The moon went behind a cloud again and it got darker.
I wanted to shoot the boy but would not part with those last bullets; nor could I make myself run onto the trail to help Lester.
“Let go, Lester!” Charley yelled.
“Lester, get back here!” shouted the doctor.
That was when the boy in the red dress dropped the old man’s legs and walked up to Lester, who stood stupefied, holding his father’s arms. He didn’t even move his head away when it reached up like a magician about to do a trick, and grabbed Lester’s ear. The boy yanked Lester’s ear off.
Lester yelled and dropped his father.
Both brothers yelling now.
The boy tucked the ear in his mouth like a piece of candy. I sighted down the barrel now, arguing with myself about whether to shoot the boy; that was when Buster grabbed Charley’s axe from his belt and ran at it.
It didn’t even duck.
Buster swung hard and hit true.
He buried the axe in the boy’s head as if in a soft tree stump; I knew the sound it was making even though I couldn’t hear it, knew that Buster was feeling that sound in the bones of his arm. He let the handle go. The boy staggered backwards until he hit a tree, then slid to the ground as his legs buckled under him. Every man stood still, holding his breath.
A gout of blood poured down the boy’s head.
Then stopped.
The axe fell out of the boy’s head and onto the trail. And then the wound was gone. The men who were close enough to see it gasped. The boy wiped the blood out of his eyes with the hem of his dress and stood up, picking up the axe.
Buster backed up a step. I walked onto the trail and stood next to Buster, my gun pointed at the boy. Not ten yards away. Despite my shaking hands, I was sure I would hit him.
The boy dropped the axe.
Grinned his sharp-toothed grin.
Then started to shake.
The doctor might have thought it was a seizure from the head wound, but that had not just been a wound any more than this was just a seizure.
Buster and I backed away.
The boy changed.
Quickly, tearing the red dress.
The moon came back, shone on its dust-colored fur.
It stepped out of what was left of the dress.
I remember smelling urine and thinking Buster’s bladder had loosed. Turned out it was mine.
I sensed Buster turn and run beside me, so I turned and ran also, still holding the pistol with two shots left in it.
I believe all of us ran.
All except the doctor, with Saul’s head in his lap.
I never saw them again.
Or Lester.
BUSTER AND I ran together until we could not run. Twice I hit trees, once so hard I almost lost consciousness. When we could no longer run we trotted, and then we walked. Buster wore the expression of a tragedy mask and, at times, made a sound between panting and sobbing. I put my arm around the big man’s shoulders but Buster didn’t seem to care; just clutched his hands under his chin like a child saying grace and made that sound.
I don’t know how long that went on. I know we were making for the river, and I have no idea if we were heading in the right direction. I was sure we wouldn’t get there. I was right.
When strong hands took my arm and spun me, I didn’t resist. I had no fight left. “This one?” said a small-eyed Negro with an unevenly trimmed woolly head. A white man said, “Yeah. This’n shot me. With this.” He had already plucked my pistol out of its holster. He had permanently matted long hair and a huge mustache. They were both naked, as was a white woman with a curly brown mane, who moved past us and made for Buster. Thankfully I didn’t see any more. The men hoisted me on their shoulders like a rolled-up rug and started running with me.
Behind me I could hear Buster screaming hoarsely, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”
Not about the men running with me; about whatever the woman was doing to him.
I knew I was going to die.
And something odd happened; I relaxed.
And it all got funny.
The white one, the one with the cowboy mustache, was running in front with my legs, limping, favoring his right side. I remembered now shooting one of the monsters in the haunch the night my wife was bitten. The right haunch. I started laughing.
Then I realized that I recognized his mustache.
He was one of the hobos who came through town looking for work. I sat next to him while he ate ice cream at Harvey’s on that hot summer day. The colored with the bad haircut had been with him. It was also possible that Curly Woman was the pipe-smoking “Polish” woman. Jesus, they had our number. They hadn’t been angels looking for honest men; they had been devils making maps.
I laughed harder.
The colored with the bad haircut, who was holding my upper body, laughed, too, and said, “Sound like young marse got a joke to say.”
I thought about Dora, alone in the house, and I stopped laughing. I clawed and tried to dig my fingers into the black man’s eyes. He didn’t yell, just made a sound like ack, twisted out of it and dropped me. Because the other one had my feet, my head hit the ground. Now my feet were dropped. I opened my eyes just in time to see the black one straddle my chest fluidly and sit down on me like an anchor. I remember the moonlight on his blousy but threadbare shirt, how old and dirty it was, and his stink. It was the not-unpleasant smell of a Negro’s skin and hair corrupted with something feral and something coppery like old blood. I had smelled it while he ran with me, but now it washed down over me.
“You need a bath,” I said.
He blinked his small eyes in surprise.
“Lawd, you got a mouth on you,” he said admiringly, then hit me with incredibly hard open hands until I blacked out.
I think it was twice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I WOKE UP in a cage, naked, outside.
It was morning. It was cold. My head hurt like it was sitting in a socket of cold, broken glass. A curious chicken just outside the iron bars cocked its head so it could see me with its preferred eye.
“Good morning,” I said to it.
I sat up, noticing first how white my legs looked and then that they had rust stains from the bottom of the cage. I had a very civilized and unnecessary urge to cover my private parts, but there was not so much as a handkerchief in the frigid cage. There was not enough room to stand, or to fully extend my legs.
I looked at the chicken again.
“Would you please tell management that I would like to be moved to a better room?”
It walked off disinterestedly.
“I’ll have your job,” I said.
I knew where I was, though I scarcely believed it.
I knew where I had to be.
Despite the murderous pain in my head, I looked around and took stock of my situation. A grey, ancient smokehouse sagged just to my left. Near it stood a sort of round wooden disk. The fact that everything was blurry informed me that my glasses were gone.
To my right, a low stone wall defined the limit of what appeared to be an overgrown garden. Past that were rows of dilapidated shacks, swarmed over by kudzu and impaled by young trees.
This was all somehow familiar to me.
When I turned around and looked behind me, I knew why.
I saw it.
La Boudeuse.
The plantation of Lucien Savoyard, my great-grandfather.
Of course.
I turned around and looked at that wooden disk again, noticing this time the leather straps and buckles. Yes. This was the wheel on which Savoyard’s slaves had been flogged and tortured and spun until they were witless. I noticed that it was not overgrown.