On the counter beside the sink were all the usual modern conveniences—a can opener, a toaster, a three-button blender, each perfectly engineered if your desire was to open or toast or blend someone. In the cabinets above the counter, I found enough canned food for a bomb shelter. Front and center were at least ten cans of Campbell’s soup. But there were also cans of beef stew, chili, and franks and beans. Which seemed to suggest that the only appliance the Ackerlys really needed was the can opener.
I couldn’t help but remark on the similarity between the food in Ackerly’s cabinet and the menu at Salina. We had always chalked up the prevalence of this sort of cuisine to its institutional utility, but maybe it was an expression of the warden’s personal tastes. For a moment I was tempted to use the can of franks and beans in the interests of poetic justice. But if you hit someone with a can, I figured you might do as much damage to your fingers as you did to his skull.
Closing the cabinet, I put my hands on my hips like Sally would have. She’d know where to look, I thought. Trying to see the situation through her eyes, I reviewed the kitchen from corner to corner. And what did I find sitting right there on the stovetop but a skillet as black as Batman’s cape. Picking it up, I weighed it in my hand, admiring its design and durability. With a gentle taper and curved edges, the handle fit so securely in your palm you could probably deliver two hundred pounds of force without losing your grip. And the bottom of the pan had a sweet spot so wide and flat you could clean someone’s clock with your eyes closed.
Yep, the cast-iron skillet was perfect in just about every respect, despite the fact that there was nothing modern or convenient about it. As a matter of fact, this very pan could have been a hundred years old. It could have been used by Ackerly’s great-grandmother on the wagon train and handed down until it had fried porkchops for four generations of Ackerly men. With a tip of the hat to the westward pioneers, I picked up the pan and carried it into the living room.
It was a lovely little room with a television in the spot where the fireplace should have been. The drapes, a chair, and the couch were upholstered in a matching floral print. In all likelihood, Mrs. Ackerly wore a dress cut from the same fabric, so that if she sat on the couch quietly enough, her husband wouldn’t know she was there.
Ackerly was still right where I had found him—stretched out on his BarcaLounger, sound asleep.
You could tell from the smile on his face that he loved that lounger. During his tenure at Salina, whenever Ackerly was dispensing strokes of the switch, he must have been dreaming about the day when he could own a lounger like this one in which to fall asleep at two in the afternoon. In fact, after all those years of anticipation, he was probably still dreaming about sleeping in a BarcaLounger, even though that’s exactly what he was doing.
—To sleep, perchance to dream, I quoted quietly while raising the skillet over his head.
But something on the side table caught my eye. It was a recent photograph of Ackerly standing between two young boys, each with the Ackerly beak and brow. The boys were wearing Little League uniforms and Ackerly was wearing a matching cap, suggesting that he had come to a game to cheer his grandsons on. Naturally, he had a big, fat smile on his face, but the boys were smiling too, like they were glad to know that Grandpa had been in the stands. I felt a surge of tender feelings for the old man in a manner that made my hands sweat. But if the Bible tells us that the sons shall not have to bear the iniquity of the fathers, then it stands to reason that the fathers should not get to bear the innocence of the sons.
So I hit him.
When I made contact, his body gave a jolt, like a shot of electricity had gone through it. Then he slumped a little lower in the chair and his khaki pants grew dark at the groin as his bladder relaxed.
I gave an appreciative nod at the skillet, thinking here was an object that had been carefully designed for one purpose, yet was perfectly suited to another. An added benefit of using the skillet—versus the meat tenderizer, or the toaster, or the can of franks and beans—was that when it made contact, it emitted a harmonious clong. It was like the toll of a church bell calling the devoted to prayer. In fact, the sound was so satisfying, I was tempted to hit him again.
But I had taken the time to do my arithmetic with care, and I was pretty confident that Ackerly’s debt to me would be satisfied with one solid whack on the crown. To hit him a second time would just put me in his debt. So I returned the skillet to the stovetop and slipped out the kitchen door, thinking: One down, two to go.