Black Hammock

by Michael Wiley

  ‘Will you be getting to the point of this?’ Walter said.

  ‘The first point – and there are two –’ I said, ‘involves supply and demand. Nineteenth-century scientists had eager or, if you will, hungry crowds, but they quickly ran out of dead criminals for dissection. That left the scientists with limited options. They could stop studying human anatomy and take up plant biology, for example. Or they could lobby the government to pass laws that would criminalize more behaviors – say, sex with another man’s wife or even simple trespassing – and increase the number of executions. Or they could find new sources of bodies. I don’t think that the scientists voted, but the last option won the day. I’ll give you another example. Once upon a time—’

  ‘Please don’t,’ Lexi said.

  ‘There were two canal diggers,’ I said. ‘Stop me if you’ve heard this one. There were two canal diggers with time on their hands. Other canal diggers with time on their hands might go to the pub or gamble or, if they were inclined differently, attend church services, and in truth these two did have a taste for whiskey and dice, but while they had time on their hands, they had little money in them. So, having tastes but no means of satisfying them, they kept their eyes open for any opportunities that might present themselves, whether in the form of a careless lady’s silver necklace or a drunk with a pocketful of coins – nothing that would get them gibbeted or dissected but enough to buy them a night or two of pleasure.

  ‘The wife of one of the canal diggers ran a boarding house and, late on a winter evening, the oldest of her tenants died – without paying his bill. Who could blame the canal diggers if they saw opportunity? Who could blame them if they wrapped the man in a blanket, threw him into a wheelbarrow, and pushed him over the cobblestones to the house of a doctor who had advertised his need for bodies – big and small, young and old – and his willingness to pay top dollar, no questions asked. Who could blame them if, after giving the canal digger’s wife the money that was due to her, they spent Sunday in whiskey, dice, and whores? Who could blame them if, on Monday morning, they failed to show up at the canal and instead went on the prowl for bodies – big and small, young and old – and, when they discovered a scarcity of already dead ones, living too, because, as far as they were concerned, a living body was just a dead one in the making.

  ‘The doctor paid them twenty dollars a pop – not bad for the time, though now if you cut up a body right, you can do much better. Strip out a spine today and you can get three or four thousand bucks. A cornea, four or five hundred. A knee, seven hundred.

  ‘Over the next year, the canal diggers lured most of their victims into the boarding house and smothered them – vagrants, poor widowers, old prostitutes, anyone who might disappear with little concern from the neighbors. Some, though, they killed out in the open. Once, they found an eight-year-old orphan and broke his back in an alleyway. His body weighed so little that they didn’t need the wheelbarrow. One of the canal diggers slung him over his shoulder like a sleeping child and a half-hour later they were knocking at the doctor’s door.’ I looked from Lexi to Kay to Walter. ‘Have you heard this before?’

  Lexi said, ‘I’ve read something.’

  ‘Sure, they were famous,’ I said. ‘Their mistake, like the mistakes of most criminals, was in getting sloppy, though it’s unclear whether their sloppiness resulted from overconfidence or from guilt over what they were doing. The fact is, though, that they rushed some jobs. And they sometimes got drunk before a killing instead of after. And when they had killed all of the least visible people in the neighborhood, they turned to others with closer social connections – young prostitutes with watchful pimps, old men known on the street for their talkativeness. They got caught after stowing a girl’s body under the bed of one of the boarding-house tenants instead of taking her straight to the doctor.

  ‘But – and this is where we can learn some lessons – only one of the canal diggers was found guilty – the one whose wife owned the boarding house. See, there was very little evidence. The doctor had chopped up the bodies in public dissections and then fed the pieces to his dogs. He had burned the clothes.

  ‘A crowd of twenty thousand came to watch the execution of the one convicted man. The next day, another crowd rioted when the police turned away those who had no tickets to see the dissection of the corpse. At the dissection, the anatomist poked a feather into the executed man’s skull and held the quill high so that the crowd could see the gore. Then he wrote with it on a piece of parchment, “This is written with the blood of a hanged man. This blood was taken from his head.” Which shows that every fool wants to be a comedian.’ I looked from Lexi to Kay to Walter. ‘The end,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the other point of your story?’ Walter asked, scornfully. ‘Every fool wants to be a comedian?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘The point is, what goes around comes around, because where there’s a will, there’s a way, and when opportunity knocks, don’t necessarily open the door, but if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Lexi

  ‘That’s a lot of points,’ Walter said.

  ‘Yes,’ Oren said.

  ‘And if where there’s a will there’s a way what’s your will?’ Walter asked.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Oren said, ‘about escape.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mom said.

  ‘There’s no escape,’ Walter said.

  But Oren got up from the chair. And clapped his hands. ‘Come on everyone,’ he said. ‘We leave tonight. Go upstairs and get your clothes. Get your pillows and sheets and towels. There’s work to be done. Come on.’ He clapped again. ‘Come on.’

  None of us moved. Not even Cristofer.

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ Oren said. And he went upstairs alone. A few minutes later he came down with an armful of Walter’s and Mom’s clothes. Which he dumped on the green chair. He went back up and got Cristofer’s clothes and mine. Then went up again and came down with pillows and bed sheets and towels. The room stunk of sweat and rancid chicken. And the rot of Lane Charles. Through the hot middle of the day Oren sat on the green chair and gutted the pillows with a kitchen knife. He dumped feather-down and cotton threads on to a bed sheet. He shredded the pillowcases. And a towel. And cut the shreds into cotton fluff and dust.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked. My belly was clenching.

  ‘Creating a diversion,’ he said. ‘Want to help?’

  We watched as he started on another towel. Like a weaver at a loom. But he pulled apart instead of making the cloth. Outside a breeze blew clouds from behind the house to the ocean. By the time the sky darkened with afternoon thunderheads Oren had covered one bed sheet with a mound of thread and fuzz and feathers. And started on a second.

  Lightning jagged the sky. Fat raindrops fell. Oren’s friends ducked under tarps tied to the pickup trucks.

  Oren gathered the clothes he had brought from upstairs. He chose a pair of Walter’s jeans and a flannel shirt. He chose a pair Mom’s pants and a blouse. He stuffed the pants and shirts with other clothes. Tied the shirt tails through the belt loops. Propped the headless dummies against the bookshelves. Then he made two more dummies out of Cristofer’s clothes and mine.

  ‘How about you?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t you going to make one for yourself?’

  ‘No one cares about me,’ he said. ‘Where’s your vacuum cleaner?’

  ‘We don’t have one,’ I said.

  ‘No vacuum cleaner?’ he said. ‘Who ever heard of that? How about a window fan?’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a broken fan in the kitchen pantry,’ Walter said.

  ‘Can you fix it?’ Oren asked.

  Walter glared at him. ‘Bring it to me,’ he said. ‘And a screwdriver.’

  While Walter repaired the fan Oren bundled the sheets that he’d filled and took them upstairs. Then came down and dug through the pile of bottles and aerosol sprays and cleaners that we’d brought in from the kitchen. H
e found a can of roach spray and another of white spray paint. Which he also took upstairs. He came back and watched Walter work and handed him a pair of pliers when he needed it. So Walter screwed the wire grill over the fan box and tested the plug in an outlet. And Oren took the fan upstairs too.

  I followed him up and into Mom’s bedroom. Outside the window the rain was driving so hard that the two pickup trucks disappeared. The room inside was almost dark. Oren had put the bundles of feathers and shredded cotton on the bed. Now he pushed Mom’s dresser lengthwise against the window. He set the fan on the far end. Plugged it in. Tested it. Turned it off again. He set the cans of roach spray and spray paint on the floor next to the dresser. I asked, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Like I said. Creating a diversion.’

  ‘No, what are you really doing?’ I asked. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  In the dim light his eyes were kind. He said, ‘They were looking like they’d almost lost hope.’

  ‘Mom and Walter? What do they have to hope for?’ I asked.

  A gust of wind slapped rain against the front of the house.

  ‘Almost nothing,’ he said. ‘You heard Walter. He said that there’s no escape but now I have him fixing a fan because I let him think it might get him out of this. I tease him with ideas of escape and then tear apart his bed linens and bath towels for reasons that he can’t possibly understand or appreciate. Nothing could look more useless and ridiculous to him. But what does he come away with?’

  ‘A little hope?’ I said.

  ‘That’s right. It’s the dirtiest word I know. As a kid I had hope. I hoped all over the place. I hoped all the way to California with Amon. I hoped as I rode on an airplane back here after they put him in a hospital. I hoped when I was locked in Tilson’s shed. I hoped when Bessy Ross was dying of cancer in Atlanta. All of that hope got me worse than nothing. You know what happens when everything you’ve hoped for crashes down?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ve hoped. We all have.’

  ‘Then you’ve died inside too,’ he said. ‘Because a part of me has been ripped out every time I’ve hoped. There’s nothing worse.’

  ‘What about when hope comes true?’ I said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know what that feels like,’ he said.

  ‘You’re going to destroy them,’ I said.

  ‘Until there’s nothing left,’ he said. ‘That’s the plan.’

  Twenty minutes later the rain stopped. As suddenly as it had started. But for another hour thunder rumbled and veins of lightning glowed through the dark clouds. Then the clouds blew out over the ocean. And all that remained of the storm was a soft wind that crossed the yard from the pine woods.

  But downstairs we smelled none of the forest peat and hot and damp that such winds usually brought. We smelled Lane Charles rotting.

  Walter said, ‘Can’t we get him out of here?’

  Oren tugged on Lane Charles’s leg until the chimney let go of the rest of him and he tumbled on to the hearth. Oren dragged him across the room to the window. ‘I need help,’ he said.

  Mom and Walter just looked at him. So I went and together we slung one of Lane Charles’s legs over the windowsill. Then the other. Oren lifted his body until we’d propped it in the window. Like it was sitting there.

  A gunshot rang from the yard and Lane Charles’s body lurched backward. Struck in the chest.

  ‘Jesus,’ Walter said.

  Another gunshot – and the body lurched again.

  ‘Push,’ Oren said. We shoved the body out of the window. It fell to the front porch. And rested. With one hand reaching over the edge into the yard.

  Oren and I sat with our backs against the wall. Catching our breath. ‘I don’t think we improved matters,’ Oren said.

  When the sky darkened Oren’s friends turned the music loud. They flipped on the floodlights. They yelled and laughed. The men rode their motorcycles in wild circles around the house. Oren’s girlfriend got into the red truck and spun it in circles and kicked dirt into the air. Whooping out through the open window. Like she was riding a bull.

  Oren sat in the green chair. Cristofer leaned against him. Walter had pulled his legs to his chest. The hurt one and the good one. He rocked. Comforting himself. Mom sat wide-eyed in the kitchen doorway. She smoked cigarette after cigarette. I could tell that Oren was right and they had about a trickle of hope left between them. Walter looked at Oren. Oren only shook his head.

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  ‘Shh,’ he said.

  A little after midnight his friends turned off the music. They got off the motorcycles. They gathered around a bonfire by the kiln. Their hollering stopped and they talked quietly in the warm glow of the floodlights and the fire. They ate meat that they roasted over the open flames. Cristofer fell asleep leaning against one of Oren’s legs. Walter stopped rocking and stared at Oren. Mom sucked on a cigarette. She held the smoke in her lungs. Then let it out like it was her last breath.

  Oren looked from her to Walter to me. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve been ready all my life,’ I said.

  He woke Cristofer. Walter pushed himself to his feet with his broom handle and limped over to Mom. He offered her a hand. Pulled her up. Oren carried the dummies to the window and laid them side by side. He got the bottle of turpentine and poured it over them.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Stripping everyone naked,’ he said. Then he said to Mom, ‘You first. Give your lighter to Lexi.’ She handed it to me. He had Mom pick up one side of the dummy he’d made from her clothes. And he picked up the other side. He looked out through the window. Past Lane Charles’s body to his friends at the bonfire. ‘OK?’ he asked Mom. Then said to me, ‘Now.’

  I flicked the lighter. I touched the flame to the turpentine-soaked blouse. The cloth and the fumes above it flared. The blaze rippled across the dummy. Oren and Mom flung it out over the edge of the porch into the yard.

  The people at the bonfire got up. They stood next to the trucks. They cheered like we’d set off a Fourth of July rocket.

  ‘Why the hell?’ Walter said.

  Oren just said, ‘Your turn.’ Together they picked up the dummy made of Walter’s clothes. I touched the lighter to the turpentine. And Walter and Oren flung the dummy out after Mom’s. Oren’s friends cheered louder.

  ‘What’s the point?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re giving everyone something to think about,’ he said. ‘Get yours.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. I gave Mom her lighter. She lit the shirt on my dummy. Oren and I threw it out on to Walter’s and Mom’s. Then Oren and I threw Cristofer’s out after it. With each new dummy the people in the yard cheered louder. With Cristofer’s the woman gave her bull-riding whoop. The sound felt like ice. Tears welled in my eyes. I watched the burning heap of clothes. Wrapped around bodies that were not ours. I looked from Mom to Walter. Their eyes were wet too. I looked at Cristofer. His face was bright and he laughed.

  ‘Go to the kitchen,’ Oren said.

  ‘We’re leaving now?’ Mom asked.

  ‘Five minutes,’ he said.

  In the kitchen Oren flipped off the lights. He opened the window that faced the side of the house where he and Mom had hung her paintings on the afternoon before her studio burned.

  Mom pulled a cigarette out of her pack. But Oren snatched it from her lips. ‘No light in here,’ he said. ‘From now on you’re invisible.’ He took Mom’s Newports and lighter. Pocketed them.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to me. We went upstairs to Mom’s bedroom. The room was dark except along the ceiling where the floodlights from outside shined long golden streaks. Oren’s friends stood by the pickup trucks. Watching as the flames on the dummies died. And black smoke blew toward them on the breeze.

  Oren untied the bed-sheet bundles. He picked up a handful of pillow down and threads and cotton dust. ‘Get some,’ he said. I scooped the stuff into my hands and arms. When we went to the window Oren’s friends were l
ooking up at us as if they’d known we would be there.

  Oren threw his handful outside. The breeze caught it and spread it out over the floodlit yard.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said. I did what he had done.

  The breeze blew the feathers and dust in easy swirls. The threads fell like snow. The light sparkled and shaded.

  ‘More,’ Oren said. We scooped more from the bed sheet and threw it out of the window.

  ‘Oooh,’ the people in the yard shouted as the stuff flew from Oren’s hands.

  ‘Ahhh,’ they shouted as it flew from mine.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. I’d never seen anything more wonderful. Feathers and cotton threads snowing. Playing in the invisible currents and eddies of wind. Falling and rising. And falling again. As they drifted out toward the hill. There was no sense to what Oren was doing. No sense that I could see. But I didn’t care. The light dazzling on the soaring flurry was changing the yard.

  ‘It’s like a Christmas movie,’ I said.

  ‘Or millions of moths,’ Oren said. He went back to the bed. ‘Help me with this.’

  Together we moved one of the sheets to the end of the dresser. He shaped the pile on top of it with his hands. Mounded it by the windowsill. The men outside stayed by the trucks but Oren’s girlfriend ran around the yard like a kid. Trying to catch the falling pieces.

  At the other end of the dresser Oren flipped on the fan and shoved it toward the window. A blizzard of feathers and cotton filled the air outside. Oren’s girlfriend laughed. The men shouted. They became almost invisible. Oren’s girlfriend turned into a black shade that danced and ran. The men hung back. Dark against the pickups.