One of Us

by Craig DiLouie

  That still didn’t make it right.

  Burton stood and stretched. “I’ve got a mind to take a drive.”

  “You should do that,” his wife said.

  “We need anything from the store?”

  Anne looked up from her book. “We have everything we need.”

  Her regal bearing came from years of suffering. He wondered again if she would ever forgive him. He’d already asked her many times over the years. The answer was always the same. That particular stone could never be removed. It would forever ripple through their lives.

  Long ago, he and Anne had wanted a child but couldn’t conceive. They’d started to drift apart. One lonely night in Tallahassee he tumbled into bed with a cocktail waitress and brought home the germ, which he gave to Anne. A month later, she started throwing up from morning sickness.

  The joy he’d felt. He was gonna be a daddy.

  Eight months after that, Anne gave birth to a monster.

  In the waiting room, Burton had paced with a breast pocket full of cigars ready to pass out to anybody wanting to help him celebrate. Doc Odom came out and gave him the bad news. Burton inspected the thing that was his child, swaddled in a glass bubble under a heat lamp. It’s that disease going around, the doctor said. I’m sorry to say you and Anne must have it.

  Doc Odom asked him if he cared to name it. Burton didn’t even know what it was, a boy or girl. Its little eyes clamped shut, its mouth kissed the air as it searched for the breast. Then it cried, which was most repugnant of all because it sounded like a normal baby crying for its mama.

  He named it and signed the forms to give it to the Homes.

  They told everybody the child died during childbirth. Arrangements were made to pass it over to the Huntsville Home. A different family name on the birth certificate. Doc Odom kept his secret. Anne never truly forgave him for any of it, and he’d lived with his shame ever since. The shame of his transgression. The shame of the plague that spread through an act of love.

  “I love you, Anne,” he said.

  She said nothing. The silence simmered between them. Sometimes Burton felt like he was the only man who lived in a house haunted by the living.

  “I’ll take that drive then,” he said.

  He left the house and drove around in the dark until he found himself at his office. A news van maintained a weary vigil outside, CNN painted on its side, the name of that new twenty-four-hour cable TV channel launched up in Atlanta. Somebody smelled a story. Most of the other press had packed it in and run off to hound the district attorney. Soon, this sordid drama would shift to the courtroom.

  He walked inside and hung his hat. Sikes jumped in his chair at the sight of him. The deputy looked at the clock. “Evening, boss.”

  “Evening, Bobby. You look like the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers. What’s got you so jumpy?”

  “Just scared me is all. Didn’t expect you in tonight.”

  “I wanted to talk to the creeper one last time,” the sheriff said.

  “I been promising the moon and threatening hellfire. He won’t confess.”

  “It don’t matter what he says. His goose is cooked.”

  “Can’t even get him to tell us where Bowie’s head is.”

  “It don’t matter. Go back to reading or whatever you was doing.”

  Burton entered the holding cells. He dragged a chair up to the bars, giving him a chance to study his prisoner. The dog boy sat on his bed watching him with glazed eyes. Captivity had not been kind to him. The kid sagged as if he were melting. Parts of his fur had been worried bald.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” the kid said.

  This boy could have been Burton’s son, though he wasn’t.

  “Evening, Enoch.”

  “Heard you come in. Thought you was the preacher come again. He been talking my ears off, praying almost every night.”

  “He’ll do that,” Burton said. “It’s his vocation.”

  “Hours of talking to God and barely a word said to me. It’s important to him that I get to a better world as long as I get out of his. Cares more about my soul than he does me. Comforting, though.”

  “What’s that? Going to Heaven?”

  “The chance to finally go someplace nobody hates to look at me. You reckon God loves me, or am I going to Hell because I were unlucky to be born a monster? Do you think my soul is ugly like my body?”

  “I don’t claim to know God’s mind,” Burton said. “But if you love Jesus and got yourself a clean conscience, I reckon God will take you in.”

  Enoch looked around at the bare walls. “I wish I could run. I wish I could run one last time on the four feet God gave me. That’s the worst part of being here, not being able to run. I can run like the wind.”

  “Wish I could let you do it. Anything else I can get you?”

  “You could tell Brain I said he were right.”

  “That’s George Hurst, right?”

  “You would pass on a message? You’d really do that for me?”

  “I might could tell him something for you if I see him,” Burton said.

  “You know how we get our names at the Home, sir?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “Sometimes it’s what you look like,” Enoch said. “Other times, it’s who you are in a single word. Like Brain, he’s smart. Me, I’m Dog.”

  “I ain’t surprised. You ever look in the mirror?”

  “I have taken a very good look, mister. And I see myself clear now. What I am. I was a dog. I was your dog. Everybody knew it. I really believed. The promise of getting a fair shake when we grew up. People like Sally made me believe. That you wasn’t all bad, not all of you, and I could have a life of my own. I don’t believe no more. And I ain’t your dog no more. Tell Brain he were right all along. He’ll know what I mean. Tell him I said my name ain’t Dog. That’s my last request.”

  “You didn’t kill Sally Gaines.”

  The kid jumped to his feet and grabbed the bars. “You believe me.”

  “I believe the evidence. The evidence says you didn’t do it. Gaines did.”

  “The evidence is right, sir.”

  “What about Ray Bowie?”

  “I didn’t even know he were killed until you told me I was the one killed him.”

  “I believe you on that, too. That case don’t stack up neither.”

  “Then what does this mean?”

  “Amy Green puts you at the scene of Bowie’s murder,” Burton said. “Dave Gaines and his boy say you killed Sally. It don’t add up, but it does enough. Nobody is willing to do the right thing and recant. And nobody else is willing to give the evidence the same hard look I did.”

  “On account I’m a plague kid,” Enoch said. “A creeper. Critter. Monster. An ugly.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You name us for how you see us. We all have one name to you. So what you’re saying is me being innocent don’t add up to a hill of beans.”

  “I came here to say I’m sorry, kid.”

  “What about you, sir?”

  “What about me what?” he said, though he knew what the boy wanted.

  “Are you willing to do the right thing? Not for a plague kid, but purely for what’s right?”

  Sometimes, the history of a thing boiled down to a single decision by a single man. Maybe that man wasn’t Gaines or Bryant but him.

  He imagined making a stink. The town turning against him. Banishment from his church. Losing the election. Midnight rocks through the window. Death threats in the mail. Maybe even a burning cross on his lawn. The news vultures digging up his past and dragging poor Anne through the mud with him. Shame, loss, retribution.

  Folks didn’t care about the truth, not when it interfered with a comforting narrative. A story about good and evil the fine citizens of Huntsville were deeply invested in believing.

  Stark County already had its share of problems with race. During the upheaval of the Sixties, it seemed Huntsville might es
cape the troubles. As a young deputy, Burton watched the White and Black kids play together at the playground and thought, That’s where the fear and hate will end, with the children. Then a Black family moved into a White neighborhood, and Mayor Emery got on the radio and said it was time to fix them niggers, help them see the error of their ways. Three days later, the house got bombed, and a little girl died. Two more houses got shot up. Black men patrolled their neighborhoods at night with shotguns.

  Things had improved since then but not by a whole lot. The town had its White and Black sections, the Klan was alive and well, and racial tensions ebbed and flowed. The walls broken during the Sixties were being rebuilt. Burton had given up his hopes for the races ever living together in perfect harmony. And if White and Black couldn’t live together, how could men and monsters?

  In the end, he might save Enoch Bryant but sacrifice himself while setting up more violence. The Klan had already shot up the Home twice, and if pushed too far it was only a matter of time before they burned it to the ground.

  Still, the law was the law, and for him, that superseded everything. A good town policed itself, but he had no interest in mob rule, either. He could do something. Maybe he’d press Archie Gaines after all and see if the kid folded. Bring Amy Green in without her mama around. Put it right to them.

  If they recanted, it was on them, and they could own the fallout. If they didn’t, well, nothing could be done.

  “I might could make an effort,” he said.

  “Thank ye, Sheriff.”

  Burton stood. “Don’t be thanking me yet, kid. It’s a long shot.”

  “You’re gonna try. You believe me. For that, I’m grateful.”

  “Good night,” Burton said.

  A good town policed itself. When that failed, it was his job.

  After the sheriff left, Dog clutched the bars and stared at the door he’d gone through as if he might come right back and let him out.

  Sheriff Burton had turned out to be a good man, if that didn’t beat all. It rekindled Dog’s hope in more ways than one, the way Sally’s friendship and kindness had. Not all hens pecked the weak. He knew not to hope in regard to gaining his freedom, but he couldn’t help it. The sheriff would let him out of this cage. He’d run again. Find a nice secret place where he could run on all fours with nobody to bother him. He’d go back to the farm. Pa Albod would thank him for trying to save Sally’s life. His friends would know he didn’t kill anybody. The whole town would.

  And he’d escape the chair, the evil chair the normals invented to destroy those guilty of the worst crimes. The mean deputy had told him all about it. The straps, the metal helmet and sponge, his accusers watching him die through the window. The deputy said you looked like you were a lunatic king sitting on a throne. A thousand volts hitting you like lightning. Your eyes melting right out of their sockets. Shitting and pissing yourself. Death was supposed to be instant, but according to the deputy it didn’t always work out that way. Sometimes you felt it all and screamed smoke. Sometimes your head burst on fire.

  Sometimes, the deputy said, they had to scrape your flesh off the chair after it was all over.

  He’d rather be shot. He’d rather die in almost any other way than that, in fact.

  If they let him out of this cage, Dog would still be a plague kid, one of the uglies with nothing to his name and no future. He’d still be in trouble for mauling Mr. Gaines. But he’d have his life, and that was enough. That was everything. He’d have his name back and nobody would ever see him as a killer of teachers and young girls. Maybe the jury would go easy on him and let him off once the truth came out he was trying to protect Miss Sally. He’d have friends and sunshine, places to run, honest work with the land, and the occasional kindness, the odd glass of iced tea with a sprig of mint in it after a long hot day.

  If they let him out, he’d become Enoch again, same as when he was born.

  As if in answer to his prayers, the door opened.

  The deputy walked in and said, “You got another visitor, creeper.”

  Reverend Coombs, no doubt. This time, Dog would pray with him. They wouldn’t talk to each other, but they could talk to God together. The preacher would pray for his soul, Dog for the deliverance of his body.

  A man came into the room, but it wasn’t the preacher.

  Pa Albod.

  The door closed. The farmer shuffled to the chair the sheriff had left. He sat in it and slumped. He was a different man in every way now. His face was gray and stubbled, his body bent and frail. His eyes blazed with sparks.

  “I’m glad to see you, sir,” Dog said.

  “I’m dying,” Pa said.

  “Dying?”

  “The little retard witch put a hex on me. I been sick ever since.”

  “You’re just sad, sir. I’m sad, too.”

  The man fixed his blazing eyes on him. “Are you? Are you sorry for what you done?”

  “I didn’t do it. Mr. Gaines did it. He shot her. I swear to God that’s what I saw.”

  “Don’t swear, boy. You already done enough to earn damnation.”

  “I still ain’t the one harmed her. Even the sheriff knows it’s true.”

  “I just came to know why,” Pa Albod said. “I’m dying, and I wanted to know why you had to take my Sally from me.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, sir. I loved Miss Sally. She invited me on walks and asked me to be her protector. She let me run on all fours the way God made me. She didn’t look at me like I were a freak. She really looked at me. Really talked. She were my friend.”

  Pa Albod smiled as he stared into private memories. “Sally were like that. She’d find a wren with a broken wing and try to nurse it. She always wanted a dog but last one we had chased you creepers around the yard. We had to get rid of him. Sally had a big giving heart.”

  “That’s how I saw her,” Dog said. “I loved her, and I didn’t kill her. You ask the sheriff. I got nothing else to say about it other than I’m sorry she’s gone.”

  “She liked you creepers, too. Anything that’s broken, she loved it.”

  Pa Albod stood and knocked on the door to be let out.

  The deputy appeared. “You sure about it, Reggie?”

  “Yup.”

  The man handed Albod a shotgun.

  “Much obliged, Bobby.”

  “Make it quick in case he comes back,” the deputy said and closed the door again.

  Dog backed from the bars until his rear bumped the sink. The cell was so small. The sink, commode, bunk. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go. He whined at the thought of the shotgun slug punching a hole through his body.

  “I’m dying,” Pa said as he checked the load. “I can feel it. Eating me one bit at a time. I don’t have long on this earth. I’ll be with Sally soon.”

  “Please don’t do this, sir.”

  Albod racked a slug into the firing chamber. “But I’ll have my justice.”

  Dog’s mind blanked out with terror. He howled and scrabbled at the walls. The deputies had clipped his claws and filed them to smooth nubs. They slid off the cinder blocks. Piss shot down his leg.

  He dropped to all fours and lunged over the commode to strike the wall. He bounded to the other side of the cell and back again, an endless circuit that brought neither relief nor escape.

  “Goddamnit, stand still,” Albod said.

  Dog screamed and ran. Nowhere to go but around and around. He’d never see his friends again or feel cotton between his fingers or see the sun or have a dream or drink iced tea or laugh or love or feel or live.

  Screaming now, nonsense gibberish. Begging and crying, wailing, It ain’t fair, I once believed in you. His body throbbing and sore from smashing against the walls. Tiring until he gaped, panting, at Albod. The shotgun blast the last thing he ever heard. The man’s lunatic face the last thing he ever saw.

  Thirty-Five

  Brain limped across the swamp that bordered the big lake north of the Home. He threaded the soft,
mossy islands on which grew hammocks of cypresses. The kids avoided this place. They thought it was creepy. Brain had always felt at home here. For him, it was nature’s laboratory, haunted only by truth.

  The swamp’s environment pressed life in all directions. Water lilies, carnivorous bladderworts, snakes, and snapping turtles. Every living thing found its niche and competed with everything else for resources. Natural design filled these niches, like the white ibis with its long beak ideal for spearing fish. Life and death on equal display. A microcosm mirroring the real world, though in its human construct they slapped rules on it and called it civilization. Their laws and religion appeared to protect the weak, but it was all a lie. As below, so above.

  Bugs landed on Brain’s weeping scabs, feeding on him before flying away with an angry whir. The air thick with mosquitos. Everything fed on everything else, another truth. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Energy transmuted but never destroyed, everything in karmic balance. For every purpose, there was a cost. Teratogenesis had given him a brilliant mind but a fragile body that was highly sensitive to pain.

  Near the moss bed where he stopped, a stand of pitcher plants grew, once used to treat measles. Some of the kids had mistaken it for honeysuckle and got sick from its poisonous nectar. He looked up at the sky, glimpsing blue through the Spanish moss that hung from the swamp’s tangled ceiling. He judged the time by the light. The other kids had returned from the farms. He’d have to head back soon or he’d miss supper. Tonight, he’d mark another day spent in his prison. Tomorrow, the teachers might declare him fit to return to ag science. They’d send him back to Pa Albod, who might this time decide to kill him.

  He’d come all the way out here to cry, a safe place to purge himself of the feelings that still gripped him after his lashing. Nothing happened. The shame and rage had fused to his bones. Otherwise, he’d become hollowed out, an empty vessel waiting to be filled with something new.

  Brain contemplated the rest of his life and felt his mind cross a threshold. The revolution had always been his idea but now, for the first time, it became inevitable and real, also part of him, like wisdom following knowledge.