“Gal’s got a nervous stomach,” Dal said, grinning around at the rest of us. To the bartender, he said, “Let’s get to it, Jerry!”
Jerry set aside the padlock. He climbed onto the bar and stood over the metal container. Then he raised it. The cover slid slowly upward, revealing a glass tank like a tall, narrow aquarium. All around me, people gasped and moaned as they saw what lay at the bottom, barely visible through its gray, murky liquid. A stench of formaldehyde filled my nostrils, and I gagged.
Face up at the bottom of the tank was a severed head, its black hair and moustache moving as if stirred by a breeze, its skin wrinkled and yellow, its eyes wide open, its mouth agape.
“Well, well,” Clark muttered.
Jerry, kneeling beside the glass tank, picked up a straight-bent coat hanger with one end turned up slightly to form a hook. He slipped the diamond ring over it. Standing, he lowered the wire into the tank. The ring descended slowly, the brilliance of its diamond a dim glow in the cloudy solution. Then it vanished inside the open mouth. Jerry flicked the hanger a bit, and raised it. The ring no longer hung from its tip.
I let out a long-held breath, and looked at Clark. He was grinning.
“All you gotta do, for the thousand dollar ring, is to reach down with one hand and take it out of the dead man’s mouth. Who’ll go first?”
“That’s me!” said Dal, the bearded one whose girl had just run off. He handed a ten-dollar bill to Jerry, then swung himself onto the bar. Standing over the tank, he unbuttoned his plaid shirt.
“Let me just say,” Jerry continued, “nobody’s a loser at the Bar None Saloon. Every man with grit enough to try The Grab gets a free beer afterwards, compliments of the house.”
Throwing down his shirt, Dal knelt behind the tank. Jerry tied a black blindfold over his eyes.
“All set?”
Dal nodded. He lowered his head and took a few deep breaths, psyching himself up like a basketball player on the free-throw line. Nobody cheered or urged him on. There was dead silence. Swelling out his chest, he held his breath and dipped his right hand into the liquid. It eased lower and lower. A few inches above the face, it stopped. The thick fingers wiggled, but touched nothing. The arm reached deeper. The tip of the middle finger stroked the dead man’s nose. With a strangled yelp, Dal jerked his arm from the tank, splashing those of us nearby with the smelly fluid. Then he sighed, and shook his head as if disgusted with himself.
“Good try, good try!” Jerry cried, removing the blindfold. “Let’s give this brave fellow a hand!”
A few people clapped. Most just watched, hands at their sides or in pockets, as Jerry filled a beer mug and gave it to Dal. “Try again later, pardner. Everyone’s welcome to try as often as he likes. It only costs ten dollars. Ten little dollars for a chance at a thousand. Who’s next?”
“Me!” called the pale girl beside Clark.
“Folks, we have us a first! What’s your name, young lady?”
“Biff,” she said.
“Biff will be the very first lady ever to try her hand at The Grab.”
“Don’t do it,” whispered a chubby girl nearby. “Please.”
“Lay off, huh?”
“It’s not worth it.”
“Is to me,” she muttered, and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. She handed her purse to the other girl, then stepped toward the bar.
“Thank you, Biff,” Jerry said, taking her money.
She removed her hat, and tossed it onto the counter. She was wearing a T-shirt. She didn’t take it off. Leaning forward, she stared down into the tank. She looked sick.
Jerry tied the blindfold in place. “All set?” he asked.
Biff nodded. Her open hand trembled over the surface of the fluid. Then it slipped in, small and pale in the murkiness. Slowly, it eased downward. It sunk closer and closer to the face, never stopping until her fingertips lit on the forehead. They stayed there, motionless. I glanced up. She was tight and shaking as if naked in an icy wind.
Her fingers moved down the head. One touched an open eye. Flinching away, her hand clutched into a fist.
Slowly, her fingers fluttered open. They stretched out, trembled along the sides of the nose, and settled in the moustache. For seconds, they didn’t move. The upper lip wasn’t visible, as though it had shrunken under the moustache.
Biff’s thumb slid along the edges of the teeth. Her fingertips moved off the moustache. They pressed against the lower teeth.
Biff started to moan.
Her fingers trembled off the teeth. They spread open over the gaping mouth, and started down.
With a shriek, she jerked her hand from the tank. She tugged the blindfold off. Face twisted with horror, she shook her hand in the air and gazed at it. She rubbed it on her T-shirt and looked at it again, gasping for air.
“Good try!” Jerry said. “The little lady made a gutsy try, didn’t she, folks?”
A few of the group clapped. She stared out at us, blinking and shaking her head. Then she grabbed her hat, took the complimentary beer, and scurried off the bar.
Clark patted her shoulder. “Good going,” he said.
“Not good enough,” she muttered. “Got spooked.”
“Who’ll be next?” Jerry asked.
“Yours truly,” Clark said, holding up a pair of fives. He winked at me. “It’s a cinch,” he said, and boosted himself onto the bar. Grinning, he tipped his hat to the small silent crowd. “I have a little surprise for y’all,” he said in his thickest cowboy drawl. “You see, folks…” He paused and beamed. “Not even my best friend, Steve, knows about this, but I work full time as a mortician’s assistant.”
That brought a shocked murmur from his audience, including me.
“Why, folks, I’ve handled more dead meat than your corner butcher. This is gonna be a sure cinch.”
With that, he skinned off his shirt and knelt behind the tank. Jerry, looking a bit amused, tied the blindfold over his eyes.
“All set?” the bartender asked.
“Ready to lose your diamond ring?”
“Give it a try.”
Clark didn’t hesitate. He plunged his arm into the solution and drove his open hand downward. His fingers found the dead man’s hair. They patted him on the head. “Howdy pardner,” he said.
Then his fingers slid over the ghastly face. They tweaked the nose, they plucked the moustache. “Say ahhhh.”
He slipped his forefinger deep between the parted teeth, and his scream ripped through the silence as the mouth snapped shut.
His hand shot upward, a cloud of red behind it. It popped from the surface, spraying us with formaldehyde and blood.
Clark jerked the blindfold down and stared at his hand. The forefinger was gone.
“My
Cheers and applause interrupted him, but they weren’t for Clark.
“Look at him go!” Dal yelled, pointing at the head.
“Go, Alf, go!” cried another.
“Alf?” I asked Biff.
“Alf Packer,” she said without looking away from the head. “The famous cannibal.”
The head seemed to grin as it chewed.
I turned to Biff, “You knew?”
“Sure. Any wimp’ll make The Grab, if he doesn’t know. When you know, it takes real guts.”
“Who’s next?” Jerry asked.
“Here’s a volunteer,” Biff called out, clutching my arm. I jerked away from her, but was restrained by half a dozen mutilated hands. “Maybe you’ll get lucky,” she said. “Alf’s a lot more tame after a good meal.”
