By Bizarre Hands (11 page)

Just a thought. Don't get mad.

The other thing you mention is the Platter of Turin. And I admit to you that it is indeed mysterious and fascinating. But I've never seen nor read anything that convinces me that whatever is making itself manifest on the platter—and I also admit it does look like a head with a bleeding stump—is in fact, the likeness of John the Baptist. And even if it is his likeness, and somehow the trauma of his death caused it to be forever captured in the platter, that still does not mean he is the Messiah.

Consider the statue of Custer at the site of the Battle of The Little Big Horn. Many have reported (and I believe it has been filmed) that it bleeds from the nose, ears and mouth from time to time. To some, this was interpreted to mean that Custer was a Saint and that the statue could cure illnesses. I know from our letters in the past that you hardly believe Custer a Saint, quite the contrary.

What I'm saying is this: there are many mysteries in the world, Hawk, and there are many interpretations. You need only choose a mystery and an interpretation to suit you.

Well,
got to cut this short. Got to get dressed. There's a meeting tonight. They're having another public execution, and it's about time. Bunch of niggers are going to be crucified along Caddo Street and I don't want to miss that. Those stupid black bastards thinking they're good as us makes me ill. I've had my hood and robes starched special for the occasion, and I'm actually getting to light one of the pitch-covered niggers placed at the end to provide light. I also get to lead the local Scout troops in a song. I'm excited.

Oh, almost forgot. If you haven't read about it, we finally got that trouble maker Martin Luther King, and he's the main feature tonight. I know from your letters that you have a sort of begrudging respect for him, and I must admit his guerilla activities conducted with only twenty-two men throughout the South have been brilliant for his kind. But after tonight he'll plague the South no more.

As I said, wish you could be here, but I know you've got a big pow-wow going up there and I wish I could see it. Like to see your tribe strip the skin off those White Eyes slow and easy. They're worse than our niggers, and I'm only glad the last of them (far as we know) have been eliminated down here.

Another thing just hit me about this Baptist business, and I'll go ahead and get it off my chest. Here we are getting rid of the whites and the niggers, and you and some others have adopted their silly religion. I admit that our own is pretty damned dumb (Great Heap Big Spirit, Ugh), but doesn't that kind of thing, accepting their religion, give the lowlifes a sort of existence through us? Think about it.

Guess while I'm badmouthing them, might as well admit I'm against the trend to drop all of their ways, as some of the traditional methods just don't translate as well. This two moons and two suns bit is ridiculous. With automobiles that method is no longer correct. What used to be a two day trip is now only a matter of hours. And this switch over from their language to ours, the use of Cherokee writing for all tribes, is going to be a pain. I mean we'll all be speaking our tribal languages, translating the writing to
Cherokee,
and when we all get together how are we going to converse? Which language will we pick? Cherokee for writing, because of their good alphabet makes sense, but which will be the superior tribal language, and how's it going to go down with folks when one is chosen over all the others?

Oh to hell with it. This old gal is going to have to get to stepping or she isn't going to have time to get dressed and moving.

Best to you,

Running Fox

B
OYS
W
ILL
B
E
B
OYS

For Karen Lansdale

1

Not so long ago, about a year back, a very rotten kid named Clyde Edson walked the earth. He was street-mean and full of savvy and he knew what he wanted and got it any way he wanted.

He lived in a big, evil house on a dying, grey street in Galveston, Texas, and he collected to him, like an old lady who brings in cats half-starved and near-eaten with mange, the human refuse and the young discards of a sick society.

He molded them. He breathed life into them. He made them feel they belonged. They were his creations, but he did not love them. They were just things to be toyed with until the paint wore thin and the batteries ran down, then out they went.

And this is the way it was until he met Brian Black-wood.

Things got worse after that.

2

—guy had a black leather jacket and dark hair combed back virgin-ass tight, slicked down with enough grease to lube a bone-dry Buick; came down the hall walking slow, head up, ice-blue eyes working like acid on everyone in sight; had the hall nearly to himself, plenty of room for his slow-stroll-swagger. The other high school kids were shouldering the wall, shedding out of his path like frenzied snakes shedding out of their skins.

You
could see this Clyde was bad news. Hung in time. Fifties-looking. Out of step. But who's going to say, "Hey, dude, you look funny?"

Tough, this guy. Hide like the jacket he wore. No books under his arm, nothing at all. Just cool.

Brian was standing at the water fountain first time he saw Clyde, and immediately he was attracted to him. Not in a sexual way. He wasn't funny. But in the manner metal shavings are attracted to a magnet—can't do a thing about it, just got to go to it and cling.

Brian knew who Clyde was, but this was the first time he'd ever been close enough to feel the heat. Before, the guy'd been a tough greaser in a leather jacket who spent most of his time expelled from school. Nothing more.

But now he saw for the first time that the guy had something; something that up close shone like a well-honed razor in the noonday sun.

Cool. He had that.

Class. He had that.

Difference. He had that.

He was a walking power plant.

Name was Clyde. Ol', mean, weird, don't-fuck-with-me Clyde.

"You looking at something?" Clyde growled.

Brian just stood there, one hand resting on the water fountain.

After a while he said innocently: "You."

"That right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Staring at me?"

"I guess."

"I see."

And then Clyde was on Brian, had him by the hair, jerking his head down, driving a knee into his face. Brian went back seeing constellations. Got kicked in the ribs then. Hit in the eye as he leaned forward from that. Clyde was making a regular bop bag out of him.

He hit Clyde back, aimed a nose shot through a swirling haze of colored dots.

And it hurt so good. Like when he made that fat pig
Betty
Sue Flowers fingernail his back until he bled; thrust up her hips until his cock ached and the rotten-fish smell of her filled his brain . . . Only this hurt better. Ten times better.

Clyde wasn't expecting that. This guy was coming back like he liked it.

Clyde dug that.

He kicked Brian in the nuts, grabbed him by the hair and slammed his forehead against the kid's nose. Made him bleed good, but didn't get a good enough lick in to break it.

Brian went down, grabbed Clyde's ankle, bit it.

Clyde yowled, dragged Brian around the hall.

The students watched, fascinated. Some wanted to laugh at what was happening, but none dared.

Clyde used his free foot to kick Brian in the face. That made Brian let go . . . for a moment. He dove at Clyde, slammed the top of his head into Clyde's bread basket, carried him back against the wall crying loudly, "Motherfucker!"

Then the principal came, separated them, screamed at them, and Clyde hit the principal and the principal went down and now Clyde and Brian were both standing up, together,
kicking the goddamned shit out of the goddamned principal in the middle of the goddamned hall.
Side by side they stood. Kicking. One. Two. One. Two. Left leg. Right leg. Feet moving together like the legs of a scurrying centipede . . .

3

They got some heat slapped on them for that; juvenile court action. It was a bad scene.

Brian's mother sat at a long table with his lawyer and whined like a blender on whip.

Good old mom. She was actually good for something. She had told the judge: "He's a good boy, your honor. Never got in any trouble before. Probably wouldn't have gotten into this, but he's got no father at home to be an example . . . , " and so forth.

If
it hadn't been to his advantage, he'd have been disgusted. As it was, he sat in his place with his nice clean suit and tried to look ashamed and a little surprised at what he had done. And in a way he was surprised.

He looked over at Clyde. He hadn't bothered with a suit. He had his jacket and jeans on. He was cleaning his fingernails with a fingernail clipper.

When Mrs. Blackwood finished, Judge Lowry yawned. It was going to be one of those days. He thought: the dockets are full, this Blackwood kid has no priors, looks clean-cut enough, and this other little shit has a bookfull . . . Yet, he is a kid, and I feel big-hearted. Or, to put this into perspective, there's enough of a backlog without adding this silly case to it.

If I let the Blackwood kid go, it'll look like favoritism because he's clean-cut and this is his first time—and that is good for something. Yet, if I don't let the Edson kid go too, then I'm saying the same crime is not as bad when it's committed by a clean-cut kid with a whining momma.

All right, he thought. We'll keep it simple. Let them both go, but give it all some window dressing.

And it was window dressing, nothing more. Brian was put on light probation, and Clyde, already on probation, was given the order to report to his probation officer more frequently, and that was the end of that.

Piece of cake.

The school expelled them for the rest of the term, but that was no mean thing. They were back on the streets before the day was out.

For the moment, Clyde went his way and Brian went his.

But the bond was formed.

4

A week later, mid-October.

Brian Blackwood sat in his room, his head full of pleasant but overwhelming emotions. He got a pen and loose-
leaf
notebook out of his desk drawer, began to write savagely.

I've never kept a journal before, and I don't know if I'll continue to keep one after tonight, but the stuff that's going on inside of me is boiling up something awful and I feel if I don't get it out I'm going to explode and there isn't going to be anything left of me but blood and shit stains on the goddamned wall.

In school I read about this writer who said he was like that, and if he could write down what was bothering him, what was pushing his skull from the inside, he could find relief, so I'm going to try that and hope for the best, because I've got to tell somebody, and I sure as hell can't tell Mommy-dear this, not that I can really tell her anything, but I've got to let this out of me and I only wish I could write faster, put it down as fast as I think.

This guy, Clyde Edson, he's really different and he's changed my life and I can feel it, I know it, it's down in my guts, squirming around like some kind of cancer, eating at me from the inside out, changing me into something new and fresh.

Being around Clyde is like being next to pure power, yeah, like that. Energy comes off of him in waves that nearly knock you down, and it's almost as if I'm absorbing that energy, and like maybe Clyde is sucking something out of me, something he can use, and the thought of that, of me giving Clyde something, whatever it is, makes me feel strong and whole. I mean, being around Clyde is like touching evil, or like that sappy
Star Wars
shit about being seduced by the Dark Side of The Force, or some such fucking malarky. But you see, this seduction by the Dark Side, it's a damn good fuck, a real jism-spurter, kind that makes your eyes bug, your back pop and your asshole pucker.

Maybe I don't understand this yet, but I think it's sort of like this guy I read about once, this philosopher whose name I can't remember, but who said something about becoming a Superman. Not the guy with the cape. I'm not talking comic book, do-gooder crap here, I'm talking the real palooka. Can't remember just what he said, but from
memory
of what I read, and from the way I feel now, I figure that Clyde and I are two of the chosen, the Supermen of now, this moment, mutants for the future. I see it sort of like this: man was once a wild animal type that made right by the size of his muscles and not by no bullshit government and laws. Time came when he had to become civilized to survive all the other hardnoses, but now that time has passed 'cause most of the hardnoses have died off and there isn't anything left but a bunch of fucking pussies who couldn't find their ass with a road map or figure how to wipe it without a blueprint. But you see, the mutations are happening again. New survivors are being born, and instead of that muck scientists say we crawled out of in the first place, we're crawling out of this mess the pussies have created with all their human rights shit and laws to protect the weak. Only this time, it isn't like before. Man might have crawled out of that slime to escape the sharks of the sea back then, but this time it's the goddamned sharks that are crawling out and we're mean sonofabitches with razor-sharp teeth and hides like fresh-dug gravel. And most different of all, there's a single-mindness about us that just won't let up.

I don't know if I'm saying this right, it's not all clear in my head and it's hard to put into words, but I can feel it, goddamnit, I can feel it. Time has come when we've become too civilized, overpopulated, so evolution has taken care of that, it's created a social mutation
—
Supermen like Clyde and me.

Clyde, he's the raw stuff, sewer sludge. He gets what he wants because he doesn't let anything stand in the way of what he wants, nothing. God, the conversations we had the last couple of days . . . See now, lost my train of thought. . . Oh yeah, the social mutations.