Flesh Wounds, page 32
Death extended a hand and bade the old man come with him.
There arose a racket from the kitchen window. The old man turned to find them all crowded there: Love and Youth; Glory, Passion, Lust, and Joy; Camaraderie and Friendship; Courage and Vitality and Desire. They pounded on the window glass and begged him to come back into the house. Their tears broke his heart.
“Take my hand,” said Death.
“I cannot leave them,” cried the old man. “Without me, they will perish. It is I that keeps them alive, even as they keep me from you.”
“You’re wrong,” Death replied. “Their fears have made you blind to the truth. Take my hand and they will follow. Where you’re going there’ll be those with whom you’ll want to share these old friends.”
There was something in Death’s voice which denied all doubt. And what, wondered the old man, is more honest, more true, more real than Death? Only life. And that was fast crumbling behind him.
He stepped carefully down into the weeds and reached for Death’s hand, but at the last second drew back. “Wait.”
“What is it?”
“In a locked room upstairs...”
Patiently, Death smiled. “I’ve already set them free.”
The old man nodded. That was as it should be. With only a slight trepidation, he took the offered hand.
Ten Days in July
Wednesday, July 1, 1992.
This morning I accompanied George Lott to Fort Worth’s Tarrant County Courthouse. Around ten a.m. he pulled a Glock nine millimeter from a blue bag and with calm precision emptied all seventeen rounds from the weapon, gunning down Appellate Judges Ashworth and Hill and Assistant County District Attorney Chris Marshall. Lott reloaded, fired a few more rounds, then fled. In the stairwell he shot another man, Dallas Attorney John Edwards. Edwards and Marshall died on the scene. The others will survive, but any self-patronizing sense of security they once possessed will be impossible to recover.
I followed Lott as he left the building. At 4:15 p.m. he entered WFAA-TV in Dallas and asked to speak to the news anchorman. The young station employee who hassled Lott had no idea how close he came to being Lott’s next victim, but Lott finally relinquished his weapons, two guns and a knife, and was allowed to give his confession to the anchorman. In a divorce trial several years ago a Fort Worth jury awarded Lott’s wife custody of their son. Lott is presently up on charges in Illinois, where his wife resides, for sexually assaulting the boy. None of Lott’s victims had any connection to either of these cases; they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“It is a horrible, horrible thing I did today,” Lott told the anchorman. “I sinned. I am certainly wrong. But you have to do a horrible, horrible thing to catch people’s attention.”
Thursday, July 2, 1992.
Crossmaglen, Northern Ireland: I was there for a press release wherein the Irish Republican Army admitted responsibility for the murders of three alleged informers whose naked, battered bodies were left beside a road in Armagh. The Roman Catholic community of Armagh, known as a safe haven for the IRA, is sickened by the brutal killings, but they haven’t withdrawn their support or come forth to identify suspects.
Meanwhile, in Tokyo, Dr. Masahito Tokunaga was charged with murder. A 58-year-old cancer patient at Tokai University Hospital in Isehara had for some time begged the good doctor to put him out of his misery. Tokunaga finally relented and administered a lethal injection to the patient in April. He wasn’t formally charged until today. If found guilty, Tokunaga will spend the rest of his life in prison or be put to death... while the IRA salute one another and publicize their killings.
Friday, July 3, 1992.
Time and all that I have witnessed press at me this morning, relentless, suffocating, like the weight of the Pacific on its deepest trenches. Screw the Timekeepers; I couldn’t go out and do my job.
Still, I read the Los Angeles Times when it was delivered. Front page news:
The Defense Department has evidence indicating that several dozen United States soldiers who disappeared during the Korean War were captured and sent to China where they were submitted to psychological and medical experiments designed to determine how differences between blacks and whites affect their ability to withstand torture and interrogation. The ultimate fate of the captives is unclear, but the Defense Intelligence Agency concludes that those prisoners who did not die during the experiments were probably executed.
Around eleven p.m. I knew I had to do something or the next day would find me bedridden again. I plunged into the Atlantic just off Daytona Beach, sank to the bottom and scrubbed with coral until I bled. Scientists are still trying to determine what caused the 15-foot wave that hit 27 miles of Florida coastline. Hours later, I returned to the surface no cleaner in body or spirit.
Saturday, July 4, 1992.
Fairmont City, Illinois: Determined to make up for the day before, I arrived early. Another 100 railroad cars filled with New York City trash had arrived in the night. That brings the total to 22,000 tons of garbage which the good people of Illinois have taken off New York’s hands—for a price, of course. Another 20,000 tons of trash awaiting transfer to Illinois landfills is sitting on train cars in Sauget. As they wait—within 400 feet of a residential area—viscous poison sludge leaks from the railcars, slipping silent and deadly into the earth beneath the tracks, working deeper and deeper, looking for the water table. The EPA should be concerned, but it is, afterall, the Fourth of July.
As the garbage in Fairmont simmered in the summer sun, several cars burst into flames, burning in pretty yellows and blues, belching noxious black smoke. The smoke drove a cloud of moths from the sky. They swarmed about me, a maelstrom of black, red, and white lighting in my hair, on my shoulders, down the bow of my bare arms. As I left for Oklahoma, dozens of them accompanied me.
Shawnee, Oklahoma: I arrived in a flurry of tiny, talcum-dusted wings to find the man I sought wasn’t home. Watching the workmen loading furniture, I overheard that the house on North Beard Street no longer belonged to Dr. Sidney Laughlin. Bankruptcy. Perhaps there is some small measure of justice in the world afterall.
“No one lives there anymore,” said a small voice behind me. I turned to find a little girl, no more than six. She was staring at me with impossibly big brown eyes. Children, like moths, have a way of sometimes seeing what adults cannot. “Mama says that’s good, ‘cause he was a bad man,” the little girl added. “They found dead babies in his trash. I hope he rots in... in Hell!” She backed up a step as if I might chastise her for her language.
I smiled and dropped to one knee, “There is no Hell, little one.”
“Mama says there is!”
“It’s up to people like your mama to make this world right, not count on gods or devils or an afterlife to straighten it all out.”
Her sun-speckled face scrunched up and for a moment she was ready to argue, but then she pointed to the colorful moths that still clung to me. “What are those?”
“Hyalophora cecropia. A moth named after an ancient king.” I took one of the delicate insects on a fingertip and extended it to her.
She shook her head. “Mama says I can’t take things from strangers.”
The moth suddenly took to the air, apparently a signal to them all, for suddenly they abandoned me. The child and I watched as the swarm circled the house where Laughlin had performed illegal, late-term abortions, and then they were gone, a swarthy haze lost against the sun. “I have to go now,” I told the child. “Remember what I told you.”
“About the moth?”
“About making this world right.” I brushed the back of my hand against her cheek, felt warmth and youth and vitality glow like the promise of a new day.
And then I jumped to...
Paris, France: Beneath a moonless sky dominated by Saturn in the southeast and Jupiter in the northwest—two gods whose vigils have run far longer than mine—the French truck drivers set up their blockades, reclined with their wine and their music, and settled in for a quiet night of passive protest. But the music that night was the scream of tortured metal, the tinkle of shattered glass as it danced across asphalt, the stale hiss of blood on hot manifolds, and the soft sigh of last breaths. The truckers were protesting new driver’s license regulations. In the dark, dozens of motorists ran into the heavy rigs left blocking the highways. Three died. I sat with one of them into the quiet hours of the morning. In his last moments, he was perfectly aware of my presence.
“Are you Death?” he asked.
“No. I am only Cecrops.”
“Can you help me?”
“I cannot even help myself.”
“But my children—” He gasped. And he died. I looked up at the ambivalent faces of Saturn and Jupiter, wondered that they could not see the tears on my face.
Sunday, July 5, 1992.
I awoke to reports of Independence Day accidents: a half acre fire in L.A.; seven people hurt in Bel Air, Maryland, where debris from unexploded pyrotechnics fell on spectators; more spectators burned in New Ulm, Minnesota; a seven-year-old girl shot in the neck while attending a fireworks display in downtown Fort Worth... the list went on and on. Fireworks manufacturers don’t expect the accidents to affect next year’s sales.
After breakfast, Ireland again: Belfast’s North Howard Street, often called the “peace line” because it links the Catholic Falls and Protestant Shankhill districts. I watched Protestants with spiked wooden staves club a Roman Catholic to death. Religion is such a wonderful thing.
Then, Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavian republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. I toured the streets of Dobrinja, a Muslim suburb pounded incessantly with mortar, artillery, and Serbian sniper fire since fighting began in February. I walked the dangerous downtown neighborhoods surrounding the Maria Square District where tracer bullets haunt the night sky. And I visited the Koshevo Hospital where the innocent are brought to heal—or to die.
Monday, July 6, 1992.
Morning. Peru... with the sun slipping pretentious shafts of gold through the Andean summits to light the remote highland village of Huamamquiquia. A dog barked somewhere, but otherwise the village was quiet. The gunfire—and the screams—ended just moments before I arrived. Death carpeted the streets of Huamamquiquia that morning, a red carpet walked by resolute beams of light as the sun climbed the sky. As the sun struck each corpse I whispered the peasant’s name that it might not be forgotten.
Death’s entourage numbered eighteen. Men, women, and children. The Maoist Shining Path guerrillas who slaughtered these eighteen peasants are gone now, no closer to the objective of their insane 12-year war.
Northern Iraq: The attempted murder of French President Francois Mitterand’s wife. The bomb which missed Danielle Mitterand injured nineteen people and killed four. The dead included three Iraqis in the last vehicle of the motorcade—Kurdish guerrillas sent to guard Mitterand—and a 10-year-old boy standing nearby. The boy died in my arms asking what he’d done.
“Nothing,” I assured him, “You’ve done absolutely nothing. They’ll just never learn.”
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“Cecrops, once King of Attica. A long time ago I founded the city of Athens—Did you know they named it after me? Cecropia it was originally called. A beautiful city. I taught the Greeks marriage, respect for the dead, and—” The boy’s eyes fluttered and he was gone.
“—and I made them understand that blood sacrifices were no longer necessary.”
No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, but I saw who did it. I added their names to my list.
Tuesday, July 7, 1992.
Busy day. And a day, it seemed, for children. I spent the morning in Gulfport, Mississippi with Shannon and Melissa Garrison, ages 17 and 15. With the help of Melissa’s boyfriend, Allen Goul, also age 15, they jumped their mother in bed where they proceeded to stab, strangle, and smother the woman to death.
I did not try to stop them.
At an arson fire in Baltimore, I watched four children die horribly. Though they could hear me, they couldn’t see me in all the smoke. I don’t know what the Timekeepers would do if they had caught me calling out to the children.
I saw who set the fire.
Visalia, California: Asian gangs clashed over territory, killing one and wounding another. I didn’t try to reason with them.
I finished off the day by running with rioters in the Washington Heights area of New York City.
As I retired that evening I heard that Sauget, Illinois had issued an ultimatum concerning the 20,000 tons of NYC garbage sitting in their rail yard: the Oklahoma-based trash hauler responsible for the mess was given thirteen days to move the railcars. There was no mention of the garbage sitting in Fairmont; presumably it was properly placed in an Illinois landfill.
Wednesday, July 8, 1992.
The Garrison sisters came forth and confessed today. They’ll be charged as adults. Their mother’s winking out there somewhere, beyond Saturn and Jupiter, silently watching with the billions of others who’ve been sacrificed.
Today the Japanese slaughtered another minke whale in the name of research. Norway, having announced several weeks ago that they will no longer abide by the international ban on commercial whaling, shipped equipment to its Arctic processing plant in preparation for the slaughter of thousands more. Should I have expected the sacrifices to be confined to man?
The refuse in Sauget was moved to landfills in Litchfield and Staunton. Case closed. Unless you happen to live in Litchfield or Staunton.
I spent most of the day with Leo Wells, a drug addict in Norman, Oklahoma. Leo is HIV-positive, but refuses to refrain from unprotected sex. He’s popular at the local night clubs.
That evening I hopped from one city to the next. Eight murders in three hours. There may be a record there somewhere.
I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.
Thursday, July 9, 1992.
Topeka, Kansas. Connie Hayes walked out her front door just short of midnight. She was in her nightgown, having already been in bed when she remembered her errand. Connie’s an average woman, not particularly beautiful or smart, but a good mother and wife. A woman with a kind heart. Practical. Responsible. Her neighbors have always been able to rely on Connie when they leave town. There are the fish to feed, the plants to water...
As she crossed the suburban street, I saw in Connie Hayes everything stable about the human race. There was a certain beauty in her deliberate strides, a supple grace to the way she carried the extra pounds acquired bearing three children. Though the moon drew silver from her auburn tresses, Connie’s husband still thought her the most beautiful thing on Earth.
The star-studded sky was a bespattered drop clothe, Saturn watching from the southeast, Pegasus dominating the eastern skyline. Draco the Dragon was curled about the sky’s nexus, his diamond-shaped head almost directly overhead. Using Draco’s tail I found Ursa Major and, with Dubhe and Merak, the outermost stars in the dipper, I located Polaris, the North Star, at the tip of the Little Dipper.
Polaris. The truest of all. Always there, never setting. Eternal, yet apathetic, vigilance.
Polaris would have watched. They’d all have watched insouciantly as Connie Hayes walked up her neighbor’s driveway and into the house to feed the fish. The burglar there would have grabbed her and drug her into a back room to sodomize and rape her, quickly, brutally, for he’d realize he hadn’t much time before Connie’s husband would wonder what was taking her so long. When the burglar finished, he would have cut her throat.
It had already been written, in essence it had already happened, a probability which the Timekeepers had calculated to the thousandth decimal place. I had my schedule to keep. Occasional lapses—like the Friday before—were barely tolerated. I could fail to do my job, fail to watch, but it would still happen.
Connie Hayes would die.
I’d take down the murderer’s name for my own useless records—records I’d vainly shown the Timekeepers a hundred times—but the Tenth of July would dawn like any other day. Except Connie Hayes wouldn’t be in it.
But there’s always that element of uncertainty. That last thousandth of a percentage point that says the Timekeepers can’t be right every time. Thus, watchers like me. Watch and record. When nothing goes as planned, when the threads of time and reality fray and unravel, then the Timekeepers will step in.
As she crossed the street and started up the drive, her pink bedroom slippers going swish-swish on the cement, something in me screamed that enough was enough. I darted in front of her, called her name, did my best to block her way. She passed right through me.
“Connie!”
Halfway up the driveway. Shadows cast by streetlights and moon fought one another for her attention. I screamed and waved, jumping about like a mad man. For a second it seemed I’d caught her attention. She paused and seemed to listen, but for her the street was silent save for the buzzing of streetlights and insects. She couldn’t hear me.
Her momentary apoplexy passed and she started back up the drive.
Ten feet to the door.
I could have run to her house, awakened her children... They would have heard me. But there wasn’t time.
Five feet.
A cloud of moths circled the pale light over the drive.
Three.
The Cecropia Moth!
One.
She slipped the key into the lock and turned it, grasped the doorknob in her other hand, but the moths suddenly swarmed about her, a dark cloud that forced her back from the door. She let out a startled yell, not quite a scream, and swatted at the bright insects, stumbling back as if the door was the focus of their attention. The moths followed her.
She saw me.
The moths swirled up like a black tornado, climbing above our heads, lifting with such force that her hair floated on a muted breeze. Their circle widened and then, just as suddenly, plunged down to encapsulate us in a dark maelstrom of powdered heartbeats.
