THE AMERICAN STORYBAG

by Gerald Hausman

  Old Ben drove the school bus every day. He picked us up and let us out, and walked us to the door of our house while his bus idled in the road. One time, when my mom was late getting home from O'Connor's Market, Old Ben stayed parked in front of the house. He smoked his amber-grained Missouri meerschaum pipe, and we waited--about thirty of us--until she drove up into our driveway. And, do you know, that whole busload of kids just sat and talked, and there wasn't one fight or any kind of disorderly conduct. That was Old Ben for you. He seemed to cast a spell of kindness wherever he went, and within its embrace everyone was safe from harm.

  One day, however all that changed--that was when Pam Snow came into our lives. But I'm getting ahead of myself again, aren't I?

  Back to Old Ben: He had white hair, crinkly blue eyes, and skin brown as tanned pigskin. He was a heavyset man with a round, sad face, set off by big black bushy eyebrows. No one in Berkeley Bend was a good-natured as Old Ben; why he was friendly as sunshine 365 days of the year. We always wondered why he had no kids of his own, because he seemed to love children more than anything. His yard was always full of wild-eyed kids and redheaded chickens.

  I used to like to chase after Old Ben's feisty little bantams, the ones that lay those perfect, pill-shaped eggs, so small and white and impossible to find. They ran around between my legs, dashing fast like fighters on quick springy muscular legs, with their heads bobbing and weaving as they eyed you up and down and tried to get out of your way.

  The ducks though, were something else. They were never underfoot, but always nearby, floating like low-lying clouds and gabbing among themselves in duck-talk. Their eggs were everywhere, as if they had no particular use for them and they knew you were going to pick them up anyway.

  On Fridays, all summer long, Old Ben killed chickens, plucked them clean, and sold them in town. That was the day Pauly and I waited for. We'd finish whatever chores we had around the house and run up in back of Bobby's house. Then run up across the road and behind Hilltop Garage, to the big field that went straight to Old Ben's farmhouse.

  If it was Friday, Old Ben would be out in his yard, sharpening his axe on a large stone wheel. He had taken an old bicycle that we nicknamed "the death bike" and put a sharpening stone on the front. He would sit on the bicycle seat, whirring the pedals, while his hands pressed the axe against the spiraling stone. The sparks looped away like fireflies into the shady summer noon.

  "Howdy, boys," Old Ben would say from the leather seat of the creaking, groaning death bike.

  "Howdy, Old Ben," we'd chime.

  "Come to watch the killin?" he 'd ask innocently, his black brogan shoes circling beneath his bulk, whirling a low wind all around us. Those shoes were as much a part of Ben's image as his small-lipped smile. I guess you'd call them "Popeye boots," for that's what they looked like--great big balloon shoes that laced up tall. He kept them bright and shiny, and if a spot of dirt got on them, he quickly rubbed it off. When he walked, his brogans squeaked. Otherwise, for such a large man, he was quiet on his feet.

  The bronze sparks nipped at our bare legs, tickling us. Pauly smiled with appreciation, and I smiled back. All week we'd waited for this moment. To us there was nothing morbid about it, the fact was, it was just plain fascinating.

  "Well, I suppose this thing's sharp enough," Old Ben would finally say in his unaffected monotone voice. He got up out of the sharpener's seat and laid the axe in the bright green grass. Then he strolled toward the barn. We followed his snowy head into the tall, raftered darkness. Above our heads long blades of penetrating sunlight lay against the mounds of musty, dusty hay. Pigeons, hidden on the cross ties, cooed at our coming. The barn was much cooler than outside and the pigeon song was like cool water falling down on us from a great height.

  Our job was to round up the stray chickens for Old Ben.

  "The ones that are too hard to catch ain't ready to eat," Old Ben sighed up ahead as he fumbled around behind his tractor. I flushed a blustery little bantam, who made good his escape out the door.

  After a little while Old Ben caught a few; and then a few more. He dropped them into a burlap bag, and we held the bag shut while he went inside and fetched his Jew's harp. This was a ceremony with him, and for us a free symphony. We sat out in the yard, waiting for Old Ben to return.

  Pretty soon he came out, a-twanging. "Dere-de-de-dere," the plucky harp went, and Ben rolled to and fro, like a circus bear trained for tricks. And the bear's grin was on his lips, as if savoring some old sweet sticky memory of honey.

  "What's that do?" Pauly asked the first time Ben ever invited us to a killin in his yard.

  "What, the harp?" Old Ben shook his wintry head, laughing deep in his chest. His belly bulged, shook up and down. And his small eyes, like green-bottle glass, twinkled in the sun.

  "Why, Pauly, don't you know the setup? First, the music -- to soothe 'em. Then, the belly scratchin' -- to set them up. Then, the killin', to let them off and finish the job."

  That was how he did it.

  A ceremony that made me think that the chickens knew it by heart; knew just what the deal was, and had, long ago, agreed to it.

  After Old Ben twanged at the chickens in the bag to soothe them, he took them out by the feet. By then, they were all blinky, wondering what was going on, but not really afraid or anything. Then Old Ben laid them out, side by side, and scratched their tummies. One by one, each and every chicken fluffed out and went fast asleep. If you've never seen it done, maybe you can't imagine it: chickens all puffed out like pillows, snoozing in the midday sun.

  Then Old Ben scooped them up, still sound asleep, and one by one he chopped off their heads.

  Now, the moment the axe fell, the real magic happened -- the thing that we'd waited for all week long. No, it wasn't the killin, so much as the second part. I don't know what name to give, except maybe the revivin, though nobody called it that but me.

  Anyway, those dead headless chickens sprang back up on their springy little feet and made a run for the woods. naturally our job -- Pauly's and mine -- was to catch them. So we went chasing after these dead chickens . . .

  They didn't get far, but any distance gained by a dead chicken is pretty far where I'm concerned. As I was saying, the chickens would shoot off the chopping block, alert and alive and full of vigor, and head for the woods, running this way and that, with Pauly and me hurrying after them. One time one actually got away from us and we never saw it again. Old Ben said a fox probably got it. But every night for weeks we had scary dreams about that headless chicken roaming the back woods.

  Well, that was Friday and Old Ben and the killin.

  We never thought anyone else knew about Old Ben's chicken killin, but one Friday morning when Pauly went out of town with his parents, I was riding my bike past Pam Snow's house, and she waved and asked me over.

  "Where are you headed in such a hurry?" Pam Snow asked, her grey eyes widening with interest.

  I flipped down my kickstand and caught my breath. One look at those dazzling eyes and the potato chip fiasco came back full force.

  I pushed the disastrous chip out of my mind. "I'm heading up to Ben's," I told her. "It's Friday, chicken killin day."

  "Can I come?"

  She asked so innocent and nice, I forgot to answer no, because chicken killin' is not for people like Pam Snow. But she caught me off balance and I heard myself say: "Why not?"

  "Can I ride with you?" she cooed.

  "Why not?" I said again (dumb).

  She got on sideways. I raised the kickstand and began to pedal down the road, behind Sleazy Joe's Garage, across the field to Old Ben's. By the time we got there Ben had already done the bagging.

  "You're late," he commented, unsmiling.

  "What's he doing?" Pam Snow whispered.

  "He sings to the chickens first," I told her knowingly.

  "Oh, no," Old Ben said. His face was stern, the summer glitter gone from his eyes. I'd never seen him look like that.

  "Pam's all right," I s
aid. "She's not afraid of anything."

  Ben's usually smiling face had "no" written all over it.

  Shaking his head, "What would your mother think, he muttered, "nice girl like you seeing a chicken killin." It wasn't a question; more like a statement of fact.

  "She doesn't care," Pam Snow said softly. Her voice was pigeony, and calm. Perfectly calm, almost disinterested.

  "Well -- I care." Ben backed off, his voice trailing.

  "I want to see," Pam Snow said earnestly.

  "What girl wants to see blood splashing around," Old Ben remarked darkly. Again, not a question.

  "I do," Pam Snow said. There was a sudden violet light in her eyes, something that suggested a little more than mere interest. If I hadn't known her better, I would've imagined there was malice in those eyes. But I knew Pam better than that -- at least I thought I did.

  Old Ben's eyebrows rose, lowered. He turned, stepped closer to Pam Snow, looking at her inquisitively.

  "You want to see blood and gore?" he asked, his black eyebrows raised high under his tan, wrinkled brow.

  Pam Snow smiled, nodded pleasantly. Her calm eyes were trained on Old Ben's, and she didn't look away.

  Then he turned and went to the death bike. He reached in the grass for his axe, ran his big brown thumb over the edge. Plucking a hair from his head, Old Ben put the blade to it -- and, I swear, that white hair split in two.

  Pam Snow gave a cooey little laugh, but her lips hardly moved at all.

  Old Ben shrugged. Sighing, he said, "All right, so be it!" He went inside the house and got his harp.

  "He's going to do it," I whispered confidently.

  "I know." Pam Snow smiled. Once again I saw her eyes brighten and darken under the shade trees. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but in the quiet shadows of Ben's sleepy yard, I thought her eyes changed color. As I looked at them, they seemed to turn to a shade of plum, dark and hidden, and not friendly.

  A moment later Old Ben started twanging on the Jew's harp. It didn't sound like it usually did; the notes were kind of somber.

  He twanged.

  I heard more cooing, but was afraid to look.

  Then he took the drowsy chickens out of the bag and scratched their tummies, and they were all asleep. There was more cooing. And I felt a hand, cold as buttermilk fresh from the fridge, fit into my own.

  I held my breath. I had her hand in mine. A tickly feeling traveled through me. I shivered briefly, and felt her hand grow heavier.

  Old Ben placed the first chicken on the stump. Its eyes were wide open, staring dreamily into space. I saw one of its legs move very, very slowly.

  The bright axe winked in the sunlight, rose, and lowered.

  Pam Snow's hand closed tightly.

  The dead chicken jumped from the chopping block to the ground and ran off into the summer air, flopping its wings.

  My feet were numb, leaden; my hand was riveted by hers. I dared not move, hardly drew breath -- waiting.

  Then my hand was free, empty and open.

  I saw someone dashing after the headless chicken. Standing stock-still, I looked at Ben. He shrugged. "Can't tell . . . with women . . . sometimes," he said under his breath.

  Pam Snow ran through the sun and shadow chasing the chicken.

  Old Ben shook his head, watching. The small bear's smile was back. Sweat trickled down his forehead. The air felt hot and thick, and for the first time it smelled of rank feathers and warm blood.

  We watched her walking serenely through the cool shade, carrying the chicken by the wings. It seemed unnatural. Pauly and I always carried them by the legs.

  I looked away.

  Ben did too. Then he wiped the sweat off his brow.

  "Well, that's it for the day. Looks like rain, don't it?"

  I nodded. It surely did. But before he got his axe wiped off and put away in the barn, and the dreaming chickens were back awake, Pam Snow had disappeared.

  "Where'd that girl go to?" he asked me. "Looked away for a spell and she was gone."

  We looked at the chopping block where she'd placed the runaway. The wings were folded out in a grotesque manner. The neck of the chicken was dripping dark purple blood.

  I felt my stomach roll.

  Old Ben said only one thing after that. First he stooped down, picked up the dead chicken, and toted it by the feet into the house. Then he turned to me and said: "I don't care who you bring next time, Bud, but see to it they don't go stealing chicken heads." It was the first time he'd ever called me Bud.

  Biking home, I felt sick to my stomach. In my mind, the purple blood was drip-drip-dripping on the grass, and the day was somehow spoiled. But I didn't -- and couldn't quite -- understand why.

  At the same time, I kept remembering the way Pam Snow's hand felt in mine, as if it belonged there.

  I was afraid I would never hold it again.

  My mind went spinning around like the sharpening stone on Old Ben's death bike. Around and around.

  What had happened? I wasn't sure that I knew.

  There was Pam Snow's hand, soft as a snowflake, melting.

  There was the blood of summer spilling on the leaves.

  There was that look of veiled violet in Pam Snow's eyes; I saw it again now as my mind went on whirling. She had liked it, hadn't she? The blood, the killin time. And suddenly I knew what was wrong with me. For Pauly and me, those chickens running headless through the woods were almost dreamlike, something that happened but was hardly real; it couldn't be, for the dead don't walk.

  In one swift moment I knew that Pam Snow's presence in Old Ben's killin yard had made the whole thing real, very real. The purple blood would be spattered on those leaves forever. And so would her snowflake hand always be melting in mine as the summer leaves burned green as candles in the hot light of day.

  Yarns and Tales

  Rattlesnake Pete, Goiter Healer

  When I am asked how I get stories, how I find them, I often say, "They are given." But people don't always believe that. They want to imagine that I do something beyond the ordinary; that I acquire the story through some mischief or madness, some type of necromancy or magic. Usually the mischievous one is the storyteller, not the listener whose every fiber is bent on getting the words down the way they were said. Well, anyway -- I have to admit people do come out of nowhere and tell me their stories -- in airports, on the street, and even in emails. The following tale is one of those "givens."

  The man sitting next to me in the hotel lobby leans over and says, “You look like Rattlesnake Pete. . . are you?”

  I shake my head. “Who’s he?”

  “See this here goiter I got on my neck?”

  There is a lump on the left side of his throat.

  “Well, sir, the man says, “Rattlesnake Pete, he cured it. But after a while it grew back. Need another cure. But Pete’s long gone by now. That was in nineteen-hundred and . . . I forget.” The man tents his eyes with his fingers.

  We are in The Hampton Inn and I walk over to the coffee bar and get a refill. “You want one?” I ask the goiter guy.

  “Black,” he says. “Thanks.”

  I pour two black coffees and return to the enormous open lounge that had so many sofas the place looked like a car lot. There was a big stain on the sea blue carpet where someone had fallen asleep with a mug of coffee. I enjoy the stain, perhaps because it looks so Rorschach and I can look at it and see an arabesque of owls, a tango of whales. Very dreamlike -- like the car lot. Like the goiter guy.

  Like the darkening winter sky.

  Flakes coming down. One at a time.

  I like this; we don't see much snow in South Florida.

  “So you were saying.” I hand my new friend a white ceramic mug of black coffee.

  One sip and he starts right in. “Rattlesnake Pete’s real name's Peter Gruber, in case you want to look him up. Never can tell when you’re going to have a goiter.”

  He pauses to watch the lazy flakes drift down from that menacing steel
y sky. As he stares outside, I stare, very briefly, at the swelling on his neck which is about as big as a baby’s fist. He swings back abruptly, catches my glance.

  “I see you looking. It’s all right. Everybody does. That thing was as big as a small football.” He pauses for a moment, searching my eyes for surprise. “Bout like this.” He rounds his hands, holds held them six inches apart.

  I nod, sip my coffee. “That’s good size--”

  “Nah,” he says, cutting me off. “Big ones are so large they look like a second head growing out of your neck.” He winks. Then he reaches into the top pocket of his plaid woolen shirt and takes out a handkerchief. The man blows his nose like a trumpet. People in the lobby turn their heads.

  “This is how he did it,” the man says, stuffing his handkerchief back into his top pocket. “Right here--” he pats the lump on his neck. "Rattlesnake Pete put his biggest, fattest rattler, and that thing coiled up around your neck so it felt like it was choking you to death. Pete’s game was to wrap the reptile round the goiter.”

  “Then what happened?”

  The man's eyes widen. Eyebrows arching, he explains. “Why, he’d let the snake squeeze the devil out of that goiter and just when you thought you was going die, Pete'd uncoil the reptile, and all the while it was rattling to beat the band, then he'd kiss it on the head and put it away in the back room. You believe me, don't you?”

  "Sure do. Hey, that’s some story.”

  “Only it ain’t a story, it's the truth,” he states. “You know, old Pete kept a corpse in the back room. That thing was dug out of the earth of the Cardiff Giant. He’d show you some of these things, if you wanted to see them. He had the last cigar of the last man executed in the electric chair in the state of New York, and he had a hairless cow from India and the bald, bare skull of Sheridan’s Civil War horse. But the best thing about Pete, he had twenty nine rattlesnake bites, four copperhead bites, and the biggest mustache you ever saw. Old Pete was a simple soul with a seedy saloon and the rattlesnakes and the corpse from the dirt of Cardiff – oh, that’s right, I already told you that.”