Scowler (27 page)

Ry tried to push himself away but one palm ended up crushing her stomach and the subsequent groan of pain made it worse: The bat that had done things to Jo Beth Burke was now taking aim at Esther Crowley. Ry paddled to get out of the way. Textures crossed his palms that might have been nose, lips, or nipple, and the next thing he knew he was bent over the edge of the bed and gasping for air. He waited for tea, no longer iced, to come pouring out of his gullet, but he got all mixed up and felt the expansion of wetness around his crotch. The wrong stuff, the wrong time—he had wet himself.

He moved from the bed on arms and legs and found he was still peeing. His hands got trapped in her inside-out jeans and down he went. Her hot skin sidled up next to his and she set a tentative hand at his back. He coughed and felt pinpoints of tears jab the corners of his eyes. She was already whispering soothing things, she was being wonderful, and it sliced like hemming pins into Ry’s skull. Boys didn’t usually urinate at the sight of her nudity; Esther knew sure as shit that this was the handiwork of Marvin Burke. Ry found his underwear, wet and stinking. But his pants and shirt were dry and he gathered them on his way to the door. She was apologizing. He was apologizing too, not for his sexual
failure but because of the bat. It was his. His own mother had sworn it.

Ry exited the Crowley house with laughter ringing from the dark worlds of the barns and sheds, from the hidden parts of the trees. It followed him all the way home, into his bed where he cowered beneath the covers and cried for hours. He would not recognize that laughter for years, until right this second alone in the attic. It came from none other than Scowler, the one friend who never shrank from dispensing the toughest of love.

Never, ever again
.

Ry realized he was muttering these words aloud, over and over.

This was the lesson Scowler was teaching: Ry might be able to outrun his past but the episode with Esther Crowley represented his miserable future. Life would be a series of heinous failures, an endless procession of beds to be pissed, if he did not stand up, right now, bare his teeth, and bite.

All Ry had to do was provide Scowler an exit.

Ideas flowed with such ease! He knew just how to do it. His proximity to the meteorite had hastened the arrival of Furrington and Jesus Christ. But he could not forget the beatings that had directly preceded each of their appearances in the real world: Marvin striking him with the owl lamp and the drowning attempt in the crater water. It was just the recipe Ry required to bring forth Scowler—a little space dust and just the right kind of physical trauma. A tall order, except for what Ry found lying only a few feet away.

It was the shard of meteorite. Marvin must have dropped it when he had fumbled the shotgun on his way out. Ry shoved aside a broken sewing machine, kicked away a rubber-banded
roll of Sarah’s kindergarten drawings, and carefully removed a ruffle that had once graced the most beautiful dress in the world. Uncovered, the shard gleamed in the bulb light like a starry night sky across a still pond.

Ry took a moment to consider the best place on his body to do it, but it was a silly debate. There was only one spot. He lifted the dagger with both hands and fit the point into the starburst scar between his eyebrows. It slotted into the crevice like a screwdriver into a screw, as if this were what it had been built for eons ago. He felt the sharpened edge squish through flesh and chip against solid bone. His fist settled upon the opposite end as he tried to remember the hundreds of nails he had pounded in his lifetime. Often he’d sunk them in a single blow. It was possible that he’d get that lucky this time, too, though he was prepared for this nail to be much more stubborn.

Scowler waited on his lap, mouth wide to catch the delicious blood.

Ry hesitated. He prayed. He told his family to hold on, just one more minute.

I
f he were flexible enough to gnaw off his own foot, he’d do it.

So much had gone right: the impact event at Bluefeather; his skyward escape; his journey through backyards and alleys and ditches, cropland and timber; finding the Winchester 1200 and a box of shells right behind the generator where he’d left them in 1972; and the meteorite, that thing from the Jaekel Belt if the girl was to be believed, a gift for which he had no satisfactory words of thanks. It was a new life served up to him on one hell of a silver platter.

So much since then had gone wrong. There was the killing of a man and the loss of control over his family, but those failings did not measure up to being chained by a child to the doghouse.
The doghouse
. Fates did not get more wretched.
Marvin had tried to uproot the post to which the chain was affixed, but he himself had set that post in cement seventeen years ago and his work, as always, was impressive. There was no way out except for unlocking the padlock and none of the keys on Jo Beth’s keychain matched.

Sniggety sat next to him, his tail whipping contentedly, delighted about his surprise guest. Marvin looked away in disgust. Hardly any time had passed since his wife and daughter had disappeared inside and already he felt a despair the likes of which he hadn’t felt since entering his first cell at Pennington. He was stuck here, either to be arrested when the cops got wise or to starve to death if they didn’t.

From inside the house he heard his wife’s shouts, the little girl’s screams. They were trying to gather the worthless boy. Marvin throttled the gun. He knew his son was mentally deranged; he knew the little girl was genuinely sick; he knew Jo Beth suffered from the same debilitating headaches that were afflicting her children. Marvin knew this because he had them too. He had not admitted this to Jo Beth because what good did it ever do to admit weakness? But the truth was that his spine rang with a throb nearly musical; the chord it struck was true all the way down to his toes. It troubled his vision and impaired his judgment. But what it agitated most was his desire. That rock was his because this land was his, no matter what that woman said. He made another futile check of his pockets for the meteorite shard and his palms throbbed with loneliness.

He sat up against the doghouse, extended his legs perfectly straight, and laid the shotgun along his thigh. He squinted past the action bar, straight down the muzzle, and lined the bead with the knob of his left ankle. If he could
keep his hands steady, a single shot ought to turn his foot into ground meat. The chain would slip off as easily as one of those dandelion bracelets he saw little girls giving their dads in prison visiting rooms. He grinned. He tasted salt. Was he crying? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t even remember what the hell tears tasted like. He tried to laugh and heard his jaws squeal as he braced for pain.

A shadow fell over his leg, making his target go dark.

Marvin sputtered. He was trying to get a clean shot here! He pulled his eyes into focus and found himself looking at a pair of bare feet twice the size of his own and so strong that they did not bother with details like ankles or toes. Marvin’s eyes crept over the tree-trunk legs, the loinclothed groin, the vast chest, the hawkish face, the anaconda arm with its trademark tomahawk. Each of these features was blunt to the point of ambiguity, but that’s what you got when carving a man from wood.

“Scalper Jim,” Marvin said. “Good to see you.”

The Indian’s brow loomed over the triangular notches of his eyes.

“I know,” Marvin said. “I take full responsibility. But I’m going to get out. Just give me one second to show you.” Marvin flashed a desperate grin and displayed his left leg. “I’m going to shoot the damn thing off. How’s that, huh? It’ll make a mess.” Marvin laughed, a strange yipping bark. “Oh, it’ll make a mess all right.”

Scalper Jim glowered from his foothill shoulders.

“What? This chain? I put it here for Old Snig.”

Hearing his name brought into it, Sniggety withdrew on his belly.

Scalper Jim’s boulder fist tightened around the tomahawk.

“A key?” Marvin shrugged. “Sure, there was a key, but no one’s used it for—huh? Well, yes. Yes, in fact. I
do
recall. I put the key right inside the doghouse here, up on a little ledge. That’s how you keep a farm: You put things in their logical places. I put it there, what, twenty years ago? And I’m proud, Jim, to still remember it. Why, I could tell you—”

Scalper Jim asserted all ten feet of his height.

Marvin lowered his head like the mutt he was. “I … I don’t know, Jim. It could be that you’re right. Now that you mention it, it makes a lot of sense. Why would they move it? Why would they even know it’s there?” Marvin laughed. “You’re smart, Jim. I always believed that. Much smarter than me. I couldn’t have—look, Jim, this is the God’s honest truth. I could not have done half of what I’ve done in my life without you.”

No response came so Marvin bowed and scuffled away on all fours until he could reach an arm inside the doghouse. He explored thick cobweb and tore past what felt like a wasp’s nest until he found the familiar beam and the tiny piece of metal. Years of corrosion had glued the key to the wood and Marvin set to ripping it free. One of his fingernails bent back. A moment later, another split down the center. Marvin grinned—this was progress. A moment later he reined in his arm. There it was, the padlock key, and he displayed it proudly.

Scalper Jim indicated the new sun, the minutes that were passing.

“Right, yes,” Marvin said, nodding, jamming the key at the padlock, then filing it against concrete when the rust proved prohibitive. “What’s that? Ha! You’re right about that,
Jim. You’re always right. The best hunting, it
is
always at daybreak.”

W
hite Special Dress did not launch a new life as they all had hoped, but it did save one. Ry would have bled to death if not for the proximity of its soft white folds. Tugging himself back from a dangerous void of total silence, he found his clothes tarred with the blood that was still slurping from his face, and so he crawled on his belly until he was able to take two handfuls of the shredded dress. Smaller bits were used to plug the hole, while longer strips were wrapped around his forehead, tighter and tighter, to staunch the flow. The cloth heavied almost at once but held heroically.
Just a little while longer
, he urged it.

Scowler was born. He popped his head from beneath what remained of the skirt’s hem, his underdeveloped limbs wriggling, his fetal face split wide. He took his first steps on wobbly legs, one bestial, one sharpened steel, two feet tall at the tallest. His head, that cone of flaking rot, tipped back and the white seashell teeth, accented with Ry’s red blood, filed past one another with the sound of shifting cutlery.

Ry became aware that his own mouth hung open. He closed it, if only to shut out the hot brown reek that he recognized but could not quite place. Oh, yes, he could: It was the bilious stench of the newly dehorned steers that marched through his nightmares, the mud underfoot boggy with their terrified piss and shit and blood, the air soured by the slather of wrath and the sniff of panic.

Scowler’s jaw snapped at a speck of dress, his first solid food. He shivered, his tumors jiggling, and continued to advance. The exposed metal pipe scritched across the floorboards, shaking an orgasmic quiver all the way into the cysts of Scowler’s face. When his pipe leg crossed the metal base of the dummy, there was a celebration of sparks. Ry found himself wishing that one would land on Scowler and ignite.

“Hkk-law.”

How blissfully Ry had forgotten the ecstatic, asphyxiated gobble.

“Hkk-law, law-hkk!”

Scowler tottered closer and Ry drew up his feet so as to delay physical contact a moment longer. The head swept this way, then that, bringing to light the most obvious thing: Scowler, with those shallow depressions for eyes, was blind. A blast of hope galvanized Ry. It wasn’t too late! He could tiptoe away, fold up the ladder, close the attic door, nail it shut. But Scowler navigated well enough with his teeth. He gnawed at the dummy’s belly, pulling up tiny cotton hernias. He swung left, burying his teeth into a stack of magazines, uncovering typeface innards. He corrected his course and toothed the floor, flecks of pure white chipping the stained hardwood.

“Hkk-law, hk’a, tk’a, tk-tk!”

If Ry did not speak, Scowler might chew himself right up Ry’s leg.

“Hello,” Ry blurted.

Scowler went still and silent.

The head circulated like a satellite dish until the hollow eyes locked onto the voice’s origin. There came a sound like the plinking of the highest piano keys and Ry recognized it immediately. It was a hundred sharp teeth adjusting all at
once—it was a grin. Scowler had been waiting so long for this conversation.

“Kt—kl, va, va, tk-tk, hr’wo-gep-gep-gep. Sk-t! Crrrr, sk, sk, lu—zu, zu. Ak! Kr’uh-kr-zni—uf. Hk! Hk! Zw, i, lok-a-tik-tik. Hwa’fwa. D’str, pk-a-pk—quish! Dak! Ssa, sstra, p-p-p-p-p-pluk! Dak! H’wosh. Ka, sa, ma—hm. A-a. Tk! Sk-t! La, raaa. Tk!”

“Please, I …”

“Hzch-st fet p’n, d-d-d. Meb, bem, eb, em—tk! Wz? Fa. Zep—zep, rep, de’cat-at-at-at-at! Chwok h’h’hd, swa beh ar-mar, ssa. Tk, hud. Nya-da-hoo, hoo. Yer n’ning seh—seh-nin! Nin! Seh-nin! Dsss. G’ve, hm, uh sus ta-ta-ta, bol! Wah; hss’foo. Fo, foo. Lkht! Wkht! Hweee, scri-bli-gli zaa-wiz, rt-tk! Lk-tk! Thro ciy twi, twi, twi. Ja bett czzzt, zip—ra, tis-d-d-d-d-d! Ri. Ri-hd! Spk-tk-rk-it-tk-rk-a, cr’g’hrrrud, hrrrud i’dk. Blee-sg pik-hs, es-soph-fk-fk, gus—bem, gus. K! Cwhd! St-t! Ty, wk! N’v, n’v, m-m-m-tk-a-tk-a. Wh? Scow! Tk? Scow! Ra, ra, sla-a-sby-tip, Ja bett nya, nya. Vek! Vek! Qk, sek! Hzch-st, seh’nin, tk, hud, hss’foo! N’fva! Hkk, law. Mn, mn, mn. Tk!”

The cacophony felt to Ry like pins into skin. His mouth fell open to let out a cry of pain, and that’s when the cloud of sound and the stench of steer swirled up inside him, and when his senses finally cleared and he parted his lips to tell himself that he was all right, out came the wrong kinds of noises—Scowler noises.