The Road Out of Hell (18 page)

“Sanford?” Walter whispered like he was telling a secret.
“You’re
not mad at me, are you, Sanford?”

“No, Walter. I’m not mad at anybody. Keep washing, though, all right? You need to get clean.”

“Can’t we go now? While he’s in there sleeping? Why can’t we just go now?”

“Walter, I am trying to help you when I say that you really,
really
do need to get nice and clean. It will make things better for you. I promise.” Walter resumed his useless patting of damp hands over his chest and arms, staring into the night like a blind man. His teeth chattered away. “Walter, can you see me?”

“Oh, yes. I see you, Sanford.”

“How come you’re not looking at me?”

The question confused Walter. He strained to think. Meanwhile, he resumed wetting his hands and patting the water over himself with more energy, as if he could physically work hard enough to force the answer from his brain. “Okay,” Walter replied.

“Okay what, Walter?”

“Okay, I am really gonna wash all clean, face and ears and hands and feet.” He cupped his hands, filled them with water, spilled it over his head, and immediately did it again, over and over, moving now as fast as he could.

“That’s good, Walter. You’re doing just right. It’s what you have to do, that’s all. Sometimes he goes softer on you when you do it all just perfect.”

“Do what perfect?”

“Anything he says. It doesn’t matter.”

“So as long as I get all clean like ready for Sunday School, he won’t be mad?”

“No. Not about that. But he can always get mad about something else. All you can do is see to it that he doesn’t have any reason to get mad after he said clear as day that he wants you clean.”

“Okay. I’m washing. Like this?”

“I think you’re getting there.”

Walter kept at it with vigor, breathing hard through his chattering teeth. “Sanford?”

“Come on, Walter. Let’s get finished up here.”

“Does he get mad at you?”

“Huh?” It was Sanford’s turn to be slapped by a question that stopped him cold. “Oh … yeah.”

“Okay, then! So you know! There must be something! What do you do? What do
you
do? To stop it?”

“God damn it, Walter! What did you come out here for, anyway?” Sanford shouted.

“It was supposed to be a ranch!”

“Chicken ranch! Chicken ranch, Walter! Stinking birds!”

“But there were horses! There was a pony that loved little boys because it broke its leg and a little boy saved it who looked just like me and so the pony was going to love me right off just like we were old friends.” He finally stopped, still staring around into the darkness.

Sanford found himself breathing so hard that it was making him dizzy. His chest was gripped in a corset of muscle tension. He leaned on the pump handle for support. “Listen, Walter. No—keep washing, don’t stop! He could be looking! Now it’s simple: you do whatever he wants. Damn it, don’t you know this shit by now? Do not
ever
argue with him! And most of all, Walter, never beg him for anything. Don’t beg! Even if you think you have to,
never do it!”
He swallowed hard and added, “It only makes him worse.”

That one hit Walter like a spear to the chest. “Oh, my Lord Jesus, Sanford. Oh, my Lord Jesus!”

“Keep washing! All right, listen: there is this one thing you can do—I learned it the hard way, let me tell you—when he hits you and knocks you down, what you do is, you kind of jerk your legs a couple of times. People do that when they get knocked out. It’s like little convulsions. He likes to see it.”

“I’ve seen people get knocked out in the movies. They never do that.”

“Movies are lies that Hollywood tells ugly people to make them feel so bad they go out and buy things to feel better. All you need to know is that it’s better for you when he’s happy. Keep washing.”

“I am washing. Sanford?”

“What, Walter? What?”

“Then when I do everything right, he’s going to let me go, isn’t he?”

“He always lets them go, Walter.” Sanford spoke with a certainty that he did not feel, but hoped it would comfort Walter a little.

“Are you sure?”

“You don’t see any others around here, do you? There’s been plenty of you guys here. He claims that the reason he brings you guys here in the first place is because he gets tired of me. When he has you here, he leaves me alone until he gets tired of you. I think his favorite thing is getting tired of somebody, doesn’t matter who—gives him an excuse to go all haywire.”

“How come you know this stuff?”

This time their eyes finally met straight on, but the connection was too hot for Sanford to hold. He had to turn back toward the desert. “… You missed a spot, Walter.”

For the first two days of Grandma Louise’s visit, everything came off without a hitch. She and Sanford stayed busy searching out any dead or dying birds so they could be separated from the others before they spread any illness around. The birds looked pretty good to Sanford, but when he mentioned it, Uncle Stewart threw three eggs at him, one after the other, that all hit him in the back and dripped down his shirt and coveralls. He was not allowed to leave work to go in and wash up. Sanford secretly railed at himself for slipping like that. It could have fatal consequences.

Uncle Stewart warned Sanford not to go near the shed for any reason. Sanford caught sight of Uncle Stewart making his way out to the supposedly empty shed on two different occasions, but he never saw him taking any food or water there. He told himself that he must have missed seeing the times when Uncle Stewart took some sort of nourishment out there. There was no purpose in starving Walter, and he would be less likely to complain to his family later on if he was at least well fed.

On the third day of Grandma Louise’s visit, just before Uncle Stewart was to give her a ride back into the city, Sanford set the table for a light supper. Uncle Stewart sat sipping coffee and waiting to be served while Louise was supposed to be out feeding the rabbits. He was facing the pantry when she entered the house, but the sounds of her feet stomping across the floor spun him around just in time to see her smack Uncle Stewart’s head with the flat of her hand. Sanford noticed that she did it the same way that Uncle Stewart did it to him.

“Hey! What the—?”

“You filthy bastard!” She fairly hissed. “Why don’t you just take out your gun and shoot every one of us
right now?”

“What? Are you going nuts?”

“I swear to God, Stewart! Why in the name of Jesus Himself didn’t you just wait until we were asleep and then shoot us in the Goddamned head?
Why?”

“Hey, you better tell me what you’re talking about before I start to take this personally.”

“Before you
what?
Oh, you better shut up this time, son. You don’t know how much I know already.”

“I know that it’s been a long time since I slapped you down to the—”

“I just talked to him, Stewart!”

There was a rancid pause. “I see. You, ah, you went out to my locked shed then, did you, Mother?”

“Locked, nothing! Don’t you forget who paid for this farm. Oh, I’ve watched you sneak out there more than once. Got curious about my boy’s special interest. You always have such interesting little projects. And then you keep the keys over there on the mantel? I thought that was an invitation to meet your new boy.”

“That kid? Walter? Oh, don’t tell me you believed anything he told you? He lies every time he opens his mouth! He’s as useless as a piss hard-on!”

“A piss hard-on. You’re joking at a time like this?”

“It was no joke, you should have seen it! Ha! No, really, though. What did he try to tell you?”

“He
tried to tell me
that he was sorry. Sorry, Stewart. He kept on saying it: sorry, sorry, sorry. He said his mother told him that you seemed nice. Oh, and he wants you to know that he doesn’t care that you don’t have a pony. Jesus, Stewart!
A pony?”

“All right. I know how this has got to look to you.”

“Stop right there. Son, I have turned my back on your ‘special interests,’ year after year. We moved our family out of Canada and hoped to leave your ‘special interests’ behind. My advice and my protection has kept you
out of jail
because of your ‘special interests.’”

“I appreciate—”

“Now you have rewarded me by taking a risk with somebody who knows you!”

“He doesn’t know me.”

“He’s got a mother out there who
met
you! Did you go retarded on us, Stewart? Did you do that?”

Sanford could only watch in horrified fascination while Uncle Stewart’s lower lip began to quiver. Seconds later, he burst into tears and embraced his mother. “Oh, all right, I can’t ever fool you, Mommie-mommie. I don’t know why I even try. You catch me in every lie I ever try to tell.”

“Don’t you ever forget that, either. Now. What did you go and do this time?”

Through his blubbering sobs, Uncle Stewart squeezed out the words. “I just lost control, Mama. You know I hardly ever do that any more, and this one time I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to, Mother. But by the time I woke up and realized what I had been doing to him, it was too late.”

“This is why you really wanted me here, isn’t it, Stewart?”

“It is, Mom. You’re right again.”

“All of that shit about sick birds. Do you know that I used up my days off for the entire month to come out here?”

“I don’t care how much people ever laugh at me for being sick in the head, Mama, I will always love you and be grateful to my sweet mother for all of her help.”

“Well, you better be.”

“I am.”

“All right. The quietest way to kill him is to use an ax. Every one of us will strike a blow on the boy so none of us can ever talk about it.” A wordless rush of air blasted out through Sanford’s lips. It was all the protest Grandma Louise would stand for. “Shut up, or you’re next. What kind of a boy are you that you don’t understand the bond between a mother and her son? Stewart, you pull Sanford along and meet me in the shed.”

“What are we supposed to tell the boy?” Uncle Stewart asked.

“Not a thing. He’s in there asleep. I stayed with him until he drifted off. So I’ll be the one to go out and brain him first. It will be an act of mercy for the poor child. A blessing that he fell asleep with me cooing to him, almost like his own dear mother. The next thing he knows, I will have personally delivered him unto the arms of the Lord.” She turned back to Sanford. “Then I am going to have to see you hit him too. I want you to hit him whether he’s dead or not.”

Sanford was too horrified to speak while he dragged himself along with them out to the shed. Surely, he thought, there’s some other story for this. It has to be a trick, or maybe some sort of a false alarm. She must be teaching Uncle Stewart a lesson somehow. It simply could not be that Grandma Louise was going out to murder that skinny little boy to keep him quiet about her son. But then a thought hit Sanford like a mugger springing from the shadows: unless he gets it from her.

His knees nearly buckled. He stopped beside Uncle Stewart at the doorway of the shed while Grandma Louise went inside. She quietly set the lantern down on the floor next to the canvas-and-steel camp cot where Walter Collins lay asleep. Without any hesitation at all, she squinted one eye at the top of Walter Collins’s head and raised the ax high, blunt end forward. She brought it down the way a lumberjack swings at a heavy log. It landed with a sickening thud of mush and bone, with Walter’s head braced as it was against the cot’s metal frame. Walter blew out a huge exhalation of air and that was all. He might have made a tiny little moan after that, or it could have been the last of the air escaping from his lungs. There was no way to be sure. Working by the hellish lantern light, Grandma Louise raised the ax again and delivered two more hammering blows to the head of the unmoving boy. She then matter-of-factly turned and handed the ax to Sanford.

He refused to take it and hurled himself backward, retching and gagging in horror. That angered Uncle Stewart so much that he swung a smaller hatchet, which he had picked up outside, at Sanford. Sanford threw up his left arm in self-defense and it bore the brunt of the blade’s impact. The shock of the blow was awful and his arm dropped uselessly to his side. Blood flowed through his clutched fingers, but he saw at once that no major veins or arteries were severed. He had chopped off enough chicken heads to be able to tell that.

“Let go of your arm and take the ax,” Uncle Stewart quietly demanded. Grandma Louise held it out to him one more time. Sanford gagged again and began to cry, even though he knew how much Uncle Stewart hated that. He could practically see the Grim Reaper waiting for him to give Uncle Stewart and Grandma Louise just the excuse they needed to finish him off right there. He forced himself to release his throbbing arm and then reached out a trembling hand to take the ax.