Child of God(22)

Each leaf he passed he'd never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back and the world that day was as lovely as any day that ever was and he was riding to his death. ON A GOOD MAY MORNING John Greer turned out to dig a septic tank at the back of his house. While he was digging, Lester Ballard in frightwig and skirts stepped from behind the pump house and raised the rifle and cocked the hammer silently, holding black the trigger and easing it into the notch as hunters do. When he fired the shovel was coming past Greer's shoulder with a load of dirt. Long after the crack of the rifle had died in the lee of the mountain he could hear the gong of turned doom that rang above the man's head as he froze there with the shovel aloft on which had splattered in a bright medallion the small piece of lead, the man looking at whatever it was standing there cursing to itself while it worked the lever of the rifle, an apparition created whole out of nothing and set upon him with such dire intent. He flung away the shovel and began to run. Ballard shot him through the body as he passed and stitched a falter in his pace. He shot him once more before he rounded the corner of the house but he could not tell where he hit him. He himself was running now, cursing steadily, working the lever of the rifle again, taking the corner of the house, one foot almost going from under him as he turned and making a vicious slash in the mud, the rifle now in one hand and his thumb hooked over the hammer, mounting the steps in a crazy sort of hopping gait and rushing toward the door. He looked like something come against the end of a spring loaded tether or some slapstick contrivance of the film cutter's art, swallowed up in the door and discharged from it again almost - simultaneously, ejected in an immense concussion backwards, spinning, one arm flying out in a peculiar limber gesture, a faint pink cloud of blood and shredded clothing and the rifle clattering soundless on the porch boards amid the uproar and Ballard sitting hard on the floor for a moment before he pitched off into the yard. Even though Greer was shot through the upper chest himself he wobbled from the doorway with the shotgun and down the steps to examine this thing he'd shot. At the foot of the steps he picked up what appeared to be a wig and saw that it was fashioned whole from a dried human scalp. BALLARD WOKE IN A ROOM dark to blackness. He woke in a room day bright. Woke in a room at dawn or dusk he knew not which where motes of dust passing through an unseen bar of light incandesced briefly and random and drifted like the smallest fireflies. He studied them for a while and then raised his hand. No hand came up. He raised the other and a thin stripe of yellow sunlight fell across his forearm. He looked about the room. Some stainless steel pots on a steel table. A pitcher of water and a glass. Ballard in a thin white gown in a thin white room, false acolyte or antiseptic felon,. a practitioner of ghastliness, a part-time ghoul. He had been awake for some few minutes before he began to feel about for the missing arm. It was not in the bed at all. He pulled the sheet from about his neck and studied the great swathings of bandage at his shoulder apparently with no surprise. He looked about. A room scarce wider than the bed. There was a small window behind him but he could not see out without craning his neck and it pained him to do so.

No one spoke to him. A nurse came with a tin tray and helped him to sit erect, Ballard still trying to use the missing arm to fetch his balance. A cup of soup, a cup of custard, a quarter pint of sweet milk in a waxed cardboard box. Ballard prodded at the food with his spoon and lay back. He lay in a waking dream. The cracks in the yellowed plaster of the ceiling and upper walls seemed to work on his brain. He could close his eyes and see them anyway. Thin fissures traversing the otherwise blank of his corroded mind. He looked at the swaddled nub that poked from the short sleeve of the county hospital gown. It looked like an enormous bandaged thumb. He wondered what they'd done with his arm and decided to ask. When the nurse came with his supper he said: What'd they do with my arm? She swung the tabletop and set the tray on it. You got it shot off, she said. I know that. I just wanted to know what all they done with it. I don't know. It don't make a damn to you, does it? No. I'll find out. I can. Who's that feller at the door all the time? He's a county deputy. County deputy. Yes, she said. What about the man you shot? What about him? Don't you even want to know if he's dead or alive? Well. He was unrolling his silver from the linen napkin. Well what? she said. Well is he dead or alive? He's alive. She watched him. He spooned up some applesauce and looked at it and put it down again. He opened the carton of milk and drank from it. You really don't care one way or the other do you? she said. Yes I do, said Ballard. I wish the son of a bitch was dead. HE ATE, HE STARED AT THE walls. He used the bedpan or chamberpot. Sometimes he could hear a radio in another room. One evening what appeared to be some hunters came to see him. They talked for a while without the door. Then the door opened and the room filled up with men. They gathered about Ballard's bedside. He'd been asleep. He struggled up in the bed and looked at them. Some he knew, some not. His heart shrank. Lester, said a heavy set man, where's them bodies at. I don't know nothing about no bodies. Yes you do. How many people did you kill? I ain't killed nary'n. The hell you ain't. You killed that Lane girl and burned her and that baby down in the house and you killed them people in them parked cars on the Frog Mountain. I never done it. They were quiet, regarding him. Then the man said: Get up, Lester. Ballard pulled at the bedcovers. I ain't allowed up, he said. A man reached and pulled back the covers. Ballard's spindly legs lay pale and yellow looking on the sheet. Get up.