“No need to be so formal,” he said. He examined the blade and then laid it down on Geiger’s left quadricep, four inches above the knee joint. “We’ll work upward. I think that’s what your father did. When I reach the groin-if we get that far-I’m going to cut off your testicles.”
Dalton pressed the blade down evenly. The entire length of it sliced into the flesh.
The boy lay facedown, naked, on a bench in the great room. The music played softly. “I see my light come shining…”
His father stood over him, holding the pearl-handled razor.
“What do we know, son?” he said.
“Life makes us ache for the things we think we need, and the pain makes us weak.”
“So what must we do?”
“Embrace the pain, a little each day, and grow strong.”
Behind his glasses, Dalton’s eyes narrowed as he examined his handiwork. The altered razor left a puckered, four-inch incision whose jagged edges sent the blood flowing in different directions across Geiger’s thigh.
“Tell me where the boy is, Geiger.”
Geiger’s father laid the blade down on his upper thigh.
“Steady now, boy.”
It had been years since he had flinched or made a sound during the ritual, but his father still prompted him each time.
“Say it with me, son,” he directed, and they chanted together softly.
“Your blood, my blood, our blood…”
“Your blood, my blood, our blood,” mumbled Geiger.
Dalton, about to make his third cut, had stopped to wipe Geiger’s blood off his gloves when the slurred words slipped out.
“What did you say?”
He slapped Geiger across the face, smearing his cheeks with his own blood.
“Geiger, you said something. What did you say?”
Geiger’s father drew the honed edge across the flesh, opening a thin, wet, red crevasse. The boy stayed rock-still. He was watching the music inside his head.
“Did it hurt, son?”
“It didn’t hurt, Father.”
“The truth?”
“Yes.”
“Good. In a world of liars, pain will always bring the truth. When I’m gone, that may serve you well.”
Dalton bent down and rested his hands on Geiger’s knees.
“Tell me where the boy is.”
Geiger’s lids fluttered and rolled up. Dalton peered at him; it was like looking into the windows of an abandoned house.
“It didn’t hurt, Father,” said Geiger.
Dalton looked to the viewing room. “Hall! I’m not sure what we’ve got here!”
The viewing room door opened.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Hall said.
“The light’s on but nobody’s home. See for yourself.”
Hall moved toward Geiger. He was becoming increasingly aware of a heavy weariness-not some existential burden or crisis of conscience but a palpable weight, like a ball and chain trailing from an ankle. He’d put in almost twenty years. Nothing got simpler; everything got more complicated, more opaque. No one really knew anything anymore.
Hall stopped beside the barber’s chair.
“I’m not going to bullshit you,” said Dalton. “I don’t really know where he is.”
“Where he is?”
“I’ve never seen anything like this before. Believe it or not, I’m not sure he’s feeling this.” Dalton adjusted his glasses. “It’s like he feels the pain, but it…”
“But it what?”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Cut him again. Let me see what happens.”
Dalton made another cut. Geiger’s pupils and nostrils flared, his hands balled up, and the muscles in his forearms visibly hardened. But he made no sound and showed no other response.
Hall grabbed him by the sides of his head with both hands. “Do you want to die? Is that it?” He bent down and spoke directly into Geiger’s face. “Have you ever seen someone bleed out?”
Geiger shook from the rumble of the churning steel roaring toward him. It was nearly on top of him now.
“Because I have, man-and you wouldn’t want a rabid dog to die like that. You hear me?”
But what Geiger heard was a different voice calling to him. And as his eyelids fell, the memory train plowed into him, shattering his view of Hall and the room around him, revealing another, more vibrant world beyond.
“Son! Come here, son!”
The boy came out of the cabin and headed up the side of the mountain. It was dark, but there was a good moon and he could make his way through the woods without much difficulty.
“Son! Where are you?”
His father’s voice, higher-pitched than usual, seemed to be bouncing off the dense trees, but he had a general sense for where it was coming from.
“I’m coming, Father!”
Something made him start running. It had been raining all week, and his shoes sank into the wet ground with each step.
“The truck, son! Do you see the truck?”
The boy ran a bit farther and then spotted the pickup’s dim silhouette about fifty feet away. Leaning downhill, the truck looked like a bull with its head lowered, ready to charge. He could see that its bed was filled with freshly cut four-foot sections of a tree.
“Yes-I see it!”
“Come to the truck! Come around!”
His father lay on his back, pinned beneath the left rear tire, which rested on his thighs. The upper half of his father’s body was visible in the moonlight, but his lower legs were obscured by the truck’s wheel. To the boy, his father looked like some mythological creature, a half man who must have angered the gods.
“I can’t move, son. The truck got stuck. I was trying to jam some wood under the tires when the brake slipped.” Rising from the waist with a growl, he pushed against the tire but couldn’t free his legs. He lay back down, his chest rising and falling violently. “Come pull me out.”
The boy moved behind his father, crouched down, and put his arms around his chest.
“Now pull, son, on three-pull hard! One, two, three!”
With a roar, his father shoved against the tire again and the boy pulled. But his shoes slid from under him in the mud and he fell.
“Again, son. Try again.” The boy got back up, arms tight around his father. “One, two, three!”
They pulled and pushed, but the result was the same. His father flopped back into the boy’s lap. Exhausted, they huffed in unison, drizzle tapping at their faces.
“What are we going to do, Father?”
“Find some rocks and branches and jam them under the other three tires. Then try and drive the truck
