Sloughing Off the Rot (25 page)

When it was all done, both men fell to the ground, unconscious. John’s body trembled, it rolled and it tumbled. He did not speak. His eyes squeezed shut. His lips tucked in and his teeth chewed at them. Shivers overwhelmed his body, and heat poured off of him like the steam from Aguacaliente.

Then John and One-Eye splayed out on the ground beneath the truffula tree and, but for the occasional tic, appeared as if they were no more living than the three dead scurves. Out of nowhere, John randomly smacked at his head and chewed at his own tongue. And One-Eye’s strange words now flowed from John’s mouth: “Deah ym fo tuo teg. Deah ym fo tuo teg.” One-Eye, he now said nothing, but still drew in shallow breaths, the slight rise and fall of his chest giving the only indication of the spark of life.

Munkle flies laid their eggs in the eyes and noses of the dead scurves. And the size of their swarm grew at the same rate as the stench of the corpses. Joad lifted the lifeless bodies and hauled them far downwind from the camp, where the smell blew away from them and the flies would bother them no more. The pile of dead scurves drew not only the attention of munkle flies, but also turkey buzzards and stink-pigs. The creatures growled and shrieked and spat and tore at each other in claims of ownership of the dead meat. And the carrion feast ensued, the beasts and birds quickly undressing the desert scurves down to the bones.

While Joad cleared the area under the fluffy truffula tree, Santiago and Alf the Sacred Burro sat vigil over John’s twitching body. Alf coughed up bezoars and Santiago placed the healing vomit balls in John’s shaking hands. When John’s arms flailed, Santiago sat on his chest and pinned the arms to the ground. When John’s teeth ground at his lips and tongue, Santiago stuck a truffula branch in his mouth to keep him from chewing anything off.

For the next three days and nights, John suffered the demons under the truffula tree. He shook and sweated and cried out at nothing. His arms flailed and his legs kicked out at the air. Wild bloodshot eyes bugged out and stared a fearful stare at nothing. Santiago stayed on the ground by his side, sleeping during John’s calm periods and pinning him to the ground when he cried out and thrashed about. And when the demon seizures stopped, Santiago dribbled water into John’s mouth and wiped the sweat from his brow.

While Santiago tended to his friend, Joad brought water from the river that paralleled the red brick road. Joad retrieved fluff-hen eggs and figs and bloodfruits, but Santiago refused the food, only taking water after giving it to John. And John, twisted and deranged by Lovethorn’s demons, accepted no sustenance other than the water. Joad tended the camp and pissed a protective circle around them each night. He kept watch, always alert and never sleeping, ready to dispatch Android Lovethorn’s men or lunkheads should they attack.

And the stink-pigs gathered and stood in a circle around the trufulla tree. More and more pigs arrived and joined in the vigil, scratching their feet and snouts at the ground, squealing and stinking up the air. By the third night of John’s ordeal, nearly a thousand stink-pigs amassed around the site of his possession. The pigs did not move from the site and they neither ate nor slept. The rank stink of their feces and urine polluted the air and sickened Santiago and Joad, but the men did not move from the site and they failed at their attempts to chase the stink-pigs off. Joad reluctantly snapped a stink-bitch’s neck to scare the pigs off, but they did not shy away this time. Instead, the remaining pigs merely made a small clearing around the dead pig, marking the spot of Joad’s offense against them.

On the third night under the trufulla tree, John’s heart beat an off-tempo rhythm and his breathing slowed. One-Eye lay on the ground beside John, marinating in his own piss and shit, his breath, too, growing shallower. And John screamed at the sky: “Deah ym fo tuo teg. Deah ym fo tuo teg.” He inhaled one last time and then deflated with a soft hiss.

And while Joad and Alf the Sacred Burro retrieved more water from the river, Santiago slapped at John’s face and chest, trying to make him wake up. He stood and kicked at John’s legs and arms. “You sad, sorry ass, piece of donkey shit,” he screamed, accentuating his words with light kicks to John’s defenseless body. “Suck some air into your talk-hole. Get up and get moving again, brother.” But the random onslaught of kicks did nothing to revive John. And Santiago, thinking his friend dead, fell to the ground and beat at it with his hands and cried a great sobbing boo-hoo of a wail.

The river of fire above roiled and tossed off a fury of flames. And from above, a ball of fire hurtled downward and crashed at the foot of the trufulla tree. The explosion temporarily scattered the gathering of stink-pigs and slammed Santiago to the ground, knocking him unconscious. Stepping from the fire, John’s flaming doppelganger strode toward him and bent down at his head. Fire-John knelt and straddled John’s chest. Bending down with his face inches from John’s, Fire-John whispered, “
Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde
.” He spat fire on his flaming hands and clapped them to John’s face, touching John’s ears and ramming his fiery thumbs into his nostrils. John seized, his back arched, and he tried to buck his doppelganger off. But Fire-John rode out the effort and stayed on John’s chest. He bent again, his thumbs still jammed in the nostrils, his hands still touching the ears, and whispered into John’s ear, “
Ephpheta, quod est, Adaperire
.” And John’s eyes flew open. They burned with madness. Fire-John continued, “
In odorem suavitatis. Tu autem effugare, diabole
.”

John’s body bucked like a brainsick bull and unsuccessfully tried to throw Fire-John aside. Fire-John gripped at the thick beard on John’s face and once again rode out the seizures and spasms. John spit and bit and fought and fit, but Fire-John held on. And he leaned in again and whispered in John’s ear, “
Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde.
” And John screeched a two-tone discordant creach that made the surrounding stink-pigs panic. And the pigs crashed into and trampled each other. This time when John’s body flailed and lurched, Fire-John did more than ride out the spasms. Fire-John balled up his flaming fists and slammed them against the sides of John’s head. He beat the fists on John’s chest and neck and face and chanted, “
Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde.
”

And at that place on the ground, under the fluffy trufulla tree, the flaming being on top of John exploded in a white-hot burst. And fire and smoke and screaming demons poured from every hole in John’s struggling, shaking body. The unclean spirits tore at John as they exited him and left bloody streams flowing from every orifice. In their haste to find hosts, those demons (those sick and broken bits of Lovethorn’s essence) dove into all other living beings surrounding John. They penetrated and possessed Santiago, and his body leapt from the ground and danced a herky-jerky jig like a marionette under the control of a mid-fit epileptic. And the spirits, they possessed each and every one of the stink-pigs that milled about around the trufulla tree.

And outside the circle of demon-infested pigs, Joad and Alf returned with water. They stood, shocked and confused as the entire stink-pig gathering ran around and past them, like a wild river flowing around a solid rock. And the pigs tore at each other as they ran, some gashing at others with great bloody tusks. And in the maddened torrent, Santiago’s possessed body ran past Joad and Alf the Sacred Burro. Santiago screeched the same words as John, “Deah ym fo tuo teg. Deah ym fo tuo teg,” and tore thick clumps of hair from his head and face as he ran stumbling along with the stink-pigs.

The entire community of demon-infested swine ran away from El Camino de la Muerte and down a steep embankment, crashing and splashing into the river. Santiago ran with them and collapsed, facedown, into the river. His face remained in the water and his body struggled and thrashed. And then he calmed and gave up the ghost. The bedeviled pigs swam no better than Santiago. They tumbled down the embankment and into the river, kicked about, and drew water into their lungs until they were no more. The current of the river carried the stink-pigs away. And just before Santiago’s limp body caught the strong current, Joad rushed into the water and tossed dead and dying stink-pigs out of his way. He fished Santiago from the water and carried him back to the trufulla tree. He lay the madman’s corpse on the ground beside John and One-Eye.

Still unconscious, but no longer bewitched, John remained on the ground. The trauma floored him. He lay exhausted from the ordeal and did not regain consciousness. One-Eye also rested easier but still looked little better than a lunkhead. Joad saw that all were safe and then he collapsed under the trufulla tree. The combination of a deep sadness and three days and nights of sleep deprivation won over and Joad leaned his back against the trufulla tree. And though he only intended to rest his teary eyes momentarily, sleep crept up on him and temporarily rescued him from his grief.

By the time Joad awoke, John had already risen and dragged Santiago’s body off to the side of the red brick road. All alone on the side of the road, John dug a shallow grave and piled rocks on top of the corpse until Santiago’s final resting place was covered with a waist-high mound of small boulders and stones. John piled the rocks until he could find no more of them. He said, “This will save you from the buzzards, my friend, and leave you to become one with the land.” And that pile of rocks remains there to this day.

The heavy hand of Joad fell on John’s shoulder. He moved beside John at the grave and got down on his knees out of respect for Santiago. His head now at John’s level, Joad said in his deep rumble, “His return to the soil is peaceful. It is the flow of nature, an eternal decay and renewal. Accepting this brings enlightenment. Ignoring this brings misery.”

John said nothing. He stayed and knelt at the pile of stones with a bowed head. Alf the Sacred Burro approached, sat on his haunches, and heaved up a large bezoar at the head of the grave. Tears stained a streak on each side of his ratty donkey snout. And he brayed a sound of pure misery at the sky.

“Do not let it bring you down,” said Joad to John and Alf the Sacred Burro. “Since life and death are each other’s companions, why worry about them? All beings are one. He is not gone. He is in the rain and the dirt and the dire wolf that howls at night. He is in the fluff-cock that crows in the morning. He swims in the flow of the river of clouds and walks the path with us.”

“Yes,” agreed John. “He is one with us and one with all. I don’t grieve his loss because he is not lost. He is here,” he patted his chest. “And here,” he pointed to his forehead. “And here,” he grabbed at his crotch. “He is not lost to me because he is me. He is in me.”

Alf the Sacred Burro brayed in agreement and coughed up another fuzzy donkey-ball. They all hung their heads in a moment of silence.

And while they marked the passing of Santiago, One-Eye awoke from his catatonic state and ran an all-out wild sprint, fleeing in blind fear from the trufulla tree. And he ran for miles in a straight line, miraculously not bumping into anything, until being intercepted by another desert scurve. One-Eye tried to keep running, but Three Tooth held tight onto the back of his buckskin jacket. The sight of the sickly scurve with one sewn-up eye and one empty socket drew a heavy tear from Three Tooth’s weepy eye. So Three Tooth invited the wreck of a man into his misfit tribe and One-Eye gladly accepted.

When John and Joad and Alf the Sacred Burro turned away from Santiago’s grave, they saw that One-Eye had left them. John scanned the land on both sides of the red brick road and did not see One-Eye anywhere. He said, “I hope that he’s alright. He has left the path and we can’t go searching for him.”

Joad said, “Every man has his own path that he must follow. It is not up to us to make that decision for him. The best we can do is hope that his path takes him to his destination.”