Ugly Behavior (12 page)

“Where’s your mother, dear?” he asked her again. She looked up at
him solemnly, but said nothing. He patted her shoulder. He noticed with some
inner disturbance that his hand trembled again. “Ah, at least someone has
taught you not to speak to strangers. That’s an important thing to remember,
dear.” He looked around and saw that no one else was around. He looked back
down at her. “But I’m no stranger. You see, I’m just the grandfather you’ve
never met, the kindly old man you’ve always dreamed about.” Her eyes grew
wider. “I can see that dream in your eyes right now, dear. I can see every
little thing you’re thinking. I know about little girls and little boys, you
see.”

Then he took her hand and she held on tightly, letting him know
once and for all time that she was at last ready to go with him. They left the
park hand-in-hand, in no particular hurry. He had been wearing makeup on all
his trips to this park in another town, and he had been watching the child for
weeks. Her calmness, her peace with him would allay all suspicions. Anyone who
did see them together would assume he was an older relative taking the child to
the park. If they wondered about anything it would be why the old man didn’t
buy the child a new dress. Obviously no one cared about this child. No one but
the
sackman
.

She slid easily into the front passenger seat of his ancient, dark
blue Buick. She was too short to see over the dashboard, but appeared
fascinated by the old gauges beneath their highly-polished glass. He made sure
she buckled the seat belt he had installed. His hands shook again (small
animals in his sack) when the car wouldn’t start, then calmed when the engine
coughed into rough activity. He smiled down at the little girl. It warmed his
old heart when she smiled back.

The drive back to his own home town was a long one, but the little
girl sat through the trip patiently. At least someone had taught her manners.
Now and then she would comment politely on the beauty of the drive. He had not
lived in the actual town itself for many years, preferring the relative
obscurity and safety of the mountains and lakes beyond. The old Buick struggled
its way up the steep incline of the initial part of the drive, then relaxed as
the highway leveled a few miles from his home. He had no idea how much longer
the Buick could manage these trips. He supposed that once it failed his career
as the
sackman
would be finished.

Not once on this long trip did this little girl ask where they
were going. He took this to be clear evidence of a long pattern of
deprivations. Normally he would have had to trot out any one of a dozen
different fantasies in order to placate the little darling. Depending on the
perceived needs, they were visiting long lost parents or friends, conducting a
secret mission for the government, aiding a dying or injured relative, or
visiting a castle, space ship, or miscellaneous wonderland. But the little girl
asked no questions, so he was careful not to provide any answers.

When they finally arrived she jumped out and ran toward the house.
“It’s like a cave!” she exclaimed, and indeed it was.

More than half of the house had been built into a hollow carved
into the mountainside.

Here comes the
sackman
, sweetheart, he
thought as he followed her to the undersized front door. As always he had to
stoop with the key in his trembling fist in order to let them inside.

“Wait here while I get the light,” he said softly to the darkness.
He reached overhead for the cord to the bulb. That was when she ran away into
the shadows of his mountain home.

He was too startled to speak, reduced to gripping and
ungripping
the cotton light cord as if in a spasm. The bulb
flickered into yellow dimness.

“Where? Are you!” he finally sputtered in rage. There was no
answer from the shadows of his cave.

He waited by the door for a time, listening carefully the way the
sackman
was supposed to listen—the
sackman
who all the mommas said could detect a small
child’s heartbeat amongst all the other heartbeats in the deep dark
woods—but he heard nothing. He felt suddenly exhausted, as if all the
bright red blood had run out of him, and he was compelled to collapse into the
overstuffed chair by the door—placed there years before for exactly these
attacks of sudden fatigue. He could remember placing the chair here himself one
day after a young boy of seven had run him practically to tatters in the
surrounding woods. He could remember, too, how he had felt when he’d finally
caught the boy (who, also tired, could only look up at the
sackman
with eyes the size of quarters), and telling the boy about the lands that lay
beyond dreams, the countries where children had no bodies that puked and stank
but instead travelled within beams of pure white light, had placed his huge
rough hand over the small boy’s face and with only the tiniest of
disturbances—a cough and a squirm as if the lad were stirring within a
bad dream—had sent him swiftly into that wondrous land.

But the
sackman
could not remember when
he had grown so old.

“Little one!” he called, after catching his breath enough to say
it softly, tenderly. “Come back to see your old grandpa, honey. We’ll play
hide-and-go-seek later. I promise.” There was a distant giggle back in the dark
far-off rooms of his house, but nothing more. The
sackman
bit into his lower lip until the blood spurted, and then he began to suck. He
closed his eyes and stared at red circles in the darkness. When he at last opened
them again, the giggles had started again. It had been a very long time since a
giggle had been heard in his house.

To the casual observer, the
sackman’s
front room was furnished unremarkably—the more obvious mementoes of all
his children were displayed in the back rooms of the house, the chambers down
under the cool mountainside, the shadowed places where the little girl in the
red dress now laughed and hid.

“Are you Little Red Riding Hood? Is that who you’ve decided to be,
my sweet?” Then the
sackman
howled his best wolf
howl, an old wolf certainly, but without a doubt a huge, snarling horrific wolf
it was. For the
sackman
had had much practice over
the years playing the part of the wolf.

There was no answer and the
sackman
laughed as loudly as he had howled, and felt young again.

Then the
sackman
sucked some more of his
own salty blood, smiled and looked around his front room, and saw:

A large pot he’d once upended over a small girl, four or five
years but small for her age, the smallest child he’d ever had in his home.
(Although not the smallest he’d ever sent back to heaven. Back during the
fifties he’d sent back a half dozen babies who’d been sleeping in bassinets and
on blankets in the park. All that had been required was something to distract
the mothers. There’d been time for only the briefest of bedtime stories, but
babies required very little, being half dream and parental anticipation
already.) He’d kept her in that pot until she’d been quite convinced he was
going to cook her, so that she was almost relieved when finally it was his
hands that sent her on her way.

A worn-out sofa with oversized cushions. For three full days he’d
once lain on that sofa, taking his meals there, even relieving himself into a
hole in the worn-out upholstery when he couldn’t hold it any longer. A visitor
would have seen a smelly, sickly old man lying there, perhaps breathing his
last. A visitor never would have guessed a skinny ten-year-old boy lay
underneath those cushions, the life squeezing out of his semi-conscious body an
hour at a time.

A tall kitchen trash can over in the corner once contained twin
six-year-olds tied together, face-to-face. He’d used both his huge hands to
send them on their way, at the same time, providing them with a joint
fairytale, a shared dream, making sure that they might look into each other’s
eyes as they began their long journey back. Now he could not remember if they
had been boys or girls.

The fireplace along a side wall appeared much too large for the
room, but otherwise was unremarkable in every way. It didn’t even sport a
rudimentary mantel. But more than once it had contained giant logs of newspaper
wrapped in wire, each with a small child completely hidden inside. He would
never have considered burning a precious child, although he had been content to
let them think so. It was all part of his game, and their personalized
fairytale.

The
sackman
had no illusions about what
an outsider might think if he or she (some matronly social worker, going house
to house in behalf of children’s welfare) stumbled onto his doings, or
witnessed any of the games he played with the children. He had given up hope
for understanding many years ago, although he was convinced there were hundreds
of people like him in the world who might appreciate his mission. Who
understood that children were lied to, made to anticipate an adulthood full of
promise and dream, when all the time the promises and dreams ended with the
onset of puberty. The life of an adult was made putrid by constant
disappointments and betrayals. Only a child, a mere
eyeblink
out of heaven’s embrace, could glimpse glory. But after the development of the
sexual organs and the accompanying desires it was as if they had been blinded,
never to see the brilliant light of heaven again.

The
sackman
loved children, and envied
them. So what better way might he show that love than to send them back to
heaven where they belonged, where they would truly want to go if they only had
the understanding ironically wasted on adults?

From the
sackman’s
under-the-mountain
rooms, where much more obvious secrets and mementoes of his career were kept,
came the sound of footsteps and giggles and can’t-catch-
mes
.
Surely it was time for this particular child’s game to end, and her final
fairytale to begin.

The
sackman’s
eyes were old, but they
were still the eyes of the
sackman
. Who sees
everything, child, so just you watch out!

Don’t let him catch you out tonight! He could still see clearly
where this one little girl had been.

One of the giant clothes closets off the east hallway had been
opened up, and decades of children’s dresses and shorts, pants and socks and
shirts and underwear had spilled out, some of it vomit- or blood- or
other-stained, all of it precious reminders of the children he had known and
loved into heaven. He stopped for a moment and tried to pick some of these up,
trying to match pieces of outfits, trying to match clothing with vague,
frightened, then peacefully sleeping little faces, but it was an impossible
task. There were too many dead children spilt here, too many tiny ghosts
struggling into these scattered outfits every morning. With tears washing his
face he cast them aside and called “Darling!” and “Sweetheart!” and even
“Grandchild!”, careful to keep the growing rage out of his voice, but all he
heard was the distant laughter, the small feet running from room to room,
crashing through all the doors of his life.

“Baby!” he shouted, kicking the piles of torn little body parts
aside. “Baby, come here!” and pounded his feet into the floor to make a Giant’s
footsteps guaranteed to terrify even the bravest Jack.

He could hear her somewhere just ahead of him now, racing in and
out of the numerous dimly-lit or dark rooms that spread far under the
mountainside.

In one room numerous toys, furred in greasy dust so that they
appeared half-animal, half-appliance, had been removed from their storage
shelves and scattered about the floor. The hands that had once played with
these played with toys of pure light now. But it still angered him that they’d
been touched, perhaps even damaged, without his permission. “Nice little girls
ask before playing with another’s things!” he shouted into the darkness. But
the darkness continued to run and cast its laughter back at the
sackman
.

He inhaled deeply of the cold, musty air of these backrooms, these
storage chambers of his past, this air redolent of ten thousand children’s
screams, children’s fear sweat, breath stink, and blood. He felt the air
lengthening his stride, putting the power back into his huge hands. With each
inhalation, with each new insult from this anonymous little girl, he felt as if
his mass and muscle were increasing, his old man’s fatigue draining away, until
by the time he reached the farthest, deepest rooms, he’d become convinced that
he was the
sackman
of forty years ago, the terror of
children and their parents for three states around.

The doors to wall cabinets had been thrown open, countless pairs
of small children’s glasses spilled out onto the hard gray rock floors. Some
were shattered, some had their frames bent and twisted. He gathered them up by
the handfuls and piled them on a nearby table alongside two miniature
prosthetic arms, a prosthetic leg, and several cigar boxes full of dental
appliances. One pair of glasses had snagged on his black coat sleeve—he
picked it off and examined it, recalling how he’d always been amazed by these
prescription lenses for children, how small they were, as if fitted for dolls
or ventriloquist dummies. He tried to wedge the glasses over his own eyes, and
his eyes seemed larger than the lenses themselves (The
sackman
has great big saucers for eyes. He can see you wherever you go. He always knows
what you’re doing.) From beneath the small lenses he could feel the darkness
pushing down in a spiraling rush, a huge face suddenly looming over him, greasy
lips parting to show dancing teeth as the
sackman
began his recital of the final fairytale.