The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (43 page)

While the farmer hitched his team, his six-year-old son crawled off the back of the wagon and wandered over to peer up at the young Mexican framed in the cell window. Louis Gallegos smiled at him.

“Are you the man?” the little boy asked. “Are you the one they’re gonna put the rope on?”

“Sí, little one. I am the man.”

“Will it hurt?”

Gallegos closed his eyes. “If God wills it.”

Koch gently pushed the boy aside. “Go on,” he ordered. “Go with your Dad.” Then he turned toward Louis. “It’s about that time.”

Gallegos nodded. “I’m ready, Sheriff.”

The townspeople watched as Koch and a deputy led Louis Gallegos out of the jail, his hands manacled together. They started a slow walk down the street toward the gallows. The people closed ranks and, as if by common consent, followed them.

A priest stood on the gallows, waiting. He was Mexican and he knew his clerical garb meant nothing to these people. The brown skin set him apart, and the fact that he spoke little English. The cross that hung from his neck was no symbol of peace to the grim men and women who gathered around the gallows. A Mexican priest was a Mexican. And the priest understood this as he stood atop the platform and watched Louis Gallegos, his hands manacled in front of him, walk slowly up the steps toward him.

A man in the first row called out impatiently. “What the hell? That should have been done in the jail! Let’s get on with it!”

There were nods of assent, but no other voices. This was a quiet crowd, anxious to have happen what had to happen. But there was no fire under these people. There was no rage. Their hatred was like themselves. It was quieted down by the hot sun, measured by the dictates of the climate. So it was a quiet crowd. But they knew what they wanted.

Peter Sykes stood in front of the jail looking expectantly down the street until he saw Pedro Gallegos turn the corner at the far end and run toward him. Sykes’s eyes shone. He held up the little bag and dangled it in the air, then crooked the finger of his free hand and waggled it toward the old man. Sykes kicked open the door to the jail.

Silently he pointed toward the interior as Pedro Gallegos came up to him. They went inside and Sykes closed the door.

“Your daughter told you, old man?”

Gallegos swallowed. His face was wet with a combination of sweat and tears. His voice shook as he answered. “She told me. She said that you had a dust...a dust of magic properties.”

Sykes smiled. “That’s the idea, old man. Sprinkled over the heads of the people...it’ll make them feel sympathy for your son. It’s very rare, you know. It’s magic.” His face changed and something hard crept in the lines by the mouth. “You brought the money, old man?”

Gallegos reached inside his worn, shabby shirt and took out a small bag of his own, tied at the top with string. He untied it and emptied the contents into his palm. There were three gold pieces.

Sykes felt his palms perspire. “Gold pieces, huh?” he said, taking a breath. “Where did you get them?”

“All my friends...all my friends went into the city. One sold a wagon, another sold a horse. Some borrowed. We got many pesos and we converted them.”

He reached for the bag of dust, but Sykes pulled it back.

Gallegos wet his lips. “It will work, Mr. Sykes?” he asked. “The magic dust—it will work? You sold the rope to hang my son. Now you sell me that which will save him?”

“I’m a businessman, Mr. Gallegos,” Sykes said reasonably. “I sell that which is needed.” He shook his head. “I make no distinctions. This will work. Like I told you...it’s magic!”

Sykes smiled, held out his hand. The old man slowly dropped the coins one by one into it, then held his own hand out for the dust which Sykes very deliberately turned over to him. Gallegos clutched it tightly to hi.

“It must work,” he said. “It must work. It must be magic!”

Then propelled by urgency and fear and a sudden hope of salvation, he pulled open the door.

“Louis,” he screamed as he ran. “Louis, I’m coming, my son. I’m coming.

Sykes stepped outside, holding the three gold pieces in his hand. “Just throw some into the air,” he shouted after the old man. “Over their heads.” He laughed. “That’s right...and then watch the magic!”

He rubbed the coins together and liked the feel and the moisture and the scraping sound of them. He sat down on the steps of the jail.

“Magic,” he said through his laughter. “You go out there and watch the magic!”

He sat rolling the coins in his sweaty palm and thought that things had a way of coming out all right. He hadn’t been around to sell the coffin...but he had made something out of the day anyway. He felt warm and good inside. He reached in his hip pocket and took out his pint bottle of whiskey. Yes, things had a way of coming out all right!

Louis Gallegos knelt on the platform, the rope hanging a few feet above him. The priest administered the blessing in a soft, sing-song Latin. Intermittently a rumble of impatient voices called for an end of prayer and a commencement of the business of the day.

But the priest kept his eyes fastened on the back of the kneeling boy’s head and made himself oblivious to the sounds. Each time he crossed himself and reached another juncture in the blessing another moment had passed, another fragment of Louis Gallegos’s life had been pushed aside. So very little remained.

At last the priest could do nothing but stand there, his fingers clenched, while Sheriff Koch went to Gallegos, took his elbow and helped him rise. The deputy placed the noose around his neck and then tightened it. A murmur of approval ran through the crowd.

Only Mrs. Canfield, mother of the dead girl, turned her eyes away, not wanting to see and wishing she had not come. Her husband took her arm and motioned with his head toward the platform. It was a silent and symbolic command. On the day of retribution, they, the bereaved, must not look away. They must stand in the front row and watch as justice was done.

“Magic...magic...” came the sound of Pedro Gallegos’s cracked, old voice. He rounded the comer and ran toward the crowd. He held the bag of dust high over his head. Out of breath, sweating, stumbling, he ran among the people, scattering the dust over their heads, half sobbing his incantations.

“You must pay heed to the magic now,” he exhorted them. “You must stop all this...and pay heed to the magic.”

Back and forth he ran, stumbling, landing on his knees, then rising to run again past the gamut of icy faces. A child laughed at the apparition, but his mother put her finger over his mouth and there was dead silence as the old man continued to fling dust over their heads and shout.

“Magic. You must pay heed to the magic. All of you—it is only for love. It is for compassion. The magic is so that my son can live—as you yourselves would want yours to live. Magic...magic...magic...”

A young man, husky, squat, powerful, thrust his foot out and tripped the old man. He fell face down. The bag dropped from his hands and he scrabbled across the ground after it.

“It’s magic,” he whispered hoarsely. “Magic...it is for love. It is for love. The magic is for love.”

The trapdoor creaked open. The rope went taut with the weight of the body. The gasp from the crowd built to a roar. The old man covered his face and screamed.

“No. Oh, no. Por el amor de Dios!”

The ground swayed under him and he turned cold from head to foot. But presently he became aware that the crowd was growing gradually quieter, until at last there was no sound at all. Very slowly his fingers parted and he peered out to see what had so strangely stilled the crowd. He saw a piece of rope hanging down through the trapdoor. Beneath it stood Louis Gallegos, the torn noose around his neck, his face white.

Only Sykes spoke, his voice tremulous. “But it was a new rope. Five-strand hemp!”

The people were silent, baffled. Koch went to Louis Gallegos’s side and faced the crowd.

“What about it, Mr. Canfield? Mrs. Canfield?”

Pedro Gallegos, holding the empty bag, made his way toward where the Canfields stood.

“Please,” he said. “Please...it’s the magic. You cannot try to defeat the magic.”

“Let’s try it again,” a man called out.

There was a murmur of agreement.

Koch held tight to Louis Gallegos’s arm. “There are only two people here,” he said, “who have the right to beg an eye for an eye.” He turned purposefully to the Canfields. “What about it?”

Canfield felt the blood drain from his face. The unfamiliar black suit was heavy and uncomfortable. But heavier was the pressure of the eyes that watched him, the sense of ears waiting for him to speak. It was his wife who answered.

“No more today, William,” she said softly, shaking her head. “No more.”

“He killed our child,” Canfield said. “He killed our child.”

The woman shook her head. “And a part of himself too.” She looked at the suffering face of Louis Gallegos.

“There’s been enough pain, William,” she said. “Quite enough pain. It has to stop now...or we’ll die, ourselves.”

Her husband’s face showed indecisiveness, but this was a gentle man, and she knew it.

Canfield turned to Koch. “Sheriff Koch,” he said quietly. “We...we withdraw the charges.” Then he looked up at the dangling rope. “There must be...there must be another hand in all this, to make the rope break like that—” He shook his head. “Another hand. Maybe... maybe the hand of Providence.”

Koch took a deep breath and felt something wondrous stirring inside him. “You want to stop it then, Mr. Canfield?” he asked in an official voice. “You have that right.”

A farmer stepped out of the crowd. “William?”

Canfield turned.

“We leave it like this?” the man asked.

Canfield nodded. “We leave it like this. One victim is enough.” He faced his fellow townspeople. “I think we should all go home now,” he said.

He took his wife’s arm and they walked away. By ones and twos, then by groups, the people left the square. Within a few moments it was empty save for Koch, the old man, and the young Mexican boy with the manacled hands, the ugly red mark on his throat, the noose around his neck. Koch released the manacles.

The boy said wonderingly, “I’m...I’m free?”

Koch felt a weariness he had never known before. “Are any of us...free, Louis?” he asked. “But you can go home.” He removed the rope from the boy’s neck. “You have
that
much freedom.”

The boy rose to his feet and clutched his father for support. His knees were weak and a faintness descended on him.

“It was the magic, Louis,” the old man said. “It was the magic dust that brought back love to the people.”

The boy kissed him. “Yes, my Father,” he said. “It was the magic. Come...come, we will go home now.”

The old man took the boy’s face in his hands, nodded, smiled, and then burst into laughter After a moment Louis Gallegos began to laugh too and, arms intertwined, they stood laughing uproariously, laughing at the miraculous salvation that had descended upon them, at the joy of being alive. Still laughing, they started home. Koch went back to the jail, glad that one day’s work was done.

Later, Peter Sykes wandered drunkenly back to the gallows, and stared up at the broken rope. He kept shaking his head and mumbling. “I’ll be damned,” he said to himself. “I’ll be God damned. It was a new rope! It was a brand new rope!”

He still clutched the three gold coins in his hand. When he saw that three small Mexican children were watching him, Sykes turned away, but somehow, in spite of himself, he felt drawn to them. Without conscious volition, Sykes flung the coins on the ground at the children’s feet. They stood motionless, almost as if they were not breathing.

“Go ahead,” Sykes yelled. “Take them. They’re yours!”

Slowly and with great dignity, the children reached down into the dust and each took a coin. Then they watched the fat man as he walked slowly across the square.

Why, the fat man said to himself. Why? Why did I do that? I don’t understand. Once he stopped and looked over his shoulder at the Mexican children. He began to laugh. “Must be the magic,” he announced out loud. “That’s what she is...magic!”

The laughter bubbled and gurgled inside him and then burst out into the air. The great noise surrounded him as he walked down the main street past the jail. He had never laughed Like that before. And still it came and he couldn’t stop. He could be heard blocks away, a fat huckster who waddled through the dust and roared with uncontrollable laughter.

The square was empty; the sun had disappeared over the vast horizon that stretched all around the town. An empty tobacco bag lay near the gallows. Soon it would be swallowed up by the desert as all things were swallowed up.

The town, still ugly and still full of squalor, prepared itself for the night. It was small, misery-laden, and this had been the day of a hanging. Of little historical consequence really. But if there was any moral to be drawn...it might be said that in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery...it might be wise to first check the human heart.

For inside this deep place is a wizardry that costs far more than a few pieces of gold. It was, of course, a fact that no one in the town could articulate this thought. But there was a feeling. There was a mood. And there were questions now where before no questions had existed.

So the town let the starry night enfold it, and went to sleep. The next day the town would again give battle to the sun and the sand. The gallows would be tom down. But the day of the hanging...this had been committed to memory.

You could say this of Harvey Hennicutt—he was an exceptional liar. When Harvey peddled one of his used cars, his lying was colorful, imaginative, and had a charm all of its own.

Along automobile row it was said of him that he could sell anything that had at least two wheels, one headlight, one unbroken glass, and a semblance of an engine—given ten minutes to make the pitch. Many of his most famous transactions are doubtless apocryphal, but some of them are quite authentic, because I remember them myself.