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  Lester put his fingers up into a box to make a frame of Augusta swinging, two-handed, and said, Bingo, that’s a take, cut. I said, Stop. He said, Cut. I said, Stop, Augusta. He said, Cut, cut, and grabbed her from behind, drawing her up and kissing her head, saying, That was great, just great, that’s a keeper for sure, you were wonderful, Augusta, you’re a brave girl, you’re going to reap awards for that scene alone. Outside, I stood for a moment in the yard and listened to the soft chatter of the whirligigs ratcheting, swirling around, sawing and bucking in the wind. Then I got in the car and sat on the seat next to Lester.

  The house went up in a giant wind-fueled blossom that glowed in the back window of Lester’s car while we headed west. I don’t do arson, man, Lester said. Arson is too low on the ladder, it’s at the bottom of the crime totem pole, for fuck’s sake. That was an act of God, that was something we had nothing to do with. Even your best arsonist depends too much on the whims of the elements. What’s at the top? I said. He said, What’s at the top? screwing his face up and drawing his fingers through his beard, pinching it tight. He thought a few minutes. Crucifixion is the top crime, man. No doubt. You nail the palms, you crown the head with thorns, and let slow, natural death take over. The guy up there is high as hell on opiates. Doesn’t feel a thing. No, sir. He’s blitzed on opiates. No pain, no gain. That’s a fact, he said, staring out through the windshield. We were flying swiftly toward the horizon. Darkness was all around us, stretching out across empty plains. The sky was sparkled with stars. Besides us, there wasn’t a sign of life in the universe. We were all alone, rattling along at full speed. Just ride the glazed highway to the Holy Land, Lester said. You hang up there on the cross until the birds are pecking your eyes out and then you feel it. When the birds start to peck, the pain begins. When the birds get to your eyes, the opiates cease. Without eyes you’re just blessed pain, man, just more and more pain. Lester got quiet for a minute. He reached up one-handed and stroked the tip of his beard. In the dark it was impossible to see his eyes, but I knew what they’d contain if they were visible: he’d have that silence in there, that kind of calm I’d seen before, all dark gray with bits of blue swirled together into the deepest black. When he started talking again, about ten miles later, his voice came out dry and tight. Then all the pain folds up on itself into this vast silky darkness, man, that gets tighter and tighter, tighter and tighter, tighter and tighter, until you’re dead, he said. I said, Until you’re dead, and tapping the wheel, he said, Yeah, until you’re fucking dead. You know how those old TVs used to have that little dot of light when you shut them off? The whole picture would zip into that single little pinpoint of light and then it would sit there, just sitting for a minute, sitting and sitting and then it would zing off to the side and that would be it, you’d be left with just darkness. Well, that’s how it is, man. You bundle it all up, crunch it, and ping, it’s gone. He went on about it for a long time that night, nothing more than that memorable to me now, mostly theorizing about why crucifixion is the top crime on the pole, and about what it’s like to die, what it’s like those final few seconds, just before you sign off, as he said, just before everything becomes static and sizzles out. I said, If it’s so top why isn’t it done more? He said, Because it’s too difficult to find good victims, man. Here in this part of the state it’s impossible. Nebraska folk are cleaner, more purified. Tulsa has plenty just waiting for it, man. I said, If they’re waiting for it why don’t we just go there and find some? He gave this long pause then, rapping the top of the wheel again, adjusting the rearview, looking back at Augusta. You’re really a dumb shit, he said. I said, Why? He said, Because Tulsa ones are junkies, and what’s dope? Dope’s dope, I said. He said, Dope’s dopamine, for fuck’s sake. You’re a Tulsa junkie and you’re already there, man. No need to go for the ride because you’re on the ride, you see. I said, I see. I didn’t, but I said I did. Get up on that cross and you’d like it too much, he said, and then he went into all of the details again, how you’d have to find a couple of pressure-treated railroad ties to make the cross, some of those galvanized nails you use to hang gutters. (Lester had done a lot of roofing in his life and could lay down shingles in his sleep, said thick tar smells remained in his nostrils.) You’d get some high-grade nylon rope. But if you like it too much, I said. What? If you like it too much, I said. What are you talking about? You said if you like it too much, on the cross, you said they’d, the Tulsa guys, would like it too much. He said, So what? So if you like it too much it’s not a crime, I said. He said, Yeah, that’s it, that’s right, exactly, you put some skinny-ass Tulsa junkie up there and he’d go for the ride of his life, but for Augusta you’d have to use a—what’s it called?—a block-and-tackle thing, like getting a piano up to an apartment, you know, like that Abbott and Costello routine, he said. I said, What are you talking about? He said, Just thinking about what it would be like to get her up on a cross. We drove. Drove more. By the time we got to Elk City the wind was coming in swoops, nudging us onto the shoulder and then back onto the road. The rage behind it was apparent to us all. You can’t go breaking small fragile things without ramifications, I thought, watching Lester grapple with the steering wheel as the wind ground us to a dead stop, hit with such ferocity that the car just couldn’t make headway, and we ended wayward on the shoulder, spinning our wheels until Lester eased up and said, Gotta make a pit stop, and opened the door into the roar, crossed in front of the headlights, bending down into the wind, the dust roiling around his head. Out there he was a space walker lost to the world while we sat waiting. I said, Augusta? She said, Yeah? I said, Are you okay? She said, Yeah. I said, You’re really beautiful, you know. She said, Yep. I turned and looked: a big mound of flesh topped by a moon face lit by the interior light, her eyes invisible but glassed over, dead to the world because Lester had pumped her full as a reward for her acting skills, for being so brilliant in her role. He’d found the lab in the back shed, a bunch of old bait buckets and chemicals, tubes and glassware, and a huge amount of product. The old coot’s a crank cooker, he’d said. You put him in a movie, nobody would believe it. Put him in a movie and they’d bow into their popcorn and mumble: Bullshit, man, he’d said, framing it up with his fingers to see what it might look like.

  In a movie I would have ditched Lester right there, snapped the locks, moved over into his seat, and torn out into the night, doing so for my own sake and for Augusta’s, saving us both, knowing right from wrong, solving the riddle of our own situation with a single, swift act, turning the tables, finding a foothold on a newfound sense of goodness; he’d be out there in some frozen field, amid the dead husks, taking a piss, when he’d hear the tires squeal, zipping himself up while making one of those funny staggers across the dirt, holding his fingers up into a frame and calling, Cut, cut, cut. In the car we’d give little hoot laughs, girl to girl, and Augusta would speak to me, her voice dry and tight in a Red Carpet tone, and she’d talk in a strange manner, like she was in an old play or something, and she’d say, We’ve torn ourselves free of the demonic, of the oracle that has given us the word, or something like that in a haunted voice, babbling on and on while I drove all the way to Oklahoma City. We’d get to the memorial in heavy snow. We’d get out of the car and there would be that fake movie night, that night that’s not really dark, or light. At least not dark enough to be real. There’d be fake snow on our shoulders, too, sticking to them, refusing to melt, while we went from chair to chair. One chair for each dead person. (I’d sit in one and say something along the lines of: My poor mom died in the blast, gone in a flash, got up one morning and headed for social services unaware that it was her last, and then Augusta, taking her turn, would talk about how her own sister had gone to the day-care center that morning, because her daughter was having problems with separation anxiety, problems parting, saying so long. With the snow coming down—still crying—we’d move from chair to chair, sitting in each one, leaving an impression in the snow on the dark stone. Then the camera would b
egin to rise above us, up and up, and you’d see the whole scene, chair, snow, girls, night light, the monument to the blast, the empty space, the shadows cast by the chairs, the road leading out, the buildings around it; up and up but always both of us visible, two girls who had somehow rescued themselves from a complete fuckup, from a demented Wind Country guy.) But, you know, the movie ending wouldn’t be that simple. Nothing ever is. You’d sit in the theater, scraping the last bits of popcorn from the bucket, knowing that Lester is still out there, probably up in that park, near that rock where the first Oklahoma oil well was sunk, the place that started the whole fucking mess, smoking a joint and racking his brain over where I might be. You’d be aware of this in the theater, as the camera kept moving skyward, and you’d feel a bit of the fear that I felt, then, in the car, knowing that he’d be lodged in your mind, waiting to pop up suddenly, to take advantage of the situation. You’d leave the theater with me in your mind, too, and with Augusta (but a better version of what she really was), and you’d carry me right back to your nice house in Tulsa. You’d drive into your garage, the door closing behind you, and go up the stairs into your warm kitchen for a glass of milk, maybe a cookie, and then to your warm bedroom, with the king-size bed; you’d take me under the covers with you, my eyes, my mouth, my long brown hair, and you’d lie with the blankets up around your chin, safe and sound, and see me inside your mind. I’d be giving you a huge smile, grinning a big, fat, shit-eating grin. Only later, waking to use the bathroom, would you remember Lester. You’d think of him out there, sneaking around, bottled up with a bunch of harebrained schemes, lifting Augusta’s breasts. You’d try to shake him out of your mind. But he’d lurk there. Lurking Lester. He’d bug you. Like a tick behind a dog’s ear. He’d bug you like the rattle of trucks on an overpass. He’d bug you like the squeal of bats in a cave. Then you’d know how I felt, in the car, when he came back across the headlights, tugging his fly, stopped for a second so that the light carved up under his chin and made his face hollow and skulllike, staring at me, staring hard, as if he knew what I was thinking, and then he slid in next to me, smelling like field mud. I said, What’re we gonna do? And he said, We’re gonna find a shopping mall, do some receipt hunting, find a way to make some money. Turning around to face Augusta, who had a long silvery strand of drool dripping from the side of her mouth, framing her with his fingers, he said, Then we’re going to make us that movie.

  The Gulch

  The cross was jury-rigged out of pressure-treated wood ties, the kind used for gardening, as borders on raised beds, and for retaining walls, secured at the cross point—for lack of a better term—with a hitch of cotton rope, ashen in color from exposure to the elements, stolen from Mrs. Highsmith’s yard; a clothesline that had for several years held the garments of Rudy Highsmith (involved). Fingering it in the evidence room, Detective Collard could feel the droopy sway of a line laden with wet garments, and he could easily imagine Rudy’s ragged jeans, holes shredded white, pale blue and growing lighter under the warmth of the sun, picking up the breeze on some late-summer afternoon, while a dog barked rhapsodically along the edge of the woods. The Highsmith house was on the outskirts of Bay City, Michigan, not far from the gulch, and was known—to a few locals, at least—as the house with laundry on the line, one last holdout of the air-drying tradition. The cross was set in a hole that had been dug by a fold-up trench shovel. This was admitted by Ron Bycroff, age seventeen, the oldest in the bunch. Bycroff openly confessed—after five hours of interrogation—to digging the hole and securing the cross and arranging the ropes and so on, but not to the actual pounding of the spikes, nor even to being there at that point. (He was there, he later admitted to his lawyer, but not in spirit and heart, and he had his eyes turned away most of the time. I just couldn’t look. I heard the sounds and that was enough.) During the trial, this confession was thrown out by Judge Richards because it had been obtained by coercion. (You’d have to be ashamed, boy, you’d have to be as deeply ashamed as anyone on this good earth, doing what you did, boy. How’d you feel if I took you down there to the gulch myself, right now, to take a little look around? I might just take you down there tonight.) On the other hand, the trench shovel was from the Bycroffs’ garage. During his interrogation, Detective Collard was unable to remove from his mind’s eye (is there a better phrase?) the impressive vision of the spikes in the victim’s palms, deep, dimpling the skin. The small hand, and the blood around the entry point in the beam of his flashlight, had given him a sense of the softness of human flesh and the vulnerability of hands to piercing implements. The skin on the victim’s hands—he knew because he reached out and touched one—was soft and smooth, like a chamois, or the inside of a dog’s ear.

  For his part, Rudy Highsmith laid out the details of the murder between snot-filled snorts, divulging the story in breathy gushes. The whole thing was Al Stanton’s idea, he said. He came up with it. Like he was preaching to us. He was saying this weird shit about how it was time to open up the cosmos. He told us Sammy was the perfect age and all, sixteen and a half, and that it would be good for him to rise from the dead. It was all his idea, honest. He came up with it first. This claim, that Stanton was the one who dreamed up the scheme (for lack of a better word), seemed dubious to Detective Collard. The hefty, moonfaced kid—a linebacker on the high school team—seemed dense in thought, a bit slow on the uptake but also openly sweet and likable. His eyes contained a sadness that came—Collard knew—from the fact that his father had disappeared when he was eight, taking off in his bass boat onto Lake Erie. (The most likely scenario was that he drove his boat down to Cleveland, sold it, and headed to Florida to find a new way of life.) His mother, a heavy drinker and prone to violence, showed up every few months on the police blotter as a DWI and eventually became known around the station as a SAWTH, a Serious Accident Waiting to Happen. There were—any policeman could tell you—those who were preordained to fiery deaths, those most certain to be found frozen in a ditch outside of town, those whose future lay out there like a bear trap, ready to snap shut when the right amount of pressure was applied on just the right spot.

  Dead faces, Collard thought, often spoke to the world, sending out final messages that were surprisingly heartfelt and concise. Dead lovers wore the betrayed smirks of the heartbroken. Dead adulterers had a worried cast to their mouths. The murdered had the silent look of the betrayed, glancing to one side or the other to indicate the direction of the perpetrator’s flight. The tortured held their lips as wide as possible at the arrogance of the living, wanting above all to arrange for a conversation with the future. But the victim of the crime down in the gulch seemed to say something else: his face was resigned and silent and nonassuming. (Collard was fully aware that it was easy to see something that wasn’t there, just as some drifter had found the Virgin Mary in a viaduct in Detroit last winter, recognizing her face in a splotch of salt and snow splatter cast up against the cement pylon by the passing snowplows.)

  Collard—who was big on fishing—had a theory that the truth always sat deep, waiting to be snagged and brought to the surface. With the boys in this case, he would later think, his technique had been off. His voice had cracked, his words had arrived unstable. The boy, Stanton, was not exactly cocky. But he was unusually sure-footed and assured when he said that he had nothing to do with the crime, that he had stood to the side while the other kids performed the rites; he had done nothing except pass, at one point, the spikes over to Bycroff, who held them while someone else, maybe Highsmith, maybe not, because he wasn’t really looking, pounded them in with the croquet hammer.

  Bycroff blamed Stanton, who in turn blamed Highsmith, who went around himself to point his finger at Bycroff in what most detectives traditionally call the golden hoop of blame. This three-way tag of culpability seemed particularly fine to Collard, who had gone so far as to hold the actual gag bandana up in Rudy Highsmith’s face during his interrogation. A green, snotstiff cloth that, when unknotted and straightened, still see
med to hold, in the wavelets of its hardened folds, a residue of the victim’s last words.

  It was impossible to imagine such agony without inflicting some on yourself, Collard thought, and listening to descriptions of the event during the trial, he bit his nails to the quick just to find some small amount of pain from which to extrapolate the rest. Most in the courtroom did something to this effect. The jury box was stuffed with nail chewers. Lawyers snapped their fingers under the clamps of their clipboards; reporters in the gallery dug their fingers into their arms, pinching hard, as if to check their consciousness. Most imagined the suffering as a dreary succumbing to the knowledge of the pain, an almost delirious unknowing state as the nails came through, the first bloom of pain, and then a feeling of being fixed there, yielding to something soft and—at least the way Collard imagined it, still thinking in terms of the laundry on those lines—fluffy and smelling of starch. What did it mean, some of the jury wondered, to lay claim to the idea that the boy was not suffering as much as one expected? In an attempt to lighten the immensity of the crime, a pain expert was brought in to testify that the body did have certain chemicals that came to the defense of the afflicted in this kind of situation. (Torture, on the other hand, was a matter of countering the body’s natural opiates, of inducing pain incrementally, with a finesse that worked around these chemical defenses.) The boys, in their quick, careless plunge into the heart of whatever it was, darkness or evil (the prosecution couldn’t exactly decide), had nailed the boy to the cross hard and fast, producing a flush of suffering that had produced a flood of endorphins. Shock was nothing but the deepest joke on consciousness, and when this boy, on that cold fall night, was faced with spikes—through his hands and legs, as he twisted up against the face of the juryrigged cross—he flew the coop, so to speak, and became nothing but a vapor of soul stuff who just so happened to inhabit a body that was, at that moment, being crucified. (The defense argued.)