Tick tick tick went the kitchen timers strapped to the melting man’s ears.
Tick tick tick.
“You should take those things off your head, Leonard. You look like a fool, and they don’t work, besides.” Joseph Stalin said, “You can still hear me.”
The melting man had tried everything he could think of to stop Joseph Stalin from telling him what to do.
“You’re unwrapping the bandages. You’re unwrapping the bandages. Oh my! Your hair is falling out!” 3-60 narrated.
“Shut up!” Joseph Stalin said.
“Shut up!” the melting man said.
Leonard Fountain blew a gust through his Hohner harmonica. It didn’t work.
“Listen to me. Your van is broken down,” Joseph Stalin told him.
“It is?” Leonard Fountain—the melting man—asked.
“No! You have to pretend you’ve broken down,” Joseph Stalin explained.
“How can I do that?” the melting man asked.
“Pull over to the side up there. Then get out and raise the hood. People will think you’re broken down.”
“That’s pretty smart.” The melting man said, “But why do I want people to think I’ve broken down?”
“So someone will stop and try to help. I need you to steal a cell phone,” Joseph Stalin explained.
“But I have a cell phone.”
“You’re pulling over. Now you’re slowing down,” 3-60 said.
“Can’t you shut her up?” Joseph Stalin said.
“I can’t make 3-60 stop talking,” the melting man said.
“You are applying the parking brake. You are turning the ignition to off,” 3-60 said.
“Why do I need another cell phone?”
Joseph Stalin said, “Because you’re going to make a switch with it. For the masterpiece.”
“Oh! That makes sense,” the melting man said.
“You are opening the driver-side door,” 3-60 said.
There are a lot of cemeteries in Arkansas.
Leonard Fountain had pulled off the road beside a place called Holland Cemetery. It was spacious and green, with neatly manicured paths and perfectly spaced oaks that shaded the row upon row of gray headstones.
“Get the gun from the back of the van.”
The melting man wanted to do exactly what Joseph Stalin had told him to do. After all, he thought it made sense; it was a good idea. Besides, the melting man was insane, so he didn’t have much in the way of choices.
He walked along the gravel shoulder of the road to the rear of the van. The melting man was tired and hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten.
He opened the rear of the van. Inside was a mess of strewn clothing, plastic grocery sacks, and empty beer cans. There was a white plastic five-gallon bucket with a lid covering it. This was Leonard Fountain’s toilet when he spent nights sleeping in the van. Leonard Fountain’s plastic-bucket toilet was getting full.
The melting man’s masterpiece, the very big bomb, was covered beneath two horse blankets Leonard Fountain stole from a ranch in Oklahoma. The melting man slept in a mass of ragged sheets and bed linens in the part of the cargo area that overhung the cab—the space the U-Haul company referred to as “Mom’s Attic.”
“Get your gun,” Joseph Stalin repeated.
“You are climbing up to Mom’s Attic,” 3-60 narrated.
The melting man coughed, and spit a bloody molar onto his bedding.
“You’ve lost another tooth!” 3-60 said.
The melting man only had a few teeth left in his mouth.
Inside his sleeping space, the melting man kept a small chrome pistol—a six-shot semiautomatic .380, the type of gun that was easy to carry in trouser pockets due to its size.
Leonard Fountain picked up the gun and slipped it into his back pocket.
“I wonder if I should take a nap,” the melting man said.
“No!” Joseph Stalin ordered, “You need to get that extra phone from someone who thinks they’re being helpful.”
The melting man walked back to the front of the van.
“You are raising the hood of your U-Haul van. You are looking up into the sky,” 3-60 told him.
The melting man caught a glimpse of the drone that had been following him. As it always did, the moment the melting man looked at the small metal rectangle floating in the sky, the object immediately pivoted and vanished.
One thing that is true about Arkansas: The people who live there are very polite and also exceedingly helpful. Leonard Fountain only had to wait about four minutes before an old Chevrolet pickup passed him, stopped in the road one hundred yards down, and then backed up until it pulled even with the front of the U-Haul van’s raised hood.
The teenage boy at the wheel had to lean across the seat and roll down the passenger window.
“The boy is rolling down the window,” 3-60 said.
That afternoon, Joseph Stalin kept telling the melting man he needed to kill Francis MacInnes, the driver of the old dull-orange pickup, but the melting man didn’t want to kill him, probably because the redheaded boy was so nice and well mannered in a very simple, corn-scented Ozarkian way. Later, the chubby, freckle-faced eighteen-year-old kid who wore round wire-frame glasses would become momentarily famous when he appeared on every Arkansan news station to talk about the strange man who’d stolen his clothes and coerced him into handing over his keys and phone.
“Good afternoon,” Francis MacInnes said through the passenger window on his pickup. “I’d be pleased to offer you some help, if you’re in need of it.”
“When the boy gets out of the truck, look to see if there are any cars on this road, and if there aren’t, shoot him one time in the side of his head,” Joseph Stalin said.
“Huh?” Leonard Fountain was confused.
“Hang on, friend. Let me park my truck and then we’ll see if we can’t get you on the road again.” Francis MacInnes smiled warmly and then parked his Chevrolet on the shoulder in front of the melting man’s U-Haul.
Francis MacInnes squinted in the bright afternoon sunlight. “Are you moving to or from Arkansas?”
“Huh?” the melting man said.
Francis MacInnes hitched his thumb at the dented old moving van. “Moving?”
“Murder him,” Joseph Stalin said.
“You are standing on the side of the road,” 3-60 told him.
“Oh. Yeah. I’m moving,” the melting man said.
“Where to?”
“Um. Maryland?”
“Shoot him now. He knows who you are,” Joseph Stalin said.
The melting man didn’t know what to do. He wanted to obey Joseph Stalin, but before he could do anything, Francis MacInnes was sticking out his hand and introducing himself, telling the melting man that it was just his luck he’d gotten off work at the chicken farm early because he happened to be a “real ace” at getting trucks running the way they’re supposed to.
And all the while, Francis MacInnes had this smiling-yet-disgusted Baptist-preacher-confronting-homosexuality kind of look on his face, due to all the blisters and sores on the melting man.
“You are shaking hands with the nice boy,” 3-60 told him.
Francis MacInnes wore an embroidered blue one-piece jumpsuit with an elaborate logo on the back, showing a hen sitting on a clutch of eggs. The jumpsuit said TY-BEE EGG RANCH, and on the front was a small oval name patch that said FRANKIE.
“Do something right for once in your life. Shoot him in the head,” Joseph Stalin said.
“Why don’t you hop up in the cab and try to fire this thing up, and I’ll take a look and see what’s going on here,” Francis MacInnes said.
“Huh? Oh. Hey. Do you happen to have a cell phone?” the melting man asked.
“Boy oh man, I sure do have a cell phone, mister!” Francis MacInnes was almost sexually aroused by the joyous degree to which he was helping out a stranger with horrible skin boils who was moving to Maryland. “It’s in my truck! Let me go get it for you!”
“Kill him,” Joseph Stalin said.
“Lenny, he’s a nice boy. Do not kill him. You are following Francis MacInnes to his truck. You are taking the gun from your back pocket.” 3-60 said, “Oh my! You are pointing the gun at Francis MacInnes.”
“Do something right for once in your life, Leonard. Shoot him in the head,” Joseph Stalin said.
Francis MacInnes was tremendously disappointed in humanity that afternoon. In fact, he would have been less disappointed if the melting man had done what Joseph Stalin ordered him to do, which was to shoot the kid in the head. Francis MacInnes would have never known the tremendous letdown he’d had to endure, which was this: Leonard Fountain stole Francis MacInnes’s cell phone and car keys. Then Leonard Fountain marched the redheaded chicken ranch hand out into the middle of the cemetery and forced Francis MacInnes at gunpoint to strip off all his clothing.
Francis MacInnes lost all faith in his fellow man that day. Leonard Fountain stole all the kid’s clothes, his eyeglasses, cell phone, and car keys, and then the melting man locked Francis MacInnes’s truck, got into his U-Haul van, and drove away.
“You are driving. You are driving,” 3-60 said.
“I am driving,” the melting man said.
“You never do anything right,” Joseph Stalin said.
Francis MacInnes sat down behind a headstone and cried.
Even people in Arkansas are not generally nice enough to stop and help out a weeping naked guy who’s stranded in a cemetery.