Stories (2011) (4 page)

Harry thought George looked like an ebony gargoyle fresh
escaped from hell. His bald, bullet-like head gleamed in the harsh lights and
his body looked as rough and ragged as stone.

Harry and George raised their hands in classic boxer stance
and began to circle one another.

From above someone yelled, "Don't hit the nigger in the
head, it'll break your hand. Go for the lips, they got soft lips."

The smell of sweat, dog blood and Old Codger's shit was
thick in the air. The lust of the crowd seemed to have an aroma as well. Harry
even thought he could smell Preacher's snakes. Once, when a boy, he had been
fishing down by the creek bed and had smelled an odor like that, and a water
moccasin had wriggled out beneath his legs and splashed in the water. It was as
if everything he feared in the world had been put in this pit. The idea of
being put deep down in the ground. Irrational people for whom logic did not
exist. Rotting skulls on poles about the pit. living skulls attached to
hunched-forward bodies that yelled for blood. Snakes. The stench of death-blood
and shit. And every white man's fear, racist or not-a big, black man with a
lifetime of hatred in his eyes.

The circle tightened. They could almost touch one another
now.

Suddenly George's lips began to tremble. His eyes poked out
of his head, seemed to be looking at something just behind and to the right of
Harry.

"Sss. . . snake!" George screamed.

God, thought Harry, one of Preacher's snakes has escaped.
Harry jerked his head for a look.

And George stepped in and knocked him on his ass and kicked
him full in the chest. Harry began scuttling along the ground on his hands and
knees, George following along kicking him in the ribs. Harry thought he felt
something snap inside, a cracked rib maybe. He finally scuttled to his feet and
bicycled around the pit. Goddamn, he thought, I fell for the oldest, silliest
trick in the book.

Here I am fighting for my life and I fell for it.

"Way to go, stupid fuck!" A voice screamed from
the bleachers. "Hey nigger, why don't you try 'hey, your shoe's untied,'
he'll go for it."

"Get off the goddamned bicycle," someone else
yelled. "Fight."

"You better run," George said. "I catch you
I'm gonna punch you so hard in the mouth, gonna knock your fucking teeth out
your asshole Harry felt dizzy. His head was like a yo-yo doing the Around the
World trick.

Blood ran down his forehead, dribbled off the tip of his
nose and gathered on his upper lip. George was closing the gap again.

I'm going to die right here in this pit, thought Harry. I'm
going to die just because my truck broke down outside of town and no one knows
where I am. That's why I'm going to die. It's as simple as that.

Popcorn rained down on Harry and a tossed cup of ice hit him
in the back.

"Wanted to see a fucking foot race," a voice
called, "I'd have gone to the fucking racetrack."

"Ten on the nigger," another voice said.

"Five bucks the nigger kills him in five minutes."

When Harry backpedaled past Preacher, the snake man leaned
forward and snapped,

"You asshole, I got a sawbuck riding on you.

Preacher was holding the big rattler again. He had the snake
gripped just below the head, and he was so upset over how the fight had gone so
far, he was unconsciously squeezing the snake in a vice-like grip. The rattler
was squirming and twisting and flapping about, but Preacher didn't seem to
notice. The snake's forked tongue was outside its mouth and it was really
working, slapping about like a thin strip of rubber come loose on a whirling
tire. The copperhead in Preacher's pocket was still looking out, as if along
with Preacher he might have a bet on the outcome of the fight as well. As Harry
danced away the rattler opened its mouth so wide its jaws came unhinged. It looked
as if it were trying to yell for help.

* * *

Harry and George came together again in the center of the
pit. Fists like black ball bearings slammed the sides of Harry's head. The pit
was like a whirlpool, the walls threatening to close in and suck Harry down
into oblivion.

Kneeing with all his might, Harry caught George solidly in
the groin. George grunted, stumbled back, half-bent over.

The crowd went wild.

Harry brought cupped hands down on George's neck, knocked
him to his knees.

Harry used the opportunity to knock out one of the big man's
teeth with the toe of his shoe.

He was about to kick him again when George reached up and
clutched the crotch of Harry's khakis, taking a crushing grip on Harry's
testicles.

"Got you by the balls," George growled.

Harry bellowed and began to hammer wildly on top of George's
head with both fists. He realized with horror that George was pulling him
forward. By God, George was going to bite him on the balls.

Jerking up his knee he caught George in the nose and broke
his grip. He bounded free, skipped and whipped about the pit like an Indian
dancing for rain.

He skipped and whooped by Preacher. Preacher's rattler had
quit twisting. It hung loosely from Preacher's tight fist. Its eyes were
bulging out of its head like the humped backs of grub worms. Its mouth was
closed and its forked tongue hung limply from the edge of it.

The copperhead was still watching the show from the safety
of Preacher's pocket, its tongue zipping out from time to time to taste the
air. The little snake didn't seem to have a care in the world.

George was on his feet again, and Harry could tell that
already he was feeling better. Feeling good enough to make Harry feel real bad.

Preacher abruptly realized that his rattler had gone limp.

"No, God no!" he cried. He stretched the huge
rattler between his hands. "Baby, baby," he bawled, "breathe for
me, Sapphire, breathe for me." Preacher shook the snake viciously, trying
to jar some life into h, but the snake did not move.

The pain in Harry's groin had subsided and he could think
again. George was moving in on him, and there just didn't seem any reason to
run. George would catch him, and when he did, it would just be worse because he
would be even more tired from all that running. It had to be done. The mating
dance was over, now all that was left was the intercourse of violence.

A black fist turned the flesh and cartilage of Harry's nose
into smouldering putty. Harry ducked his head and caught another blow to the
chin. The stars he had not been able to see above him because of the lights, he
could now see below him, spinning constellations on the floor of the pit.

It came to him again, the fact that he was going to die
right here without one good, last thought. But then maybe there was one. He
envisioned his wife, dumpy and sullen and denying him sex. George became her
and she became George and Harry did what he had wanted to do for so long, he
hit her in the mouth. Not once, but twice and a third time. He battered her
nose and he pounded her ribs.

And By God, but she could hit back. He felt something crack
in the center of his chest and his left cheekbone collapsed into his face. But
Harry did not stop battering her. He looped and punched and pounded her dumpy
face until h was George's black face and George's black face turned back to her
face and he thought of her now on the bed, naked, on her back, battered, and he
was naked and mounted her, and the blows of his fists were the sexual thrusts
of his cock and he was pounding her until-George screamed. He had fallen to his
knees. His right eye was hanging out on the tendons. One of Harry's straight
rights had struck George's cheekbone with such power it had shattered it and
pressured the eye out of its socket.

Blood ran down Harry's knuckles. Some of it was George's.
Much of it was his own. His knuckle bones showed through the rent flesh of his
hands, but they did not hurt. They were past hurting.

George wobbled to his feet. The two men stood facing one
another, neither moving. The crowd was silent. The only sound in the pit was
the harsh breathing of the two fighters, and Preacher who had stretched
Sapphire out on the ground on her back and was trying to blow air into her
mouth. Occasionally he'd lift his head and say in tearful supplication,
"Breathe for me, Sapphire, breathe for me."

Each time Preacher blew a blast into the snake, its white
underbelly would swell and then settle down, like a leaky balloon that just
wouldn't hold air.

George and Harry came together. Softly. They had their arms
on each other's shoulders and they leaned against one another, breathed each
other's breath.

Above, the silence of the crowd was broken when a heckler
yelled "Start some music, the fuckers want to dance."

"It's nothing personal," George said.

"Not at all," Harry said.

They managed to separate, reluctantly, like two lovers who
had just copulated to the greatest orgasm of their lives.

George bent slightly and put up his hands. The eye dangling
on his cheek looked like some kind of tentacled creature trying to crawl up and
into George's socket. Harry knew that he would have to work on that eye.

Preacher screamed. Harry afforded him a sideways glance.
Sapphire was awake. And now she was dangling from Preacher's face. She had
bitten through his top lip and was hung there by her fangs. Preacher was saying
something about the power to tread on serpents and stumbling about the pit.
Finally his back struck the pit wall and he slid down to his butt and just sat
there, legs sticking out in front of him, Sapphire dangling off his lip like
some sort of malignant growth.

Gradually, building momentum, the snake began to thrash.

Harry and George met again in the center of the pit. A
second wind had washed in on them and they were ready. Harry hurt wonderfully.
He was no longer afraid.

Both men were smiling, showing the teeth they had left. They
began to hit each other.

Harry worked on the eye. Twice he felt it beneath his fists,
a grape-like thing that cushioned his knuckles and made them wet. Harry's
entire body felt on fir~twin fires, ecstasy and pain.

George and Harry collapsed together, held each other,
waltzed about.

"You done good," George said, "make it
quick."

The black man's legs went out from under him and he fell to
his knees, his head between. Harry took the man's head in his hands and kneed
him in the face with all his might. George went limp. Harry grasped George's
chin and the back of his head and gave a violent twist. The neck bone snapped
and George fell back, dead.

The copperhead, which had been poking its head out of
Preacher's pocket, took this moment to slither away into a crack in the pit's
wall.

Out of nowhere came weakness. Harry fell to his knees. He
touched George's ruined face with his fingers.

Suddenly hands had him. The ramp was lowered. The crowd
cheered. Preacher-Sapphire dislodged from his lip--came forward to help Sheriff
Jimmy with him.

They lifted him up.

Harry looked at Preacher. His lip was greenish. His head
looked like a sunswollen watermelon, yet, he seemed well enough. Sapphire was
wrapped around his neck again. They were still buddies. The snake looked tired.
Harry no longer felt afraid of it. He reached out and touched its head. It did
not try to bite him. He felt its feathery tongue brush his bloody hand.

They carried him up the ramp and the crowd took him, lifted
him up high above their heads. He could see the moon and the stars now. For some
odd reason they did not look familiar Even the nature of the sky seemed
different.

He turned and looked down. The terriers were being herded
into the pit. They ran down the ramp like rats. Below, he could hear them begin
to feed, to fight for choice morsels. But there were so many dogs, and they
were so hungry, this only went on for a few minutes. After a while they came
back up the ramp followed by Sheriff Jimmy closing a big lock-bladed knife and
by Preacher who held George's head in his outstretched hands. George's eyes
were gone. Little of the face remained. Only that slick, bald pate had been
left undamaged by the terriers.

A pole came out of the crowd and the head was pushed onto
its sharpened end and the pole was dropped into a deep hole in the ground. The
pole, like a long neck, rocked its trophy for a moment, then went still. Dirt
was kicked into the hole and George joined the others, all those beautiful,
wonderful heads and skulls.

They began to carry Harry away. Tomorrow he would have
Elvira, who could do more tricks with a six inch dick than a monkey could with
a hundred foot of grapevine, then he would heal and a new outsider would come
through and they would train together and then they would mate in blood and
sweat in the depths of the pit.

The crowd was moving toward the forest rail, toward town.
The smell of pines was sweet in the air. And as they carried him away, Harry
turned his head so he could look back and see the pit, its maw closing in
shadow as the lights were cut, and just before the last one went out Harry saw
the heads on the poles, and dead center of his vision, was the shiny, bald pate
of his good friend George.

When the traveling preacher heard about the Widow Case and
her retarded girl, he set out in his black Dodge to get over there before
Halloween night Preacher Judd, as he called himself-though his name was really
Billy Fred William--had this thing for retarded girls, due to the fact that his
sister had been simple-headed, and his mama always said it was a shame she was
probably going to burn in hell like a pan of biscuits forgot in the oven, just
on account of not having a full set of brains.

This was a thing he had thought on considerable, and this
considerable thinking made it so he couldn't pass up the idea of baptizing and
giving some Godtraining to female retards. It was something he wanted to do in
the worst way, though he had to admit there wasn't any burning desire in him to
do the same for boys or men or women that were half-wits, but due to his sister
having been one, he certainly had this thing for girl simples.