Stories (2011) Read Online Free PDF

smiling, showing the teeth they had left. They
began to hit each other.
    Harry worked on the eye. Twice he felt it beneath his fists,
a grape-like thing that cushioned his knuckles and made them wet. Harry's
entire body felt on fir~twin fires, ecstasy and pain.
    George and Harry collapsed together, held each other,
waltzed about.
    "You done good," George said, "make it
quick."
    The black man's legs went out from under him and he fell to
his knees, his head between. Harry took the man's head in his hands and kneed
him in the face with all his might. George went limp. Harry grasped George's
chin and the back of his head and gave a violent twist. The neck bone snapped
and George fell back, dead.
    The copperhead, which had been poking its head out of
Preacher's pocket, took this moment to slither away into a crack in the pit's
wall.
    Out of nowhere came weakness. Harry fell to his knees. He
touched George's ruined face with his fingers.
    Suddenly hands had him. The ramp was lowered. The crowd
cheered. Preacher-Sapphire dislodged from his lip--came forward to help Sheriff
Jimmy with him.
    They lifted him up.
    Harry looked at Preacher. His lip was greenish. His head
looked like a sunswollen watermelon, yet, he seemed well enough. Sapphire was
wrapped around his neck again. They were still buddies. The snake looked tired.
Harry no longer felt afraid of it. He reached out and touched its head. It did
not try to bite him. He felt its feathery tongue brush his bloody hand.
    They carried him up the ramp and the crowd took him, lifted
him up high above their heads. He could see the moon and the stars now. For some
odd reason they did not look familiar Even the nature of the sky seemed
different.
    He turned and looked down. The terriers were being herded
into the pit. They ran down the ramp like rats. Below, he could hear them begin
to feed, to fight for choice morsels. But there were so many dogs, and they
were so hungry, this only went on for a few minutes. After a while they came
back up the ramp followed by Sheriff Jimmy closing a big lock-bladed knife and
by Preacher who held George's head in his outstretched hands. George's eyes
were gone. Little of the face remained. Only that slick, bald pate had been
left undamaged by the terriers.
    A pole came out of the crowd and the head was pushed onto
its sharpened end and the pole was dropped into a deep hole in the ground. The
pole, like a long neck, rocked its trophy for a moment, then went still. Dirt
was kicked into the hole and George joined the others, all those beautiful,
wonderful heads and skulls.
    They began to carry Harry away. Tomorrow he would have
Elvira, who could do more tricks with a six inch dick than a monkey could with
a hundred foot of grapevine, then he would heal and a new outsider would come
through and they would train together and then they would mate in blood and
sweat in the depths of the pit.
    The crowd was moving toward the forest rail, toward town.
The smell of pines was sweet in the air. And as they carried him away, Harry
turned his head so he could look back and see the pit, its maw closing in
shadow as the lights were cut, and just before the last one went out Harry saw
the heads on the poles, and dead center of his vision, was the shiny, bald pate
of his good friend George.
     

BY BIZARRE HANDS
     
                 
    When the traveling preacher heard about the Widow Case and
her retarded girl, he set out in his black Dodge to get over there before
Halloween night Preacher Judd, as he called himself-though his name was really
Billy Fred William--had this thing for retarded girls, due to the fact that his
sister had been simple-headed, and his mama always said it was a shame she was
probably going to burn in hell like a pan of biscuits forgot in the oven, just
on account of not having a full set of brains.
    This was a thing he had thought on considerable, and this
considerable thinking made it so he couldn't pass up the idea of baptizing and
giving