The Incurables Read online

  And now there was more laughter, more scorn, and the old drunkard faked like he was going to punch Stanton in the face, and Stanton flinched and shielded his face with his arm. A tall, skinny woman wearing fake pearls, a lifetime supply of mascara, and a broken shoe called out, “You ain’t nothing but a phony. You and the boy, both!”

  Stanton wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded his head. “I see that we are inflicted with the great disease of unfaithfulness. But if proof is what you require, then proof is what you shall receive.” He then turned toward his son and told him to rise.

  And though he felt ashamed, Durango did what he was told and rose to his feet, removing the crown of thorns from his head.

  Stanton gazed into the crowd, growing by the minute. Then he raised his right hand, a tattered Bible flickering between his fingers. “Those who are blind and want sight, step forward!” he shouted. “Those who are lame and want to walk, step forward! Those who are deaf and want to hear, step forward!”

  And for a long time there was no movement, but then an old woman appeared, hunched at the shoulders, dress tattered and torn, white cane in her hand, face badly burned, eyes rolled up in her head. The butchers and drunks and whores guided her past Stanton and over to where Durango stood in front of his throne.

  Durango gazed at her for a few moments and suddenly he felt terrified. His legs became rubbery and he fell back to his seat. The old woman took a step forward and grinned a terrible grin. “My old man threw acid on my face when he caught me in bed with another man,” she said. “That was thirty-two years ago. I ain’t been able to see since. If you are who you says you are, you should be able to give me sight. And with sight, I do aim to find the old bastard and put a dozen holes in his belly.”

  And now the crowd was getting more agitated, pointing and laughing, cursing and shouting. Durango looked at his father, and his father nodded his head and then closed his eyes and began mumbling a prayer to the nobody in the sky.

  Durango took a couple of steps forward until he was directly in front of the grotesque-looking woman. While she continued to grin, and while the crowd continued to mock, Durango Stanton carefully placed his hands on the woman’s deformed eyes. He held his hands there for a very long time, pressing his fingers against the woman’s tightly clenched eyelids, and then he closed his own eyes, and for the first time in his life he felt God’s presence, felt the power blasting through his veins, swelling in his skin.

  The woman began moaning, and the crowd became hushed. And then Durango’s own eyes rolled back into his head, and his tongue swelled in his mouth, and he began speaking, but he had no control of the words: “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

  And then he removed his hands from the woman’s face and she opened her eyes, and for a moment her eyes met Durango’s, and her face betrayed an expression of terror. But Durango was the only one who recognized the moment, because a split second later the terrible grin returned, and she turned toward the sound of the crowd and, with great triumph, shouted, “He’s a fraud! A phony! Blind I have been, and blind I will stay!”

  The crowd erupted into more scornful laughter and taunts, and the devilish woman turned her back toward Durango and tapped away with her white cane until she was swallowed up into the gathering. Durango looked at his father and saw a silent, blank look that said his faith was shaken if not destroyed. Durango shook his head, said, “She’s a liar. She saw. I gave her sight.”

  Stanton nodded his head, in a daze. “We should pack up,” he said. “We should get on away from here.”

  Chapter 6

  They walked through town, through this dying Oklahoma town, and the crown was on Durango’s head, the throne tied to his back. Neither of them spoke. The sidewalks and streets were splintered, and the buildings and houses, once proud and stately, were crumbling beneath the weight of vanishing oil and long-ago fires. Durango wondered if his days as the Messiah were finished once and for all now that he’d failed his father again, as he had so many times in the past. Like when he’d tried to heal the man with the polio-shriveled leg, or when he’d prayed for the young mother’s child to rise from the river in which she’d drowned. Failures both. And there had been many other times as well. Times without success when he’d tried to prove his father wasn’t a lunatic. In the past the old man had rationalized the failures, said the savior couldn’t be pushed and prodded into proving his divinity. But after enough failures, after enough humiliations, the faith was bound to disintegrate…

  On Front Street there was a run-down bar called the Silver Dollar. Stanton told Durango to sit outside while he went to drink for a while, something he hadn’t ceased doing completely. He pushed open the wooden door and stepped inside, and Durango could hear the sound of glass against glass, the sound of the cash register slamming shut. Exhausted, Durango untied the throne and placed it against the wooden wall. He removed his crown and sat down. The day was hot and violent. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to dissolve the memories of the day: the rowdy carnival crowd, the accusatory man, the sightless woman. Drunks stumbled past him looking to numb their bodies and brains with bourbon and brandy. Durango remained sitting there with his eyes closed for a long time. He was breathing hard and the blood was dribbling from his forehead. When he did open his eyes, he saw a young woman standing directly in front of him, staring at him, a gap-toothed grin on her face. She had the look of a small-town whore. She wore a tight red sweater that fell off her shoulder and a matching bandanna around her neck. A white garter peeked out from under a slit cut in the side of a too-short black skirt. She wore high stiletto heels on her feet and bright red lipstick on her mouth. Slung over her shoulder was a brown leather purse. Durango was pretty certain he was in love.

  “So you’re the Messiah, huh?” she said.

  Durango only shook his head, said, “I ain’t nothing that I know of.”

  “I saw you back there. I watched. It was a good show. And then I followed you over here ’cause I like the way you look. Your daddy inside the bar?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Durango Stanton.”

  “That’s a funny name. My name is Scent. How old are you, Durango?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Me, I’m a year older than that. And want to know a secret?”

  “What’s that?”

  “My mama’s crazy, just like your old man.”

  Durango clenched his fists and scowled. “My old man ain’t crazy.”

  “Sure he is. Saying you’re the Messiah. Making you sit on a throne. Making you wear a crown of thorns. Sure he’s crazy.”

  “Maybe I am the Messiah. Maybe he’s right.”

  “I don’t think so. The Messiah woulda given that lady sight, don’t you think?”

  Durango didn’t know what to say. She was right about his father, but he didn’t like admitting it.

  Off in the distance lightning flashed, but there was no thunder. Scent looked up at the sky. “Looks like it’s gonna rain.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “I like the rain. Cleans the town of all its filth.”

  She wiped a strand of dirty blonde hair from her face and touched Durango’s leg. He flinched, pulled back.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  “I know you ain’t.”

  “Where do you and your father live?”

  Durango only frowned.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you got a place?”

  “We depend on the kindness of others.”

  “You ain’t got a place of your own?”

  “No, ma’am. Right now we’re staying in the woods. We got a tent so it ain’t so bad.”

  Scent placed her hands—filthy, the fingernails jagged—on her hips and shook her head. “Well, I’d let you stay at our place—my mom and me—but we don’t got much space. Ain’t nothing but a shack, really. My mom ain�
�t nothing but a pauper. And I ain’t nothing but a whore.”

  Before Durango could respond, an enormous man with a thick red beard and a woodcutter’s shirt pushed through the doors of the bar. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and belched. When he saw the young whore standing there, he stopped in his tracks.

  “Well, well,” he said. “You’re a pretty one, ain’t you?”

  “Leave me alone,” she said. “I ain’t interested.”

  “I got a pocket full of cash, missy.”

  “I ain’t interested.”

  But the man remained, grinning, eyes good and bloodshot. “I heard about you,” he said, and then grabbed her by the arm.

  “Let me go, mister. I’m warning you.”

  The man just laughed and started pulling her until she fell from her feet and landed on the ground. And he was going to drag her across the asphalt, take matters into his own hands, until Durango stood from his throne. “You best let go of her,” he said, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

  The man stopped and looked up at Durango, his forehead scratched and bleeding. “You say something, boy?”

  “You just best let her go is all.”

  “Don’t you give me no advice, boy. I’ll let her go just as soon as I finish screwing her. How does that suit you?”

  Several other drunks and whores exited the bar, and not one of them stopped for the girl because this is what happened in Burnwood, Oklahoma.

  “You should listen to him,” the girl said, squirming in his grasp. “He’s a man of God. He’s got some powers that you should know about.”

  That got the man laughing. He let go of the girl and took a few steps forward. “Man of God, huh? Is that what I heard?”

  “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “You think God gave you powers?”

  “Talk to my father. Talk to—”

  But the man didn’t want to talk anymore. He grabbed Durango and threw him against the wall, knocking the wind and snot out of him. “I don’t believe in God,” the man said. “And I don’t believe in you neither.”

  Then the man reached back and threw a practiced hook at Durango’s chin. The punch connected, tearing through the skin and slamming Durango’s head back. A blow to the stomach and another to the temple, and Durango collapsed to the pavement. He heard voices, distant, incomprehensible. Then he was gone.

  The rain was falling when the older Stanton stumbled out of the bar. When he saw his son lying on the sidewalk, blood mixing with rain, he didn’t scream, didn’t rush to his side. Instead, he kicked him gently in the ribs, said, “C’mon, Durango, up and at ’em. We’ll head back to our camp, get some shut-eye. Then tomorrow we’ll start preaching anew. Tomorrow you’ll save ’em. Believe me, boy.”

  Durango opened his eyes and blinked for a while. Then he got to his knees, coughing and gasping, and finally to his feet. He watched as his father started walking. Then he grabbed the crown off the ground and placed it on his head, and grabbed the throne and tied it to his back.

  And as he followed his father through the streets all covered with filth, he wondered what happened to the girl named Scent, wondered if she’d be the one he’d save.

  Chapter 7

  Scent and the fat man drove in his badly rusted, badly dented Ford truck toward the Lullaby Motel over on Front Street. His calloused hands rode up and down her leg and she didn’t try to stop him. The radio played static-filled doo-wop. And out on the streets a heaping of destitution and debauchery. Not that it bothered Scent. See the obese bastard sprawled in a heap of garbage, eyes rolled back in his head, vomit covering his overalls. See the whore with an emaciated body and snaggletooth trying to wrestle away a bottle of bourbon from an elderly woman in a whale-skin jacket. See the four little children, dressed in rags and covered with filth, scurrying around the alley like rabid rats, one of them pounding an old doll against a building wall until its head snaps off and rolls into the gutter.

  “I ain’t giving you more than ten dollars,” the man said, and Scent could smell the stink of his breath, whiskey mixed with chicken liver.

  Scent didn’t say a thing because she had her way of getting paid.

  A few minutes later they arrived at the motel, a run-down one-story with blue doors and brown curtains. There was a swimming pool, but it had long since dried up. Weeds pushed through the cracked asphalt of the parking lot and all was empty except for a blue van, front tire slashed, back windshield shattered.

  “Now you just wait here, little girl,” he said. “Gonna go get us a fancy room.”

  The man went into the office to pay for a room, while Scent slumped down in the car and chewed her nails. She reached into the front pocket of her purse and pulled out her lipstick. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she smeared red on her lips, then spat at the image. “Ugly bitch,” she said.

  Soon the fat man came out of the office, twirling the key ring around his finger. “Room number one,” he said. “Lovers Lane.”

  He parked in front of the room, looked her up and down, and asked what the hell she was waiting for. She opened the door and stepped outside.

  The room was dingy as hell. A bed sloppily made. A lopsided chair. Yellow paint peeling from the wall. Scent stood just inside the doorway, feeling plenty of hatred. The old drunkard watched her, his eyes narrowed, his rotted teeth visible between bloated lips. “Now I heard from a buddy-wuddy of mine that you fuck like a mountain pony,” he said. She gritted her teeth, didn’t say a word. “Well c’mon now. Time to prove it.”

  Scent lifted the sweater over her head and tossed it on the floor. Then she unsnapped her bra and yanked off her skirt and panties. She stood there naked, unashamed, despite her small breasts and her flabby stomach, a place where a deranged fetus had once grown.

  She didn’t take off her garter or her high heels, and so she wobbled back and forth. The man watched her, grunting in approval. He sat down on the bed and struggled to pull off his work boots and then his dungarees. His cock was half-erect, resting against the flab of his inner thigh. He rose to his feet, and his flannel shirt was still on, keeping hidden his enormous gut.

  He grabbed a hold of his cock and began stroking it, nodding to Scent. “Come on now,” he said. “I’m feeling good and ready.”

  Scent hesitated for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders. No sense in fooling around. Take what she had coming to her and pocket the cash. She walked over to where he stood and got down on her knees. She licked her lips and took him in her mouth. A minute or two of sucking and then he grabbed a hold of her hair and yanked her head back and forth, causing her to choke and gag. She could hear him moaning and breathing, a feral animal.

  But he wanted the full treatment, the fat bastard, and so he pushed her away, said she sure was a rotten little whore, threw her to the filthy carpet. With hands thick and strong, he positioned her on her hands and knees and heaved himself into her. Scent gasped and he kept on, the sound of flesh slapping against her ass. She imagined she was somewhere else, just like she always did, but it didn’t make it much better. He was going full force, and he grabbed a hold of her throat and squeezed. She squealed and gasped for air, the room spinning around. Almost finished. He released his grip on her neck and instead slammed her face against the coarse carpet, hard enough to leave a bruise. With a shudder he finished, slammed her head again, withdrew.

  He stood over her, scowling. “Little whore,” he said. “Goddamn little whore. But a good one at that.”

  Breathing loudly out of his nose, he walked across the room and went to the bathroom and closed the door. Scent lay there for a while, hating the fat man, hating herself, her head throbbing badly. Eventually she managed to pull herself up to a sitting position. She grabbed the fat man’s jeans and dug into the pockets. She found his car keys in one pocket and a wallet in the other. She fisted the cash, forty-some dollars. She placed the wallet and car keys back in his pockets. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she staggered across the room to where her purse lay on a
wooden chair. She unzipped it and stuffed the cash inside, then pulled out her lipstick, smeared some on her swollen lips. She was plenty battered. Returning the lipstick to the purse, she grabbed a hold of an old friend: a silver .357 Colt Python, already loaded.

  Outside the wind was blowing and a door somewhere was banging open and shut. Everything was a dream, of course, and so it wasn’t really her tiptoeing across the filthy carpet, the revolver dangling from her small hand. She stood outside the door for a long moment and then knocked, once, twice, three times.

  “You still here, you fucking whore?” he shouted.

  “My money,” she said. “I need my money.”

  “Give a fellow some privacy. Jesus Christ. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  The door was unlocked. She stepped inside. The man was sitting on the toilet, hands on knees. Scent raised the gun, pulled back the hammer.

  “The hell are you doing?” he said, rising from the toilet, his cock now shriveled beneath his gut.

  Scent squeezed the trigger and there was a deafening explosion. The man cradled his head with his arms, then, after realizing she’d missed, began walking toward her, right arm outstretched. She took a step backward, out of the bathroom, cocked the gun, and fired once more. This time the mirror shattered, shards crashing to the floor. The man continued moving forward, wide-eyed and crazy-like. Her hand was trembling, and the weapon suddenly seemed heavy, an anchor in her grip. He swiped at the gun and Scent squeezed the trigger again and this time she got him good, a shot to the chest.

  He stopped in his tracks, reached for the wound. Then he looked at his hands, slick with blood. He staggered forward, reaching for Scent and coming up just short. He collapsed to the floor, lay on his stomach, head cocked to the side, breathing quickly, the blood turning the carpet red.

  Scent stood there for a long time, watching him die. When he was still, she walked across the room and placed the gun back in her purse. She grabbed her clothes off the floor and got dressed. Then she sat on the bed, hands folded on her lap, and stared straight ahead. Twenty, thirty minutes she stayed, not moving at all. The shots had been loud, and Scent waited for somebody to rush into the motel room, waited for the muted sounds of sirens, but that never happened. Nobody ever came.