had been sitting there on the porch watching him for four hours straight, as if he were a television game show. Fascinated. Neither of them had ever seen anything like it. The man got up and stretched. “Ah'm gonna sack out awhile. Fuck it,” he said, and went in, the screen door slamming. The slow wife said nothing but continued to sit on the rump-sprung chair watching the big man from the porch.
The water intake hit him hard. He felt a terrible rush come across him. Vaguely like the red tide that would wash over him and make him do the bad things, but he figured this one was maybe heatstroke or blood pressure. Either way, he thought, I work. He wet a bandanna and tied it around his neck, put on his floppy boonie-rat hat, and slowly went back to work.
He could feel the heat had sapped him. He could no longer pick up a landscape timber in one hand. His fingers would let it go. When he dropped one on his foot he quit trying. But he stayed with it, working slowly, methodically, using both hands to pick up each timber, walking slower now, feeling a little twinge in his back as he set the heavy timbers down on the stack, which was taller and wider than a pair of double beds.
About three-thirty the man came out, yawning. He looked over and said, “Shit. Still at it.” He walked down the rickety steps and across the junk-strewn yard. “Hey,” he called out aimlessly. Chaingang may have tilted his head slightly but he said nothing. “Y’ better ease up ‘air, hoss.” His tone was jovial.
Chaingang grunted and kept working. The man disappeared back into the house, taking the woman with him this time. After another hour or so Chaingang finished.
He was hurting in his back a little, but not too bad. He'd worn a large hole in one of the work gloves. His ankle was sore as always. He had a headache. He was having a little trouble breathing. Just tired more than anything. He went into the sharecropper's shack and drank a little more water from the jug. Hopped down on the mound of blankets and was snoring immediately, fully dressed, filthy dirty, and sweat-soaked. Dead to the world at a quarter to five in the evening.
Sissy had been out in their “back yard” looking at all the sights. There were ducks, two kinds. Turkeys. Pea fowls. Peacocks strutting around. Dogs. Cats. It was something. All the junk fascinated her as much as the animals. She came in and was surprised to find Daniel sound asleep on the blankets. She didn't know what to do next so she went back outside and watched the ducks and turkeys and peacocks and junk until dark. And then she came in and lay down by the snoring mound that was her new mentor.
The next day Chaingang did no work. He couldn't. He could not get off the blankets on the floor, much as he tried. His back felt like it was broken. He had dreamed about this, that two of the blacks in D had taken baseball bats to him and he wondered if his kidneys were bad. He could not get up to piss, so he rolled over and urinated out the door.
Then he saw his ankles. Both ankles were swollen. His right ankle, the bad one, was the size of a large grapefruit. He knew there would be no point in continuing this sort of work as long as his weight was so great. The building process might cripple his weak ankles. He'd forgotten what it would be like to carry all that weight on top of his own. He had to be able to walk. This wouldn't get it.
He was finally able to roll into a sitting position, and he pulled himself up by the strength of his upper torso. Using a broken wooden chair for a kind of walker, he hobbled outside with his big fighting bowie, moving toward the ditch that ran through the middle of the property. On the way he cut himself a huge crutch from an oak tree, and he limped through the field of weeds in the direction of the running water.
He removed his clothes and immersed himself in the ditch, which was ice-cold and muddy brown. It felt so good to let his weight push his sore feet and ankles down into the cool mud. He stood motionless for a long time. Then he washed his clothes in the cold water and, pulling himself out with the aid of a nearby, overhanging tree, managed to get back on the bank. He soaped himself thoroughly and went back into the water, washing himself as best he could. His enormous pants and shirt dried like blankets in the nearby willow limbs. The sun was hot and he came back out and sat naked on the bank, thinking of nothing, trying not to feel the pain and soreness and the aches in muscles he'd forgotten he had. He stayed there on the bank through the noon hour when he went back to fetch Sissy.
“Come on,” he told her. It was only the second thing he'd said to her in two days and it was enough to make her smile and start a flood of pent-up commentary about everything she'd done or seen or thought during the last forty-eight hours. He heard not a word of it as they walked toward the hidden vehicle, back through the overgrown fields bordering the junkyard.
“...and he says they're called coots, those little black ones, you know, or mud coots, somethin’ like that, and they'd come up...” And then they were in the car and moving toward town. Sissy was happy again, and her soft stream of chatter was like playing a radio low in the background.
The first stop was at a medium-sized grocery store in a small would-be shopping center that had a laundromat, a Radio Shack, a video store that was apparently out of business, and a Western Auto. Chaingang went in to get them their lunch. He came out with a can of V-8 juice that he'd paid for, and pockets full of apples, a package of cold meat, and a tomato, which he plucked out of a sealed package. Nobody could shoplift like Daniel. While the clerk was ringing up the V-8 he dropped some mints into a voluminous pocket. He had plenty of money, but he always stole on principle.
He got in the car and handed Sissy her apple. “Here's your lunch.'
“Thanks,” she said. “Is this all we're gonna eat?” She wasn't complaining. Just asking.
“Yeah. You need to lose weight for your modeling. Tonight you'll fix the meat, some greens, and tomato.” He had their menu all planned out.
“You know,” she said, telling him for the tenth time, “you're the only guy I've ever known who didn't think I was too thin.'
“Ummm,” he grunted as he drove across the expanse of parking lot toward the Western Auto store.
“I went to this one doctor, ya know, and I was getting a physical and he was you know going on about how I was too skinny and all and...” She was so pleased that this man who had actually had professional experience producing model layouts would be truthful with her. She had always suspected she was too heavy for high fashion work, and even though she hardly ate anything she just couldn't lose weight. Chaingang, the ultimate mind- manipulator, had instinctively played to her most secret fear. That she was FAT! A borderline anorexia victim, Sissy could sometimes stand in front of a mirror and look right at those protruding, skeletonlike pelvic bones and see only disgusting bulk. He heard her singsong little-girl voice say with great earnestness, “And I sure do like for ya to be honest like that with me,” and she touched him.
He was turning off the ignition when he felt the little bony hand reach over and rest on his leg, and she almost bought it right then and there. Some miracle stopped that steel shotput from crashing out and stilling her simple brain. He loathed being touched by anyone when he wasn't expecting it and he almost took her down as an involuntary reflex, but somehow he caught his reaction in time. All she saw was a little tremor like a flinch as he slid out of the vehicle, the springs creaking in relief as he removed his bulk from the car. She thought to herself, Interesting, and knew then that they would have something between them.
He went inside and a jovial, redneck clerk boomed out, “Hot enough for ya?” which Chaingang ignored as he searched the row of merchandise.
“Whatcha looking for there, Tiny? Can I help you?” The man had no earthly idea how close he was right at that second to shuffling off his mortal coil. For some reason Bunkowski's huge bulk evoked that sort of a response in a certain-type person. People who worked in hardware stores, gas stations, tire retailers—they weren't used to seeing a 6-foot-7-inch 460-pound man waddling though their aisles. It upset them, put them off their feed a little, these certain jolly types, and they “kidded” him sometimes to help smooth over their surprise. Some he didn't even hear. Others he ignored. Once in a while he would go over and hurt them in some way. Something would fall on the person. An accident. A can of paint would drop on their foot. Or he would shoplift an unusually large amount right in front of them in silent revenge.
“Where's the whipsickles?'
“Where's the Popsicles? Haven't you et lunch yet?'
“Whipsickles? Weed slingers?” Chaingang beamed. It was his most dangerous smile.
“Right over here,” the man said, sensing something and backing off a notch. But it was too late. As Bunkowski walked past him, filling the aisle with his massive body he “brushed up against the man and lost his balance,” as he said later, and 460 pounds came down viciously on the clerk's arch and the man let out a bloodcurdling scream, “AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.'
“OHHHHH” Daniel echoed as if he too were hurt and out of control, pushing against the man as he threw his
