Sand Circles

I limp down the prison steps, a free man for the first time in thirty years. I should be smiling, but like a frightened animal my eyes scan and dart everywhere. I wince and hold my chest as my old heart shudders in the heat. Have those beasts been waiting for me all this time?

All right, gotta make this quick. The sun blazes as I shuffle down the front steps of the Walls unit. My fat ass is sweating already. Ray got his release today, too. He’s all smiles on the sidewalk ahead of me with everyone else who recovered their freedom today.

“Who gonna sing for Cellblock Three now, Joe?”

I wave it away. “They’ll figure something out. Hey, good luck to you, Ray.”

But he doesn’t reply. His lady just ran up and he’s already laughing and buried in her hugs and kisses.

I begin the three blocks to the bank to cash my prison release gate check. My eyes try to adjust to a colorful world not surrounded by red brick. I’m totally exposed like I haven’t been for thirty years, and I watch every patch of woods and bushes. Nothing’s after me yet, and the boiling daylight helps. Or at least I hope it does.

All the other released cons make a line and the bank takes too long. I keep looking out the windows — good, still nothing. I get my little wad of cash and waddle to the bus station. Damn, my feet hurt and I can’t get enough air. 64 years old and can’t walk for shit anymore.

The first bus to Austin leaves in four hours, the guy says. I peek outside again, looking into the briars and all the hidey holes. It could take days for them to show. Or minutes. I ain’t risking it. “Fuck Austin, then. When’s the next bus to anywhere?”

“If we route you through-”

“No.” I point to the dock. My hand’s shaking. “Get me on that there bus closing up. Sorry, brother, I need out of here right now.”

Sitting on the bus as it rolls down the street, I look out and smear milky sweat on the window. Only dust and exhaust chase along the ditches. There’s no chill in my spine, no screaming in my ears, and that gives me comfort enough to breathe. I’ll get to Austin and Dina eventually. The thing is to keep moving.

In and out of those brick walls everyone I cared about had been safe and steady, and I’d just as soon have died in there, where the freaks couldn’t get at me. During those three decades I’d occasionally punch someone just to keep in enough trouble to avoid the parole board. But then they forced this compassionate medical release for my heart — just about pushed me through the door and set me on the curb. Now that I’m out those animals will be moving again, tracking me. The thought of it has got me so wound up that my ticker can’t last much longer. That’s probably what the board was hoping, that I’d end up face down somewhere. I can’t blame them.

The bus rumbles town to town. I feel nervous as the sun gets low. I scan the gloomy countryside, sometimes imagining their dark bounding shapes, but I know they can’t keep up if I drift quick enough. People getting on take one look at me and decide to sit somewhere else. Except for this hat-and-suspenders kid with a music case who slides in next to me.

“Now what you got in there?”

“Banjo.” He answers me straight, without a flinch. I like that, and feel like singing anyways. Something I picked up in the Unit.

“Mind clawhammering for a spell?”

“Reckon I could do that.” He smiles and opens his case.

A real banjo. Now that’s a sound. I sang a million times to tapes in lock-up, but never to the real thing. My voice warms up nice, and we do a few tunes easy. Folks up and down the aisle actually clap and whistle when we’re done, and I don’t know what to make of it. I feel my face go red and I smile for the first time in forever.

Singing in the free world gets me thinking on how I got here — how I’d got a clean escape from the cops but got so spooked that I turned and went back to them. That was a turn that kept me hidden away safe for all those years. One look into the streaming blackness outside makes me glad I had them.

I think back to ’88 when Crazy Casey, Dina, and me were driving the rounds like we’d been doing for years. For a few days this house we’d been casing kept coming up deserted-looking. It was one of those broke down places in the suburbs where they moved a bunch of crystal — they call it meth today. We crept up in the heat of day and I let my girl Dina kick in the door. She had great strong legs and liked to show off by making them useful.

The place was the same as you usually get — scummed dishes piled high and drooling on the counters by the sink, trashed furniture setting upside down and sideways. Watching out for tweakers, we spread out hoping for crystal or cash, or whatever else came up good that we could carry.

The living room is where shit got weird. I walked in and there was no furniture except for a nasty mattress in the middle. A figure was on it, curled up and making a deathly wheeze. Somebody’d dumped some kind of colored sands in big circles around the mattress, deep enough to pile on the carpet, circling the whole room like the mattress was a center bulls-eye.

“Hey, check this out,” I called, and Dina and Casey came in and stared.

Before we did anything there was a racket out front and we scrambled to hide, but it was too late. It was like a mirror: a girl and two guys shuffled in. Except they were zits, skin, and bones, with teeth missing — tweakers jonesing for crystal for sure. One guy looked up. “What the fuck?”

He raised a pistol and we leapt like a flock of pigeons. He never got a shot at us. In a few seconds I broke a chair to pieces putting him down and Casey hamburgered the other two with his crowbar. They went quiet and lay there bleeding.

“Aw, fuck, Joe,” Dina whined. She was never any good when we had to open a can of whoop-ass, but I was happy to have her just the same. I get a chill looking back on it now, but in those days we just did that stuff as a part of business.

Crazy Casey was all smiles. He undid his belt and sang a song as he went to the girl, “Ooo! Who wants a piece of this one, this one, this one…?”

Even before he’d smashed her face in, tweaker girl was no looker. “Dammit, Crazy, put your pecker away — we ain’t got time to watch you get VD. Get in their pockets and unload any cash and shit. Then we comb the house and bail.”

“Cockblocker-rrr,” he sang in a different note, giving a wink. Dina made a face and walked off.

I gave him a shove and said, “You sure got a way with the ladies, Casey. Just get some goodies for us.”

The guy covered in chair splinters tried to make a move and I had to kick him in the head a few times. When he was good and still I went to look down at the wheezer on the mattress. He was like one of those ancient mummies in the movies, watching me.

“What’s your story?” I asked.

“They give me this house to die in.” I could hardly understand him for his gurgling throat and Mexican accent. “Like for a week they give it to me. You think you bad? Ha! I’m Paco el cuchillo loco — ask them about me. I did way worse than you. That’s why those lobos monstruosas coming after me.”

“What?”

“Wolves, crazy wolves.” He coughed blood so bad that I thought he’d never say anything else, but he strained and kept gurgling, “Just dealing, you know, but I knife the wrong people one time. Bad shit — a witch family. Now five years they got a wolf curse on me.”

“Sure, a wolf curse.” I started to go see what the others found in the rooms. “Whatever you say, Paco.”

“Those circles make from sand. They can’t come in here.”

Now that stopped me because a chill prickled me all over despite the heat. Those cold fingers would visit for the rest of my life, but I didn’t know it then. He was struggling now.

“Magic sand. I make circles, hide inside. My soul. Will escape.” More choking and blood went everywhere.

I wanted to ask him more but there was a cry down the hall and I ran to it.

“Fuckin Casey! What the hell you doing?”

He was bent over the three tweakers, spreading even bigger red stains all over the carpet. It had the wet metallic smell of lives draining. “Scalpin’. Just like those cowboy movies I been watchin’, Joe. Scalps are the goodies I’m getting.”

He’d done a shit job. Hair and skull and grey meat were flopped in a warm mess that made me gag. “None of us want scalps, Casey. Damn, you killed these people for sure.”

“These two ain’t dead yet like that guy you kicked.”

Just then Dina came down the hall.

“You killed that guy, Joe?” she cried, tugging her hair up the way she did sometimes.

“Shit.” It was either the crystal, the chair, or the kicks in the head, but Casey was right. Even back then my stomach clenched. “Well, the ball’s rolling now. We gotta put these other two down and get out of here.”

I pressed the tweaker’s gun into a pillow and ended it for the guy and girl. After what Casey did to them I would have asked for the same.

“Okay, what’d you get?” They showed me the pile: some Codene and a sack of pink ones, probably Percocets, and a sandwich tub of crystal. A good haul, except for the three dead bodies of baggage. “Good. Pack it and let’s run.”

We were just leaving when we heard Paco say hey. He sounded rough, like he had just a couple minutes left, so we went into the sand circles to see what he wanted.

“See? They’re here. Can’t cross the circles…”

“Oh, God,” Dina muttered.

At the edge of the biggest circle two four-footed beasts stepped up and eyed Paco calmly, like rats looking at trash. They weren’t wolves, whatever they were. Their heads were funny shaped, like big cats, with the biggest teeth and mouths you ever saw. They were as tall as my hip and had stripes on their backsides. They had impossible black eyes, so huge and frozen that the room went cold.

“They tie to me like leash, always chase my evil smell, always find me,” Paco slurred with a burst of energy. “But my soul, now it go free. They can’t reach in circles.” He smiled even though he trembled all over. “You do. Bad things. Maybe they. Leash on you now.” He exhaled his last breath in a chuckle filled with red foam.

When he went grey the creatures took their eyes off him and locked on us instead. None of us liked that. They just stayed there staring, waiting for us to step over that last circle.

“Oh fuck no!” Crazy yelled. “Gimmee that.” He grabbed my knife and crowbar and rushed straight at the closest one.

Sometimes we forgot why we kept Crazy around, but every now and again he’d reminded us. He pump-faked, used the outer circle like an extra shield, and slashed the knife in a whistling arc. The creature’s blood speckled the wall. He dodged, hooked it in the eye with the bar’s claw, and dragged it inwards. It went limp as soon as its snout crossed the powdery threshold. Casey dragged it halfway in and crushed its ribs with his boots. The remaining one backed off until Casey was done, and then without a squeak pulled its dead buddy outside by the tail. Casey sang out, “It’s clear, clear, clear, kids!”

We fled out the door. Holy shit, there were twenty more of them in the yard. Cold dust was everywhere. They gaped with those monster mouths and crunched guts and bone as they ate up their dead friend in a minute. We weren’t halfway to the car before they started after us. I yanked Dina’s arm so she’d keep up. Five monsters went down with the last bullets in the tweaker’s gun. Dina got a few more with the bumper as we burnt rubber out of there. In the back window we could see those freaks still coming. Dina whipped us through the neighborhoods like an Indy driver. That girl could drive.

The animals were out of sight by the time we made the freeway, and the day’s heat returned. We kept on the gas through the night, hitting a little of our new crystal when we needed to keep alert. Casey got so wired he sang his songs the whole way. We met up with some shitheads we knew outside of Dallas and traded the dope for cash and bullets. They saw we weren’t in a haggling mood and ripped us off bad. Hey, we would’ve done the same to them.

Figuring we were hundreds of miles clear of those monster wolves or whatever they were, we bought a heap of burgers, a case of beer, and adjoining rooms at a worn out motel I knew. My cousin managed the place, and none of the air conditioning worked. He never liked us showing up, but you can’t choose your family.

The three of us needed a party and didn’t hold back. Casey got so hammered that he puked his dinner in the toilet and passed out panting on the floor beside his bed. Dina and me got frisky for an hour until we fell asleep sweating in each other’s arms. We would’ve had well-earned hangovers if we’d slept until morning, but we didn’t.

Screams from Casey’s room yanked me out of bed. I staggered to the door and heaved in with the gun. A dozen of those creatures had pushed through the window screen and had Crazy ripped open like a candy wrapper. Ignoring me, they chewed slimy bladders and pink ropes from his belly. There was nothing left in him to fight about, and from the look in his eyes Casey knew it.

“Jesus, Casey.” I didn’t have enough bullets to stop them. His cries were fading, but he saw me. I aimed the pistol. “I’ll stop this for you now, okay?”

He couldn’t say anything, but goodbye was in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Casey.” My throat clenched but I made myself do it. “So long, brother.” Two in the head and it was over for him.

The monsters crowded to put their teeth on him. All at once I heard them sucking, and the next horror has been in my nightmares ever since. In seconds they deflated him down until every bone and sinew wrinkled into a cold, ashen shell. And then they ate that, too.

But it was the screams that got me. Those echoes came from the walls, the floor, and straight out of mid-air. It was agony ripping right from Casey’s soul. I ducked back into our room and bolted the door, but his unnatural screams were still deafening. Dina was holding her ears, terror on her face. Shivering in the sudden cold, I reloaded, grabbed a few things, and slung her out of bed. Casey’s ghost shrieks kept coming like a flood from everywhere. I got us down the stairs, blasting at the freaks that followed. I emptied another magazine on them as Dina drove us out of there. Racing at a hundred miles an hour, we heard his howls twisting across the sky for another half hour.

Dina came apart, bawling. “Joe, I can’t do this any more.”

It took me a minute to find my voice. It came out shaky. “That’s okay, girl-”

“No more. I’m quitting this shit. You heard that guy on the mattress. They can smell it on us, always following.” Her voice was high and cracked. “I’m gonna turn a leaf, Joe. Go back to a normal life. Make it right with family again.”

“Dina, sure.” I swallowed, trying to get my thoughts straight. “That thing that happened back there — I’ve had it, too. I don’t know if-”

“Joe, stay.” Her hands were wet on the wheel from wiping her eyes. “Come and let’s get it right together.”

I took a few deep breaths and patched up a plan. I pinched a few twenties from our loot and gave the rest to her. “Yeah, here, it’s a few thousand. You start a good life.”

“Joe, you’re not leaving me now?”

“I’ll catch up.” I watched the lightening sky and my heart sank. “Look, I need to keep those things away from you. I’ll go somewhere else for a while — I’ll figure something out.”

“I’ve got nobody else…”

“Stop us at a bus station. You get a ticket for Austin or something. I’ll take the car the other way, far away so you’re safe, and I’ll fix this.”

“Don’t be long, Joe,” she sobbed. “God, I’ll miss you.”

“Me too, baby.”

The last time I saw her she was going through the bus station doors. I get choked up thinking on it even now. How life could’ve been different.

I zigzagged the map for most of the day before deciding on Texarkana. On the way I loaded up at a liquor store and was buzzing heavy when the cops lit their lights in the sunset behind me. I put my foot down and tried some of Dina’s tricks. Before I knew it I’d lost them down a rough trail in the woods. I cut the lights, tucked the car into some briars, and laid low.

After an hour the hairs on my neck prickled, I imagined shadows moving, and heard Casey’s screams growing again in my ears. I tried to ignore all that, but when I heard branches crashing I cut on the lights. Three monsters stalked in the beams, eyes like black tunnels to nowhere. Casey’s torture rang in my head as I smashed my way back to the highway. I never thought I’d be so glad to see those red and blue lights. I zoomed straight for them. The troopers bashed my head and dislocated my shoulder, and my thirty years in the Walls started right then.

In the beginning I wrote her a few times to make sure she was okay. The noise from that night would get in my head whenever I’d see those half-striped freaks pacing the concertino wire outside the yard, their eyes gobbling warmth from the day. I decided it was best if Dina kept far away. In all that time no one but me noticed them out there, locked on to only me, silently drooling to have my guts in their jaws. I never let her visit.

I started singing because Casey was always doing it, and I wanted to remember him that way. When I heard his cries I’d just sing louder. It helped a little.

I found out all about Paco el cuchillo loco, and sure as shit he’d racked up a ton of trouble by the time he ended up in those sand circles. He moved a bunch of dope like any of us, working deals all over the world, but his favorite business was knifing people to pieces and making them watch.

No wonder some pissed off people sicced those beasties on him. I had ages to look into it, and eventually gathered that Paco had used his knife to make a few corpses out of an old tribal family in Australia. The survivors launched their grudge against him by reaching far into the ancient past, to an age centuries ago when all the tribes made wolf curses and sand circles.

One day I was turning pages in an old library book and suddenly one of them was looking right at me. Some extinct animal from down there, it said. It was too small, the eyes were wrong, and my head stayed quiet, but the resemblance was there. Those things waiting outside the walls were part nightmare, from a place you’d never find in an old schoolbook.

“Got someone in Austin?” the banjo kid asks, turning me back into an old man on a night bus.

“Headed there to find out.”

He sees that there’s history in my words and does me the favor of skipping it. “I got a gig in town, and there’s a bunch of folks on Sixth Street I’m sure would like your voice. Come sit in for a few sets and earn yourself a full belly.”

That warms what’s left of my heart like I’ve never felt before. “In a different world I’d love to, but I just ain’t got the time for it, son.”

He grins. “Well the invite stands, pops.”

I think for a few minutes and tell him, “But if it suits you, maybe you could help me do just one more jingle before your show on sixth street…”

I’m not even sure it’s the right house, but the long walk in the sun has got my chest aching so bad that I stop us in the yard. I try to get some air while he opens his case. I’ve finally got the song in my lungs and start letting it out after his first few bars. It sounds so good outside of the cellblocks that I wish I’d had the chance to do something more with it. Before I know it we’re done, and for a second a little kid peeks from behind the curtains. In another second the front door opens.

The years weren’t easy on her, but I know they were worse on me. She recognizes me in an instant anyways. She breathes, “Joe…”

I can’t find words, so I just look at her.

“Good luck to you, pops. Look me up.” He closes up his case and walks off with a smile after shaking my hand. I never even ask his name. Damn good kid.

I finally manage, “That your boy in the window?”

The smile I’d been keeping in memory for decades spreads across her aged face. “Grandson, Joe.”

“So my Dina’s married.”

“Was. Jerry got cancer, been gone three years now.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Don’t be. I got the house at least.” Her eyes dance like old times, just a little. “I spent a lot of years thinking that you would’ve been better.”

Every scrap of spirit remaining in me says stay, but I can’t do that to her. My heart’s breaking all over again. “I’ve been wishing to see you since I dropped you off that night. But I need to go make some circles out of sand, girl. My time’s getting short.”

Her smile evaporates and I can see she never stopped hearing Crazy’s screams, either. “I made a life from what you left me that night. I want to make it up to you now — you deserve that much.”

“Now, Dina,” I call, but she’s hurried off already.

She comes back with some keys. Her eyes are wet as she hands them to me. “Take Jerry’s old pickup.”

“I hate to come begging just so I can say goodbye.” It hurts me to take the keys, but we both know what’s coming if I don’t go soon. My throat catches as I tell her, “I wish you could drive me like you used to.”

Her face puckers.

“But I’m gonna quit running soon all the same.”

Her whisper is haunted. “Don’t let them hurt you, Joe.”

“Just as long as you’re safe first.” I want to give her a hug, or a kiss, or something, but the thirty years since I last touched her is in the way. We make do with a wave that says I’ll never see you again. She cries in the rearview and the streets blur with tears as I drive off.

I move steadily all day and night, stopping now and then to steal half an hour of sleep. The sun is rising behind me as I pass through New Mexico, and it’s near noon when I leave the freeway for the Navajo Nation. The sky is at its blazing biggest and sparse shrubbery follows the earth in lumpy orange bulges that spread forever. Flat-topped mountains pierce upwards and ripple in the heat. Trailing red dust, I pull into a ragged place selling tourist trinkets and park close so I can hobble in. I’m dizzy and my left arm’s starting to ache, but I need to hang on.

There’s turquoise knick-knacks, feathery dreamcatchers, moccasins, and leather tassels on shelves and hangers. Fluorescent lights buzz and flicker, and the flies are full of pep from the heat. Mystical music plays in the back where they have a cramped display of a desert scene. It’s a dark, roped off patch of dirt spread around some clay pots and a beat-up stuffed coyote. There’s a sign that says ‘iikááh, exactly the word I’d memorized. At the coyote’s paws is a pattern so colored and detailed that at first I can’t believe it’s made of sand. I grab a couple of the pots and check the gritty powder inside with trembling fingers.

Just as I turn to go, a stocky, brown-skinned lady blocks the aisle. “Those aren’t for sale.”

“It’s just sand in these pots. I need it.”

“That is sacred material and you need to put it back.”

“This is everything I got,” I say as I hand her the fist of cash that’s my entire life. Casey’s screams start hissing in my ears and I jump. When she doesn’t take the money I dump it on the coyote and try to shove past her.

She’s about to do something when she closes her mouth and tilts her head to listen. She gives me a long look and says, “Something’s coming for you. A curse.”

“Lady, I’m in a hurry.” Now my other arm’s hurting too, and she’s staring at me. “Please. I need to make circles to hide in.”

It takes her a moment to decide. With smooth motions she trades me containers until I’ve got black, white, blue, and yellow sands. “I don’t want your money.” She points out the door. “Four circles, each a different color. Do it far from here.”

I leave the money anyways and sag sweating behind the wheel. I can’t get enough air and can hardly stay awake. The frigid wave that moves up my spine spurs me to start the truck and move down the road. The sky starts to whisper Casey’s shrill cries and I look back. Nothing’s in the rearview yet.

I turn down a rough trail and drive until I find a quiet spot on a low hill. I leave the engine running and stumble a few yards in a cloud of dust to a bare patch in the sages. My jaw is aching and it’s agony fumbling with the pots. I start pouring sand but trip before I close the first circle. The clay pots fall and shatter on the rocks, spilling mounds of color on the ground and into the wind. On my knees I try to retrieve some in my hands but my vision tunnels and I fall over. I struggle back to my knees and I don’t think I can stand up. My chest feels crushed.

I’m wheezing and shuddering so bad that I can barely reach for the spilled pigments. I quit trying after I see five monsters emerge from the brittlebushes and chollas. Huge hollow eyes approach with calm hunger and the air goes cold. I think my head will explode from Casey’s screams blasting from everywhere. On instinct I start singing, just like I did in the Unit when I’d heard those awful cries.

I sing about waiting for release, being just a few minutes too late to pour the sand, and how I wish I could see Dina again. My voice is weak but it’s doing something. The creatures stop feet away and listen, and then sit down on their stripes. One of them makes a little whine and I strain to continue.

But I’m suffocating and my voice fails in a fit of coughing. It feels like there’s a knife in my chest and there’s blood in my spit. The creatures rise and lick their icy teeth. They step across the frigid earth. For thirty years I’ve been dreading this moment when my screams join Casey’s.

“All these years I’ve kept you lured away from her,” I rasp. They smell like death, or is it me? “Leave her soul. Just take mine and call it even. It ain’t worth a damn to me anyways.”

They’re on me now. I brace for the first bite. My words are a trembly wheeze. “Is this the evil you’re after? I love that girl. And dammit I think she loves me too.”

I feel the sun warming my face, the earth thawing. Casey’s cries fade. When I open my eyes I see the creatures turn, pause a minute to have a last look at me, and then amble off in different directions. In a moment there’s no sign they were here. The truck’s still running and the pretty colored sands are warm on my damp cheek. The world spins into darkness as I relax and go numb all over, but I can feel my lips smile. I would laugh if I could.

“Guess that’s something I should’ve said a long while back.”

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