The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

by Rod Serling

  Sykes pointed through the bars. “Today you’re gonna get hanged!” Obscene laughter poured out of him. “Today young Mr. Gallegos, killer of children, dangles at the gallows!”

  He limped away from the window, tears of laughter rolling from his eyes. Two men were walking down the wooden sidewalk toward him. His laughter died out, his eyes narrowed and took on a different expression. These were customers and Peter Sykes’s entire life was built upon commerce. He waddled over to the nearer man, grabbed him in a perspiring fist.

  “Good whiskey from St. Louis, Jonesy,” he said importantly. He patted his hip pocket. “Eighty-five cents a fifth.”

  The man looked embarrassed and shook off Sykes’s hand. Immediately Sykes turned to the other passer-by, blocked him with his big bulk, shoved his face close to him and rolled his eyes. His voice, almost inaudible, was like a leer.

  “Post cards, Eddie,” he whispered, wiggling his tongue. “Wonderful post cards this trip. French dancing girls in their native costumes.”

  Sykes giggled, jammed his elbow in the man’s ribs, then laughed aloud as he walked away, head down. Sykes was still chuckling as he went back to the jail and into the Sheriff’s office.

  It was a bare room with a makeshift desk, a gun rack, and a barred door leading to the single cell. John Koch sat behind the desk, a tarnished badge on his worn and dusty leather vest. His long, lean tanned face, the eyes deep-set and tired, showed forty-seven hard years indelibly imprinted in lines over the cheekbones and on either side of the jaw. Koch barely glanced at Sykes, then busied himself with papers on the desk. He felt the intrusion of the fat man and the sense of envelopment that Sykes carried with him.

  “What’ll it be for you today, Mr. Koch?” Sykes’s shrill voice intruded upon the quiet of the room. “Don’t need any more rope, do you?” He called out toward the barred door. “Oughta see the fancy five-strand hemp I sold the town for your party, Gallegos! It could lift about five of you.”

  He lumbered across the room to stand close to the cell door. The look he threw at Gallegos was as much a part of him as his rolls of fat. There was a meanness to it. A raw prejudice. A naked dislike of other men.

  “Not any more at home like you, are there?” Sykes laughed loudly, then asked, “And what do you fancy today, Mr. Koch?”

  “What do I fancy, Mr. Sykes?” Koch forced himself to keep his voice steady and low. “I’ll tell you what I fancy. I’d like you to take your fat carcass and your loud mouth out into the air. This is a small room and it’s the hot time of the morning.”

  The grin on the fat man’s face grew tight and strained. Sykes knew what Koch was feeling. He was not insensitive to the anger he aroused. But he’d lived a life of walking over other people’s anger and disgust. It was his own peculiar strength.

  “How about you, Mr. Gallegos?” Sykes jeered. “What would be your pleasure this morning? Maybe a nice hacksaw?”

  Again his whole body quivered with laughter but it faded when he saw the look on the Mexican boy’s face. The black eyes that caught and pierced him held fathomless pools of hate.

  “This one I wouldn’t miss!” Sykes gloated. “I just wouldn’t want to miss this one!” He took the bottle from his hip pocket, uncorked it with his teeth. “There’s gonna be a funeral procession down this street, Gallegos. You better look out and watch. They’re burying the little girl you mangled under your wagon. You’re sobered up now, aren’t you, Gallegos? You remember the little girl, don’t you? You got stinking drunk, rode a wagon down the street, and what you did to that poor little girl—”

  The Mexican boy leaped from the bench, slammed against the bars and thrust an arm out through them, trying to reach the fat man. But Sykes nimbly stepped back a foot and waggled a finger. “Uh, uh, Mr. Gallegos. You’ll get your chance to move around this afternoon. You’ll be able to kick and kick and kick.”

  This struck him as so funny that he threw back his head and roared.

  Koch stared at Sykes. God, what an animal, he thought. What a filthy animal. Some men were built for their trade. They were designed to be cheats, hucksters, medicine men. There must be some kind of mold, the thought ran through his mind, which produced the filth that stood in front of him holding the rotgut whiskey.

  “You ought to take a drink of this, Sheriff?” Sykes’s voice patronized Koch. “It’s a good tonic.” He patted the flab that hung over his belt. “Puts a little grizzle there. Sets you up great for a good hanging. Yes, sir. Makes you feel strong and firm.” He held out his vast, flabby arm and made a muscle. “You oughta feel this!”

  Koch’s mouth trembled. “I don’t touch dog meat, Sykes.”

  The bottle was slammed down on the desk top. “You talk big behind a badge, Mr. Koch.”

  “It just sounds big to you, Sykes, because you’re a midget. You only grew up as high as a money belt and that’s a low height for a man.”

  Sykes’s little eyes glittered. “I’ve always had a question about you, Koch,” he said, in a low voice. “Seems you got a thing for foreigners and strays. But you’re mighty tight-lipped when it comes to your own.”

  Koch rose from his chair. “You’re not my own, Sykes, so don’t claim any kinship.” He pointed toward the cell. “And as for the boy in there—he had his trial and today he’s gonna swing for it. But there’s nothing in his sentence that says he’s got to be tormented by a pig who sells trinkets at funerals.” He stared at the fat man and Sykes had to turn away. “Go on, get out of here.”

  Sykes moved toward the door, anger building up inside him. Anger at being despised. Anger at the itchy sweat that rolled down his body. Anger because hatred was his own special province; hatred of people, hatred of all he had to do to stay alive. He wanted to walk out without saying anything more, but found himself turning at the door.

  “When the day is over, Mr. Koch,” he asked, “which one will you weep for?”

  Koch looked at the thin Mexican boy whose hands gripped the bars and whose young face suddenly looked so old. “I’ve got enough tears for both, Mr. Sykes,” he answered quietly.

  The fat man walked out on to the street and heard the sound of rolling wagon wheels. He shaded his eyes against the blinding sun. The funeral procession was turning the corner at the far end of the street. The long line of people included the black-garbed figures of a middle-aged man and his wife, who walked behind a minister; behind them, in the center of the column, was the wagon with the unpainted pine box. The box was very small.

  Sykes moved his fat bulk down to the dusty street and, with a great flourish, removed his hat and held it over his heart. He waited until the middle-aged couple were a few feet from him, and then joined the procession.

  “Mr. and Missuz Canfield,” Sykes panted as he shuffled along beside them. He was sweating and half out of breath, but his tone was deep and mournful. “I’m real sorry about this. My condolences to yuh. But this afternoon it’s gonna be a lot cheerier. We’re gonna string up the dirty little animal who done this.”

  The husband and wife stared at him incredulously and the woman bit her lip and turned away.

  Sykes screwed up his face like a little baby beginning to cry. “It’s God’s will, Mr. and Missuz Canfield,” he screeched. “It’s God’s will. But she’s gonna be avenged. She is going to be avenged. So you don’t have no worries on that score. The Mexican who done it is gonna pay for it.”

  Koch came up behind Sykes, pulled him by the back of his jacket and half yanked him off his feet. Sykes whirled around, a hand raised. This was knocked aside by the tall sheriff whose face was white and grim.

  “Some other time, Sykes, huh?” Koch said quietly. “Some other time act like a man with no brains. But not, now. Now you keep quiet.”

  Sykes glared at him, but the look on the other man’s face was the kind you didn’t talk back to. This crazy, Goddamned sheriff. This fanatic. Well, what the hell. He’d made his position known. The Canfields had seen him. He had been properly doleful and he’d supplied the rope f
or the hanging. They’d remember that. His eyes suddenly blinked and narrowed.

  He nudged Koch. “Now look at that, will yuh? Now ain’t that the most gall you ever seen in one place? There’s Gallegos’s old man! He got the nerve...the honest to God nerve...to show himself in broad daylight! And during the funeral procession too! Somebody ought to take a horsewhip to that dirty little—”

  The rest of the words never came out. He saw Koch’s baleful face, and Sykes forced a smile. Down the street Pedro Gallegos and his little ten-year-old daughter, Estrelita, were standing in the center of the road waiting for the procession.

  Pedro Gallegos was sixty-eight years old. He was thin, scrawny, with bent shoulders, and the lines in his face looked as if they’d been hewn in rock. Sun had done it. And toil. And now sorrow—sorrow beyond any kind of words. He held the little girl’s hand tightly and as the funeral procession got closer he whispered something in her ear and then gently pushed her forward.

  When the Canfields came abreast, Estrelita walked out and stood in front of them. They stopped, looking at the little girl and then over toward the old Mexican, whose lips trembled, whose features worked as he whispered something soundlessly and then motioned toward the little girl to speak.

  Estrelita looked at the ground and mumbled something in a low voice.

  Gallegos half shouted from a few feet away. “Louder, Estrelita. Tell them, my darling. Tell them, my heart. Speak to them. Go ahead.”

  The Canfields looked away in white-faced, shocked embarrassment.

  “My father wishes me to tell you,” the little girl began. “My father wishes me to tell you that...”

  The words died in her throat. She looked fearfully over her shoulder toward her father. “My father wishes for me to tell you,” she tried again, “that his heart is broken. That if he could...if he could give...”

  “His own life in return,” Pedro Gallegos whispered. Then it came out louder. “His own life in return. His own life in return, Estrelita.”

  Mrs. Canfield’s eyes were tightly shut and her husband gripped her arm.

  “His own life in return,” Estrelita said, “he would do so with great willingness.” She wet her lips. Her thin, little face looked agonized. “He...he understands...” Once again the words stopped.

  Pedro Gallegos took a stumbling step toward her, tears rolling down his face. “He understands what it is like to lose your flesh,” the old man said. “He understands and he is sad for you. He asks now that...” The old man sobbed aloud. “Estrelita, tell them. Say it to them.”

  “He asks that you have no malice for his son, Louis, who did this awful thing. He...he did not do it on purpose and he is sick in his heart and his mind because of it.”

  The little girl scuffled a bare foot in the dust, her hands tightly intertwined behind her back, her dark little face flushed with pain and misery Her father walked another few feet toward the Canfields, then with palms outstretched, dropped to his knees in the dust.

  “Señor...Señora,” the old man pleaded, “please do not let them kill my son. He will spend the rest of his life and I, mine, in your service. Anything. Anything you wish. But please...please do not let them take my son’s life.”

  The little girl ran to throw herself into her father’s arms and bury her face against his shoulder. He held her tightly, stroking her hair and crooning softly into her ear, something in Spanish that the others could not hear.

  The Canfields looked at one another and the husband said in a choked voice, “Don’t hold us up any further, please. Can’t you see...can’t you see that we’re burying our daughter today?”

  He took his wife’s arm and they continued to walk toward the cemetery at the edge of town, a patch of barren sand dotted irregularly with inexpertly carved, ugly stones and makeshift wooden crosses, as if the squalor of living had its own counterpart in death.

  Why couldn’t he have stayed away, Canfield thought. Why did he have to come out on this afternoon? Why does he have to throw more pain at us when his son has already supplied the ultimate in pain?

  Oh God, Sheriff Koch thought, oh dear God. This place. This ugly town full of ugly people. This sapper of strength and dignity that robs the living and now even the dead with the heat of it and the misery of it.

  Peter Sykes squinted after the disappearing procession. It don’t make a damn, really, he thought, that they didn’t buy the coffin from him. Next time. Next time they would. He’d supplied the rope for the hanging and there was a thirty-eight percent markup on the rope. Next time the coffin, he thought. Next time he’d be here in time for the bidding.

  That was what Sykes thought, as the thin column of people and the wagon with the pine box disappeared into the fields beyond the town, going toward the ugly little cemetery that lay under the hot Southwestern desert sun.

  There were no flowers. None at all. It was too hot for flowers.

  Pedro Gallegos, holding tight to his little daughter’s hand, walked slowly toward the jail. The ragged, dusty men on the street moved aside as he passed and stared coldly at him. He felt their hostility and forced himself to walk straight ahead. Koch stood near the cell window and he too noticed the angry faces of the townspeople.

  Gallegos looked around at these faces, released Estrelita’s hand and held out his own in front of him. “Please...please...” His puckered, weather-beaten old face with the deeply etched lines and sad eyes pleaded with them. “My son did not mean to do it. He is a lover of children just as you all are. He is a lover of children—”

  He felt a shocking, tearing pain over his right eye as a stone glanced off the side of his head. It drew blood. Estrelita let out a small scream. Louis gripped the bars of the cell and shouted out at his father.

  “Padre, por favor vayase a la casa. No se le necesita aqui.”

  Peter Sykes grinned. “He’ll do you no good here? Is that what you say to this old man, Gallegos? This is a staunch figure of a man, Louis—this father. Look at him. The patriarch of the Mexican community.” He rumbled deep laughter from his gut. The others did not share the laughter, but continued to stare at the old man.

  “Father,” Louis said urgently in a soft voice. “Take Estrelita home. They will hurt you if you stay here. Please...go home now.” The old man’s eyes were wet. He wiped the blood from his eye, reached in his pocket and took out a coin which he held out toward his son.

  “Louis,” he said, “a lucky coin. It is said that one can make a wish on it—”

  Someone in the crowd laughed, but at that moment Peter Sykes did not laugh. He looked at the coin squinty-eyed, suddenly very interested. Koch stepped in front of the cell window.

  “Go home, old man,” he said gently. “Make wishes...or pray. But Louis is right. You’ll do no good here.”

  “You have never been drunk, Mr. Sheriff?” the old man asked. “You never felt such misery rising in you that salvation seemed to look at you only from out of a bottle?” The blood was running again from the cut over his eye. “You never felt pain...such pain that you had to ride through the night and not look behind you?”

  He gestured toward the cell. “My son was hungry and he felt such a pain and he drank too much and he rode down the street not looking...not seeing.

  “He had a sadness deep inside. Sadness that there was not enough to eat. Sadness that he had no work. Sadness that the earth all around him was growing barren in the sun. And he did not see the little girl. He never saw her for an instant.” Pedro Gallegos fumbled blindly for his daughter’s hand, gripped it and pulled her closer to him.

  Koch said nothing. The old man knew that he had said enough. Perhaps too much. And all of it to no avail. He was a dirty old Mexican and his words carried no meaning to the men who listened to them. He was a dirty old Mexican and he was the father of a murderer. So Pedro Gallegos shuffled away, down the dusty street. Estrelita started to follow him, but stopped when Sykes whistled at her.

  “Come over here,” the fat man said.

  Estreli
ta stood stock-still.

  “Come over here,” Sykes repeated urgently. “I won’t hurt you.”

  The little girl went slowly to him. Sykes held her tight by the shoulders and shoved his fat, sweaty face close to hers.

  “You tell your Papa,” he said softly. “Understand? Comprende? You tell your Papa I want to help him. You tell him that coin of his is worthless. But I have a magic dust that turns hate to love. Understand? Comprende? Turns hate to love. You tell him that. A magic dust, but it is very precious, understand? Very, very dear.”

  The little girl nodded. Sykes looked around surreptitiously.

  “Five hundred pesos,” he said. “You tell your Papa to bring five hundred pesos in an hour and I will sell him the magic dust that makes people love and forgive. Understand?”

  Wide-eyed, Estrelita nodded. She backed away from the fat man and broke into a run. Sykes watched her until she caught up with her father and they disappeared.

  The crowd dispersed and Koch went back into the jail. Sykes sat down on the steps and took out a bag of tobacco from his pocket. He opened it, stared at it, grinned and finally laughed aloud.

  Sykes emptied the bag, then went down on his knees and scooped dust into it. He pulled the strings tight with his teeth then swung it back and forth.

  “Magic dust,” he said aloud. “That’s what she is. Five hundred pesos worth of magic dust.” Then he threw back his head and laughed.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon when people started to arrive. Battered, makeshift wagons, full of parents and children from outlying districts; townspeople who erupted into the streets and were drawn compulsively toward the jail. It was almost that time.

  Koch stood leaning against the whitewashed clay wall of the building, rolling a cigarette. When he finished the cigarette he gave it to Louis Gallegos. Gallegos let Koch light it for him.