Bazaar (2) As he rested in the soothing water, enjoying the warmth and trying to forget the events of the past night, the bathroom door opened, again. Jo's enormous frame crowded through the doorway, into the steam-laden bathroom, covered only by a flannel housecoat the size of a circus tent. "Hello," she said, pushing the door closed behind her. In the center of the bathroom, she opened the housecoat, slipped it off her blindingly white, rounded shoulders , and let it fall to her chubby ankles. She wore no undergarments. The boy gasped. The young woman's stomach drooped well beyond her imagined waist. She raised a thick leg slowly, up over and into the tub, giving the boy a brief glimpse of her sex which had been concealed up to that point by her abundant flesh. Sliding into the tub, she caused the water to rise to, and well over the rim of the fairly deep basin. The crested water had a small, sunomi-like effect on the Formica tile floor. "Ooh," she cooed, reposing next to him. "Its nice and warm." Although the boy was repulsed by the disgustingly obese, malformation of her body, he couldn't help but be drawn to her pretty, angelic face. She lathered the wash cloth in her hands, and then began to massage the boy beneath the water. He instantly became enlarged in her hand and soon found himself kissing her chapped, but still inviting lips. "All the boys like this," she said, her busy hand churning the soapy water. Suddenly, Fred called out from somewhere in the house, "Jo, where the hell are you?" "In here, Papa," she responded. The boy slipped and slid on the soapy surface as he tried frantically to remove himself from the tub. "Goddamnit," Fred exclaimed, exploding through the door. "In my own house, no less." A young man whom the boy had never seen before, stood solemnly in the hallway. "Take 'em out to the smokehouse," Fred ordered. Fred and the younger man dragged the boy, unclothed, through the house, past Martha's longing gaze, and into a small shed; its air choked with the scent of livestock. "On the table, Fred," Fred said to the younger man. The boy guessed that the younger man was Fred's son. He could barely see or breath in the humid, steam-induced structure. "She wants you...well she's gonna git you," Fred, Sr. said, strapping the boy's legs to a much shorter table. "Just have to hold his hands down, Fred." "We keep this up," Junior joked, "we're gonna need a longer table." "Like I said, 'Just have to hold his hands down.' Thing's made for hogs...not humans." The boy swallowed hard. "You hear that boy? You a hog? Can you say sooooweee?" Junior taunted in the boy's ear. "Cut that shit out, Junior. Hold his fucking arms down." The boy struggled to free himself but was no match for Fred, Jr.'s much stronger grip. Senior turned his back to the boy momentarily, and then faced him holding what appeared to be a wood planer in his hands. He then grasped the boy by the ear and ran the planer across his scalp, removing an area of the boy's oily hair in the process. Almost immediately, a stream of tears escaped the boy's eyes and streaked down his face. He tried to turn his head away. "Hold still, horny boy. Got to make you nice and purty for ol' Jo. Gotta scrape you down like a hog." Fred, Sr. said, now almost gleefully. "Please," the boy began sobbing. "I'll marry her, okay? I'll marry her and take care of her...oh God. Please?" Then he lost it completely as his chest began to heave, uncontrollably. "I'll marry her," he repeated, quietly. "Marry her?" Senior said. "Marry her?" Both Freds laughed hysterically. As they laughed, the boy cried even more. "Why son, we'd have to strap a board across your skinny ass just to keep you from gettin' swallowed up in her big ol' smelly snatch." Both Freds laughed some more. "She don't need no husband...she needs meat. Get it?" Fred, Jr. leaned casually to the side of the table and picked up what appeared to be a human skull from the floor. He pressed it against the boy's nose. "How'd you like the meatloaf?" Both Freds laughed even harder than before. The contents of the boy's stomach began to swirl as did the entire room, and the boy forced his head to the side. As he felt the warm, pungent vomit exude from his mouth and nose, something in the corner caught his attention. On the dusty floor near the door were two blood stained uniforms; the old man's .357 lay on top of them. The boy closed his eyes and screamed as the two Freds proceeded to remove every hair, every single hair, from his body. "All nice and shiny," one of the Freds remarked when they were finished. "As purty as any hog waitin' to be butchered I've ever seen." Turning his head slightly, the boy watched Senior searching through the drawers of a large cabinet. "Goddamnit," Fred exclaimed. "Your mama has all the butchering knives soakin' up in her sink." He hesitated for a moment and then said, "You hold 'em tight and don't fuck around. I'll be right back." He exited the smokehouse leaving the boy alone with Junior. "So," Junior said, sneeringly. "What are your final thoughts on your pathetic life?" The boy mumbled something unintelligible. "I'd feel the same way if I found my ass in your predicament." He left go of the boy's arms momentarily, leaned back against the cabinet, and with both hands, lit a cigarette. "Cheer up," he told him, exhaling a stream of smoke through his nostrils into the thick air. "You're gonna win Jo fifty grand in Chicago...probably the only fucking thing you ever won in your entire life. Look at you for Chrissakes, skinny as hell, no muscle definition, face full of zits...you're disgusting. This is probably the best thing ever could happen to you. I mean hell, I wouldn't let my best dog suffer like you. Mercy killing, I'd call it." He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and blew more smoke into the air. Seeing this, the boy sat forward and quickly went to work on the straps which bound his legs. "Sunavabitch," Junior exclaimed, opening his eyes. He threw the cigarette to the ground and lunged at the boy who had succeeded in freeing one of his ankles. As Fred attempted to restrain him, he caught one of the boy's flailing elbows on the jaw. The blow sent Junior backwards, striking his head against the cabinet. His body instantly became limp, slumped to the floor, and rested against the hog table where it laid motionless. Liberated from the hog table, the boy sprung to his feet. As he stepped over Junior's inanimate body, he heard the sound of the back door of the farm house close. Rummaging through the hazy shed, he found a pair of somewhat, rusty hedgeclippers. He removed them from their resting place on the wall and brandished them in his hand like a knife. Moments later, When Fred, Sr. came through the door, he plunged the rusty scissors into his soft thorax. The encrusted points found his aorta like an arrow through a bullseye. Fred stopped in his tracks and looked at the boy; the sound of the butchering knives rang out as they fell from his hands onto the cement walkway. "Mama," he managed to say, before his words became drowned with his blood. Then he fell forward onto his face, driving the crimson blades even deeper into his heart. Without a sound, the boy leaped over Fred's dying body and streaked across the night swept farm like a gray, hairless phantom. As he glided past the farm house, the kitchen door burst open with unexpected zeal; there Martha stood, legs wide apart, and a Winchester rifle in her relaxed hands. "You filthy, little bastard," she called out into the dark, squeezing the trigger. Fiery fragments of buckshot rained over him, some finding their way into his bare skin. The blast knocked the old lady backwards, landing her spread eagle on the floor, and caught the attention of Zed and his boys. "Over at the Benders', " Zed called out to his men. "Hurry." In moments, they were at the back door to the Bender's farm house. "He's gettin' away," Jo screamed, her left utter visible in her open housecoat. Zed caught a glimpse of the boy's white ass fleeing through the melon patch and beyond, into the deep wood. "He ain't got no hair," Nathan cried out. "Ain't got no hair at all...what the hell happened to him?" An unmistakable note of fear hung over his words. "Shut up," Zed commanded. He removed a flask of whiskey from the breast pocket of his flannel jacket and took a long pull of it. Meanwhile, the old lady picked herself up from the kitchen floor and carried herself to the smokehouse door where she mourned over the body of her dead husband. "Sunavabitch killed my Fred," she shrieked. "Fred!" She howled like a wounded she-beast. The men, after re-loading their rifles and sharing the whiskey, made for the wood on the trail of the boy. "Let's get that boy," Petey cried; his words fired with adrenaline and alcohol. "Which way you think he went?" Nathan asked. "The highway," Zed replied. The boy ran through the thick, night air, through a world populated by shadows and things which he could not see but knew they were there. Nocturnal creatures; towering trees; rocks and streams; and hunters. His ivory, naked skin, completely devoid of clothes and hair, seemed to aid in his flight. He felt like quicksilver, slip-streaming elegantly around the forboding trees and other obstacles. A ghost, for he was dead, or knew he soon would be. He felt as if he were slowly de-materializing, turning into mist; a spectral vapor. He laughed at this new found freedom he felt, the liberation from his clothes and the mores of society, and also at the savage he'd become. Now he would try to make it to the highway, although he knew all roads led back here, to his damnation. The shot gun pellets digging into his shoulder and back burned like a thousand tiny bee stings. He laughed at that, too. The boy wasn't all that hard to track now. He glowed in the moonlight like a haunted apparition. Or like an albino, Zed thought. A fucking snowman. He was one resilient sunavabitch, he'd give 'em that. Zed liked the boy. Not like a comrade, but a formidable opponent, or rather, an unwavering prey. he likened him to a large mouth bass that fights you for every inch of line, or a deer carrying so much lead, it should have already died except for its fear driving it on. Sooner or later, Zed knew, the boy would stumble. They were already closing the distance on him. Even if he did make it to the highway, Interstate 81, who the hell would pick him up looking like that? The boy leapt over a fallen tree with the levity of a butterfly, lowered his shoulder, and rolled under the sweeping branches of a brooding spruce, all in one graceful motion. Soon he found himself in a slight clearing. He paused a moment, catching his breath and bathing himself in the moon's light. He liked the way his body looked now, his metamorphosis. "He stopped," Nathan said. "What the hell is he doing?" Zed smiled. "He's dancing...the dance of death." Danse Macabre, he thought they called it, if he remembered correctly from school. Dance boy, dance. He felt it, too. The madness; the insanity of the bazaar. "I'll dance with you." He raised his rifle and centered the cross hairs on the boy's heart. The boy looked down at himself, down at the moonlight dripping from his taut, smooth flesh. No, Zed thought. This would be too easy; he's too far away; he's too detached from it all. I've got to make it better, he insisted to himself. He squeezed the trigger, the crack of the rifle echoing in his ears. The bullet spun the boy around, entering near his collarbone and taking with it, a good bit of flesh as it exited his shoulder. The boy clutched his chest and looked out at Zed. Just to let you know, Zed thought, just a reminder. A tractor trailer rumbled by on the distant highway, its eighteen wheels disturbing the sanctity of the moment unfolding. There's the highway, boy. That's what you want. Take it. The boy turned. The highway, it was right there. It couldn't be more than one hundred yards away. The finish line; the spoils. He stretched his long, slender body and then dashed into the woods. "He's going again," Petey announced. That boy's still movin'. Its like he's got nine lives or somethin'." "Or something," Zed replied. Without hesitation, they followed after him. Soon, they were only forty yards away. Another car streaked by on the road ahead, its passing a mere vision of blurred light. The boy was only thirty yards from the interstate now. Nathan pulled up, set his sights on the boy and fired. The bullet tore into the boy's right thigh, taking him to the ground. The boy was hit by a bullet, he was sure. He heard the gunshot and felt the warm blood cascade down his leg, but there was no pain. He'd heard of that. He got to his feet cautiously and continued, tumbling to the ground every few feet. Soon only fifteen yards separated him from the road, but they were behind him. Long, grotesque shadows cast in the moonlight, they were with him at every step. They were always with him, almost all his life. They took on various forms: the school bully; the athletes; the poverty that had always afflicted him. Fifteen yards wasn't so far to go to free himself from his demons. His body was beginning to fail him, but he could make fifteen yards. Nathan reloaded and fired again, this time hitting him in the neck. It should have been fatal, but instead, actually carried him closer to his quest; his holy grail. The boy's eyes grew dim, his head clouded with an indistinct fuzziness. His mind raced. Random images projected themselves onto the insides of his eye lids: the old man; his son; Jo; her meatloaf; the interstate; eight yards. He rose to his feet, his hand clutching his throat, and continued for the road. Like Lazarus, Zed thought. Just like the pastor's sermon last Sunday. He felt himself rooting for the boy, cheering him on inside his head. Nathan loaded yet another bullet into the rifle and again aimed at the boy. With four yards separating him from the road, the boy fell. There wasn't much left of him now. The morning dew began to settle on everything, including him. he felt himself dissolving, being washed away. He wanted to lay there and fall to sleep, to dream. But he knew he wasn't quite finished. Zed watched the boy slowly crawl the slight embankment to the highway above. He thought about how ugly the boy had been when he'd first laid eyes on him at the bazaar. Lanky, awkward, a face full of pimples. Then he smiled at the beautiful, intrepid being he'd become. It would be a shame to stop him now, right when he was so close to realizing his potential. Nathan's finger grew taut around the trigger and his heart danced with delight in his chest. He drew an imaginary line on the back of the boy's head in his mind's eye. One squeeze, one thought, would erase the boy from this physical plane. "No," Zed said. "But-" "Let him go," Zed insisted. He was doing something he had never done in his short life: he was letting someone else win. The boy reached Interstate 81, his hands grasping the guard rail. He made it, he'd beaten them. "You're crazy, Zed," Nathan exclaimed. "He's getting away." That's what the bazaar's all about: the madness; the insanity. The bazaar makes you crazy, Zed thought. The boy raised himself slowly to his feet. With his unfocused eyes he looked at his pursuers. He couldn't tell how many there were, he never really knew, anyway. Zed and his boys stood there, too, silently staring back at him. The ghost, with splashes of crimson encroaching upon his neck, shoulders, and leg, raised his hands above his head in an exaggerated pose of mock triumph. Zed smiled. The boy pivoted and leaped effortlessly over the guard rail, into the oncoming headlights, freeing himself from his malignant shadows and his battered shell.
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Copyright © 1999 W Bryan Smith |