Flesh Wounds, page 5
“Merry Christmas to you, too.”
Closing the door behind her, she stopped in the hall and stood there for a long minute, hand on the knob. Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller—could she get it on compact disk or would she have to find an old album at an auction? It would have been nice to have given it to the old man tomorrow for Christmas. Obviously no one else had remembered him.
A cold breeze kissed her ankles. Drafty old place, she thought, just before she realized that the chill was coming from under the old man’s door. She turned and pushed it open. Swept her eyes around the empty room, across the deserted bed, to the curtains blowing back from the open window. The old man’s pajamas lay on the floor. She ran to the window and looked out, but there was only the wind and the cold and the moonlight.
And a set of tracks leading out across the snow toward the security wall.
Wolf tracks.
From somewhere beyond the wall came an echoing howl...
The Woodshed
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
–Henry David Thoreau, Walden
My father took me out to the woodshed for the first time when I was twelve years old.
I had just broken a promise to him—not my first, but the first that he’d caught me at. I’d promised to have nothing more to do with Benjamin Conley, who had already gotten me in more trouble in the last year than all of my first eleven put together. I’d snuck out my window so Bennie and I could hang out with some of the older boys down at the drive-in. There’d been ‘shine and pot, and enough of the older boys had taken a liking to Bennie and me so that we got samples. Daddy didn’t catch me going out, but he caught me coming in just before dawn. The things he smelled on me had clenched his fists and narrowed his eyes.
The woodshed sat out behind our family farm in Hays, Kansas, nestled among the scrub oaks and junipers. The walls were rough hewn pine, dove-tailed at each corner. The planks seeped a sweet, sticky tar in the hot summer and glazed over like amber in the winter cold. The roof was shake cedar shingles, moldy black with age. I’d never been in the woodshed before because for as long as I could remember the door had sported the largest padlock known to man. And besides, “woodshed” was a misnomer. I’d been sent out after firewood often enough to know that it was stacked out back of the livestock shed.
Daddy’s breath caught in the frigid air that morning as he fumbled with the lock. I’d never thought much about where the key to that lock was kept, and it came as some surprise to see him pull it from around his neck. Oh, I’d had my moments of curiosity about the woodshed. More than once I’d pressed my face against the walls and tried to peer through the cracks between the planks. But always, no matter how bright it was outside and no matter what the angle of the sun, within there was nothing but the deep dark of a root cellar. This little mystery became all the more inexplicable when I first saw the woodshed from the inside and discovered just how much light actually seeped through the unevenly spaced planks.
Daddy pushed me through the door first, then he stepped in behind me and swung it shut behind us. How do I describe what I saw? Where does one find the words to relate the impossible? I know at that moment I couldn’t process what my eyes conveyed to my brain. All I could do was stand there, arms at my sides, eyes wide and mouth dropped open, and listen as my Daddy’s voice broke the cold, still air in the shed.
“There are some things we say to people, son, that don’t amount to a hill of beans. But there are other things, important things, that become promises which are marked against a man’s soul like the devil’s own scorecard. It’s these promises you don’t want to break, son. It’s these promises that ride your soul to Hell and beyond. And guilt, well, guilt is the least of it.”
There was a hickory switch leaning just inside the door, its four-foot length stained a rusty red. My father took the switch and stepped to the first man hung on the walls of the woodshed, a naked man of muscle and taut sinew, hairy thighs and knotted biceps. His eyes were wild and he began to beg, twisting against the railroad spikes that had fixed him to the wall at wrists and ankles.
I watched while my Daddy beat that man. Watched as the man screamed and begged, as red welts rose on his flesh and then split open. Watched as blood trickled down his body to paint the clotted mud at his feet. I watched as my Daddy sobbed and struck again and again, his own stout frame flinching with every slap of the switch. “This man,” Daddy wept, “this man broke a promise to your mother, son. This man slept with another woman.”
When it was over, Daddy moved on to the next man, a frail, weasel-like character whose bones showed through his skin like the print on the backside of a Sunday paper. This one bit his lip and took his no less brutal beating in stoic silence. “This man,” Daddy wept, “cheated his first business partner.”
And so it went, around the four walls of the shed, until at last we’d come full circle and my Daddy stood there with blood running down that hickory switch and over his hand, blood splattered on his overalls, his shoulders slumped and his back bent like a man twice his age. He didn’t look at the whimpering, sobbing, bleeding men on the walls. He didn’t look at any of them... though each wore Daddy’s face.
“Every broken promise, son,” Daddy all but whispered, handing me the switch. “You lock them up inside and you live with them. You build a woodshed and you hide them best you can, but you know they’re there. You know.” And my Daddy walked out, leaving me holding that bloody switch, staring at the things he’d done and regretted, at the weaker men that he’d been. I stood there for what seemed like hours, listening to them cry and beg for help, hearing the dripping of their blood. Finally, I dropped the switch and walked out, careful to lock the door behind me.
In the years that followed, I thought an awful lot about that woodshed. I wondered whether I really saw what I thought I saw or whether Daddy had simply pressed a rather horrifying metaphor so firmly into my impressionable young mind that I invented the whole thing. I asked myself why Daddy hung on to such a place, why he never just burned it to the ground, and I came to the conclusion—brought about more by hard experiences of my own than through any deductive reasoning—that there are some things for which you never forgive yourself. These are the things Daddy stored in his woodshed, not the petty betrayals of everyday life, not the meaningless lies that you forget with time. You carry these broken promises inside you and you torture yourself with them. Guilt, as Daddy said, is the least of it. The pain you inflict on yourself is far worse.
Why keep such a place? I believe that without guilt, without our woodsheds, we become monsters. Immoral men don’t own woodsheds.
I’d like to say that I never saw my father’s woodshed again, but I did. When my parents died, the farm was passed on to me. Among the personal effects returned by the mortuary was that key.
I went out to the woodshed with matches and a five gallon gas can in tow, meaning to burn the evil place to the ground now that my Daddy was gone, but curiosity is a tough meal to pass over. I wondered whether his tortured pasts were still hung there on the walls. I wondered what it would mean to set them free. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, expecting to see either Daddy’s pitiful facsimiles or an empty room, but what I found was completely unexpected.
Already, hung shoulder to shoulder, were several of my own weakest moments.
I dropped the gas can.
Picked up the switch.
Night Bite
Bernie found the flyer atop the television in his hotel room.
He was the type that never let anything go unread. It wasn’t in him to pass up the pastel-blue flyer with its neat black type.
“Damn,” he muttered as he caught the words hot tub and closed near the bottom of the page.
ATTENTION
DUE TO AN EPIDEMIC OF ENCEPHALITIS (SLEEPING SICKNESS) BELIEVED TO BE TRANSMITTED BY MOSQUITOS IN THE ORLANDO AREA, THE OSCEOLA COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH RECOMMENDS THAT GUESTS NOT BE OUTDOORS UNNECESSARILY AFTER SUNDOWN.
IF IT IS NECESSARY TO BE OUTDOORS AFTER DARK FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT PROTECTIVE CLOTHING (LONG SLEEVE SHIRTS AND LONG PANTS) BE WORN. IN ADDITION, IT IS ADVISABLE TO UTILIZE A BUG REPELLANT SPRAY OR LOTION.
IN ORDER TO REDUCE THE RISK OF INFECTION, THE SWIMMING POOLS, HOT TUBS, AND TENNIS COURTS WILL BE CLOSED AT SUNSET.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND COOPERATION.
HYATT MANAGEMENT STAFF
Bernie crumbled the flyer and hurled it at a squat metal wastebasket in the corner.
After a day spent traveling from Seattle to Orlando, he’d been looking forward to basking in the hotel’s outdoor hot tub. Disney, EPCOT, Shamu, and the thousands of tourist traps held little allure for him. He’d planned to spend his free time while at the convention center soaking in steaming water with bubbles shooting up his ass.
And they were trying to tell him he couldn’t because of some fucking insect?
No way.
It was already dark outside. He’d walked safely from the taxi to the lobby and from the lobby to his room without being attacked by rabid mosquitos. Why should he worry about them now?
Encephalitis? What the hell was that anyway? The flyer had called it the sleeping sickness. Certainly didn’t sound very serious. He put it out of his mind and started unpacking.
Taking out the clothes his wife had packed, he thought of her stoic silence when he’d left that morning for the airport. After what he’d seen in the bathroom, he didn’t know if he’d ever see Charlotte again—wasn’t even sure he wanted to. He knew he hadn’t handled the situation. He refused, even now, to face it. He’d wasted what little time they’d had trying to explain why he’d come back from the office—as if that were a crime!
Hanging up his clothes, Bernie saw, but chose to ignore his reflection in the mirrored closet door. He was a tall man, early forties, dark of complexion and hair, six foot two inches tall and 255 pounds. His shirt was stretched taut across an ample belly beneath which his belt was long lost and upon which his necktie, tied too short, lay like a dead thing. Receding hairline, jowls that hung like a tired old hound’s, and crow’s feet completed the picture.
Bernie Dewitt had looked different in college. Though he’d weighed nearly the same, his bulk had been muscle. Knee injuries, an inability to tolerate the bullshit that accompanied collegiate sports, and Charlotte got him off the football field. Though his father never understood, Bernie knew that getting off the team was the smartest move he ever made.
Everyone but Charlotte thought he’d drop out of college. They said he couldn’t cut it without the athletic scholarship and all the special allowances made for campus jocks. Bernie proved them wrong by graduating with an engineering degree. He took a job with Boeing, married Charlotte, and packed his meager belongings. In Seattle, he settled down to life behind a desk. A life where the muscle he’d cultivated in his youth slowly withered and softened, leaving him the man he was embarrassed to face in the mirror today. The man whose father still called him a “quitter.”
More than once he’d considered changing his life. He could exercise—even take up sports again. But the sedentary life agreed with Bernie. It allowed him ample time to pursue his one obsession: reading.
When he finished putting away his clothes, Bernie set his shaving kit on the sink beside a wicker basket stocked with complimentary toiletries. He changed into swimming trunks, grabbed a towel and the plastic door key, and headed for the hot tub.
The guest rooms at the Orlando Hyatt were arranged in four clusters landscaped about the main lobby, convention center, and exhibit hall. Each cluster circled its own pool, playground, and hot tub. Out front, shielded from the traffic on Highway 192 by ancient oaks draped in Spanish moss, sat two tennis courts and a heliport.
Bernie found the hot tub situated within a raised redwood platform. A weathered fence lent some privacy, although it was low enough to discourage sexual liaisons. The air surrounding the tub smelled, rightly so, of chlorine. Spotlights along the top of the fence normally lit the enclosure, but since it was officially closed the lights were off.
There was a lock on the gate, but no one had bothered to snap it shut. Bernie let himself in.
Despite an evening temperature in the upper seventies, a cloud of steam hung over the water like a bank of swamp gas, lending the gazebo-like enclosure a pretense of mystery. Without the floodlights, the tub was a dark, mist-shrouded pool in the night, still and calm, hiding secret futures, forgotten pasts.
A cold premonition crawled on razored feet up Bernie’s back. He felt certain that something terrible was waiting beneath the flaccid surface. His wasn’t a childish fear. No Loch Ness monster all fins and teeth. No corpse all bloated and blue. Inexplicably, he feared that the hot tub held some turning point for him. Good or bad, it was change, and Bernie hated change.
A second later, he laughed and shrugged it off. Next, he thought, I’ll be listening for mosquitos.
Just inside the gate, Bernie found the timer for the water jets. He turned it on and the water erupted in noisy turmoil.
His body let out a long, satisfied sigh as the tub’s bubbling warmth enveloped his flesh. He spread his arms along the tub’s rim, leaned his head back, and smiled up at the night.
There were dancing lights in the sky, a Close Encounters special effects session played across a heavy blanket of clouds. It startled him at first, until he realized Disney World was only two miles away on 192, and what he was seeing must be spotlights from the Magic Kingdom. Amused, he watched the spectral dance of lights. The lights seemed to weave a pattern, each light tracing a separate course that, combined, made up a greater whole. He felt certain there was a message being written across the face of the clouds—if only he could read it.
Suddenly, something pricked his right arm. It was but the tiniest of pinpricks, a minute tingling as his skin was penetrated, yet when he turned his head to behold his assailant, the tiny insect seemed gargantuan. Its slender body squatted on six long legs. Its translucent wings were narrow and fringed with tiny scales. Two slender antennae waved above its head. Its sucking tube, thrust deep into Bernie’s forearm, worked in and out like the cheeks of a child with milkshake and straw.
Its stomach was already bloated.
Bernie swatted at the parasite, missed, and ducked half underwater as it buzzed his head. It flew a slow circle over the roiling surface of the hot tub, rising fat and heavy in the steam, then swept back for second helpings. Bernie let it land on his left arm, but before it could lance him, he smashed it.
The crushed insect left a smear of thick red blood and black body parts. Bernie stared at it, revolted yet somehow fascinated by the smear of mingled body fluids. Finally, he dunked his arm underwater and rubbed fiercely to clean away the mess.
By the dim light from the surrounding buildings, Bernie inspected his arm. Because he couldn’t even find where the mosquito had bitten him, he had trouble getting overly excited about it. Surely an encephalitic bug bite would swell or show some signs of irritation? And, of the billions of mosquitos hunting the Orlando area, what were the odds that he’d just been bitten by one carrying encephalitis? With this logic, he convinced himself there was nothing to worry about.
Still, he thought as he searched the gloom for more of the bloodsuckers, maybe it’s time to call it a night. He yawned, realizing how tired he was.
Halfway to his room, Bernie heard a buzzing and broke into a run. It wasn’t until he had slammed the building’s door behind him that he allowed himself to catch his breath. He was breathing hard and his legs felt rubbery. He had to lean one hand against the wall to steady himself.
“Damn, I’m really getting out of shape when a little run like that leaves me winded.”
Stumbling down the hall, he realized his eyes were tired as well—he was having trouble focusing. He found his room and managed, on the third try, to get the plastic card in its slot. When the door clicked softly, he withdrew the card and stumbled inside. The door closed behind him on its own.
On his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth, Bernie mumbled, “To hell with it; I’m too tired.” He slipped out of his wet swimming trunks, caring not that they dropped in a sopping pile on the floor. He crawled blindly between the sheets without bothering to chain the door, leave a wake-up call, or even turn off the lights.
Professor Dante slapped the wall chart with his pointer. “Order Diptera. Family Culicidae. There are many types known to man, but the most important genera are the Culex, Aedes, and Anopheles.”
Bernie didn’t even wonder why his college professor was suddenly conducting a class in the hotel room. He searched for a pen so he could take notes. It was important that he pass Dante’s exam. Without at least a B on the test he would flunk, and that meant losing his football scholarship. Dante was one of the few professors Coach Wyndom couldn’t buy.
“The mosquito has been known to spread many diseases: yellow fever, malaria, dengue, filariasis—”
“What about encephalitis?” Bernie interrupted.
“Oh, yes. That too.”
Bernie held out his arm. It had swollen to twice its normal size and turned a gangrenous grey. The bite itself was a volcano-shaped eruption, ripe with oozing yellow pus, nucleus to a host of angry red striations meandering out like the radial spokes of a twisted wheel.
“Look what he did to me,” Bernie moaned.
“She, my boy. Only the female mosquito feeds on warm blood. The male is quite content with plant juices.” The professor switched off the lights and turned on an eight millimeter projector. “Let me show you how she does it.”
The screen came to life, focused on a blue-black monster squatting on a flesh-colored plateau amidst a forest of slender, golden stalks. It took Bernie a moment to realize the landscape was a human arm. The camera zoomed in for a mosquito close-up.
