The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (49 page)

“His own life in return,” Pedro Gallegos whispered. Then it came out louder. “His own life in return.
His own life in return, Estrelita.”

Mrs. Canfield’s eyes were tightly shut and her husband gripped her arm.

“His own life in return,” Estrelita said, “he would do so with great willingness.” She wet her lips. Her thin, little face looked agonized. “He...he understands...” Once again the words stopped.

Pedro Gallegos took a stumbling step toward her, tears rolling down his face. “He understands what it is like to lose your flesh,” the old man said. “He understands and he is sad for you. He asks now that...” The old man sobbed aloud. “Estrelita, tell them. Say it to them.”

“He asks that you have no malice for his son, Louis, who did this awful thing. He...he did not do it on purpose and he is sick in his heart and his mind because of it.”

The little girl scuffled a bare foot in the dust, her hands tightly intertwined behind her back, her dark little face flushed with pain and misery Her father walked another few feet toward the Canfields, then with palms outstretched, dropped to his knees in the dust.

“Señor...Señora,” the old man pleaded, “please do not let them kill my son. He will spend the rest of his life and I, mine, in your service. Anything. Anything you wish. But please...please do not let them take my son’s life.”

The little girl ran to throw herself into her father’s arms and bury her face against his shoulder. He held her tightly, stroking her hair and crooning softly into her ear, something in Spanish that the others could not hear.

The Canfields looked at one another and the husband said in a choked voice, “Don’t hold us up any further, please. Can’t you see...can’t you see that we’re burying our daughter today?”

He took his wife’s arm and they continued to walk toward the cemetery at the edge of town, a patch of barren sand dotted irregularly with inexpertly carved, ugly stones and makeshift wooden crosses, as if the squalor of living had its own counterpart in death.

Why couldn’t he have stayed away, Canfield thought. Why did he have to come out on this afternoon? Why does he have to throw more pain at us when his son has already supplied the ultimate in pain?

Oh God, Sheriff Koch thought, oh dear God. This place. This ugly town full of ugly people. This sapper of strength and dignity that robs the living and now even the dead with the heat of it and the misery of it.

Peter Sykes squinted after the disappearing procession. It don’t make a damn, really, he thought, that they didn’t buy the coffin from him. Next time. Next time they would. He’d supplied the rope for the hanging and there was a thirty-eight percent markup on the rope. Next time the coffin, he thought. Next time he’d be here in time for the bidding.

That was what Sykes thought, as the thin column of people and the wagon with the pine box disappeared into the fields beyond the town, going toward the ugly little cemetery that lay under the hot Southwestern desert sun.

There were no flowers. None at all. It was too hot for flowers.

Pedro Gallegos, holding tight to his little daughter’s hand, walked slowly toward the jail. The ragged, dusty men on the street moved aside as he passed and stared coldly at him. He felt their hostility and forced himself to walk straight ahead. Koch stood near the cell window and he too noticed the angry faces of the townspeople.

Gallegos looked around at these faces, released Estrelita’s hand and held out his own in front of him. “Please...please...” His puckered, weather-beaten old face with the deeply etched lines and sad eyes pleaded with them. “My son did not mean to do it. He is a lover of children just as you all are. He is a lover of children—”

He felt a shocking, tearing pain over his right eye as a stone glanced off the side of his head. It drew blood. Estrelita let out a small scream. Louis gripped the bars of the cell and shouted out at his father.

“Padre, por favor vayase a la casa. No se le necesita aqui.”

Peter Sykes grinned. “He’ll do you no good here? Is that what you say to this old man, Gallegos? This is a staunch figure of a man, Louis—this father. Look at him. The patriarch of the Mexican community.” He rumbled deep laughter from his gut. The others did not share the laughter, but continued to stare at the old man.

“Father,” Louis said urgently in a soft voice. “Take Estrelita home. They will hurt you if you stay here. Please...go home now.” The old man’s eyes were wet. He wiped the blood from his eye, reached in his pocket and took out a coin which he held out toward his son.

“Louis,” he said, “a lucky coin. It is said that one can make a wish on it—”

Someone in the crowd laughed, but at that moment Peter Sykes did not laugh. He looked at the coin squinty-eyed, suddenly very interested. Koch stepped in front of the cell window.

“Go home, old man,” he said gently. “Make wishes...or pray. But Louis is right. You’ll do no good here.”

“You have never been drunk, Mr. Sheriff?” the old man asked. “You never felt such misery rising in you that salvation seemed to look at you only from out of a bottle?” The blood was running again from the cut over his eye. “You never felt pain...such pain that you had to ride through the night and not look behind you?”

He gestured toward the cell. “My son was hungry and he felt such a pain and he drank too much and he rode down the street not looking...not seeing.

“He had a sadness deep inside. Sadness that there was not enough to eat. Sadness that he had no work. Sadness that the earth all around him was growing barren in the sun. And he did not see the little girl. He never saw her for an instant.” Pedro Gallegos fumbled blindly for his daughter’s hand, gripped it and pulled her closer to him.

Koch said nothing. The old man knew that he had said enough. Perhaps too much. And all of it to no avail. He was a dirty old Mexican and his words carried no meaning to the men who listened to them. He was a dirty old Mexican and he was the father of a murderer. So Pedro Gallegos shuffled away, down the dusty street. Estrelita started to follow him, but stopped when Sykes whistled at her.

“Come over here,” the fat man said.

Estrelita stood stock-still.

“Come over here,” Sykes repeated urgently. “I won’t hurt you.”

The little girl went slowly to him. Sykes held her tight by the shoulders and shoved his fat, sweaty face close to hers.

“You tell your Papa,” he said softly. “Understand? Comprende? You tell your Papa I want to help him. You tell him that coin of his is worthless. But I have a magic dust that turns hate to love. Understand? Comprende? Turns hate to love. You tell him that. A magic dust, but it is very precious, understand? Very, very dear.”

The little girl nodded. Sykes looked around surreptitiously.

“Five hundred pesos,” he said. “You tell your Papa to bring five hundred pesos in an hour and I will sell him the magic dust that makes people love and forgive. Understand?”

Wide-eyed, Estrelita nodded. She backed away from the fat man and broke into a run. Sykes watched her until she caught up with her father and they disappeared.

The crowd dispersed and Koch went back into the jail. Sykes sat down on the steps and took out a bag of tobacco from his pocket. He opened it, stared at it, grinned and finally laughed aloud.

Sykes emptied the bag, then went down on his knees and scooped dust into it. He pulled the strings tight with his teeth then swung it back and forth.

“Magic dust,” he said aloud. “That’s what she is. Five hundred pesos worth of magic dust.” Then he threw back his head and laughed.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon when people started to arrive. Battered, makeshift wagons, full of parents and children from outlying districts; townspeople who erupted into the streets and were drawn compulsively toward the jail. It was almost that time.

Koch stood leaning against the whitewashed clay wall of the building, rolling a cigarette. When he finished the cigarette he gave it to Louis Gallegos. Gallegos let Koch light it for him.

“Gracias,” he said. “There should be a good attendance today,” he added simply.

“When was it that God made people?” Koch asked. “—Was it on the fifth day? He should have stopped on the fourth!” Louis Gallegos shook his head. “They are tired of hating this place. The sun. The ground that is dead under their feet.” His fingers gripped the bars. “So they must go out and find something else to hate.”

A wagon creaked slowly to a stop in front of the jail. A farmer and his wife were on the front seat and in the back were six wide-eyed, excited children.

Koch stepped away from the wall toward the wagon. “It isn’t a carnival, Rogers,” he said. “It’s a hanging.”

The farmer jerked his thumb toward the children. “You mean the kids?” he asked. “They ain’t ever seen a hanging. I figured that it was about time.”

“Why?” asked Koch.

“Why not? They’ll learn a lesson. This is what happens to drunk Mexicans who kill kids.”

Koch smiled. “I guess that’s pretty vital.” He hesitated. “How do you teach them pain, Rogers? Shoot one of them in the arm?”

The farmer shook his head, and said to his wife, “Tell them to stay together. I’ll tie up the horses.”

While the farmer hitched his team, his six-year-old son crawled off the back of the wagon and wandered over to peer up at the young Mexican framed in the cell window. Louis Gallegos smiled at him.

“Are you the man?” the little boy asked. “Are you the one they’re gonna put the rope on?”

“Sí, little one. I am the man.”

“Will it hurt?”

Gallegos closed his eyes. “If God wills it.”

Koch gently pushed the boy aside. “Go on,” he ordered. “Go with your Dad.” Then he turned toward Louis. “It’s about that time.”

Gallegos nodded. “I’m ready, Sheriff.”

The townspeople watched as Koch and a deputy led Louis Gallegos out of the jail, his hands manacled together. They started a slow walk down the street toward the gallows. The people closed ranks and, as if by common consent, followed them.

A priest stood on the gallows, waiting. He was Mexican and he knew his clerical garb meant nothing to these people. The brown skin set him apart, and the fact that he spoke little English. The cross that hung from his neck was no symbol of peace to the grim men and women who gathered around the gallows. A Mexican priest was a Mexican. And the priest understood this as he stood atop the platform and watched Louis Gallegos, his hands manacled in front of him, walk slowly up the steps toward him.

A man in the first row called out impatiently. “What the hell? That should have been done in the jail! Let’s get on with it!”

There were nods of assent, but no other voices. This was a quiet crowd, anxious to have happen what had to happen. But there was no fire under these people. There was no rage. Their hatred was like themselves. It was quieted down by the hot sun, measured by the dictates of the climate. So it was a quiet crowd. But they knew what they wanted.

Peter Sykes stood in front of the jail looking expectantly down the street until he saw Pedro Gallegos turn the corner at the far end and run toward him. Sykes’s eyes shone. He held up the little bag and dangled it in the air, then crooked the finger of his free hand and waggled it toward the old man. Sykes kicked open the door to the jail.

Silently he pointed toward the interior as Pedro Gallegos came up to him. They went inside and Sykes closed the door.

“Your daughter told you, old man?”

Gallegos swallowed. His face was wet with a combination of sweat and tears. His voice shook as he answered. “She told me. She said that you had a dust...a dust of magic properties.”

Sykes smiled. “That’s the idea, old man. Sprinkled over the heads of the people...it’ll make them feel sympathy for your son. It’s very rare, you know. It’s magic.” His face changed and something hard crept in the lines by the mouth. “You brought the money, old man?”