Steve Tem - Ugly Behavior

All the mommas cry when the sackman comes around. Back in the beginning, people minded their own business. Sackman. Like some sort of superhero. Now if people saw you with a sack like that they’d call the police. Even as all the mommas used the sackman to scare their kiddies out of misbehavior.

Now his hands shook, the way the children shook while he told them their special, their final, bedtime stories.

When he’d started it had been back after the war, and a sack wasn’t all that unusual to see. Sometimes a sack was all a man had to carry what was important to him. And surely children were the most important things of all. Children were a comfort. Children were our future.

And he was the man whose task it was to murder the future.

Better get in before the sackman comes. Don’t touch that if you don’t want the sackman comin’ round here! Better be good tonight or the old sackman may just up and take you for his dinner!

Back then, as now, what was important was the children he found. And no matter how good parents were, a few children confounded the purpose of these scary old cautionary tales. A few children were even more daring and reckless upon hearing of the sackman’s activities. A few children were seemingly eager to fill his sack.

These were not bad children. The sackman had a hard time thinking of any of them as bad. Most often he thought it was, in fact, the best children who came into his sack, the ones with their heads all full of fairytales and visions of the future.

The sackman would send them all back to heaven if he could. This was impossible, of course, especially at his present age. Even if he recruited and shared his mission with thousands of like minded others, and surely they were out there, others cognizant of the need for such drastic measures, he couldn’t send them all back. He knew it was impossible because they all needed a song or a story to send them on their way, much as small children about to fall into dreamland need a story to send them on their way, and he knew he would never be able to trust anyone else with such a grave responsibility.

The little girl with the red dress was once again in his park. She always wore the red dress and he had come to assume that she must have little else to wear. The dress had torn lace in the back and had faded almost to pink in the seat area. She always came to the park unsupervised. Sometimes her face was dirty, or bruised. He wondered, in part because of these things, if she understood yet that adults were monsters.

He would be very surprised if she had such an understanding. One of the stellar charms of children was that they could be so trusting. This quality never failed to move him. They could be lied to, cheated, and abused by half the adults of their acquaintance, and still the little angels continued to put their trust in these grown-up monsters.

“Where’s your mother, dear?” he asked her again. She looked up at him solemnly, but said nothing. He patted her shoulder. He noticed with some inner disturbance that his hand trembled again. “Ah, at least someone has taught you not to speak to strangers. That’s an important thing to remember, dear.” He looked around and saw that no one else was around. He looked back down at her. “But I’m no stranger. You see, I’m just the grandfather you’ve never met, the kindly old man you’ve always dreamed about.” Her eyes grew wider. “I can see that dream in your eyes right now, dear. I can see every little thing you’re thinking. I know about little girls and little boys, you see.”

Then he took her hand and she held on tightly, letting him know once and for all time that she was at last ready to go with him. They left the park hand-in-hand, in no particular hurry. He had been wearing makeup on all his trips to this park in another town, and he had been watching the child for weeks. Her calmness, her peace with him would allay all suspicions. Anyone who did see them together would assume he was an older relative taking the child to the park. If they wondered about anything it would be why the old man didn’t buy the child a new dress. Obviously no one cared about this child. No one but the sackman.

She slid easily into the front passenger seat of his ancient, dark blue Buick. She was too short to see over the dashboard, but appeared fascinated by the old gauges beneath their highly-polished glass. He made sure she buckled the seat belt he had installed. His hands shook again (small animals in his sack) when the car wouldn’t start, then calmed when the engine coughed into rough activity. He smiled down at the little girl. It warmed his old heart when she smiled back.

The drive back to his own home town was a long one, but the little girl sat through the trip patiently. At least someone had taught her manners. Now and then she would comment politely on the beauty of the drive. He had not lived in the actual town itself for many years, preferring the relative obscurity and safety of the mountains and lakes beyond. The old Buick struggled its way up the steep incline of the initial part of the drive, then relaxed as the highway leveled a few miles from his home. He had no idea how much longer the Buick could manage these trips. He supposed that once it failed his career as the sackman would be finished.

Not once on this long trip did this little girl ask where they were going. He took this to be clear evidence of a long pattern of deprivations. Normally he would have had to trot out any one of a dozen different fantasies in order to placate the little darling. Depending on the perceived needs, they were visiting long lost parents or friends, conducting a secret mission for the government, aiding a dying or injured relative, or visiting a castle, space ship, or miscellaneous wonderland. But the little girl asked no questions, so he was careful not to provide any answers.

When they finally arrived she jumped out and ran toward the house. “It’s like a cave!” she exclaimed, and indeed it was.

More than half of the house had been built into a hollow carved into the mountainside.

Here comes the sackman, sweetheart, he thought as he followed her to the undersized front door. As always he had to stoop with the key in his trembling fist in order to let them inside.

“Wait here while I get the light,” he said softly to the darkness. He reached overhead for the cord to the bulb. That was when she ran away into the shadows of his mountain home.

He was too startled to speak, reduced to gripping and ungripping the cotton light cord as if in a spasm. The bulb flickered into yellow dimness.

“Where? Are you!” he finally sputtered in rage. There was no answer from the shadows of his cave.

He waited by the door for a time, listening carefully the way the sackman was supposed to listen—the sackman who all the mommas said could detect a small child’s heartbeat amongst all the other heartbeats in the deep dark woods—but he heard nothing. He felt suddenly exhausted, as if all the bright red blood had run out of him, and he was compelled to collapse into the overstuffed chair by the door—placed there years before for exactly these attacks of sudden fatigue. He could remember placing the chair here himself one day after a young boy of seven had run him practically to tatters in the surrounding woods. He could remember, too, how he had felt when he’d finally caught the boy (who, also tired, could only look up at the sackman with eyes the size of quarters), and telling the boy about the lands that lay beyond dreams, the countries where children had no bodies that puked and stank but instead travelled within beams of pure white light, had placed his huge rough hand over the small boy’s face and with only the tiniest of disturbances—a cough and a squirm as if the lad were stirring within a bad dream—had sent him swiftly into that wondrous land.