And what is emerging
What makes even the suddenly-appearing doctor stand back and cover his eyes in disgust and horror
is this
thing
No other word for it — thing
a crocodile head on the body of a small hunch-backed human child with fingers that are long slashing razors
slashing Sandra Dee’s face into bloody shreds
severing Bobby Darin’s neck from his shoulders
& then leaping for the doctor
knife-fingers ripping the man’s blue blue eyes from their sockets
the doctor screaming
and covering his eyes again
blood streaming from beneath his fingers
And then running, running
sirens just behind him & shouts just behind him & gunfire just behind him
& into a deep woods now
lost & wandering in circles and circles and circles
& a storm all crashing thunder and silver lightning that burns when its silver touches
& he knows who he is now
& he is both the 1963 boy watching the movie
& also the sad hideous terrible thing that is lost in the dark woods
“Hey, man, knock it off.”
The coon upstairs.
That’s how he thinks of him.
Guy in the upper bunk.
Says he’s white.
But everybody knows better.
Except the warden, who always puts him in with the white guys.
And he has to endure the coon for another six weeks or so until the new section is put on the prison.
“You hear me?” the coon says.
“Yeah.”
“That musta been some nightmare,” the coon says.
“Yeah.”
“Woke me up,” the coon says.
Politeness now calls for him to say Sorry. But not in prison where politeness is considered an effeminate sign of weakness.
“Screw yourself. You don’t have nightmares?”
“Not like yours.” the coon says.
“Just go back to sleep.”
“Just go screw yourself.”
It is at times like these that the claustrophobia comes. There is no place for privacy. You eat/sleep/piss/shit/shower/exercise/work/read/pick your nose/scratch your balls with people watching you. Twenty-four hours a day. Three hundred sixty-five days a year. Watching you. There are even cons in this place who like watching gang rapes. Somebody is always always watching somebody. True, in some respects, it is a jungle but unlike a real jungle it offers no trees no ravines no caves for privacy. None.
It is also at moments like these when he understands the suicides. There was a guy in cellblock D, for instance, who beat his head against the wall until he killed himself. There was a guy in the infirmary who got his hands on some rodent poison and killed himself. There was even the guy who was so desperate to get it over with that he went down to the garage one day, poured gasoline on himself and set himself afire, like those Buddhist monks back during the Vietnam War.
“Next time you tell me to go screw myself, man,” the coon says, “you’re gonna be sorry you said it.”
“Yeah?” he says. “Go screw yourself.”
But the coon is a coward and everybody knows it.
The coon eventually goes back to sleep. He eventually goes back to his nightmare.
Back to the movie theater again. And back to the beast on screen who is really — himself.
Razor talons click as he searches for new victims.
10
“ ’lo.”
“Chief Avery, please.”
“This is she.”
“I just wanted to tell you that you’ve won a free Mike’s pizza.”
“This could only be the mysterious Mr. Hokanson.”
“I believe we were talking about pizza. Don’t change the subject.”
“How do I get this pizza?”
“You give your address to our delivery man, and after he’s run a few other errands, he’ll bring it over to your place. Maybe an hour and a half.”
“And the delivery man is—”
“A guy I know named Hokanson.”
“Why not? I have a gun and plenty of ammunition and a whole drawerful of arrest warrants. I guess I can take care of myself.”
“All I need is the address.”
Which she gave me.
Jane Avery’s apartment house sat in a little grove of cedars on the edge of a narrow creek that ran silver in the moonlight. No lights were on. No car was parked out front, Maybe she’d gotten tired of waiting.
It was a night of crickets and barn owls and a quarter moon, a night of lonely distant dogs and far roaring trains and creek water tumbling across rocks just right for frogs to sit on. No doubt about it, I liked the country life.
I left my car running and walked up to the apartment house. I knocked on the screen door. Then I watched something white flutter to the concrete block steps. This was my night for notes.
Jim,
There’s been an emergency. I’m at the old Brindle farm. Guess we’ll have to try again. Sorry, but this is very serious stuff.
I stuffed the note in my pocket, got in my car and drove back to my motel. Maybe I’d just have myself a good night’s sleep and start this investigation all over again tomorrow.
I kept checking my rearview for any sign of Nora and Vic. None.
After parking my car, I decided to treat myself to a 7-Up and a Hershey bar (with almonds, of course) so I went to the motel office and got some change.
“Big night,” the elderly clerk said as he fanned four quarters out on the counter.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. One person killed, another one bad wounded out to the old Brindle place.”
Jane hadn’t been exaggerating. Serious stuff indeed.
“Fred over to the DX?”
“Yeah?” I said, pretending I knew just who Fred was.
“Just was out there. Said they sure ruined a nice new Caddy. Blood all over the interior. Said that’s not the kind of stuff that washes off, either.”
A few moments ago I’d been checking my rearview for any sign of Nora and Vic. Maybe they wouldn’t ever be following me again.
“Can you tell me how to get to the Brindle place?”
“Sure. If you want. But Fred said it’s pretty damned grisly.”
There must have been thirty cars parked lining both sides of the winding gravel road that ran past the Brindle farm, which was basically an aged and deserted farmhouse with the windows boarded up, and a faded barn that some local kids had spray-painted dirty words all over. Down close to a creek was another barn that, while smaller, was also a lot fancier, with a gabled roof and a cross-gabled cupola. The sprawling land to the east looked as if it hadn’t been seeded in some time. Overhead, a state police chopper hovered, its search lights crisscrossing the rolling countryside.