When Alexander Blaney approached the staggering figure by the pond he stopped in the shadows. He saw that it was a drunken man and he heard the voices off by the trees and saw a blue panel truck parked between the drunken man on the grass and the others. He knew it was the group of policemen again and he debated about whether to try to help the drunken one or to mind his own business. For all he knew the drunken policeman might be the one called Roscoe who raged about fags and might kneedrop him, whatever that meant.
Then Sam Niles, who did not see Alexander Blaney managed to get to his feet and swayed toward the subdued choir practice. But he made it only as far as the panel truck where he found the doors open and saw a pair of feet and a body on the floor.
“That you, Harold?” mumbled Sam as he leaned into the foul and shadowy truck and tugged on the sleeve of the snoring figure.
“That you, Dean?” asked Sam Niles who crawled into the truck and collapsed on the floor next to Spencer Van Moot.
“That you, Padre?” he asked, and tried to help the sleeping figure up to the bench in the truck but got dizzy and sat down on the opposite bench. Then Sam Niles became nauseated and violently light-headed and he had to lie down on the bench while the earth spun madly. Within seconds he was dozing.
Alexander Blaney watched all this and saw that the policeman was safely inside the blue truck and he sat down on the grass closer to the choir practice than he had ever been before and listened to the voices which were not loud and funny tonight. But quiet and bitter.
Then Alexander backed into the shadow of the trees when he saw a uniformed policeman and another man walking toward the truck.
“Hey, look at this, Padre,” Roscoe Rules said when he got to the back of the wagon.
“Sam!” said Father Willie.
“Spencer’s got another drunk for company. Fuckin scrote, probably been smoking pot and passed out. Just like that dope-head friend of his, Baxter Slate.”
“Baxter’s dead,” Father Willie reminded, thinking Roscoe didn’t look sober enough to drive.
“I liked him as much as the next guy,” Roscoe said. “I just didn’t like his pervert ways.”
“What’ll we do about Sam?”
“Take him with Spencer, I guess,” said Roscoe.
“So somebody’s gonna have to drive two cars to the station.”
“Let’s get it over with before we have the whole fucking bunch back here,” Roscoe Rules said, pushing Spencer’s feet inside and slamming the door to the wagon.
After the wagon was closed Roscoe urinated on the grass and Alexander Blaney heard him laughing as he rejoined the dying choir practice.
Then when they were out of sight Alexander Blaney heard a muffled scream from inside the wagon.
It was less the clanging wagon door and the snapping of the lock than it was the feel of the body on the floor beside him, but Sam Niles’ eyes popped open. It was black. There was no light. He didn’t know where he was. For a brief instant he didn’t know who he was. Then he felt the body. He leaped to his feet in the darkness and slammed his head against the metal roof. He screamed and turned to his right, smashing his glasses on the wall of the wagon. He clawed at those unyielding walls.
He walked on the body and his alcohol weakened legs slipped and his ankle turned and he fell on the body. He screamed again.
“Harold! Harold!” Sam screamed. And he smelled fish sauce and garlic and pressed his face to the slimy wall and awaited the molten horror from the flame thrower.
Then he wept and screamed, “Harold! Harold!” But instead of saying, “Now now now Hush now, I’m with you. You’re not alone,” the body said nothing. Because it was dead. It was Baxter Slate!
While Roscoe was laughingly reporting to Spermwhale Whalen that he found Sam Niles asleep in the wagon, Sam Niles was pleading, “Baxter! Baxter! Baxter!”
But the body beside him did not answer. Not in a human tongue. It only said, “Mmmmmmmmmm. Uuuuuuuuhh.”
The top of Baxter’s head was gone and crackled under Sam Niles shoes as he backed against the doors of the wagon, his head bent from the low roof, his face bleeding from the broken glasses. He screamed. He couldn’t breathe. He was hyperventilating.
But the only one who could hear those dreadful cries was a boy named Alexander Blaney who summoned enough courage and came out of the shadows and hurried to the back of the truck to open the doors for the screaming policeman.
Back at the blankets Harold Bloomguard said, “You what!”
“We left him in the back of the wagon,” said Roscoe.
“Did you close the doors?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Sam doesn’t like to be closed in. I better go have a look!”
But before he could get there Alexander Blaney was standing at the back door of the wagon trying to get the rusty bolt slid to the right as Sam Niles was hiding his bloody face in his hands, screaming like a woman, trying hopelessly to escape the body that was Baxter Slate. And the Moaning Man. Trying to breathe.
Then Sam reached for the M-14 which wasn’t there. He instinctively went for his waistband for his off-duty Smith amp; Wesson.38 caliber two-inch revolver which was there. The thundering explosions commenced just as the right door flew open. The first two fireballs missed Alexander Blaney by a foot. The third splattered into his throat, throwing out a pocket of blood. The fourth and fifth would have hit him except that he dropped and lay on the grass grabbing his throat, gasping for the oxygen that was always there for Sam. Spencer Van Mott scrambled through the door, covering his ears and screaming louder than Sam Niles.
Then Sam found himself being pulled from the wagon by Harold Bloomguard who sat him on the ground holding him in his arms. Roscoe Rules stood over the convulsive body of Alexander Blaney saying, “It’s a park fairy! He shot a park fairy!”
Then Roscoe was on his ass so fast it didn’t even surprise him anymore. Spermwhale Whalen, who had hurled him aside, was on the ground reaching inside Alexander Blaney’s mouth, pulling the swallowed tongue free.
Then Spermwhale was sitting on the grass holding the boy like a baby, blowing his hot lusty lion’s breath into the lad’s mouth, pausing every so often to hammer on the thin chest and say “Come on, boy! Come on, son! Breathe!”
Alexander Blaney had given up very easily. When death offered, the lonely boy accepted, and his life leaked away Still Spermwhale stubbornly tried to force his brawny vigorous life into Alexander. Most of it bellowed into the chest of the boy some foamed out the hole in his throat.
It was a full five minutes before Spermwhale Whalen looked up, his face and arms and hands smeared with blood, his balding head wet and shining, his white eyes glimmering in the moonlight. Had that indolent moon appeared when Sam Niles was clawing at the blackness, it might have shined in the window of the truck and reassured the drunk and panic stricken choirboy bringing him to his senses.
As Spermwhale got to his feet, leaving the sprawling body, several choirboys started walking in circles babbling incoherently. A dozen plans were made while Spermwhale Whalen wiped the blood of Alexander Blaney shining black in the moonlight, from his own face and hands.
But finally it was a strange and stern and determined Harold Bloomguard standing next to Sam Niles whose face was bleeding and lowered. Sam shivered and smoked silently and was content to let others think and do for him.
“I’m taking Sam to Wilshire dicks,” Harold said evenly. “I’m telling them that we bought some booze and were on our way to my pad to have a few drinks when we decided to stop in the park and have a beer. While we were here we both got a little drunk. Sam dropped his gun. When he picked it up he fell on his face and broke his glasses.”
“I’ll sweep the broken glass outta the truck!” Roscoe jabbered frantically “in case they…”
“Shut up!” Spermwhale said. “Go on, Harold.”