The Twelve-Fingered Boy

by John Hornor Jacobs

  Marvin Robinson brings up the Taser, and I look at him. And remembering how it felt, I send out the part of me that is me but not me. I send out the detachable part of Shreveport Justice Cannon, the part that isn’t locked incarcerado, the part that can fly, that can lift itself out of the meatsuit like I was dancing the Ghost Dance. That part, I send out.

  A lot is going on inside Marvin Robinson’s head. But one thing is clear: he’s pretty excited at the prospect of tasing me.

  It’s a weird little dance my soul does then. I’m in Marvin Robinson’s head when he pulls the Taser trigger— That rotten kid, he deserves it!—but I’m also back incarcerado in my own body. My perception of time thickens like molasses. The Taser darts lance slowly through the air. I move like a fly caught in syrup as the blue electric sparks cross the yellow line. Marvin Robinson didn’t really want me to stay behind the line. The darts are slowing, slowing, slowing as they near, and I can’t move fast enough out to get of the way.

  The darts bite into my chest, and suddenly the whole world goes bright white. For a horrible instant of jittering and contortion, my skeleton becomes neon and flickers on and off at some frequency beyond the physical body’s understanding other than AAAIIIEEEE. And then … I squirm. I squirm like that good old tadpole in a child’s hand. But it’s more than my body squirming—it’s me, all of me that matters. And I slip out and race back up the Taser line, up the fuse, through and past the dart, through the Taser, and into Marvin. And I kick his ass out.

  The bastard. I’m in charge now.

  The me/not me equilibrium stabilizes. MeMarvin yanks the Taser wire and darts out of the MeIncarcerado body.

  Time is running out.

  MeIncarcerado walks forward and kicks MeMarvin square in the nuts.

  I feel it on both ends, the kick and the pain. It hurts like someone has jabbed a burning pike deep into MeMarvin’s guts, and I don’t like that. That part of my awareness skitters and cringes away from the blow, out and away from Marvin. Discorporeal. Then I blink and I’m just me again, and Marvin the guard kneels before me.

  I kick him in the face. Something goes crunchy there. He probably won’t look much like Barney Fife anymore.

  He doesn’t get up.

  I take his keys. I take his Taser. I take his wallet.

  In the end, everything he has, I’ve taken it from him.

  If I’m as evil as Quincrux and the witch, then so be it. The difference between them and me is that I don’t have a choice.

  There’s not much time.

  I run back to Jack. He’s looking at me, wide-eyed and surprised. It doesn’t take a mind reader to know he’s picked up on my little trick.

  I jerk him up off the floor, and we run out the front doors of Casimir Pulaski Juvenile Detention Center and into the parking lot. I’m pushing the beeper button on Marvin’s keychain like a madman and waiting to hear the chirp of the car alarm system. It’s hard to hear over the whine of the sirens coming from inside Casimir. But finally it comes.

  Beep.

  The doors are unlocked now. Jack’s not crying anymore as I push him into the car and slide behind the wheel.

  We’re free.

  TWELVE

  On the inside, nothing ever changes. So everything outside appears strange and new now.

  I drive through the trailer park, just to make sure it isn’t swarming with police. It looks different. The trailers look shabbier, more run-down. They’re dented and desperate, perched on the edge of town by the big piney woods.

  We sit in the car on a gravel access road behind a cheap cinder-block strip mall. We’re a few miles down from the trailer park. We’ll hoof it from here.

  Jack rummages through the car and finds a gym bag with shorts, sweatpants, and a couple T-shirts. It all smells like dog balls and mildew.

  We change in the car. There’s just enough clothing to keep us safe from indecency charges if they retake us.

  Having seen the inside of Marvin’s sadistic noggin, I halfway expected Jack to find a gun while searching the car. Part of me really hoped he would. If I’m to be a fugitive, then I’d like to be an armed fugitive at least. But I still have the Taser and its holster. The holster sports a couple of blocky cartridges. I might be able to figure out how to reload the thing.

  We’re parked in a brake of hardwoods, still within earshot of the interstate. The constant hiss of cars is comforting and threatening all at once. The road is freedom, but the road will bring the law, too. Damn, I’m starting to sound like a country song.

  We wait for dark.

  “What was your secret weapon?” Jack asks. He’s sitting in the passenger seat, looking out the front windshield at the cottonwoods shedding their fluff like snow. His feet are on the dash, and if I squint it looks like he’s in a fetal position. But at least he’s come out of his daze. I can tell he’s pretty torn up about hurting them. Killing them, maybe.

  We’re born into pain, and we leave in pain, and we cause it along the way too, it seems. It’s a damned hard lesson.

  And how do I feel about it? I’m just as guilty, I guess. But Quincrux and the witch had it coming to them, the rapists.

  Norman was a sweetheart. God, I hope he’s okay.

  I look at Jack. Really look at him. He repeats his question. “Come on. What was your secret weapon?”

  “Trash bags.”

  He laughs. “You gotta tell me how.”

  “You know. Road crews of convicts. We bust out, run for it. The minute we’re safe, we start picking up trash. Nobody would question us then, even with the orange jumpers. We’d just be another detail cleaning up the city’s mess.”

  Jack smiles. “Not bad. It wouldn’t have worked. But not bad.” He pauses and then says, “Do you remember when they took us over?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You remember what they were talking about? How Quincrux couldn’t get … get inside me? Cause he’d been weakened.”

  “Yeah. And he said the witch was there because of her talent with ‘supernumeraries.’”

  “But he warned her not to go somewhere. ‘The incident in Maryland.’ He said he was recovering. It’s something to think about.”

  “What? You mean go there?”

  “We go there, they wouldn’t follow.”

  “But whatever happened to them could happen to us.” It’s weird being the voice of reason. Normally I rely on other people to talk me out of stuff. “Quincrux and the witch are…”

  I pause on that particular be verb. It could be “was,” depending on how bad the witch’s neck was twisted. But I won’t shed a single damned tear over her sorry demise. If that makes me evil, so be it.

  I keep going. “They’re adults and more powerful than—”

  “Us?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t lie to me, Shreve. I just want to know.” Jack holds up his hand and shows it to me. Making a point, he is. I remember a similar conversation, not a week ago, but with me asking the questions.

  I put up my hand, near his. There’s eleven fingers, right there.

  “You mean, how did I take out the guard?”

  “Yeah. That. You did the same trick Quincrux and the witch did.”

  I think for a bit. I can’t come up with an answer for him.

  “I don’t know, Jack. Maybe something transferred into me when Quincrux…” I don’t know any other way to say it, and it hurts to admit it, even to Jack. “When he raped me. I think part of him, his residue or something, was left behind.”

  Jack leans back in the seat. It’s a shabby little car. The seats are fabric that’s gone nappy, and the whole inside has the scent of a washed ashtray. I doubt the great state of Arkansas pays Marvin too well.

  “So, you can do what they do?”

  “I don’t know.” This kid is getting me worried, acting like this is a problem. And I don’t even know what this is. “No. I don’t know. It just happened. I though
t, ‘If they can do it, why can’t I?’”

  Jack bows his head. His face darkens, looking grim.

  Finally, he looks up and stares at me with hard, gray eyes.

  “Good. This is good.” The way he says it doesn’t sound like it’s good. Jack shifts in his seat and looks back toward the falling cottonwood dander. “I need you to promise me something.”

  I don’t like making promises, honestly. I never have. I never will. But this is Jack.

  “I … I can try, man. What is it?”

  “It’s simple. Promise me you’ll never do to someone else what Quincrux and Ilsa did to us.”

  It’s my turn to bow my head now. I put my hand on the door handle.

  “No.” I tense, alert for any sign of Jack going explodey. “No, I can’t. I can’t tell you I’ll never do it. If I have to protect us, I will. If I have to do it to stop them, I’ll do it. All I can promise is that I’ll try to never do it to someone who doesn’t deserve it,”

  Jack looks at me—that long, faraway gaze seeing other places, other people—and for a moment I think he’s going to start his magic shoving match. But then he shakes away his thoughts and nods once in acknowledgment.

  I blow air. I didn’t realize I was quite so tense. I pull out the Taser and holster and try to remove the cartridge from the barrel. My chest burns and aches where the needles pierced my skin and delivered the charge. But the Taser has a good feel in my hand.

  After a few moments of fiddling with the thing, I pop off the cartridge, shift it to my other hand, and pull another cartridge from the holster. The cartridges hold the needles and wires that zapped the pee-waddly-doo out of me. Nice heft. There’s one more left in the holster. On back of the Taser, a glowing blue battery charge icon reads half-full. I don’t know whether that means I have one shot left or means Marvin tased unruly wards before me, draining the charge.

  It’s heavier than I thought a Taser would be. But it is comforting.

  We wait for dark.

  We trudge away from Little Rock, from the glowing indigent spillage of strip-malls and convenience stores into the green. We hike through the piney woods with the moon rising, pale but bright, illuminating the mat of pine needles. There’s a trail that loops through an old hobo camp that in the summer becomes a small tent city. Now, with fall coming on, it’s bare. Trash flutters in the wind, and a charcoal pit remains, naked and angry, like God extinguished his Kool amid the evergreens and hardwoods.

  “We used to play all through these woods. They stretch about six or seven miles until you hit the railyard. There’s a little pond over that way.” I point off into the trees. “We’ve got lots of forts scattered about.”

  “Forts?”

  “Eh. Really just holes with brush and plywood scraps. For Kick the Can and Army. Capture the Flag.”

  The look Jack gives me makes me stop. He’s never heard of these games.

  “You mean you’ve never played Capture the Flag?”

  “No … I…” He gets this panicked look, like if he answers the question wrong something terrible will happen. This kid isn’t like any kid I’ve ever met. He’s never had a day of fun in his life.

  I’ve got to change that. For his sake. For my sake. Believe it or not, I’ve had fun growing up, even with the Moms as she is. Me and Vig and Coco and even some of the Garcia boys from down the way … we’ve had good times here in these woods.

  “Hey, it’s cool. We’ll play it someday. Soon. You’ll love it.”

  Jack’s smile looks more like a grimace.

  “What’s gonna happen when we get to your house?” he asks.

  “I’m gonna grab my stash—I’ve got a little money— and get us some clothes. Some real clothes. Food. I’ve got to find out how Vig’s doing…”

  Jack nods, leaving me to my thoughts.

  Vig’s gonna be a problem. Jack and I can’t stay with Moms. Maybe long enough for a shower, packing the bags, digging up my stash. But after that we’ve got to roll. There’s no safety here.

  We come through the piney woods and into the gully that separates the trailer park from the trees. A single bright halogen bulb is mounted on a pole in the middle of a handful of building blocks. The trailers look crumpled and beaten in its white light. I can hear the sounds of dinner being cleared away, the slamming of screen doors through paper-thin walls. Radios and televisions blare into the autumn night.

  Coco’s trailer is lit up like a carnival, Halloween decorations glowing in every window. Her room light is on. I was supposed to write her. I meant to write. But it was all so hard. And what was I going to say? Hey, girl, you know how your dad didn’t like me? Well he’s gonna love me now!

  We creep up the gully embankment, up onto the shabby, eroding plateau that holds the Holly Pines Trailer Park.

  “Gotta wait here for a bit. There are folks about. It takes a while for the park to settle down.”

  Looks like Billy Cather’s got himself a new truck, the bastard. I must have totaled the old one. That makes me happy. He did keep a gun in his cab, I remember. Something to think about.

  “That trailer there.” I point. “He shot me. Right here, through the arm.”

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Whatdya mean, ‘What did I do?’” I put on my best expression of innocence. “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Right. You don’t get shot for doing nothing.”

  “I stole his truck.”

  Jack laughs. It’s a silent laugh, with his head down and his mouth open, like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard in his life—so funny he can’t even make a sound. I believe the little bastard is laughing at me.

  “Hey. It wasn’t that funny.”

  When Jack’s done laughing, tears are streaming away from the corners of his eyes.

  “Hey, man.” I guess I’m a little hurt he finds my pain so damn funny. “Uncool.”

  “Why? Why would you do something like that?”

  What can I say? The longer Jack is with me, the clearer it will become to him that I’m an idiot.

  “Went stir-crazy and tried to bolt.”

  “Stir-crazy?”

  “Man, you think Casimir is the only prison?”

  “No.” He shifts, uncomfortable on the clay and slate embankment. “I guess not.”

  Sighing, I say, “I wish I hadn’t. I’ve done a lot of stupid things but—”

  “You think Quincrux will come here?”

  That’s a change of gears.

  “Definitely.”

  Jack does something I’ve never heard him do before. He curses. “Then I can’t be seen here.”

  “Why not?”

  “As far we know, the only person they want is me. They don’t know anything about your…” He stops, not knowing what to call it. “Power.”

  “Yet. Quincrux will pull it from Marvin if he interviews him.”

  “Oh.”

  “And don’t forget the witch. She’s put me on her grocery list.”

  We’re silent for a while, and then I say, “There’s nothing for it except to get in and get out as fast as possible.”

  “Let’s do it, then. You think it’s late enough?”

  The sky’s fully dark, and the stars shine hard and brilliant above. There’s still some movement and noise in the park, but that might be better.

  “Yeah. Here we go.”

  I leave the Taser on the ground, marking its position. No need to have an armed homecoming.

  We scramble up the rest of the embankment and across the alley behind the row of trailers. It’s just a gravel path where most families keep their trashcans and assorted junk: used toys, broken bicycles, moldering plywood, broken TV sets, collapsed lawn chairs, rakes and shovels, portable deer blinds, tires. There’s a reason why folks call us trailer trash.

  Up and across the alley we run. Moms’s trailer is right here. The tin awning is slumping to the right of the door now, but other than that,
the trailer looks the way it was six months ago when I ended up upside-down, bleeding out in Billy Cather’s truck.

  Moms’s Delta 88 is parked behind us. Busted headlight and crumpled fender. That’s new.

  I reach for the doorknob, then stop. What’s going to happen here? I can feel a hard ball of tension in my gut. My hand shakes, and Jack notices it.

  Moms has two speeds: raging bitch and oblivious drunk. Which one will we get?

  I’m just about to turn around and run back to the woods—this can wait till later—when Jack puts his hand on my arm and squeezes. It’s just a little thing, but it helps.

  I turn the handle, push open the door, and step inside.

  “Moms! I’m home!”

  She’s standing in the kitchenette, holding a big knife, her eyes wide.

  “Shree. Holy Christ. You nearly scared me to death.” She stops, tosses the knife on the linoleum counter, and cocks her head at Jack. “With company, looks like.”

  The house stinks of smoke. Overfull ashtrays and fast-food wrappers are everywhere. Judging by the number of cans lying around, one of Moms’s friends is partial to Milwaukee’s Best Light.

  She’s dressed in a waitress outfit, blue with white edges and a nametag that reads Margaret. She must have wheedled her way back in at the Waffle House since the last time she was fired. At least she’s not tricking. Her face is drawn, and her blue eyes are rheumy and glazed. When I was a kid she’d pull out old high school yearbooks and show us pictures of herself and Dad, holding hands, in funny outfits and bad haircuts. She looked beautiful in those pictures. Now her drunk’s belly and her spider arms give her a gnomish look. She’s wrinkled and ugly and a ghost of that person in the yearbooks. That person is gone, like water boiling away in a pan and just leaving the crusty hard minerals baked into the sides.

  “I see you’ve done some decorating, Moms.”

  “What happened to your face?”

  “Had a little accident on the way home.”

  No answer. She opens a cabinet and pulls out a full bottle of Heavenly Hill vodka. She cracks the seal. It takes her a second to find a semi-clean cup in the pile of dishes rising from the sink.