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  Sidney pounded the extra nails in with vehement concentration.

  He waited as if marveling at the many little streams of blood coming out of the body of Roy Sturtevant, like many little brooks and creeks swollen by sudden cloudburst.

  “Then I will be back in the a.m. with Brian McFee,” Sidney announced with his mouth almost directly over the closed eyes of the man nailed to the barn door. “At the first flush of day I will bring him to you.”

  Sidney De Lakes had been a high-­diver in high school among his other athletic accomplishments, and his coach had wanted him to try for a scholarship to a large school later on, and become one day, who knows? an Olympic star.

  Even though he dived with the beauty and precision already of a laureate athlete he hated diving and hated water.

  Now as he drove off in Roy Sturtevant’s truck with the pickaxe and other tools for digging, headed for the ceme­tery, he felt again as he had when he had dived into the pool to the plaudits and huzzahs of his coach. Actually when he had seen the admiration and even love on the face of the young man who had taught him to dive and swim so superbly he felt there was no need to go on and work harder to be an Olympic victor. His coach’s admiration and closeness completely satisfied his ambition.

  Now again as he faced the imposed task of digging up Brian McFee he felt a new and infallible coach was commanding him to dive into some bottomless abyss, and he feared it much more than death itself as he feared more than death putting the first nail in the flesh of his enemy the renderer’s son, but then, having put in the first nail he had wanted to put in more, he had wanted as a matter of fact to cover entirely the scissors-­grinder’s body with nails so numerous that he would look like he was clothed in an iron suit composed of shiny little silver heads.

  But he had discovered something else, as when from perilous heights of diving he had discovered he loved not the sport but the coach, now he saw not in a blinding flash but in a calm recognition that as he had watched the contempt of the renderer for the pain and mutilation he was inflicting on him, he loved Roy Sturtevant in the same way he loved his coach, who had also commanded him to accomplish the impossible.

  In almost the blinking of an eye then Roy Sturtevant had become his coach. There was no scissors-­grinder or renderer anymore, with blackened fingers and dirty ears, there was merely the young man bleeding and nailed to an old Pennsylvania-­style barn who was waiting for his pupil’s return with Brian McFee whom they had both loved equally.

  So the wheel had come full circle, his past was blotted out along with most of his memory, all that remained to him therefore was this new coach bleeding and heroic against the barn door. So, he would show him Brian McFee, he would take the nails out, and then hold him in his arms for he would be his, they would both be one another’s forever. Roy would guide and keep him, he would not let him go wrong again, they would not part from one another ever after having only at last been united pursuant to so many devious detours and windings, as souls long separated from each other by the world’s vicissitudes are said to enter paradise linked arm in arm.

  It was about an hour and a half till daybreak when Sidney went upstairs to Gareth’s room. Gareth was sitting up, which gave Sid a shock for he resembled so very much Brian McFee who was also sitting up by the driver’s seat down below waiting for Sidney to drive him back to Roy and the unnailing.

  “Did you kill him? You’ve been gone long enough to kill a army.”

  Sidney kept staring at him, marveling at the resemblance, and feeling dizzy by reason of the teeter-­totter effect of his running now to Roy, then back to Gareth, and then all over again from one to the other.

  “It’s all settled,” Sidney spoke in the dreamy manner which had become habitual with him of late. He slumped down into the armchair and his hat fell off at his feet.

  “What’s the meaning of all that earth on your shoes and pants?” Gareth wondered.

  Then after studying his lover: “Did you kill and bury him already?”

  Sidney’s lips began to form the word Yes, but then coming up with a start he answered, “Roy ain’t dead yet, no.”

  Then panicking at Sidney’s peculiar behavior and his flushed cheeks, Gareth cried: “Where did you leave him then?”

  “He’s nailed to the barn door.”

  Gareth let out a sound like a balloon being burst, then jibed: “You’re stoned, ain’t you, you dumb shitass. . . . You didn’t do nothing to him I bet.”

  “Oh, no? . . . Well, Brian’s down there in the truck, for your information. We’re going back, him and me, to Roy’s place at daybreak and then I’m goin’ to take the nails out.”

  Gareth shook his head, a volley of oaths and curses came out but not so much aimed at Sidney as perhaps at the powers which had bestowed on him life and breath.

  “I promised him,” Sidney was going on, “I would bring Brian back so he could see him nailed to the barn.”

  Gareth got out of bed and came over and looked at Sidney close all over. Then stooping down Gareth picked Sidney’s hat up and put it on his head, and as he put the hat heavily over his head, his long hair began to fall down but did not fall as long or as far as usual because it was secured this time by a familiar pink cord in the back.

  “I’ll see about this,” Gareth admonished him, “and I will be going along to find out if you are totally insane or whether . . .”

  He pulled on his pants and ran noiselessly down the long staircase. He opened the screen door, then the storm door, and went out to where the truck was parked. He was gone a long time, in fact Sidney meantime had fallen asleep and had begun to snore.

  When Gareth came back into the room he walked like some crippled old man of ninety. He could barely help himself into bed and put his upper body under the counter­pane. He made queer little sounds almost like that of a quail when he senses the shadow of a hawk over it. Then he began to cry.

  Sidney woke up. “Did you take a peek?” he wanted to know.

  Gareth cried on.

  “Why don’t you shut up,” Sidney said indifferently. “You might wake up everybody.”

  “He don’t look . . . rotten,” Gareth got out now, the horror of what he had seen not yet having completely reached him. “He looks . . . fresh . . .”

  “I think,” Sidney began swallowing convulsively, and then he took off his hat and looked inside the crown, “I reckon . . . the coach . . . must have embalmed him lavishly on the sly.”

  “He looks alive!” Gareth moaned.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “But who is the coach, Sid?” Gareth mumbled, rising up in the bed and loosening the covers.

  “Why, him of course.”

  Gareth Vaisey did not ask more, he was weeping silently now but spasmodically.

  “I shouldn’t have told you to,” Gareth kept repeating. “It was my fault . . .”

  “No, Garey, no.” Sidney went over to the bed and sat down on it, but the younger man drew violently away from him.

  “Kiss me, Garey, please kiss me.”

  “No, no . . . I think I will kill myself now.”

  “Kiss me, please.” He took hold of Gareth and kissed him wetly, bringing the boy afterwards against his breast.

  “I got to be there at the first flush of day, Gareth. I promised him, you know.”

  “Will Roy be dead too when you get there?”

  “I don’t think he will ever die, if you ask me.”

  “What did you say you did to him?” Gareth was wiping his eyes with the freshly laundered pillowcase.

  “Roy said I had to do it, that’s why I called him the coach who always made me do (remember?) things I couldn’t do, like climb without ever having practiced that big rope that led up to the gym ceiling, go through all those spine-­twisting tricks on the horse, run round the stadium till I puked for an hour from my lungs being turned inside out, so when this new coach says, ‘You have to nail me to the barn door if we are ever either of us to have any peace or rest or g
o on our separate ways, for this has been going on for nearly ten years, long enough for a man to marry and be raising his own kids,’ I said, ‘I can’t do it. I mean my fingers won’t obey me even if my brain said Do it,’ and the New Coach said, ‘Well, I’m in your brain then and your fingers and your heart and your kidneys and bladder and all your organs put together, see? and I do say, Nail me to the door, and save the both of us . . . But fetch Brian with you . . .’ ‘Brian is dead, you motherfucker!’ ‘All right, fetch him just the same!’ he answers. ‘Don’t you believe in death?’ I yelled at him. ‘No,’ he answers, ‘and I don’t believe in time neither . . .’ ”

  “So I will go back with you then to Sturtevant’s place,” Gareth said very quietly, more like he used to speak when he had been very sick and was so dependent on Sidney.

  “Don’t see any reason why you can’t. . . . After all I just have to do them two things, show him Brian, if he’s still alive, and remove the fucking nails.”

  “That shouldn’t take too long, should it, Sid?”

  “No, I expect not,” he answered. Then he kissed Gareth on the forehead, touched his lips to his cheek, and after a wait put his mouth on Gareth’s mouth like he was tasting a plate of fresh-­picked cherries. Then catching sight of the first few streaks of the dawn, Sidney jumped up and ran down the stairs three at a time.

  “Wait for me, wait up, Sidney. You promised!”

  Gareth climbed on the side of the car which was already in motion and the rifle he was all of a sudden carrying with him went off twice. Sidney stopped the truck.

  “Get in, I had most forgot about you when I seen the sun coming up. . . . Get in the back on the floor on account of Brian should ride right beside me, don’t you think . . .”

  Gareth jumped in the back of the truck holding his rifle.

  “He don’t smell like he’s dead, and he looks just about the same as when we knew him . . . Only he smells of something sure enough . . .”

  “I can tell you,” Sidney said, “I don’t know if I am dreamin’ or dead myself or what . . . I seem to be drivin’ this truck, that’s about all I know for sure. If he ain’t there nailed to the door I will know I have dreamed it all and am back in jail probably. I won’t care by then. In fact jail will be a good rest after what I been through. Old Vance should have let me rot in jail, always told him that anyhow. I sort of belong in jail. . . . But when he begun to talk to me, Roy, you know, and persuaded me to nail him to the barn door, I sort of thought, ‘Well, if I can’t be in jail maybe the next best thing would be to give myself up, and to live locked up with the scissors-­grinder and be done pretending I ever was out free . . .’ ”

  “See here now, Sid,” Gareth began and just as he spoke he caught a whiff of the dead boy in the front seat that made him stop and then choke.

  “Go on, have your say, Gareth.”

  Choking and gagging into his pocket handkerchief now, the Vaisey boy struggled to get the words out. At last he shouted: “You wouldn’t leave me for the renderer would you? Was that what you were sayin’ back in the house?”

  “Well, what if he commands me again. I ain’t never been commanded so firm before, Garey, like he done for instance when he said I should nail him. Do you think I would nail anybody like that on my own? What do you think I am anyhow, huh? No way. I wouldn’t do that ever on account of I don’t see how I did it even now. If I did it. If he’s there, that is, when we go back and we ain’t both locked up in some lunatic asylum dreaming this whole thing.”

  “You was stoned, that’s all.”

  “Not really. No, sir, I was not.”

  “You’re always stoned anyhow, and you know it . . . So you nailed him stoned . . . But I know something, and if what I know proves accurate, you watch out, De Lakes, God damn you watch out.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Just this. If I see you have gone over to this renderer son of a bitch, you better take cover, do you hear?”

  “You got to explain yourself better than that if you want me to understand you.”

  “You just missed the detour to Roy’s, you dumb crud. Now turn back and head south . . .”

  Sidney began to swear now and to sound a little more like himself, and wheeled about and then turned down a little dirt side road, but then presently he got stuck in what was left of a big snow pile, and had some trouble getting unstuck before proceeding on the new road. When he got to a clear part of pavement again he put on the gas and went most ninety miles an hour.

  “Did you hear what I was telling you, driver, before you fucked up our itinerary.”

  “Hear that spoiled snot complain, would you! Look. See here . . . When you have been through what I have, what no man who ever drew breath has done been through before, why do you want to eat my ass out about missing a little road sign, huh? I ask you, Garey . . . You lay off me . . .”

  “Listen to me good, Sid, you cheap fucker, now you listen good and proper.” He put the muzzle of the gun between Sid’s shoulder blades.

  “Now you stop that chicken shit, Garey. God damn you.”

  “Are you listening to me, or will I have to take care of you?”

  “How can I help not listening . . . Even Brian McFee here is listening, the loud mouth you are.”

  “All right then . . . I say if you go over to the renderer I am going to blow your brains out.”

  Sidney slowed the truck down. Then he came to a full stop.

  “Get out, Garey, get your rosy ass up and out.”

  “I’m in earnest, Sid. If you go over to the renderer I will kill the both of you, mark my words. . . .”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I have the feeling you love him. Do you?”

  “I think something has happened to me, Garey.” Sidney’s voice shook now. He sounded like he was praying to an indifferent idol. “Sure enough. I ain’t never been commanded so before. I told you that back at the house. You just wait and see how I bet he commands me again. I bet he can command me still nailed to that door.”

  “You fucked-­up hunk.”

  “I can’t help what’s happening, Garey. Did I ever seek him out? You tell me.”

  “Ho, all you ever talked about, thought about, or dreamed about all your life is this renderer guy, if you ask me. You coy little motherfucker. I know what you do to us all. You’re a coy faggot, that’s all you are, and that’s why they throwed you to the cement and fucked you in jail ’cause you act the part of a little coy faggot no matter how tough and all-­American you look. You ain’t fooled me from the first, but I can tell you one thing—if you go over to the renderer, it’s your life, De Lakes . . . I aim to kill both of you if I see any shit treachery, is that clear?”

  Sidney started the motor. He was even whiter than he had been back at the house, and his hands were shaking.

  “Take that rifle from between my shoulders, you dizzy cocksucker. On account of I can’t drive with no gun pointed at my lungs.”

  Gareth pulled the gun away.

  “Brian McFee is beginning to stink like a bona fide real dead man, if you ask me,” the Vaisey boy said after a long silence in which Sidney drove his car at full speed, with screeching of brakes and punishing of tires and sudden breakneck turns as in a last-­lap car race.

  “Oh, it’s only cause the air is getting warm, Garey. . . . I don’t dare look at him again. I looked at him once, and I tell you something . . . I kissed him.” He slowed down when he said this because his hands were shaking again.

  “Yeah, you had him fooled too,” Gareth scolded. “He thought you loved him, poor baby . . . And all the time your heart belonged to this scissors-­grinder which to hear you talk was your worst enemy. . . . Well, we are going to see in a few minutes who is in charge here . . . Or the blood will flow like spring freshets, you can count on that. You cheap four-flusher, you God damn low-­down flirt, you . . . I ought to choke you to death right over the steering-­wheel. Supposed to tend and care for me, was you? Made love to me and t
old me I was your only one, and all the time since the eighth grade you have been slave to this unwashed turd goes by the name of the renderer.”

  “He don’t render and never did, and it was you explained it to me first. And he explained it all over to me again. It was his old Grandpa that done it. He ain’t never been in the rendering business and you know it.”

  “But it was ’cause he had the stain on him of bein’ a renderer that you never spoke to him all through school, that you held yourself aloof from him which was what drove him crazy in the first place when all the time he loved you from the time he was thirteen years old. Your coyness drove him crazy and you are the cause of it all. . . . Your nailin’ him to the door was the kindest thing you ever done for him. Don’t tell me you ain’t coy, you slick prick-­teasin’ stuck-­up smartass, you have been teasin’ everybody ever set eyes on you from the time you was birthed, you cheap showcase fucking football model, you. You drove all them convicts crazy too in jail I can believe that. I should shoot you here and now and the world would thank me for it, every prison in the U.S.A. would send me a telegram of thanks and appreciation that the coy little flirt of a football hero is plugged and out of service in his coffin . . .”

  “You sure are cured, Gareth. You are well! You don’t need nobody to take care of you or change your diapers anymore. And you know what? I will give you tit for tat, you motherfucking snot, you was never sick at all. I seen through you. It was just an excuse to get my loving and be safe so you could go on using your Ma as a meal ticket and have my good love in the bargain. . . . I ain’t fooled by what Doc calls your psychosomatic malady, hell, no. You are a cheap playactor, and there ain’t an honest hair in your pretty little head . . .”

  Gareth put the gun back between his shoulders, but then he removed it almost instantly.

  “Never fear, Sid, I am not going to kill you in the car. I want to see how your lover will greet you as you approach him nailed to the barn door. That is, if the nails ain’t drunk all his blood and have fallen out . . .”

  “I put more nails in him than he asked for, that’s for sure . . . He seen that I was carried away. . . . But you know something? He wasn’t scared. No, had I started to nail his mouth shut to his brain he wouldn’t have said a word in way of protest.”