Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Mrs. Peterson’s coffee cup stood abandoned on the kitchen counter, bearing a stain of frosted pink lipstick.

But the man in black passed it by.

The scent of Tracy’s girlish perfume drew him to the upstairs bathroom. He touched her uncapped perfume bottle, touched the damp towel Tracy had abandoned on the floor, touched Tracy’s soap, touched the heap of girlish clothes she had tossed in the laundry hamper.

And the man in black left the room.

He followed the track of Major Peterson’s bare feet on plush new carpet until he came to the major’s walk-in closet.

The closet held many uniforms. The man in black ran his fingers over these.

When he was done, he did not leave the closet.

Instead, he bent low and spun the dial on a safe which Major Peterson had bought at Sears.

He spun the dial with a calm sense of surety.

The numbers clicked into place.

The man in black opened the door.

There were many valuable things within the safe.

But the hand grenade was gone.

The mouth of the cave gaped wide.

Billy knew that it was a mouth that could not speak.

Shivering, Billy stared at it. He did not want to look away.

He could not look away. That was what he had done just the other day. He’d been staring at the mouth of the cave, staring into that black mouth that could not utter a single word, when his buddy Gordon Rogers said something stupid.

And, just for a second, Billy looked away.

Just for a second. Just long enough to give Gordon Rogers a poke in the ribs.

And when Billy looked back, a man was standing at the mouth of the cave.

A man dressed all in black.

Billy swallowed hard, remembering.

He wished that Gordon were here.

Maybe, in a way, he was.

No. That wasn’t right. Billy knew that he was all alone now. Gordon was gone—as good as dead, really. And no one stood at the mouth of the cave.

No one stood there dressed all in black.

No one said, “Don’t you know that caves are dangerous?”

No Gordon to answer, “If caves are so dangerous, what’re you doing in one?”

“Guess,” was the single word the man in black whispered, but there was no one to whisper it.

No one but Billy.

He stared at the mouth full of nothing.

“You’re a mining engineer,” he guessed.

But no one shook his head, as the man in black had done. “You’re a spelunker,” Billy said.

And no one laughed.

“If you want me to ask, I’ll ask.” Billy said. “What are you?”

“I am an army.”

“An army?” Billy shook his head. “You’re just one guy!”

“I am an army, all the same.”

“From where, then? You don’t look like a Ruskie.”

“I am not from Russia.”

“Then where are you from?”

The question hung in the air. The mouth of the cave yawned wide, but there was only silence.

The man in black was not here.

So he could not answer, “I am an army… from hell.”

Being an army was an occupation fraught with hazards. Violence was often unavoidable. People lied. And reconnaissance reports were sometimes less than accurate.

For example—there was no hand grenade in Major Peterson’s safe. Which meant that there was no shiny hand-grenade pin to be had.

But the man in black found many other attractive things in the Peterson house. Things that could be of use.

He found Billy’s baseball. The one with pretty red stitches sewn with surgical precision.

He found Tracy’s jump rope. Tracy had abandoned it long ago, of course. But not so long ago as she might have wished.

In addition to these things, the man in black found a towel used by both parents. The towel was the color of skin, and it bore telltale smudges of Mrs. Peterson’s foundation cream, and from it Mr. Peterson’s hair seemed to sprout, for just this morning he had trimmed his moustache before departing for the base, and the bristling hairs had adhered to the towel.

The man in black bunched the towel between his large palms. Then he twisted it, as if wringing it out.

Bunched again. Twisted again.

He worked faster and faster. Strange shapes appeared in the material. Shapes vaguely recognizable, but only for a moment, and then they were gone.

A nose. An eyebrow.

A woman’s cheek daubed with foundation cream.

A man’s graying moustache.

The man in black smiled as he wrapped the baseball in the towel and snared it with the jump rope.

Then he wrung the towel again, quite viciously this time.

Almost sadistically.

Soon the towel began to bleed.

Blood spattered the carpet as the man in black crossed Mr. and Mrs. Peterson’s bedroom.

Soon each and every drop had been wrung from the towel.

The man in black shattered the bedroom window.

No one noticed.

No one was home.

And the neighbors, the man thought with a wry smile, had flown.

Billy was about to unzip his U. S. Army surplus backpack when something moved within.

Billy gasped. The canvas material seemed to pulse before his eyes. He watched it, but he couldn’t move.

Until he heard the sound.

A faint cracking. The same sound Billy heard every morning when his father tapped a spoon against his soft-boiled egg.

Billy knew he had to move quickly. He unzipped the backpack. He snatched at the nest made from Gordon Rogers’ Slinky and Mrs. Rogers’ measuring tape and Mr. Rogers’ toupee.

He spilled three eggs from the nest.

Immediately, he spotted the crack in the biggest egg.

Another peck and it widened. Yet another peck and the crack was a hole.

One more peck and something pink showed through.

Something pink inside a blackbird’s egg.

Something as pink as Mr. Rogers’ bald head.

The hole in the egg was very tiny. Not nearly as large as the mouth of the cave. But the mouth of the cave was silent, and the hole in the egg was not.

“Billy,” a voice whispered from within. “Don’t… please, Billy. For God’s sake don’t…”

It was a tiny voice. Not like Mr. Rogers’ voice at all.

Not really.

Another tiny tap, like father’s spoon at the breakfast table.

A crack rippled across the surface of the second egg.

The smallest egg.

Gordon’s egg.

“Billy…”

Billy jerked the canteen out of the backpack and doused the nest and all three eggs with gasoline.

The box of safety matches was in his pocket.

Soon they were in his hand.

Soon the nest was a funeral pyre.

It crackled and crackled. Blood boiled in the eggshells and sizzled away to nothing. Mrs. Rogers’ measuring tape and Mr. Rogers’ toupee were crisped to fine ash, and soon all that remained of the nest was Gordon’s charred and blackened Slinky, which didn’t move at all.

Everything was quiet again.

The man in black screamed.

Sparks erupted from his shoulders and ignited the blackbird’s feathers and the bird screeched and took wing and crashed to the ground in a flaming, twisted heap while the man watched in agony.

But he did not watch for long. Fiery tongues leapt from his trouser cuffs and licked at his ankles. He ripped off his burning coat and tossed it in the corner. Hurriedly, he worked at the metal buckle of his flaming belt, his fingers blistering at the touch of hot metal.

And then just that quickly the fire was gone, and he scooped his winged companion from the floor and smoothed its black feathers, and he knew that there had been no fire at all.