by Thomas, Lee
A lot of blood covered the German. His face wore a mask of it, making his eyes look bigger and whiter like a couple of eggs floating in a tomato soup. Ernst’s body quaked uncontrollably.
Those four boys. What in the name of God had they been thinking?
“We got him, Sheriff,” Hugo Jones said proudly. “We got the queer bastard.”
“Let him up,” Tom said. None of the boys moved. They looked at him like he was dancing around the room in a dress, and Tom honestly couldn’t remember if he’d actually spoken the words that first time, so he repeated the order. “Let him up!”
“But he’s the Cowboy. He confessed,” Hugo protested.
“Yeah,” Austin Chitwood added. “He confessed to being a spy and a Nazi and a pervert. He killed Harold and David and Little Lenny.”
“No, he didn’t,” the sheriff said. “Jesus Christ, he didn’t touch them.”
“But he confessed,” Hugo insisted. “He’s a damned pervert.”
“Let him up!” Tom yelled, and this time, the Randall boy moved.
He didn’t do as Tom said, though. Tim Randall fled the room and a second later Tom heard the porch door swing out with a squeal, then slam. The sheriff looked back at the German, and those big white eyes were burning, and he understood the Randall boy’s fear. Once Lang was loose, that bull-built bastard would rip those kids’ heads off. How they’d gotten the best of him in the first place, Tom didn’t know, but he’d seen enough violence for one night.
“You boys get out of here,” he said.
“Are you gonna arrest him?” Hugo asked, crossing his arms over his chest defiantly.
“I’m going to arrest you, Hugo Jones,” Tom said. “What you’ve done here breaks too many laws for me to list, but you are going to answer for each and every one of them. Now you get out of this house. I’m letting this man loose, and if he has a mind to break your stupid necks, I’m inclined to turn the other way and let him.”
“My pa won’t stand for this.”
“Then you send him to me. Now, get the fuck out of this house.”
The curse seemed to do the trick. Boys were used to throwing those words around easy enough amongst themselves, but hearing an adult invoke such an obscenity got their attention. And it was a good thing too, because the German’s condition so disturbed Tom he had a strong urge to break some necks himself.
The boys fled, all but Hugo, who strutted across the floor like he’d gotten the best of the sheriff. Infuriated by his manner, Tom hauled off and slapped the boy upside his head. Hugo yelped, and Tom was glad to hear it. “This is on your head, Hugo Jones.”
“I ain’t….”
Tom didn’t let the puffed up little bastard say another word. Instead, his palm made a second visit to the boy’s head. This time, Hugo cried out and then he stumbled out of the room, leaving the sheriff alone with Ernst Lang.
At the bedside, the man’s wounds were clear enough. The boys had burned him and cut him. His skin was bruised and swollen in so many places Tom figured the man was lucky to be conscious. Using his knife, the sheriff freed Ernst’s ankles. Then he pulled a pair of rolled up socks out of his mouth. The German didn’t make a sound. Not a thank you or a damn you; not a whimper or a sigh, so Tom went to work on the rope at his wrist, freeing his left arm first. Then the sheriff circled the bed and sliced through the hemp securing Ernst’s right arm to the wooden bed frame.
“Scheisse!” the German said. It was meant to be a shout, but it snapped in his throat, dry and brittle like the crushing of dead leaves. “Scheisse! Verdammete Scheisse!” Ernst bolted upright. He lunged in Tom’s direction, throwing himself from the mattress. But his legs must have been starved for circulation, and he crumbled to his knees.
He startled Tom so badly the sheriff spun away, holding his knife out in a defensive stance. Kneeling on the floor and looking up as if in furious prayer, Ernst stared at the blade in the sheriff’s hand. The German wanted the knife. Tom didn’t know if the man thought he might use it on him or those boys or everyone in Barnard, but the blade rapt his attention.
“Settle down, now. You’re hurt bad and a bit muddled.” Truth was the German seemed out of his mind, but it looked to Tom like he had sufficient reason for it. “We have to take care of you.”
“Out,” Ernst said. “Just…out…my house.”
“I can’t leave you in this condition, Ernst. You’re not thinking clearly.”
A low growl rumbled in the German’s throat.
“How long were they here?” the sheriff asked. “How long they have you tied up?”
“Don’t know,” Lang said. His eyes lost that hungry cast and they clouded over. The lids drooped, and he leaned forward on his hands. “Last night. At sunset.”
“Let me call an ambulance. You’re hurt real bad.”
“No. Nein. No.”
“You need help.”
He slapped the air with one of his large hands, sweeping the thought away like a mosquito. “You see the kind of help I get.”
“At least get back into the bed. I’ll find some things to patch you up. Just get back in….”
“The bed….” Ernst interrupted, but the sentence ended. He grunted heavily as if releasing a great burden from his shoulders. The sound came again, only harsher, rasping – a dull file on a length of mesquite. The noise grew more frequent, almost panting like a dog about to retch. His head lowered and his muscled back expanded and contracted furiously.
Tom had never seen anything like it and didn’t know what it meant. He only knew he needed to get the man to a hospital.
“The bed,” Ernst repeated quickly between raking breaths, “shit and piss and blood.” He inhaled deeply. The air fled him in those short sawing grunts. He gasped again. “You sleep in it.” He tried to get to his feet and failed. His second attempt was no more successful. He crawled forward and spread out on the floor, lying on his back. “Water, yes? A glass of water, yes?”
“Sure.”
Tom returned his knife to its sheath and walked to the kitchen. He poured a glass of water, then carried it back to the room, where he knelt by the wounded man’s side, holding his head and helping his drink. After the glass was drained, Tom set it aside and began checking Ernst’s wounds. One of his thighs had a long gash that drew a line from his knee nearly to his privates. The boys had removed two of his fingernails and ragged flesh framed the purple wounds beneath. Black circles on his outer thighs looked to be the work of cigarettes; they oozed clear fluid. The German’s belly was one purple smear of bruise. Similar marks covered both of his arms. These didn’t worry Tom as much as the cuts, though. The boys had carved his arm like notching a gun butt. Four on the left and three on the right. They still oozed blood.
“Nice boys, nuh?” Ernst said.
“They’ll pay accounts for this.”
“And how much is a German deviant worth?”
“As much as anyone else, I suppose.”
“You’re too old to be so stupid.”
The sheriff ignored the comment and told him he had to get an ambulance. Ernst was bleeding all over the floor, and there might have been more damage inside. Tom didn’t know. The sheriff could manage snakebite and maybe a broken arm. The German’s wounds were well beyond his medical abilities.
“No,” Ernst said, staring up at Tom from the floor.
“You could bleed to death.”
“I stink.”
“They’ll clean you up.”
“The bath, yes? You run the bath.”
“No, I’m not running the bath, you goddamn fool. You could bleed out. Jesus, Ernst, the last thing you should be thinking about is the way you smell.”
“So I deserve no dignity?”
Tom didn’t know what to make of that. Dignity? Was the German so damn proud he was willing to die rather than be seen with a smear of shit on him?
The situation had Tom perplexed. He couldn’t carry the man out of the house. Lang was too heavy for that, though Tom could h
ave dragged him, he figured it would do more harm than good. Finally, he decided to grant Lang’s request for a bath. If nothing else, it would give Tom time to get Doc Randolph down to Dodd Street.
He left Ernst on the floor and walked into the bathroom. The stopper went into the drain and he turned on the faucet. Then Tom slipped back into the hall and made his way to the phone in Ernst’s kitchen. The Doc’s wife, Myrna, told him the doctor would be on down to Dodd Street as soon as he could. A few minutes later, the sheriff helped Ernst to the tub. The man moaned in pain when they reached the bedroom threshold and Tom stopped uncertain.
“The bath,” Lang insisted, his voice pinched.
The water turned pink as his bulk slid into the tub. The wounds on his arms opened like tiny mouths drooling blood into the water. Ernst lifted a small towel from the edge of the tub, using the right hand, which still had all of its fingernails intact; he struggled with the cloth’s weight as if it were lead rather than cotton. Dipping the towel into the foul water, he brought it to his face and dabbed gently across his forehead, cleaning away the sweat and blood accumulated there. With the skin clean, Tom saw a purple welt the size of an acorn on the man’s right brow. Rivulets of crimson rose through the water like smoke from the wounds on his arms. Once his face was clean, Lang dragged the towel over his chin and down his throat. He winced but did not stop the motion. The towel slid lower and he passed it over his privates. Then the cloth grazed the cuts and burns on his legs. Lang cried out. It was a terrible sound, a squeal of animal agony. He gritted his teeth, biting off its tail, then he squeezed his eyes shut, continuing to clean himself.
“Is there anything you need?” Tom asked. It was a jackass thing to say, but he didn’t know what else to do. Watching the German bathe himself was like watching a gutshot man crawling around a field picking flowers.
“Those boys,” Ernst said. His voice was stronger, though still drained. He draped the cloth over the side of the tub. What he did next shocked the sheriff. The German grasped his privates in one of his hands, not covering them, but circling them and squeezing. “Those boys were afraid of my cock, yes? That’s why I still have it. They talked about cutting it off, but none of them would touch it. I’m lucky, yes?”
Tom looked away toward the sink and nodded. “Sure,” he said.
“They tried to act so brave, so cruel, but they were afraid. They hold their own cocks every day, but mine terrified them.”
“Ernst, you shouldn’t talk just now.”
“Ah, it scares you, too. Good. Enough. No more talk of it.”
“Thank you.”
Tom was grateful when Doc Randolph finally arrived, though the doctor cursed him out something fierce for having put the German in the tub, but once he set to mending Lang’s wounds Tom was forgotten. They helped the German to the sofa, and the Doc got to work and Tom went back into the bedroom where he collected the ropes and set them in a pile by the door. Then he stripped off the dirty sheets and took them to the back porch to air out. The mattress beneath was also stained, but there wasn’t anything to be done about that just then.
Once the doc had Ernst patched up, he gave the man a shot of something and together they helped Lang outside and into Doc Randolph’s car.
“He’ll stay in the hospital for a day or so. Keep an eye out for infection. You mind telling me who did this to that man?”
Tom did mind, and he didn’t say. The doctor would know soon enough anyway. Doc Randolph shook his head, disappointed, then he climbed in his car and drove off.
Tom closed up the German’s house and drove back to the station. He’d have a deputy round up the three older boys, wake their folks, and give them all something to chew over while he worked on his report. In the morning – at least later in the morning – he’d call Estella and ask her to run by Lang’s house to clean up those sheets and do what she could with his mattress.
The German might as well have a clean bed when he got home.
Twenty-Six: Tim Randall
I didn’t sleep.
My mind overflowed with sound and motion – a big band dance filled with trampled and bloody dancers, twirling to a blaring, discordant dirge. Even my mother’s demands for answers couldn’t break through the cacophony. Once home, I flew past her and ran into my bedroom and collapsed on the bed, curling into a ball, and she instantly followed to ask where I had been and what I had been doing and was I okay, and I said nothing. She sobbed and held me, convinced I was the victim.
Amid screams pouring from the German’s bloody face, I remembered the sheriff’s words: Jesus Christ, he didn’t touch them. At the time, his certainty had been like a splash of cold water delivered in unison with an electric shock. I felt my own certainty then: Hugo had manipulated me – had manipulated everything. My mind was too shattered to identify the specific deceits, but one moment I firmly believed my neighbor was a monster, and in the next I saw him as the casualty of monsters – beaten, cut, bloody. Innocent.
Later in the morning my mother returned to my room. Her demeanor had changed, but she continued to cry. In a terse voice, she told me to get up and straighten my clothes. Comb my hair. Deputy Gilbert Perry was waiting in the living room to take us into town. He greeted me with a sour expression and a stern, “Morning,” and then he led us outside.
Ma sat next to me in the police car, silent and wiping the tears from her eyes. At the police station, Gilbert limped around the car and opened the door and when I stepped out, I felt his hand on my back, as if ready to grab me should I decide to run. Inside, Ma and I were led into a small, poorly lit room that smelled like cigarettes and sweat. A fan clacked noisily as it pushed warm air around the cinderblock cell. We were asked to sit at a table, and then Deputy Gil shambled out of the room, leaving me alone with my mother, who insisted on answers.
“Timothy George Randall, you tell me what this is all about.”
“I don’t know,” I said, and it wasn’t far from the truth. The dance continued in my head – one bloody face after another, though they were all the German’s face contorted in different ways. I could no longer summon the rage that had so easily guided me into his house, that had made his wounding justified. So I didn’t know what this was all about, because I couldn’t understand how any of it had happened.
“He said you kidnapped a man,” she pressed. “He said you hurt him very badly.”
“Yes,” I replied. That’s exactly what had happened, but I didn’t want to remember it that way. I wanted to remember how brave we’d been, how smart we’d been, how we’d made the German confess. We were heroes.
Laughable.
“How could you do this?” Ma asked. “Timmy, how? I don’t understand.”
“Yes,” I said again.
The interrogation room door opened and Sheriff Rabbit walked in, followed by Deputy Burns. Both of them looked like they’d just come from the funeral of someone they loved. My belly twisted tight with sickness and the dance played on in my head, the music faster, the dancers all the more damaged.
Deputy Burns took the chair across from me. He dropped down in it and glared over the table. Sheriff Rabbit remained standing.
“Mrs. Randall,” he said, “I want you to understand the seriousness of this business, and further, I want you to know that I witnessed the crime in question, so I would appreciate the cooperation of you and your son. It’ll make life easier for all of us.”
Ma nodded at this and threw a frightened look at me.
“Tim,” Sheriff Rabbit said, “we know what happened, so there’s no use in lying about it. We’ve already spoken to Hugo and Ben and Austin, and we have their statements on file. We know you entered the residence of Ernst Lang…” Ma gasped at the mention of our neighbor’s name. “…and that you proceeded to subdue, restrain, and commit acts of violence on the man. Can you tell me why you did this?”
“He was a queer,” I said. “He was a murderer. He was a German.”
“And why did you think Lang was a murderer? D
id you have any evidence?”
“Hugo saw something through his window,” I said.
“And what did he see?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“But Hugo convinced you that Ernst Lang had murdered Harold Ashton and David Williams.”
“And Little Lenny.”
“Little Lenny Elliot came home yesterday,” Sheriff Rabbit said.
“But he confessed,” I whispered, knowing how empty it sounded.
Deputy Burns spoke up then. His voice rolled over his tongue like a thresher chopping through a field of stone columns. “I’m thinking you’d confess to a whole lot of things yourself if you were tied to a bed and cut up and burned with cigarettes. Now, I don’t have much use for Lang’s sort, and I sure don’t have much liking for them. I see a queer and I pop him in the jaw to let him know he best look the other way. I handle it like a man and I move on. But you could have killed that son of bitch, Tim. It’s a goddamn miracle you didn’t. Then it wouldn’t matter a bit if he was queer or not; you’d be a murderer. That sound good to you?”
I couldn’t respond. Fear and anger rolled off of Ma; I could feel it falling over me, clinging like the stink of cigarette smoke.