Chaingang

6. Men will tell you that they love you when they don't.

7. Men tell you they respect you when they don't.

8. Men promise they'll be true and sometimes they won't.

9. Men can be overcritical, ungrateful, sloppy, and mean.

10. Men interrupt you when you're talking, don't like your friends, leave their dirty socks on the floor, tell you you're gaining weight, and make a mess in the bathroom.

11. Men complain when you eat in bed.

12. Men don't take you out enough.

A dozen? There were a thousand reasons why she shouldn't put her head on his shoulder.

But she was too tired to think of them, and she was ice cold.

29

WATERTON

John Wayne Vodrey lived catercorner from Mathis Cotton Gin. He had him a nice little place with a sweet soundproofed living quarters so he wouldn't have to listen to them big ol’ reefer trucks rattle while he tried to get hisself some shut-eye. He drank a bit now and again. He was taking forty winks in his nicely soundproofed cottage when he awoke, drenched in a nightmare litany:

“Gommle-grabber, gommle-grabber, gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble,” repeated over and over, spoken very fast, the name of a strange cat toy he'd once had, a gommle-grabber, it was called—a chase ball this one kitty cat had liked.

He was a cutter and a slicer and a castrator. He had a mean streak wide as a four-lane highway, and he hated four-legged things of all kinds. The nonsense inside his fucked-up head inserted itself into his booze dreams, and suddenly he'd be soundlessly repeating gommle-grabber, gooble-gobble, like in Freaks, you know? The ratcheting of train wheels and the noise of the cars over the amputator's night sweats.

“Pachyderma-dromadery pachyderma-dromadery, gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble,” Oh, my land's sakes, he was going to die from this hangover. It had its big fat hand over his nose and snoring mouth while he slept, and suddenly he was choking and being lifted, lifted out of the nightmare by a hand, and he saw the pig eyes burning in the doughy face and smelt human and flailed around for the .45 he kept under the bed, but he was in the air, all 208 hard, mean pounds of John Wayne Vodrey, trying his best to grab, claw, hit, smash, rip, get hold of his night monster, a big fat assailant looked like he might go six or seven hundred pounds stripped out.

Big ol’ mean John Wayne tried to holler something, but a hand the shape of a blacksmith's anvil hammered his dirty yap shut.

For some reason Chaingang recalled that official executioners work in groups called execution teams. He chuckled, remembering the look of “Violent C10,” the only time he'd got a look at the sign on the outer door beside the one-way glassed viewing port. He recalled with some pleasure the large stenciled word imprinted in black bold font on the institutional beige paint: V I 0 L E N T, it said, simply.

John Wayne jerked at the sound of the thing that was the beast's laugh. It spoke to him in a deep rumble:

“I am the execution team, Mr. Vodrey."

“I don't—” The blow sent him into blackness. When he came to, he was nude and on his back, and the big fat crazy was over him with a-holt of both his feet. He was in his bathtub, in about three or four inches of water.

“I—” Preemptive pressure.

“No."

“Please, uh—"

“No!” Chaingang said, smiling his most dangerous and evil grin. “Don't open that shithole. You need all your strength.” He put pressure on the amputator's ankles, watching him try to muscle his way out of the tub. “Just ... to ... survive.” Mr. Vodrey was going to commit suicide in his own bathtub. And he was going to take all day to do it.

He would not allow the red tide to flow over his mind. Not this time. This time he would work for his fun—and he planned on spending hours and hours with Mr. Vodrey.

Imagine that you are a large man. Strong. Your hands aren't tied—right? Just reach up, grab the top of the tub, and pull yourself up. Easy—eh?

Try it. Go run three or four inches of water in your tub. Get a four-hundred-pound man—or, if that's not practical, two two-hundred-pound men will suffice. Have him/them grasp your feet firmly by the ankles. Oh, make sure these are men who can lift their own weight, by the way—big, strong men. While they are putting downward pressure on your feet, you pull yourself up out of the water. Eventually, as you grow tired and more tired, you'll begin to realize the plain and nasty truth. You are drowning in four inches of bath water.

It is a rather graphic physics lesson, and Daniel had the entire day to teach it to Mr. John Wayne Vodrey, torturer of dogs, cats, horses, hamsters, gerbils, goats, sheep, mules—God only knows what all—who kept cussin’ and fussin’ and grabbin’ at the slick tub, straining with every ounce of strength in his body.

Finally all the man could do was blow bubbles, and they were coming out of the wrong end. Another accident in the bathroom.

30

MAYSBURG