Dance the Eagle to Sleep (17 page)

Billy moved to the center of the circle. There he stood, big and slightly hunched, with his fingers at the front of his belt. He faced Chuck. He stared at him till Chuck squirmed. Then he turned slowly around and looked at the circle. He held out his oversized hand and turned the thumb down. “Death”

“Death,” Matty said.

“Death” Billy’s warriors repeated one by one. “Death” “Death” “Death”

Corey saw that he had been outflanked. Private caucus. The more-militant-than-thou warriors. God damn them. The mood of the meeting was thick and ugly. Never, never could he do what had to be done, never was he close enough to everyone to sense moods and changes, never did he spend enough time feeling people out and giving them a sense of their place and their value. Never enough time, never. He stood to argue for imprisonment. Chuck could be detained on the farm. They could try to reeducate him. After all, they had time. Perhaps it was everyone’s fault that Chuck had been left with the inside of his head full of ugly nonsense, while no one had noticed and no one had cared.

Matty answered, “Who among us wants to be a jailer? We came out of the system to make ourselves and others free. If we haven’t won him to us in all the time he’s been here, if he’s been hiding what he really wanted all this time, what does reeducation mean? He fooled us once, so he can do it again. How can we trust him? And who wants to be his jailer?”

“Who wants to be his murderer?” Carole asked: hard-edged Carole of the warriors. Maybe she had slept with Chuck. Or maybe she just hated what they were doing.

“We’ll draw lots” Matty said. “It’s like security. Nobody should have to do it, but as long as we’re in the belly of a sick society, everybody has to eat some shit.”

“It has to be done at the farm” Harley the street fighter said. “It’s too dangerous here.” Chuck was staring from one to another, his eyes just pulling from face to face in dumb fury. “You’re all crazy bastards. You know that? Crazy bastards! I didn’t do anything you all don’t want to do. That’s why you want to get rid of me. Don’t you see I’m willing to go? I’ll walk out that door and wash my hands of the lot of you. I don’t need your old bread to make a living. I can get a job any time. Shit, I can promise I won’t bother with it. And Billy, he’s lying, because he knows I never could work good in the lab. All I ever done was break glass. I don’t know the formula for water, let alone bread.”

“You’re an evader” Matty said. “What wouldn’t you tell to stay out of jail?”

“So I’ll go to your farm. What do you want out of me?”

“You just said you didn’t want to stay with us,” Billy said. He got to his feet. “Why should you want to stay on the farm? What’s new that’s going to keep you honest? We’ll draw lots.”

The momentum had escaped Corey, and he had to regather it. A dangerous feel to the room. It was necessary to do something to heal the collective. The will of the caucus must be healed into the will of the body. Further, a bad task must not fall on someone who might be broken by it. Finally, his political instincts told him he must stay on top of decisions. Regain control. Corey stood. “No. I’ll perform any sentence of the council. I accept the judgment of the tribe and stand ready to carry it out” Had to, had to. Heal the breach.

By vote of council, the death sentence was confirmed and Corey was mandated to carry it out that night. Chuck was bound and Ben went for the truck. Corey wanted to leave fast. “We won’t stay for the dancing” It would turn his stomach.

“We don’t dance after council any more” Matty said. “Cadre have criticism, self-criticism. Dancing is for after we’ve won”

The trip back was black and silent, a long tunnel under a mountain. Joanna held his head in her lap and stroked his forehead. He had an urge to draw away from her. He would not let himself withdraw. She was his strength. But he could not speak to her. He could only lie in his blackness as the miles slipped under them.

The guards let them in. It was late and most of the tribe asleep. But Shawn was sitting up with Ginny and Ben’s little sister Ruth and three of the farm warriors, awaiting them. He looked at Ruthie waiting, and for an instant he loved her better than anyone, clearer than anyone. And knew he could not communicate it out of his trouble. She was little as a comma and dark, and she spent most of her time with the chickens. She danced by herself singing words you had to stand near her to hear:

I used not to live anywhere.

I used not to live anywhere.

I used not to have hands.

Now I live here.

I used not to have a face.

Now I see me.

There used to be others.

They used to be tall.

They used to be mean.

Now I see you.

Ginny stepped forward, her hands clutched. “We didn’t know if you’d be back tonight, but we thought we’d wait. Billy didn’t come?”

Corey made a brief report. The others filled in. Bound Chuck lay like a bag of laundry. Corey could not look at him.

“I’m worried about Billy,” Ginny said. “He’s getting harder. Things are building up in him.”

“Things build up for all of us. And power corrupts” Corey said bleakly. He wished Ginny would shut up. “Is it corrupting you?”

“Corey isn’t interested in power” Joanna said fiercely. “All he cares about night and day is the group.” And me, her eyes said sideways.

“The group isn’t power?” She had such a way of looking at him sometimes. It made him remember, but he always pushed it away. He did not want to connect this Ginny with that one. They were comrades now. But her look sometimes pushed on his forehead like a pointed finger.

“Better do it on the hill. Take him up to the cabin. Nobody’s there now,” one of the warriors said, and all three left quickly. Corey got his .22 from storage.

“You’re going to kill him? Have you gone crazy?” Ginny stood arms akimbo.

I met a monster walking up the hill. His name was Corey and he grinned and grinned and his hands ran blood. The executioner’s shame. He
told Joanna to untie Chuck’s feet and told Chuck to get up. Chuck shook his head. He would not move.

“Why are you going through with this? Just because they’ve gone mad fighting doesn’t mean we have to. Why?”

Joanna repeated the argument to her from the council meeting. Ginny frowned. She sat on a bench, looking down. Corey prodded Chuck with the rifle till he got up.

Joanna said, “Corey, he wants the gag taken out”

“No.”

“Why not?” Joanna shook back her curly hair. “It must be nauseating to have something in your mouth.”

“It must be nauseating to have a nice conversation with the man you’re about to shoot.”

“Maybe he has something to say.”

“Sure he has: Don’t do it; I want to live. Hurry up. Unless, of course, you don’t want to come with me. Maybe it disgusts you.”

“Of course it does. But I won’t let you go up there alone”

“And you, Shawn. Still sitting this one out? Still see it as none of your business?”

Shawn winced. “All right. What I love best is your forgiving disposition”

“Listen!” Ginny stood up. “We can’t let him go, because supposedly he would sell the formula for bread. Okay, we stop selling bread. We give it away.”

Shawn sat down. “Why not? We want to cut people out of the money system. What better way?”

“Because the council decided. If you two felt so strongly, why the hell wouldn’t you come along? We can’t set ourselves against the decision. We can’t start creating factions. Billy uses the money that comes in from bread for buying guns. He’s into weapons training with the warriors. The time to fight the decision was at the council, not afterwards because you don’t like it.”

Ginny spoke a few words to Chuck and walked out. They started for the cabin. Corey wanted to send the others away from him and to keep them, to tax them for failing him in some murky way he could not define. They stumped up the hill on the path, tripping over rocks, lashed with branches. He hated the broad back of Chuck stumbling ahead. Wanted to drive the rifle in. The flashlight streamed ahead of them, swinging as Shawn walked. Insects fluttered through the beam.

He could no longer remember why it had been important to assume
the will of the council in his person. Symbolic leadership materializing in concrete act: concrete dirty painful act. Heal the group. Fight schisms. Now he mistrusted his judgment. Long scramble up the hill. They were all panting. The dampness of sweat disgusted him under his clothes.

Shawn went into the cabin and lit a Coleman lantern, which hissed loudly. No electricity up here. Water from a spring fifty yards away—the spring that became the stream running down through the farm. It was a dull night. He could see no stars. The wind was soft and tired. It must be three. He did not own a watch. At demonstrations, he borrowed one. He saw Joanna and Shawn retie Chuck’s legs and then they came out to him. He had dropped his rifle and left it on the ground in the path of yellow light from the cabin door. Cabin they had built for people to be alone with their heads. He still believed in fasting and vision. Would what they were about to do pollute the air?

“We should dig the hole first” Shawn said. A shovel leaned by the door, and Joanna picked it up over her shoulder.

“A hole by any other name. Why don’t we dig the grave here, where he can supervise?”

“Come on, Corey” She touched his arm. “It has to be away from the cabin” She spoke very softly.

False delicacy. They were about to kill Chuck, but they must not discuss it loudly in front of him. That way it would hurt less, no? “Why don’t we ask him where he’d like to be?”

Joanna let go. “All right, I’ll do it” She plunged blindly through the underbrush. Shawn chased her with a flashlight. Corey followed sullenly. Joanna and Shawn finally agreed on a spot, and Shawn began to dig. It was slow work. Finally he said, “Come on, you dig for a while, chief.”

Corey took the shovel and worked savagely. “How handy that there’s a shovel here. It’s for burying garbage, you know.”

“Look, we didn’t vote to kill him.”

“Yes, you did, Joanna baby.”

“Just to make it unanimous. Everybody raised his hand.”

“Everybody except me.”

“But you were waiting for a verdict. You said you’d carry it out. That’s why you didn’t vote.”

“How do you know why I didn’t vote? Did you ask me?”

Joanna bit her lip, turning to and fro. “Did you want me not to vote? Think how that would have looked.”

“Think how Chuck’s going to look soon.”

Shawn yanked the shovel from him and finished the hole. Corey did not want to kill anybody, not even for his best ideas. He blamed himself because he had not thought of an alternative. That meant they had not cared enough to invent a way that Chuck could live. Yet he was being sentimental. Chuck was a dangerous slob. The wind had stiffened. The sky looked thinner as they trudged back to the cabin.

“It’ll be light soon. So we can see what we’re doing” The rifle lay in front of the cabin. He had hoped somehow it would have been stolen. He had hoped that Chuck would have escaped, but he lay bound on the canvas cot. The supports were two x’s. Almost he hated the boy now, although he still pitied him and his plastic desires, pitied his awkward assertions that they all shared his itches, pitied his naïve hustler’s self-conning. Corey sat down on a rock. Yes, it was getting lighter. Gray seeped through the air.

Joanna was standing in front of him. Her hands dug into the mass of her tangled hair. It was not red yet. “It has to be done soon. It will upset people to know we’re here.”

“By all means, let’s everybody pretend nothing is happening” Corey heard himself and felt shame, but he could not stop. Bitterness rode him. He was rubbing himself into it, and he could not stop.

She looked at him, stepped close, her eyes narrow and hard. “Do you want me to do it? Is that it?”

“Of course not” But he was fascinated. A pit. He did not know if he were more fascinated by the idea because that proved she would kill the boy for him, or because then he would not have to. It made him dizzy.

“I don’t believe you” After a minute she went and picked up the gun. She held it gingerly but did not offer it to him.

“God damn it, what is going on?” Shawn came over.

“Corey can’t do it”

He did not move. He did not know if it were true or not. He had the feeling he could, if he chose, rise and do it and be done. Still he did not. He was waiting for something else.

“Oh shit” Shawn said softly.

They stood there. The gray wind very slightly moved Joanna’s hair. Shawn took the gun from her. He shook Corey by the shoulder roughly. “Come on, we have to carry him out.”

“Untie his legs. He’ll walk.”

“I’m not going to shoot a man running from me. Why should he walk out? Come on.”

Shawn pulled him to his feet.

Shawn took Chuck’s shoulders and he took Chuck’s legs. Chuck stared at him over the gag and mumbled something. They sat him up against a tree and Corey took the gag from his mouth. Wet with spittle.

Chuck made a sour face and felt his lips with his tongue. “Are you going to shoot me?”

He was looking at Corey, but Shawn answered. “Yes” He got the rifle and fumbled with it, finding the safety catch. “Is it loaded?”

Corey nodded. He wanted to turn away but could not.

“Why are
you
doing it?
He
can’t. Corey! Let me go, Corey. I knew you couldn’t do it to me. You don’t have to tell anyone. I’ll go away, you can trust me, you know that. Corey!”

Shawn stood about ten feet from him and raised the rifle, squinting, grimacing. Still he missed the first shot. Chuck screamed and tried to roll away. Shawn stepped close and shot into him, shot into his neck and head. The shots came quickly and horribly loud. He shot until the rifle clicked empty. Then he threw it down.

Joanna took two steps forward, staring. The blood ran out of Chuck in a pool that looked black on the gray leaves. Then she turned away and vomited. Corey felt his gorge rise and fall back. He took a deep breath. Still the blood ran out of the boy. He saw Sandy again. Killed by a shotgun blast. Mechanically and remotely, he made his body work. He got to his feet and walked over to Chuck and examined him carefully. “He’s still bleeding.”