not go away. Perhaps he was permanently damaged.
“Connelly?” said Peachy’s voice through the crack in the wall.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“They beat on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh,” said Peachy. “They beat on me sometimes, too. Not too often.”
“When are they going to let you out?” asked Connelly.
“They never said.-I-I don’t think anyone knows I’m in here. Except maybe a few of the other deputies and I don’t think they care.”
“Christ,” said Connelly. Never had he felt more alone and miserable. Before this he had trudged through whatever he needed to but at that moment all the lonely days and terrified nights collapsed on him at once. He curled up and shrank into the corner.
“What do you think of the sheriff?” asked Peachy.
“Don’t care for him much.”
“They had a man in the cell before you. Did you know that? It was him that pried open the little slivers of wood so he could talk to me. Do you see any carvings he left there? Anything at all?”
“No.” For the first time Connelly wished Peachy would be quiet. The ringing in his ears had increased to a whine.
“He was old and crazy as hell. I don’t know how long he’d been in here. I almost wished he never did carve that gap. At night he’d just sit there and lean against it and whisper to me. He’d say the most terrible things. About screamings coming from under the jailhouse and about the sheriff. He said the sheriff could make the cells sing to you at night, sing about all the bad things that had happened to you, and drown you in them. And he said he was old. You know how old he said the sheriff was? How old would you say he is by looking at him, Connelly?”
“Don’t know. Fifty. Fifty-five.”
“He said he thought the sheriff was nearly ninety years old.”
“Bullshit.”
“I know. That’s what he said, though. But it makes sense, don’t it? I mean, you’ve seen him. Have you… Have you seen his eyes?”
“Yeah.”
“They ain’t right, are they? Even though he’s a little old man, his eyes is older. Like they seen too much. Or maybe they seen things most folks shouldn’t see.”
“What are you saying?”
“Oh, just something that crazy old man in your cell said once. Said the sheriff’d been working in this town for so long it was unreal. Said the sheriff’d made a deal with a god.”
Connelly stopped. “What did you say?”
“Huh? I said the sheriff made a deal with a god.”
“Which… which god?”
“Which god? I don’t know, he was crazy. ’Sides, seems to be a lot of gods.”
“What did he make the deal for?” whispered Connelly.
“What for? To live longer, that’s what for. I don’t know what the god got. Maybe just… just help. Maybe one hand washed the other, I don’t know.”
Connelly half listened to Peachy’s words. He felt sick. He swallowed and said, “You… you think he can make people live longer?”
“Who? The god? Why, sure. He’s a god. Old man said he’d come down out of the hills. Said sometimes there’d be screaming in the jailhouse, and those screams, they’d call to him. Wake him up. He’d come on down and see what was what. Like the mountains opened up and bled and he rose up out of the ash, just tapping his foot.”
“What did he look like?”
“What?”
“The god. What did the god look like?”
“He never said. Why? What’s gotten into you?”
“Jesus,” said Connelly. “Jesus Christ.” His head began pounding again. There was a high, warbling whine in his ears, boring into all his thoughts. He grasped his skull and pushed his fingers into it as though to squeeze the pain out along with this new revelation.
What was this thing they hunted? How old was he, how long had this been going on for? Connelly remembered Korsher, drunkenly rambling in the grass. Remembered the look on the young boy’s face as he recounted the scarred man’s appearance. They had lived in his wake for so long, but what was he?
“What?” said Peachy’s voice. “What’d you say? How long what? What you doing over there, Connelly?”
Connelly mumbled something in reply. He felt sick. Without thinking he began tearing strings off of the cuffs of his pants. Then he pulled splinters out of the wood around him and began trying to get his fingers to work. He was not as skilled as Roosevelt so the idol he made was crude but still good enough, he thought. He made its face out of dust and spit and though the eyes were lopsided they still were vaguely human.
“There,” he wheezed, and lay back. “There.” He placed it in the corner. Then he began coughing.
“Don’t… don’t you die on me, Connelly,” said Peachy. “I ain’t had no one to talk to in over a month. Please, don’t you die on me, Connelly. Please don’t…”
Connelly did not answer. The high-pitched squeal trapped in his head was drowning out all other thought. He curled up tighter on the floor and through watering eyes stared up at the ceiling. Above him he saw the shaft of sunlight flicker like a dying bulb, strobing the cell with shadows. But that was impossible. For if the sheriff had the power to kill the sun itself, even for a second, then Connelly and the others were surely in their graves already but did not know it yet.
Time became soft to him. Hours bled into weeks bled into months. Whatever part of Connelly’s mind still worked believed he was sick, some infection, perhaps another concussion. He shivered all day and all night and when the deputies dropped off gruel and water he did not eat or drink. They laughed when they took away his full plate, their chuckles leaking through the slot in the door, and sometimes he believed they were staying on the other side of the door, watching and smiling.
The whine in his ears grew louder each day, his head filling up with pressure like a balloon. It made sleep difficult and thought almost impossible. Simply breathing was hard with that whine rattling in his head, turning his mind to jelly. He tried to feel his forehead to get a gauge of his temperature but his palms were clammy and wet with sweat. He shivered at all times and tried to tell his complexion by examining the backs of his hands but it was far too dark.
On the first morning the idol he had made was gone. There was no scrap of string or piece of twig left to show that it had ever been there. He suspected that something had come in the night, crawling out of the darkness and devouring it before retreating again. So he made a new idol. And when that one disappeared in the night, he made another, and another. And though he could not be sure he felt somehow that all these little souls he made and blessed in the dark cell were keeping him alive and staving off death. That each time they disappeared they had bought him another day.
He tried to count the days by the shaft of sunlight at the top of his cell but could not, as with each minute the light seemed darker and darker, like the very sun was fading or its radiance was being eaten by his cell. Peachy spoke all day and all night, telling him about the family he had, his mother and sisters, about frying fresh perch next to the river and drinking ale in the evening and kisses sweeter than any wine. Sometimes Peachy would sing and when he did Connelly’s sickness seemed to fade a little. He knew Peachy was doing it to keep himself sane as much as anything, but Connelly did not care.
Then there came one night when Peachy slept and Connelly did not have voice enough to wake him. Connelly listened and believed himself deaf, he blinked at his cell and thought he was blind, and when he felt the boards beneath or beside them it was like touching air.
And Connelly said to himself, I am dying. And he believed it. Perhaps he was dead already.
Darkness swooped down on him, dripping out of the corners of the cell and swallowing him. He lay staring at the wall for what felt like ages. And when he shut his eyes he saw the desert.
