Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  The I-95. He passed another sign that said northbound I-95, and it brought back the memories again, that night when he had killed Sheriff Beaumont. It was particularly fitting that he would use that road to drive most of the way up to Liberty. It felt like a circle closing, or something. Here he had fled Liberty on the I-95 in a stolen police car, and he had traveled all over the U.S., seeing most of the Midwest and Western states, making one huge looping circle. Now he was in Georgia, almost to South Carolina and heading north on the I-95, driving back into the town that had given his mind so much trouble.

  He unconsciously reached into his shirt pocket with his right hand and took out the Sheriff’s star, looking at it carefully when he realized what he had done. The edges were dull and the five points had lost most of their sharpness, but the letters were still clear, easy to read. He curled his fingers around it and squeezed, squeezed very hard, until he felt the dulled points jab into his flesh and blood began to ease out between his clenched fingers. He uncurled his fingers and looked at the bloody holes in his fingers and palm. To him, they looked almost like stigmata, when priests and the religious faithful, mostly those worshippers of the Catholic belief, would bleed from their palms, their feet, or their sides in a repetition of those wounds suffered by Christ. No one was exactly sure how these things happened, but Jack had read about several documented examples of stigmata, some of them even coming from the official literature of the Holy Catholic Church.

  His wounds didn’t look a lot like stigmata, but the points of the star were red with the blood from his wounds, and he set the star on the dashboard of the van. The wounds would probably not scar, and even if they did, it would look nothing like the palm of his left hand, where the horrible crooked scars painted the palm and the inner curves of all of his fingers. He’d gotten that scar a long time ago, when he’d lost an argument with a barbed-wire fence. And the scar...well, getting the scar had caused so many things to go wrong, so many things...

  Back when Jack Terrington was much younger and still living in Maine with his mother and her boyfriend, he had taken to riding his bicycle all over Jameston, where they lived, exploring the countryside and getting into trouble wherever and whenever he could. Jack had been a precocious kid, always in the way or getting into trouble, and on some psychobabble level, maybe he was acting out to grasp and hold the tenuous and short-lived attention of his mother. She was most often concerned about her own pleasures, and Jack had early on grown accustomed to the endless parade of new ‘uncles’ through his mothers’ bedroom. But she took good care of him and loved him as much as she could, even though she had recognized early on that her little Jack was a different sort of child, a loner. He was much more content off by himself than in a group of kids.

  Jameston was a smallish farming community in southern Maine whose only claim to fame was an annual Harvest Festival in September, which often attracted crowds from all over southern Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and even some people from as far away as up-state New York. The festival was an event that the entire town anticipated for several months, the only time when the town swelled above its normal population of around 3,500 people.

  Young Jack Terrington rode his pride and joy, his little red and white bicycle, all over Jameston, usually managing to get into some type of trouble at least once a week, especially during the summer months when the crops and the weeds grew long from the warm sun and the ample rains. Jack was a troublemaker, plain and simple, but the people of Jameston knew to leave him alone and go about their business. They knew that if they called his mother, she would send her boyfriend after little Jack, and the man, whomever Jack’s mother happened to be dating at the time, would show up after a couple hours and toss the red and white bike into the back of his car or truck, collect the little boy, and drive away. They let Jack get away with a lot of things that the other little kids in town would not have, probably because they felt sorry for the kid and his lousy home life.

  In late August of 1966, only weeks before the coming Harvest Festival, Jack had been riding his bike out on Seven Hills Road north of town, a long country road that was lined on both sides by huge, flat fields of crops, baking in the heat of the late afternoon sun. The road was paved, something of an oddity in this part of the county - it was only a country road that only led up into long stretches of farmland. And, for some reason, the road only had five hills along it. No one was exactly sure how the road had gotten its name, and frankly, nobody cared.

  Jack was riding along, off on one of his adventures, the kind of adventures that all little boys invent for themselves to pass the time and prove their worth as explorers. This day, he was off to count the hills on Seven Hills Road. His mother had told him that there were really only five hills on this road, and he had not believed her, storming out of the house and declaring he would not speak to her again until he’d counted all seven hills.

  Somewhere between the third and fourth hill, the fields on the left-hand side of the road swung over much closer to the road, butting right up against the gravel shoulder. The spaced wooden posts of the fence held a mesh of metal chain link fence, topped by three nasty-looking strands of barbed wire, each studded with wicked points of the rusty metal. The wooden posts stood at twenty-foot intervals like stolid wooden soldiers, holding up a defensive line against unknown invaders.

  Jack swung his bike over onto the wrong side of the road and closer to the fence, wanting to get a closer look at the wire. He was already growing tired of counting the hills, and the idea of barbed wire fascinated him. He had killed a cat or two by tying them to fences made of barbed wire and watching as they proceeded to tear their feet off trying to get free. Afterwards, he had always been fascinated with the bodies, the carcasses – they grew cold so quickly, so heavy with dead weight. He had always enjoyed playing with animals, especially birds, and he had always been fascinated with the mechanics of death. Jack always looked for the terror had filled the animals’ eyes.

  Mostly he had killed birds, dozens and dozens of them. He loved catching them and tying them up, watching them try to fly away and beating themselves to death against the ground. He’d tie them together and watch them kill each other, or tie them to a rock and throw it into the river. They would flap against the current and the rock would sink and slowly pull them under. He had even seen one bird chew off its’ own leg to get free of the fishing line Jack had used to tie the bird to a fence.

  The paved width of the road was bordered by thin gravel shoulders and a shallow ditch, and he biked on the very edge of the pavement.

  The wire whizzed past him at a dizzying speed, or at least it looked that way to Jack. He was probably riding along at not more than ten miles an hour, but to him, seeing the wire and the studded barbs and the wooden posts rushing past him, he felt like a bullet just shot from his mothers’ boyfriends’ gun.

  After a few minutes of this, he grew tired of seeing how close he could ride to the fence. It wasn’t a thrill, and besides, another hill, hill number four, was coming up.

  He swerved back out onto the main part of the road and pedaled faster, trying to pick up momentum for what looked to be a long, grueling hill. His legs pumped up and down like little white pistons wrapped with blue-striped socks, and the bike tilted back and forth as he pedaled fiercely. He was biting his lip, something he usually did when he was trying to concentrate on something, something important to him. His legs burned with exertion.

  The incline finally leveled off and he crested the hill, barely having the energy to pedal any further. He coasted to a stop on top of the hill, braking with his shoes.

  The road sloped downwards for a while and then leveled off again, just as it had done several times before. On either side of the road were more of the fields of yellow and green butting up against the road. Actually, the road looked only like a thin gray streak in a vast plain of greens and yellows and browns. An occasional tree dotted the area, but they were rare and precious. Waves of heat rose off the road, distorting it and
making it dance in the harsh August sunlight.

  After a couple minutes of rest, his heart slowed from its trip-hammer pace and he started down the hill, still heading away from town. He soon began to pick up speed quickly, encouraging him to pedal faster.

  The fence was again on his left, close to the road. He moved over towards it and carefully edged his bike off the paved road and onto the hard-packed gravel of the shoulder. He wanted to see how close he could ride to the fence.

  The naked spurs of the barbed-wire fence was now no more than two feet away from him, and at his speed there were a blur, the wooden posts rushing past him and making an odd WHOOSH - WHOOSH - WHOOSH sound as he flew past each of them, sounding like the wings of some giant bird. He was still well on the gravel shoulder and away from the shallow drainage ditch that lined the road between the shoulder and the field, but it was still a thrill to do something so dangerous. One jerk of the handlebars and he would crash right into the sharp points of the fence, surely killing him.

  Suddenly, Jack felt an urge, something like the urge he felt when he killed the animals, and he reached out and touched the fence.

  He touched it down below the barbed wire, where the fence was simply a blurry grid of metal, and his fingers reverberated against the thin metal wires. His hand wasn’t pressed very hard against the fence but it was still beating against the metal incredibly fast, so fast that he couldn’t even see it, but he could feel the hard WHOOMP as each wooden post passed under his hand. The barbed wire was passing along at about shoulder level, jagged and angry. Each of the barbed points seemed to reflect the sun above, flashing light into his eyes, taunting him, teasing him to

  (touch us, touch us)

  reach out and touch them.

  He took his hand away from the fence. He was biting his lip, and then he raised his left hand and held it just over the top strand of barbed wire, his hand pointed out and flat like an airplane. The top strand rushed past him, just below his hand, the wicked, jagged points only inches away.

  He was careful to pull his hand up before the tops of each post went whizzing by, or else he would’ve smacked into one of them. But the hand always returned to its dangerous position, just above the wire. He lowered his hand and tried to curl it around the upper strand of metal, but he didn’t have time to do that between each fencepost.

  Jack felt giddy, an emotion he had rarely felt before. It seemed that he was tempting fate, riding here on the gravel shoulder of the wrong side of the road, holding his hand just above the jagged points of the wire. It was a thrill.

  But then, it wasn’t enough. He wanted to do something REALLY cool, really exciting.

  He grabbed the handlebars of his bike with both sweaty hands and steered for a little while, trying to steel up his courage. He was now moving at top speed, and he saw that the road was starting to level out just below him, stretching for a long ways before it began to slope upwards again. He could just make out the fuzzy image of a car, its lines and colors wavering from the heat coming up off the road, coming down that far hill. It looked a long way away.

  Jack Terrington swallowed and closed his eyes for a second to steel up his courage. Then he took his left hand off of its handlebar and lifted it up

  (it won’t hurt not one little bit)

  and grabbed the top strand of the barbed-wire fence as it rushed by at blinding speed.

  Instantly, the palm and the skin on the insides of his fingers and thumb were shredded.

  The skin came off in long, jagged pieces, snagging on the wicked points of the barbs. Blood shot out from the palm and fingers, painting the top strand of wire red.

  He could not let go.

  The skin was gone from the inside of his hand in a moment, and the barbs were slashing away at the muscles and tendons of his hand and blood was splashed all the way up his arm past the elbow and still he could not let go. It had all happened so quickly that for a long half-second he felt nothing except an odd moving pressure on the sensitive skin of his palm, and just as the pain was moving in like a huge earth-mover, roaring and unstoppable, his still-clenched fist slammed into the next wooden post and he was knocked away from the fence.

  The bike swerved and finally tipped over, spilling Jack onto the hot pavement. He rolled and skidded for a distance before he came to a stop, laying there in the middle of the road. Had there been road stripes back in those days, he would’ve been laying right on the center dotted line.

  Jack’s hand was on fire. It felt like someone had dipped his entire hand in gasoline and then set it ablaze. The pain came in huge waves that crashed against him like an incoming tide. Heat and fire and pain seemed to drip from his clenched fist and run down his elbow, his arm, even all the way down into his feet.

  Little Jack Terrington screamed as loud as he could, louder than he had ever screamed before, even when his mother’s boyfriends would beat him.

  He opened his eyes and looked at his clenched hand. The back of his fist was uncut, but blood had been splashed up there, painting it a deep, viscous red. The web of skin that had stretched between his thumb and forefinger was gone, taken as if by magic. Tattered strips of skin several inches long hung from the ball of his hand, where the wire had torn it loose but had not had time to take it.

  He tried to uncurl his fist, and for a long painful moment his hand would not take orders from his brain, almost as if his hand had been disgusted by what the brain had last ordered him to do and was now on strike.

  Finally, the fingers began to slowly, painfully uncurl and he straightened them out.

  bones

  He could see the bones of his fingers, naked and white and shiny in the late summer sunlight, the skin stripped away and torn from the bones, the muscles exposed. It was amazing. Only the tips of his fingers, above the last knuckle, and heel of his hand still had skin on them.

  Jack only had a second to look at what was left of the palm of his left hand before blood welled up and began pulsating out of the gaping wound. It ran down his hand and arm past the wrist where the school nurse had taken his pulse only two weeks ago in preparation for the coming school year, and he could see that the blood was coming in waves, pumped by his heart through his veins and up his arm and out into the sunlight. The blood was moving, surging, coursing through his veins as if it were trying to escape his body altogether. And even through his pain, the sight of all that blood amazed him.

  He shook his head to clear the sleepy feeling that had suddenly gripped him and clenched his hand together again, and the sudden force with which he squeezed forced some of the blood to squirt out from between his ragged fingers, spattering his face and neck with scarlet. He only had time to begin to notice the feeling of the hot blood on his face before the world around him wavered and dipped and he passed out.

  The car had stopped and the couple in the car had seen him, bundled him up, and taken him to the hospital. The staff and doctors at the hospital had called his mother right away, needing her permission before they could operate, and she had given her consent over the phone before hanging up angrily and climbing into her car for the twenty-minute drive over to Jameston General. She had been in the process of packing up her boyfriend’s things - they were having a period of difficulty that she had called a “spat” but it was really the end of anything between them - but that would have to wait until after the hospital. She did not call the boyfriend; it would’ve been too awkward, and he probably wouldn’t have cared about the boy, anyway.

  She drove out to the hospital with only a vague idea of her son’s injuries, only having given her permission for an “operation to stop the bleeding in his hand” and perform a skin graft, if necessary.

  Her mind was filled with the horrible images that always seem to fill the minds of someone who knows that a loved one is injured but not sure HOW injured, her mind racing with thoughts of her son and his bleeding hand and her boyfriend and his box of things that she had set in the hallway, and she was trying to decide whether or not to call her
boyfriend from the hospital. It seemed like the right thing to do, but she hated him and wanted all of it to be over between them. She was worried about her son and his bleeding hand, and she was wondering if she should tell him about the boyfriend tonight or in the morning, and she never even heard the ringing of the railroad guard post until it was far too late. She did hear the train when it blasted its horn for the third time, and she did hear herself scream as she realized that the train was RIGHT THERE, RIGHT THERE and then she didn’t hear anything else ever again.

  The train dragged the twisted metal hunk of her car for almost a half-mile before it fell off to one side and finally tumbled to a rest.

  The police that responded to the scene said that they had never seen a worse car-vs.-train accident. The coroner had had difficulty finding enough of Miss Terrington to even make a positive identification.

  And Jack had blamed himself for it, and for everything that had happened after.

  The surgery to fix his hand had been successful, even though skin grafting was a technique still in its infancy. Little Jack had been very lucky not to lose his hand completely, but the quick response of the medical team and his mother’s timely permission had allowed the doctors to begin before irreversible damage could be done. The new skin for the graft had come from his legs and back, and even though the palm healed up as little more than one huge scar, the alternative was certainly worse.

  By the time the hand was bandaged and healing, little Jack had heard the news about his mother and lapsed into a long period of silence that the hospital staff could not break. The mother’s boyfriend had conveniently left town after he’d heard the news, and one of his mother’s co-workers had arranged for the funeral services for Jack’s mother.

  It was a closed casket ceremony, with few attendees.

  After a few months, Jack seemed to awaken, and come back to himself. He was examined by a county child welfare specialist and deemed physically and mentally healthy, and he was remanded over to become custody of the County.