He flicked on the lighter and looking at the cleared area, above, knocked against it with the knuckles of his free hand. He sighed with relief. It was oak not metal. Another mistake on their part. He smiled with contempt. It was easy to see why he had always been so far ahead of them.
“Stupid bastards,” he muttered, as he stared at the thick wood. Gripping the keys together firmly, he began to dig their serrated edges against the oak. The flame of the lighter shook as he watched small pieces of the lid being chewed off by the gouging of the keys. Fragment after fragment fell. The lighter kept going out and he had to spin the flint over and over, repeating each move, until his hands felt numb. Fearing that he would use up the air, he turned the light off again, and continued to chisel at the wood, splinters of it falling on his neck and chin.
His arm began to ache.
He was losing strength. Wood no longer coming off as steadily. He laid the keys on his chest and flicked on the lighter again. He could see only a tattered path of wood where he had dug but it was only inches long. It’s not enough, he thought. It’s not enough.
He slumped and took a deep breath, stopping halfway through. The air was thinning. He reached up and pounded against the lid.
“Open this thing, goddammit,” he shouted, the veins in his neck rising beneath the skin. “Open this thing and let me out!”
I’ll die if I don’t do something more, he thought.
They’ll win.
His face began to tighten. He had never given up before. Never. And they weren’t going to win. There was no way to stop him once he made up his mind.
He’d show those bastards what willpower was.
Quickly, he took the lighter in his right hand and turned the wheel several times. The flame rose like a streamer, fluttering back and forth before his eyes. Steadying his left arm with his right, he held the flame to the casket wood and began to scorch the ripped grain.
He breathed in short, shallow breaths, smelling the butane and wool odor as it filled the casket. The lid started to speckle with tiny sparks as he ran the flame along the gouge. He held it to one spot for several moments then slid it to another spot. The wood made faint crackling sounds.
Suddenly, a flame formed on the surface of the wood. He coughed as the burning oak began to produce grey pulpy smoke. The air in the casket continued to thin and he felt his lungs working harder. What air was available tasted like gummy smoke, as if he were lying in a horizontal smokestack. He felt as though he might faint and his body began to lose feeling.
Desperately, he struggled to remove his shirt, ripping several of the buttons off. He tore away part of the shirt and wrapped it around his right hand and wrist. A section of the lid was beginning to char and had become brittle. He slammed his swathed fist and forearm against the smoking wood and it crumbled down on him, glowing embers falling on his face and neck. His arms scrambled frantically to slap them out. Several burned his chest and palms and he cried out in pain.
Now a portion of the lid had become a glowing skeleton of wood, the heating radiating downward at his face. He squirmed away from it, turning his head to avoid the falling pieces of wood. The casket was filled with smoke and he could breathe only the choking, burning smell of it. He coughed his throat hot and raw. Fine-powder ash filled his mouth and nose and he pounded at the lid with his wrapped fist. Come on, he thought. Come on.
“Come on!” he screamed.
The section of lid gave suddenly and fell around him. He slapped at his face, neck and chest but the hot particles sizzled on his skin and he had to bear the pain as he tried to smother them.
The embers began to darken, one by one and now he smelled something new and strange. He searched for the lighter at his side, found it, and flicked it on.
He shuddered at what he saw.
Moist, root laden soil packed firmly overhead.
Reaching up, he ran his fingers across it. In the flickering light, he saw burrowing insects and the whiteness of earthworms, dangling inches from his face. He drew down as far as he could, pulling his face from their wriggling movements.
Unexpectedly, one of the larva pulled free and dropped. It fell to his face and its jelly-like casing stuck to his upper lip. His mind erupted with revulsion and he thrust both hands upward, digging at the soil. He shook his head wildly as the larva were thrown off. He continued to dig, the dirt falling in on him. It poured into his nose and he could barely breathe. It stuck to his lips and slipped into his mouth. He closed his eyes tightly but he could feel it clumping on the lids. He held his breath as he pistoned his hands upward and forward like a maniacal digging machine. He eased his body up, a little at a time, letting the dirt collect under him. His lungs were laboring, hungry for air. He didn’t dare open his eyes. His fingers became raw from digging, nails bent backward on several fingers, breaking off. He couldn’t even feel the pain or the running blood but knew the dirt was being stained by its flow. The pain in his arms and lungs grew worse with each passing second until shearing agony filled his body. He continued to press himself upward, pulling his feet and knees closer to his chest. He began to wrestle himself into a kind of spasmed crouch, hands above his head, upper arms gathered around his face. He clawed fiercely at the dirt which gave way with each shoveling gouge of his fingers. Keep going, he told himself. Keep going. He refused to lose control. Refused to stop and die in the earth. He bit down hard, his teeth nearly breaking from the tension of his jaws. Keep going, he thought. Keep going! He pushed up harder and harder, dirt cascading over his body, gathering in his hair and on his shoulders. Filth surrounded him. His lungs felt ready to burst. It seemed like minutes since he’d taken a breath. He wanted to scream from his need for air but couldn’t. His fingernails began to sting and throb, exposed cuticles and nerves rubbing against the granules of dirt. His mouth opened in pain and was filled with dirt, covering his tongue and gathering in his throat. His gag reflex jumped and he began retching, vomit and dirt mixing as it exploded from his mouth. His head began to empty of life as he felt himself breathing in more dirt, dying of asphyxiation. The clogging dirt began to fill his air passages, the beat of his heart doubled. I’m losing! he thought in anguish.
Suddenly, one finger thrust up through the crust of earth. Unthinkingly, he moved his hand like a trowel and drove it through to the surface. Now, his arms went crazy, pulling and punching at the dirt until an opening expanded. He kept thrashing at the opening, his entire system glutted with dirt. His chest felt as if it would tear down the middle.
Then his arms were poking themselves out of the grave and within several seconds he had managed to pull his upper body from the ground. He kept pulling, hooking his shredded fingers into the earth and sliding his legs from the hole. They yanked out and he lay on the ground completely, trying to fill his lungs with gulps of air. But no air could get through the dirt which had collected in his windpipe and mouth. He writhed on the ground, turning on his back and side until he’d finally raised himself to a forward kneel and began hacking phlegm-covered mud from his air passages. Black saliva ran down his chin as he continued to throw up violently, dirt falling from his mouth to the ground. When most of it was out he began to gasp, as oxygen rushed into his body, cool air filling his body with life.
I’ve won, he thought. I’ve beaten the bastards, beaten them! He began to laugh in victorious rage until his eyes pried open and he looked around, rubbing at his blood-covered lids. He heard the sound of traffic and blinding lights glared at him. They crisscrossed on his face, rushing at him from left and right. He winced, struck dumb by their glare, then realized where he was.
The cemetery by the highway.
Cars and trucks roared back and forth, tires humming. He breathed a sigh at being near life again; near movement and people. A grunting smile raised his lips.
Looking to his right, he saw a gas-station sign high on a metal pole several hundred yards up the highway.
> Struggling to his feet, he ran.
As he did, he made a plan. He would go to the station, wash up in the rest room, then borrow a dime and call for a limo from the company to come and get him. No. Better a cab. That way he could fool those sons of bitches. Catch them by surprise. They undoubtedly assume he was long gone by now. Well, he had beat them. He knew it as he picked up the pace of his run. Nobody could stop you when you really wanted something, he told himself, glancing back in the direction of the grave he had just escaped.
He ran into the station from the back and made his way to the bathroom. He didn’t want anyone to see his dirtied, bloodied state.
There was a pay phone in the bathroom and he locked the door before plowing into his pocket for change. He found two pennies and a quarter and deposited the silver coin, they’d even provided him with money, he thought; the stupid bastards.
He dialed his wife.
She answered and screamed when he told her what had happened. She screamed and screamed. What a hideous joke she said. Whoever was doing this was making a hideous joke. She hung up before he could stop her. He dropped the phone and turned to face the bathroom mirror.
He couldn’t even scream. He could only stare in silence.
Staring back at him was a face that was missing sections of flesh. Its skin was grey, and withered yellow bone showed through.
The he remembered what else his wife had said and began to weep. His shock began to turn to hopeless fatalism.
It had been over seven months, she’d said.
Seven months.
He looked at himself in the mirror again, and realized there was nowhere he could go.
And, somehow all he could think about was the engraving on his lighter.
DYING ROOM ONLY
The café was a rectangle of brick and wood with an attached shed on the edge of the little town. They drove past it at first and started out into the heat-shimmering desert.
Then Bob said, “Maybe we’d better stop there. Lord knows how far it is to the next one.”
“I suppose,” Jean said without enthusiasm.
“I know it’s probably a joint,” Bob said, “but we have to eat something. It’s been more than five hours since we had breakfast.”
“Oh—all right.”
Bob pulled over to the side of the road and looked back. There wasn’t another car in sight. He made a quick U-turn and powered the Ford back along the road, then turned in and braked in front of the café.
“Boy, I’m starved,” he said.
“So am I,” Jean said. “I was starved last night, too, until the waitress brought that food to the table.”
Bob shrugged. “So what can we do?” he said. “Is it better we starve and they find our bleached bones in the desert?”
She made a face at him and they got out of the car. “Bleached bones,” she said.
The heat fell over them like a waterfall as they stepped into the sun. They hurried toward the café, feeling the burning ground through their sandals.
“It’s so hot,” Jean said, and Bob grunted.
The screen door made a groaning sound as they pulled it open. Then it slapped shut behind them and they were in the stuffy interior that smelled of grease and hot dust.
The three men in the café looked up at them as they entered. One, in overalls and a dirty cap, sat slumped in a back booth drinking beer. Another sat on a counter stool, a sandwich in his hand and a bottle of beer in front of him. The third man was behind the counter looking at them over a lowered newspaper. He was dressed in a white, short-sleeved shirt and wrinkled white ducks.
“Here we go,” Bob whispered to her. “The Ritz-Carlton.”
She enunciated slowly, “Ha-ha.”
They moved to the counter and sat down on stools. The three men still looked at them.
“Our arrival in town must be an event,” Bob said softly.
“We’re celebrities,” Jean said.
The man in the white ducks came over and drew a menu from behind a tarnished napkin holder. He slid it across the counter toward them. Bob opened it up and the two of them looked at it.
“Have you got any iced tea?” Bob asked.
The man shook his head. They looked at the menu again.
“What have you got that’s cold?” Bob asked.
“Hi-Li Orange and Dr. Pepper,” said the man in a bored voice.
Bob cleared his throat.
“May we have some water before we order. We’ve been—”
The man turned away and walked back to the sink. He ran water into two cloudy glasses and brought them back. They spilled over onto the counter as he set them down. Jean picked up her glass and took a sip. She almost choked on the water it was so brackish and warm. She put down the glass.
“Can’t you get it any cooler?” she asked.
“This is desert country, ma’am,” he said. “We’re lucky we get any water at all.”
He was a man in his early fifties, his hair steel-gray and dry, parted in the middle. The backs of his hands were covered with tiny swirls of black hair, and on the small finger of his right hand there was a ring with a red stone in it. He stared at them with lifeless eyes and waited for their order.
“I’ll have a fried egg sandwich on rye toast and—” Bob started.
“No toast,” said the man.
“All right, plain rye then.”
“No rye.”
Bob looked up. “What kind of bread have you got?” he asked.
“White.”
Bob shrugged. “White then. And a strawberry malted. How about you, honey?”
The man’s flat gaze moved over to Jean.
“I don’t know,” she said. She looked up at the man. “I’ll decide while you’re making my husband’s order.”
The man looked at her a moment longer, then turned away and walked back to the stove.
“This is awful,” Jean said.
“I know, honey,” Bob admitted, “but what can we do? We don’t know how far it is to the next town.”
Jean pushed away the cloudy glass and slid off the stool.
“I’m going to wash up,” she said. “Maybe then I’ll feel more like eating.”
“Good idea,” he said.
After a moment, he got off his stool, too, and walked to the front of the café where the two rest rooms were.
His hand was on the door knob when the man eating at the counter called, “Think it’s locked, mister.”
Bob pushed.
“No it isn’t,” he said and went in.
—
Jean came out of the washroom and walked back to her stool at the counter. Bob wasn’t there. He must be washing up, too, she thought. The man who had been eating at the counter was gone.
The man in the white ducks left his small gas stove and came over.
“You want to order now?” he asked.
“What? Oh.” She picked up the menu and looked at it for a moment. “I’ll have the same thing, I guess.”
The man went back to the stove and broke another egg on the edge of the black pan. Jean listened to the sound of the eggs frying. She wished Bob would come back. It was unpleasant sitting there alone in the hot, dingy café.
Unconsciously she picked up the glass of water again and took a sip. She grimaced at the taste and put down the glass.
A minute passed. She noticed that the man in the back booth was looking at her. Her throat contracted and the fingers of her right hand began drumming slowly on the counter. She felt her stomach muscles drawing in. Her right hand twitched suddenly as a fly settled on it.
Then she heard the door to the men’s washroom open, and she turned quickly with a sense of body-lightening relief.
She shuddered in the hot café.
It wasn’t Bob.
She felt her heart throbbing unnaturally as she watched the man return to his place at the counter and pick up his unfinished sandwich. She averted her eyes as he glanced at her. Then, impulsively, she got off the stool and went back to the front of the café.
She pretended to look at a rack of sunfaded postcards, but her eyes kept moving to the brownish-yellow door with the word MEN painted on it.
Another minute passed. She saw that her hands were starting to shake. A long breath trembled her body as she looked in nervous impatience at the door.
She saw the man in the back booth push himself up and plod slowly down the length of the café. His cap was pushed to the back of his head and his high-topped shoes clomped heavily on the floor boards. Jean stood rigidly, holding a postcard in her hands as the man passed her. The washroom door opened and closed behind him.
Silence. Jean stood there staring at the door, trying to hold herself under control. Her throat moved again. She took a deep breath and put the postcard back in place.
“Here’s your sandwich,” the man at the counter called.
Jean started at the sound of his voice. She nodded once at him but stayed where she was.
Her breath caught as the washroom door opened again. She started forward instinctively, then drew back as the other man walked out, his face florid and sweaty. He started past her.
“Pardon me,” she said.
The man kept moving. Jean hurried after him and touched his arm, her fingers twitching at the feel of the hot, damp cloth.
“Excuse me,” she said.
The man turned and looked at her with dull eyes. His breath made her stomach turn.
“Did you see my—my husband in there?”
“Huh?”
Her hands closed into fists at her sides.
“Was my husband in the washroom?”
He looked at her a moment as if he didn’t understand her. Then he said, “No, ma’am,” and turned away.