FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

FRIDAY TYRANT - BRIAN EVENSON'S BABY LEG

This past November, Tyrant Books released a very limited edition of the great Brian Evenson novella, Baby Leg. Only 400 copies, hardcover, draped in linen, and illustrated by Eric Hanson. Evenson signed and fingerprinted each one as well. What I'm getting at is: Are you poor and don't want to be like that when you grow up/old? I thought as much. Then I would advise you to buy one of these things (we have a couple left) and sit on it until you tire of living slice to slice and decide to part with your copy for what will surely be jillions.

Advertisement

My man Blake Butler put together maybe one of the best blurb/reviews I've ever read, so instead of trying to beat him at it, I'll just let him sway you for a few:

"Via a series of sparely rendered dream loops, each wormed so deep into the other that it is no longer safe to say which might be which, Baby Leg extends the already wide mind-belt of Brian Evenson's terror parade another mile, and well beyond. Those familiar with the Evensonian memory fractals, his freak-noir theaters, and his fetish for leagues of amputees, will find herein not only another puzzle box to nuzzle in its reader's memory long after the book is closed, but as well enough blood and fearlight and paranoia to make Kafka or Hitchcock seem a foundling. 'Who am I?' our narrator Kraus asks, among Baby Leg's endless questionings, its barrage. 'Where am I?' 'What is it?' 'And now?' Thereafter, through the magicked wrath of Evenson's dream speaking, from each of these questions birth more questions, and more questions, on and on, creating around the reader a glassy lockbox much like the one we find, we think, our Kraus, poor thing, inside."

Pretty good, huh? This piece is a little long so I'll break it up into a couple of posts. I hope it scares the living shit out of you and makes you go on anti-anxiety meds. That's what happened to me. Lexapro. No, it did not help. But, hey, no regrets.

GIANCARLO DITRAPANO

Baby Leg by Brian Evenson (1 of 4 parts)

Advertisement

Part One: Then/Now

I.
Night after night, Kraus dreamt of a woman with a normal leg and a baby leg. In the dream, she clomped about on her adult-sized knee and the baby leg, wielding an axe, lurching. He kept watching her pass, yawing with each step. He would hear her first, the thud of the knee and the soft slap of the baby foot, and then see her come by, slow and off-kilter, the sound of her slowly fading. He couldn't move, not even his eyes. He had to lie there, listening to his own breathing, until he heard her coming back. She kept coming and going, until finally, shaken, he managed to wake up.

His eyes during these days grew more and more hollow, as if he weren't sleeping at all. He stared at his face in the mirror, at the angry scar in the center of his forehead which, when he had first arrived, had been a bleeding gash. He rubbed at his eyesockets, wondered if perhaps it would be better not to sleep at all.

He turned on the faucet with his remaining hand, then dipped his stump in water and rubbed it all over his face. Then he took a drink and went back to bed.

Most nights he just lay there, staring up at the ceiling, nodding in and out, waiting for dawn to arrive. When it grew pale outside, he stumbled out of bed and sat near the window, staring out into the woods until full light.

The worst nights, though, after an hour or two he fell back asleep and there she was again, clomping and lurching, axe in hand.

Advertisement

Mornings, he crumpled pieces of newspaper and strewed them one-handed about the grate, layering them over with kindling and larger chunks of wood. Once the fire was going, he settled into the wing-backed chair, staring into the flames.

By day, he waited patiently for them to find him and kill him. He was sure it was only a matter of time until they found him, although he had only the vaguest sense of who they were: a dark figure in a light coat, or perhaps a light figure in a dark coat, or perhaps somehow both at once. His memory seemed mostly to have deserted him, if he ever had had one at all. He remembered a trip through the woods, his missing hand aching, his stump wrapped in an old shirt, a gash open on his forehead. Before that, he wasn't certain what he remembered. The dream of the woman with a baby leg might be a memory but maybe it was just a dream. The cabin was perhaps his cabin or perhaps just a cabin he had stumbled upon or perhaps part of a third undefined category, he couldn't say.

Sometimes he left the chair to stare out the window at the dirt road below. There was only the one road, ending abruptly at his cabin. If they, dark in light, light in dark, came by the road, surely he would see them.

There was not much food. The cabin had only a few dry goods in the cabinet: staples, like flour. The fridge was unplugged and empty and smelled sour inside. So far, he had been mixing flour with water and powdered milk, frying lumps of it in oil, but now the oil was gone and soon the flour would be gone as well. Then he would have to walk down the road and find more food. Perhaps they would kill him then.

Advertisement

Afternoons, he faded off in the wingchair and there she would be again, with her baby leg, clomping and lurching. But by the time he opened his eyes she was gone.

He hid, between the cushion and the chair's wing, a small revolver, which he practiced plucking from its hiding place and aiming through the wing with a minimum of visible motion. He was lucky to be alive, despite the gash on his forehead. But such luck, he felt, was not likely to last.

And indeed it did not. His food ran out. I have to go to the town, he told himself, but he did not go. For one thing, he didn't know where a town was, or even if there was one. But there was just the one road. Surely it led somewhere. For another thing, he had no money. For a third thing, he was afraid of what would happen to him if he left.

After a few days, gnawed through with hunger, he wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and set off down the road, but after a hundred yards his steps grew reluctant. Perhaps this is exactly what they want me to do, he thought, and circled back. But perhaps this is what they want me to do, he thought, once he was back in the cabin: simply stay inside and starve. Still, he could not bring himself to leave again.

His dreams became more vivid, the slap of the baby foot louder, the sound crashing hard against the sides of his skull. Now when the woman passed, he saw every pore on her face and even the wisps of down on the baby leg. When he awoke he awoke shouting, and it took him some time to remember where he was. He knew himself even less than usual. His beard was full and thick and matted, and going a little gray. In the mirror his eyes looked to him as if they had been gouged out.

Advertisement

The air grew cold and windy. The cabin itself creaked in the wind, and it was hard to stay warm unless he remained directly in front of the fire. He took to sleeping in the wingback chair, wrapped in blankets, the small gun like a hard cyst developing on his baby leg. Or on his leg, rather; he didn't have a baby leg, only a leg.

He awoke to the sound of the wind whistling through the eaves, a pale sunlight leaking in and distorting the window glass. I will just stay here, he thought, stay and wait for spring to come. What else was there for him to do? How far away could spring possibly be?

And then suddenly his dream changed. Baby Leg was still in it, lurching through. She still had the axe but this time she stopped beside him and said Go. Go where? he wondered. But she was already fading. But then, a few minutes later, she was back again, and closer this time, whispering in his ear, Go. But where? And then, as if no time had passed she was back again, her lips touching his ear and this time shouting, GO!

He awoke to find he had fallen from the chair. His stump ached. The fire was dying down. His jaw hurt, and when he stood up his stomach clenched in pain.

He waited for it to unknot a little and then, wrapping himself in blankets, made his way to the door.

The wind kept blowing him from one edge of the path to the other. The road below was bigger, easier to navigate, and sloped gently down. How he would climb up it later, he couldn't say.

Advertisement

He followed the road down a little slope. By the time he was a hundred yards down, he felt compelled to turn back but did not. He couldn't, he was sure, make it back up the slope. His legs kept jerking him forward. Once, he fell and lay on the ground for hours perhaps before regaining his feet.

He wasn't sure how long he had walked before he passed another cabin, dark, seemingly deserted. He left the road and made his way slowly up its path and broke a window with a stone and forced his way in. There was some money in a drawer, which he pocketed, but nothing to eat.

He kept down the road. The trees rose high to either side of the path. The sun began to die out. Even with the blankets he was very cold and his face felt numb and a little dead. Perhaps, he thought, I should rest a little before I go on. But there was Baby Leg, still in his head somehow, telling him Go. She seemed to mean it, so he went.

He came to a crossroad, took the only paved road. He could hear the sound of his feet like awkward skittering birds against the pavement, each step twitching in his spine. There was a light ahead that, as he drew near, became a streetlight. His shadow swelled slowly out before him and disappeared into a darkness that swallowed him as well.

The next streetlight turned out not to be a streetlight at all but a gas station.

He made his way through its door. Something struck him as familiar but he couldn't say what. A bell rang. Inside, an older woman with bleached-out hair sat behind the counter, smoking a cigarette. He could only see her from the waist up. She quickly stubbed her cigarette out as he entered, setting her mouth in a hard line.

Advertisement

"Got to buy something to use the bathroom," she claimed.

Grabbing the nearest candy bar, he put a handful of coins on the counter. She took a few coins out, pushed the rest toward him. There was a booth to sit in and he sat there and unwrapped the candy bar and swallowed a bite. His stomach rose and he had to wait, sweating slightly, for it to settle again. He took another bite, then another. His head began to swim.

"You don't look too good." She was staring at him from the counter, eyes narrowed. "Lose your coat?" she asked.

"Never had a coat," he said.

"No? About time to think about getting one."

He nodded. He felt a little better, maybe. He took another bite of the candy bar. The rest he wrapped back up, pushed into his pocket.

"What about your hand?"

"What about it?"

"Ever had one or were you born that way?"

"Cut off."

"How?"

Unsure, he ignored the question. He bought a packet of bacon, some beef jerky, some flour, some packets of powdered milk, a few mealy apples. Altogether it was more money than he had stolen, but not much; she'd let him run a little credit, she claimed. She got out a piece of paper and wrote down what he owed.

"Where you staying?"

"Just up the road," he said.

"Which way?"

He pointed.

"One of the dirt roads?"

He nodded.

"Sleeping out under the stars? You a vagrant?"

He hesitated, nodded.

"Got yourself a tent?"

"Tarp," he lied.

"Left or right fork?"

"Left," he lied.

She nodded. "Stay away from those cabins. And you better think about finding somewhere else before the cold really sets in." She tucked his bill under the counter and smiled. "Pay the difference next time you come in," she said.

Advertisement

It wasn't until he was on his way up the road that he realized what had struck him entering the store. There, taped beside the door, as he had come in too starved to even think, a photocopied flyer showing a face very like his own. He stopped walking. Had it been him? Perhaps. Lost, it had said, and Missing. Other things had been written upon it. If not his face, a face very like his own, except it had no gash in its forehead.

He turned around and went back. By the time he reached the door he had begun to think he was mistaken. There was no flyer there.

He stepped a little closer, and the shift of light caught four torn strips of scotch tape stuck to the glass. It didn't mean anything, he tried to tell himself, anything could have been taped there and who was to say when it had been taken down? Turn and leave, he tried to tell himself. But through the glass door he could just glimpse a slightly wrinkled piece of white paper on the counter, the counter-woman facing away, talking into the telephone.

Leaving his groceries in a heap by the door he went in, opening the door slowly, using the flat of his stump to hold the bell still. He approached the counter he thought soundlessly but the counterwoman sensed something and turned, going pale when she saw him.

"I'll call you back," she said, and hung up.

Picking up the flyer, he looked at it. It was his face, without the scar. Lost. Answers to the name of Kraus, the flyer claimed. Below, a number to call and a name: Dr. Varner. What sort of doctor? he wondered.

Advertisement

The counterwoman wasn't moving. She just stared at him. "Who were you talking to?" he asked.

"Me?" she said. "Nobody."

"You must have been talking to someone."

She considered this. "Personal call," she said. "A friend."

"Varner?" he asked.

She slowly shook her head. "I don't believe I know anyone by that name," she said.

He nodded. With his hand and stump, he folded the flyer, slipped it into his pocket. He took a look in front and behind, then slowly stepped behind the counter.

"You can't come back here," she said. "You can't come around the counter."

But he kept coming. And then he was around and seeing the lower half of her for the first time. It was not what he expected to see: both of her legs were ordinary, two normal legs. He took a step toward her. She moved as far away from him as she could, crowding into the corner.

"Who was that on the telephone?" he asked again. "Varner? What did you tell him?"

"Nobody," she claimed, her voice beginning to rise. "Nothing."

He was taking another step toward her when the telephone began to ring. He watched the way she looked at it.

"Just your friend calling back?" he said, and reached for it.

"No, don't—" she started to say.

But he was already saying hello.

The other end of the line remained silent, staticky. "Hello?" he said again.

"Kraus?" a voice finally said from a great distance. "Can it possibly be you?"

It was a quiet voice, with a slight musicality in the way that it pronounced its words. It was a soothing voice, and it sounded familiar. He tried to assign a face to it, but failed.

Advertisement

"Varner?" he said.

"But this is a nice surprise!" said the voice. "Gladys told me you'd already left. Apparently she was mistaken."

"Gladys?"

"She's there still, isn't she? The woman behind the counter?" And, when Kraus did not respond, "You haven't done anything to her, have you?"

Kraus glanced over at the woman. "What," he asked slowly, "do you think I might have done to her?"

"Poor Kraus," said Varner, the voice smoothly shrugging to practiced disappointment. "You haven't stumbled into old habits, have you? It isn't good for you to be out on your own. You've been on your own a long time, my friend. Too long. A lot of people miss you. I for one miss you."

Kraus didn't say anything.

"Wouldn't it be better for everyone involved if you waited until I sent someone to fetch you?"

"I have to go," said Kraus.

"So soon?" said Varner. "So soon? But please, Kraus, stay on the line a moment: don't you want to tell me about your dreams?"

"My dreams?"

"Are they of a baby's leg, Kraus? I imagine so. Just like old times? Wouldn't you like some sort of explanation? What do you remember and what don't you? Confused, Kraus? Unsure of yourself? Perhaps I can read minds? You thought so once, if I am not mistak—"

It was a great effort to hang up the receiver: it made him feel weak.

He took out the rest of the candy bar and unwrapped it, had a bite. He stood chewing, staring at the woman at the far end of the counter. She huddled there, half-crouched, waiting. He held out the candy bar.

Advertisement

"Like some?" he asked.

She shook her head.

He finished it, then smoothed the wrapper flat on the counter.

"What am I to do with you?" he asked.

She did not say anything, and so he was forced to answer the question on his own. Though he did not feel at his very best it was not long before she was lying at his feet, more or less dead.

Later on the walk home, snug in Gladys' coat beneath his blankets, he got to thinking. Why had he done it, exactly? Simply because she could trace a path to him, or were there other reasons? Was violence, as Varner had implied, in his nature? Or was there more to it than that?

As he walked, it struck him as stranger and stranger. Was he the sort to kill someone? He would not have thought so. It had not felt natural, nor had it felt familiar. It did not seem like something he had done before. His hand had not known where to go.

He was puzzled. He kept walking, thinking it through, and still was puzzled.

He had to stop frequently and put down the plastic bag and rest, but he felt a little better, coherent anyway.

Before he reached the crossroads, he heard the sound of a car and slipped into the ditch at the edge of the road, lying flat and still. The car sputtered past, slowing for just a moment but not stopping. He lifted his head long enough to see it reach the crossroads and turn in the wrong direction.

Pulling himself up, he fished some beef jerky out of the bag, bit off a piece. No, not natural, he thought. Almost as if I had never killed anyone before. But surely I've killed someone, or else why would Varner…

Gathering his bag he stood and started down the road again, turning off the asphalt and going down the dirt road. The slope was not easy but he could manage it now. Now that he had eaten a little he could think, could keep himself company. Coming down, it had been just him. Now it was both of him.

What did this mean exactly? he wondered. Why would he think something like that? He was, he tried to tell himself, a new man now that he could eat, was becoming a new man. Maybe that was it, he told himself, maybe now he was not the same person as the person who had killed.

He heard the car again. There was no ditch now, instead a little rise to one side of the road. He pulled himself up, awkwardly huddling behind a bush. The car came very slowly this time and he watched it pass, moving toward his cabin.

So, killing her had done no good after all.

But was that why he had killed her?