Then something bumped our dugout and a hand touched my shoulder.
I could have died of fright.
For there was this grip trying to steady my trembling body before a blade swooped my head away.
"Easy, son," a voice said. "Just turn and look at me."
Though I tried to do as it said, I couldn't — that picture would not set me free.
Then I saw another hand reach over me to turn the copy of Real Man's Adventure face down on the stack of magazines below.
"There," my father said, squatting down on bended knees. "Out of sight, out of mind. That picture bothers you?"
"No," I remember saying, now back in the store. I was shaking my head from side to side.
"Well it bothers me,"my father said. "That's what it's meant to do. It's like your comic Tales From the Crypt but a little more realistic. Don't be afraid of fear, son. We all have to conquer it someday — one way or another. Now go on and pick out a comic. Your mother's got supper waiting."
I did what he said.
Then with his arm on my shoulder, the two of us left the store. But I do remember one final look back at that stack of magazines.
On the back cover of Real Man's Adventure. Charles Atlas was flexing his biceps and asking: Would you like to look like me?
The plane went missing that December as my father was flying to Toronto. He had managed to stop his drinking long enough to land a job and was on his way back east for some sort of business upgrading.
For two months I spent every day sitting by the front door waiting for him to return.
It was the second week in February before they found the wreck of the aircraft. It had smashed to pieces on a Rocky Mountain peak. The papers said my father's head was severed in the crash. I cried for several days.
The second head was waiting for me on the first Tuesday in March.
My eyes must have seen it at once but neglected to tell my brain, for I distinctly heard the sound of a snake slither across the drugstore floor. I recall my sweat bursting from every pore as if I were in steaming tropical heat. And I know my mind was shrieking: 'I got to get out of here'.
This head was worse than the others.
For there he was again, my friend, the Great White Hunter in his sweat-stained khaki safari jacket. Only this time he was in the background, standing. Remington ready, in the door of a grass hut. You could see him between the Jivaro's legs which made up the picture's foreground. The cover focused on an Indian's loins from his waist down to his knees. That was all that you could see of him as he walked away from the hunter. Except, of course, for his hands.
His left hand held the machete dripping blood and gore.
His right hand held a leather thong attached to both ends of a needle. This needle was made of slivered bone about ten inches long. It had been rammed through one eardrum of the head until it had passed through the brain and out of the other ear. The head itself took up a good one-third of the page. Trickles of blood ran down from the corner of each eye. The eyes had rolled up in the head, one of them nothing but white road-mapped with red veins. The other revealed just the barest hint of a pupil.
I tried to turn away. But I couldn't. I tried to run. But I couldn't. I tried to shut my own eyes. But I couldn't.
"Please, Father," I whispered. "Turn that picture away." My hope was that he'd stop it like he had that time before.
"What's going on here? You're talking to yourself."
"It's back, Dad. It's back. Make it go away."
A hand fell onto my shoulder, giving it a shake.
"Are you all right, son?" the voice of the druggist asked.
And that was when I knew for sure that no matter how much I needed him my father would never be there again.
I guess I panicked.
For a moment there I looked again at the cover and thought that this time I saw my father's eyes staring out at me from that chopped head strung on a string. His pale gray eyes shone faintly through the flesh of those rolled back whites.
Then I broke away from the druggist and made a dash for the door. With glass shattering and exploding in razor-sharp shards around me, I ran right through the pane set into the metal doorframe.
Outside it was raining. That's usual for this city.
I was more than a block away from the store and still running through the downpour when I realized I was cut. Both my hands were slashed and gouged and smeared with blood. I stopped running abruptly and sat down on the ground beside a puddle rippled with raindrops. For maybe half an hour I sat there thinking about my father trapped inside that hacked-off head, watching the water distort my reflection and wash my blood away.
Four days later I knew something was wrong.
At Vancouver General Hospital a doctor had put forty-seven stitches into my hands. My mother was upset as hell and equally pissed off. Paying for the door had cost her fifty bucks that we could ill afford; my father because of his drinking had let his insurance premiums lapse. But more than that, the thought of her son with his hands paralyzed because of severed nerves and tendons had cost her several nights' sleep. And she had desperately needed that rest. It had only been a few weeks since they had found the wreckage of the plane and I know she was struggling against odds to hold up a strong front for the sake of me and my brother.
I never told her about the head on the front of the magazine. At eight years old I was now the man in this family Men like Charles Atlas weren't afraid of magazine covers.
She was the best type of mother. She didn't pry.
The only punishment I got was that four days after the accident she sent me to the drugstore to buy replacement bandages for my injured hands. Like most mothers she saw me off with words something like this: "I hope this trip reinforces the lesson you should have learned. You know you could have been killed."
I bypassed the drugstore with the piece of plywood set into its door — in fact I never went there again — and walked six blocks down from Victoria Drive till I came to a Rexall Pharmacy. Through its glass door I could see shelves of medicine, Band-Aids, candy, toys, and that the bald-headed druggist was passing a youth a package that seemed to emharrass him. There was a young teenage girl about the same age as the youth waiting expectantly outside the store.
I first knew something was wrong when I couldn't through the door.
It was science fiction come true: I was held off by some sort of force field.
Holding both arms out before me I tried to will my hands to press the metal bar that stretched across the door. But my arms refused to move. It was weird and I felt frightened.
The girl outside noticed I was in difficulty and she came sauntering over, peeking shyly into the store as she did so. "Must hurt, eh?" she said, looking at my bandaged hands and pushing open the door to help me.
"Yeah, it does," I said, and I tried to step forward. But now my foot refused to move. It was as if the sole of my penny-loafer was glued to the concrete. I tried to move a second time, and then the fear really set in.
Something's wrong with me,I thought. I can't get into the store!
Just then the youth rushed out through the door, pushing me aside. "I got'em," he said excitedly. "An' these ones are lubricated."
"Jeez, Tim," the girl said, her face becoming bright pink, "you hit that little kid."
"Oh, yeah. Sorry, kid." He gave me a disdainful look. Then noticing my hands he said: "You need some help?"
"Would you buy me some bandages?" I asked. "While I wait out here?"