The Bone Parade (41 page)

“When you were in the foundry, you saw the impressions I took of them.”

His eyes landed on her again so suddenly that she felt stung, attacked by a wasp. She looked away as quickly, but saw only those fully clothed skeletons striking oddly animate poses.

Yes, she had seen those dull green forms, and this made it far too easy to imagine them alive; easier still to look at these bones and imagine their pain, to sense in an instant all they’d lost of life, and the thistles of love known to every family.

Ry gently handed her the boy, dressed like a mannequin in jeans and a red T-shirt; and as she climbed the stairs, her eyes, though tired and tested by all she’d seen, began to absorb the details around her, and to sense, even in the midst of all this horror, the joy of vision, the manner in which it revealed textures and surfaces and shapes—all the forms, simple and complex—that had inspired her hands and imagination for as long as she could remember. She’d been born to be an artist, and an artist she had become. This consolation was not so small as it might once have seemed.

She walked to the foundry with her eyes rising from the trail of mud to the stars poking through the cloud cover, and she looked in wonder at the thick drops of rain racing past the outdoor lights that burned with a strange beauty.

More than anything else, this incandescent awareness of the physical world, the way it seemed to light up from within, and to radiate from without, made her understand that death had become as imminent as breath.

She hoped she
would
die quickly. Not like the others. But when she entered the foundry and smelled the melting bronze for the first time, she knew its slow, torturous threat. The time had come, she decided, to take her fate in her own hands, to plan her own death. Not his gun. He would want only to wound her, to drag her bleeding to his desires. No, her death needed to be swift and sudden. Her death needed to be sure.

I
T’S TIME TO ADD HER
bite marks to that hard rubber ball, the one with the straps that I’ve clamped so tightly around so many skulls. I don’t have the time for the alginate, but I can still take an impression of her pain. Maybe she’ll even rip the ball in two. I’ve been waiting a long time for one of them to fill up with enough raw terror, enough hormones to tear the rubber apart with their teeth.

She might be the one. I certainly never did to the others what I’m about to do to her. I was never the least bit inclined to waste the bronze. But what better use will those bars ever have? It was either leave them behind, or harness their molten fury to force all of her pain onto the ball, because in the end the ball’s all I’m going to have. I can’t take the bone parade or faces with me, but I can take the ball and the straps and the bite marks. Small enough to stuff in my pocket. And some day, it may be years from now but some day I’ll make a mold from that deeply pitted device, and I’ll cast it in bronze. I even have a name all picked out, one that will carry on a rich tradition:
Family Reunion #1
. Isn’t that perfect? All of them together at last.

At first I’ll admit that I suffered terrible regrets over not having the time to use the alginate on her, but I’ve come to see that a greater wisdom is at work here. The fact is, she doesn’t deserve such an honor. She was never intended for the afterlife of art. She’s flesh to be burned and destroyed, to cower, cringe, and scream, to become nothing more than teeth tearing into that black rubber ball till they bleed from their roots and snap at their tips, and crumble like mortar too long at their bricks.

I was so preoccupied with my plans that I almost overlooked the videotapes. Years of them. A catalog of crimes that has to go. So I drive the two of them back out into the rain, and make them carry boxes of tapes to the foundry. I tell Ring Ding to pour them down the opening to the mine, and I stand over him listening to the clatter of a thousand images rising from the darkness.

I also have them carry the impressions of June, Jolly Roger, and Sonny-boy over to the partition wall. I can’t bear the thought of having such exquisite forms tossed into the darkness, of destroying them any sooner than I have to.

Before we go down the ladder, I check the fuses running into the mine. For this I put on Brilliance’s headlamp, and force them to sit about five feet away. The fuses are fine, as neat and dry as the day I put them in.

Now I tell Ring Ding to climb down the ladder. She seems too petrified to move. That’s fine with me. Right now I don’t want her to do a thing.

I wait till he clears a path through the bone parade and tapes, and then hand him the impressions of the Vandersons. First, Sonny-boy the guttersnipe, then June the skeptic, and finally, Jolly Roger. No one’s ever greeted me quite like him. Come in, come in, come in. I can still feel that big meaty hand of his, and hear the door clicking shut behind us.

Nympho media whore ruined the plans I had to cast them, and it’s all I can do not to reach out and rip her face off right now. But I exercise great restraint, and tell her to get down in the mine with “lover boy.” She doesn’t flinch, and that’s when I know my suspicions are true: she really has been using sex to get into the book. She’s
earned
her name the old-fashioned way. And now she’s going to
earn
her death.

She gets up slowly, moving like a geriatric, and I realize that she’s on the verge of total exhaustion.

I have Ring Ding drag three skeletons away, a mother and son from
Family Planning #7
, and a father from
#3
. I recognize them as if they’re my own children. She makes a feeble effort to help.

Move, I tell them. He turns on me.

“Back off.” He’s shouting. “We’re moving as fast as we can.”

Back off?
Me? This is too rich, this outburst of his, this little display of bravado for his lady dear; but rather than shoot him in the groin, which is my most immediate urge, I let them move on. I need his muscle, and his life can be measured in minutes. I’ll have his humiliation in the end. He’ll see.

Back and forth they go, ferrying the bone parade to the same shaft that has received so many others, disposing of these marvelous creations beneath Harriet’s tortured gaze.

Watching this is painful to me. No, it’s much more than painful, it’s excruciating. The bone parade was the shadowland of my great success, the perfect balance to the bronzes that went to art collectors, museums, and galleries. I spent thousands of hours on it. Thousands! I had to weld the bones together, and shape every skeleton to strike the subject’s most characteristic pose. And I did it brilliantly, from the first to the last. The Vandersons are perfect examples of this. I look at their skeletons slumped against the wall, and I can still see June’s insolence, Jolly Roger’s insipid lazy posture, and the way I captured the puling of their sniveling son without the benefit of sound or tears.

The beauty of the parade inspired me every time I took off in search of new subjects. I could always tell how they’d look stripped of all flesh, their clothes hanging from their bones, with only the empty caverns of their eyes looking out at me. This wasn’t hard to envision. I’d carved away so much flesh, removed so many eyes, that I was practiced in the art of the unimaginable. I could even sense the longing in them when they took their places in the parade. I felt it as intimately as I felt the hot breath of their final exertions. And now, to toss them all away so unceremoniously, to consign them to such an ignominious end, with the likes of Brilliance and his bike, no less, hurts me as nothing ever has. As nothing ever could.

But it must go. The whole parade. It’s a forensic nightmare, a veritable keyboard of clues to all the families.

The last in line are the Vandersons. I have Ring Ding haul them down to the shaft, and then I make him carry the impressions one at a time; they are far too fragile for her shaky hands, and I can’t stomach the thought of her carelessly smashing them. They must be disposed of too, but not with the taint of her touch.

I have a soft spot for the Vandersons, I recognize this now. I’m going to miss casting them. But what I’m going to miss most of all is Diamond Girl. Even now, with the theft of my Jeep, the betrayal of my trust, I think kindly of her, and hope that some day I’ll catch up to her again. Maybe it’s sentimental, maybe not, but I see Diamond Girl at twenty, or twenty-one, and me still in my prime, walking hand in hand down a beach in the sun, gazing at the bodies on the blankets, watching the signals that fly among mothers and fathers and children, seeing the little ones at play in the sand, their smiles, their soulful expressions; and from this cornucopia of eyes and arms and hands and feet selecting the families we’ll sculpt, the bite marks we’ll add to the ball.

As I say, maybe it’s sentimental, but it’s also immensely satisfying—and consoling—to imagine the two of us knitting our lives together as tightly as honeysuckle knits its sweet summery fragrance to a fence.

At my command, Ring Ding stands before Harriet and tosses June, Jolly Roger, and Sonny-boy into the shaft. The last of the bone parade. Then I have him drop their impressions down there too, and we all listen to a strange tinkling sound rising from the depths. It’s the alginate, shattered and falling through the skeletons, playing the bones like a xylophone.

There’s one chore left, and it’s critically important to me. I want them to move the stainless steel table from the cellar up here to the foundry. We have time. Ring Ding may be no brighter than a fruit fly, but he’s a hard worker, and he’s gotten a lot done. And besides, I simply can’t imagine that Her Rankness has found her way out of the desert yet, not in these conditions. But if at some time in the next hour or two she does manage to stumble out to the highway and hitch a ride into town, what’s the sheriff going to do? He’ll be getting a call in the middle of the night from some foggy-brained dispatcher who’s going to tell him that the missing girl has just wandered in the door with a bizarre story about the world’s most gifted sculptor sticking her in a cage and snuffing an entire family with some green gunk.

Sure, he’ll respond. He has to, but first he’s going to drive down there and question her long and hard until he’s sure that she hasn’t spent the past week eating peyote soup with a bunch of wannabe Indians.

Then he’ll wake up his deputies and work out a plan. But he’s going to move cautiously, and who can blame him? Not me. This is rural America, and you never know if you’re about to walk into another Ruby Ridge or Waco, or some other kind of nut factory.

The one thing he’s not going to do is shake the sleep from his eyes and come racing out here in the middle of the night. It’ll take him an hour or two to question her and get all of his deputies organized, and another hour or so to set up a perimeter. All of that adds up to more time than I need, and a whole lot more than nympho media whore has left to live.

So I’m not about to deny myself the single pleasure I have left to me here. They’d have to be beating down my door before I’d give that up.

•  •  •

She’s so tired she’s barely able to walk, and not much help to Ring Ding, who’s having to lug the table up the stairs almost entirely by himself. I’m definitely going to have to give her a shot of methamphetamine. She’s not going to be any fun like this.

Once they drag it into the foundry, I wipe it down. I save a towel for her too. They both look soaked as sponges, but she’s the only one I’m willing to waste a towel on. His work is almost done. All he has left to do is strap her to the table. Then, when she’s staring at him most intently, pleading with her eyes—I’ve seen this a lot and know what to expect—I’ll shoot him in the head. It’ll be the first shock to her system, and the gentlest by far that she’ll face.

But for now she must take off her wet clothes and use the towel because I need her dry, though they’re never truly dry, not when they’re scared. Their palms and brows dampen, and puddles form. Yes,
puddles
. Bodies lose control of their functions at exactly the same rate that they lose control of their fears. Everything I’ve ever seen in the cellar testifies to that fact. It’s a lesson I’m anxious to pass on one more time.

S
TASSLER ORDERED
L
AUREN TO “DISROBE.”
He said it softly, as if he were a physician getting her ready for a physical exam, instead of a killer with a deadly plan.

A tremor in her legs spread rapidly to her belly and chest, and her hands fluttered upward, as if sprouting meekly in the face of death. She felt a grinding desire to plead for their lives, but couldn’t force herself to speak. It wasn’t the throbbing in her throat that stopped her, it was the fear that words—any words at all—would incite him to start shooting.

She took a last look around, saw a hammer, tongs, tools, but nothing within reach.

“Take them off,” he said evenly, as if she needed the definition of “disrobe,” as if the humiliation he planned wasn’t apparent enough.

She complied, but slowly, stalling with the hope that somehow the darkness outside would explode with red, blue, and amber lights, with rescue vehicles and sheriff’s deputies and the end to all this horror.

He raised his hand to strike her with the gun. She cowered, and hastily pulled her drenched pants all the way down. Then she lifted her soggy T-shirt over her head and looked back at him. He pointed the gun at her underpants and bra, conducting her nakedness with movements that made him smile, but not with lust. There was no lust in those eyes, not even the hard spark of its sudden violence. As he peered at her underpants, translucent from the rain, his eyes were grim veils that revealed nothing of life. A deadening.

She lowered her panties and laid them on her T-shirt and pants. Then she unhooked her bra and placed it down there too, before rolling her clothing into a neat bundle

Stassler nodded, as if he approved of her fussiness. Perhaps for the first time he glimpsed a quality in her that he considered redeeming, a tidiness so ingrained that it could prevail in the face of such stark uncertainty.