The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (48 page)

They were building a gallows.

Incongruously, here was activity. Here was fresh lumber. Here were men at work. The gallows stood sixteen feet high. Four giant pillars supported a platform with a trapdoor. Over it was a heavy cross beam from which dangled a thick rope, a noose expertly tied at its end.

This village and its people shared an infection. It was the germ of misery, of hopelessness, of loss of faith. And for the faithless...the hopeless...the misery-laden...there is time—ample time—to engage in one of the other pursuits of men.

They begin to destroy themselves.

Peter Sykes walked down the main meet pulling an overladen pack mule. The animal was sick and overworked. It stumbled along, head
down, eyes half-closed. At intervals Sykes yanked viciously on the rope. The animal would start, then seem to push itself forward, eyes glazed with pain and fatigue, bony body white with sweat. Pots and pans, bottles, magazines, coiled rope, and nondescript boxes protruded from the saddle bags by which the mule was weighted down.

Peter Sykes had small eyes that darted this way and that way from a fat and filthy face. As he moved his massive bulk though the dust, from time to time he produced a bottle from his hip pocket and took a long, luxurious drink. The liquor dribbled from the corners of his mouth and traveled in little rivulets through his beard stubble. “Awright, ladies and gents,” he suddenly shrieked when he got halfway down the main street. “It’s Peter Sykes back from St. Louis and stocked up with everything that’s needed for kitchen, barn and”—he held up the pint bottle—“the dried throat and the swollen tongue!”

He boomed out his fat man’s laughter and shoved the bottle back into his hip pocket. He stopped the mule in front of a wooden building that was the town jail. He dropped the rope in the dust, and climbed laboriously to the wooden plank sidewalk. A barred window faced the street. Sykes peered through the bars into the dark cell. A thin Mexican boy sat on a bench at the far end, his hands resting quietly on his lap, his head bent forward.

“Mr. Gallegos, I believe,” Sykes said, bowing from his vast waist. He chuckled. The obese body shook and the folds in his face seemed to come alive like wiggling snakes. “Mr. Gallegos,” he repeated. He scratched his jaw in an exaggerated pretense of thought. “Today’s a special day, isn’t it? Now let’s see...what’s the special day?” He grinned and snapped his fingers. “I remember now! It’s just this moment come back to me.”

Sykes pointed through the bars. “Today you’re gonna get hanged!” Obscene laughter poured out of him. “Today young Mr. Gallegos, killer of children, dangles at the gallows!”

He limped away from the window, tears of laughter rolling from his eyes. Two men were walking down the wooden sidewalk toward him. His laughter died out, his eyes narrowed and took on a different expression. These were customers and Peter Sykes’s entire life was built upon commerce. He waddled over to the nearer man, grabbed him in a perspiring fist.

“Good whiskey from St. Louis, Jonesy,” he said importantly. He patted his hip pocket. “Eighty-five cents a fifth.”

The man looked embarrassed and shook off Sykes’s hand. Immediately Sykes turned to the other passer-by, blocked him with his big bulk, shoved his face close to him and rolled his eyes. His voice, almost inaudible, was like a leer.

“Post cards, Eddie,” he whispered, wiggling his tongue. “Wonderful post cards this trip. French dancing girls in their native costumes.”

Sykes giggled, jammed his elbow in the man’s ribs, then laughed aloud as he walked away, head down. Sykes was still chuckling as he went back to the jail and into the Sheriff’s office.

It was a bare room with a makeshift desk, a gun rack, and a barred door leading to the single cell. John Koch sat behind the desk, a tarnished badge on his worn and dusty leather vest. His long, lean tanned face, the eyes deep-set and tired, showed forty-seven hard years indelibly imprinted in lines over the cheekbones and on either side of the jaw. Koch barely glanced at Sykes, then busied himself with papers on the desk. He felt the intrusion of the fat man and the sense of envelopment that Sykes carried with him.

“What’ll it be for you today, Mr. Koch?” Sykes’s shrill voice intruded upon the quiet of the room. “Don’t need any more rope, do you?” He called out toward the barred door. “Oughta see the fancy five-strand hemp I sold the town for your party, Gallegos! It could lift about five of you.”

He lumbered across the room to stand close to the cell door. The look he threw at Gallegos was as much a part of him as his rolls of fat. There was a meanness to it. A raw prejudice. A naked dislike of other men.

“Not any more at home like you, are there?” Sykes laughed loudly, then asked, “And what do you fancy today, Mr. Koch?”

“What do I fancy, Mr. Sykes?” Koch forced himself to keep his voice steady and low. “I’ll tell you what I fancy. I’d like you to take your fat carcass and your loud mouth out into the air. This is a small room and it’s the hot time of the morning.”

The grin on the fat man’s face grew tight and strained. Sykes knew what Koch was feeling. He was not insensitive to the anger he aroused. But he’d lived a life of walking over other people’s anger and disgust. It was his own peculiar strength.

“How about you, Mr. Gallegos?” Sykes jeered. “What would be your pleasure this morning? Maybe a nice hacksaw?”

Again his whole body quivered with laughter but it faded when he saw the look on the Mexican boy’s face. The black eyes that caught and pierced him held fathomless pools of hate.

“This one I wouldn’t miss!” Sykes gloated. “I just wouldn’t want to miss this one!” He took the bottle from his hip pocket, uncorked it with his teeth. “There’s gonna be a funeral procession down this street, Gallegos. You better look out and watch. They’re burying the little girl you mangled under your wagon. You’re sobered up now, aren’t you, Gallegos? You remember the little girl, don’t you? You got stinking drunk, rode a wagon down the street, and what you did to that poor little girl—”

The Mexican boy leaped from the bench, slammed against the bars and thrust an arm out through them, trying to reach the fat man. But Sykes nimbly stepped back a foot and waggled a finger. “Uh, uh, Mr. Gallegos. You’ll get your chance to move around this afternoon. You’ll be able to kick and kick and kick.”

This struck him as so funny that he threw back his head and roared.

Koch stared at Sykes. God, what an animal, he thought. What a filthy animal. Some men were built for their trade. They were designed to be cheats, hucksters, medicine men. There must be some kind of mold, the thought ran through his mind, which produced the filth that stood in front of him holding the rotgut whiskey.

“You ought to take a drink of this, Sheriff?” Sykes’s voice patronized Koch. “It’s a good tonic.” He patted the flab that hung over his belt. “Puts a little grizzle there. Sets you up great for a good hanging. Yes, sir. Makes you feel strong and firm.” He held out his vast, flabby arm and made a muscle. “You oughta feel this!”

Koch’s mouth trembled. “I don’t touch dog meat, Sykes.”

The bottle was slammed down on the desk top. “You talk big behind a badge, Mr. Koch.”

“It just sounds big to you, Sykes, because you’re a midget. You only grew up as high as a money belt and that’s a low height for a man.”

Sykes’s little eyes glittered. “I’ve always had a question about you, Koch,” he said, in a low voice. “Seems you got a thing for foreigners and strays. But you’re mighty tight-lipped when it comes to your own.”

Koch rose from his chair. “You’re not my own, Sykes, so don’t claim any kinship.” He pointed toward the cell. “And as for the boy in there—he had his trial and today he’s gonna swing for it. But there’s nothing in his sentence that says he’s got to be tormented by a pig who sells trinkets at funerals.” He stared at the fat man and Sykes had to turn away. “Go on, get out of here.”

Sykes moved toward the door, anger building up inside him. Anger at being despised. Anger at the itchy sweat that rolled down his body. Anger because hatred was his own special province; hatred of people, hatred of all he had to do to stay alive. He wanted to walk out without saying anything more, but found himself turning at the door.

“When the day is over, Mr. Koch,” he asked, “which one will you weep for?”

Koch looked at the thin Mexican boy whose hands gripped the bars and whose young face suddenly looked so old. “I’ve got enough tears for both, Mr. Sykes,” he answered quietly.

The fat man walked out on to the street and heard the sound of rolling wagon wheels. He shaded his eyes against the blinding sun. The funeral procession was turning the corner at the far end of the street. The long line of people included the black-garbed figures of a middle-aged man and his wife, who walked behind a minister; behind them, in the center of the column, was the wagon with the unpainted pine box. The box was very small.

Sykes moved his fat bulk down to the dusty street and, with a great flourish, removed his hat and held it over his heart. He waited until the middle-aged couple were a few feet from him, and then joined the procession.

“Mr. and Missuz Canfield,” Sykes panted as he shuffled along beside them. He was sweating and half out of breath, but his tone was deep and mournful. “I’m real sorry about this. My condolences to yuh. But this afternoon it’s gonna be a lot cheerier. We’re gonna string up the dirty little animal who done this.”

The husband and wife stared at him incredulously and the woman bit her lip and turned away.

Sykes screwed up his face like a little baby beginning to cry. “It’s God’s will, Mr. and Missuz Canfield,” he screeched. “It’s God’s will. But she’s gonna be avenged.
She is going to be avenged.
So you don’t have no worries on that score. The Mexican who done it is gonna pay for it.”

Koch came up behind Sykes, pulled him by the back of his jacket and half yanked him off his feet. Sykes whirled around, a hand raised. This was knocked aside by the tall sheriff whose face was white and grim.

“Some other time, Sykes, huh?” Koch said quietly. “Some other time act like a man with no brains. But not, now. Now you keep quiet.”

Sykes glared at him, but the look on the other man’s face was the kind you didn’t talk back to. This crazy, Goddamned sheriff. This fanatic. Well, what the hell. He’d made his position known. The Canfields had seen him. He had been properly doleful and he’d supplied the rope for the hanging. They’d remember that. His eyes suddenly blinked and narrowed.

He nudged Koch. “Now look at that, will yuh? Now ain’t that the most gall you ever seen in one place? There’s Gallegos’s old man! He got the nerve...the honest to God nerve...to show himself in broad daylight! And during the funeral procession too! Somebody ought to take a horsewhip to that dirty little—”

The rest of the words never came out. He saw Koch’s baleful face, and Sykes forced a smile. Down the street Pedro Gallegos and his little ten-year-old daughter, Estrelita, were standing in the center of the road waiting for the procession.

Pedro Gallegos was sixty-eight years old. He was thin, scrawny, with bent shoulders, and the lines in his face looked as if they’d been hewn in rock. Sun had done it. And toil. And now sorrow—sorrow beyond any kind of words. He held the little girl’s hand tightly and as the funeral procession got closer he whispered something in her ear and then gently pushed her forward.

When the Canfields came abreast, Estrelita walked out and stood in front of them. They stopped, looking at the little girl and then over toward the old Mexican, whose lips trembled, whose features worked as he whispered something soundlessly and then motioned toward the little girl to speak.

Estrelita looked at the ground and mumbled something in a low voice.

Gallegos half shouted from a few feet away. “Louder, Estrelita. Tell them, my darling. Tell them, my heart. Speak to them. Go ahead.”

The Canfields looked away in white-faced, shocked embarrassment.

“My father wishes me to tell you,” the little girl began. “My father wishes me to tell you that...”

The words died in her throat. She looked fearfully over her shoulder toward her father. “My father wishes for me to tell you,” she tried again, “that his heart is broken. That if he could...if he could give...”