Appalachian Galapagos (19 page)

As the young man reached back to undo the tie, the crowd fell silent again. His hands were shaking and the knot seemed almost too difficult a navigation for his fingers. Finally, he loosened the tie. As he pulled away the cloth, The Low Man growled. The young man spun towards the sound and shrieked. His arms
windmilled
as he stumbled backwards into a wooden wall of The Pit. His shrieking continued as he turned and clawed at the wood, fingernails breaking. The crowd surged with their laughter at the sport of it all.

"Jesus! Who are you people?" asked
Dicky
.

"Just normal, hardworking folk."

This was anything but normal.
Dicky
found himself transfixed as he watched The Low Man creep across the breadth of the pit towards his prey. Without pause, The Low Man bit into the young man's calf, shook his head violently, and came away with a chunk of meat.

The crowd roared.

"We call him The Low Man," said Elias directly into
Dicky's
ear so he could be heard.

"Is he the one who killed Willy?"
Dicky
shouted back.

"He was responsible, yes." Elias' eyes were on the actions taking place in The Pit.

"You brought Willy here?"
Dicky
was focused on the man's lips. He wanted to make sure he understood.

"I did."

"Did he come willingly?" He knew the answer before he asked it. His hands shook as he fought to control their intended murder.

"Not exactly."

"Jesus. You bastard. I can't believe you're admitting it."

Elias' gaze snapped from The Pit to
Dicky
. His smile wavered, but then fixed itself. "Why not?"

"Wait until the police get a hold of you."

"That won't happen."

"Why not?" asked
Dicky
. The muscle of his shoulder's tensed as he prepared to fight his way out. "You gonna stop me? You gonna kill me?"

"No. I'm going to offer you an alternative."

"A bribe?" laughed
Dicky
.

"Not a bribe. An alternative. I'll give you a choice. You see, I can feel your loss. I can see in your eyes the love you've lost. You want to do something about it, don't you?"

"Of course I do. If I had a gun, I'd shoot you right where you stand."

"Getting angry with me is the wrong answer. I'm merely the facilitator. You might as well become angry at the sun for setting. What I did was what had to be done. No. I shouldn't be the target of your anger. I'm not the one you should hate." Elias gestured at The Low Man who was now feeding on his opponent. "He is."

Dicky's
eighth, ninth and tenth fights were also against hitchhikers. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of them, as if there was a segment of society that desired to become victim. He'd felt guilty at first. It was so easy to kill—to win. The secret was to dehumanize. He became animal, forgetting about love and the complications of compassion. He became instinct. He became the snarl that curled around inviting teeth.

By the time his tenth fight was over, he'd become all animal. For two complete days his humanity had been forgotten. He remembered chewing fingers and swallowing muscle. He remembered lapping at congealing blood, chomping blow flies like popcorn.

Then he'd dreamed of Willy Pete and became human once again. He'd spent the next few days alternately praying and crying, trying to understand this evolution he had undergone. He'd chosen to be what he was, but condemned himself for it. He'd killed animals. He'd killed men. He was butchering his own soul.

And for what? All to extract retribution from the thing that had ruined his life?

It was with these too-human thoughts that he'd entered his eleventh fight and they'd almost killed him. For it was humanity that allowed him to feel love. It was love that allowed him to feel empathy. It was empathy that made him feel sorry for his eleventh opponent, the grizzled hunter who'd been caught poaching deer in the pine nursery where they held the yearly Kudzu Festival.
 
And in that second's hesitation when he'd empathized, the old man had been able to escape his clutches and reach the baseball bat at the other end of the pit.

Dicky
had paid with pain. He'd barely managed to chew through the man's defenses. He'd almost died at the cusp of reaching his goal. It was only by descending into the taste of flesh that he found the animal within.

"So what are you saying?" asked
Dicky
Sims, pacing the length of the billiard room. The fight between The Low Man and the hitchhiker had been over for an hour, yet the fear and rage still flowed through him. "You saying that I should punish that freak. What did you call him? The Low Man?"

"I'm saying that you don't want to punish any of us," said Elias from where he sat in a large, red leather chair.
 

"The hell I don't,"
Dicky
snapped. "I want nothing more than to see you punished."

"No. Punishment is nothing. What would you have them do? Arrest us?"

"Yes."

"Throw us in jail?"

"Yes."

"Maybe even get a death sentence, do the
kickin
' chicken in an electric chair or sleep to death in a gas chamber?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes,"
Dicky
said, emphasizing each affirmative by punching his hand.

"And that would satisfy you?"

"Yes."

"Then you didn't love your friend."

"What?"

"I think that you thought you loved him, but it's clear that you never did. You're like all the rest of the world who profess to love. Instead of loving, you loved the way he made you feel about yourself. You loved his acceptance of you. You loved the times that you spent together. You loved the—"

"You don't know what you're talking about," said
Dicky
, his voice cracking. "I loved him. I loved him," he repeated, the second attempt full of memory.

"Just look at you. You tell me that you're angry. You tell me you're enraged at the loss of your friend. You tell me that you loved him. You even seem to feel that something needs to be done, yet with all the options presented to you, you continue to maintain your civility. You cling to your humanity like it's a
Linus
blanket."

"I'm talking about punishing you. I'm talking about killing you. Isn't that angry enough?"

"What's the difference between punishment and revenge?"

"I don't know."

"For one," said Elias, standing and walking towards the broad window behind his desk, "with one you get to dictate, with the other you can participate."

The room was silent for several minutes as
Dicky
thought about this and Elias stared out upon his mountain. Finally, the younger man turned. He cocked his head and asked, "But can't a person participate in both of them?"

"
Ahh
," said Elias turning, a broad smile upon his face. "Yes, he may. But then it's called something different entirely. We call that retribution."

"Mumbo Jumbo. That's all this is. You're just trying to confuse me so that I won't figure out a way to make you pay."

"This is not Mumbo Jumbo,
Dicky
Sims. This is all about making us pay. That's what retribution is. Retribution is a personalized form of justice where one may become a part of making the other pay."

Dicky
shook his head and placed his hands over his face.

"Retribution," continued Elias, "allows you to come face to face with that which harmed you or yours and actively seek to bring about pain, both mental and true."

"Stop."

"Retribution is what a person who was in love embraces when the object of their love is harmed."

"I said stop it. What would you have me do?"

"What would you do,
Dicky
Sims? You said you wanted to punish. What I'm offering you is one better. I'm offering you a chance to do to The Low Man what he did to your friend."

"I want to," said
Dicky
. "I really want to, but I—I'm afraid."

"What you lack is Perfect Anger. What you lack is the understanding of what actually transpired."

As
Dicky
stared up from the bottom of his own low place, Elias detailed the demise of Willy Pete. As the story progressed,
Dicky
began to feel angry. When it finally came to an end
Dicky
Sims
was
anger.

When he crept through the door, a halo of light caught and blinded him. Squinting, he was unable see more than a foot in front of him. He didn't need to see to know that The Low Man was there, however. He could feel the other's deadness across the dirt of the pit like an ache he was unable to fill.

Dicky
shifted athletically on his low arms towards the place and heard the thing growl a welcome. He answered it with one of his own. He tried to look into the stands, but could not pierce the white veil of phosphorous light. The citizens of Jacob Mountain were like a single feral being, breathing in time to the hot humid wind.

Lowering his shoulders,
Dicky
shifted his neck, feeling his muscles gather and bunch around vertebrae. He snapped his teeth twice and pawed at the ground behind him.

Elias's voice erupted from the speakers hung high in the eaves. He spoke, but the struggle for
Dicky
to understand speech was too much. He'd descended fully into the world of creature and would probably never resurface. He was on a mission of retribution, and sometimes, sacrifice was a necessary price. He didn't need to understand the language to understand the meaning. By the excitement and surge of the crowd,
Dicky
knew the match was about to begin.

Someone dimmed the lights to a soft yellow nimbus revealing The Low Man shuffling at the other edge of The Pit. Like a bull, he pawed at the ground and snorted, causing small gales of dust to spin in the air.

Their eyes met, redemptive fury versus animal indifference. Muscles twitched in their faces. Elias finished speaking and the crowd hushed.
Dicky
felt hairs rise along his skin. A single drop of sweat slid from his hairless scalp and plunged into the dry earth.

Then the squeal of an air horn punctured the silence and the two combatants launched themselves across The Pit. They met in a savage engagement of teeth and tearing skin. Sweat and blood whipped across the wooden façade of The Pit reaching the first few rows of spectators. The cheers of the crowd were drowned by the guttural oaths and screams of
Dicky
Sims and The Low Man.

Each had the other on the stumps of his hind legs, front stumps struggling to propel the other onto his back, teeth snapping at pulsing jugulars. The Low Man was the first to latch on, his teeth snatching away an ear. The pain and sudden loss of equilibrium caused
Dicky
to stumble. He fell to his side, and as he did, The Low Man fell away.

Dicky
pulled himself up, but was hurled back as a head butted his side. He rolled and rolled, finally slamming against the far wall. Before he could move, teeth fastened on the skin beneath his arm, digging and consuming the soft tender tissue.

Dicky
screamed, and in that scream he found power. Using what was left of his legs, he gathered them beneath The Low Man and shoved, pushing the creature away before it could take another bite from him. The Low Man rolled and landed upright. Panting, he glared at
Dicky
, the open lipless maw a parody of a smile.