BALDY THE DUMMY was miserable throughout his program that night. His wisecracking style was gone. He didn’t even tease Bob as he ordinarily did. He was bitter and snappish. When he got to the end of the show and turned to the news, the Catalog of Human Misery, I had to turn the volume up to hear him. The quality of the sound of the broadcast changed, as if Baldy had retreated to some distant recess of the cave and spoke to us from there. In a wheezing, rasping voice, he began. “I was reading the newspaper today, boys and girls, and I came upon a story that it pains me to have to relate to you. It pains me, doesn’t it, Bob?”
“Yeah.”
“A man made a cave, boys and girls. I don’t mean that literally, of course — no one could make a cave. That requires thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, maybe millions of years, and the geological conditions have to be just right. But metaphorically speaking, he made a cave. Literally, what he did was dig a hole.”
He sighed.
“This man, this monster, dug a hole in his yard, first a deep shaft, and then, at the bottom of the shaft, a larger hole, and inside the hole he built a room. A little room, boys and girls, just big enough for a monster and a little girl. He took some pains with this room. He put a mattress in it, to make the floor soft, softer than dirt, and he made wooden walls, and he had some kind of system for ventilation. Baldy isn’t too sure about how this ventilation system worked, because the newspaper article was silent on that subject. Never mind about it. It is one of those things you do not need to know the workings of, boys and girls. There are things we need to know, and there are things we do not need to know, and there are many things we would rather not need to know, right, Bob?”
“Yeah.”
“But this is something you have to know, boys and girls, what Baldy is telling you now.”
He lit a cigarette.
“The monster made a cave, and he hid it from any prying eyes. It was right there in his yard, his suburban yard, but nobody walking by would have seen it.”
He took a drag, exhaled into the microphone.
“Now we get to the hard part, don’t we, Bob?”
“Yeah,” said Bob.
“He perverted the concept of the cave, didn’t he, Bob?”
“Yeah.”
“Boys and girls, he got a little girl, some little girl who lived nearby, some neighbor girl, to come into his cave. Maybe — Baldy can’t be sure about this, boys and girls, because the article is silent on this point, too — but maybe he told her that she would be safe in the cave. Maybe.”
Another drag, another long exhalation.
“Beware the neighbor who invites you into his cave, boys and girls.”
A pause.
“When this monster got the little girl into his cave, he locked her up in there. He kept her there, in that little room under the ground, hidden under his lawn. And then, from time to time, he — visited her — he visited her there. He — he visited her.”
A silence, a sigh, then, “That’s not what I mean, is it, Bob?”
“No,” said Bob.
“I meant to say — that — he — fucked her — fucked her — again — and again — and he made her hurt and bleed and cry and want to die — and if you ever see him, boys and girls, you would do the world a favor if you slit the fucker’s throat from ear to ear.”
Another sigh, and then, “That’s what I meant to say, wasn’t it, Bob?”
“Yeah.”
“Good night, boys and girls. Stay out of your neighbor’s cave.”
[to be continued]
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