Sloughing Off the Rot (24 page)

And as John and Joad and Santiago slept, Android Lovethorn’s guards dragged a group of four sickly desert scurves before him on his throne. Ragged buckskin pants and shirts, bones that had broken and reset wrongly, greasy, torn heads of hair, crumbling teeth and festering sores. These were the physical attributes of the desert rats. Other than their copper complexions and crudely crafted clothing, the men bore little resemblance to Three Tooth. Where Three Tooth stood straight and strong, the men standing before Lovethorn hunched over before their captors and flinched at any sudden movements.

Lovethorn waved his guards out of the hall and said, “Leave now.” He rose from his seat and descended the three steps that led to the platform on which his altar and throne of bones sat. The guards turned and quickly exited the cavernous room, slamming the doors behind them.

Paralyzed with fear, the trembling group of men cowered and covered their heads and faces as Lovethorn approached them. The frailest among the captives, One-Eye, lost consciousness and went limp at the approach of Lovethorn. Lovethorn bent and lifted the monocular man from the ground and carried him up the steps, gently laying him on the altar. Looking down on the scrawny little man, Lovethorn saw that the empty eye socket had been sewn shut long ago but the scars from the stitches were still red and raised. Lovethorn pushed on the empty socket and felt resistance from the skin, but nothing beneath it. The Man in Black smoothed One-Eye’s oily hair back and petted the sickly man’s head until he regained consciousness. One-Eye’s one eye blinked frantically upon waking and seeing Lovethorn’s grim countenance looming over him. “Jeepers creeper,” said Lovethorn with a dry laugh, “where’d you get that peeper?” And, the frightening sight of Lovethorn, as seen by the one good eye, blacked out as Lovethorn unexpectedly jammed his thumb into the socket and plucked the eyeball from One-Eye’s head.

With just a slushy pop, the eye vacated the socket and left in its place the burn of raw nerves. One-Eye screamed unintelligibly and once again lost consciousness from shock. Lovethorn said, “and thine right eye has offended me, thus I plucked it out and cast it from ye.” And he threw the smashed orb to the floor in front of the other captives, but they continued to cower and kept their eyes to the floor for fear of being the next to draw Lovethorn’s damning attention.

The blackness of the freshly exposed socket called to Lovethorn. He lifted One-Eye from the altar and bent over his face, kissing the open eyehole. Moist sucking sounds filled the air. Lovethorn’s dry lips smacked at the edges of the eye socket and his tongue flicked at the fresh wound, lapping up the blood until the flow slowed and stopped.

One-Eye’s blood still flowed through his veins. And his mouth struggled to drag air into his lungs. But he did not see and he did not feel. He did not think. His heart was black, and his lips were cold. Lovethorn’s demons infected One-Eye’s being and corroded his already weakened spirit. And the forces that pumped the scurve’s blood and drew air into his lungs were malevolent and rotten. One-Eye’s skin and bones remained but his essence trickled into Lovethorn’s mouth and almost completely expired with the exhalation of his tormentor’s stale breath. The scrawny scurve dissipated, leaving almost nothing but a glove of flesh to hold the stinking rotten sampling of Android Lovethorn’s sickness.

“Take your friend from here,” Lovethorn said to the other scurves. “Take him along El Camino de la Muerte. Take him as far away as you can manage, but stay on the road.” And he dropped One-Eye to the ground and turned to walk back up the steps to his throne.

One-Eye’s friends did not move to help him. They did not look up at Android Lovethorn. They waited, sitting still, eyes downcast, afraid to do anything.

“Do it now,” boomed Lovethorn, his voice a hollow, ricocheting echo in the large room. He stood from his throne and advanced on the men, who wilted at the hostility of his approach. “Do it now and you will live. Wait any longer and I will strike you down and grind you to dust. I will wipe your names from the annals of this land now. And those who knew you will not remember your names and faces. All that you will know is the eternal sting of my wrath, and unbearable pain. So take your friend and be gone from my sight. Be gone and be fast about it.”

Lovethorn turned and stomped out of the room. The sound of his voice, shouting at guards just outside, prompted the men to action. And they grabbed One-Eye and dragged him out of the room, out of the fort, and onto El Camino de la Muerte.

And a fluff-cock crowed thrice before John awoke that morning. The stink-pig pork from the night prior churned in John’s gut and fought hard to resist digestion, provoking painful cramps and rank gas. Meat farts, burps stinking of undigested pork, and the stench of the slaughtered stink-pig hung heavily in the air about the camp. Joad stirred in response to the rooster’s raspy cock-a-doodle-doo, and, still asleep, rolled onto his stomach. His giant ass arched high in the air and released a mephitic blast that that shamed the stink-pigs’ stench into submission. The rumble startled a group of turkey buzzards that had descended in the early morning and torn apart the remains of the slaughtered stink-pig. And Joad’s noises set the buzzards off into a drunken flight pattern above the camp. When it became clear that the men were no danger to them, the vultures again descended and finished their breakfast of putrid stink-pig carcass.

Santiago sat up and rubbed at his bloated gut, admiring the taut belly filled with an abundance of gas. Bile bubbled halfway up his throat, trying to escape on the wave of a rotten burp. “I should’a known better than to dine on that cloven hoofed swine,” he said to himself. Palms pressed to the sides of his head to calm the throbbing, Santiago rocked gently back and forth and moaned, “Awwww, damn. Should’a known better.”

Like an angel of mercy, Alf the Sacred Burro appeared at Santiago’s side. Alf’s body convulsed rhythmically and the thud of his throat opening and closing announced the imminent birth of a bezoar. And the burro coughed and heaved until he laid a fist-sized, hairy, donkey-nugget at Santiago’s feet.

“Thank you, you stinking donkey,” said Santiago as he grabbed his pipe and stuffed the bezoar in the bowl. He looked up at the ragged old beast, and the sun positioned itself perfectly behind Alf’s head so as to make it appear that the sacred burro had a fiery red halo glowing around the edge of his head. Alf whinnied and held his head still while Santiago scratched his chin.

The stink-pig meat sat, rotten and festering, like a load of hot sand in John’s stomach. He plopped down on the ground beside Alf the Sacred Burro and scratched at the donkey’s head. Santiago passed the bezoar pipe to John without saying anything. And they sat silently, scritching Alf and passing the bezoar until the healing donkey-ball soothed their stomachs and calmed their throbbing heads.

And though they felt better from the bezoar, neither John nor Santiago ate any breakfast that morning. Joad, though, woke up with a great hunger. He stood, stretched his arms wide, arched his back, and blurted out another bum-rumble that once again set the turkey vultures to flight. While it was clear to John and Joad that the stink-pig meat had also turned on Joad, Joad did not realize it. He sat by the embers of their fire from the night before and gnawed on the charred remains of a rack of stink-pig ribs. John and Santiago looked on in disbelief as Joad polished off the remainder of the ribs.

“What?” asked Joad. “I’m hungry. And ribs are good. I like ribs.”

And then they set out and walked on down the road, John, Joad, Santiago, and Alf the Sacred Burro. Walking helped them to shake off the last vestiges of stink-pig sickness, all except for Joad’s curdled meat farts. But Joad walked behind and downwind from John and Santiago and exhausted his foulness into his past and toward the sounder of stink-pigs. And the swine squealed and oinked and walked along the sides of El Camino de la Muerte, keeping a safe distance from the men. The stink-pigs always seemed on the edge of fleeing, especially if Joad slowed his walk and turned to look at them. But the pigs were no longer in danger of becoming dinner. Their fallen family member sat like shame in the men’s bellies and made it so that stink-pig was the last thing they wanted to eat. Gradually, the stink-pigs sensed that they were safe, and they followed closer, but still out of reach of the giant. Not out of fear, but out of a recognized pecking order, the pigs waddled along at the back, and as a part of, the caravan.

With each step the men took, the mountains in the distance seemed closer. The hazy skies diffused the sunlight and cast a red glow over the land. The cold air blew down at them, carrying with it the smell smoke and decay. Beneath a grand trufulla tree, along the side of El Camino de la Muerte, John saw movement. A small group of men lounged under the tree and did not rise at the approach of John and his entourage.

As they neared the strangers on the side of the road, John saw that it was a group of sickly desert scurves. He stepped toward the men with a determined stride. But Joad stepped in front of him and blocked his path. Joad said, “Let me approach them. I will find out what they are doing and what their intentions are.”

John said, “Look at them. They are frail and sick. They are small and we are large. They are ill and we are healthy. What do we have to fear from those little men?”

“There are no small enemies,” said Joad. “Something’s wrong. Those are desert scurves but this is not the desert. They do not belong here. Something’s wrong.” He looked down at John but neither the sincerity of Joad’s glare nor the imposition of his size deterred John. And Joad knew that he could not take control of the situation if John did not agree. So he stepped aside and let John take the lead.

And when they approached, they saw the Indians scattered on the side of the late-morning’s highway. Three of the scurves lay dead and bleeding. Their ghosts swam off on the chill breeze that blew along the path. One scurve writhed on the ground, holding his hands over his eyes and kicking his feet in the air. He screamed over and over in a language that John did not understand: “Deah ym fo tuo teg. Deah ym fo tuo teg.”

“He’s rotten with demons,” said Santiago, squatting in front of the man and sniffing at the air like a dog catching a scent. “He doesn’t even know we’re here, dig?”

John looked down on the scene and saw that the dead scurves had been attacked and hacked at. And there was blood on the ground from the dead desert scurves. Blood on the street in the land with no name. Bloody red sun beating down on the death scene.

Santiago walked around the scurves, surveying the situation. And he bent down and grasped the head of one of the corpses, looking into the dead eyes, Santiago said “Injun, Injun. What did you die for?”

But the scurve said nothing at all to Santiago’s inquiry. The dead eyes, they saw nothing. The dead ears did not hear the question. The dead mouth, it spoke not. The only sound coming from the group of scurves was the buzz of the munkle flies and the ranting of the man with his hands held tightly to his eyes. And he covered his eyes because his sight had been ripped from him. John knelt in front of the scurve whose name – One-Eye – no longer suited him.

“Do not touch him,” warned Joad, but he made no move to stop John. “There is something wrong here. He may be small and sick, but there is something wrong with this whole situation. I smell a trap.”

Before Joad could say any more, John laid his hands on One-Eye and received a jolt that momentarily stopped his heart. One-Eye’s body jumped and his mouth screamed in the foreign tongue, “Deah ym fo tuo teg. Deah ym fo tuo teg.” But John held tight to the emaciated scurve’s head and drew the sickness from the little man. John realized that Santiago was right, that the man was rotten with demons. And Joad was right, too – it was a trap. John could not have removed his hands from One-Eye even if he wanted to. He kept his hands on the scurve and consumed his sickness. But it was unlike the illness John had taken on before when he laid hands on the sick. This did not give him energy or power. It felt like he was sucking up rot, like something foul had been festering deep in the scurve. And when it was only too late, John realized that the man was rotten with demons and that he had removed the demons from the scurve and taken them on himself. His hands locked onto One-Eye’s head and the spirits flowed like the rapids of a river from One-Eye and into John.