The Impaler

hyperactive imagination, Eddie.”

“But you were the one who told me about the Civil War stuff.”

“I don’t remember,” said his grandfather. “I probably said all that just to make you feel better even though it wasn’t true. Like c’est mieux d’oublier. I used to say them words to you thinking they was magic. But look what happened? Them words ended up not being magic at all. If they was, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself kicked off the baseball team, now would ya? My own damn fault, I reckon. Wrong fucking equation and back to square one.”

Edmund had no idea what his grandfather was talking about, and asked, “But what about the medicine? You used to give it to me to make me feel better when I was hurt, but now you won’t anymore.”

“You’ve had too much of it,” his grandfather said simply. “Ain’t good for your head no more, I reckon. Besides, there ain’t none of it left.”

Chapter 47

Edmund got the idea to kill the cat from the buck his grandfather had mounted for him years earlier. He didn’t know why the image of the cat skewered on the deer’s antlers suddenly flashed in his mind while he was doing his geometry homework; and he most certainly didn’t know why it should be his first buck rather than all the others he and his grandfather had hung up in the den over the years. Perhaps, Edmund thought, it was because he had been daydreaming about pussy; about Erin Jones and their first time in the back of her cramped Honda Civic. She was sixteen, he was fifteen. His first time, not hers. Fun, but nothing special, and not nearly as exciting as he had thought it would be. But the idea of the cat suddenly excited him more than the memory of doing it with Erin Jones; excited him even more than the idea of doing it with Karen Blume, who had been the star of his jerk-off sessions for pretty much his entire sophomore year now.

Searching. Searching.

The cat? Was that what he had been searching for?

It felt like the answer, and for an entire week Edmund Lambert could not get the image out of his mind.

Edmund and his grandfather had about a half dozen cats roaming the property—all outdoors, all former strays. Two of the new ones were still feral, and only came out from under the back porch when Edmund set out their food. They hadn’t been fixed like the others, hadn’t even been named yet, and Edmund knew it was only a matter of time before another litter popped and he and Rally would have to cart them off to the shelter. Well, it was really Edmund who would have to take care of all that. Rally would just tag along for the ride like he always did. Claude Lambert preferred more and more to stay in the farmhouse—in the cellar, mostly, or in the den watching T V. The two men were well into their seventies now, retired, and Edmund had begun to think of them both as pretty fucking useless; had grown bored with them, and would often look for any excuse to get out of the house.

But the cats? Well, that was one reason to stick around.

Edmund knew how to catch the wild ones. He’d done it before with a can of tuna fish and a bottomless wooden crate with a hinged lid that his grandfather kept in the old horse barn. There were no more horses in the horse barn—only his Uncle James’s old van and some other junk behind which Edmund kept his stack of nudie books. Edmund rarely went in there anymore to look at them. No, in the last year or so, he had begun to feel confused when he looked at the pictures that had both men and women in them; would sometimes find his eyes drifting to the men, to their buttocks and their chests. Edmund didn’t think he was a “sodomite” as his grandfather and Rally called them. He still liked girls, still liked doing Erin Jones and hoped someday to do Karen Blume, too.

But still, sometimes, late at night, when his mind wandered …

There was no confusion about what Edmund wanted to do to the cat, however. And so one day while his grandfather was at Rally’s auto shop (which had been bought out by a nephew after the pudgy old man retired), fifteen-year-old Edmund Lambert latched the top of the crate closed and tied a clothesline through a hole in the lid; rigged everything up so the crate hung from a tree limb about three feet off the ground. He tied off the other end of the line on a chair leg a few yards away on the back porch. Then he clicked the top of a tuna fish can a few times, opened four of them, and set them beneath the crate.

All the cats came out of hiding immediately, but only the ones with names rushed to feed while Edmund was still there. Edmund didn’t want them. No, his grandfather and Rally liked those cats and would miss them; might ask questions and grow suspicious.

So Edmund sat on the porch and waited; untied the clothesline from the chair leg and held the crate aloft until the feral cats approached. And once all six of the cats were jostling for position around the tuna fish cans, Edmund let the crate drop. Three, including a feral one, got away immediately, but the others were trapped— meowing and hissing and batting against the inside of the crate in a panic. Edmund felt excited, but at the same time as if his actions were not his own. Like that time with his grandfather in woods when he ate the deer’s heart; felt as if he were standing a few feet away watching a robot who had been programmed by somebody else.

Either way, he knew exactly what to do.

Edmund walked over to the crate and picked up the pitchfork he’d leaned up against the other side of the tree. He undid the latch and, with some quick maneuvering, was able to corner the feral cat while the other two escaped. The cat hissed and screeched and clawed at the pitchfork points that held it down. And then, without thinking, Edmund skewered the creature through its back and belly. The cat let out a wail—started trembling and clawed at itself as it tried to escape. But Edmund pushed harder, then lifted the cat into the air as if he were baling hay. The cat shrieked and began to spasm, its movements impaling it farther down the pitchfork. The other cats were wailing now, too, watching from the woods and from underneath the porch. Edmund held the pitchfork at arm’s length as the cat began to twitch—a soft hissing coming from its mouth—and the blood began to drip down the handle and onto Edmund’s hand.

And then it was over.

Edmund twisted the pitchfork’s handle into the soft dirt, and when it would stand upright on its own, he stepped back a few feet and studied his work. His heart was beating wildly, and he felt exhilarated overall, but something was missing. Impulsively, he dipped his fingers in the cat’s blood and brought them to his mouth. The blood was warm and tasted coppery, and for some reason Edmund thought of the wind from his grandfather’s grinder in the workroom.

But something was still missing. And the more Edmund thought about it, the further away the answer seemed to be.

Later, after he buried the cat in the woods, Edmund lay in his bed wide awake, thinking and listening to the other cats outside as they mourned their fallen comrade. He felt no guilt, only confusion. And then the searching again—still there, creeping back in, the answer tomorrow maybe.

No, killing the cat and tasting its blood—at least that cat and that blood—wasn’t it. And Edmund Lambert felt as empty as he did before.

Chapter 48

Edmund’s first time with a man was with a lawyer named Alfred, an older gentleman he met in an AOL chat room called RaleighMen4Men. It was in the spring of 1998, during his senior year of high school, while he was still going hot and heavy with Karen Blume. Edmund liked Karen; well, he liked banging her, but didn’t really enjoy spending time with her, and often found himself thinking strange thoughts when they were together.

He wondered what it would be like if he did things to her: things like he had done to the cat; things like he had done to some of the other animals he’d captured over the last couple of years— squirrels, mice, a possum or two, and that stray dog. And of course, there were more cats. So many cats.

Edmund had also fixed up his uncle’s old van, and his favorite fantasy involved drugging Karen and driving her out into the woods, where he would park the van and set up a little workshop with the tools he had brought along to play with her. But at the same time Edmund suspected that doing those kinds of things to Karen Blume wouldn’t be worth the risk and wouldn’t satisfy him in the long run.