ready to walk away. But then that little knot came inside me. I don’t know how to describe it. A knot of anxiety? A knot of tension? Almost the kind of feeling you get before jumping off the highest board at the pool for the first time. It gets tighter and tighter inside me. Muscles in my neck and legs become hard as they tense so fiercely you’d think they’d rip apart. Even the muscles in my back writhe like they’re infested with a life all their own and are trying to worm out of my skin.
The townsfolk walking with the stranger stopped. Stopped dead. Just as if I’d pointed a gun at their heads. But there was this single expression on all their faces. It was sheer disappointment. They could have been kids who’d got up on Christmas Day to find that Santa Claus hadn’t called after all.
As I’d waited there I’d leaned the big ax against the tree. Even though I’d chopped wood for months to earn my keep the ax still made my arms ache if I carried it too long. Huge son of a bitch it was. With a halfmoon blade that glittered like silver. And a long, thick shaft stained dark from my sweat. I know I haven’t mentioned the ax until now. Maybe I hoped I could skip this bit. But I won’t do that. I’ve promised myself to tell you everything-warts, blood blisters and all. Right? You follow?
So.
I picked up the ax.
Stepped out into the sunlight.
Then I hit the stranger.
First blow. To the head. Knock him to the ground. I struck so hard that it sliced off his bottom jaw. The chin full of perfect white teeth plopped onto the path.
Second blow. To the center of the back as he falls. Cut the spinal cord. Arms might flail; head might flip; but without two working legs he’s going nowhere.
Third blow. Fourth blow. Fifth blow. As he lies there, strike chest, belly and groin. Open up the rib cage like a bunch of celery. Split the belly to free his intestine. Bloody snakes all over the floor. See how they run, my man. Oh, see how they run!
OK. How did he take it? He may have screamed. He may have tried to run. Or did he know what I’d do? Did he just stand there and wait for the ax to bite into him?
I don’t know. Something comes over me. Afterward there are only freeze-frame images. Ribs protruding from raw meat. Blood, certainly. Lots of blood painting the path this brilliant, brilliant red.
As the stranger lay dead at my feet I remember shouting at the stupid stone faces of the men and women.
“You fucking knew it! You knew he wasn’t one of us. Why didn’t you kill him? Why did you wait for me to do your own fucking dirty work?”
When I first arrived in Sullivan nine months ago someone gave me chocolate cake. I was so hungry I told them chocolate cake was my favorite. That’s the kind of code you use when you want more. If they’d fed me an ass’s head I’d have told them that was my favorite food. I was that hungry.
As I sat later that day on the bench that overlooks the lake to what’s left of Lewis, Mr. and Mrs. Angstrom brought me chocolate cake. They said nothing. They just set the cake down. Then quiet, even stealthy, as if leaving a sleeping baby, they went.
Chocolate cake. I wasn’t its biggest fan really. I couldn’t eat that piece turning all glossy in the sun beside me any more than I could sprout big feathery wings and fly up to heaven.
They always give me chocolate cake afterward.
I wonder: Is it supposed to be an offering? A way of saying, Sorry, son. Sorry you had to go through that. Comfort food? Or just the executioner’s fee?
If it is, I come pretty cheap.
No one else came near me for the rest of the day. My face started to blister in the heat, but I didn’t notice. I just sat until the sun went down and the stars came out one by one.
Two
Like it was diseased vermin, they burned the blue-eyed stranger on the shore, then buried the ashes with the others. Later there was this big meeting in the hotel. I didn’t go, but I knew what they were talking about. This was no south-of-the-border bread bandit who had washed up in Sullivan this morning. This was a regular blue-eyed guy from the next town. Somehow he’d got the Jumpy. That meant everything was changing. And changing for the worse. How long before the men and women of Sullivan would be watching me with their big frightened eyes just in case I got the telltale twinge when I looked at them?
I walked out of town around Lime Bay. There on the headland is a pile of white rocks. Every night I added another dozen to it. It’s now perhaps the size of a truck; a near-perfect square that glows milky white when the moon comes up. Rocks there are all shapes and sizes, but if I stand and look at them for a while I can start to see them as pieces of a puzzle. Originally I’d only meant to build a platform maybe the size of a bedsheet and about knee high. But the thing had just grown bigger and bigger.
Once when Ben got drunk and was sore at me for some reason he called it my “goddam obsession.” He apologized afterward.
But yeah, obsession. I guess that’s what it was. Now I build it a little higher every night. I take pieces of that white rock that might be the size of a cigarette carton or as big as a shoebox, that are either square or broad and flat like a book. Then I stand and stare at what I’ve built so far. It might take a while, but eventually I see where the piece fits, just like when you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle. Somehow my brain manages to perfectly match the shape of a rock in my hand to the same shaped space in my neat heap of stones.
I work either at night when there’s a moon that’s bright enough for me to see my obsession. Or I work at dawn or at dusk. Here, it’s far enough from the town for me not to be stared at like a freak in a cage. There are no houses on the headland. Precious few trees either. It’s just a bald finger of land poking out into the lake. So, as the clock in the town hall chimed midnight, I worked. My rhythmic ritual. Select stone. Stand. Stare at my “goddam obsession.” Stare at the stone in my hand. Then slot it into place on the pile. Repeat the procedure. Stand and stare. Listen to the rhythm of my breathing. The chirp of crickets. The night birds calling across the water. Do it all over again. That night I split my finger sliding a rock into its socket. But that wasn’t going to spoil the rhythm. Blood got onto the stones. Juicy red paw prints. But it didn’t look out of place. It looked right.
“You shouldn’t be doing this tonight, Greg.”
I looked up to see Lynne standing there. She fingered the flare of her cotton skirt. This was the first time I’d seen her really nervous. As if I frightened her. Nine months ago she’d worn the skirt and I’d told her that it was my favorite. Tonight she was wearing the same skirt to please me. More chocolate cake syndrome, huh?
She repeated the line as near as dammit. “Don’t do this tonight, Greg. You don’t have to.”
“It gives me something to do.” Yeah, it’s my goddam obsession. “Where’s William?”
“Asleep.”
“How are the kids?”
“They’re fine. The dogs are fine, too, just in case you ask.” Lynne laughed. I hadn’t heard her laugh like that before. It was nervy
… tight-sounding. Sure, she was frightened. She was frightened of me. But here she was, only she wasn’t paying me in chocolate cake.
“Greg,” she said. “Why don’t we walk down to the beach?”
“I can’t yet.” I picked up a rock that was the size of a skull. It even had dark shading where the eyes would be. “I haven’t done my regulation twelve stones.”
“You don’t have to do this anymore, you know?” Her eyes glinted at me in the moonlight. “They’re…” She hunted for the word. “They’re safe now.”
My throat tightened the way it does when you know you can’t speak. I found the perfect slot for my skull- shaped rock and slid it into place. Blood smeared the skull stone where the mouth would be.
It took a while before I freed the words from the back of my throat. “You should go home to William. He’ll wonder where you are if he wakes up and finds you’re not in bed.”
“He’ll know where I’ll be.”
