The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Billy could not shoot all of them. He could only fire the gun so fast.

Tears burned his eyes and his aim was poor.

Still, Billy tried his best. But the mouth of the cave was open, open so very wide. The other day, the silence of the open mouth had bothered him. But now it did not. Now he understood it.

The mouth was not open to speak.

It was open to swallow.

Billy reloaded his gun and continued firing.

Soon he stopped crying.

Soon his BB’s were gone, and the sky was a pink canvas of writhing, naked wings.

Soon the man in black strode through the dark trees that ringed the cave.

Billy watched the man smile. Overhead, the souls of Billy’s friends and enemies and people he had never met and would never meet raced past him like some strange airborne river.

Billy dropped his rifle and raised his father’s hand grenade.

The man in black’s smile did not falter.

“I’ll stop you.” Billy screamed above the deafening pink scream. “I’ll stop them. Don’t you think I won’t.”

“And you’ll do it all by yourself,” the man said, still smiling. Billy nodded.

The man chuckled. “Then you too are an army of one.”

“Sure I am.” Billy bristled at the man in black’s mocking tone. “I am an army of one. Just ask your bird.”

As if on cue, the bloody creature tumbled from the man in black’s shoulder and dropped lightly upon a blanket of small pink corpses.

Tiny bones crunched underfoot as the man crossed the pink blanket. But he never looked down. Not once.

Cool air rushed past Billy, sucked into the cave like a breath. He retreated into the darkness of the cave, a torrent of pink things choking past him overhead, the grenade gripped tightly in Ms hands.

The man in black was silhouetted against a pink sky, sunlight flashing through a thousand furious wings behind him, nothing on his shoulder at all. He said, “The time has come to discuss the terms of your surrender.”

Billy pulled the pin from the grenade. “I’ll see you in hell first.”

“If that is the way of it,” the man said, “then I imagine that you will.”

The mouth of the cave was silent.

The man in black said not a word.

Words were useless in this land of shrieking souls.

The man looked to the trees. Dark, gnarled branches, heavy with tortured pink things.

Each one, waiting for him to move.

Each one, waiting to follow.

The man brushed dust from his dark clothes. Still, he did not rise from the rock on which he sat. The exploding grenade had torn the rock from the collapsing mouth of the cave like some great broken molar.

And now the mouth was closed.

The man in black’s master would feast no more today.

But this knowledge did not trouble the man in black, for he knew well that there were many other caves in this land.

So he sat upon the broken rock, and he listened to the pink things screeching in the trees, and he watched the skies.

Soon enough they came. Four of them, flying from the west.

Three landed in the trees. Their screams sliced an awful counterpoint to the cries of their cursed brethren.

The fourth broke off and flew to the man in black, who raised a beckoning hand.

The creature landed on his shoulder, its small talon’s scrabbling over his flesh for purchase.

The man in black stroked the tiny tiring, for this creature was different from the others. Once, twice, his hand traveled its trembling body. Pink skin smooth under his fingertips… then black down… then stiff black feathers…

The man smiled and closed his eyes.

In his mind’s eye he glimpsed a brave boy framed by the ravenous mouth of a cave. And then the mouth closed, and swallowed, and the brave boy was gone, torn to shreds by granite teeth.

And now there was a blackbird perched on the man in black’s shoulder.

“What are you?” the man asked.

The brave boy answered in a voice that was all at once familiar, yet unfamiliar just the same.

“I am an army.”

(For Bill Schafer)

WRONG TURN

The thing is, they really weigh on you. That’s why digging up the dead is so tough.

And my father was a real backbreaker. I’m speaking figuratively, of course. I mean, I can’t remember the last time I held a shovel in my hands, and I’m not a dirt-under-the-fingernails kind of guy. I’ve never played things that way. I’ve always liked to think that I used my head.

Not that I’ve gotten much of anywhere in thirty-five years. The trust fund my mother set up after she remarried has kept me afloat, but I think my monthly stipend equals the average take an inventive person can snag with welfare and food stamps. I’m certainly not one of those rich sons of privilege who motor around Maui with a windsurfing rig when they’re not busy hitting the slopes in Aspen or Vail.

Dad’s name hasn’t hurt me, though. There are still plenty of people who remember it. It’s funny — people forget directors and writers and producers, but get your face up there on the screen and you’ll be remembered for a long time, even if your claim to fame is portraying a long string of heavies and sad-eyed losers in poverty row quickies. I’ve made more than a few dollars by being the son of a movie star, even if Dad was a star in a lesser constellation.

Then again, most people remember Dad for the things he did when there weren’t any cameras in sight. That’s what puts the old shine in their eyes.

Tom Cassady — my old man. Me — Tom Cassady, Junior. I guess Dad wasn’t the most inventive guy in the world. He actually had a dog named Rover.

But Dad did leave me the name and all the baggage that goes with it. That, and his face. Hard little eyes and pouting lips on a face that is otherwise completely boyish, even when I skip shaving for a day or two. Give Kurt Russell a bad attitude and you’ve got me. I don’t have Dad’s signature broken nose, of course — remember, I use my head. And I doubt that I’ll ever acquire the puffy, dissipated look he had after he got out of prison, the look that made him a primo heavy in his second run at Hollywood, because I don’t drink much.

But like I said, I’ve made some money with Dad’s face. It’s a handsome face, and I take care of what’s under it. I pump iron, keep my tan just a shade this side of narcissistic, get my hair styled every other week and my back waxed at the same interval. You’ve probably seen me on TV. Lathering my manly chest with Irish Spring. Whipping