by Unknown
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Scotty cried, “Just something bad.”
“Were you able to say it last night?”
“No.” Scotty looked up. “Josh, I’m tired. I wanna go home.”
“I know. But …”
The room suddenly felt too small, the air too thick. He needed to get out of there. Away from there. Away from all of it.
“Look, it won’t be much longer. Just hang in there. God …” The word seemed suddenly strange, like he didn’t know what it meant anymore. “God’ll take care of it. You’ll see.” He forced himself to smile, and to believe. “It’ll be okay.”
The barbed wire cut at Josh’s work gloves as he pulled the last line tight along the fence. The job done, he got the water jug out of the pickup and drank deeply.
It had been two days since he last saw Scotty. He had gone into town each morning, but both times the Pastor had said it was not the right time to see him. Something about not giving the devil a weakness to exploit.
From where he was, he could see both the farmhouse and the cemetery. As he looked from one to the other, a kaleidoscope of memories rolled over. The family having a barbecue down near the creek. His father grooming Wheezer out on the front porch, carefully picking out the cockleburrs. His mother working on a painting. Scotty off looking for arrowheads in the newly plowed field across the road. His father asking where Scotty had gone.
Josh threw the jug on the seat and climbed in the pickup. The dust blew up behind him all the way into town. He was still wearing his work gloves when he reached the church. Deacon Evans was sitting outside the room.
“I’ve come to see Scotty.”
“Now Josh …” Evans stood up, shaking his head. “… you know the Pastor said you couldn’ … “
Josh ignored him and started for the door. When the deacon tried to stop him, Josh shoved past him, causing him to fall over the chair.
Scotty looked bad. Dark grey crescents hung under his eyes, which seemed drawn back in his head. His lips were cracked. The room, bare now except for the chairs, smelled of sweat.
“You’re coming home,” Josh said. He started to lift his brother up but stopped when Scotty cried out in pain. “What’s wrong?”
“My shoulder.” The voice was dry and rasping. “My arm got twisted around and it hurts.”
“Can you walk?” Josh looked out in the hallway but the deacon was gone. “We gotta get out of here.”
Scotty looked up from where he was sitting. He had to swallow a couple of times before he was able to speak.
“No, Josh. I can’t. I gotta stay here.”
“What?” Josh’s heart was beating fast, and the seconds seemed to drag by. “Why??”
“I … I wanna be cured. I want this devil out of me.” The boy began to sob. “I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.”
Josh opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He raised his hands in a helpless gesture, struggling to find the words.
“What are you talking about?” he asked finally. “You’ve never hurt anyone in your entire life.”
“Yes, I have!” Scotty cried. “It’s this devil that’s in me. I’m the reason it doesn’t rain anymore. I’m the reason the peanut mill closed. I’m the reason all those people are getting cancer.” He struck his fist weakly on his leg. “It’s me. It’s me. It’s me.”
Suddenly there were voices and footsteps coming up the hall. Josh thought frantically but the men reached the room before he could act. A moment later, he was dragged back into the hall and held before Pastor Roberts.
“Brother Josh, you are not to come here again,” the Pastor said softly. His face was oddly sympathetic. “I know you are worried about your brother. But the devil is using you as his instrument.” He reached out and put his arm on Josh’s shoulder. “Scotty needs you to be strong. And that means letting us fight this devil to the finish. We must all be strong. Our faith is our only defense. Doubt is the way to destruction.” Josh shook his head in disbelief. The arms holding him drew tighter, but he made no effort to break free.
“Pastor, I don’t know what to believe anymore. But Scotty’s no more got a devil in him than you do.” He looked around at men he had known all his life, men who had been his father’s friends. “I know he acts funny, but what has he ever done? To any of you? To anyone? What has he ever done?”
The Pastor gazed at Josh sadly.
“I’m sorry, Brother Josh, but your faith isn’t strong enough to resist the devil’s tricks. And we can’t allow your weakness to stop us from saving your brother.”
“There’s no devil!” Josh shouted as he was dragged outside. “Do you hear me, Scotty? There’s no devil!”
“Hey, kid! Wake up!”
Josh looked up and saw Mr. Brodie bending over him. Brodie had been Morgan’s peace officer until the town had to lay him off. Now he was the volunteer peace officer.
“What is it?” Josh asked. He tried to sit up. It was difficult with his hands handcuffed around the support beam. Morgan couldn’t afford a jail, so they had used the back room in Higgenbotham’s hardware store.
“You’re free to go,” Brodie said as he unlocked the cuffs. “What about the charges?”
“Well, there aren’t any no more. Pastor’s dropped the unlawful entry and Evans’s dropped the assault. Like I said, you’re free to go.” The usually talkative peace officer seemed subdued, his mind elsewhere. He stared out at the street while Josh got dressed, not saying a word until Josh started out the door.
“I think you oughtta go on home.” Brodie spoke without even glancing Josh’s way. “I think your mother’s gonna need you.”
Josh saw the smoke from the trash fire before he reached the house. Well, he thought, at least she’s not lying in bed listening to those mournful gospel songs all day.
She was coming out of the house when he pulled up. Her arms were filled with Scotty’s clothes. She didn’t look at Josh as she headed toward the trash fire.
“Mom,” Josh yelled as he ran to catch up with her. “What are you doing? Mom?”
His mother ignored him as she threw the clothes on the fire. Josh could see other things in the flames. Books. A baseball glove. Shoes. Without waiting, his mother turned away and headed back to the house. Josh followed.
“Your brother’s run away. He’s not coming back.” She was staring straight ahead as she spoke. “I’ll need your help with his bed.” It was not a request.
“His bed? Mom, what are you doing?”
She turned toward him, and for a moment she was his mother again, in pain and needing comfort. He reached out instinctively but she jerked away and the moment was gone.
“I told you, he’s gone and he’s not coming back,” she screamed, her fist shaking in the air. “Not here. Not ever. Now you get in here and help me with this bed!”
Josh got in the pickup and sped away, his mother’s voice fading as her image shrank in the rear-view mirror. It was Saturday, so he headed straight for the Pastor’s house.
The Pastor was kneeling by a single rose bush, checking the leaves for cut-worms. It was the only green thing left in a yard of dead grass and withered leaves.
“Where’s Scotty?” Josh asked, his tone flat and disrespectful.
The Pastor leaned back but did not look up. He suddenly seemed tired and worn out, as beaten down as the sun-burnt grass he knelt on. “Your brother ran away, Josh. The devil was too strong.” The Pastor looked down at his hands, shaking his head. “I wasn’t able to save him. I’m sorry.”
“Then where did he go?” Josh looked around angrily. “Nobody here would hide him or help him. Not in this town.”
“I don’t know where he went. No one does.” He reached haltingly for a browning rose leaf but stopped short, dropping his hand. “Go home, Josh,” he said softly. “Your mother needs you, more than ever. Go home.”
Josh sat in the pickup. He had stopped where the road ended at the edge of the creek. The bare hulk of what had on
ce been a bridge lay rusting across the small trickle of water that still managed to flow past. The shadows grew longer as the sun edged toward the horizon.
Scotty wasn’t anywhere to be found. Not in town, or on any of the roads leading into town, or in any of the abandoned houses along those roads. Josh ran over the problem again and again, not liking what he was thinking but unable to do anything else.
As the first stars began to twinkle into view, he remembered something, something he’d seen. He sat up, wondering why it seemed important. A moment later another memory came to him, and then he knew why.
He went home first. The house was dark and silent, his mother gone. Off near the edge of the yard, the embers of the trash fire glowed red in the deepening dusk. Josh got what he needed from the workshop behind the house and loaded it into the pickup. Wheezer jumped in on the passenger side and they drove off.
The Selby place, abandoned for years, sat at the end of one of the remotest and least maintained roads around Morgan. But it did have some metal holding pens that people sometimes used, especially when the ownership of the livestock was in question.
Eight large hogs roamed the confines of the nearest pen. He had noticed them on his earlier search of the place. They hadn’t seemed important then. He shut off the engine but left the lights on. The snuffling and squealing rose as he walked closer. “And the unclean spirits went out,” he quoted softly, “and entered into the swine .…”
The ground looked unusually torn up, even for hogs. Two sets of fresh tire tracks led up to the pen. One might have been a truck, but the other had the distinctive third-wheel marks of a back-hoe.
Opening the connecting gate, Josh waited while Wheezer herded the protesting hogs into the neighboring pen. Then he pumped up the Coleman lantern, and soon a bright white-ish light shone over the scene. He tested the ground with his shovel. The blade went in easily, going much deeper than it would normally have been able to. For a moment, he just stared at the ground, trying to see through it. Then he began to dig.
Josh wondered why he was hearing birds. Then he realized that he had fallen asleep. The ground under him was hard, and his sore muscles screamed their abuse when he sat up.
It was morning, and the sun was well on its way to warming things up. Wheezer looked up from where he was lying next to the pickup and then put his head down again. The hogs were shuffling about listlessly, uninterested in anything that did not involve food.
The hole was large and uneven, but it was still just a hole. There was no sign of anything in it. Struggling to ignore the stiffness and pain, Josh picked up the shovel and slid down to begin again.
Josh worked slowly and without thought. Each shovelful was the same as the last, and the hole deepened before him. The sun’s light edged lower along the dirt walls as the morning wore on.
Suddenly Wheezer lifted his head up and looked around. His body tensed up and he sneezed. A moment later he sneezed again and was up on his feet. Padding around the hole, he sniffed at the piles of dirt with growing agitation. Then he clambered down and began digging.
Josh’s throat ached and his eyes burned. Putting the shovel aside, he knelt down and began using his hands alongside Wheezer. He stopped when he felt something resist, something smooth and rubbery. The toe of a sneaker.
Figuring the distance, Josh moved over a few feet and brushed the dirt away. A thatch of straw-colored hair came up under his hand. He cleared the rest away slowly and carefully.
At first glance, Scotty looked like he was just waking up. But the half-open eyes were glazed over, and bits of dirt still clung to his lashes. His face was tired and grey, except where a large purple bruise crossed the left side. The lips were almost blue.
Scotty’s shirt-tail was hanging out, down across his belt. Josh was always having to tuck it in for him. Reaching down, he did it again. A powerful grief welled up inside him and spilled out in hot blinding tears. It took a long time to run dry.
He left Wheezer with Scotty and headed back into town. The streets were deserted. Then he remembered it was Sunday. Stopping in front of the church, he shut the engine off but stayed sitting behind the wheel. Everything was quiet.
He thought about the rifle hanging on the gun rack across the pickup’s rear window, but he couldn’t bring himself to even reach for it. Leaning his head against the steering wheel, he closed his eyes.
The sound of music drifted out through the open windows. Looking at the church entrance, he thought about going inside. Part of him still wanted to. Everything and everyone he had known was in there, waiting.
“Amazing grace,” the voices sang, “how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”
“I once was lost,” Josh joined in softly, “but now I am found. Was blind, but now I see.”
Reaching down, he started the pickup again. The sound of the engine and the crunch of gravel beneath the tires blurred away the hidden choir, but Josh continued on his own.
“T’was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fear relieved.” He held the note long as he turned onto the highway. It was thirty miles to Comanche. There was a state police office there.
“How precious did that grace appear …” Out of the corner of his eye, Josh saw Scotty sitting on the seat beside him, singing along. He knew he wasn't there, but he didn't care. He was glad for the company.
“… the hour I first believed.”
The End
Prisoner 392
JON F. MERZ
After reading more than seven hundred submissions and having bought twenty-four stories we figured we were finally done. But the last story remaining to be read demanded that we buy it. It was that good. We’re thinking, Kafka; we’re thinking Ambrose Bierce; we’re thinking Melville. We told you: it’s good.
They called it the slit.
And it was the only way Prisoner 392 could see the outside world. Cut into the iron door of his cell, the six-inch wide by two-inch tall opening looked like a mouth, rusted burs jutting up and down from the unfinished edges like serrated teeth.
The slit giveth; he could see the general population walking in the yard where the sun scorched the fecal brown earth into a fine dust that exploded in the wake of every footstep.
And the slit taketh away; it rubbed salt into the open wound of a life sentence spent in solitary confinement. It teased with tempting glimpses walking more than eight feet in a straight line, breathing the dust-caked air, feeling a simple breeze, almost feeling … free.
Even the slit’s position in the door reinforced its cruel purpose. Cut exactly four feet from the ground, an average-sized man would have little choice but to stoop in order to peer through. Soon, his back muscles would spasm. His quadriceps would burn. His neck would stiffen.
But still, he would look.
He’d been called Jakob once. He’d been called other names before that. Before the murders. Before the trials. Before everything.
Now he was simply Prisoner 392.
They’d stripped him of his name as easily as they’d stripped his clothes when the transport steamer had finally docked in Belize. Jakob was grateful to have merely survived the journey. Storms had pounded the vessel mercilessly en route. In the vast hold, three hundred prisoners waded through a viscous muck of urine, feces, vomit, sweat, and blood. The few times the sun managed to pierce the heavy gray clouds that had been the ship’s albatross throughout, it had baked the cargo hold until a cloying mist issued up from the bacterial swill.
Fifty men died crossing the ocean.
Those with the constitution it took to withstand the hellish trip spent the time discussing the impossibilities of escape. Marauding cats the color of night prowled the jungles outside the prison. Heathen tribes that still feasted on human flesh hunted like silent ghosts. Venomous asps slithered through the underbrush. And famished sharks filled the waterways hoping for a tasty morsel in the guise of a foolish convict.
Jakob only smiled. Let the rest of these fools suffer a lifetime away
from the fruits of civilized society. He would be going home.
Soon enough.
Tumbling down the rickety wooden gangway toward an equally unstable dock, Jakob got his first glimpse of Belize. It looked like a brothel built onto the ocean. Whores draped themselves over railings of the closest buildings taunting the men with quick glimpses of bare breast or plump buttock. Jakob found himself unable to look without feeling a surge of adrenaline bloat his bloodstream.
Other rogues clotted the streets. Traders in wide-brimmed hats offered up exotic animal skins, revolvers dangling like Christmas ornaments from their hips. Vagabonds loitered by the docks, their clothes ragged and their futures uncertain.
But the children drew his eyes most.
They ran barefoot begging food and money from anyone they could. Their lean legs powered their quest for nutrition. Their eyes gleamed bright with hope. A thin sheen of salty sweat basted their tanned lithe bodies.
Jakob licked his lips. Oh, but he could give them such salvation as they never knew existed. Such delicious delights could he perpetrate upon their innocent souls. And such heinous pleasure would he derive from their screams and pleas for mercy.
The sharp clang of an iron bell—a single toll—fell over the raucous chatter that had assaulted his ears.
And silence dropped like a guillotine blade on a soft fleshy neck. Everyone in the town watched them march off the dock. Jakob looked around. What did they know? What was this place? He felt like a lamb being led to the slaughter.
Armed guards herded them like cattle, ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. The trip hadn’t been easy for them either.
Two miles from the docks, down the winding dirt road lined with thorny bushes and spindly trees bearing no fruit, Jakob caught sight of the prison itself.
At first glance, the line from Poe’s poem jumped into his head.
Up Babylon-like walls, he thought. Appropriate given the imposing height of the sun-baked fortifications. Jakob almost smirked. Poe had gotten it right. But this wasn’t the City in the Sea.