Jackson's scalp.

  Spartacus ducked low. Started to slide. Reached out with his one hand but only caught the canvas tarp. The wind wrapped it around him like a shroud.

  He heard a dry popping sound as he fell against the rear boot. A broken bone. He was sure of it. Worry swam in his gut as he tumbled from the stage. He landed hard, rolling.

  He rose and shook off the pain, steady on both feet.

  Nothing was broken.

  But that sound...

  He looked down.

  Clutching at his shredded boot, locked there, was the dead thing's left arm. Jackson shivered with revulsion. He couldn't look away. He couldn't even move.

  Carolina's screams brought him around. Up ahead, the stage went over hard, sending up a cottony cloud of dust. Jackson kicked the dead arm loose and moved forward, unable to see much.

  He heard horses whinnying. Some screamed in pain. But he didn't hear any human screams, and he didn't hear the report of a pistol.

  The hazy cloud drifted toward him, slowly, clinging close to the earth as it advanced.

  His shotgun was up there somewhere. Plenty of shells too, beneath the driver's box.

  Unless the shells had been thrown clear. Unless his gun had been smashed beneath the wrecked stage.

  Jackson stopped, eyeing the cloud.

  Something rose in the middle of it.

  The thing had suffered in the wreck. Dust spilled through its naked ribs and poured down its spine like sand rushing through some strange hourglass. Its face was skinned clean off; its naked jaws clacked as if it were trying to speak.

  Jackson backed off, glancing over his shoulder. Castro was miles away. He couldn't even see the other man.

  It's slow, he told himself, so damn slow. I can get around it. I can get to the stage, find a gun...

  He remembered Carolina's bullets whizzing through the thing, not even hurting it, and he stopped cold. In his youth he'd fought Johnny Reb. In his prime he'd battled hard cases of every stripe. But lately he'd only fought with barkeepers who refused to serve him. And a surly barkeep didn't hold a candle to a walking skeleton, that was for damn sure.

  He turned to run, but saw the thing's arm lying there in the dirt, still papered with dry flesh. He bent low and snapped it into two sections, got out his makings, and filled the withered palm with dry tobacco and cigarette papers.

  The dead thing was close now, its single arm outstretched, reaching for him.

  "We're even now." Jackson grinned, staring at the place where the thing's other arm should have been. "Even."

  He got a match, his fingers shaking. Bracing a bone beneath his foot, he struck Lucifer against bone.

  It flamed, and in a moment the hand was blazing.

  He jammed it under the thing's ribs and prayed.

  Jackson's shotgun was in fine shape.

  Carolina wasn't. His neck was broken, twisted clean around so that his chest pointed toward heaven and his nose pointed toward hell.

  Jackson didn't feel bad about it.

  He did feel bad about shooting three injured horses, but that left three that were still fit and able. He transferred the contents of the strongbox into one of Mrs. Sloane's carpetbags, took a canteen from the driver's box, and started back toward Senor Castro. As he passed the dead thing, he emptied the shotgun into it, just to be sure.

  The charred black bones flew apart like a cheap pinata.

  Castro was tamping earth over Ben Rose's grave when Jackson dismounted. "You doing okay?" Jackson asked.

  Castro nodded. There were a few red splotches on his right shoulder, but it appeared that he'd escaped the brunt of Carolina's shotgun blast. Jackson turned his gun on the Mexican, hoping to remind him of the damage it could do. "Right now I'm not too sure what just happened. I figure you might be able to help me out."

  "I can try." Castro eyed the canteen, and Jackson tossed it. The Mexican drank. "I've been after Catherine Flint, our Mrs. Amelia Sloane, since she left Mexico City. My employers have a museum there. Senorita Flint stole something from us."

  "That thing?"

  "Yes. It was a momia, a mummy, from Peru. The remains of a very powerful man who died a long time ago. It had certain powers, powers so dangerous that we kept it hidden from those who might exploit it. That is what we do: we control evil, we battle it."

  "Go on. I'm listening."

  Castro smiled. "She was very ingenious, Senorita Flint. She gained the confidence of my superiors and managed to steal the momia. And the ruse she employed to escape —the bereaved widow traveling with her husband's remains—was one we hadn't expected. The dead dog was another brilliant stroke, adding, if you'll pardon the pun, a certain odor of authenticity. At any rate, it took me quite some time to catch up with her. I was looking for a way to take back the mummy when our troubles began.

  "I don't know what she wanted," Castro continued. "Perhaps she recognized the thing's power, but I hope that is not the case. Perhaps she only wanted money. Many museums in your country are unconcerned about the sources that supply their antiquities, and they pay extravagant sums to those who plunder the riches of other lands." He pointed to the doll head. "And the momia, wrapped carefully many years ago and crowned with a false head, would have brought a pretty penny."

  "Until Carolina decided to check it for gold teeth."

  "I think that is what brought the creature back to life. But I may be wrong. There are many forces in the world which we do not understand."

  Jackson lowered his shotgun. "Maybe the old boy just didn't appreciate being disturbed after all those years spent bundled up neat and tidy."

  "That is a distinct possibility."

  "Well, let's go," Jackson said.

  "Where?"

  "Tucson's closest. The stage company will be waiting for me. I've got their money and a bunch of dead passengers and a whole lot of explaining to do." He shook his head. "Damn. They'll never believe any of this."

  "There will be many questions," Castro said. "They will not like your answers, amigo. This I can assure you."

  Jackson knelt and pressed his hand against Ben's grave. He was quiet for a long moment, and then he said, "These folks you work for, you say they fight the good fight?"

  "Yes. They most assuredly do."

  "Are they hiring?"

  Castro laughed. "Senor Jackson, I'm certain that a man of your talents can always be of use."

  Spartacus Jackson patted the grave one last time, remembering Ben's words about moving south.

  "I've always wanted to see Mexico," he said.

  The Macbeth School of Horror

  "When the Fruit Comes Ripe" is about a crooked sheriff's moldering corpse returning from the dead to wreak vengeance upon his enemies. Not surprisingly, the story veers into nasty EC Comics territory pretty quickly, and it's a quick drag race from there to the finish line.

  You'll notice that's not exactly the kind of neighborhood where you'd expect to find ol' Will Shakespeare hanging out. So what's the deal with the allusion to Macbeth in the title of this essay, you ask? What in the world can a zombified lawman have to do with the Bard's signature Scottish king?

  My answer: it's all in the attitude.

  I was about twelve when I saw Macbeth for the first time. This would have been sometime in the early seventies, when my older brother was a student at Southern Oregon College in Ashland. Of course, Ashland
was (and is) home to one of the premiere Shakespeare festivals in the world, so I was starting at the top.

  I can still remember my brother dropping me off at the outdoor theater the night of the performance. I was nervous—a kid going to a play for the very first time, and going alone[54] —but excited at the same time. An usher helped me find my seat. I was right up front, in the third row. The place was far from packed, and everyone in the audience looked older than my parents. Naturally I began to worry that I was in for three of the most boring hours of my life.

  Then a trio of witches took the stage and stirred a boiling cauldron. Warriors followed them with hefty swords strapped to their sides. Those swords came out as the play progressed, and so did murderous little knives. Schemes were hatched and blood was spilled across a dark landscape, and a madwoman endeavored to wash invisible blood from her hands. Believe me, it was a heady brew of violence and fury for an imaginative kid like me.

  Macbeth fascinated me then; he still does today. It isn't easy to corral his motivations, or size up his character. The witches' prophecy drives him, but so does his wife's own simmering ambition, and so does his own. Watching Macbeth that night, it seemed to me that he was a man strapped in an invisible harness, yanked through the events of the play by his own merciless demons. And what fascinated me most of all about Macbeth's battle with destiny was the way he faced his doom when the caveats of the witches' prophesies that had once seemed to assure his victory turned against him. Knowing well that death awaited, Macbeth drew his sword, went straight at it, and took his cuts at eternity with words that I have never forgotten;

  I will not yield,

  To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet.

  And to be baited with the rabble's curse.

  Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane

  And though opposed being by no woman born

  Yet will I try the last. Before my body

  I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,

  And damned be he who first cries "Hold, enough."

  For the burgeoning writer inside me, watching Macbeth that night hardcast part of my creative component. It was a defining moment. The character and his story captivated me as few other characters or stories ever had. It colored the way I would come to see fiction and the world in a way I couldn't fully perceive at the time.

  As I saw more plays (and movies) and read more books, I developed a love of strong characters and strong characterization. Toss in a scenario that notched high on the virtually insurmountable scale or a doomed hero who faced up to his fate knowing full-well that he didn't stand a chance and you had a story that would punch me hard in the head, heart, and gut.

  I discovered a lot of characters that fit that bill—or parts of it—over the years. The first one (long before Macbeth) was probably Lon Chaney, Jr.'s Wolfman/Lawrence Talbot character in those old Universal monster rallies. Others that stuck with me were Robert Neville in Matheson's The Last Man on Earth, John Russell in Elmore Leonard's Hombre, and Taylor in the film version of Planet of the Apes. There were darker characters, too, like Sheriff Lou Ford in Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me.[55]

  And that last bit presented an interesting paradox once I recognized it. Both heroes and villains could be cut from the same creative cloth when it came to characterization. Strong heroes and strong villains were often driven by the belief that they saw the world in its true light. Their actions were directed by a personal code, and that code was molded by their experience, cemented into a worldview. In other words, they'd go to the mat to validate their sense of reality.

  It was an interesting way to approach the idea of good and evil. Ultimately, I came to think of heroes and villains like flip sides of the same coin. A balance existed between the two, a grudging connection. For me, the more interesting heroes and villains butted heads not only with their enemies, but with fate or the world itself. And if the world got the better of them in the end...well, they went down swinging.

  These were the kind of characters that fascinated me as a reader/viewer, so it's no surprise that they were the same kind of characters I'd write about when I began to craft my own stories. Many writers' manuals will advise you to concentrate on character motivation, but when it comes to characterization motivation has always seemed too weak a word for me. Sure, I want to understand each player's particular moral compass and know what forces direct it, but I'm equally interested in a character's visceral response to the world. I want to understand how the things locked up inside drive him. I want to know not only what makes him tick, but what propels him through life...whether he's a hero, a villain, or something in between.

  WHEN THE FRUIT COMES RIPE

  Everyone in town used to say that Sheriff Willie Martin was Fiddler, and one night Willie rose from the grave to prove that it was still true.

  Ten years. A long time to lie underground in a leaky box. A long time to suffer the worms twisting in your guts. Not enough time to figure out if you were alive or dead, or decide if you believed in God or the Devil, but just enough time to teach yourself how to move again, and plenty of time to store up a whole lot of hate.

  Willie lumbered past the rusty FIDDLER CEMETERY sign. In the distance, headlights cut through the fog on Highway 63. One corner of Willie's upper lip rose in a leathery sneer, a feeble mockery of the self-satisfied grin that had stopped tough men cold in the old days. But now the sneer would have to do —the rest of Willie's upper lip was glued to his teeth like a dry, lifeless worm, and his lower lip had rotted away long ago.

  Thirteen miles to Fiddler. Thirteen miles home. Commanding his fingers to bend in ways they didn't want to, Willie untied his silk necktie. Ten years ago the undertaker had knotted it especially tight, taking care to make Willie's eternal rest as uncomfortable as possible. But that was okay. In fact, Willie admired the man for it. After all, during his reign as sheriff he had collected fifty bucks from the undertaker for every stiff planted in Fiddler soil, not to mention a whole jarful of gold fillings.

  Willie's bony fingers clacked together as he tugged at the ends of the tie. I hope the old bastard hasn't gone and died on me, he thought. I'd like to see if I can still cinch up a perfect full-Windsor.

  Again, Willie tried for the self-satisfied grin. Again, he settled for the leathery sneer. Tonight he planned to show every person who'd ever crossed him that his memory was very long, indeed. Every union organizer, every newspaper writer, every clean cop, every damn one of them.

  Stiff-legged, Willie made his way along the muddy drainage ditch that ran parallel to the highway. He kicked at beer bottles and aluminum cans, and then his foot struck something soft and fleshy.

  A dead dog.

  Willie laughed. Plenty of strays had disappeared beneath the bumper of his patrol car in the old days, crawling off to die in a ditch just like this stupid mutt had. He stepped gingerly over the decaying animal. "Hell," he said, staring down at what remained of his hands. "I seen worse."

  Grin. Sneer.

  Slowly, careful of his footing, Willie climbed the embankment. The wind whipped across Highway 63 and tore a window in the fog. Willie froze. A huge oak stood on the other side of the road, its branches reaching into the night, reaching for him.

  The same tree that those crazy bastards tied me to. The same tree....

  Willie lurched out of the way as a car sped by. His withered heart throbbed and wheezed, pumping musty air instead of blood.

  "No," Willie begged, but his dead brain dredged up the memory. The fog, the warm whiskey swimming in his belly...a big dog in front of him and he hit the gas...a whispered oh Christ when he saw that the dog was really a little girl carrying a burlap sack and his feet got tangled up, missed the brake pedal...the sack flying through the fog, disappearing, and the sound of deposit bottles shattering against the blacktop...yellow lights slicing through the fog-shrouded migrant camp...Willie panicking...the smell of ripe oranges and gunpowder and then his bullets were gone and the migrants were all over him, punching
and cutting...cutting him everywhere as the thick rope tightened, pulling him against rough bark...the orange shoved into his mouth...his teeth clamping down, summer-sweet juice squirting in his mouth as the sharp blade ripped across his throat....

  Willie dropped to his knees. High beams blazed in the fog, but he couldn't even blink anymore let alone get out of the way and a truck plowed into him, breaking his brittle body into a dozen pieces.

  Willie's head landed in an orange grove on the other side of the highway. The truck roared away, toward Fiddler, fog and exhaust swirling in its wake like a monstrous, crashing wave.

  At sunrise, a skinny dog came sniffing down the drainage ditch. Tentatively, the animal nudged Willie's left leg, then took the withered limb between its teeth and trotted toward Willie's head.

  No! Willie begged silently. Stay away!

  The dog growled, showing yellow teeth. It sniffed Willie's head, decided that the leg was the better bargain, and continued into the orange grove.

  Around noon, a flock of sparrows appeared. The birds tore tufts of hair from Willie's pitted scalp and flew off toward Fiddler to build their nests. A chattering crow landed in the ditch and pecked at Willie's skeletal fingers, and a squirrel stole his silk necktie.

  Willie watched the squirrel scamper away. He prayed, not knowing who to pray to. He knew nothing about magic or witchcraft, but he'd sure enough seen his share of weird shit transpire around these parts.

  Somewhere out there, there was something to believe in. Willie was certain of that. He promised anything and everything if only someone, something, would help him. He pledged eternal servitude. He swore that he'd burn in hell without complaint. And when he ran out of earnest promises, he simply waited, satisfied that he'd done all he could.

  Two Mexican boys came down the ditch late in the afternoon, shouting and laughing while they collected bottles and aluminum cans. The shorter boy found Willie's badge and pinned it to his faded flannel shirt, but it was the taller boy who discovered the real prize — Willie's head.