Other details—his cryptic verbage, his darkly, otherworldly aura, his outturned nostrils and gnarled hands that were covered with coarse, bristly hair—would be subject to heated disagreement, as Lamepeter Officer Keiffer noted. Reports of his “glowing eyes” and his frothing mouth would be listed as “drunken conjecture.” After a point, collective memory folded on matters of visual detail. The stranger’s behavior, however, was generally agreed upon, running, chronologically, as follows:
At approximately ten o’clock, the individual in question—variously referred to as “It,” “The Shitbeast,” “The Devil,” “The Corn Dog” and “Dutchies’ Revenge”—entered the tavern. At that time, fifteen persons were present, including the bartender, Freida Baylor. A group at the counter was watching a boxing event on the TV, above the bar. According to Ms. Baylor, the “intruder,” as she called him, sat down and yelled for what sounded like food, though in some other language—“Dutch” (meaning: German, most likely) by the twang of it. He beat on the counter with a napkin dispenser. His manner was forceful, crude and belligerent. Baylor nervously gave him a menu … He pulled out a pile of dollar bills. He slid them across the counter toward her and, reaching over it, snatched up an unopened bottle of bourbon. The group to his left couldn’t help but notice. He leered at them, snapping in “Dutch” again.
Everyone glanced away uncomfortably.
The intruder motioned to Baylor, jabbing the menu with one of his crooked fingers. He seemed to be placing an order for steak and potatoes. She took it, keeping her distance.
Next, he got to work on the bottle, pulling in horrible, slobbering gulps. He drank over half of the contents directly. His pallor was blanched when he came up, grimacing. Closing his eyes, he appeared to be choking back vomit. He belched, breaking into a smile.
Moments later, he snapped from his toxic rapture, shifting, annoyed. He was restless. He bellowed for service. Where was his food?
“Coming,” Ms. Baylor assured him uneasily.
Looking around, he continued to shift on his stool, panting. He looked like a “madman.”
Beyond the counter, Ms. Baylor considered her options. Had she thought it would do any good, she might have called the township police. But as it was: this “asshole” had already been in the Dogboy on several occasions, and even though, every time, he had threatened the general peace to a legal extreme, complaints to the sheriff’s department had proven useless. No one had come by for hours.
And anyway, the cops were a “nuisance” themselves. And to add to matters, they didn’t tip.
She wasn’t about to go calling them now, directly in front of this jabbering lunatic. Nor would she try to eject him herself—not without someone to back her up. And certainly not without a gun …. Only one thing remained to be done: to sit there and wait for her boyfriend, a member of The Heathens, the “dreaded” biker gang, to arrive with a pack from their chapter, as per nightly custom, at 10:15.
“Wench!” The intruder slammed the bar with the empty bottle of Maker’s Mark. He had drunk it in less than five minutes. “Another!” He stiffened upright on his stool. “Another bottle!” he yelled this time.
Suddenly baring his teeth, he squinted in irritation. He let out a sneeze. A cloud of mucus sprayed the counter. Again, he squinted and bristled and, this time, his body rocked forward upon release. His skull hit the bar. He squawked in pain, gripping his forehead. He nearly fell over.
Pulling together, he went for a basket of pretzels. He buried his face in them, chomping. Crumbs were scattered everywhere—all down the front of his jacket, across the counter. He tossed the basket over his shoulder and blew a glob of snot on the floor.
Then he caught sight of the television—the boxing match—and started to laugh.
While that was happening, Freida Baylor was standing at the end of the bar with her back turned—dosing a second bottle of bourbon with high-powered Valiums from her own prescription. Discreetly, she crushed the pills with a beer glass and dumped the powder into the bottle. A customer seated nearby saw her do so, but didn’t object. He looked away.
By now, every soul in the bar was nervous, at best—too frightened to leave, in truth.
Baylor delivered the spiked bourbon.
Five minutes later, the intruder’s order of beef and potatoes came up from the kitchen. Already into his second bottle, he didn’t appear to be slowing down.
According to Baylor, he devoured his meal like a “God damned pig,” then ordered another, this time with “double the mutton and beer.”
No one had left the tavern, as yet.
At a quarter past, a couple came in: Dwayne Gibbons and Valerie Dollup, both in a state of intoxication. Gibbons, a regular Dogboy patron, was said to be particularly loud upon entry. Apparently, he and Ms. Dollup, a woman, by local renown, of “loose morals,” were arguing back and forth over something. The source of their conflict wasn’t apparent.
They sat at the bar and continued to bicker for several moments, not looking up, until, finally, the uncanny silence around them began to creep in, dissolving their argument. It was actually Dollup, annoyed that she hadn’t been served a drink, who noticed it first. As Gibbons continued to air his grievances, Dollup quietly scanned the bar, picking up on the lack of conversation, first, then spotting the wild-eyed stranger across the bar, staring at her … Grinning drunkenly, she elbowed Gibbons and pointed. Annoyed by the interruption, Gibbons, in a wavering stupor, looked up. His eyes were glazed, half-lidded and bloodshot.
The moment he spotted the stranger, the color drained out of his face, by all accounts.
From there on, eyewitness testimony clashed.
Freida Baylor, who would own up to having been no fan of Dollup or Gibbons for years, would insist that Ms. Dollup had only made matters worse by “batting eyes with the stranger.”
Other patrons agreed to a point, but insisted Ms. Dollup could never have known or suspected the trouble she was getting into. Even while flashing “alluring glances” across the bar, as one man claimed, she had seemed more intent on punishing Gibbons than soliciting shows of real affection.
Whatever the case, the regulars tried to wave her off, with no success. Baylor motioned an urgent warning. Which only egged Ms. Dollup on.
Swaying, she met the stranger’s gaze. Her addled focus eventually sharpened. She stared intently into his eyes. Her coquettish grin began to dissolve, giving way to a look of vague discomfort.
Gibbons started to lose his cool. The regular patrons braced for disaster as the stranger, fueled by evident lust and intoxication, grew more excited.
He called on Baylor, demanding gruffly: “Who’s the trollop?”
Baylor shrugged.
Again, the intruder spoke in “Dutch.” It sounded like some kind of horror movie. He motioned to buy Ms. Dollup a drink.
Aggravated, Baylor was slow to respond.
The stranger pushed some money toward her, slamming the counter. “Do as you’re told!”
Startled, she took a step back. Behind her, Ms. Dollup, as though coming out of a reverie, laughed out loud. “Give me a whiskey.”
Gibbons intruded. “Don’t give her a whiskey.”
The stranger snapped at him, “Quiet, vermin!” He looked to Baylor. “You heard the lady.”
Silence hung over the room momentarily, thick as a pending hostage crisis. Ms. Baylor frowned. “You’re crazy, Valerie.”
Dollup retorted, sneering nastily. “Fetch me a whiskey.” She giggled. “Freida.”
Livid, Baylor proceeded to mix a whiskey and water, shaking her head.
The stranger threw back his head and let out a “horrifying” laugh.
In a flash, he got up and carried his bottle around the counter toward Valerie Dollup. A wave of panic swept the room.
Dollup sat up on her seat, looking startled.
In an instant, the stranger took Gibbons by the back of his neck and ripped him off of the stool. Gibbons hit the wall and dropped to the floor
with a yelp. A gasp went up, but no one stepped forward to intervene. The stranger slid onto the stool beside Dollup, grinning obscenely. “Greetings, fräulein.”
As Gibbons struggled to get to his feet, the front door opened and the first of The Heathens appeared—at last, a half hour late. Taylor Blake, Ms. Baylor’s boyfriend, was just in time to see Gibbons, whom he “couldn’t stand,” pull a cue stick down from the wall and smash it over the stranger’s head.
The Heathens might have been spurred to action—i.e., beating Gibbons to a pulp—had the stranger not tended to matters himself. Uninjured, apparently, he whirled on Gibbons with a backhand, dropping him straight to the floor. He reached for the broken cue stick and bore down repeatedly. Squealing with every blow, Gibbons attempted to crawl for the door. Despite Ms. Baylor’s appeals for help, The Heathens stood laughing. It caught them off guard. Parting ranks, they allowed the “worm,” as Gibbons had always been known to them, to be “horsewhipped brutally” out the door. They even slammed it behind him, still laughing.
This was an unexpected, and welcome, surprise for them—a good start to the evening.
Even though Freida Baylor insisted the stranger had been causing trouble all night, and even though he looked “kinda freaky” and “stunk like shit,” The Heathens liked what they saw.
“What are you drinking?” Taylor offered.
Again, the stranger responded in “Dutch.” Nobody understood, but his overall bearing was less than deferential. He seemed un-impressed by their leather-clad brawn. He was fearless, this one: “a credit to bad-ass-dom.”
Baring his teeth, he whirled back into the tavern and stalked toward a hedging Ms. Dollup. After another disgustingly long pull of bourbon, he let out a piercing laugh, then took her by the arm and pulled her down the length of the counter to the ladies’ room …
For the next few minutes, a frenzy of banging and screaming let out from behind the door. While it was happening, Freida Baylor cursed not only her boyfriend, Taylor, but the rest of his chapter for not stepping in. They dismissed her, insisting that Dollup was getting not only what she asked for, but what she deserved—and enjoying herself in the bargain, at that.
Which may or may not have been true, by report, given the cries of what sounded like “pleasure.”
Either way, Ms. Baylor was fed up. She blasted her boyfriend’s chapter for cowards. When one of them started to chop out a line of methamphetamine there on the counter (which all of The Heathens would later deny), she gave up and placed a call to the police.
Booing, The Heathens called her a “buzzkill.”
In fact, the police had already been summoned—first by a pummeled Dwayne Gibbons, then by the first two patrons who were able to flee the bar while the coast was clear. The calls had been placed, one after another, from a pay phone, outside in the parking lot. Officers Kreider and a newly-returned-to-duty Beaumont were now en route.
Back inside, the thrashing and wailing from the ladies’ room peaked to a sudden crescendo. A silence followed, interrupted by the roar of a boxer being knocked out on the TV.
Soon, the door swung open abruptly. The stranger reemerged—disheveled, deranged and “smelling worse than ever.”
What’s more, his complexion appeared to have “darkened.” His posture was slumped. His eyes were “scarlet.”
He didn’t respond when The Heathens beckoned him over to blast “his share” from the counter. He didn’t appear to understand—neither their speech, nor their intentions.
Finally, according to subsequent testimony, someone (Taylor Blake) produced a rolled dollar bill to demonstrate.
“It ain’t the best,” he was said to have claimed. “But it’s good enough for a weekend in Blue Ball.”
That caught the stranger’s attention, at last. Accepting the outstretched dollar bill, he followed Blake’s example, honking not only the line of crystalline powder intended for him, but three others beside it. He pressed his entire face to the counter. He snorted and slobbered in wild abandon.
Which didn’t appear to bother The Heathens, even in light of the mess he made.
He came up with powder all over his face, blinking and twitching in breathless spasms.
The Heathens laughed as a few more disgusted regulars made for the exit with haste …
Then Ms. Dollup appeared from the ladies’ room. Everyone looked at her—standing in the doorway, ravaged, despondent, her clothing in tatters. The stranger ignored her—along with the angry cries of Ms. Baylor to “Get her a jacket!”—pitting his face, instead, to the counter to slobber and snort at the powder some more. He stiffened in place, almost seeming to choke. He gripped the counter and craned his neck with a heaving, then snapping esophageal roar. A scream went up from the pit of his diaphragm.
Whether by cause of cardiac overload, the tavern’s notoriously greasy cuisine, the two-fifths of whiskey downed in an hour, the three tabs of Valium ingested unknowingly—or, of course, the muscle relaxant the quadruple dose of crank had been cut with—a blast of flatulence ripped the air, followed by the pungent stench of feces.
Groaning, Ms. Baylor implored Jesus. The Heathens backed off in sudden alarm. Only Valerie Dollup’s thousand-yard stare remained unchanged throughout.
Appearing “subhuman” by now—as one patron would claim, he had changed in an hour’s time (“He came in as a man and left as an animal”)—the stranger / intruder snapped from his spot at the counter and shot down the aisle, scampering—past the jukebox, over the welcome mat, out the exit and into the night.
… startled cries from behind, diminishing. Open air. Wind from the north, through fields of aster and sumac and nitrogen—underfoot asphalt, slapping—trash on the road, moving over it, into a ditch—clogged with oil and sewage and rainwater … up the embankment, craggy with limestone and quartz toward power lines humming above—a blinding glare, more voices behind, more tires on asphalt, approaching directly—urgent calls to the driver—continuing up and then over the rim of the bank and then tumbling downward, downward, down—to a plateau of aster and jimsonweed, old rusty wire on appendages, puncturing flesh—then release—a pounding inside, as of moving again … through bull-thistle, knapweed and dogbane to aorta / ventricle, hammer and anvil. Surging. Thirst and palpitations. Overload, onward—till heavens above yawning wide in the darkness: trains in the distance, motorized traffic delayed at a crossing—of burning downwind, of exhaust and of cellophane—carbon monoxide, fiberglass, vinyl—wafting through fields of Queen Anne’s lace, over islands of oak and hickory trees—bull thistle tearing the shredded finery, hanging in strips from the briars behind—until, fully divested, and running as brought into searing existence, alone, at birth: naked and bloodied and wailing and here without limit, though thirsty, terribly thirsty—down on all fours at the edge of a stream—the moon’s reflection in ripples, a furnace of streamlined combustion, gulping, burning, fueling, steadily waxing to term … Up again. Blackness. A gap in movement—more briars, more sow-thistle, gouging and tearing—a break in the tangle, a crumbling fence post—and over—a clearing of gentler grass—clover and goldenrods, sweet even now in the brittle of autumn, soothing of hazel welts—pressing at length to an island of white oaks and hickories—milkweed exploding on impact—over a gritty forest floor, covered with bitter green walnuts and pine cones and kudzu—a canopy overhead, white oak and maple crowns, gently obscured by the layers of dogwood and sassafras—opening up to the sky … Croppings of granite, spotted with red-green lichen and moss—slick on the incline—slipping, tumbling down until—BANG—to the cankered remains of a chestnut stump—coming to in the splash of a darkened corridor—getting up, pressing north…
Blackness…
Bounding through fields of squash in the moonlight, and pumpkins, and cattle manure underfoot—pavement again, of passing below: of honking and screeching and swerving and SLAM—to a pole—and, still racing, with thunder behind—to a pain in the flank and of stabbing, unbearable—onward, continuing, mo
ving, flight…
The aroma of hay and confinement: of stables and holding pens, rank with the heat of manure—lumbering bodies, tense with fear and ripe for the tearing of flesh and crimson … of thunder and booming—and voices now, furious—squalling in starts—and then bounding again…
More blackness…
… weeds overlooking a lot full of half-completed modern dwellings. An engine cutting across the sky. Automobiles in the clearing below. Men inside. Patrolling the property. Grounds defiled. Moving again…
The clatter and rattle of falling beams. A door being torn from its hinges, on end.
Floodlights, shouting, more thunder, more booming … pellets of lead hissing by, off target…
… into a field of nettles and ivy. Moving through tangled thickets to clearings of nightshade, Saint John’s wort and charlock … beyond to a blackened line of evergreens: cypress and hemlock and larches and spruce—a carpet of needles and cones underfoot, the sweet aroma of hardened pine sap…
An increased roar of motors ahead…
Evading them easily, back up an untraveled road to a field of pungent nitrogen … churning downwind from the ugly man’s home, now approaching, his absence abundantly clear—in spirit, in purity—nobody home: down with the gutter trims, out with the windows, off with the pump handle, up with the waterwheel—spraying the porch from one end to the other, then off again, moving away…
Blackness.
… cockleburs, goldenrod, milkweed—continuing north over water, through ditches and granite—to darkness in terrible thirst and beyond: for the ugly man’s fortification of sorrow—the place of captivity, home of the killing …
PART FOUR
Bring It In
Kornwolf Page 19