The Impaler (31 page)

Then a blink, a rush, a coming together, and Edmund and the boy were one again.

The vibrating was gone, but the calm remained.

And now there was only the buck’s bloody beating heart held out to him in his grandfather’s hands.

“Take it, Eddie,” said the old man. “You know what to do.”

Edmund took the heart from his grandfather and brought it to his lips. He did not pause to ponder its warmth, its wetness, and without hesitation sank his teeth deep into the twitching muscle, tore out a bite, and swallowed.

When he was grown, Edmund would realize that the hunting trip was not only the last time his grandfather gave him the medicine in secret, but also the last time his grandfather gave him the medicine
period.
However, over the course of the two years following the hunting trip, Edmund began to wonder why his grandfather never offered him the medicine even after some of his really bad fights. Like the one with the catcher that got him kicked off his junior high school baseball team.

Granted, Edmund threw the first punch, but the catcher had called Edmund a faggot because he didn’t feel like pitching hard that day. Edmund flew off the mound in a fury, but another player stepped in front of him just as he reached home plate, making Edmund’s punch go wild. The catcher, who was a big, fat kid, easily sidestepped their scuffle and tagged Edmund in the face—pushed the other player out of the way and tackled Edmund to the ground. He got in a few more punches before Edmund could connect with one of his own. And surely Edmund would have gotten the best of him had the coach and the other players not stepped in. But be-
cause Edmund had thrown the first punch, he was told to gather up his things and never come back.

Claude Lambert had been really disappointed in his grandson for getting kicked off the baseball team. He even went down to the school and tried to reason with the coach, but the coach wouldn’t hear of taking Edmund back. Didn’t matter how good the kid was, he said. That kind of unsportsmanlike conduct simply would not be tolerated.

The old man went on a two-week bender after that. And oftentimes, Edmund would come home from school and find him down in the cellar by himself, the smell of licorice mixed with cigarette smoke wafting up the stairs and that weird French music playing in the background. It had been ages since Edmund had heard that music, and he couldn’t remember ever seeing his grandfather that way—depressed, distant, quiet. Rally seemed to look at him differently, too, and for weeks the two men only spoke to Edmund in spurts of yeses, nos, and maybes.

Eventually, the old man forgave him—never actually said anything, but Edmund could tell by the way he and Rally looked at him normally again. Edmund would get in many more fights that year, but still Claude Lambert never brought the medicine up from the cellar. The boy even went looking for it one night when his grandfather was passed out in the den—something he swore he would never do—but could not find it anywhere. Edmund still got spooked when he went down into the cellar alone, but strangely, not only did he find himself longing for the medicine, but more than anything else, Edmund also found himself longing for the General.

Edmund hadn’t dreamed of the General since even before the hunting trip; hadn’t talked about him with his grandfather since he was a boy and began to wonder if he had ever dreamed of him at all. And so he asked the school librarian about any Civil War battles fought in Wilson. She said she didn’t know of any and told him to look it up in the encyclo-
pedia. Edmund did, and discovered that no Civil War battles had been fought in Wilson County
ever.
The closest one seemed to be the Battle of Bentonville, near the present-day town of Four Oaks—about forty miles away, by Edmund’s calculations, and certainly not close enough to warrant carrying the General all the way to his property.

He asked his grandfather about it.

“I reckon the General must’ve been someone you made up,” the old man replied. “You always had a hyperactive imagination, Eddie.”

“But you were the one who told me about the Civil War stuff.”

“I don’t remember,” said his grandfather. “I probably said all that just to make you feel better even though it wasn’t true. Like
c’est mieux d’oublier.
I used to say them words to you thinking they was magic. But look what happened? Them words ended up not being magic at all. If they was, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself kicked off the baseball team, now would ya? My own damn fault, I reckon. Wrong fucking equation and back to square one.”

Edmund had no idea what his grandfather was talking about, and asked, “But what about the medicine? You used to give it to me to make me feel better when I was hurt, but now you won’t anymore.”

“You’ve had too much of it,” his grandfather said simply. “Ain’t good for your head no more, I reckon. Besides, there ain’t none of it left.”

Edmund got the idea to kill the cat from the buck his grandfather had mounted for him years earlier. He didn’t know why the image of the cat skewered on the deer’s antlers suddenly flashed in his mind while he was doing his geometry homework; and he most certainly didn’t know why it should be his
first
buck rather than all the others he and his grandfather had hung up in the den over the years. Perhaps, Edmund thought, it was because he had been daydreaming about pussy; about Erin Jones and their first time in the back of her cramped Honda Civic. She was sixteen, he was fifteen. His first time, not hers. Fun, but nothing special, and not nearly as exciting as he had thought it would be. But the idea of the cat suddenly excited him more than the memory of doing it with Erin Jones; excited him even more than the idea of doing it with Karen Blume, who had been the star of his jerk-off sessions for pretty much his entire sophomore year now.

Searching. Searching.

The cat? Was that what he had been searching for?

It felt like the answer, and for an entire week Edmund Lambert could not get the image out of his mind.

Edmund and his grandfather had about a half dozen cats roaming the property—all outdoors, all former strays. Two of the new ones were still feral, and only came out from under the back porch when Edmund set out their food. They hadn’t been fixed like the others, hadn’t even been named yet, and Edmund knew it was only a matter of time before another litter popped and he and Rally would have to cart them off to the shelter. Well, it was really Edmund who would have to take care of all that. Rally would just tag along for the ride like he always did. Claude Lambert preferred more and more to stay in the farmhouse—in the cellar, mostly, or in the den watching T V. The two men were well into their seventies now, retired, and Edmund had begun to think of them both as pretty fucking useless; had grown bored with them, and would often look for any excuse to get out of the house.

But the cats? Well, that was one reason to stick around.

Edmund knew how to catch the wild ones. He’d done it before with a can of tuna fish and a bottomless wooden crate with a hinged lid that his grandfather kept in the old horse barn. There were no more horses in the horse barn—only his Uncle James’s old van and some other junk behind which Edmund kept his stack of nudie books. Edmund rarely went in there anymore to look at them. No, in the last year or so, he had begun to feel confused when he looked at the pictures that had both men and women in them; would sometimes find his eyes drifting to the men, to their buttocks and their chests. Edmund didn’t think he was a “sodomite” as his grandfather and Rally called them. He still liked girls, still liked doing Erin Jones and hoped someday to do Karen Blume, too.

But still, sometimes, late at night, when his mind wandered …

There was no confusion about what Edmund wanted to do to the cat, however. And so one day while his grandfather was at Rally’s auto shop (which had been bought out by a nephew after the pudgy old man retired), fifteen-year-old Edmund Lambert latched the top of the crate closed and tied a clothesline through a hole in the lid; rigged everything up so the crate hung from a tree limb about three feet off the ground. He tied off the other end of the line on a chair leg a few yards away on the back porch. Then he clicked the top of a tuna fish can a few times, opened four of them, and set them beneath the crate.

All the cats came out of hiding immediately, but only the ones with names rushed to feed while Edmund was still there. Edmund didn’t want them. No, his grandfather and Rally liked those cats and would miss them; might ask questions and grow suspicious.

So Edmund sat on the porch and waited; untied the clothesline from the chair leg and held the crate aloft until the feral cats approached. And once all six of the cats were jostling for position around the tuna fish cans, Edmund let the crate drop. Three, including a feral one, got away immediately, but the others were trapped—meowing and hissing and batting against the inside of the crate in a panic. Edmund felt excited, but at the same time as if his actions were not his own. Like that time with his grandfather in woods when he ate the deer’s heart; felt as if he were standing a few feet away watching a robot who had been programmed by somebody else.

Either way, he knew exactly what to do.

Edmund walked over to the crate and picked up the pitchfork he’d leaned up against the other side of the tree. He undid the latch and, with some quick maneuvering, was able to corner the feral cat while the other two escaped. The cat hissed and screeched and clawed at the pitchfork points that held it down. And then, without thinking, Edmund skewered
the creature through its back and belly. The cat let out a wail—started trembling and clawed at itself as it tried to escape. But Edmund pushed harder, then lifted the cat into the air as if he were baling hay. The cat shrieked and began to spasm, its movements impaling it farther down the pitchfork. The other cats were wailing now, too, watching from the woods and from underneath the porch. Edmund held the pitchfork at arm’s length as the cat began to twitch—a soft hissing coming from its mouth—and the blood began to drip down the handle and onto Edmund’s hand.

And then it was over.

Edmund twisted the pitchfork’s handle into the soft dirt, and when it would stand upright on its own, he stepped back a few feet and studied his work. His heart was beating wildly, and he felt exhilarated overall, but something was missing. Impulsively, he dipped his fingers in the cat’s blood and brought them to his mouth. The blood was warm and tasted coppery, and for some reason Edmund thought of the wind from his grandfather’s grinder in the workroom.

But something was still missing. And the more Edmund thought about it, the further away the answer seemed to be.

Later, after he buried the cat in the woods, Edmund lay in his bed wide awake, thinking and listening to the other cats outside as they mourned their fallen comrade. He felt no guilt, only confusion. And then the searching again—still there, creeping back in, the answer tomorrow maybe.

No, killing the cat and tasting its blood—at least
that
cat and
that
blood—wasn’t it. And Edmund Lambert felt as empty as he did before.

Edmund’s first time with a man was with a lawyer named Alfred, an older gentleman he met in an AOL chat room called RaleighMen4Men. It was in the spring of 1998, during his senior year of high school, while he was still going hot and heavy with Karen Blume. Edmund liked Karen; well, he liked banging her, but didn’t really enjoy spending time with her, and often found himself thinking strange thoughts when they were together.

He wondered what it would be like if he
did things
to her: things like he had done to the cat; things like he had done to some of the other animals he’d captured over the last couple of years—squirrels, mice, a possum or two, and that stray dog. And of course, there were more cats. So many cats.

Edmund had also fixed up his uncle’s old van, and his favorite fantasy involved drugging Karen and driving her out into the woods, where he would park the van and set up a little workshop with the tools he had brought along to play with her. But at the same time Edmund suspected that doing those kinds of things to Karen Blume wouldn’t be worth the risk and wouldn’t satisfy him in the long run.

No, something was missing. Something was always missing.

Edmund didn’t know why he started going in the Men4Men chat room; didn’t know why searched the male-modeling sites until he found a picture that sort of looked like him. Edmund called himself “Ken” and asked a lot of questions of the men online; even sent his picture to a few of them. But just like the phony photo and the phony name, Edmund felt as if his actions were not his own, and watched himself with the same detached curiosity as if he were watching a character on a TV show.

And of course there was the searching. Always the searching.

Edmund and Alfred had gone back and forth on AOL for about a month before Edmund agreed to meet him one afternoon in the philosophy and religion section at Barnes & Noble. The plan was simple enough: if each liked what he saw, Edmund would follow the lawyer to a hotel room a few miles away. Alfred was married, he said—had one child already and another on the way—and the only time he could get away was during the weekdays. It also worked out well for Edmund, who had been suspended from school again for fighting. He was one step away from being expelled, his counselor said, and would have to go to summer school to finish up his coursework. Indeed, it was Edmund’s counselor who had made the case for Edmund to be allowed to graduate; reminded the principal that Edmund had a 3.8 GPA and had tested the previous year at the genius level. If the boy could just get his temper under control, his counselor said; if he could just focus, it would pay off for him in the long run.

School had always been easy for Edmund Lambert. Girls, sports, the respect and envy from the other boys—it all came just
so goddamn easy
to him. But the searching? Yes, only the searching was hard.