Amos Dyer has travelled halfway around the world in both directions and now enjoys life in small-town Michigan. A fictionist and aspiring author, he spends his free time writing, reading, and studying the craft of writing. As a father he also makes time to play games with his son. Share in his journey at https://amosdyer.com/journey-journal . Book Keeper |
Born in the UK to Sri Lankan parents, and raised there and in Russia, Subodhana Wijeyeratne has been writing speculative fiction for nearly twenty years. His favourite writers and biggest influences are Cormac McCarthy, Ernest Hemingway, James Tiptree Jr, and Isaac Asimov. He currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. |
SKELETON VALLEY
The old man is out collecting mushrooms when sees a white deer ascending through the trees towards the peaks. It is early spring and winter’s icy fangs are still descending from the top of the ridge and above that the sky is laden with swift-moving cloud. The creature stops and turns to him, radiant in the pale light. He bows and waits for it to pass and afterwards he sees that it has left small pile of dung. By the time he reaches this it has already turned into a clot of moss and vivid yellow flowers swarming with little beatles, emerald-green and buzzing.
He returns home and tells the old woman.
‘Could be the summer will be long, and hot,’ she says. She is small and her hands are gnarled and the tips of her hairy ears peek out from under her headscarf. She places log on a chopping block as she speaks and wraps twine around it and splits it into eighths with deft swings of her axe. ‘Could be that he wants to enjoy the cold while he can.’
The old man is unconvinced.
The next day he sees a gang of horned children, fat and naked, skipping down into the valley. Then, two days later, comes a shimmering black sheet, slithering along the ground, humming in a thin voice like cracking metal. The old man climbs a tree and waits for it to pass. Afterwards he follows the trail of rot it has left behind to a fissure in the ground and it is still fresh and oozing heat like blood from a scrape.
There is only one thing that will bring such a thing out at this time of year, and that is fresh meat.
He goes home and sharpens his sword and re-strings his bow, sitting cross-legged on his porch. The old woman sits nearby, smoking her pipe.
‘Mayhap they’re friendly,’ she says, puffing. ‘But my nose tells me there be a lot. And they have goats.’
‘Goats?’
‘Yes, my love.’
‘Hate goats. Settlers, probably.’
‘That be good.’
‘They ain’t settling here.’
‘I know it.’
‘How far away they be?’
The old woman sniffs the air.
‘Not far. Ther’ll be here before sunset.’
The old man works faster.
They are still out on the porch when the first stranger arrives, tall and dirty-faced and carrying an old woman, fast asleep, on his back. His scabbard is ornate, and though his clothes are faded and ragged he wears what he wears with precision and pride. He comes to a stop in front of them and looks from one to the other until the old woman points at the old man and says, ‘It’s him you’ll want gab at.’
‘Tha mi Kastananga an Taigh an Iar,’ says the man. ‘Agus tha mi a 'cur fàilte thu.’
The old man stares at him for a while. Then he holds out his hand and the old woman hands him her pipe. He takes a deep drag.
‘You smoke?’
‘Taigh an lar.’
‘What?’
The man taps his chest and speaks slower.
‘Kastananga. Bha sinn a dh'innis a lorg thu, agus a bhiodh tu ag innse dhuinn far a bheil sinn a bu chòir a dhol às an seo.’
‘Speaking slowly ain’t gon help, friend.’
‘I don’t understand him,’ says the old woman. ‘I don’t understand a word.’
‘He’s a foreigner,’ says the old man. ‘Look at his hair.’
‘I know it. Where’s he from?’
‘Where you from?’ says the old man.
‘Duilich?’ The man puffs. ‘Chan eil mi a’ tuigsinn. Chan eil, innis dhomh. Càite a bheil Skeleton Valley?’
‘Skeleton Valley?’ The old man points up the slope, to where the tree-dappled peak of the ridge runs in a rugged black line against the sky. ‘Over the ridge.’
‘Thairis air an sin?’
‘Over the ridge.’
‘They look thirsty,’ says the old woman. ‘Let’s at least get him some water.’
She jogs around the back of the house. When she comes back she is carrying two water-skins and drops them at the man’s feet like two colossal livers.
‘Do they need so much?’ says the old man.
‘Aye, that’n more. There be fifty or so,’ says the old woman.
‘Tha mi a' toirt taing dhut,’ says Kastananga. ‘Cuiridh mi feadhainn eile a dh'iarraidh sin, ma tha mi 'Mhàigh uairean..’
The old man and old woman shrug and point at the skins and head into their cottage. Then they sit in the gloom, holding hands, watching through the window as the man walks back down the path. When he is gone, the old man rests his head on the old woman’s lap.
‘It were bound to happen,’ says the old woman, stroking his hair.
‘What’ll they make of it?’
‘What all of ‘em do. Starin’ and wondrin’ first, then growin’ used, then forgettin’ it be there, even.’
The old man lifts his head.
‘What’s that sound?’
‘Voices, my love. Other people’s voices.’
A few minutes later two youths arrive. They look around for the cottage Kastananga mentioned, and the old couple, but there is nothing except two huge fig trees, their towering crowns rustling despite the windlessness. They grab the water-skins, staggering under the weight, and flee.
*
Kastananga wanders out across the dew-dampened grass to the centre of the encampment. It is still chilly and dark and the carts are all drawn in a circle around them, as they have been every night since they left Philan. The others are huddled together beneath sacks and blankets, fast asleep. Except Paragareen – he is on top of one of the carriages off to the left, swinging his lanky legs. He waves at Kastananga, and Kastananga waves back.
He goes back to his tent. Grandma and Maphna are asleep, tangled up in each other, the older woman snoring in the younger one’s ear. He shakes them awake.
‘Dawn already?’ says Grandma.
‘Yes, Grandma.’
‘Sunrise?’
‘Soon.’
‘Can you see it?’
He nods.
‘Is it as big as they say?’
‘It is huge.’
Grandma wraps her arms around Maphna and pulls her in tight. The girl’s eyes flicker open and then close and then open again. She looks up at Kastananga and smiles.
‘Day one,’ she says sleepily.
‘Come.’ Kastananga pries Grandma’s arms, wrinkled and velvety, off the girl.
‘It’s cold,’ says Grandma. ‘Goddess isn’t awake yet.’
But of course Goddess is, and of course Grandma comes.
The sun is rising off to the right when they emerge, Grandma clinging to Kastananga’s back. The others have woken up too and are huddled together, whispering. Down in the valley, weaving through the dense green canopy, are two mirrored ribbons of water. Each bifurcates and then bifurcates again before meeting the lake in gaping estuary off to the right. Even at this distance they can hear the hiss of the surf and sometimes, when the wind turns and surges towards them in shimmering ripples of the treetops, they can hear birds.
But that is not what they are looking at.
What they are looking at is the giant skeleton sprawled across the valley floor. Directly in front of them are colossal ribs spearing up from amidst the foliage between the rivers. There are seven of them, fang-sharp and unblemished. There is an eighth also, but it has shattered and ends abruptly in a tangle of vicious splinters off to the left. Scattered along the riverbank are colossal neck-bones and, peeking out of the sand by the lake, the smooth nub of a half-buried skull, forty feet long.
Kastananga stares at it along with the others and wonders if it is true what the people near here say - that this dead beast’s magic still haunts this place, like the last glimmers of the sun on high clouds at dusk, silvery and cool and nothing like the fire it is born from. Then slowly his thoughts wander. This thing was once alive and far mightier than anything he has seen or heard of, yet there is nothing of it now but these fractured remnants. Compared to it, how tiny his people are, and how slim a sliver of the universe they inhabit. How transient their memories - of people and places long gone, of feelings only they have felt, of moments only they have seen. And how heavy and relentless is the erasing hand of time is on it all.
‘Praise the Mother,’ whispers Grandma. ‘Put me down.’
The old woman summons the others and while they gather in ranks Maphna comes up behind Kastananga and takes his hand. It is the first time she has done so in weeks.
‘Blessed is the Mother,’ says Grandma. ‘Look what She has given us.’
The gathered mutter, and nod, and hold each other. Grandma toes the earth, grey-black and crammed with greenery.
‘Look where the Mother has lead us - to where the land is fertile, and the forests bountiful. All things happen to hasten the coming of the Apotheosis. Let us burn the flame She bequeathed to us here. Let us tend to the fire upon the highest peak and in the lowest valley.’
They lower themselves to their knees and kiss the ground and though they have done this every day for their entire lives it has never felt so right or so joyous. Then they rise and hold each other and sob for the past and for the future and for the transfixing thought that, finally, they will wake up tomorrow in the same place they did today.
Afterwards Kastananga walks over to Paragareen.
‘How was the night?’ he asks.
Paragareen shrugs.
‘Just like every night since we got here.’
‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘You weren’t awake. I was. I saw.’
‘They came close enough to see?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What were they?’
‘This time? Three kids fat kids, holding hands. They just stood out by that tree.’ He points. ‘Just stood there, staring at me, singing.’
‘Singing?’
‘Yup.’
‘That was it?’
‘Yup. Just singing. You know what their voices are like.’ He breathes in deep. ‘They scarpered before dawn.’
‘You may retire now. You must be tired.’
‘No worries. Gave me time to think.’
‘About what?’
‘About why we’ve got to be so damn grateful to Goddess. I mean, if She’s so great, why doesn’t she drive this lot away? First Tarsu, and now this.’ He grins. ‘Maybe Her writ don’t run here, eh?’
Kastananga squints.
‘Paragreen?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Watch your tongue.’
Paragareen stares off into the forest for a few moments. Then he jumps down off the cart and hangs his head.
‘Yes, my lord. I’m sorry.’
Kastananga watches him for a few moments.
‘Go and get some sleep. You’ve had a long night.’
‘Thank you, m’lord.’
Paragareen lopes back to his tent and when he is gone Kastananga peers at the trees. He sees nothing. Then something grabs him from behind. He stiffens for an instant before recognizing the slim forearms - Maphna. She slides around in front of him and kisses him and when they part she keeps her eyes closed.
‘Mmm,’ she says. ‘I’m not sure I could have gone much longer without that.’
‘You are a vulgar woman,’ says Kastananga.
‘Vulgar, and common. But.’ She opens her eyes and sweeps her hand at the ground. ‘You cannot hew crops from the soil with your sword, my lord.’
‘Then I shall have to hitch a plough to you, and drive you up the hillside like an ox.’
She twitches her nose and grins.
‘Tease,’ she says.
*
The land is utterly unlike the old country. There the soil was dry and the fruits sour and when summer came it came with desiccating winds and sunshine like yellow acid. Here, one need only drop seeds, and the next day they will have sprouted. The mornings are always dewy and even the goats, skinny-legged and fretful, grow fat and slow and sprout so much wool that they have to be shorn twice, then three times, then four times a year.
They begin by felling trees in a spiral from their carts. Perhaps they take a little too much glee in toppling the ancient hemlocks and swamp oaks and spruces, thinks Kastananga. Perhaps there is something vicious in how they swing their axes, sweat spraying, eyes narrowed. But the farther the tree line is from them, the farther the things in the forest stay. So he lets them carry on, even if Grandma mutters about wastefulness and avarice and taking more from the Mother than she will, in the end, be willing to give.
They build the church first. It takes them a few weeks to learn how to work the tough oak but soon they erect a frame, and then a roof, and finally walls. They try to top the building off with a dome in the old style but the wood warps and cracks. Sitting around the fire that evening someone ventures that perhaps now that they are in a new place they should build in a new style, but Kastananga chews slowly on a piece of roast goat and shakes his head.
‘There is only one Goddess,’ he says. ‘And there is only one right way to worship her.’
No one argues with him and eventually, on winter’s doorstep, they make a dome that stays. After they top it off with a golden leaf Kastananga praises their work and never once reminds any of them that they would not have finished had he not insisted.
At the first service one of the women unwraps a small chunk of incense she has brought all the way from Philan. She breaks off a small piece and puts it in a brazier and they gather around it. They close their eyes and for the briefest moment they are all back in the old country. But from the instant they open them afterwards they all begin to think of this place as their home.
They call it Komas-in-the-Valley.
Some days, down in the valley, the mist swirls about the rapier-sharp ribs like frothing milk. Some days sunlight clinks off them, sharp and blinding. In the summer great flocks of birds descend between them and into the forest as if the ribcage was really the skeletal hand of some buried god offering up feed from the underworld. But it never changes, even if, unbeknownst to them, the once-foreign people building their thatch-roofed homes on the slopes slowly are.
Come the spring a group of them travel over the peaks with huge bundles of wool piled on their heads. When they return they have metal tools and silks and one or two small nuggets of gold. They melt those down and mix them with resin and then two women climb up the dome and paint it gold. When the gold is dried they descend and the rest of the village anoint them in oil and let them sleep by the altar for seven nights. Maphna takes them bowls of stew every evening and stays with them till late, chatting and playing dice.
One night she returns, waddling and holding her giant belly, frowning.
‘What is it?’ says Kastananga.
She shakes her head.
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s bad luck.’
Kastananga looks back up the way she came, but he can see only the path winding up to the middle of the village, and the church beyond that, and the cottages of the others dotted around amidst the thinned-out trees.
‘What did you see?’
‘Something. Up on the church dome.’
Kastananga gets his bow and arrow and heads for the door.
‘Show me.’
‘No. Love.’ Maphna comes after him and takes his hand. ‘No. Leave the beasts of the forest to the forest.’
‘They are not in the forest. They are on Goddess’s house. Show me.’
‘Grandma would not have wanted this.’
He takes her hand.
‘She’d have been the first out there. Show me.’
She leads him back to the church. Off to the left the sun is glinting off the terraced paddies proceeding down the ridgeside like mirrored scales. Off to the right is a grove of oranges, and though the ones that grow here are fat and full of water and altogether too sweet, they ferment splendidly. Paragareen is there now, sipping the liquor from little barrel. He wanders over.
‘Yah, m’lord,’ says one. ‘Where are we going?’
‘There is a demon on the church roof.’
Paragareen goes pale.
‘Should we - should we ring the bell?’
‘Check on the children.’
When they get to the church there is nothing there but the last glimmer of sunset on the golden leaf atop the dome. By now others have joined them. They wait for a while but nothing happens. Someone goes in and checks on the two women and when he comes out he says, ‘They’re fast asleep.’
‘Or dead,’ says Paragareen
‘No, they’re warm.’
Someone gasps.
‘What?’ says the man.
Maphna puts her finger to her lips, and signals him over. He walks towards them, legs shaking, and does not look back until he is past Kastananga. When he does he sees a weasel on the dome, small and bushy-tailed and glowing. It watches them with empty white eyes, and licks its paw.
Kastananga raises his bow.
‘You there!’ he says. ‘Begone!’
Kastananga nocks an arrow and lets loose but the creature catches it in its jaws with a snap of its head, and then turns back to Kastananga.
‘What do you want?’ shouts Kastananga.
The weasel stares at them for a long time and Kastananga realizes that it is staring at Maphna’s belly. He fires another arrow.
‘If you touch her,’ he says, ‘If you come near her -’
With a yelp, the weasel leaps into the air, and disappears.
The others gasp and clap their hands over their eyes. Some of them rush into the church and fling themselves on the altar. Kastananga turns to Maphna, and she is shivering, arms around her belly.
‘I don’t think it’s me it wants,’ she says.
Kastananga takes her in his arms.
‘It doesn’t matter what it wants,’ he says. ‘We do not belong to it. We belong to Goddess.’
*
After the boy arrives – after he loses Maphna – Kastananga he gets in the habit of going for long walks through the shuddering heather and rhododendrons on the high peaks. It is a habit he will never lose. Though the child is beautiful and healthy, his eyes remind him of his mother, and when he holds him in his arms it is like cupping the last glimmering fragments of a star. So Kastananga goes alone and leaves the child with Paragareen and his ever-smiling primary, who bows when she takes him, and calls him ‘Little Lord.’ Most days he makes it all round the rim of the valley. It gives him time to think, though always his thoughts drift to the same thing: why do the things in the forest still gather at the edge of Komas-in-the-Valley, night after night, staring in through the windows of his house?
One day he returns in time for evening mass and he sees children running about in the ferns and through the tree trunks and climbing the thick black boughs of an ancient oak that just three days earlier had been home to a cloud of tiny glowing rhinoceroses. They are eating the hard red fruit that grows on a black-barked shrubs dotted through the forest, fruit that seems to Kastananga change colour all year long, and so he cannot tell if they are ripe or not. But the children do and they run about with the juices glistening and sweet on their fat cheeks and their hands smeared with dark soil. He realizes that their flesh is made of the valley’s earth and their lungs are full of the valley’s air and none of them have ever seen or even thought of the howling sunbaked ravines he grew up in. They are less afraid of the demons than they should be and left alone go traipsing down to the river to gawp at the great ribs. Some head down to the lake and bring back crabs and shellfish and fish. After mass their parents make crab stew and the old folk - for that is what they are now - all quaff it like they have not eaten in weeks and chat happily about the old country, that far-off place now subsiding into memory like fallen petals into the soil.
When he gets back to the village, he detours to the orchard and picks up an orange. He peels it and takes a bite and then tosses it to the ground. It is too sweet.
*
The boy looks like his mother, and speaks like his father. His name is Adirit. Before he is born there are only miscarriages; after him there are more children than they can cope with. Eventually they clear out more trees and dig new channels down from the peaks, where even in the summer there is snow, bright and twinkling like ground-up mirrors.
One day, Kastananga gets up early, fretful for no reason, and packs a small bag with food and water. Then he wakes Adirit.
‘Get dressed,’ he says. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
They head out of the village and up the ridgeside.
‘It is important to survey the land you are responsible for,’ says Kastananga. ‘You must know its every inch. People will come to you for justice and advice.’
‘Yes, father.’
‘And the source of all justice is?’
‘In the stories of Goddess, and of her Avatars.’
‘Good. Tell me the story of the creation.’
Adirit chews his lip for a moment, and nods.
‘In the beginning there was nothing but nothing,’ he says. ‘There was not even time. And then in the nothingness there was something. In the darkness there was light. And the light was good, the first of all things. The light was called Goddess.’
When he speaks he is like his mother too. Kastananga closes his eyes and listens, but it is too much, so he opens them again.
‘Continue.’
‘The whole story?’
‘The gist.’
‘Goddess looked about Herself and realized She was alone and that within Her She contained all things that could be. And so after an eternity She reached within Herself and took out the First World and cast it out into the Martuk, the Ocean of Black. But the First World drifted away and it could not reach Her, and all those on the First World were lost from Her grace forever.
‘Then She created the Second World and held it close to Her bosom. And for a long time the trees on this world grew tall and the people prospered. But they grew covetous and they climbed the trees and tried to touch the face of Goddess. And so She pushed them away and it too drifted off into the darkness.
‘Then finally She created the Third World, and pushed it gently away from Her. And between it and Her She fed out a long golden thread, so that this world would drift too, but those who believed and lived righteously would find their way to Her. Where are we going, father?’
Kastananga looks about him as if he had just woken up. They have crested the ridge and the adjoining valley lies before them, a great green-furred cleft in the earth running for miles in either direction.
‘Let’s loop around and head back to the village. Finish the story.’
‘It’s finished.’
‘What of the golden thread?’
The boy holds up his hand and points to his veins.
‘It runs in us. We, the Children of Goddess, are the thread that binds creation to the creator.’
‘Very good.’ Kastananga nods. ‘Very good.’
As they head back down the boy notices that there are columns of smoke rising out of the trees down by the river, close to the skeleton. Then, though it is very far, he notices one of the trees fall.
‘Is it a fire?’ he asks.
Kastananga stares for a long time, lips thin, and shakes his head.
‘It’s settlers,’ he says.
‘Settlers?’
‘Yes. Other settlers. Polytheists, I would hazard.’
The boy smiles.
‘Neighbours!’
Kastananga purses his lips.
‘Polytheists,’ he says.
2
Adirit has heard so much about Philan, yet he cannot begin to imagine what kind of a place it must have been. He cannot imagine living on soil that is not dark and rich and moist with life. He cannot imagine bald mountain peaks not covered in glowing snow even at the height of summer. He cannot imagine valleys not drowned in lush green, the air reverberating with the cacophony of life.
Even when he can - when some vision of the old country wafts through his mind, gossamer and transient, like streaming clouds - he cannot see what it is about the place that could possibly lay claim to dictating how he should live now. What it is about those far lost orchards and silent graveyards that means he still must not walk the forest in the dark, or approach the shimmering things that watch him from the boughs, or eat flesh only on some days and avoid milk on others? The old folk don’t seem to know either, for when he asks them why, they tell him only that that is how his people have lived for ten thousand years, and that if they do not keep living that way, there will be no reason for the world to exist any longer.
Sometimes he thinks they are just making it all up. That one day, when they were young, they all sat down and decided that it would be better just to make up this place and call it the Old Country and pretend like all the rules they have come from there, to stop people like him from questioning them. But of course, he does not say this out loud. This, or the other thing he thinks when he is told to obey his elders - that an old fool is still a fool, regardless of their age.
One day Adirit wanders along one of the spring-fattened streams, climbing up past butter-yellow flowers twitching in the breeze, and finds Paragareen sitting with his feet in the water. When he smiles Adirit sees that he has lost some more teeth. If he did not know him he would look like some terrifying old man-eating hermit, like in the stories from the Old Country.
‘Ya, Paragareen,’ says Adirit. ‘Why so clean today?’
The old man chuckles.
‘Ah, little lord, we have visitors.’
‘Who?’
‘Go up to the village. Them fellows from down in the valley’ve come up to say hello.’
Adirit sprints up the path and out of the trees to where the village now spreads in a sprawling patchwork of houses and water-filled paddies crowned, at it peak, by the shiny and golden-brown church. Everyone is gathered by the door and his father and the other elders are sitting in a semi-circle on red-and-brown carpets that the goat-herders learned how to make a few years earlier. In front of them are another group of people, five or six maybe, all of them with long hair. When he comes closer he sees that it is three women and three men and they are all drinking goat milk from wooden bowls.
One of the men holds up his bowl and smiles. Kastananga looks up at Adirit and beckons him over.
‘This,’ he says, shaking Adirit by his shoulders. ‘My son.’ He points to himself, and then to Adirit. ‘Son.’
The man holding the bowl peers at Adirit. He wears his beard long and his eyes are kohl-rimmed and even at this distance Adirit can smell the perfume he is wearing. His smile is broad and he nods and points to one of the men next to him.
‘Semea,’ he says. ‘Nire semea.’
Everyone nods.
After the others have finished drinking their milk the three women come forward, each carrying a wooden box. One of them is young - no older than him, Adirit thinks - and her hair is long and thick and purple. It curves down under her face and when he follows the line of her jaw up past her ear and across her dark brown cheek he realizes that she is staring at him. Then he realizes that he is staring at her and they both look away at the same instant, and then back at each other, and then, smiling, away again.
The girl puts her box down and retreats quickly. The man with the beard thumps his chest.
‘Dugu,’ he says. ‘Portzelana egiten dugu.’
The man opens one of the boxes and pulls out a giant chunk of bone, white and pitted and shapeless.
‘Hau. Hau hartuko dugu, erre, eta ehotzeko hautsa sartu.’
He puts the bone back in the box the opens the next one. Inside is some sort of white dust and Adirit realizes that it is ground bone. The man scoops some up and runs it through his fingers and it is so light some of it drifts off in the wind in a smoky veil.
He closes the box.
‘Erretzea eta ehotzeko ondoren, nahastu ditugu kimikoak eta gero urarekin. Gure portzelana ederrena da! Pertsonak osotik etortzen da erosteko.’
He reaches forward and opens the last box, and lifts something out of it. The villagers gasp. It is a bowl, smooth and round and milk-white, so fine that they can see the outline of the man’s fingers through it. On its surface is are vivid blue images, and when they look closer they realize that it is a picture of their village - people and crops and church and trees rendered in flawless azure, and above it all, a faceless woman, hands spread, hair blazing like rays of the sun.
The man gets up and approaches Kastananga and offers him the bowl. Kastananga takes it, and bows deep, and turns to the others.
‘Bring out the carpet,’ he says
When they are gone, the village buzzes with chatter. Kastananga holds his hand up, everyone falls silent.
‘It is good that we are on good terms with these people,’ he says. ‘And we must do nothing to change that. But remember that they are unbelievers, and that this was their land first, and they know it better. Burn the Flame, children. Burn the Flame above all else.’
Adirit wanders back out into the forest. After a while he comes across Paragareen, leaning up against a tree, reeking of wine and taking swigs from a little barrel.
‘You’re drunk again,’ says Adirit.
Paragareen grins, and hiccoughs.
‘And you, little master, are in love.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I saw you making eyes at that girl. The girl with the purple hair. She’s right pretty.’
‘She’s an unbeliever.’
‘Eh,’ says Paragareen, taking another swig. ‘Good women is good women.’
Then he slumps over, and falls asleep.
*
The truth - Kastananga has long since discovered - is a feral and furtive thing. Sometimes you stumble upon it when you are at your most lost. Sometimes you walk right past it and only realize you did so later. He remembers an old man who lived in the palace when he was young, back when the Empire of Heaven had ruled Philan. He had taught Kastananga the difference between a circle and a sphere, and then said, ‘What would you see when you looked at a circle side-on?’
Kastananga had thought about this for a bit, and then the answer had hit him like the morning sun on the sea.
‘Nothing,’ he’d said. ‘You’d see nothing.’
‘Look around you,’ said the old man. ‘There are shapes beyond imagining. But we do not look at them right. So we do not see.’
Now, years later, the memory comes back to him for no reason, as he approaches the top of the ridge, back aching, wheezing. He has come to accept that this is how his memory works now. Like tumbling mess of water reflecting the past in shattered flashes. Like a fountain of gibberish bubbling briefly into poetry.
It has been so long since he has come this way. Though he has walked all over Skeleton Valley he has never crested the peak and come back the way they came. But today he goes down the creamy brown path, little trickles of dusty soil preceding him, stopping every now and then to sip from his water-skin with quivering lips. The air is thick and close and he sweats more than he has sweated in a long time. By the time he gets to the little path leading off into the trees it is growing dark. By the time he is at the end of the path and staring at the little cottage in front of him, smoke billowing from its chimney, it is dusk, and there are already two lamps burning inside.
He looks in through the window, but there is no one there. He taps it a few times - it is made of glass like he has never seen, smooth and clear and utterly unblemished - but there is no response. There is a creak, and the door opens, but there is no one there to open it.
‘Hello?’ he says. ‘Hello?’
The door closes.
Kastananga hobbles round the back and there is nothing there either but for the edge of the forest gaping through the tree-trunks like a great black maw. He turns and hobbles back down the path. As he goes, the door to the cottage opens and shuts, opens and shuts.
Just as he reaches the path leading back up to the ridge, he hears voices. At first he thinks it is some trick of the forest, and keeps on. But then he recognizes the language - the language of the folk who live in the valley. He wanders off the path, in the darkness, through the trees. After a while he sees three valley-dwellers standing by a tree, two men, and a woman, talking to each other furiously. Not far away, clinging to the trunk of a tree, is a small antlered child. It knocks its head on the tree, woodpecker-swift, and coos into the darkness. More creatures appear. A bird of some kind, big-eyed and razor-beaked, staring. A fat woman, two carrying giant toads under her arms. Some sort of pulsing cloud, glowing greenish-blue, and humming softly. The three people turn to these beasts, and bow, and say something. Kastananga cannot understand all of it, but he can understand the most important part.
‘Please accept.’
The woman steps forwards, sobbing, and holds something out. A tiny, wailing bundle.
A child.
Kastananga puts his hand to his mouth.
The fat woman puts the toads on the ground and all three waddle forward together. They stop a few feet away from the woman and stare at her. She lowers the baby to the ground. It kicks at the leaf litter and reaches out for her, but she steps back, wiping tears, and buries her face in one of the men.
‘Please,’ says one of the men. ‘Please.’
The fat woman looks back at the others. There are more now. A deer, a bucket with legs, an open doorway. Then Kastananga sees the weasel that appeared on the church. It ferrets its way between the legs of the others and up to the baby and the child stops crying when it looks up at it.
The three humans drop to their knees and touch their foreheads to the ground. The fat woman reaches out and picks up the child and it begins to sob again. But the humans just watch as she turns and walks away, the child howling in her hands, the toads and weasel and other ghouls following and watching and licking their lips.
Kastananga can take no more. He comes striding out of the forest, waving his walking stick.
‘Away with you, demons!’ he shouts. ‘Leave that child, and away with you!’
The creatures see him. An instant later they take off into the darkness. Kastananga puffs after them, but he is nowhere near fast enough. Within a few seconds they, and the baby, are gone.
The three valley-dwellers run after him. One of them shoves him and shouts in his face.
‘What is wrong with you?’ says Kastananga. ‘How can you sacrifice your children like this?’
They shout at him for a long time. He cannot understand most of it, but he does catch one sentence:
‘You stupid old man. Do you want us all to die?’
*
Their main problem is time. It passes differently for each of them. Take, for example, just the things that grow out of the ground - the mushrooms, the cicadas, the creaking old oaks. The mushrooms pop out in the moisture of autumn and scramble in slow-motion over whatever rot they can find. By the first frosts they are already dead and deflating. The cicadas sleep through twenty-seven cycles of this, unaware that time is passing at all. And to the oaks, these lives, and many others, are no more consequential or discernible than the jostling of bubbles in the foam on the lakeshore.
It makes it very difficult to come to any sort of agreement.
Still, there are some of them that can just about understand each other. It is raining when the woman with antlers arrives by the well, a feathery downpour, cold and swirling in the gusting wind. Two toads waddle in her aftermath. The child is on top of one, and he is already glowing too. They wait for one sunless day, and then another, sitting in the dry patches beneath a tree. Then finally then a stag arrives, and a hare. An hour or so later the weasel comes too, carrying some arrows in its mouth, and through the whole meeting it sits with its paws draped over their shafts, chewing at their heads. Little beads of glowing ichor drip from its lips to the ground and fizzle away in little clouds of mites.
The child has something to say, says the woman.
It is new, says someone else.
It has something to teach us.
Speak then.
The child looks up at the woman. She smiles back.
You are one of us now and you will be heard as such.
My head hurts. I have too many thoughts.
You will get used to it. Share the most important ones.
About the firstborn?
Yes, that.
The child looks about the gathered creatures. He remembers being afraid of them, not so long ago, but now he can see that they are just there, no more or less than the sky is above him and the earth below.
They are of two different kinds. The ones who made me are not the ones who live up on the hillside.
And so?
Why are we here?
To discuss this matter.
This matter is closed
The child says it is not.
Explain.
If they are of two separate types then those on the hillside did not render their firstborn to us.
The fat woman squats and strokes a toad.
Then they are in arrears.
Many years of arrears.
They have cut many trees and diverted the waters. We have let them.
They did not render the firstborn.
Their firstborn still lives amongst them.
They do not believe in or like us.
We do not need to be liked.
Stop. The woman raises her hand. Do we punish them or not?
The weasel has not spoken this whole time. Now it stops chewing and raises its head.
We punish them, it says.
The others are silent. The woman looks at them one by one, but none objects. Then she stands up and turns in the direction of the village on the hillside, out across the valley, and begins to sing. Her voice is low, so low it falls to the ground and travels through the earth and in the valley the humans feel it in their feet and think perhaps it is an earthquake.
Clouds begin to gather up on the ridge.
*
Sometimes he thinks if there is light in him, it is only because he is reflecting hers.
The first time he goes looking for her he sneaks around the edge of the Porcelain-Makers’ village, watching them gathering fragments of bone from the forest floor, squatting and sifting through the soil with wicker frames shaped like sails. He finds her not far away, sitting alone, cross-legged and still. Later she will explain to him that she was listening to the forest grow. The creeping cilia of fungus in the leaf litter. The shuffling footsteps of millipedes. The sighing of fat clouds flopping down the mountainsides. He realizes, too, that she must have heard him coming too. That she sat there letting him watch her without moving a muscle. But she never says so. In their long years together he will learn that this is the kind of person she is - that she never says a thing unless it needs to be said, and that to her mind, there are very few such things.
*
The first deluge lasts for a week. Clouds tower over one side of Skeleton Valley - and only one side - colossal and dark-bellied and convulsed with lightning. When they collapse they do so in a pounding shower that floods the paddies and sends most of the crop sailing down the mountainside, tender and half-grown, brief green scars amidst the churning mud.
Then the landslides begin.
The first one carries away a heaving slice of forest and leaves the hillside raw and brown in its wake. Then another carries away some of the paddies. Then the rain abates, and the villagers emerge from their huts and pick their way awkwardly over the sodden ground to inspect the damage. The sky is clear and the sun already baking the moisture from the soil. They have a lot to do, they think, but it can be done. Komas-in-the-Valley will heal.
But the next day the clouds gather again and, finally, mid-afternoon, there is a cloudburst high on the ridge. Halfway through the downpour they hear a groan, and a rumble. They look up at the church and its dome has split down the middle. There is something dancing about at the top of the dome, something glimmering and white. It pauses for an instant and looks down at them, licking its paw.
An instant later, the earth slips away beneath their feet.
The hillside collapses and takes everything with it in a grinding calamity of mud and trees and people and goats that descends furiously into the valley and into the river. When it is over and the last tree falls, crackling, there is silence, and the porcelain-makers rush over to find barely half of the villagers alive.
Osayanu finds Kastananga lying on his back on the riverbank, and though his leg is broken, and his jaw too, he is alive. She then spends four days staggering over the wreckage looking for Adirit. When she finally finds him, tangled up in foliage nearly halfway across the valley, she thinks he is dead. But when she takes his arm and rests her head on his cheek, he twitches, and smiles.
‘I knew it would be you,’ he says.
Kastananga takes months to recover. Though he is awake he does not speak and does not recognize anyone. Osayanu and Adirit build a bed for him and take turns sitting by his side. At night he mutters about the things in the forest and has long conversations with someone he calls My Lady. When Osayanu asks if that is Adirit’s mother, Adirit smiles and puts his arm around her thin shoulders and says, ‘No, my love.’
The other survivors disperse into the village. Most of them build new houses by the riverbank and cut down more trees and soon their paddies sprawl in silver and emerald profusion all about the giant ribs. As they dig and till they unearth thousands of bone fragments and they give these in baskets to the porcelain-makers and learn each their language. There are squabbles and fights and arguments about ritual. But there is also love and shared meals and none amongst them forget that when the earth itself tried to sweep them away it was the porcelain-makers who dug them out of its wet grasp and brought them back to the light.
One day the porcelain-makers present them with a gift - a porcelain shrine, and inside a gold-rimmed leaf. They erect it by the riverside and when strangers come to their village from now on they call it Porcelain Leaf.
*
By spring Kastananga’s eyes are livelier and he takes to sitting on the front porch, eating slices of orange that Osanayu gives him one by one. In early summer Paragreen emerges from the trees, nearly naked, and keeps him company. Osayanu insists that he should wash if he wishes the stay there.
‘Ah, go to hell,’ says the old man, grinning toothlessly. ‘I’m as Goddess intended me to be.’
The next day, when he arrives, Osayanu pours a bucket of water over his head. He squeals and thrashes about on the floor, but she walks back in, silent, and comes out with another one. This is one full of suds and bubbles and she pours this over his head too. Paragareen gets up and slips over and by now there is a group of children watching. Osayanu pays them an five oranges each to hold him down and walks in and out of the house carrying alternate buckets of water with and without soap until finally Paragareen is cleaner than he has ever been in his life.
Kastananga smiles.
Later that day Adirit comes home from the lake, carrying a sackful of fish, and Kastananga is sitting alone on the steps of the house, scanning the village with narrowed eyes. There are some oranges in a bowl by the door, and he takes one and sits by his father.
Kastananga shakes his head.
‘They are too sweet,’ he says.
It is the first time he has spoken in almost a year. Adirit waits for him to say more, but he just sits there, gazing out over the houses and the giant ribs.
‘Would you like something else?’
‘Where is Paragareen?’
‘I don’t know.’
The old man flexes his shoulders.
‘Bring me my shoes, and a bowl.’
‘Where are you going?’
Kastananga looks at Adirit and gets up, slowly. Adirit goes to help him but he pushes him away and hobbles into the house. When he comes out he is wearing a heavy cloak and the pair of leather sandals Osayanu traded a set of three bowls to a peddler for the autumn before. He heads off, out of the house, and away from the riverbank.
‘Father, where are you going?’
‘We cannot remain here. Come.’
He heads deeper into the trees. Adirit follows.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home.’
‘We are home.’
‘That is not my home.’ Kastananga pauses, and looks back at Adirit. ‘Who is that woman?’
‘Osayanu? She is my...we live together.’
‘Live together?’ Kastananga shakes his head. ‘No, she is not suitable. She is common, and an unbeliever.’
‘She’s cared for you all this winter long.’
‘That is kind of her, but she is not suitable. Get the others. Come.’
‘Father, wait.’ Adirit frowns. ‘What do you mean she is unsuitable?’
‘I do not need to explain myself to you. You are forbidden from seeing her again.’
‘Forbidden?’
‘Yes, forbidden. Forbidden. You are familiar with this word. They are all unbelievers down there, and it is time we returned home.’
‘You can’t be serious.’ Adirit walks up to the old man, and touches him gently on the shoulder. ‘Come. Let’s go home.’
‘I am going home. Where are you going?’
‘Father, there is nothing left. The landslide brought everything down with it. There is nowhere for you to go. Look.’ He points up to where the cascading vines and saplings are colonizing the indented hillside. ‘There’s nothing there.’
‘Then we will build a new place. Stop arguing with me. It is getting late and we must begin before dark.’
‘No.’
Kastananga squints.
‘No?’
Adirit takes a deep breath, and shakes his head.
‘No, father. No. We can’t leave the village. We won’t.’
‘No?’
Adirit shakes his head again. Kastananga watches him for a long time, chewing his lip. Then he shrugs.
‘Very well. I will be off on my own, then.’
‘Father!’
‘You are a grown man. You can choose to turn your back on who you are if you like, but I will not.’
‘Please -’
Kastananga shuffles over to Adirit and pokes him in the chest with his walking-stick.
‘What do you think all those things I taught you when you were a child were? Do you think they were just stories, like the ones these people make up? That they were just a way of comforting ourselves at night? They were not stories, son. They were the truth. There is only one of those. Either you believe it to be the case, or you too are an unbeliever.’ He spits. ‘Those people are baby-killers and infidels. They were kind to us and for that we will thank them in time. But we will not live with them and call them brothers.’
‘And what of the children?’
‘What children?’ Kastananga blinks. ‘Is that woman with your child?’
Adirit holds Kastananga’s gaze for a moment, and looks away. The old man sniffs.
‘You are not the boy I raised,’ he says. ‘You are not the son I raised.’
‘I’m the son who looked after you while you were lying on your deathbed, old man.’
‘If you expect thanks for looking after your parents, then you truly are one of them, not one of us.’
Kastananga turns and shuffles off into the trees. Adirit goes after him but the old man turns and bring his cane down in one vicious slice across his face. When he wakes up, he is long gone, and so is the sun.
3
Kastananga is not alone on the hillside. Not everyone wanted to stay down in the valley with the unbelievers. Though most of those who came up and joined him in the little huts clinging to the slope like mushrooms to a log are old, there are a few youngsters, and sometimes that gives him hope.
When he can think of nothing else to do, he descends the hillside, hobbling through the trees, and heads to the river. Off to the north is a ford, where the water flows frothing over an expanse of gravel, cool even at noon, shallow enough for him to cross without concern. He does this and loops around the other side of Porcelain Leaf, and from there he can see through the trees to the houses. What he sees is no different to what he has seen before. Children carrying buckets of paints. Adults heaving baskets of bone and food and pails of water. Chatter and laughter and, sometimes, voices raised in song and argument.
Then he looks up the hillside and sees the scar where the church and the paddies used to be. The once raw soil darkened now and the edges of where the ground fell away softened with foliage. There are already towering clumps of bamboo and thin-trunked birches crowding the slope and in amongst them are the slim youth of what will eventually become sprawling swamp oaks.
How is it, he wonders, that things could disappear so utterly, and not even be mourned? When did world become so incomprehensible? Had it just changed while he was preoccupied other things - with digging channels and smoothing out the paddyfields and overseeing the village’s slow conquest of the forest? Had it changed abruptly that day, when all of it had tumbled down? Or had he just fooled himself into believing that the world was orderly and good, when really he was just stumbling around in a maze, with pinholes for eyes?
Sometimes the grief becomes so intense he cannot breathe, and all he sees are the remaining moments of his life passing like droplets into a vast black cistern.
One day he is sitting up by an aging oak, watching the shadows of the clouds race in sneaking black packs across the valley floor, when the glowing weasel appears in front of him. Kastananga glares at it, and then spits on the ground next to him.
‘Go away,’ he says.
The weasel sits down and opens its mouth. It coughs, once, and then twice, and then a little golden leaf flops out onto the ground, bone-dry and blinding.
It looks up at Kastananga. The old man looks away.
The weasel sits down and clamps its hands on the leaf and begins to chew. As it does the leaf comes apart in splinters and some of them drive into its gums. It bleeds little drops of glittering blood and tiny white flowers sprout where they fall.
‘You have a grandchild,’ it says.
‘I have no interest in what you have to say.’ says Kastananga.
‘Don’t be unkind. You can be remarkably unkind. That is the problem with you who believe too hard in something. You think you know what everyone else is thinking, and so you’re not interested in what they actually are.’
‘I’ve no interest in locking horns with ghost from the jungle.’
‘I’m not a ghost, old man.’
‘Demon, then.’
‘Nor that.’
‘Were you not responsible for destroying my village?’
The weasel looks up at him, and then away, and hangs its head.
‘I am ashamed of that.’
‘Seventy-four people died. Seventy-four of my people.’ Kastananga gets up. ‘Your shame is not enough.’
‘Do you not know how it is your kind and mine live together in this world? There are rules. There are rules and obligations, and that you don’t believe in them doesn’t make them any less true.’
‘We lived a thousand years in the old country without your rules.’
The weasel peers at him.
‘And yet,’ it says, ‘Here you are, in my country. Talking to me.’
*
Memories of when she lived with Adirit steal up on her when she is at her most still - an instant before she falls asleep, or when the clay is slipping through her fingers, glossy and moist, in a quick and never-ending swirl. They come in flashes and snippets - his hand on her wrist, or else the two of them lying in the high heather with nothing but cool leaves and each other’s skin between them. Once she hated these moments, but now she welcomes them, for time has weathered her pain from breath-stealing sharpness to brief blooming ache.
Her life is now the porcelain. She heads out with her basket early in the morning - before Adirit and the child are awake, before the sun has even risen, before the skittering fireflies and forest-gods have had time to disperse. By the time she returns she is hungry. Down by the river there are stalls with people grilling fish and she sits by the water and eats and listen to old folk gathered there, monotheists and polytheists alike. They ask her how she is and she tells them the truth, which is never very long, and then they resume their gossiping. Here she learns that there are more traders coming to the village and that Adirit looks lonely and that the child is growing up and looks more like her every day. She listens to all this and smiles a little and says nothing.
After this she returns and trades the bone she collected in the morning for some fresh porcelain from one or the other of the makers in town. Then she returns and sits by her wheel. By the time she gets up again her back is stiff and her feet are covered in hardening daubs of porcelain but always, always, what she has made is flawless. Often she stares at it while the sun sets and the mosquitos gather and it is only after they begin to bite her that she takes it and leaves it with the other finished pieces to dry before firing.
For dinner she eats only some dried fruit and nuts that Adirit sometimes leaves by her door or, if he is angry or hurt again - that is to say, if he remembers how things are - that she has gathered herself. She sits in the corner of her hut with a single lamp and in the tiny tremulous island of golden red light she uses a brush no bigger than the width of her nail to paint the side of the pieces that have already been fired. She uses only yellow and red and vivid emerald green and because there is darkness all about her, and half the pot is lost in shadows, she can only work on a small bit of it at a time.
By the time she is finished almost everyone else in the village is asleep. Then she heads out and walks quickly in the darkness to Adirit’s house. Every now and then, if she is lucky, both he and their daughter are awake, and playing in the light of the ten or so lamps Adirit has hung from the roof.
On nights like this she watches them - the little girl who looks like her riding around on her father’s feet, or learning to draw, or just curled up in his lap, asleep. But never for very long. It will not do for either of them to see her watching, or for her to get used to seeing then.
*
Kastananga tries ignoring the weasel, and then insulting him, and then chanting tracts from the third Avatar’s book, but it will not leave him alone. It appears when he is sitting in the dark of his hut. It appears when he is on his walks. It appears when he is meditating, and though his eyes are closed, he smells it, sweet like lavender, sharp like alcohol.
‘Why do you follow me around?’ he asks it one day.
They are down in the valley, by the river. Kastananga is soaking his feet in the cold water.
‘Because you will die soon, and I wish to be here for that.’
‘You will not have my soul. My soul belongs to Goddess, and I’ve lived a good life.’
‘Have you?’ says the weasel. ‘Are you certain?’
‘I am certain,’ says Kastananga.
‘And yet here you are, alone, with none but your worst enemy for company.’
‘That is precisely because I led a good life, and did not give you and yours what you wanted.’
‘How do you know what we wanted?’
‘I saw you looking at Maphna’s belly. I saw the unbelievers sacrificing their child to you in the dark of the forest. I know what it is you wanted of us, but you have no right to it. And for that, you killed everyone I love.’ Kastananga stares into the water. ‘I lived a good life, and for that I suffered. So what?’
The weasel licks its paw.
‘The child looks like you. The woman now knows that your son was the firstborn, and that you did not give him to the forest. She knows now that her child will be taken in his stead, and she has turned her back on her family. You son needs you.’
Kastananga stares and the thing holds his gaze. Then, suddenly, he lunges at it, arms outstretched, half expecting his fingers to slip right through. But they make contact with the weasel’s body and it is a body like any other of its kind, warm and furry and squirming furiously. Kastananga holds on tight. The weasel’s skin goes scorching hot and Kastananga feels his skin burn, but he squeezes and shoves the thing into the river. The water seethes and hot steam gushes over his face but he keeps the weasel under the surface until it stops moving. He holds it there, wheezing and coughing, until the water stops boiling and he can see down to limp little body huddled by his feet, mouth open, eyes narrowed, the light in its flesh slowly dimming.
Kastananga pulls his arms out of the water. His hands are gone. Where they were are two painless stumps, grey-skinned and riven with flowing cracks like little rivers of lava. He leans against the bank and waits for his breath to come back, wondering how he will get by now. But his breath does not come back. It slips further and further away, until he falls over, face red, neck taut, gasping. A little while after that his breath begins to fade. A little while after that, it stops altogether.
*
Adirit does not know where he is going until he looks up and he realizes he is standing outside Osayanu’s house, and that she is sitting on her porch, hands smeared in clay, staring at him.
‘Where is she?’ says Osayanu.
Adirit wipes his eyes.
‘With Paragareen.’
‘I see.’ She gets up and wipes her hands on the tabard she is wearing, and then takes it off. ‘Come.’
They walk through the house and she discards the tabard and keeps walking out the back. He follows her through the workshop where half finished pots and bowls and thin-necked vases stand in serried ranks, glossy and curvaceous. Eventually they come to a rounded rock protruding from the ground by the river’s edge. She sits, and pats the space next to her. He does not ask her how she knew what he wanted. He is used the fact that she just does. He sits down and breaths deep and fills his nose with her smell. Then he cries.
‘My father is dead,’ he says.
Osayanu looks at the river, and says nothing.
‘They found him downriver. He’d drowned, and his hands were missing. Something had eaten his hands.’
She touches him, briefly, on the leg.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
Adirit nods, and wipes away his tears. They sit quietly for a little while longer. Then:
‘Won’t you come home?’
Osayanu shakes her head.
‘You can come home now. There’s no reason for you not to.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My father was the firstborn. Now he is dead. The forest has what it needs.’
She smiles.
‘That isn’t how it works, my love.’
‘Then I’ll give myself to the forest.’
‘You’re too old.’
‘Just come home. Please.’
She shakes her head again.
‘I can’t. I can’t live with a goddess. I can’t grow to love a child that isn’t mine to love.’
‘She is your child. She is your child, and mine. You have a responsibility.’
‘Yes,’ says Osayanu. ‘And my responsibility is to give her up to the forest.’
Adirit gets up and walks down to the river’s edge, and looks back the way he came. Not so far away are the soaring sharp-tipped curves of the giant ribs, clean and shining in the noontime sun.
‘Do you know the story of those ribs?’ says Osayanu.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I thought no one did.’
‘No one really does. There are lots of stories. But there’s one I think is true.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I’m no good with telling stories.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
Osayanu takes a strand of her hair in her hands and as she speaks she picks at it, eyes-crossed, as if the whole tale was carved into its side.
‘The beasts came from the sea. The sea had become too crowded and they needed a new place to live, and so they came out onto land. When they did the gods told them that they were coming to a new place, and so they should bring a gift. It’s rude not to bring a gift when you go to a new place, they said. But the beasts didn’t listen. They were bigger than the gods and, they thought, mightier, and so they wandered up and did as they pleased. But they had no luck, and wherever they went was disaster. Though they were huge, in some places many smaller creatures came together and killed them. In other places they fell into crevasses, or were attacked by demons. Eventually there was only one of them, and she thought, my ancestors are from the sea. I’ll go back there, because it is my home. But when she went into the sea, she realized that the sea had forgotten them. That to the sea, she was someone new, and she had not come bearing a gift. So she drowned, and the sea returned her to where it thought she belonged - the land. And there her body lies, of neither the sea nor the earth, and lost to both.’
Adirit smiles when she is done.
‘There is no Goddess but Goddess,’ he says. ‘And we are her people.’
Osayanu reaches down and scoops up some earth.
‘You belong to your Goddess my love, but I belong to this,’ she says. ‘And so does our child.’
*
The old woman chooses the cove because it is secluded and quiet and the path there winds up and over a precipitous ridge. Not many people will come here, she thinks, and when they do she will smell them once they reach the top of the climb, for even in winter, it will make them sweat. The sea here is still all year around on account of the outcroppings of rock a few minute’s swim from the sand. Even on stormy days they buffer her little bay from the waves and she can swim in slow circles, as she likes to do, and see all the way to the pale golden world of crabs and octopuses and flitting silvery fish below.
She spends the first few days marking her territory. Then she goes into the forest and chops down some trees. At first it is difficult for her to hew the wood and split it and shape it into usable planks because she has not done it alone for so long. Sometimes, in the middle of the afternoon, when the heat is at its most smothering, she loses track of what she is doing and reverts. At moments like this the axe goes flying out of her hands and off into the undergrowth and it is only when she tries to go to pick it up that she realizes that she can only lope along on all fours.
By late summer the cabin is half done and her larder is beginning to fill. She is sitting by the water, soaking her old feet in it, when she smells people up on the ridge. At first she thinks of hiding, but then she realizes the smells are familiar. It does not take her long to realize who they are. Eventually a young woman and an older man emerge from the undergrowth onto the beach. The man is bearded and silver-haired and on his back he is carrying an even older man, a man so skinny that he looks barely more than organs wrapped parchment. Still, he is swigging wantonly from a bottle of orange wine that the old woman can smell even where she is sitting.
‘Put me down, little lord,’ says the old man. ‘This ain’t what a lord should be doing. I told you. I told you.’
‘Stop calling me that,’ says the other man. ‘No one believes in that crap anymore.’
‘Blessed be the Mother,’ says the old man. ‘Stop your blaspheming. Your balls’ll fall off in the night.’
The young woman sees the old woman and comes over. She is long-limbed and long-haired and smiles a smile that could obliterate shadows. It does not take the old woman long to realize why she is so excited. It does not take her long to realize that the young woman, one day, will be just like her.
‘Yah, grandma,’ says the young girl. ‘I am sorry, I did not realize anyone lived here.’
‘Nowt wrong with it,’ says the old woman. ‘Who’re you?’
‘I am Adisayan. That is my father, Adirit, and that old fart is his flag-bearer, Paragareen the Drunken.’
‘I hear you, little lady!’ shouts Paragareen, stomping through the surf. ‘I hear the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea!’
‘And the clink of a bottle of wine from a hundred miles!’
‘Aye!’ Paragareen takes a swig. ‘Who’s that sexy lass, then?’
‘You’ll pardon him,’ says Adisayan.
The old woman shrugs.
‘I’ve pardoned worse,’ she says, and gets to her feet.
‘May we stay a while? We will not disturb you.’
‘Stay, stay. Disturb.’
‘Is that your house?’
‘It is. Will you take water?’
The girl nods.
‘I will. We will.’
She follows the old woman without asking her father for permission and inside she marvels at the apples and clusters of grapes, each fat and golden and dripping with moisture, that grow from the ceiling of the store room. Then she inspects the grandfather clock in the corner and the carpet with its little scurrying drawings and the old woman is astonished that she does not ask any questions. But when the woman goes to the well and comes back with two huge buckets of water the girl takes one and says, ‘Who else lives here?’
‘Oh, my man did. For a while. But he is gone now.’
‘He must have been very powerful.’
The old woman nods, and sniffs.
‘Aye,’ she says. ‘Not the most, but enough.’
When they head back out Adirit and Paragareen are sprawled on the sand watching a sliver of the horizon between two of the water-rocks, a view fading from the azure of the sea to the pale blue of the horizon and then finally to the reddening gold of the slowly subsiding sun. They take the water and drink and the old woman sits with them for a while.
‘When I die,’ says Paragareen, ‘I want you to burn me and scatter my ashes here.’
‘Will that suit you, grandmother?’ says Adirit.
‘Aye. It’ll suit the crabs and fish and what suits them suits me.’
‘I thought I would be a warrior,’ says Paragareen.
‘You were,’ says Adirit.
‘I thought I’d be a hero.’
‘You were.’
‘I warn’t no hero, little lord. I was a survivor. You can tell what person’ll be when they’re young and that’s what me gramma said I’d be. A survivor.’
‘He gets like this when he’s drunk,’ whispers Adisayan to the old woman.
The old woman chuckles.
‘What’ll be I be, then, Paragareen?’ asks Adisayan.
Paragareen gives the old woman a long look, and swigs from his bottle.
‘I reckon you’ll be whatever you want to be, little lady. Isn’t that right, m’lord?’
Adirit smiles, and nods.
‘That’s right, Piglet,’ he says, wrapping his arms around the girl. ‘When you grow up, you can be whatever you want to be.’
The old woman smiles.
THE END
KUSHAL PODDAR authored ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, ‘A Place For Your Ghost Animals, Understanding The Neighborhood’, ‘Scratches Within’, ‘Kleptomaniac's Book of Unoriginal Poems’, ‘Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems’ and now ‘Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel’ (Alien Buddha Press) Author Page - amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe |
Parallels
Their hairs wave along the length of their arms. They disrobe and think of the other couple watching them through their colonial blinds. Then they feel their shadows talking about them and water staring through every bead at them while they lave their skin.
They close their window, and through the blinds of their own they observe the couple on the other side. They keep watching. Sundays are the best. Warm cats asleep on the cornice, the cups of tea cooling down.
Sometimes they wish the other window opens up to show the inside.
One Monday, the third one of the month, right before the moon rises, as the couple stands near their window and peeps through the blinds the other window opens. And there stands a couple much like themselves- the girl looks like the boy here and the boy there fashions after the boy. The couple here can think of anything else but to open their own window. The moment they do so they are in the other couple's room much like theirs.
The Silenced Hiss
Illias went to the forest department. Went to the Zoo authority. They all accepted his applications and paid no heed. Illias began to raise his voice, told everyone, "The snake returns every night and drinks the blood of the chickens I chop all day. Every morning I see it recede from the view, its tail rattling, its black skin glistening. I am afraid. My clients will be afraid if they come to know. My butcher's shop will die down. Please send some men and catch it away."
They all said, "Did you try carbolic acid? Is the snake for real?"
Illias could not stand the fume of carbolic. The snake was real so far his vision went.
His friend, Kishore, the fish seller, chuckled, "Its all in your head. Why didn't we see the snake? Ha! That big! Five feet! I tell you, you must marry now. When a man of your age stays unmarried he sees these things."
Illias retied the knot of his pajama, spat at the cobblestoned market, but mumbled to his mother at night, "Fish is undercooked, ammijaan. I think you should retire from the kitchen. I should marry after all."
"Did you see the snake again?" His mother asked, but she had already shortlisted the probable brides.
Illias saw the snake even the day before his wedding and sighed. He called the police, "The snake is here again." The phone was disconnected. He said, Kabool hai thrice.
It was a Sunday the day after his wedding. His right cheek still bore the print of the pillow, his left- a smeared shade of red. He came to open the shop and found no snake. He told Kishore. He smirked.
The snake did not return the day after. The day after. Months after. Illias left a bucket of blood for it. It did not return. He left milk and bananas for it as per the story goes in a Hindu mythology. Kishore laughed, "You are a Muslim. Why are you following a snake goddess? Are you missing the snake?"
Illias spat on the cobblestoned market.
Secret Sanctuary
He has a fish fry crumbled in a bag. The cat meows in a broken voice as if winter just touched the tip of a tree and the leaves are leaving for the following life.
"I think I saw my son in a stranger's face today", he says, "He smokes. Do you think he smokes nowadays? I used to." He sports a faint smile, "I remember the last cigarette. I put it out and brushed my hair with my fingers, was ready to kiss my son's mother. She said, I smelt awfully."
I I
The cat tells the wind, "This fence feels like winter." "How so?" Howls the wind.
"It runs such a short distance that goes on forever, stiff, slow, moony, broke where moonshine gushes out, sleepy and insomniac." The cat finds a leafless shrub's thorny leaflet to read. It remembers all its kittens gone into oblivion. The cat doesn't mind. It feels hungry but would have rejected anything edible. It remembers the house where it dropped the orange kitten. It lost all. It doesn't mind.
Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in journals many times including Bourbon Penn, Bartleby Snopes, Thrice Fiction, Foliate Oak and Able Muse. Tim Frank is an upcoming writer specialising in the comic, the dark and the surreal. He has written a semi-autobiographical novel, Devil in my Veins, and is currently writing a sci-fi thriller novel. |
Concrete jungle
One afternoon when some of the Skelter crew were rounded up and cuffed after a raid in the south side of the estate, rain lashing down on the concrete outside sounding like cracking knuckles, a small group of officers circled the gang who they'd forced to their knees by a wall. Officer Gauche frisked the crew. When he came to Gerald, he yanked his head to one side.
‘Hislop,’ ordered Gauche, ‘come over here. This kid's cuffs are loose, I hope you're not going easy on him.’
‘I didn't cuff him, said Hislop, and I don't go easy on anyone.’
‘Yeah, I don't need any help from no cop,’ said Gerald, the crust of dried snot plastered across his upper lip.
‘Shut up punk,’ said Gauche.
‘Yeah, Gerald, shut the fuck up,’ said Hislop.
Gauche forced Gerald's head against the wall. Hislop lit a cigarette and played with it nervously as he stared at Gerald and the stupid look he wore on his face, like he was confused by some complex maths equation. That poor sap couldn't count to five, Hislop thought.
The police found nothing on the gang and eventually set them free. They scuttled off like a mischief of rats into all four corners of the building. Gerald went home to the fifth floor where his grandmother was waiting for him in the kitchen, smoking a joint that alleviated the pain from her cancerous breast.
When he came in the door his phone exploded with text messages. It was Gerald's gang leader, Reece, checking on him to see if the cops had found anything.
Gerald's grandmother beckoned him to join her.
‘Put the phone away, I have to talk to you,’ she said.
Gerald slipped the phone inside his jacket pocket and took a seat opposite his grandmother. His stomach growled with hunger as he wiped his nose and reached out for the joint.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I need your head clear for what I'm about to tell you.’
She laid the joint in an ashtray, letting it burn out by itself as it nestled amongst a cluster of other roaches.
‘I'm dying Gerald,’ she said, ‘you know that don't you?’
‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, watching a fly try to wrestle itself free from a spider's web.
‘But I don't think you understand. It means you'll be all on your own with no one to look after you.’
‘But you can come visit though, right?’
‘No - what? Gerald when someone dies, that's it, they are gone, never to come back. Like your parents.’
‘Oh, they just went away, they'll be back one day. I get it.’
‘No, you don't.’
‘I do, gran, and I'll save you, I promise.’
‘Listen to me Gerald, I have nothing to leave you when I die except this flat. I need you to promise me that you will sell it and leave this God forsaken place when I'm gone.’
‘Leave? But what about my job?’
‘Gerald, you're selling drugs for a gang. It's not a job. I know you don't understand but I want you to find a way out of here.’
Gerald smiled and said, ‘It's going to be alright gran, you'll see.’
Gerald's grandmother sighed, sparked up her joint and said, ‘You can go back to your phone now. Please try to think about what I've said.’
That night Hislop returned home to his wife and child late. As he searched his pockets for his keys he almost tripped on the front step. His wife, Marie, opened the door and said, ‘Jesus Patrick, this is the third time this week you've come back wasted.’
Hislop aimed a kiss at Marie's cheek and brushed past her into the living room.
‘I've put Stanley to bed. Would you at least like to say goodnight to him?’
‘Can't it wait?’ he said. ‘I need a cup of coffee.’
Marie placed her hand on her hip and gave him the look.
‘OK, OK, I'll be up in a minute.’
Stanley's room was illuminated by a night light that spread a gloomy fog. As Hislop entered, closely followed by his wife, he saw the boy, three years old, in Spiderman pyjamas, standing in his cot gently crying. Hislop scooped him up into his arms and whispered into his ear, rocking him back and forth. Hislop looked into Stanley's eyes. The boy held a glazed expression.
‘He still doesn't recognise me,’ Hislop said, as Stanley began to wail.
‘Give it time,’ Marie said.
‘Right. Time.’
A few days later Hislop was patrolling one of the blocks when he caught sight of Gerald dealing by the motorway that separated the estate from the rest of the city. The crackhead jetted off before Hislop could catch him but he managed to corner Gerald.
Hislop cuffed him and said, ‘Come with me,’ and he led the boy across the motorway where they found some semblance of civilisation. They stepped into a burger and beer joint. Clean lines, white decor with splashes of red.
‘I didn't do it, OK?’
‘Take a seat Gerald, I just want to talk.’
Hislop released Gerald from his cuffs and the boy rubbed his chafed wrists.
‘What would you like?’ Hislop said. ‘Pick anything, it's on me.’
‘Is this a joke?’
‘No one needs to know Gerald; this is between us. I want to help you. You are hungry, right?’
‘Well, yeah.’
A waitress wearing her hair in a bun and an apron with a picture of a bull etched on the front came to serve them.
‘Give us a double patty diablo with the works. Fries and a chocolate milkshake too. I'll just have a light beer, thanks,’ said Hislop.
The waitress jotted down the order but before she could leave Gerald said, ‘What are you looking at?’
‘Excuse me, sir?’
‘You know what I'm talking about. What the fuck are you looking at?’
‘Go easy Gerald,’ said Hislop. ‘Nobody's judging you, right miss?’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘If it’s all the same, I think I'm going to let someone else wait on you.’
‘Fine,’ said Hislop, ‘but I'm sorry.’
Another waitress soon joined them and Hislop repeated the order. He flicked through the mini jukebox that was positioned on the side of their table.
‘I've been watching you Gerald. You may not know it but I've been looking out for your wellbeing.’
‘Looking out how?’
‘Just... Looking out. I know your grandmother.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Gerald said, all cagey.
‘We speak sometimes. She's a good woman who cares deeply for you.’
‘I don't want to talk about my gran.’
‘OK, we won't. But listen, I don't care that you deal drugs. I know you are a good person too.’
‘How?’
‘How what?’
‘How do you know I'm a good person?’
‘No idea, Gerald. Call it instinct.’
‘You don't know the things I've done.’
‘Maybe so but I want to help you.’
The food came and Gerald tucked in ferociously.
‘I want to get you out of the hood,’ said Hislop.
‘I don't need any help, I've got plans,’ Gerald said, manoeuvring his mouth around his burger then biting down hard.
‘Oh yeah? What plans are these?’
‘None of your business, and don't worry about me. I'm going to be just fine.’
‘Right, of course.’
What, you don't believe me?’
‘Honestly, no I don't see it.’
‘Well, you're wrong.’
‘Enlighten me.’
‘Fuck you, how about that?’
‘Now play nice, Gerald.’
Gerald wiped his mouth and sighed.
‘I'm going to save up for university, get a degree and become a doctor or something.’
‘There's so much wrong with that sentence I don't even know where to begin.’
‘I don't have to listen to this bullshit. If you want to arrest me, arrest me. Otherwise, thanks for the food, but I've got to go.’
‘No wait, I'm sorry, please just hear me out.’
‘Why do you give a shit about me?’
‘Don't ask me that question Gerald because I really don't know.’’
Gerald stood and said, ‘People think I'm thick, well they're wrong. I can achieve whatever I put my mind to.’
‘That's all very well but if you stay here, in the hood, dealing for Reece you're going to end up dead or in prison. You have to get out of this city where the Skelter crew can't track you down. Please take a seat and let's talk about it.’
Gerald stared out of the diner window, across the motorway and over to the looming presence of the estate. It seemed to look back at him, saturated in all its grey haunted glory. He sat back down.
An hour later, after an in-depth discussion, Hislop and Gerald went their separate ways. As Gerald crossed the motorway and approached the estate, he felt eyes on him, peering like black opals embedded in the concrete. As he jiggled his keys in his front door a text pinged from his phone. It was Reece. Gerald's muscles contracted sending a bolt of energy through his body. The message simply read, ‘My flat, now.’
So, Gerald climbed the four floors to reach Reece's apartment. He texted Reece to say he was outside his door. He was shown inside by one of the crew and the smell of high-grade skunk stung his nostrils. The living room had a couch and a coffee table next to it. A selection of guns was laid out on the surface and beside them was a mound of cocaine with tubs of detergent and baby powder to cut the drug. A one-year old baby with a soiled nappy roamed around the constricted space, dried tears on her face. The flat was hot and Reece wore a shirt cut off at the sleeves. But he was lean and had no muscles to expose. He indicated to Gerald that he should take a seat. ‘Why did you text me, you idiot, if you're just outside the fucking door?’’
‘Um,’ stuttered Gerald.
‘I'm not going waste time Gerald,’ Reece said, as the baby tugged at Gerald's trouser leg.
‘You've been seen with... Wait, pass the little tyke over.’
Gerald picked up the baby and caught a glimpse straight into her eyes. He saw purity.
‘OK,’ said Reece laying the baby on one side of the couch, beginning to change her. He stroked the side of her face and made some goofy noises.
‘Gerald, you've been seen with Hislop. We know he's been helping you. Let's face it, any fool can tell you would have been locked up a long time ago if it wasn't for him. Honestly Gerald, do you actually like that shitbag?’
‘No, uh, he just wanted to talk and I listened.’
‘Talk about what?’
‘Well, you know, I guess, my plans to go to university and that. He said he could help me.’
‘University?’ Reece cracked a smile, chortled, then fell about laughing. After he'd settled down and picked up the baby, resting her on his chest, he said, ‘And what about your commitments to me and the gang? You have a lot of important work to do. And I'm sure you know what it means if you talk to the police, right? Listen to me now and listen well. I'm going to give you one of these guns and you're going to take Hislop out. Pop pop, OK? It's the only way I can be sure you're on our side. I have to be able to trust you one hundred percent from now on. Otherwise you're no good to me. Now I know this is a big thing I'm asking you to do, fuck me everyone knows you're thick as two short planks. But I believe in you. I want to believe in you anyway. Prove to me that my faith is well placed. This is your last chance. Am I understood?’
Gerald gave a sullen nod and took the gun.
‘I'll text you with instructions when the time is right.’
Gerald went home, his mind swimming with visions of death. That night he dreamt of his grandmother being strangled with a rope. He saw her blood vessels bursting out of her eyes, her bulbous tongue sticking out of her mouth. He couldn't see who was murdering her but he felt it could be him. He woke in a cold sweat and checked his phone. Still no orders from Reece. He would have to wait.
*
After saying goodbye to Gerald outside the diner, Hislop went to the pub, but he didn't stay long. Instead he journeyed home to spend some time with his family.
‘This is a pleasant surprise, to what do we owe this honour?’ said Marie as Hislop took a seat at the dinner table. She doled out some casserole for him. The baby sat in his chair and squinted. His lazy eye shifted about in its socket.
‘Just, you know, want to make some changes,’ he said.
‘Well great, about time,’ Marie smiled. ‘Wine?’
They finished the meal, put Stanley to sleep and climbed into bed. As they switched off their bedside lamps both of them remained wide-eyed and deep in thought. The night outside seemed to hiss with venomous intent.
‘You never bring your work home with you,’ Marie said, ‘but for once I want you to talk about it with me. Let me in. I know something is going on.’
‘I thought I could keep it from you. That was the plan. But you're right, there is something. There's some boy at work. He needs help Marie.’
‘And you think you're the one to give it to him?’
‘Maybe, yes, I mean, I don't know.’
‘Let me tell you what you do. You steer clear of this kid as much as is humanly possible. You don't talk to him; you don't think about him.’
‘But you don't even know who he is and what his situation is like.’
‘I don't care. I know your job and the scum you work with. They are animals, degenerates. Keep away, do you hear me?’
They were quiet for a while and then Hislop broke the silence, saying, ‘I'm having dreams, nightmares. I'm afraid I've already let him in and I can't push him away. I've opened the door and now I can't shut it.’
‘The only door you need to open is for Stanley, no one else. He's the one who needs your help and attention. Can't you see we're losing you to this job of yours? And God knows what danger you're putting yourself in by associating with some crackhead.’
‘He's not a crackhead. Marie he's actually given me hope. I can do something worthwhile for once in a job that's been meaningless for years. If, that is...’
‘If what?’
‘If he doesn't screw it up.’’
‘Please, I'm begging you, stop this madness and focus on what's important - your family.’
That night Hislop couldn't sleep so he took a pillow and a throw and crept into Stanley's room where he laid down on the floor. Hislop finally nodded off an hour or two before dawn. He slept beside Stanley every night that week. He and Marie didn't talk about his new routine and why it was happening because, although Marie wanted to feel happy about it, she wasn't completely sure if she liked the motives behind his new behaviour.
*
The week after, Gerald was taking a snooze late in the afternoon. His dreams incorporated the sounds of an audience applauding from the television set next door. He was woken by a text from Reece. It spelled out the details of when and where the hit was to take place. Reece signed off by saying, ‘Don't fuck it up.’
Gerald wiped the sleep from his eyes, slipped his feet inside his trainers and picked up the gun from inside the dresser. The weapon glinted in the shaft of light emanating from the half-open door. He swallowed. He reached out to his ashtray, took a couple of puffs from a spliff and then tried to sneak out of the flat before his grandmother could notice. As he opened the front door it creaked and alerted her to his presence. She was sitting in the armchair in the living room watching a game show shrouded by a cloud of weed smoke. Buzzers and ticking clocks frayed Gerald's nerves.
‘What, you don't want to give a kiss goodbye to your gran?’ she said.
Gerald's shoulders slumped and he shuffled back inside.
‘What's wrong Gerald? Don't hide anything from me. Grandmas always know when there's something up with their boy.’
‘It's nothing gran. How are you feeling?’
‘I'm coping darling, I'm coping. I don't know if I should tell you this but that nice police officer paid me a visit the other day. What's his name? Henry? Harold?’
‘Hislop.’
‘Yes, that's it. Well we've been talking about you, and me, but mostly you and I have to say he really does speak sense. He seems like a good man and I truly believe that he has your best interests at heart. One day soon I'd like us all to sit down and have a chat. Now, I don't want to keep you, I just need my kiss and I'll let you be on your way.’
Gerald dutifully bent down and gave her a peck on the cheek. He was close to tears. He walked out of the flat and told himself under his breath, ‘Fix up, look sharp, you can do this.’
Reece's text had directed Gerald to wait in a stairwell on the second floor. The message said Hislop was expected to arrive, one flight of steps lower, in the hall by the elevators around five pm. Gerald leaned up against the cold wall with his gun held aloft, resting it near his cheek. He noticed his shallow breaths. In out, in out. He noticed the sweat dripping from his forehead. Then he heard voices echo below. Calling him from hell. It was a conversation between Officers Gauche and Hislop. He eavesdropped.
‘I gotta say, I'm getting a little tired of this place, said Gauche. Frankly I don't know if I can carry on much longer.’
‘Who do you think you're fooling? You've said the same thing every day for the last ten years,’ said Hislop.
‘Nevertheless. And what about you? You seem to have a new found spring in your step.’
‘Really? No, I don't think anything's different.’
‘I have a feeling I know what's going on.’
‘Oh yeah, what?’
‘Do I have to spell it out?’
‘Yes, I'm afraid you do, because I have no idea what you're talking about.’
‘OK. It's Gerald isn't it. Tell me, what have you got yourself into?’
‘Come on Gauche, I've told you a million times I have no connection to that kid. Now lay off me.’
‘I wish I could but this is too important to be brushed under the carpet.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Say you've been having secret meetings with Gerald and his grandmother. Say you've been looking the other way when he's dealing on the streets or beating up crackheads. For chrissakes, say you're obsessed with him.’
Gerald knew it was time to act. But the words of his grandmother reverberated through his mind, ‘He wants the best for you, he's a good man.’ Gerald remained frozen in the stairwell, caught between two worlds. The darkness and the light. All he could do was continue to listen into the cops' conversation and delay the inevitable.
‘You really want to know what I think of that retard Gerald and his crippled nan?’ Hislop said. ‘I'll tell you. He's degenerate scum just like the rest of the bacteria in this hole of an estate. Yes, I thought I could help him, yes, I thought I could fix him somehow. But I was wrong and he and his gran can rot six feet deep for all I care because they have brought me nothing but misery since I met them.’
‘Jeez,’ Gauche said.
‘OK?’
‘OK, OK, I believe you. I never knew you felt that way. I just thought...’
‘You thought what?’
‘Never mind. It's history.’
Gerald leapt out of his hiding place and aimed his gun at Hislop's temple. He fingered the trigger lightly but couldn't bring himself to shoot.
‘I believed in you,’ he howled, the anguish and confusion painted on his face. ‘You said... you said, and my gran she trusted you. I'm going to blow your fucking brains out!’
Just then the sound of trainers squeaked on the concrete from behind Gerald. Hislop yelled, ‘Gerald, watch out!’
A gun fired. The blast pulsated around the hallway. Gerald hit the deck, collapsing like a wave. His blood and brains were splattered against the elevator doors as the lift descended to the basement level. The hitman raced off and disappeared amongst the maze of steps and halls in the building. Gauche scampered after him. Hislop knelt down next to Gerald's body and wiped blood from his cheeks. His eyes were open, grey and gone.
‘Shit Gerald, you idiot, what have you done? I didn't mean it; I didn’t fucking mean it.’
Gauche returned to the scene with the killer in tow and said, ‘You certainly do a good impression of not caring for the retard.’
The prisoner had a blank give-a-shit stare, yet it was clear he was trying his best to avert his gaze from the dead body lying at his feet.
‘Looks like Troy here just saved your life Hislop,’ Gauche said. ‘And now we're going to take him to the station to find out why.’
‘No need to wait, I'll tell you right now,’ said Troy. ‘It's a warning to mind your business and leave the Skelter crew alone. Gerald crossed the line, there was no helping him. So, now you know that if you want to get involved again, you can expect the same thing to happen. Without question.’
Hislop flipped. He grabbed Troy by the back of the neck and forced his face up against Gerald's.
‘Look what you've done!’ he cried. ‘Don't you care what you've done?!’
‘That's enough Hislop,’ said Gauche. ‘Let him go.’
Hislop released Troy who staggered to his feet, shaken.
‘Better him than wiping out some cop. We're not that stupid,’ Troy said.
‘OK that's enough out of you,’ said Gauche. ‘You're gonna be in a world of pain. Do you believe in karma? Hislop go see Reece.’
‘Reece can wait until tomorrow,’ said Hislop, ‘he's not going anywhere. He'll be waiting for us, he'll be clean. But someone's got to tell the grandmother. I don't think I can do it.’
‘I'll get Rawdon to pay her a visit. Go home, have a shower, try and forget about today. Gerald's not your responsibility, never was.’
Instead of going directly home he decided to walk a lap around the estate in an attempt to clear his mind. He saw rival gangs loitering here and there, continuing to go about their business, not even scared of dealing in front of him. A statement had been made. He hated them and yet he realised Gerald was once one of them too. Maybe Gerald was the same as all the rest. But maybe they were all like him - just kids who needed proper help and guidance. Or they were all psychopaths. Hislop took one last glance behind him as he left the estate and caught sight of two rival gangs, ten on each side, formed in a huddle, hurling punches at each other, grunting and groaning. Hislop let it pass. Not today. And what did it matter if he got involved anyhow? They'd only be at each other’s throats again the next day. It was insanity.
He hit the pub - propping up the bar, still, quiet, throwing back pint after pint as punters buzzed around him. Laughter rang out intermittently as strangers bonded over the pool table and old drunks slept in booths.
Then he went home and tried his best to be quiet as he entered the building. Something told him his wife knew he was there but was giving him a wide berth because, as he crashed about the kitchen searching for coffee, she made no appearance. He was relieved. He gave up on the coffee and with a shaky hand drank five glasses of water. He grabbed a bag of tortilla chips from a cupboard and climbed the stairs. He walked into Stanley's room, closed the door, and took a seat on the carpet by the cot.
He prised open the crisps and began stuffing them in his mouth, crumbs falling from his lips, scattering around his feet as he sat cross-legged. He put the bag to one side, still munching away, got to his feet and arched his head over the cot to peer in at his son who was ensconced in a blanket, fast asleep.
Hislop picked up Stanley and carried him around the room on unsteady feet. Stanley opened his eyes and yawned. He pawed at Hislop's chin and looked straight into his father's eyes. The baby seemed to smile.
‘You see me,’ said Hislop in astonishment. ‘I don't believe it, you see me.’
He hugged the baby. He hugged him tight. Too tight. Stanley wriggled around and tried to cry but his breath was trapped in his diaphragm. He began to turn blue as his father continued to squeeze the life out of him. The sun began to rise on another day, a day like all the rest, where the weak were swallowed by the strong and no one dared to think twice.
Brothers
James beat his chest as he read Psalm 56. Michael chastised his flesh with a hazel switch as Simon wept. Placid Daniel sat with his breviary open on his lap, head bowed solemnly. There was the click clack of beads as four brothers, kneeling in a row, recited the rosary.
Paul stood apart from the others and tried to figure out what it meant. They had been expecting a miracle, not this catastrophe. What were they going to do?
***
The sixteen monks lived in a house at the end of a peninsula on the west coast of Ireland, fifty feet above the roiling Atlantic. Three storeys of stone roasted red by the corrosive spray of the salt water. The rooms inside were no more than cells, six feet by eight. Each contained a rough-hewn cot with a hessian cover, a straight-backed chair and a small side table with a ewer for water and an earthen cup. A piss pot sat under the bed. There was a crucifix by the door and a peg to hang a cowl but no mirror.
Sixteen rooms on the top two floors and a meeting area on the ground floor with an oak table and benching on two sides. Adjoining rooms served as pantry, kitchen and washroom. Outhouses built onto the main building provided living quarters for the two servants who saw to the monks’ minimal needs.
The winds, icy even in July, whipped the skirts of the monks’ robes against their bare shins. An errant blast would lift the robe over the head of an unsuspecting brother and reveal once white underpants, perished from wear and grey from washing in cold water. The rain came in sheets or as bullets, from above, from below and sometimes horizontal.
The nearest civilisation was five miles away. A civilisation of sorts, a cluster of houses with a petrol station, a shop, three pubs and a church. A place where one could purchase a can of motor oil, a pint of stout, a packet of chocolate digestives and have a mass said for a loved one but not a place to buy a book.
The people in this isolated community tended to their cows and sheep, sowed and reaped a scant harvest and invested their money shrewdly. They spoke well of nothing and nobody and begrudged everything. Sitting on their bar stools, they connived and chuntered, spat out their grievances and farted in loud harrumphs or syrupy fizzles. The world turned and life was doled out in the same bitter instalments. They paid no heed to the abstinent and abstemious men in the big house who offered themselves to God to atone for the sins of man.
***
Brother Bartholomew was the head monk or elder. Fluffy white hair around his ears rimmed a broad dome like a round hill emerging from the clouds. There was not a wrinkle on his face, not a line on his forehead and his eyes were blue and clear. He would have been a boon for advertising men seeking to promote the anti-aging properties of face creams. Maybe not the ideal candidate to boost the sale of shampoo but Bartholomew had no time for frippery. This was not a man concerned with outer appearance.
Brother Dominic was second in command and something of an éminence grise. His skin was as lined as the hide of a crocodile, wrinkles that begat wrinkles in a network of junctions and tributaries. The high colour of his face was offset by tightly wound grey hair that clung to his head like ash on hot coals. Dominic had been a tax consultant in secular life and Bartholomew often drew comparisons with Matthew the Apostle, once a tax collector for Herod Antipas who refused to convict the famous Galilean. “Matthew converted from scoundrel to devoted disciple,” Bartholomew would remark in jest but Dominic never rose to the bait. He was a difficult man to read and his was a watchful presence in the house.
Brother Bernard was number three in the pecking order. Good natured and diligent, he served as general factotum and kept things ticking over. At one time a primary school teacher, Bernard drew on that experience to manage the thirteen junior monks. They were a mixed bag, much like liquorice allsorts, sweet with a bitter aftertaste. There was excitable Simon, impressionable Martin, flighty Leo and zealous Michael, always first with his hand up when the elder was handing out prayer duties.
Each day followed the same schedule of contemplation and prayer. They met first thing at five in the morning, came together for a meal at one and again at eight in the evening for the elder's homily, which was rounded off by a final hour of prayer before bed. These were not monks who brewed beer as others had done since the Middle Ages. "Alcohol," Bartholomew observed, "gives rise to flights of fancy through the distorting lens of intoxication and is not compatible with a life of meditation." Nor was there any place for sniggering or horsing around. They were there to seek guidance from God on how best to praise him and ensure salvation.
Spiritual life was about sacrifice, not hedonism and the pleasure principle. "You can forget about dissatisfaction, alienation and all that malarkey,” Bartholomew informed his acolytes. “Less soul searching and more soul affirmation.” They adhered to strict rules, codified in a weighty tome that was locked away in a trunk in one of the outhouses. Bartholomew kept the key in the voluminous pockets of his robe. What else did he keep there? More than likely beads and a prayer book, less likely loose change, a corkscrew or a comb.
The novices received absolution for their sins though they had little opportunity to commit any serious transgression. Bartholomew listened patiently to their litany of minor offences and handed out bespoke penance for each misdemeanour. James coveted Bernard’s onyx prayer beads. Leo was two prayers short of his assigned target. Simon borrowed Peter’s sandals without his permission. Michael laughed at Daniel when he tripped on the stairs.
There was no one better than the bald monk at holding forth on the ins and outs of sin and forgiveness. "There is nothing to be gained from ranking sins," he advised them. "Cardinal, venial, omission, commission, it's all a matter of semantics. Sin is sin, simple as that. Never denigrate those you think have fallen short of the mark for if you do, you are committing the sin of pride."
No visits were permitted from family or friends. The world beyond the house was off limits. The only lay people the young brothers encountered were the two servants, a rural salt of the earth and his wife. One day, Bartholomew saw the woman bowing and scraping before Peter who was the youngest monk with a face ravaged by ferocious acne. Bartholomew noted Peter’s look of smug satisfaction.
He tackled the issue head-on that evening. "So, our young votaries believe they should be held in high esteem as blessed oracles by the housemaid." Bartholomew laid it on good and thick, he was like a dog with a bone when it came to the monks' shortcomings. "If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times, there's nothing worse than the sin of pride." He slapped the table to emphasise his point. "It leads to daydreaming and feelings of self-importance." Peter’s pimply puss turned bright red with embarrassment. The others looked away, not wanting to catch the elder’s disapproving eye.
On the first Sunday of every month, Bartholomew played host to a select group of outsiders. As soon as the visitors arrived, the junior monks were confined to their rooms and told to pray for their souls. Businessmen, industrialists and aristocrats came from afar to prostrate themselves before Bartholomew, kissing his feet, his pink cheeks and bald head. They repented past wrongdoing and thoughtlessness, sobbing when they spoke of the innocent victims they had subjugated and oppressed. At the end of each session, the hem of Bartholomew’s robe was wringing wet with sinners’ tears. In return for his forgiveness, they handed him donations in brown envelopes.
It was a trial for the elder but he had to keep the show on the road. Otherwise, he would have to shut up shop and release Martin, Leo and the others into the wild. The hapless creatures would never survive the vicissitudes of an authentic life. Daniel didn’t know his right foot from his left. The boy often allowed an errant thread in his robe go untended until the cloth unravelled and he was half-naked. Imagine Simon trying to buy a loaf of bread; he was clueless. Money was needed, even a two-bit devotional operation required funds and robes didn’t grow on trees.
This particular Sunday had been a gruelling session. Bartholomew was dealing with the last penitent in the queue, a socialite caked in make-up. The woman was all over him. “Be sure Brother to put in a good word for me with The Redeemer.” She smiled slyly and handed him a package that he slipped into his robe with the other donations. There should be enough to patch the hole in the roof with money to spare.
Afterwards, Bartholomew was restless, bothered by the rotten deeds he had just forgiven. He checked the contents of the package the socialite had given him and felt the old pull. No, not now, he told himself, leave it until later. He locked everything in the small safe he kept under his cot and joined the others downstairs to give his sermon.
"Such humiliation," he began, "if you only knew the sort of people I have to deal with." Bartholomew never opened up like this about the visitors. The young brothers eyed him nervously, even Dominic looked surprised. The elder realised he was crossing a line. "We must love the sinner,” he said, “understand the depth of his degradation and love him all the more for his perversity.'' He scanned the faces around the table and knew he was back on track.
"Accept the sinner’s ingratitude for it reflects the torment of his soul and the self-hatred he must endure. Remember too that by forgiving, you set yourself above the sinner but do not be judgemental. Who among you is so virtuous that he can hold others to account. Everyone strays and evil is only good that has lost its way, its moorings untied so it drifts without guidance." His young charges stared at him in wonder.
***
Paul was in his room, thinking about Brother Bartholomew. He was a great man, could there be anyone greater? The elder's soul must be gleaming white, incandescent with holiness. Luke said you’d have to wear special protective glasses if you wanted to look at the elder’s soul. Luke bothered Brother Bartholomew all the time with requests for extra instruction. Noel and Michael were worse, trying to get into the elder’s good books, coming up with questions and doubts so they could spend more time with him. How can you know you loved God enough, they would ask, or how can you tell if your living sacrifice was good enough. It was disgraceful the way they behaved but Paul knew he shouldn’t think badly of them. The elder had no favourites, he loved everyone equally.
Brother Bartholomew must be worn out from all the confessions he heard. Brother Bernard said he was almost too forgiving, taking on himself all the failings of the unworthy and crippled in spirit. “The elder is like blotting paper for sins,” that’s what Brother Bernard said. Paul had learned a lot from the elder. He learned that the unenlightened were not wicked but worn down by failure and distracted by injustice and temptation. The elder was able to put himself in the shoes of the most humble. It wasn’t right that he was at the beck and call of Luke and the others.
“Do not look down on unbelievers or castigate the wealthy for their avarice,” Paul repeated the elder’s words as a mantra to cleanse his mind. Pray for the atheists, the ones who try to find holes and mock believers. There were no contradictions, only things beyond man's finite comprehension. The elder was the most positive man Paul had ever met but sometimes he seemed so sad. When he gave his sermons, he was animated and filled with enormous energy, his eyes gleaming with fierce intensity. “See how the elder has been transported to a heavenly state,” Brother Dominic would say to them. Paul hoped that one day he could reach such a state of sanctity.
Joining the order meant renouncing your will and Brother Bartholomew expected nothing less than total self-abnegation. That was fine with Paul, he was there to get away from himself. The monastic way of life took some getting used to but now he couldn’t imagine anything else. “Good job security,” his father had remarked. “Free accommodation and no deadlines to worry about.” The quietness and constant reflection may not be for everyone but it suited Paul well enough. The food was nothing to write home about unless you liked rice and beans, watery pea soup and boiled mackerel. That said, the outside world had been no picnic.
At school, he was picked on and bullied, his pocket money stolen and his head shoved down the toilet. He had one friend, Samuel, who made light of everything. When he told him he was planning on becoming a monk, Samuel had a good laugh. "Rather you then me," he said. "I have a fear of enclosed holy spaces, a case of cloister-phobia." Samuel was an unbeliever and Paul made sure to include him in his prayers.
He asked the elder how they were serving humanity in such an isolated place. "You have an enquiring mind," Brother Bartholomew replied, clearly impressed by Paul’s question. "Be patient and all will be revealed. When the time is right, you will go forth and save sinners but first you must know yourself for how else can you teach others?" That made sense to Paul who was in no hurry, happy enough to get to know himself.
Before joining Brother Bartholomew’s crew, Paul was in a different house. They were a queer lot, great men for fasts and silence, not a peep out of them. Textbook ascetics as thin as rakes. Paul was given instruction by Brother John the gimp who had only one leg. Brother John received visits from an angel who was a regular chatterbox. Paul asked what the angel looked like. "Oh, the angel takes on many forms," John said, "sometimes an aphid, sometimes a dust mote, a squirrel or a saucer." As for topics of conversation, they were diverse but a common theme was the nature of mystery. "We have discussed the rules of cricket, cubism, the economy, thermodynamics and electromagnetism." Paul wondered if they had got around to the mystery of three deities in one entity. "That never came up for it's not a mystery to those in the know," Brother John told him. Paul was glad to get out of there. He had landed on his feet in Brother Bartholomew's house and, every day, he counted his blessings.
***
Bartholomew folded his hands behind his head and stretched out on the cot. Love the sinner. How often had he preached that? If the sinner is covered in dripping sores, wash his wounds and apply ointment. If foul and malodorous, embrace him closer and breathe in his halitosis as if it were the sweetest smelling perfume. Love all the vicious and self-serving sinners, every last one of them, in their thousands and millions for each one is precious.
What could you do but laugh? The piffle he had spouted beggared belief. Hugging the diseased, smooching psychopaths and poltroons. He felt giddy and let himself really go with an attack of the giggles. Of course, he omitted the important proviso. He never said, "It’s all in the abstract so there's no need to worry boys, you’re safe here cut off from the real world. There’s no question of putting any of this guff to the test."
He didn't have to tell Dominic; the tight-lipped old dog knew the score. Even amiable Bernard, maybe the kids too, all of them in on the act and staying schtum. But that was going too far, those dunderhead novices needed someone to do their thinking for them. Maybe not Paul, he was different from the rest of them. Paul had his head screwed on straight. But the day would come, even for the other saps, when the penny dropped as it had long ago for Bartholomew. When reality and all its harsh truths had to be faced.
***
In one of his sermons, Brother Bartholomew said the believing fool attained the highest calling. Paul didn't get what that meant and brought it up with Brother Dominic. Instead of providing an answer, the older monk asked, "What is it you want to achieve in this house?" Paul was not expecting this and didn’t know what to say.
Brother Dominic had more questions. What did Paul think was the purpose of continual contemplation? Was it a placebo? Was the menu of devotion so bland there was nothing he wouldn’t swallow, even a main course of unjustified guilt with a dessert of eternity in paradise? Surely generosity was better than charity and tolerance preferable to forgiveness. Where was the logic, the rationale beyond belief? Perhaps the only realistic belief was belief in sin itself. Was it an experiment? Was Paul going along out of curiosity? "Without faith," he concluded, "you're on your own. Do you think you can handle that?" Paul decided Brother Dominic had been testing him.
It was only natural for the young monks to think Brother Bartholomew was a saint. He was so wise and emanated such calmness and certainty. They often discussed it among themselves. "Brother Bartholomew is definitely a saint," Luke said. Noel and Michael nodded their agreement, "The best saint ever." When Brother Dominic got wind of this, he set them straight. "In order to be considered a saint, it’s necessary to perform a miracle." Then Brother Bartholomew would perform a miracle, that shouldn’t be a problem for him. "A miracle, a miracle," they begged him. The elder demanded that they be quiet. "Which miracle will you perform?" Noel asked. "Go to your rooms and pray," he ordered. Paul had never seen the elder so cross.
***
Bartholomew flung open the door to his room. He was beside himself with rage. The resounding crash as the door slammed shut did nothing to quell the violence erupting within him. He upturned the chair and the table with the ewer, spilling water everywhere. They wouldn’t leave him alone with their “show me Brother Bartholomew”. “Show me how to pray.” “Show me how to honour God.” “Show me how to tie the belt on my robe.” I’ll show them all right. That simpering Simon, he was simple all right, as simple as they come. And Martin with his puppy dog moon face. “How should we praise the Lord?” Don’t bother, it won’t do you any good. They wanted a miracle did they? He stood in front of the crucifix and glared at the pendant figure.
That two-faced conniving Dominic had put them up to this, the sly snake was stirring the pot. So he was expected to magic something up, sleight of hand, a conjuring trick. Pull a rabbit out of a hat; is that what they wanted? Maybe he would saw Noel in half, it would serve him right. “Which miracle will you perform Brother Bartholomew?” The ungrateful wretches.
He had to get a grip. This was a cushy number and he mustn’t do anything drastic. Dominic was a chancer, barely in the door and on the make. What could you expect from a tax consultant? “I heard the call later in life,” Dominic claimed. Pull the other one. He hadn’t put in the time like Bartholomew, a career monk, forty years in the business. The elder wasn’t getting any younger and there weren't many options on the outside. He hadn’t put enough aside and now he would have to give Dominic a cut. That wrinkled so-and-so, they would have to come to some agreement. It wasn't time to pack it in yet.
The kids though were an awful pain, buzzing in his ear non-stop. Fobbing them off with a devotional dozen didn’t work. Tie them up in cycles of rosaries and they came back looking for more. All that inadequacy and neediness, there was only so much he could put up with. Thanks be to God for the pills. Where would he be without the pills?
Bending down, he opened the safe and took out the package. He righted the table and sat on the chair. The package was flat, only one plastic bag left and that was half-empty. No matter, he had a session with the rich hypocrites the following week and would get another supply. He shook the bag into his cupped hand. Two, no he needed three, this was a crisis. He was sorry now he knocked over the ewer, it was easier to swallow the pills with water. If it was a miracle they wanted, then a miracle they would get.
***
Paul would never forget that morning as long as he lived. They were sitting at the table when Brother Dominic entered the room. "The elder is dead," he announced. How could that be? "But he’s immortal," Luke cried. "No, you're wrong there," Brother Dominic corrected him, "it’s the soul that’s immortal." Why was he saying this? Brother Dominic pointed to the pantry, "If you need proof, go inside."
They were in a tizzy and couldn’t stay still, scurrying back and forth. Peter clung onto Noel’s belt, Luke was shaking like a leaf and held the hem of Michael’s robe. They sidled in a line towards the pantry and turned away, squealing with fear. Simon fell to his knees, howling with pain and grief. Paul put his fingers in his ears to block out the noise, went to the open door and looked inside. Brother Bartholomew was laid out on a blanket, arms folded across his chest, rosary beads wrapped around his hands. His eyes were closed, his mouth slack and his face so terribly pale. Brother Dominic put a hand on Paul’s shoulder and led him away. "You must tell the others."
Later, the young monks were upstairs, packed into two rooms, not wanting to be alone. Bereft of initiative or common sense, they were helpless. All they had was the reassurance of familiar psalms and prayers. Paul felt a great sadness. There was no point staying, he decided, it was good while it lasted but now he had to find another house.
The sound of doors banging came from below. Somebody was climbing the stairs. Paul went to see what was happening. One by one, the others followed. Brother Dominic was standing at the top of the stairs. His arms were raised and he began reciting adjurations in Latin. He stepped aside and all was revealed. Brother Bartholomew came forth, eyes flashing, messianic. “Yes boys, I’m back, back from the dead. It’s the miracle you wanted. I’m here to lead you on the path of discovery”.
***
Paul was sitting at the table with Brother Dominic. It was nearly ten o’clock, long past their normal bed-time but these were exceptional circumstances.
“That was a turn-up for the books.”
“Yes, it was,” Paul agreed.
“And I would say it satisfies the requirements of a miracle. What do you think?” Dominic was back to asking questions.
“I would say so,” Paul answered.
“A toast, then.” Dominic raised his cup of water. “To Saint Bartholomew.”
“There’s going to be some changes around here,” Dominic continued. “You can’t expect to keep a bona fide saint locked away in this back of beyond. Bartholomew will be moving on, not immediately but soon enough.” This was a relaxed Brother Dominic, not the saturnine figure who had put the wind up the junior monks. “Yours truly will be taking over the reins and I’ll need a good man as my lieutenant. What do you say, are you up to the task?”
“What about Brother Bernard?”
“Ah, good old Bernard.” Dominic nodded, his lined face giving nothing away. “Bernard will always be a water carrier, I’m looking for someone with a bit more get up and go.”
The first thing that came into Paul’s head was his father’s advice to never look a gift horse in the mouth. Was it right to look on a miracle as a gift horse? He felt Dominic’s eyes on him. “Brother Bartholomew said I was to prepare myself for going forth and saving sinners.”
“Leave the saving of sinners to others.” Dominic waved his hand dismissively. “Your place is here, helping me turn this place into a going concern. Time to tone down the preachiness. We need to focus on increasing the returns from forgiveness.”
Paul was not sure what to make of this.
“Don’t worry my boy, all will be revealed in the fullness of time.” This pally version of Brother Dominic was going to take some getting used to. “As for the food in this gaff, I don’t know about you but I’m sick of rice and beans. No reason why management shouldn’t eat from a different menu.” The elder-to-be leaned forward in his chair. “Come on now, I need an answer. Are you ready and willing?”
Paul took his time before committing himself. What had he to lose, it wasn’t as if there was anything better on offer. “I believe I am, Brother Dominic,” he said.
“Glad to hear it.” Dominic raised his cup. “Welcome on board, Brother Paul.”
Cinderella
“Oh, come on, Neville,” the grandmother said, tugging querulously at him again. “I’ve paid good money for this and you’re going to love it. Joyfullest place on the planet, they call it.”
I met little Neville’s eye. Without diminishing my beaming smile I shot him a look of sympathy, and he relaxed his backward pull enough for his grandmother to drag him along with the queue.
“Granny?” he said. “Granny? Why is she smiling?”
The woman glanced round at me. “Well, because she’s happy, of course. It’s a magical place, and she’s a magical princess, Snow White or something. So of course she’s smiling. Let’s start off with an ice-cream, then you can tell me what you want to do first.”
“Can we get one for her?” Neville asked, indicating me.
“All right, if you want, but I don’t suppose they’re allowed.”
“Would you like an ice-cream?” Neville asked me.
“No, thank you,” I beamed.
“Why not?”
“I—I’m not hungry right now,” I lied. “Have a totally magical day.”
“Why are you smiling?”
I smile because I need to pay the rent. Because I need to eat. Because I dropped out of theatre school when my uncle’s business went bust, and I can’t go home without facing, all over again, the reasons I had to leave.
“What’s your name?” Neville asked, giving up on his last question.
“Cinderella.”
“No,” he frowned. “Not the pretend name. What’s your real name?”
“I’m Cinderella in more ways than one,” I said lightly. At the end of my shift, face aching, feet swollen, dress soaked with sweat and smeared with candyfloss and children’s body fluids, I would face two hours of cleaning and laundering, raking out the cinders of the day’s magic and fantasy.
***
Your cheek muscles improve, with time, and you can even get promoted to a supervisory role over the newer recruits. You have some good ideas for cutting costs, for improving peripheral sales or raising customer satisfaction figures, and your acting talents stand you in good stead until you no longer require them. One way and another, by the end of twelve years I earned a good wage. I had a daughter of my own, just old enough to thoroughly enjoy the world of fairytale fantasy for herself. It all seemed worth the struggle, observing her innocent belief in the magic of make-believe, granting her constant greed for costumes and candies. My little Helena-Jo already saw herself as part of the theme park, in the role of a sort of mini-celebrity, posing in fancy dress for everything from adverts to customers’ selfies. Maybe I could find some vicarious fulfilment of my half-forgotten childhood ambitions through my daughter’s successes. Helena-Jo disported herself with a sort of coy brashness, a knowingly infantile demeanour that deserved to become a brand in itself. Even her tantrums had power to charm: one of them very nearly went viral on social media.
“Life is good,” I said, zipping my little VIP into a new Thumbelina costume.
“I’m good,” Helena-Jo retorted, sticking her tongue out at me.
“Sure, princess,” I replied. “Now, do please stay with Samurai Girl and don’t go off in the crowds.”
“I hate Sammai Girl,” Helena-Jo lisped. “She’s a poopy-face.”
“I know, honey, but I’m ever so busy today. I’m doing the training session with those new costume workers.” The temporary summer employees, bane of my life, took half a day’s training and often lasted less than a week.
“What I want to see is a positive attitude,” I instructed this new group. “No excuses. Never stop smiling even when your feet are blistered and your head’s splitting. And commitment, of course, After you clock off, you stick around, pitch in and help with cleanup. Be professionals. Go over and above.”
“Do you pay us over and above if we do?” someone asked.
“Do you want this job?” I countered, and she fell silent.
“Twelve years ago,” I told them, “I was standing where you are now. I didn’t get where I am today by complaining or giving up. I stayed on my feet, smiling through everything from flu to fallen arches. And you can too if you’ve got what it takes. This is an amazing little world of magic and fantasies, and you are here to make the dreams of little children come true.”
“May I ask what were your childhood dreams?” one of the trainees asked—a nice-looking boy, name-tagged Nev, one I had already mentally registered as a possible costume-companion for Helena-Jo’s Pirate Girl outfit.
“I—I wanted to be an actress,” I found myself admitting, with a feeling of surprise—a sense of reopening things forgotten. “Why do you ask?” I added sharply.
Nev shrugged. “Excuse me. The habit of curiosity; I’m studying journalism.”
“Well, you won’t be doing any journalism here,” I said briskly. “You’re in for a busy summer. Sixty hours a week on shift, plus your preparation and takedown tasks. The work ethic we look for is a willingness to sacrifice physical comfort and wellbeing for the benefit of our customers. And this is a business model that really works: profits are rising every year, and there are good prospects for those of you who stay with us.”
“Survival of the fittest,” Nev remarked helpfully.
“Yes. Absolutely!” I mentally added this to my repertoire for future pep-talks.
As I had hoped, Helena-Jo liked Nev and expressed herself happy to stay by him the following weekend while he manned the Pirate Ship, our newest and most popular feature.
“I gonna have my own ship when I’m all growed up,” I heard her telling him. At eight years old, she used words like “growed” for cuteness rather than necessity. Everyone found it adorable.
“A pirate ship?” Nev inquired almost absent-mindedly. I paused to listen, making a mental note to speak to Nev later. Helena-Jo should receive better-quality interaction, full attention, proper validation and praise.
“A princess ship. I gonna be a princess. And you gonna be a prince in my palace.”
“Oh, I’m not a prince. I’m going to be something much more ordinary.”
Helena-Jo usually hated a contradiction, but curiosity took over: “What are you then?”
“An investigative journalist.”
“A vestative gerbil?” I could hear her trying to charm him, but he seemed devoid of normal sentiment.
“Someone who finds out about injustices and makes documentaries about it.”
“What’s justices?” Helena-Jo didn’t want to know. She just needed more attention.
“Injustices? Unfair things that happen.”
“Like what fings?”
“Like...” Nev paused. “Like workers being paid below minimum wage, or not allowed to take proper breaks.”
“I can take bakes. Cos I’m portant. You can’t.”
“Exactly.”
I gasped. Turning and rounding the plastic prow, I came back to face Nev, eye to eye.
“Go to my office,” I ordered. My voice shook with rage, but he moved slowly, almost casually, showing neither fear nor shame.
“Honey,” I said to Helena-Jo, “you come back to Reception and sit with Lee for a bit.”
Helena-Jo can always tell when she loses the limelight. She began to jump up and down. “I don’t wanna! I don’t wanna! I hate Lee! Lee made of poo and pee!”
“Please, princess,” I begged. “I’ll get you a present. A big present.”
Pouting, she came along. I settled her with an ice-cream in the ticket office, then went to settle with Nev.
“Well?” I said, once inside my office.
He met my eye calmly, too calmly, and I finally recognised that feeling I got from him: the sense of someone watching me, someone who had seen me before.
“Who are you?” I asked harshly.
“Nobody,” he said. “Nobody as yet. This job—I was doing this place for my senior thesis. The joyfullest place on the planet.”
“So where have I seen you before?”
“Oh, I was dragged in here as a child. I remember seeing this frightened, lonely Cinderella desperately trying to smile. I read that story again when I got home, and I found I really had seen Cinderella in the flesh.”
“So?” I said. “I’m not Cinderella any more. Am I?”
“No,” he answered. “You’re not Cinderella now. You’re Lady Tremaine.”
“Leave,” I told him, “before I call security.”
He left, and I have never seen him since. I took an iced tea and wandered out among the reassuring scene of my success in life, my magic domain. But everywhere around me I saw Cinderellas, graciously greeting and serving, gracefully picking up litter, smiling by rule at the shrill, demanding children and the parents who had paid for fairy stories and would take nothing less.
END
Jim Bartlett has been fortunate to have a number of stories, ranging from flash to novella, featured in Fiction on the Web, Ontologica, Fewer Than 500, Fairlight Books, CrimeSpree Magazine, Friday Flash Fiction, Spillwords Press, and a number of other wonderful publications. Though mentally he strolls a warm California beach with his wife and golden retriever (shhh, she doesn’t know she’s a dog), they live on a special little island in the Pacific Northwest. You can find more of his stories at: https://islandtales.net/stories/ |
ISLE OF PALMS
Lovers since the beginning of time.
Sitting there she remembers the very first time she took the kayak out, and how her troubles and worries fell like a tropical rain from her shoulders. Since then she’s made it a daily routine – no, ritual – to come back each time they once again begin to overwhelm.
After moments that seem like hours, she takes a deep breath and finally opens her eyes. The tiny island’s beauty with its sugar-white sand, turquoise waters, and swaying trees, steals her breath, and she feels as though she could stay here, resting on this kayak, the swell breaking behind her, forever and ever.
This is her sanctuary. A haven of serenity and peace. By all counts, here, on this beach, on this isolated little isle, her weary soul should be at rest, her mind settled into the comfort of calm.
Yet today something lies unsettled. Different. She feels the sharp edge of the turbulence of uncertainty stirring within, and it warns her of a brewing storm somewhere just beyond the horizon ready to unleash its fury.
She tries to shake it off. Find her normal breathing rhythm. But a group of seagulls, their voices riding a light breeze that carries the fragrance of a patch of hibiscus not far up the way, begin to cackle and caw, almost taunting her as they haggle over the remains of a clam or crab. Wanting more. Wanting more.
There’s something familiar in their cry. What, she’s not sure, but whatever it might be cinches her gut into a knot, triggering memories better left in the shadows. As they get louder, more insistent, her gaze shifts to the ugly mark just below her shoulder. It’s purple and swollen, and the sight of the bruise gives rise to the hair along her arm and a chill racing down her back. She takes a deep swallow, her body now tingling with a sudden sense of urgency. An edge of panic. She stands, drawing the paddle from the water, and takes a tentative step, the warm sand caressing her toes, the afternoon sun warming her cheeks.
But she can’t afford to give in to their temptation, their yearning to keep her in their embrace. Paddle in hand, she begins trudging her way up the rise, her legs moving ever so slowly, as though something pulls her from behind. At first, each stride is a struggle, but little by little fear gives her strength, and her pace quickens.
There’s a row of palm trees at the top of the beach, their fronds swaying in the breeze. Yet, to her, their wave seems more a beckoning. A call of hope. Of escape to a harbor of refuge. And she knows she must find her way there. Tuck into the safety of their shadows.
She begins to run, as the sensation of darkness is creeping up ever closer from behind. She can now feel its hot breath upon her shoulder and it drives her to push harder, faster, her heart becoming a thumping base drum, her lungs burning with fire. She throws the paddle – it’s only slowing her down – and stretches out her legs. Yet when she looks up, the trees seem no closer. Rather they seem to retreat with her harried approach.
She refuses to give up and the next time she looks she’s halfway up the beach, freedom just a few steps away. But someone or something grabs her hair from behind and spins her around. A fist, as if dropping from the crystal blue sky, strikes, and in an explosion of pain and light, she falls to the tattered carpet, one eye sealed shut, her cheek already swelling. When she looks up with her good eye, Clyde, her husband, unshaven and brows furrowed, still wearing the same sleeveless sweat-stained t-shirt and angry face he wore yesterday, glares down at her.
“Where yous think yer goin’ woman? I duns told yous, my beer’s empty and the game’s about to start.”
He shifts on his unsteady feet, then leans down, poking a finger in her face. He starts to say something when, from behind him in the living room, gruff men’s voices cackle and caw that their cans are empty, too. They’ll be wanting more. Wanting more.
“Sounds like Jake and Sam be needin’ one, too. Git your ass in the kitchen and do yer duty.” He uses the finger to push back her forehead, then stands, his fiery gaze still raining down upon her. “And bring us sum more peanuts,” he shouts, before turning back to join his friends.
Putting a hand to her eye, she pulls herself up, and limps into the kitchen, where a soft breeze blows in through the screen door. It carries the fragrance of her hibiscus planted out in the back yard, her only connection to the ocean she’s never seen. There she lingers for a moment, standing with a hand to the refrigerator’s handle, allowing her bare feet to take in the coolness of the worn linoleum floor. Slowly, she turns her gaze to the screen.
But it’s then a cheer rises up from the front room. The game has started. For her, it’s now.
Or never.
Without knowing how she got there, she finds herself opening the gate at the back fence, the screen door slamming behind her. She hurries out into the alley and to the rear of the garage. The door is open, the car inviting, but the keys hang from a hook next to the refrigerator. She can’t go back. There’s no going back.
She starts right, but stops, reversing and heading two buildings up, where she tosses her sweater onto the side of the pavement in the weeds. A distraction to buy time; it was only slowing her down anyway.
She spins back around and races to the end of the alley, making a left on First Street. She’s running now, hoping to never again feel that hot breath on her shoulder. By the time she arrives at the intersection, she’s gasping for air, and her heart is trying to beat its way out of her chest.
Here she must go left, no, wait, right! She darts across the busy road against the light, oblivious to the honking of horns, the squealing of skidding tires, and the vulgar shouts of drivers recommending she make better choices with her pedestrian ways.
She continues to run, two blocks, then three, finally turning left down a street whose name rings a bell. She wobbles more than walks now, her legs nothing but rubber, her feet red and raw. She stops here and there, leaning against trees or fences, hoping to catch her breath, stop the burning in her lungs.
An hour passes, then two. She begins to doubt herself; she thought she knew the way. But none of the street names here sound familiar, allowing the shadow of dread to seep into her bones.
Somewhere into the third hour, the sun nearly done for the day, she stumbles to an intersection, legs and lungs ready to quit, though her will is still strong. She steps up to the sign, her heart jumping.
Shoreline Avenue.
From deep in her pocket she pulls a wadded receipt from the grocery store, an address and name penciled in on the back side.
1541 Shoreline.
With newfound energy her legs carry her down the street, racing by house after house until a small rambler in need of paint, a small child’s bike out in the driveway, catches her eye.
1541.
Shaking, she makes her way to the door and knocks, not quite believing she is really doing this. From inside she hears the giggles of at least two kids, a woman telling them to hush, as she needs to get the door.
The porch light comes on and a moment later the door opens. The woman who answers is wearing a Midwest Mart uniform, her nametag proclaiming her to be “Karen,” and her hair is up in a bun. Though the light is harsh, Darcy recognizes her immediately, as this was exactly how she was dressed the first time they met.
Darcy shakes her head. Of course she was. She was the checker that pulled her aside when she noticed the cuts and bruises Darcy wore that day.
Behind Karen, in the living room, a few toys strewn about, two kids, maybe seven or eight, race across the sofa, shouting in glee as they jump off the end and disappear into the hall. The woman starts to turn, but can’t pull her bulging eyes off Darcy. Finally, after a long moment of silence, she gives off a whistle followed by a “tsk.”
“Good lord, girl. Would you look at you!” Her gaze drops to Darcy’s bloodied feet. “And you’re barefoot. Git yerself in here, let’s not let the flies in.”
Karen pulls more than leads Darcy into the front room and then the kitchen. She flings open the freezer and grabs some ice, wrapping it in a dishtowel that had been hanging from the cupboard door. She puts it to Darcy’s eye, then places Darcy’s hand up to hold it. “Keep that there for a bit, missy. You’ve got a heck of a shiner. No use making it worse.” She leans over, grabs a couple of paper towels, wets them, and then wipes a small trickle of blood off Darcy’s lip.
“You done the right thing, Darcy. This is all gonna work out. Just have to give it some time.” She turns toward a hall that leads off the back of the kitchen. “Mama, can you come in here?” Then she turns back, looking Darcy straight in the eyes. “Okay, Frank, my hubbie, is working the second shift today. Gotta git them hours when you can. And I kent afford to miss any more work, they’re already cutting hours at the store, so I’m gonna call someone to come and git you. Mama will be here with you while you wait...okay?”
Darcy nods, but is lost in a trance. Nothing makes sense to her, her body aches from head to toe, and she’s just run away from everything she knew.
A tiny slim woman, traces of gray in her hair, a smile on her face, steps into the kitchen. “Looks like you tangled with a tiger, young lady. But you come to the right place. We’ll get you fixed up, don’t you worry none. I’m Emma. I guess you’re Darcy. Karen’s been telling me about you.”
Darcy nods, but once again it’s from deep in a fog.
“Mama, I gotta go. Kent be late again. Call Willie over at the shelter. He’ll send someone right over.”
Emma nods and gives Karen a kiss on the cheek. “Git, you, I’ll watch the kids and make sure our girl here is taken care of.”
Karen squeezes Darcy’s arm, wipes a tear, and heads for the door. “It’s all gonna be okay. Just wait and see...”
As she leaves, Emma pulls out a cell and punches in a familiar number.
“Hey Willie. Emma. Can you swing by? We got someone here that really, really needs you guys pronto. That’s great...thanks. You’re a peach.”
She turns to Darcy. “Willie runs the Isla de Palmera shelter. No one, I mean noooo one will ever find you. And you’ll get the best of care, Sweetie.”
“Is-la day...what?”
“Isla de Palmera. It’s Spanish...for Island of Palms.”
Kori Frazier Morgan received her MFA in fiction writing from West Virginia University. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Shenandoah, SN Review, Rubbertop Review, Switchback, Prick of the Spindle, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Forge, and other publications. She is the author of the chapbook Bone China Girls: A Poetic Account of a Female Crime, which explores the 1965 murder of Sylvia Likens though persona poetry. |
In the Barn
But now it’s been too long, and two weeks is just a best guess. It could be a month. Maybe a year. This routine has become the new normal: wake up to the crackle of truck tires outside; ready yourself for whatever is coming at you today; if you feel strong enough, make a run for one of the six or seven places you’ve found in the barn that he’s too big to get to. Except he always does, and you’ve started wondering if it’s worth the energy it takes to even comprehend hiding.
The first night he brought you here, he cut your hair. You wondered if anyone would be able to recognize you if they came to find you, if they wouldn’t know this strange girl with hair chopped so close to her ears and the nape of her neck instead of blonde-brown crimped curls. Then he threw you over a haybale, tore off your panties, and tossed them out what must have been a window once. He shaved you with a dry razor, then raped you. You think that by now, you should be used to the driving force of it, the bloody stubble, but each time seems to only hurt more than the last.
If you’re good (which means you don’t make too much noise, because even though it doesn’t seem like anyone’s been here for years, you just never know), he lets you sleep in a haystack and ties you to a heavy beam that runs from the floor of the hayloft to the ceiling. If you cry too much, he ties you to a ring in the floor that must have once been meant for cattle.
Sometimes—and this is the thing you still can’t figure out—he takes pictures. Not even sexy ones—the first time you saw the camera, you backed away in horror, fearing that he’d have you in porno slut poses, legs spread, the whole bloody mess on display. But no: he just takes pictures of you while he follows you around the barn. Sometimes you wonder if he’s waiting for you to fall over—after he raped you the first time, he took the blue sweater your boyfriend got you for your birthday and gave you a black dress and high heels that don’t fit. You’ve been wearing that dress for however many days or weeks it’s been. You can smell yourself mixed with decades-old manure.
You move as far into the corner as the chains will let you, then squat and poop and wipe yourself with a handful of straw. When you’re finished, you sit up against the wall of the barn, your head tilted backward. If you look up at just the right angle, you can see the field outside the barn, the tip of the roof of an abandoned farmhouse, waves and waves of unkempt grass. The field is grey, then gold, then green, depending on how the light hits it, sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrible. Sometimes you get bored with the fear, the uncertainty of knowing when he’ll come back, and you play a game—wondering who lived on this property once. You remember when you were a kid, your grandma gave you a series of books about little girls growing up in a cabin on the prairie, all of them with pastel covers. You never were a good reader and only made it through one of them, but you liked it, and maybe a family like them lived here, and they tended the pigs and rode horses.
Maybe the little girl would come out here sometimes to talk to the animals. She’d milk the cows and swing an empty bucket as she walked. Perhaps she’d dance on the now broken floor joists, backwards, letting an imaginary prince lead her. She would sleep in the hay sometimes, but only when she wanted to, and dinner would be waiting inside at night. You wish that maybe, if you picture her hard enough, she’ll come to life, then travel from the past to now and rescue you.
Then you see something outside the barn that you’ve never noticed before. Far away, at the edge of the overgrown field, is the roof of another building. It could be another abandoned barn, or it could be a house. Somewhere to run to.
You wonder if you could do it. Sometimes he unlocks the chains, and if he did, there might be a brief moment of opportunity to bust away from him, maybe kick him in the face and gouge his eyeball out with the heel of those stupid shoes, then kick them off, eyeball still attached, and run, run, run, run. Would you have the energy to do it? You feel so weak and tired all the time, but if you had to, you’d conjure up every bit of hope and adrenaline you had left and run so fast you could fly, the rough edges of the grass slashing at your skin, but you hardly feel it because you’ve felt so much worse and now you’re free, free, free. When you reach the house, you don’t even knock, you bust through the door, and there’s a woman with a kettle of hot soup, and she just stares at you for a moment and says, “Child, why you wearing that dress?” and you’ll just hug her and say to call 911 and then tell her everything.
It could happen. You could do it.
The truck pulls into the driveway. You don’t sit down. You have to be ready—if he unlocks you, there won’t be time. He comes through where the door to the barn must have once been, and your spine goes stiff. In one hand, he’s holding that stupid camera. In the other, a contraption made out of a thick wire noose with sharp, jagged edges, attached to a wooden board.
He doesn’t unlock you, but you try to move away from him, walking backwards, hands outward, as if a hex in your palms can stop him. He grins and snaps a picture, and you can’t imagine why he would want this, to capture it. You keep walking away, your eyes on him, the heels slipping on your feet, threatening to knock you off balance, your hand over your mouth as though protecting your breath from him. “Please…” a voice says, gravely and soft and hardly your own. “Please…” and then you hit the end of the chain and there’s nowhere else to go.
J.M. Scott a full time educator, specializing in English and Social Studies. He has had short stories published in Penumbra Magazine, Dark Corners, Horrified Press, The WiFiles, Miskatonic Press, Third Flatiron Publishing and Grinning Skull Press. His story The Spirit is listed on Tangent Online as a recommended read for 2013, and he has a collection of short stories titled Sexy Brass available on Amazon as a digital download or in hard cover. He has a bachelor’s degree in film, criminal justice and liberal studies from San Francisco State University and a master’s in Education. |
Prepperland
“Get on the ground, now!”A voice echoed near the front of the building.
Thomas peered down the aisle.
Standing in front of the counter was a grizzled man, face scarred with dark black hair that jutted out in all directions. He looked as though he lived in a tent under the city’s only bridge, and Thomas winced a little when he thought about what the man probably smelled like. Acidic,
with a pungent odor of dirt and uncultured flesh that curtailed into something that a man could bump his head on.
“I swear to God, I’ll blow your friggen’ head off,” the man said.
Thomas noticed he was pointing a gun at the clerk’s chest. He opened the bottle of Gatorade, took a large swig and then put it back in the cooler.
The cashier fidgeted and then scratched his face as he removed the folds of green from the register.
“Hurry up, man,” the gunman said. “I’m gonna’…”
“Excuse me,” Thomas interrupted, walking down the aisle.
The man paused and turned his head slightly. Then, he shook off the distraction as if the voice was a figment of his imagination.
Thomas moved a little closer. He raised his fist to his mouth and coughed. “Excuse me,” he said again.
The man spun around.
Thomas raised his hands to his chest. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said.
“What do you want?” The man bellowed. He pointed the gun at Thomas. His hands were shaking, so the muzzle of the weapon swayed in a web of haphazard directions.
“You’re never gonna’ maintain trigger control if you keep shaking like that,” Thomas advised.
The man turned and looked at the cashier, who shrugged his shoulders.
“Trigger what?” The man asked. The exacerbation in his voice was apparent.
“Trigger control,” Thomas repeated. “And that’s a beautiful Glock. Zev magwell, Taran Tactical sights. Do you use that gun for competitions?”
The robber snapped his head back toward the cashier. The young man pointed his finger at his temple and made a circular motion as if to indicate that Thomas was crazy.
Fatigued, the man switched the pistol from his right hand to his left, and then pulled back on the slide, allowing it to freely snap forward. He almost dropped the gun in the process.
Thomas dipped his hips a little when it looked like the firearm was going to fall. “Easy now,” he said. “Just roll your thumb around the slide which will help make an easier transition next time.”
“You’re insane,” The man said. It was as if Thomas and his antics had taken the spirit out of the robbery.
Police sirens blared in the distance.
Thomas looked out the window. He stammered. “… I’m going to reach into my pocket. I have something for you.”
The man punched his other arm forward and gripped the pistol with both hands. He took a deep breath and raised the sights onto Thomas’s forehead.
“Here’s my card,” Thomas said, pulling out a small rectangular piece of paper. “My name is Thomas Gunderson, and I run a tactical shooting kind of survival business.”
The man reached out, took the card and flipped it over. “Prepperland. Never heard of it. Besides, I’m ex-military. I don’t need shooting classes or survival training.”
Thomas sighed. “Of course,” he said under his breath.
There was an uncomfortable pause. The man looked to the side and took a few moments to digest the information that Thomas had presented.
“How is your pricing?” The man asked.
“Fair and competitive,” Thomas returned.
The man shoved his pistol into his waistband as the sirens drew closer. Thomas waved his head toward the back of the convenience store. The man turned, and then ran toward the rear of the building.
Five police cars screeched to a halt. One of the vehicles jumped the curve and tapped the front panel of glass of the store with its bumper.
The cashier stared at Thomas and shook his head. “What the fuck was that? That guy could have killed us.” He punched the packages of cigarettes above his head.
“Not with that pistol, he wasn’t. There was no magazine in the magwell, and when he racked the slide, a cartridge didn’t eject. He said that he was ex-military and those guys don’t make mistakes like that. He didn’t want to hurt anybody. He is probably just down on his luck.” Thomas turned his head toward the rear exit of the building. “ Besides, I just picked up another client.” He snapped his fingers and smiled before the police blew through the front door with their guns drawn.
“Bear is gonna’ love this,” Thomas said, lowering himself onto the ground.
Later that day, Thomas bounded down two of the concrete steps leading away from the police station. He paused before taking on the final six steps. Leaning down, he rubbed the top of his knee, making sure to put pressure on the soft spots of the tendon.
“How are you doing, old man?” A voice called out from the inside of a beaten-up 1967 Mustang. “Knee bothering you?”
The woman inside the car smiled at Thomas. Free from crow’s feet, her eyes sparkled even from the inside of the vehicle.
Thomas chuckled, once again realizing that Bear was the woman of his dreams. Young, funny, beautiful, and a helluva shooter.
He remembered the first time they’d met at a gun show. He had to ask her a couple of times what her name was when she introduced herself to him, not entirely believing that her name could be Bear. As it turned out, the moniker was only her nickname. It seemed that she had taken on four little boys in her fifth grade class after they’d teased her about her ponytails. She’d won the fight and went from being known as Cynthia Ringo, to the rough and tumble Bear.
Thomas rubbed his knee a little. “I’m fine. Too many of my famous Mel Gibson roll and shoot scenarios when I was younger.”
“You haven’t done a Mel Gibson in years,” Bear added. “I’d like to see you hit six steel targets while tumbling on the ground, now.”
Thomas hobbled down the rest of the stairs.
Just as he reached the bottom of the steps, four men on bikes zoomed by him; throwing Thomas off balance. One of the men shot him a look of superiority as if he owned the road when he stopped to grab the water bottle underneath his seat.
Thomas stared at the cyclist and shook his head.
“What’s the matter? Don’t like athletes?” The man asked.
“Athletes? Athletes? You’ve got to be kidding me. Just because you squeeze your fat ass into a polyester shirt that has logos on it like you’re sponsored by a major company - but you’re not – doesn’t make you an athlete. As a matter of fact, I’ve been to plenty of Super Bowl parties, but now that I think about it, I’ve never been to a Tour De France party. You know why? Because nobody gives a shit about biking.”
The man got off his bike. He pointed, and was about to say something, but Thomas cut him off.
“You know…” Thomas said. There are plenty of things to worry about while you’re driving. Yes, I said driving. Teen drivers, road conditions, the weather, old people behind the wheel, mechanical malfunctions, and of course just plain old acts of fucking God. But you bastards need to get your cardio in for the day, so you act like a car and put yourself in harm’s way. Go ride around in a circle on a track somewhere you sorry son of a bitch, and quit thinking you’re an athlete. You’re a white elitist who probably hails from an overpriced Silicon Valley city where you all walk your yellow Labradors every day and drink your shitty milk tea.”
The man bit his lower lip. He was about to take a step forward when one of his buddies stopped him by moving his bike between the two men.
“He’s not worth it,” the second bicyclist said.
“Not worth what?” Thomas shot back. “It always cracks me up when people say that. What exactly am I not worth? Do you really think the courts would throw him in jail for taking a poke at me? I mean he might like prison, being that he has a fondness for tight little spandex shorts.”
The two men got on their bikes. The one Thomas had insulted flipped him the bird before riding off.
“Does this mean I won’t get an invite to the Olympics?” Thomas yelled. “Seeing as how you guys are such incredible athletes.”
The two men ignored him.
“Hey, you,” Bear yelled out from the driver’s side of the car. “Would you just get in and quit picking on bicyclists.”
Thomas opened the door to the passenger’s side of the vehicle and slipped into the seat. “Athletes,” he said. “You shouldn’t be considered an athlete for riding a toy you got under the Christmas tree when you were ten years old.”
“Just stop,” Bear said. “Some people don’t consider what you do a sport. And professional shooters also wear those kind shirts. Yes, the ones with all the logos.” Bear raised her hands over her head.
“Well, wait until the shit hits the fan,” Thomas said. “At least I can shoot my way out. Those guys can try to pedal their way out of an apocalypse.”
Bear started the car and put it in drive. “You certainly are a grumpaluffagus, today,” she said. “And you’re also white, so it kind of takes the steam out of an insult like – You’re a white elitist.”
“It was all I could think of.” Thomas wrinkled his lips and huffed before slumping into his seat. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said. “I need a nap.”
The ride to Prepperland was short. The compound stood just a few miles off the main highway, down a dusty road. Thomas and Bear saw the steeple of the church they lived in at least a mile before they hit the front gate. The structure had been on the property since it was purchased in the early 1930’s by Thomas’s grandfather. It was used as a Presbyterian place of worship for many years up until WWII when the family started to store recyclables in the main hall to help the war effort. Since then, the entire structure was converted to a studio-like residence since it was extremely spacious, save for a couple of unused rooms that Thomas always talked about renting out to the right person, and boasted the same amenities as a modern day apartment. That is, until the years crept up on the structure. The roof needed to be replaced, the entire building needed some paint, and the steeple had seen better days. The church’s reconstruction had taken a back burner to other projects, but it was always a consideration when Thomas had a little extra money.
When they got home, Thomas was eager to go over the applications for the new courses, but first, he made sure to hide the loan overdue notice from Bear. His father had taken out a line of credit using Prepperlannd as collateral a couple of years back to cover some of the businesses operating costs, and when the title transferred over to Thomas, so did the debt. He’d always been a firm believer in tackling one problem at a time. The issue of the remaining loan amount on the property would have to wait until Thomas could figure out how to soften his delivery. Now, his first priority was to get some new students enrolled and shooting. When he opened the envelopes, he couldn’t help but be disappointed.
“We only have two sign-ups?” Thomas stressed.
Bear wasn’t listening. She was playing the latest first-person driving game on her phone. The clicks and beeps of the interface were drowning out Thomas’s voice. “Wait, what?” She said.
“Two signups,” Thomas repeated.
“Yeah, two. It’s all good.”
“Do you know what ammo costs these days?” Thomas asked.
“Um, a lot?”
“Is that just your opinion, or are you trying to keep me quiet?’
“Quiet,” Bear said.
“Fine.”
“Fine, what?” Bear asked.
“Just get back to your game.”
Thomas rubbed his temples and paced.“What about a promotion of some type?”
“Shit,” Bear said, listing hard to the right.
“Put that damn thing down,” Thomas barked.
“Fine,” Bear threw her phone on the table and snapped her gum. “I need to redo my ponytails any way.”
“Try something different, today. You look like Harley Quinn,” Thomas said. “I guess. Except for the makeup and clown suit.”
Bear flicked her left ponytail and strutted to the bathroom.
He lifted the list of sign-ups. It wasn’t as if it was going to take him long to review a couple of applications.
“Pathetic,” he said.
Thomas reached down and picked up a lighter that looked like an AR-15 with an NRA logo on the side.
“You’d think people would want to learn how to keep themselves safe,” he said. “You’d think they’d be smarter.”
“Stop complaining,” Bear shouted from the other room. “Work with what you got.”
Thomas lifted the first application up by its corner with his thumb and forefinger like it was dirty. His face wrinkled, but not in a way that said he was pleased. “Kerena Faux,” he said. Thomas stared at the scraggly writing. “I’m surprised she didn’t fill this out with brown crayon.”
He flicked the application aside and went to the next submission.
“Sam Spreckles. Dear God.” He lifted his hand to his brow. “Now, we’re training nerdy white kids.”
“Don’t judge,” Bear yelled from the other room.
“He’s probably going to suck. I don’t want a bunch of lame asses to make up our membership,” Thomas returned.
“You don’t know that, stupid.”
Thomas shot his head to the side to hear the popping noise that made him feel like he was purging the stress from his body.
He was about to make some notes on the files when Bear interjected. “Maybe this guy is okay. Don’t presume.”
“Presumption keeps us safe,” Thomas insisted.
“Well then,” Bear added, “Why don’t you presume to put your real name on the company flyer?”
Thomas bit his lower lip. “Because Richard Raper isn’t the kind of name that promotes our business well. We’re Preppers. Gunderson is more appropriate.”
“You’re just mad that Richard Raper could also be construed as Dick Raper.” Bear held a towel to her face and snickered.
Thomas heard the muffled breaths from the other room, but held his retort. He looked at his watch before moving on to the next file.“Damn,” he said doing a double take. “I’ve got to get to the range. I’m supposed to give Carl a deposit for the training next week.”
Bear came out of the bathroom. She was rubbing the top of her head with the towel she had laughed into earlier. “Do you have enough in your account to cover the fees?” Her words slurred and faded with each wipe of the cloth over her face.
Thomas grabbed his wallet off the table. He hesitated before opening the fold. Even from a short distance he could see that he only had three dollars. “Where’s the checkbook?” He asked.
Bear threw the towel over a chair and held her hands to her hips. “I think it’s in the truck’s glove compartment.”
“Thanks,” Thomas said. “I’ll be back later.”
Bear looked at him with a stitch of sadness like a woman that was about to fill a homeless person’s cup with a couple of quarters.
Thomas didn’t catch the look. He stared at the tattered carpet on the inside of their living area. “It’s looked better,” he said.
“And it will look good again, soon.” Bear said, trying to be reassuring. “See you later.”
Thomas waved and then headed for his truck. He went to open the door when he noticed his left front tire was almost flat. “Great,” he said, throwing the manila folder with his current sign-ups onto the passenger’s side of the vehicle. He looked back to see if Bear was watching. She wasn’t, so he went into the tool box that was bolted to the back of his truck, and retrieved an old baseball cap and a fanny pack. The cap he’d had for years, it was tattered with an image of Scooby-Doo embroidered across the top. The only thing Bear hated more than the hat was the cheap amusement park fanny pack that he sometimes wore. He mostly donned the apparel when Bear wasn’t around; decidedly keeping the items in the toolbox of his truck, so that they wouldn’t find their way into the garbage bin someday.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said.
On the way to the range, he passed two filling stations. Both of them had closed down. His truck limped down the highway until he saw his exit. “A little late, but he’ll still be there.” He felt his truck list to the left and then bounce up and down. “No. No. No,” he said. He put the truck in park and swung the driver’s side door open. His tire was completely flat, and was half hanging off the wheel. “Shit!” He grabbed the paperwork off the seat next to him, locked up his vehicle and jogged down the empty highway.
Thirty minutes later, he heard the distinct sound of gunfire. The snap in the air from multiple firearm reports increased when he drew closer to the range. Thomas knew that Carl would be pissed that he’d forgotten his eye and ear protection, but his priorities were to get the paperwork turned in and the range paid for. Safety would have to take a back seat to his business needs.
“Hey, Carl,” Thomas said, walking up to the range office. He was holding the folder with his student’s paperwork.
“What happened to you?” Carl asked. “Looks like you went swimming.”
Thomas pulled his shirt away from his chest. It peeled away like wet toilet paper off a countertop.
“Truck broke down,” Thomas said.
Carl adjusted his Glock Perfection hat. The brim was scarred and the fabric under the iconic logo was stained from years of hard work on the range. “You could have called. I’d have given you a ride.”
“No need, really. I need the workout anyway.” Thomas handed the folder to Carl.
“Any good prospects this time?” Carl asked. He thumbed through the files. “Jesus Christ,” he added. “I can’t wait to see this one in action.” He ran his forefinger along the name on one of the applications. Carl sifted through the remainder of the paperwork and raised his eyes over the bend in the folder. “I don’t see a check,” he said.
“Oh, right,” Thomas said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his checkbook. “Got a pen?”
A voiced bellowed from behind him. “Writing checks again, I see. Any money in the account this time?”
Thomas turned around to see Dale Stone standing behind him. As usual, Dale was decked out in full combat gear. Shooting glasses, tactical pants and vest, custom ear protection with his Team 5 Response logo emblazoned on the side of the safety equipment; Thomas compared his look to a strutting peacock, beautiful at first until you realize they are as annoying as hell and shit all over your lawn.
“Hello, Dale,” Thomas said. He tried not to make eye contact.
“I’m just fucking with you,” Dale said. He put his arm around Thomas’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know times have been tough over there at Prepperland. He canted his head and smirked at Carl behind Thomas’s back.
“We’re just getting our footing,” Thomas said, slipping under Dale’s arm.
“Hey, I care. I really do. Your father ran the best prepper compound in the state for years. I just think it’s too bad you can’t do the same.”
“Dale,” Carl interjected. “Come on. We’re all professional here. The gun guy niche is small enough. I’ve been fighting the county to keep this place open for years. The last thing we need around here is two clubs going at it. Besides, the two of you are the reason I have to take heart medication. Your continual bickering is going to put me six feet under.”
Dale backed away. “No worries, Carl. But I’m a club. I have a legitimate business. Prepperland is on its last leg and you know it.”
Thomas put his fist in his palm and cracked his knuckles.
“I can put forty guys on the line during the same weekend. What can he do?” Dale pointed at Thomas. “Five, maybe. And those five won’t end up being tactical operators. Hell, they probably won’t even end up taking another class from him. But they will come over to Team 5 Response.”
Thomas stuck out his chest and stepped forward. The big man retreated slightly.
“You guys knock it off!” Carl yelled. “I don’t want to see any of that shit around here.”
Dale wrenched his jaw from side to side with his free hand, even though Thomas hadn’t thrown a punch. “That would have been nice,” he said. “But I’ll bet Bear would have had the balls to actually go a couple of rounds with me.”
Thomas lurched forward. “She probably would go toe to toe with you, I mean, when I do, I usually come out ahead, like at nationals. Didn’t I beat you in the divisions that we competed in together?”
Dale tried to grab Thomas by the lapel when Carl jumped in between the two men.“Stop it now or neither of the two of you will conduct business on my range, ever again.”
Both Dale and Thomas didn’t move.
“Now, you get back to your team,” Carl said, waiving Dale away. “And let’s get your paperwork finalized.” He said to Thomas.
Dale spit on the ground. “All right, Carl. You’re the boss.” He turned and lumbered toward the shooting bays. “And, nice fanny purse,” he yelled before disappearing into the range.
Thomas intertwined his fingers and rested his palms on the top of his head. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I like my fanny pack.”
Carl cleared his throat. “I know. He’s an asshole, but he brings me a lot of repeat business and his credentials are good. The guy is a Silver Star recipient for God’s sake.”
“Doesn’t act like it,” Thomas said.
“He doesn’t have to. He’s built a reliable brand. His instructors are all ex-special forces or police officers. It’s hard to beat his numbers.” He looked at Thomas and squinted.
“And I’m just the son of a weirdo old prepper. Is that it? I couldn’t possibly compete with a guy like that.”
“That’s not what I said,” Carl snapped.
“You didn’t have to.” Thomas huffed. “Look, I’ll get the money to you by Wednesday. Okay?”
Carl shrugged his shoulders.
“Okay,” Thomas repeated.
“Yeah. All right. See you Wednesday,” Carl said. He turned and walked toward his office.
Thomas put his hand to his brow and peered into the sun. “Hottest part of the day. Great. Bear’s going to worry.” The cracked road he’d jogged in on looked like it had extended further into the landscape. Thomas knew the illusion was something his mind had cooked up like the immense pain from a shot in the arm by a doctor. The prick was minimal. It was the lead up to the prick was horrifying. Prick, he thought. You’d better get moving.
Two hours later, Thomas rounded the dirt path that led to Prepperland. He saw the sign in the distance. It had seen its better days. A series of mismatched letters in different sizes reading: Beer, Ammo, Bait and Lotto, adorned the face of the chest high marquee. Eight neon lights on the inside of the sign were supposed to come on at night, but Thomas was lucky to get three working, and two of those would flicker out of sync. He always wondered about the beer, bait, and lotto sections of the sign. Maybe his father always wanted to turn Prepperland into a convenience store. One day, Thomas would get a new sign, but for now, the advertisement was serving its purpose.
“We need some business,” he said, bending over to place his hands on his upper thighs. “Sorry, dad. I’m trying.”
“Who are you talking to?” He heard a voice say.
It was Bear. She was walking toward him.
“Nobody,” Thomas said. “Just mumbling to myself.”
Bear gave him a big hug and brushed his bangs away from his sweaty brow. “No you weren’t. You’re a liar,” she said, smirking.
“Did you get it all done? Is Carl ready for this weekend?”
Thomas wheezed and shifted out of her grip. “Almost,” he said. “I really do need to submit my range fees in full. I have to get him some cash by Wednesday.”
Bear plunged her head into his chest. His damp shirt made her ear cold, but she didn’t care.
“Here,” she said, placing something in his hand.
Thomas cupped the gift. He knew what it was by the look in her eye. Bear didn’t have to say a word.
“I’ll just pawn your grandmother’s ring. I’ll get it out of hock before you know it.”
Bear grunted.
“Really, I will,” Thomas said. He put the ring in the front pocket of his jeans.
“Let’s focus on this weekend,” Bear said. She pushed away from Thomas like she hadn’t enjoyed the embrace.
“We have to come up with a plan. Let’s get inside. You, take a shower. I’ll get to work,” Bear said.
She led him into the compound and pushed him toward the church that doubled as their house.
Thomas undressed and turned the two soap scum stained knobs in the shower. He noticed something wasn’t right. Only one valve produced a flow of water. “Please, let it get hot,” he said. Reaching into the stream, Thomas let his fingertips tickle the drops of water. He pulled back and then moaned. “I thought I was only supposed to take one of these when I was horny,” he mumbled before plunging into the ice cold water. Bear thought she heard a high pitched yelp come from the bathroom, but ignored the annoyance. She scanned the files. “We really have our work cut out for us,” she said, taking notes on the side of one of the applications.
A short ten minutes later, Thomas came out of the bathroom. He was shivering.
“Dry yourself off and help me make up an outline for this weekend,” Bear said. “Oh, and by the way, I have entered myself in a three gun competition.”
“When is it?”
“I have to look at the dates. It’s sometime toward the middle of the month.”
“Plug our courses,” Thomas said.
“Of course,” Bear said, grinning.
Thomas threw on an old pair of sweats and a pullover sweatshirt. He sat next to Bear.
“So, from what I remember, neither of them has ever held a firearm before,” Thomas said.
“That’s right,” Bear added. “So, we need to go over the basics of marksmanship again. Get them all on target before moving on. We also need to review the four point draw and some limited footwork.” She looked at Thomas, who was using his pinky finger to clear the residual water out of his ear.
“Agreed?” Bear asked.
Thomas held his hand in the air open palmed and Bear slapped him a high-five.
“Been a long day,” Thomas said. “Let’s get some shut eye.”
“And cuddles,” Bear said in an exaggerated, high pitched voice.
“And cuddles,” Thomas returned. He hugged her tightly.
Thomas tried to sleep, but every time he nodded off, he was thrown into a nightmare. There was someone chasing him. He was armed, but his pistol wouldn’t come out of his holster. He pulled. He struggled. But the weapon wouldn’t budge. Finally, his legs gave out. At the same time, he jerked hard. The motion threw him out of his sleep. He heard Bear grunt, but she was a heavy sleeper. He rested his hand on her hip and was thankful she hadn’t woken. For the rest of the night, he stumbled in and out of sleep. When he got up the next morning and opened his hand, something fell onto the floor. He looked down to see the ring Bear had given him. He examined his palm and saw the outline of the piece of jewelry pressed into his flesh. He wondered how long he’d been holding the ring, and when during the night he’d decided to grab it out of the pocket of his jeans.
He turned to see if Bear was awake. The little high pitched wisps she was making told him she wasn’t. He dressed without making much noise and headed to the pawn shop. During the trip, he never put the ring back in his pocket. He pressed it harder into his palm until it was time to give the piece of jewelry to the shop keep. Even then, when he held his hand open, the ring wouldn’t fall. He had to pry it free from the soft meat of his inner grip.
“Here you go,” Thomas said to the pawn shop owner. He didn’t make eye contact with the man. When the paperwork was done, Thomas didn’t bother counting the cash. He jumped in his truck and headed for the range.
When he pulled into the parking lot, the spaces were mostly empty.
“Huh,” Thomas mused. “It should be busier than this today.”
He rolled his window down and listed his head toward the open space.
“What the hell,” he said. “Why isn’t there any gunfire?”
Thomas jumped out of his truck and walked toward Carl’s office. He was about to round the corner when Dale Stone blocked his way.
“Move, Dale,” Thomas said. “I’m not in the mood right now. I’ve ‘gotta’ get my payment to Carl…”
“Carl is dead,” Dale interrupted. “Died last night of a heart attack.”
Thomas couldn’t move his legs. He felt like there was no air around him, but somehow, he was able to breathe.
“A heart attack?” He asked.
Dale cleared his throat.
“Right,” Thomas said. “Okay then. I mean…”
“Look, Gunderson… we might not like each other so good, but we both respected Carl and loved the old coot.” He turned away from Thomas. “I’ve managed to talk to the county and keep the range open under my management.”
“I kind of figured,” Thomas said.
“I hate to kick a man when he’s down… but,” Dale turned around and crossed his arms.
“But what?” Thomas added. “What’s on that pea brain of yours, Dale?”
“Nice, Gunderson. Classy as always.”
Thomas slapped the envelope with his range payment against his thigh. He couldn’t believe Dale was going to be in charge of the business. The only other place that had a full action range was a good three hours away. He thought about his father. Would the old man be shaking his head with his hands resting on his hips? Thomas thought. Prepperland is doomed.
“I’ll cut you a break, though, Gunderson. I’ll let you work here repairing the wooden target frames and collecting brass. Hell, you can even bring Bear along. Wouldn’t mind having something like that about the range,” Dale said.
Thomas thought about breaking the big man’s jaw. He closed one fist, and then relaxed when the seed of a crazy idea began to germinate.
“Work for you? Huh, Dale,” Thomas said. “You know that’s never going to happen.
Dale waved his hand as if to say, oh well.
“But I got something better for you, Dale. Something you can really sink your teeth into.”
Dale leaned forward. “Go on.”
“Instead of me paying this range fee…” Thomas held up the envelope, “… I want to apply this toPrepperland’s entrance fee in the Freeman Tactical Shooting Competition.”
Dale laughed. “The Freeman Competition is in one month. I’m sure Carl already has all of the applications and the accounting in place. All I have to do is stage the event.”
“And you’ll get the chance to beat me once and for all,” Thomas said. “I know it bothers you that you’ve never beaten any of my times, or high hit factors, in a major USPSA match. It must be hard being an ass hair’s away from stomping on a guy that was never in the military. A guy that was never close to receiving a Silver Star because he was at home getting drunk and watching Netflix.”
Dale took off his Team 5 Response cap and beat it into his left hand. It was almost as if Thomas could see the hairs on the back of his neck stand tall.
“This is a team shooting club event for charity,” Dale said. “But I think I can accommodate you. Each competitor will run five different stages, one will be a classifier, of course.”
“Of course,” Thomas added.
“I will do the design, but they will be officially sanctioned USPSA stages. Four will be Comstock and the classifier will be Virginia. Two of the shooters on your team can be experienced, but the other two have to be brand new.” He scratched the stubble on his chin. “And…, our little side wager only applies to the last stage.”
“What are you suggesting,” Thomas asked.
“I have an entire tournament to run. I can’t be worried about being an administrator, and a competitor. The team points from the last stage is what will determine the winner of our little challenge.”
The terms of the agreement weren’t exactly in Prepperland’s favor, but Thomas could deal with the arrangement. His shooters would, at least, get to run four stages as a warm up to the main event.
As far as the remainder of the tournament stages was concerned, Thomas knew the rest of it. The four shooters would be scored by where their shots landed on the target, and a hit factor would be calculated after subtracting any penalties like misses or procedurals. An overall percentage of where a competitor placed would determine how many points each shooter receives for the stage. Add the points up as a team, and the highest score would establish the winner of the tournament.
“Actually…,” Dale digressed. “I’m not sure that you’re even worth my time.”
Thomas knew the big man was almost there. Almost ready to take the challenge.
Dale was about to speak, but Thomas stopped him before he could start his sentence. “I’ll throw in the deed to Prepperland.”
“What?” Dale said, stepping back. “This doesn’t sound right?”
“You would own Prepperalnd. Tear it down, sell the land or start a new branch of Team 5 Response. You could build a small indoor range if you saw fit.”
“You’re not interested in the free shotgun if you win, I know that,” Dale said.
Thomas couldn’t believe Dale had figured something out all on his own. “Of course not,” he said. “If our team members get the overall highest number of points, I get a twenty year contract to use this range when and how I see fit. You, and the other businesses, would have to schedule time on my range.”
“You’re shitting me,” Dale said. “That would be a $200,000.00 dollar contract.”
“Yup. High stakes.”
Dale tried to find the angle. He almost shook Thomas’s hand twice, but regressed when he didn’t come up with anything.
“Cold feet?” Thomas said. “Yeah, I heard all of you aging war heroes go through that.”
Dale shot his palm into Thomas’s grip. “I’ve been waiting to kick some ass with my new STI race pistol here.” He rotated his hip toward Thomas to show off the shiny metal.
“Nice,” Thomas said.“Good choice.”
“You know it.”
Thomas pointed to Dale’s gun, “Now, you know everyone isn’t going to have that kind of hardware, so we all shoot a production pistol and the power factor will be minor.”
Dale frowned, but understood the advantages of using a race pistol against any other gun that wasn’t of comparable mechanics.
“Fine,” Dale barked. “Now, get the hell out of here. My team has a competition to prepare for.”
Thomas raised his hands up in front of him. “Fair enough.”
Dale saw the envelope full of money. He reached out and cleared his throat.
“Oh, right,” Thomas said. He handed the envelope over to Dale. “See you in a month.”
Dale took the money and stuffed it in his pocket.
Thomas turned and walked toward his truck. He looked into the sky. “I already miss you, Carl. I wish you were here.” The gravity of everything that had just happened locked onto Thomas like invisible shackles from a prison cell. After all, Carl was the man that really taught Thomas how to shoot. When his dad was busy on the range with his students, Carl would pull Thomas aside and run him through training scenarios over and over again until Thomas was more than excellent with a firearm. As he walked to his vehicle, Thomas almost stumbled, but knew Dale would revel in the reaction if he were to witness Thomas under stress. He got into his truck and drove off to tell Bear what had happened to Carl.
The next morning, Thomas got up early to prep the compound for the instructional part of his new class. He looked at his watch. “About an hour,” he said. He scanned the area, but didn’t see Bear. He checked his watch again and wrinkled his brow. “She always beats me out here.” He surmised that she’d taken the news about Carl pretty hard. He’d been a friend of theirs for a long time, and when Thomas told her what had happened she replied with one word - Oh. He knew she’d grieve in her own way. Hell, he couldn’t blame her for not being up before him.
Thomas started across the barren landscape that was littered with small rocks and old, tarnished brass. A few fifty-gallon, plastic blue barrels were out of place, but all in all, it looked like a shooter'sworkspace. Steel and paper targets rested off to the side of the yard ready to be placed in order, so that his students could simulate taking cover and moving around threats. He went over to the gear and started to set up a mini-stage, when he saw the first car pull into the Prepperland parking lot. A young woman got out of the vehicle. She was wearing black sweats with the word PINK embroidered across her backside like a bumper sticker advertising her fashion sense. She didn’t even bother to turn her music off while she grabbed her gear from out of the trunk of the car. Some kind of hardcore rap song was thumping out of her speakers. Thomas thought that her choice of tunes was odd for a little white girl, but he didn’t care. He knew that he was pretty much out of sync with the younger generation. It’s probably what every young person is listening to these days, he thought. Even from a distance, Thomas could see that her makeup had been done to perfection, and she was wearing fake eyelashes.
“Kind of makes you wonder,” he heard Bear say from behind him. He turned to see her holding a Styrofoam cup full of coffee. “If I had to guess, that’s Kerena Faux,” she said. Bear took a delicate sip, and then handed him the cup. “I’ll go introduce us.”
Thomas went to set up a table to complete the paperwork for the day and finalize everyone’s registration. He saw one more car pull into the parking lot. “Well, at least everyone showed.”He laid out the documents, unfolded a raggedy chair and sat with a pen in his hand. He tapped the tip of the writing instrument against the table and increased the frequency of the tapping when the students approached with their gear. Kerena Faux was the first shooter to come to the table.
Thomas stood. “Good morning,” he said. “I’m Thomas Gunderson.” He reached out to shake her hand.
“Wait,” Kerena said. She reached up and pulled at one of her eyelashes.
“Did you read the course description?” Thomas asked. “In it, there was a list of attire options that would make your experience here a little more…,” he searched for the word “… productive.”
Kerena finished pulling at her eyelash. “No,” she said. “I don’t have time for that shit.” She unzipped her sweat jacket, exposing a low-cut tank top. Thomas turned his head after noticing that she was very well endowed and sported at least four inches of cleavage that was sure to make a great brass catcher.
“Well, okay,” Thomas said. “Then sign here and I’ll take the rest of your sign-up fee.”
Kerena signed next to her name. Thomas recognized the scraggly writing from her application.
“Are you renting today?” He asked.
“Renting? Aww hell naw,” she said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a Smith and Wesson 696. The cylinder on the revolver was as long as a pack of gum, and the barrel was a good eight inches long. She waved the behemoth piece of steel around like she was conducting an orchestra.
Thomas grabbed the gun out of her hand. He inhaled deeply through his nose and then let it out slowly as a calming effort.
“Hey,” Kerena barked.
“The first thing we are going to learn around here is gun safety. Set your stuff over there, and I’ll go and get you a real gun that you can work with.” Thomas said. “You’ll get this back at the end of the day.” He punched the gun at the air while he retreated to his living space to get Kerena a weapon that was a little more manageable.
“You can call me Foxy,” she yelled.
“Noooo…,” Thomas said. He rolled his eyes and then went to retrieve the equipment that she needed.
Later, he met the only other student that, he hoped, would save Prepperland. Sam Spreckles came dressed like he’d been parachuted from a plane that had taken off from Afghanistan. He sported matching tactical gear; the camouflage design on his pistol was coordinated with his hat and shirt. He donned a shooting vest adorned with two combat knives, four AR-15 magazines and ten shotgun shells. A medical pack was tethered to the small of his back and his tactical pants were tucked into his combat boots.
“Sir,” Sam said to Thomas while standing tall. His arm was bent at the elbow in a full salute.
Thomas smiled and returned a two finger salute like a boy scout. He leaned over to address Bear. “Kid couldn’t be any older that twenty.”
“He’s certainly dressing to impress,” Bear added.
“Who?” Thomas shot back. “The chick with the word PINK up her butt crack?”
Bear nudged Thomas in the side and then gave him a side hug with one arm. “Calm down, Ace,” she said.
Thomas turned to face the students. “Once your gear is stowed, bring what you need to the line over here, so I can go over some safety rules.”
The students looked at each other like two kindergartners who didn’t know where to sit.
“Are we shooting here?” Sam asked.
“No live fire yet,” Bear answered. “We’ll be using these.” She held up three bright orange firearms that were molded in the shape of actual guns. “We’ll get some live fire in later today.”
Sam lowered his head like he was disappointed that he wouldn’t be shooting something up sooner.
“Fuck yeah,” Kerena said. She fashioned her hand in the shape of a pistol, and made a pew, pew noise while she fanned her imaginary gun across the compound.
It wasn’t long before they were ready for instruction save for Kerena’s need to pee every five minutes. Thomas stood in front of them with his right hand resting on the top of his Glock.
“Okay, so once again, I’m Thomas…” he paused and stared in Bear’s direction for a moment “… Gunderson, and this is my assistant, Bear.”
“Right on sister,” Kerena said.
Thomas wrinkled his brow. “Yeah, anyway… Bear and I are happy to see all of you this morning, and I’ve got some great news. Since this course is over four weekends, we’ve been invited to test our skills in the Freeman Tactical Shooting Competition at the end of the month.”
Thomas heard Bear cough out loud behind him like she’d accidentally swallowed her spit wrong. He knew what it meant. He was going to get it later.
“Yes, the Freeman Competition. It’ll be a blast both literally and metaphorically.”
No one laughed at the joke. Thomas slapped his hands together.
“Is this your first time doing this?” Kerena spit out. “You look nervous. I mean, I don’t need a nervous instructor waiving a gun around.” She snapped her gum. Sam nodded in accordance.
Thomas took in a large bite of air. When he exhaled, the bite in the air from the chill caused his breath to fog.
“Look, I’m going to be straight with you guys. I have a lot of shooting experience, but my dad was the one that ran this business. He passed away six months ago, and yes, you guys are my first class,” Thomas said.
“Sucks,” Kerena interjected.
Sam raised his hand. Thomas pointed at him.
“Does this mean we get a discount?” Sam said. “I mean, usually, as an introductory rate, when there is a new instructor, they kind of…”
“No,” Thomas interrupted. “Let’s just get to work.” He thought about Sam’s suggestion for a moment before he moved forward with the training.
“I’ll tell you guys what,” Thomas beamed. “I’ll give you a year of free training if you compete in and do well in the Freeman Competition.”
Bear shoved him slightly after Thomas had made the offer.
“Sounds good to me,” Sam said.
“Yo, I’m in,” Kerena added.
Thomas pushed back into Bear. “Good then. We have a deal. Now…, we have a lot of work to do.”
“It’s going to be a long month,” Bear whispered to Thomas from behind him. Thomas raised one eyebrow as a gesture of incredulity before beginning his instruction. He went over the four basic safety rules of shooting:
- Keep your finger off the trigger and along the slide until you have indexed your target and made the decision to shoot.
- Treat every weapon as if it is loaded.
- Know your target, its surroundings and beyond.
- Do not point the weapon at anything you don’t intend to destroy.
He handed one of the rubber guns by the barrel to Sam. The young man reached out and grabbed the pistol grip, but immediately wrapped his index finger around the trigger.
“What did I just say?” Thomas barked. “Rule number one. Finger off the trigger until you have indexed your target and are ready to shoot.”
“Sorry,” Sam said. He released the training gun and then tried again. This time he took up the weapon in the correct fashion.
“There you go, bro.” Kerena said even though Thomas hadn’t solicited her opinion.
“Good job!” Thomas yelled, leaning toward Kerena while he shouted the statement.
Kerena moved back. It seemed that she got the point.
“Now, we need to get mobile. Sitting and listening makes us stiff. The two of you, run the outer perimeter of the compound twice,” Thomas ordered.
The two shooters started off slow, punctuated by Kerena telling Sam; this sucks, while they were starting their first lap.
Bear waited until the students were out of sight. She punched Thomas on the shoulder.
“Are you fucking crazy?” She said. “The Freeman Competition? Tell me what’s going on right now.”
Thomas recounted his deal with Dale Stone. Bear thought she was dreaming for a moment. Her mouth hung open to the point that she almost drooled down the front of her shirt.
“Did you even really think about this?” Bear said. “Team 5 Response is going to kick our collective asses and boot us out of here for good.”
“Look, I know this is unusual,” Thomas said. “But…”
Bear cut him off. “It’s insane.”
Thomas grabbed her by the shoulders. “Just hear me out. We’ll need a team of four. That’s you and me, and these two guys. We’ll work on their strengths and by the end of the month, we might have a shot.”
“How are you going to manage to train them to compete against these guys? Thomas, why didn’t you talk to me first?” Bear pulled away from his grip. “You know we’re in this together. You can’t just go and turn my life upside down along with yours.”
The words hit Thomas hard. She was right. He hadn’t considered how the decisions his ego made might affect her life.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Bear huffed. “So what’s your plan, Ace?”
“Well, we are going to shoot five stages, only one will be Virginia. This means that in the high point Comstock stages, we can train them on when to make up shots, how to play to their strengths, and how to read each target so that they can get the highest hit factor.
“All this in a month?” Bear argued.
“It’s going to come down to the team that scores the most points on the last stage.
The students rounded the corner. “Any chance they’ll be competitors?” Bear asked.
“Dad was a great instructor. He always told me that if you can make someone believe in themselves, they could shoot through the eye of a needle. I’m going to do my best with these guys,” Thomas maintained.
“Even the gal with the big boobs?”
Thomas chuckled. “Even the gal with the big boobs.”
When Kerena and Sam returned from their run, Thomas had set up a simple course of fire. He was happy that they were able to get on paper from the seven yard line. Kerena kept shooting low on the silhouette, and when Thomas tried to correct her, so that she’d be hitting center mass, she informed him with a flirtatious wink that if she was ever in a gun fight, she’d aim and shoot the guy in the balls.
Sam, on the other hand kept hitting the right side of the target. He was hitting the paper, but most of the time, his shots weren’t combat effective. Thomas was going to help him with his marksmanship, but decided to get through the drills for the day instead of overwhelming the kid with the idiosyncrasies of shooting. The rest of the training had gone as expected, and Thomas was pleased that no one had done anything unsafe that might lead to a negligent discharge. It was almost 3:30 in the afternoon, so Bear instructed the group in the fine art of turning and shooting before they let go for the day.
“You did pretty well, today,” Bear said to Kerena while the girl packed up her gear.
“Thanks,” Kerena replied. She lowered her head. “It’s just that…” she took off her sweater and shoved it into her bag. “… Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“We’re going to get to know each other pretty well over the next month. If there’s something you want to discuss, sweetie, I’m all ears,” Bear said.
Kerena pulled up on her sweats. “I want to be able to take care of myself. That’s all.”
“Really?” Bear added.
“Basically.”
Bear sat next to Kerena, leaned over and swung her legs out and back like a little kid sitting on a park bench.
Kerena sat next to Bear. “About a year ago, I was at this party with my girls. You know, we was just chillin’ then these niggas’ came out of nowhere and started spilling drinks all over the girls. I was like, you didn’t just spill Hennessey all over my Jimmy Choos, and he was like Bitch, shut up. I went to the bathroom to get right, and this nigga’ came in behind me. He put his hand over my mouth and…” Kerena’s eyes welled up with tears. “I’m not saying that a gun would have helped. But I felt, I don’t know, helpless.”
Bear balled up her fist and patted Kerena softly on the knee. “Don’t worry girl. When we’re done with you, you’re going to be one bad bitch.” Bear winced a little. She was only a few years older than Kerena, but was never able to use the language of her peers very well. She hoped that she used the vernacular correctly and not made herself look like a total fool.
“I’ll have Thomas teach you how to do his famous Mel Gibson,” Bear said.
“Who’s Mel Gibson?”
Sometimes, Bear forgot that Thomas was fifteen years older than she. He’d introduced her to the Lethal Weapon films when they first met. He’d watch Mel Gibson do his famous shoot and roll scene in the first movie, and then go out and practice the maneuver trying to hit six steel plates. When he was on target, Thomas was amazing. He could knock down the plates over and over again without much effort. Bear had tried the move a couple of times, but only ended up throwing lead at the mountainside. All Thomas needed was a clear line of sight, and enough room to stretch out on the ground.
Kerena leaned over and gave Bear a hug.
“And next weekend, read our website and dress a little more appropriately,” Bear whispered.
“Fo’ sho’,” Kerena said. She packed the rest of her things and headed to her car. “Oh, and tell yo’ man he can hold my bang-bang until the end of the course.” She fashioned her thumb and forefinger in the shape of a pistol.
“I will,” Bear said. And then she whispered, “I will.”
Thomas had tended to Sam, giving him some encouraging words before the young man left. He met Bear in the middle of the compound.
“Well, what’d you think about today?” Bear asked.
Thomas bobbed his head. “Not too bad. Not too bad.”
They watched Sam and Kerena drive off.
Thomas pointed to their cars. “You know why Sam is here?”
“Gimme the scoop,” Bear said, hugging him around the waist.
“Sam’s dad is some kind of a military hero. He served two tours in Iraq, was awarded a Purple Hearts and two silver stars.”
“Impressive,” Bear added.
“Yeah, but Sam is not quite the military prodigy. He has a couple of medical issues that have kept him from enlisting. Nothing major, but his problems didn’t get overlooked. I get the feeling that this is his attempt to relate to his father, maybe even show him that he’s a soldier even if he’ll never serve.”
“That’s so sad,” Bear said. She scratched her head. “I’ve got an idea.”
“What is it?”
“Let me work on a few things, and then I’ll fill you in, okay?”
Thomas didn’t like mysteries, or surprises for that matter, but he trusted Bear implicitly. If she had some sort of harebrained idea, he knew that she wouldn’t let it come to fruition if it would do any harm to Prepperland.
“Now let’s get inside. I’ve got to get things ready for tomorrow,” Bear said, yawning.
“Tomorrow?” Thomas asked. “Oh, right. You’re competing,” he said, answering his own question. “Good luck,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. He reached down and rubbed the top of his knee.
“Bothering you again,” Bear asked.
“It’s okay. Gave out on me a little today, but I’ll be fine. I’m just worried that it’ll buckle during something important.”
“Don’t worry about it. If it does, just drop to the ground and do a Mel Gibson.”
“Very funny,” Thomas left off.
That night, Thomas went in and out of the same nightmare he’d been having for the last couple of weeks. Each time, he was in the same situation. He’d try to draw his pistol, but it wouldn’t come out of the holster. The figure chasing him would get closer until he woke up with a jerk, the sheets damp with his sweat. Thomas sat up. He was in the middle of the bed.
“Bear?” He said, looking around the room. She was nowhere to be seen. He smacked his palm against his forehead. “The competition… right.” Thomas laid back down and tried to get some sleep. He was almost out when his cell phone rang.
“Hello,” Thomas said.
“Yes, is this Mr. Gunderson?”
“It is. Can I help you?”
“Sir, my name is Steven Reed, and I’m the administrator in charge of the Tricon three gun competition.”
“Yeah, right. My girlfriend is shooting with you guys today.” Thomas rubbed his eyes. “What do you need?”
“Mr. Gunderson, there has been an accident involving a firearm.”
Thomas sat up. “What? Who… what’s going on?”
“I’m sorry to inform you that one of the people involved in the incident was your girlfriend. Bear, that’s what she goes by, right?”
“Yeah,” Thomas answered.
“Well, I really don’t know how to tell you this, but it’s not like we’ve ever had anything like this happen before.”
“Get to the point,” Thomas grumbled.
“One of our shooters slipped in the gravel, and when he did, he spun around, his barrel faced the other competitors.”
Thomas felt his hands start to shake. The man had said he, so it wasn’t Bear that had had the negligent discharge. It meant something else. Something that Thomas just couldn’t fathom.
“Mr. Gunderson, Bear was hit by a round that was discharged from the shooter's rifle when he slipped, and I’m sorry to inform you that she was unresponsive when they took her away in an ambulance.”
“Wait, what?” Thomas replied. “Unresponsive?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“But where…?”
“She’s been transported to St. Anderson’s hospital and…”
Thomas didn’t press the disconnect button. He heard the man’s voice trail off while the phone dropped to the floor. For a second, Thomas thought he was dreaming until he looked around and noticed there was no figure chasing him. No figure, but also, no Bear. He sprang out of bed, grabbed a set of mismatched clothes and ran to his truck. He had trouble getting the key into the lock. He was stabbing at the door while trying to make sense of his surroundings through the haze. His eyes were swollen and he couldn’t remember where he was supposed to go - to the hospital, to the range – wherever it was he prayed the phone call was wrong. Thomas decided to go to the hospital while he drove down the highway. He saw the sun peek over the mountain range. He remembered the first morning he and Bear drank coffee under a blanket while sitting against the Prepperland sign. The sun was coming up, and they were cuddling to stay warm. He knew he loved her back then, but he’d never put a ring on her finger. Why? Thomas didn’t know. But he was always sure of one thing… there’d be more time.
Thomas pulled into the parking lot of the emergency room. He ran through the double doors as they whooshed open.
“Can I help you?” A receptionist asked.
“Bear,” Thomas shook his head and then digressed. “I mean, Cynthia Ringo.”
The woman’s face soured.
“Oh, let me call a doctor. One will be out shortly,” she said.
“Now!” Thomas yelled.
His tone flummoxed the receptionist. She got out of her seat and ran into the back room.
Thomas was about to jump the counter and search for Bear himself when a doctor came into the reception area. His arms were outstretched and he was shaking his head.
“No, no, no,” The doctor said. “We have other patients here. Please, come with me.”
Thomas followed the doctor. He didn’t know why, but he was looking for the word Morgue on the overhead signs. It just seemed to him that that’s where they were headed. They snaked through the hallway, first three right turns, and then a left. Thomas was trying not to picture Bear lying on a table, dead. He wondered where the projectile had hit her and hoped it wasn’t in the head. He didn’t think he could take it if he couldn’t look at her face one last time even if she wasn’t alive.
“Where are we going?” Thomas asked, wiping away the tears.
The doctor stopped in the middle of the hallway. “We were able to resuscitate her. She’s in a coma, but she’s very much alive. The stray bullet hit her in the arm, it was when she fell and hit her head on the cement foundation near some benches that gave her a head injury. She scored an 11 on the Glasgow Coma Scale, which a good sign. I’d give her a few weeks before she’s lucid enough to be able to function as usual.”
Thomas felt his legs start to give out. He hit the hospital floor hard. The word alive ran through his head several times and increased in intensity as each syllable rang out with a song that Bear might be okay. He saw her face, her smile and then heard the sound of her laughter while the world around him retreated into darkness.
“Mr. Gunderson. Mr. Gunderson, can you hear me?” The doctor said.
Thomas opened his eyes. He saw the white ceiling of the hospital room come into focus. Every pit and raised piece of ceiling texture came into view. Thomas rolled over and then pushed himself up to his knees. “Where is she,” he asked.
“She’s in room 1A,” the doctor replied. “It’s right in front of you.”
Thomas stood. His feet were dragging, but he managed to press up against the door frame. There, in a hospital bed, with tubes protruding from her face and arms laid Bear. Thomas didn’t know if he could even enter the room. His head sprang forward, but his heart kept his body at bay. Taking a deep breath, he moved to the side of Bear’s bed.
He was about to say the first thing that came to mind, but decided not to utter the words – until we, or you and I. None of it made sense, so he reached out and stroked her hair. Thomas sat next to Bear for a couple of hours going in and out of different thoughts. He couldn’t focus on any one idea. He thought about their finances, then the future of Prepperland, and finally, how much he would miss her if she were to die.
Thomas looked at the clock and then at his watch to verify the time. Of course, his timepiece had ceased to function.
He squeezed Bear’s hand one last time and muttered, “I know what needs to be done, honey. I’ll take care of everything.”
Thomas left the hospital and headed back to Prepperland. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been by Bear’s side, but the thin veil of twilight had crept up around him. While driving into the darkening sky, a new kind of resolve shook the entirety of his being. He didn’t know where the feeling came from, but it was right there for him grab a hold of, and this time, he wasn’t going to let go until everything was okay. He was going to win the competition against Dale, and Prepperland would be there for Bear to see again.
That night, Thomas got up several times and tinkered with the equipment he’d need for the morning training session. When it was time, the first car that pulled into the lot was that of Kerena Faux. Thomas could hear the base from her stereo thump, and he pictured her with her head and gun tilted to one side like she was in a rap video. “Silly little girl,” he said, waving to her when she exited her vehicle. It wasn’t long before Sam arrived.
Thomas went over the safety rules again, and then supervised as they put on their equipment.
“All right guys, now that you have a little range time under your belt and some basic pistol skills, we’re going to warm up with a failure drill. When I yell out the word threat, you draw your pistol and put two in the chest and one in the head on the silhouette. Got it?” Thomas said. He was standing behind Sam. “Threat,” he called out. The piercing sound of gunfire rang out across Prepperland.
“Ouch. Shit,” he heard Kerena yell.
When Thomas looked around Sam’s head, he noticed that Kerena hadn’t put her hearing protection on.
“She’ll learn,” Thomas said. He waited for a moment and watched her lower the cups onto her ears. “Now, threat,” he commanded once again.
The students drew their pistols well from what he could tell, safe and only in the direction of the targets. The smell of gunpowder was quite pronounced and the crack that came from the expulsion of gas from the front of the barrel wrapped him in a dream. A dream that included Bear and Prepperland, forever.
Thomas looked at the patterns on the cardboard silhouettes. “Not bad. Not bad,” he said.
Sam raised his hand. “What is it, my man?” Thomas asked.
“When are we going to run and gun?”
Thomas thought about the request for a moment. He knew that the kind of movement that Sam was referring to had its complications. Prepperland was shy on space, the compound supported a small area where a shooter could only engage targets from one position. That was the reason he wanted to use Carl’s range for the advanced drills. There was much more real estate to work with. He peered down at his watch, but had forgotten that it was broken, so he shook his head to acknowledge to himself that he felt like an idiot.
“All right, then. We can’t do any elaborate drills that require a lot of movement, but we can use what we’ve got to further complicate this session. Let’s all line up right here next to me.” Thomas pointed to a spot on the dirt to his left.
Kerena was the first to line up on his right side. Thomas looked at the spot that he was pointing to in disbelief and waited until she had realized her error. He was willing to forgive the little mistakes; it was the big ones he was worried about.
“Use the cartridges in your dump pouch, and top off your magazines,” Thomas said. “Keep your pistols holstered. I need to throw some spray paint on the steel again.” He turned his back to his students.
Sam reached behind him and lowered his fingers into the mesh pouch. He felt a couple of bullets slipping around, the tips of the 9mm projectiles were hard to get a hold of, so he shoved his hand down even harder. The motion caused him to tilt to his right like a dog chasing his tail. Kerena noticed that Sam was struggling to grab his ammo, so she reached down to retrieve some of her own; her intent was to lend him some, so that they could continue the drill. She lowered her hips, and the grip on her pistol bit into her midsection.
“Shit,” she grumbled. To alleviate the pain, Kerena removed the pistol from her holster. Her finger wrapped gently around the trigger. When she reached back again, she gripped the frame a little harder. Thomas jumped when the shot went off. It was as if the world had slowed down and time was crawling past him like a caterpillar on a leaf. Before opening his eyes, he said a little prayer. The damage, the chaos, the death that could come from a firearm related accident flooded his brain. He turned slowly to see Kerena standing with her eyes wide. The pistol was still pointed in Sam’s direction, but the muzzle was slightly askew. Sam looked up at Thomas, and took a step to his rear. His legs folded, and Sam fell into the dirt. Thomas reached for the young man, but couldn’t get a hold of him. All he could feel was the coarse fabric of his jacked easing along his fingertips. Sam looked understandably shaken. Thomas thought he’d have grabbed the wound in pain, but Sam just sat there panting heavily.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Kerena let out.
Sam pulled his foot back and up as close as he could to his chest. There was a nick in the rubber sole of his boot. The half crescent had almost reached up to his big toe.
“Jesus,” Thomas said, removing his Scooby-Doo cap. He slapped the padded dome across his thigh. “You all right,” he said.
Sam let out a guttural acknowledgement that he was okay.
“Kerena. Let me see your pistol.” Thomas reached out and took the firearm from the young girl.
“K,” Kerena said. “I just…,”
“Just calm down. Everyone is safe. Go over to the safe table with Sam once he catches his breath, but make sure you don’t have any ammo with you. Check his pistol. Make sure it’s unloaded; check again, and have him bag it, muzzle facing a safe direction. I’ll be right there,” Thomas said.
The two shooters made their way over to the table. Thomas placed his hands on his hips and looked skyward. “I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this, Bear,” he said. “I need you.”
Taking a breath of stale air, Thomas held it in for a couple of seconds before going over to his students. They had a lot of work to do before the tournament, and Thomas Gunderson was determined to teach them how to be shooters. Even if he had a mental breakdown trying to do so.
The day bit into the night, and Thomas sat with his back against the Prepperland sign sipping on a small glass of scotch. He felt bad about not visiting Bear earlier in the day, but knew that she’d have wanted him to keep building up the team. Stages, stages, he thought. What stages can we use to our advantage? He knew that Dale was a hot-headed, but the man wasn’t stupid when it came to tactics. He’d be at his best and would take a bulldozer to Prepperland as soon as the title passed to him. If, Thomas reconciled.
There was also the problem of finding a third man to compete. Thomas originally thought that he and Bear would make up half of the team, but that design had blown away like a sleeve of newspaper in a storm. One stage at a time. The game is won, one stage at a time, he murmured. I’ll find somebody. He took a sip of the amber liquid. It went down a little hard, but he knew to expect that from a 10 year old bottle. In the distance, Thomas saw what looked like a person walking down the road. Standing, he rested the glass of scotch on top of the Prepperland sign. The silhouette grew, and Thomas felt a hard pinch in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t need any more trouble. Not now.
The individual made a sharp turn toward Prepperland, but Thomas still couldn’t make out any of the man’s features. He reached down, like he was going to draw his pistol; a gut reaction that causality had driven into his brain with a whispery resolve.
There was no pistol. Not that he was going to draw, but the cold steel usually coddled him with a sense of security.
Some safety expert, he thought. I’m not even armed in my own compound.
As the man drew closer, Thomas readied himself for what might come. A verbal assault, perhaps something physical, his intent was unknown, but at this point Thomas didn’t really care. He would give as good as he got, so he raised his glass and choked down the last of his scotch.
“Hello,” the man called from the distance.
Eyes darting upward, Thomas replied before he even knew what he was saying. “Good evening. Can I help you?”
The man was now close enough for Thomas to get a good look at him. Cupping his chin while in thought, Thomas put the man at about forty-two years old, slightly older than himself. His features were calm that creased with a hint of experience coming from a couple of scars that ran down his face. Countenance aside, the man hinted at suffering, but managed to curtail any concerns that Thomas had about being dangerous with a slight, yet warm grimace.
“Don’t I know you?” Thomas said, squinting.
“Yeah,” the man answered. “The last time we met wasn’t under the best of circumstances.”
Of all the people Thomas knew, there was no question that this individual was set back somewhere in the obscure recesses of his discombobulated memories. He struggled, until he saw the man’s baseball cap that read 25th infantry division, and then - bam - there he was as clear as day. The robber from the convenience store; a little cleaned up, but it was him, nevertheless.
The man reached out and handed Thomas his own business card. “I just wanted to say thank you for what you did for me in that store. It’s been hard for me ever since I left the service – not an excuse mind you – but things haven’t been so good.”
The man turned to leave.
“Wait a minute,” Thomas said. “What’s your name?”
“James. James Warren. But my friends call me Titan.”
“Titan, huh…” Thomas said. “You’re not a very big guy.”
“You’d have to get to know me as a soldier. My battlefield presence is… well, big.”
“All right then, Titan. What was all that stuff with the pistol back at the convenience store? You didn’t handle it well, and there was no magazine in the magwell.”
Titan shrugged his shoulders. “My experience, like most military guys, is with a rifle. I never actually shot a pistol.”
“How are you with a rifle?”
“Fleas off a fly’s back.”
“Right,” Thomas thought for a moment about how he was going to ask Titan to stay and shoot for him. He knew the man was in no position to pay for lessons, but quite frankly, probably didn’t need much instruction anyway.
“Do you like scotch?” Thomas asked.
“Is it wet?” Titan replied.
The two men sat down and had a long conversation that lasted well into the night. In the end, Thomas Gunderson had a new shooter. He’d also thrown in a job offer to sweeten the deal. Titan would work part time getting things ready for the courses that Thomas was going to teach. Of course, Thomas had failed to mention that he might lose the title to Prepperland soon, but as he kept reminding himself, one problem at a time. He’d have to have a talk with Titan later if things didn’t go as planned. Thomas slept well that night, not amongst the dark dreams he usually had, but with a slight smile on his face that said that Dale Stone had finally met his match.
The training over the next weekend went well, Titan was introduced to the group, and Kerena didn’t accidentally shoot anyone, so Thomas viewed the training as a success. Kerena had a few problems clearing some of the jams that Thomas had intentionally set up, but with enough practice, all Thomas had to say was tap and rack, and she went on to clear her pistol with ease. He wanted to end the instruction early, so that he could visit Bear. He missed her, and it was only the fact that he was training for the Freeman Competition that kept him from going into a deep depression.
“Okay, guys. Remove your magazines and any rounds that you may have in battery, point your firearm down range and pull the trigger. Once your weapon is cleared, lock the action open and have one of your teammates check for an empty chamber,” Thomas said.
Once they were finished, Kerena called the group together. Thomas had exited the range and was about to leave when he noticed that his students had gathered in the parking lot.
“I don’t have time to see what’s going on,” he grumbled, driving off to see Bear.
Once his car was out of sight, Kerena came forward with her idea.
“We have some extra time today,” she said. “I say we go check out the competition.”
“Team 5 Response?” Sam asked.
“No shit,” Kerena snapped back. “They’re at the range downtown right now. Let’s take a ride over there and see how those niggas’ doing.”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. Couldn’t we get into some kind of trouble?” Sam responded.
Titan cocked his head toward Sam; a scowl replaced the good humored smile he’d donned earlier.
“Are you serious?” He asked. “Trouble? What kind of trouble could we possibly get into by going to a public range to observe our competition?”
“I don’t know. Just trouble,” Sam added.
“I’m down,” Titan said. He looked at Sam and paused; waiting for the young man to look at him. “Do you have to ask your mommy?”
“Shut up, Titan. I can do what I want.”
“Good, then let’s go,” Kerena said. She walked over to her car and unlocked the doors by pushing a button on her FOB. Once they were all inside the vehicle, Kerena smirked before she started the car.
“Y’all ready for some muzakkk,” she said.
Titan and Sam winced a little, not knowing exactly what to expect. As the vehicle rolled out of Prepperland, the bass thumped, and Kerena bounced up and down in the driver’s seat mouthing the words to the rap song.
Titan leaned over to Sam. “I should have worn my hearing protection,” he said. Sam leaned back before pulling his hoodie over his ears.
Save for a little traffic, the ride to see Team 5 Response at the range was free of incident. Kerena made sure to turn her music off before they pulled into the parking lot.
“There they are,” she said.
Titan leaned over, almost pushing Kerena into the back seat as he tried to get a better view of the competition through the driver’s side window.
“Shit,” Titan said.
The members of Team 5 Response were running timed drills. Each competitor was decked out in Team 5 Response gear and ran the courses with little to no difficulty.
“They’re putting most of their shots on target,” Sam said. “Are you sure these guys are beginners?”
“They are supposed to be,” Kerena answered. “All of them, but that big guy over there, I think.” She pointed at Dale Stone. “That looks like the guy that hates Thomas. Bear had mentioned this guy to me during some lady talk. You know.”
“No, I don’t know,” Titan interjected. “Is it common to discuss other men just willy-nilly while you’re supposed to be practicing?”
Kerena waved her hand at Titan in dismissal. “Whatever bro. I’m guessing that’s the guy to beat, though.”
Dale stepped into the shooter’s box.
“Shooter, load and make ready,” a range officer commanded.
Dale drew his pistol, inserted a magazine and then pulled back on the slide.
“Shooter ready?”
Dale nodded.
The beep from the timer was audible from the parking lot. There were two targets in front of Dale. He drew his pistol; rapid fired five times into the first target, changed magazines and did the same thing to the second target, all in 2.43 seconds.
“I don’t know how good Thomas really is, but we can’t beat these guys,” Kerena said. Titan and Sam didn’t respond. “We should talk to him.”
Kerena started her car. Out of habit, she accidentally turned the volume all the way up on her sound system. When she did, the music thumped out of the speakers. Dale turned around to see the three Prepperland students scrambling to turn the music down.
“Ah…, the competition is conducting a little reconnaissance,” Dale said. “Idiots like that could only be Gunderson’s students.”
“Dale, come here,” One of his students asked. “I know that car, and that girl,” he said as Dale approached.
“Who is she?”
“Well, I don’t really know her that well, but she lives in the same complex as a friend of mine. Her father is a real bastard. He comes out and bangs on my friend’s door whenever we put in a late night out on his balcony. She always backs away from the guy, like she’s afraid of him.”
“Does she now?” Dale said. A sinister little smile stretched across his face.
He reached into his pocket. Dale pulled out a 9mm cartridge and examined its dimensions. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that girl, or anyone else over at Prepperland. They’re a bunch of nobodies,” he said. “But if they think they’re going to beat us...,” He held up the cartridge, “… Then they’re a lot dumber than they look.” He watched the vehicle drive out of sight. “Good luck, morons,” he said under his breath.
The next morning, Thomas was busy reloading some ammunition for the day’s training. He was using a fast burning powder and decided to increase the grain amount to make sure the ammunition would make the minimum power factor during a chronograph session that always preceded the tournament. Usually, he loaded his cartridges a little light to decrease the amount of recoil when practicing, but it was time that his students started shooting the exact type of ammunition they were going to compete with, and if there was one thing that Thomas was good at, it was reloading some excellent rounds. Reliable, powerful and accurate.
Kerena, Sam and Titan got to the compound early and were pounding on Thomas’s front door.
“What the hell,” Thomas said. “They’re a half an hour early.”
Kerena was the first to enter when Thomas opened the door.
“Have you seen those guys?” Kerena shouted.
Thomas held up his hands. “First of all, what guys?”
“The shooters from Team 5 response.”
“I have,” Thomas replied.
“There is no way we’ll beat them, boss,” Titan said. “I mean, I’m not afraid to go toe to toe with them, but beating them is going to be a tall order.”
Thomas pushed away from the reloader, crossing his arms indignantly.
“So, you guys are afraid?”
“Yes. I think we can safely say that at least Kerena and I are terrified of them,” Sam answered.
“Thomas, look, we like you, bro,” Kerena said. “But we’re way out of our league here.”
“I can’t believe this,” Thomas said. “You’re not even willing to try to save this place?”
“What do you mean, save this place?” Titan asked.
“I’m just saying that…,” Thomas stammered. “Okay, I have to come clean. If we don’t beat Team 5 Response, then I’m going to lose Prepperland.”
“So, this whole thing, the competition and everything, is about you, isn’t it? Kerena said. “We were never going to get a year of free training. I thought you were an upfront kind of guy, but I guess I was wrong.” Kerena waved her hands in the air. “I’m out.”
“Guys, wait.” Thomas implored. “Let me explain.”
“No need to,” Titan said. “I guess I’m out of that job, then.” He and Sam followed Kerena out the door.
“Since we’re done training, let’s go get breakfast, guys,” Kerena said. “This is wack.”
They all went to their separate vehicles and followed Kerena to the nearest diner.
Thomas beat his fist against the doorframe. He looked at an old clock on the wall. He wanted to go see Bear. He hoped that it would raise his spirits a little, but then when he thought about the totality of the situation, he sank deeper into his own sense of self-pity.
On the way to the hospital, Thomas tried to purge the morning’s events from his mind. When he arrived, the nurse at the front desk recognized him, and pointed to her watch to indicate that he only had a little bit of time before Bear was due for her daily examination.
When he entered the room, the sound from a nearby television set made a high pitched beeping noise, and for a second, Thomas thought he’d find Bear sitting up in her hospital bed playing video games.
He walked in and held her hand. “I wish I had good news, baby, but as usual, I don’t. When is all this bullshit going to end for us, anyway?” He turned to look out the window. The clouds were particularly billowy against the blue sky. Thomas raised his hand and closed one eye as if he were indexing the formations as targets.
“Not even you can make ammunition that’s powerful enough to hit one of them,” a voice from behind him said.
Slowly, he turned to see Bear smiling at him from her hospital bed.
“Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God!” Thomas shouted. “Nurse!”
The doctor showed up soon enough, and ushered Thomas outside while he conducted his examination. It was only for a short while, but it was the longest half-hour of his life.
“You can come in and see her now,” the doctor said, waving Thomas into the room.
A thousand words ran through his head as he stepped past the threshold. When he stood over Bear, all he could think of to say was, “So, are you still shooting for team Prepperland?”
Bear chuckled a little before shaking her head, “No.”
“That’s fine. We don’t have a team, anyway.” Thomas sat on the bed next to her. “I screwed up again, Bear. They are pissed at me for making promises that I might not be able to keep.”
“Why’d you do that?” Bear asked.
“I don’t know. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. Why does anybody lie? It starts off small, and you think that you can get out of it pretty easily, then it becomes more and more layered and complicated, until you’ve forgotten why you said what you said in the first place.” Bear placed her hand on his knee. “I meant to help them all out. I really did, but that damn Dale Stone.” Thomas grunted. “And now it looks like he’ll own Prepperland.” Thomas stood. “Maybe, we can just move away and leave all of this behind.”
Bear sat up in her bed. “You wouldn’t be able to do that. If there is one thing that I know will eat you up inside for the rest of your life, it is losing Prepperland. You just can’t do it. You were a good son, and I know that you never got the pat on the back you deserved from your father, but keeping the business alive, is, your acceptance. You are Prepperland, now. Not your father. Make it a home.”
“You always know what to say,” Thomas said. “I’ll pull this together somehow, even if I have to drag those knuckleheads out of bed the day of the competition.”
The nurse at the front desk entered the room. “It’s time to go Mr. Gunderson.”
Thomas leaned over and gave Bear a kiss on the forehead. “I love you,” he said.
“Of course,” Bear replied.
Thomas left the hospital. Where he was going and how he was going to convince the others to join him was anybody’s guess, but he had to try. Even if it meant that he’d have to eat a little crow.
The first door that Thomas knocked on was that of Kerena Faux. She lived the closest to Prepperland, so it seemed like it was a good place to start. He had addresses for Kerena and Sam, but he’d have to do some creative searching to find Titan; a problem he’d deal with later.
Thomas knocked on the door. The apartment complex was riddled with unique smells coming from the various meals that were being prepared within. Thomas could almost taste a certain flavor before it was replaced with more of a bitter concoction. The overall experience was quite unpleasant, and Thomas thought about just grabbing a simple burger and fries, later.
The door opened slightly, the sound of the security chain clanged against the doorframe as it stretched to its maximum length.
“Can I help you?” A gruff voice said from inside the apartment.
For a brief moment, Thomas thought he’d knocked on the wrong door.
“Yes, is this where Kerena lives? Kerena Faux?” Thomas asked. “If so, I just need to discuss something with her just for a moment.”
The man behind the door snickered. “Kerena, huh. Is that what she’s calling herself now?” He turned to yell into the apartment. “Sasha. Sasha Snodgrass. You have a visitor.”
When Kerena got to the door, the man opened it wide and pushed her as she went outside to talk to Thomas.
“Hey, man. Come on. What’s up with that?” Thomas said.
The Man rolled his eyes. Thomas heard the word asshole just before the door shut.
“What a sweetheart,” Thomas said. He noticed that Kerena was a lot quieter than usual. He also almost didn’t recognize her. No fake eyelashes, makeup or designer sweats. To him, she looked… normal.
“So who’s…,” Thomas pointed.
“Dad,” Kerena said before he could finish.
The look on her face was not only that of embarrassment, but also of disgust. She didn’t raise her head once to look at Thomas.
“Can I ask about the Kerena thing?” Thomas said.
Kerena shrugged her shoulders before answering. “If you were born Sasha Snodgrass, wouldn’t you change your name, too?”
Thomas held out his hand. “Ms. Snodgrass, I’m Richard. Richard Raper.”
Kerena laughed. “Dick Raper,” she said, covering her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “Sometimes we need a clean break. And I’ve noticed that you don’t talk like you’re right out of a rap video anymore.”
Kerena shot him a look as though she was coy.
“Look, let me talk to you for a minute, we can go and grab some burgers or whatever. And it’s still Kerena and Thomas, right?”
“Right,” Kerena said.
Just then, the door behind Kerena flew open. “Mister, I don’t know who you are, but you’re not going anywhere with my little girl.”
“You know, when your daughter came to Prepperland to learn how to use a gun, I could sense that something was amiss. She was afraid of something or someone. Perhaps someone in her life that wasn’t so nice to her.”
“Fuck you!” The man shouted. He opened the door all the way and stretched his chest outward almost beyond what his dirty tank top would hold.
“Kerena, as your instructor, can you tell me which firearm would be best to use in a situation like this. As we’ve discussed in class, I have an ankle revolver, a Glock 19 in my waistband, and of course, my primary – a Glock 34, I might add – here on my hip. Thomas caressed the bulge that resided just under his hoodie.
“Well…,” Kerena started. “… The ankle revolver is too far to get to before my dad makes a move. The waistband compact Glock 19 should only be drawn if there is a primary malfunction, so I’d say you’re good to go with the 34. You can draw that thing in about 1 second, right?”
“That’s about right,” Thomas said. He rested his hand on the bulge.
The man in the doorway deflated. He backed into the apartment and slammed the door.
“Let’s go,” Thomas said. “I get the feeling that you’ll be staying with us for a while.” Kerena beamed. As they made their way to his car, Thomas lifted his hoodie to access the fanny pack he was wearing on his right side. He unzipped the pouch and pulled out a stick of gum.
“Wait a minute,” Kerena said. “Where’s your Glock 34?”
“Oh. That’s at home. So are the ankle revolver and Glock 19.”
Kerena got into the car. Thomas handed her a stick of gum. “You’re a slick one, Thomas Gunderson.”
“Keep that in mind when you hear what I have to say.”
“Where are we going?”
“We have got to find Sam and then Titan.”
Kerena looked down at the fanny pack. “Does Bear know you wear that?
Thomas smiled. “She thinks it’s dorky, but yeah.”
“I doubt that,” Kerena added. “Seems to me, she’d burn something like that on sight.”
“Let’s just keep it our little secret,” Thomas said, leaving the apartment complex.
While they drove through town, Thomas had Kerena look through a manila file folder containing each of the applications he had on file. She tried to find Sam’s address as Thomas bounced down the road, seemingly hitting every speed bump and pot hole at an unusually high rate of speed.
“Here it is,” Kerena said.
She started to type the address on her phone, when the vehicle screeched to a halt. Kerena almost bounced off the dashboard; the force throwing her phone onto the floorboard. She turned her head slowly toward Thomas, and he’d seen the look before. He was just about to get his ass ripped if he didn’t start to explain exactly why he’d stopped so fast.
“Is that Sam?” He said, pointing.
Karena shifted her focus. There was a line coming out of some kind of tech store, and it looked like Sam was standing there waiting for something.
“Let’s go,” Thomas said, parking the car.
Kerena picked up her phone and saw that the screen was cracked. Kill him later, she thought. Kill him later.
The two crossed the street, dodging a couple of slow moving cars as they passed. One of the vehicles honked its horn, which caught Sam’s attention.
“What are you guys doing here?” Sam asked.
“We were looking for you,” Thomas answered.
“I’m working right now.”
“Working?” Kerena asked.
“Yeah, I’m a professional spot saver.”
“A what?” Thomas said.
“I wait in line for products that haven’t been released yet, then when it’s time, I call the client, they take my place and go in and buy the latest phone, or tablet or whatever.”
“You wait in line for a living,” Thomas said, trying not to let his face reveal what he was really thinking.
“Yes,” Sam replied.
“Parents got to be proud.”
Kerena elbowed Thomas in the side.
“Sam, I’m sorry,” Thomas said. “I meant…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sam assured him. “I already how my father feels about me. Do you know what it’s like to have a father who is a military hero, and you can’t even get into the armed services? It’s like I wasn’t even given a chance, so what I do now doesn’t really matter.”
Thomas felt his chest tighten. The feelings that Sam described still resonated with him about his own father. He knew exactly how the boy felt.
“Look, Sam… my father was in a Marine Reconnaissance unit during the Vietnam War. If you saw his DD-214, you’d see that it reads like a manual on how to kill people. I went to college, and we’d compete together in these shooting tournaments. I always felt like he wanted me to enlist, but he never said anything. What I came to learn later on, was that he was proud of me for just being who I was.” Thomas laughed. “And the fact that when we competed I’d kick the shit out of all the military guys.”
Sam seemed to understand.
“I’m trying to live up to his legacy by keeping Prepperland open just like you’re trying to prove to your father that you have value as well. And do you know how you could do that?”
Sam looked like he was going to say yes, but then shook his head from side to side.
“By burying Dale Stone and his Team 5 Response flunkies.”
Sam took his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. “Yes, Mr. Vial, You need to come down here as soon as possible. I have an emergency that I have to attend to.”
There was a soft grumble that came out of the phone’s speaker before Sam hung up.
“He’ll be here in about ten minutes.”
Thomas pointed across the street. “We’ll have the car running.”
They didn’t wait for long. Sam’s employer showed up in no time, and the group headed back to Prepperland. There was a surprise waiting near the broken down sign when they returned.
“Is that Titan,” Sam said.
Thomas smiled. “Yes. Yes, it is. I can tell by his hat.” Titan was wearing his 25th infantry division cap.
They pulled up next to him and Thomas rolled down his window. Titan leaned in to address the group. “I’m sorry I bailed on you guys. I guess I just got a little hot headed, that’s all.”
“It’s pretty scary when a guy named Titan says that he got a little hot headed,” Kerena said.
Titan shrugged. “Just happens.”
“Let’s go over a few things about next week’s competition,” Thomas said. “We’re not practicing today, you’re not going to get significantly better by next week, but I do want to give you guys the layout of the stages and a few pointers. I got an email of the stage setup from Dale last night.”
“Right,” Kerena said. She winked at Titan and pushed Sam on his shoulder.
“Next Saturday is going to be a big day for all of us. Now, let’s go wrap our heads around what we’re going to have to do.”
The week went by faster than Thomas had expected. The night before the competition, he didn’t get much rest. Thomas took a couple of cat naps sometime after midnight, but didn’t feel as refreshed as he should have if he’d gotten a good night’s sleep. He was sure that the other members of the team didn’t either. He just hoped that they would all be frosty enough in the morning to do the job that needed to be done. He wished that Bear was lying next to him. He ran his hand across the empty space. The sheets were cold, and so it seemed was his resolve. If he lost tomorrow, Prepperland was gone, and with it, most of the life that he’d built, no matter how simple it may seem to the people looking inward. One way or another, Dale Stone would have to be bested, and Thomas was determined to be the one to facilitate the defeat.
The next day, both squads showed up on-time and ready to shoot. Dale’s team was running through each stage, pretending to draw their firearms and take a sight picture. Thomas circled up with his group. “See what they’re doing there? Get in line and practice running the stage the best way that suits you. Don’t worry how someone else is doing it, shape the challenge to your strengths. I’m going to go set up an area for you guys to reload your magazines and store your stuff.”
“Right boss,” Titan said.
“Kerena, did you load up your magazines, yet?” Thomas asked.
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
“Yeah, I didn’t see any in your pouches. Before you run through the stage, go load some magazines. That way when we’re ready to go, no one is waiting for you.”
“Okay,” Kerena said. She made her way over to a clearly marked reloading table and grabbed the ammo can marked Prepperland 9mm.
Dale looked over to see Kerena loading her magazines. He walked over as if he was going to make some polite conversation. “Ready for today?” He asked.
Kerena ignored him. Then, she looked up and smiled gingerly.
“I can help you with that,” Dale said. “A lady shouldn’t have to load her own magazines.” He leaned over and scooped a handful of cartridges out of the ammo can.
Kerena grabbed Dale by the wrist. “I got it,” she said. “But thanks.”
“Just trying to be sportsman like,” Dale said. He reached into his pocket when Kerena looked down and added a single cartridge to the mix in his hand.
“Here you go,” Dale said, dumping the bullets back into the can. “Sometimes daddy just can’t be nice to people,” he whispered loud enough for Kerena to hear before rejoining his team.
Kerena thought about her father. A sharp chill ran down her spine. The comment had shaken her enough that she tried to load a cartridge into the magazine that was facing the wrong way. “Fuckin’ butthole,” Kerena said under her breath. She shivered slightly and then returned to what she was doing. When she was finished, she joined the others in practice. Little did she know that she’d inadvertently loaded the cartridge that Dale had dumped in her ammo can into one of her magazines.
“Okay, let’s get to the safety briefing,” Dale said.
Both teams assembled. Dale went on about being safe during the competition, muzzle discipline, finger off the trigger and all that when a car pulled into the parking lot. Thomas noticed the vehicle out of the corner of his eye. The passenger side door opened, and a cane with a rubber stopper hit the ground first. Then, a pair of shoes, and Thomas knew who it was in an instant.
“Dale, I’ll be right back,” Thomas said.
“You’d better be ready to go right when I’m done,” Dale countered. “We’re not waiting for you.”
Thomas ran over to the car. Bear struggled a little, but was able to get her balance. Thomas threw his arms around her, but was careful not to squeeze her too tightly because of her injury.
“Why are you out of the hospital? Who is this with you?” Thomas asked, referring to the driver.
An elderly gentleman exited the vehicle. He was wearing a Marines soft top hat that read Marine Force Recon. The man stood tall and looked into the crowd to spot his son. Sam turned around. His father waved, and Sam was taken aback. He wasn’t sure what the feeling was that came racing up through him, but whatever it was, it was good.
“I arranged this along with Kerena from the hospital,” Bear said. “I thought Sam might need the support.”
Thomas peered at Kerena. She dipped her head to one side and grinned.
“Now, get out there and win,” Bear added just before the tournament started.
The match began right on time, and the competition was going well for the Prepperland shooters. The first four stages challenged each competitor, and because of the number of teams that entered the tournament, it took about four hours to get to the last stage. Thomas was as fast as ever, Kerena was being safe, Titan was racking up points like a shooting machine, and Sam was steady and consistent.
Thomas was proud of them, but knew that the real test of their skills was about to start. The last stage. It was the one that he and Dale had based their rather eccentric wager on, and if Thomas and his team fell apart now, Prepperland would be no more.
Thomas pursed his lips. He stood behind the group as they started to call the names of the competitors, and looked over the stage one last time. There were four official USPSA cardboard targets that were staggered at various distances. The object was to put at least two shots in the center of the target, or alpha zone, from each of the designated shooting areas. There were three blue boxes tethered to the ground by spikes. Each box was approximately six feet long by six feet wide. After engaging the cardboard targets, the shooter could move to another designated area and take aim at the first of six steel plates, placed horizontally across a metal frame. Once the steel was knocked down, another set of four cardboard targets punctuated the tail end of the stage. The design was a basic, but Thomas knew that his shooters needed to keep their fingers off the trigger when moving between shooting areas. It was an easy way to get disqualified, and even Thomas had made the mistake a few times throughout his shooting career.
“James. James Warren, you’re our first shooter,” Dale said, reading the name off the iPad. “Do you understand the course of fire?”He asked, raising the shot timer to Titan’s ear. Before the sound of the beep, Titan ran through his plan one more time. He knew exactly where he was going to do his magazine changes and what his shooting positions were going to be. The shot timer sounded. Titan took off running. He performed a quick double-tap placing two shots onto the first set of paper targets. He changed magazines, and knocked down a rack of six steel plates without missing.
“He’s doing it,” Thomas said, clenching his fists.
Titan ran to the last section of the stage and unloaded into the rest of the cardboard targets. Thomas could see the hits, or the lack thereof, on the last set of silhouettes.
“What the hell?” Thomas said. He pointed at the targets again with his index finger, trying to see if he had missed any hits. There was only one hit in the alpha zone. All three of the other shots missed the targets entirely.
Thomas looked over at Dale, who seemed a little too preoccupied to acknowledge Titan’s debacle.
The afternoon crept up on the competitors, and the sun was beating down something fierce. Dale went over to his range bag, grabbed a hat, and placed the cap over his sweat-soaked hair. When he turned, Thomas couldn’t help but notice the emblem stitched across the face of the headgear. It read 25th infantry division.
Thomas stood dumbfounded for a few moments. “He sandbagged the stage. Jesus Christ. He served with Dale,” Thomas realized.
“What?” Kerena added.
“He must have told Dale that I tried to get him to come to Prepperland while he was robbing the convenience store. I thought that Titan showing up just when we needed another shooter was a little too convenient, but I let the pressure of the situation get the best of me,” Thomas recounted.
Kerena didn’t know what to say. She just crossed her arms and watched the next competitor as he stepped into the shooting area.
Just then, Titan turned to Dale and signaled to his former commander with a slight nod of his head.
Thomas gathered his resolve. One problem at a time. One stage at a time, he thought. Focus on the rest of the match.
He turned to Kerena. “Let’s see how the Team 5 Response guy does when the pressure is on. I’ll bet he folds.”
The second competitor stepped into the shooting box. He loaded and made ready. When the shot timer went off, he flew through the course, hitting his targets with ease. When he got to the steel plates the clang rang out across the compound. The first three fell with hits that were just above the center of the plate. Thomas could see that the impact marks were getting higher and higher. By the time the competitor got to the fifth plate, the dirt above, and behind the target sputtered, indicating that the projectile had missed. The shooter went on to the sixth plate and knocked it down. Placing his front post back on the fifth target, the competitor squeezed the trigger. The dirt behind the target once again launched into the air.
“He’s going to panic,” Thomas said to Kerena.
The shooter pulled back on the trigger four more times, each hit landing just above or below the plate. Finally, the slide on his firearm locked back.
Thomas lowered his head, knowing full well that the shooter would have to take a penalty for the missed steel.
“That helped us,” Thomas said. “Way to get us back in the game.” He fist bumped the remaining members of his team.
Sam was up next in the order of shooters. He looked back at his father, who gave him a kind nod. Sam had only seen the gesture two other times in his life. When he graduated from high school, and when he told his father that he’d decided to join the military. Unfortunately for Sam, the second time he’d received his father’s approval was punctuated by the discovery that he was ineligible to serve for medical reasons. They never discussed the details of the situation, but Sam knew how his father felt. But then, Prepperland came along. Thomas and Bear had trained him well, and he was ready to show his father what he was made of. This time was different. This time, Sam was going to fight.
The timer sounded. Sam took off, hitting the alpha zone on most of his cardboard targets, and then knocking down all six of the steel plates.
“Yes, that’s what we needed,” Thomas said. He glanced over at Dale. The big man looked nervous, but Thomas knew that his team was far from out of the game.
The next Team 5 Response shooter stepped up to the line and made ready. Except for a couple of fumbles while changing magazines, the time it took him to get through the course was amazing. When the shot timer stopped, he had bested Sam’s time by two seconds.
Thomas quickly did the math in his head. “We’re still okay,” he said to his team. It’s going to come down to me and Kerena.”
Kerena stepped back slightly and placed the palm of her right hand on her chest.
“Calm down, sweetie,” Thomas assured her. “Just stick to what you know. Don’t push your shots. Take aim and move smoothly through the stage.”
Kerena took a deep breath. Bear took notice of the interaction from afar. She was never more proud of Thomas. He’d taken what was essentially a motley group of misfits and turned them into real shooters. She knew that he would get his footing sooner or later, and whether or not the day’s events went in their favor, Prepperland would always be saved in their hearts.
Since Kerena was the next to shoot, Thomas made sure that she had loaded all of her magazines and was ready to go. She stepped into the shooting area. Dale looked over at one of his teammates, winked and then elbowed the man on his shoulder. Thomas saw the exchange, but paid little attention to the action. He needed to focus on Kerena.
“Shooter ready?” The range officer said.
Kerena nodded. The shot timer went off.
She engaged the first set of targets. Kerena moved to her next shooting position and changed magazines with ease. Thomas threw his hands in the air. “Unbelievable,” he said. “She’s doing great.”
The steel plates and the remainder of the cardboard targets stood between Kerena and the completion of the stage. She took aim and squeezed the trigger. The firing pin made contact with the primer, but the projectile didn’t discharge.
Dale grabbed the shoulder of the man next to him in anticipation that Kerena would panic and fail to knock down the steel.
“Tap and rack,” Thomas whispered.
Kerena immediately struck the bottom of the magazine and racked the slide of the gun to the rear. The bad round ejected, and Kerena placed the front post back in the center of the first steel plate. Her gun fired when she pulled the trigger to the rear, and one by one the targets fell as she engaged them.
Kerena turned to face Thomas but was careful not to let the muzzle of the pistol turn away from a safe firing position. She waved excitedly.
Thomas clasped his hands together and bowed his head.
“If you’re finished, show clear and then hammer down,” the range officer said.
Kerena completed the safety procedures before holstering her pistol. She ran from the shooting box to hug Thomas.
“Great job, sweetie. Couldn’t have done better myself,” Thomas said. He noticed that she was crying. He hugged her a little tighter to show that he understood and that he was very proud of her.
“Dale Stone. You’re up,” the range officer announced. “Thomas Gunderson, you’re on deck.”
Before letting go of Kerena, Thomas stared into the dirt where the round that she had ejected would have fallen. Since the other competitors were busy taping up the holes in the targets, Thomas went over to see if he could find the loose bullet. He searched around the dirt until he found what he was looking for. When he inspected the round, he noticed that the name of the company etched into the rim of the brass casing was Blazer. “Funny,” he said. “I don’t reload with Blazer brass.” He shook the cartridge and looked in Dale’s direction. The big man was getting ready to shoot.
Thomas went to his range bag. He retrieved a kinetic bullet puller and loaded the round into the hammer-like tool. He pounded the face of the apparatus against the hard concrete and extracted the projectile from its seating. There was no powder in the brass.
“Son of a bitch,” Thomas said. “He fucking tried to jam her pistol.”
Thomas had been heated before, but even Bear noticed that something was different.
“Something’s wrong,” Bear said to Sam’s dad.
“What do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know, but he’s pissed.”
Thomas placed the components in the front pocket of his tactical pants. He thought about telling the range officer about Dale’s indiscretion, and even his recruitment of Titan for that matter, but then thought better of the idea because of what was at stake. To the other teams competing, this was just the Freeman Tournament. Their livelihoods weren’t in jeopardy. Not to mention the fact that a side bet like the one he had with Dale would be considered unsportsmanlike conduct, and they could both be barred from competition shooting. Thomas would just have to deal with Dale himself. He pushed his way back through the crowd of shooters and prepared to watch Dale’s run.
“Let’s go Stone,” one of Dale’s teammates yelled. The big man turned and grinned.
Thomas was to the point of wanting to punch Dale out after his run, but knew that he had to keep his composure even in the face of Dale’s attempt to rig the event.
Dale readied himself.
“Shooter ready,” the range officer said.
Dale didn’t move. The shot timer went off, and he drew his pistol in under a second. His shots were on target, and his transitions smooth.
Thomas was waiting for his gun to jam, or for him to forget to shoot one of the targets. A procedural penalty would also help out team Prepperland, but it was not likely that Dale would make such an error.
Dale’s run went off with excellent poise and skill.
Kerena walked up to Thomas. “What do you think?”
“I think that it’s going to come down to a second or two. I’ll just have to do the best that I can.”
“Do you think you can make up for the time?”
“I’ll have to go faster or get better hits,” Thomas added. “I think the best option would be to cut down on my travel time. That means that I can’t run to each shooting position. I’ll have to take out some of the targets from a place that’s farther out. My shots are going to have to be right on the money.”
Kerena walked back and forth, looking for an alternate way in which to complete the stage. She couldn’t find a solution, but knew that Thomas was good at the game. He had to have something in mind.
After the targets had been taped up and the stage was clear, the range officer was ready to get Thomas shooting. “Gunderson, you’re up,” he said.
Thomas stepped into the firing box.
The range officer held the shot timer up to Thomas’s ear. “Load and make ready.”
Thomas loaded a magazine and racked a cartridge into the action.
“Shooter ready?”
The shot timer sounded like it went off in slow motion. Thomas drew his pistol and then squeezed the trigger, hitting his first set of targets. All of his hits were in the alpha zone.
“He’s doing it,” Bear cheered.
Thomas looked over at the second shooting box. He made sure that his finger wasn’t on the trigger before making his move. As he exited the first shooting area, his knee gave out and the front of his shoe caught the outside of the second wooden frame. Thomas felt himself lurching forward. He ducked his head and went into a full roll; the movement ended in him lying prone in the next shooting area.
“What the hell is he doing?” Dale said.
Bear’s eyes widened. “No way. That Mel Gibson son of a bitch.”
Thomas took aim at the six steel plates. He rolled to his right, spinning on the ground and firing his pistol at the same time. The steel targets fell one at a time with the rhythm of dominos toppling across a flat table. Standing, Thomas engaged the last four targets by moving to one other shooting area. The shot timer recorded his last shot.
“7.49,” the range officer called out.
“That’s two seconds better than Dale’s time,” Bear said. She leaned over and hugged Sam’s dad who was not expecting the embrace, but gladly accepted the attention from such a lovely young lady.
When the officials checked the targets, Thomas had fourteen hits in the A zones and two in the C.
Dale almost jumped out of his skin. He couldn’t believe what had just happened.
“Wait a minute,” Dale said to the range officer. “He has to engage the third set of targets from the last shooting position. That’s a procedural.”
The range officer made his way over to the stage directions that were taped to a small table for the competitors to view. He examined the document. “There isn’t anything that says where a shooter can engage the targets from. If he wants to shoot from one area, then he can. It’s perfectly within the rules of the stage.”
Dale tightened his jaw. He waited with his team, while the range officer looked over the final scores.
Omitting the points from the other teams, the range officer focused on Team 5 Response and Prepperland. He’d been informed of what was going on between the two teams and used extreme prudence while making his announcements.
Thomas dusted off his tactical pants, and then looked over at Bear. He’d done the best that he could, and hoped that if there was a heaven, that his father was looking down at him while whispering - That’s my boy.
The range officer went over the numbers several times before declaring a winner.
“So…, taking into account the point deductions from penalties and procedurals,” the range officer paused. “The winner is…,” he turned the iPad around.
Kerena reached over and grabbed Thomas by the hand.
“Prepperland,” the range officer declared.
Thomas couldn’t believe what he’d heard. He looked at his team members for some kind of validation that he wasn’t wrong in what he was thinking.
“We won!” Kerena shouted.
Sam hugged her tight. They all turned and patted Thomas on the back. Bear clasped her hands together and felt her eyes well up with tears. They’d done it. Prepperland had beaten Team 5 Response.
Thomas looked over at Dale, who in perfect character kept a face devoid of emotion. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the components of the bullet that he’d pulled apart earlier. Dale walked away from the course, grabbed his range bag and went over to the safe table to case his pistol. Titan joined him, and Thomas followed. Dale was putting a trigger lock on his gun when Thomas threw the pieces of the bullet onto the table in front of him.
“Looks like you’ll need a new place for your parking lot,” Thomas said. “I’ll send you a list of classes and dates when we’ll be using the range. If you need any time for your own outfit, just let me know and I’ll squeeze you in somewhere.”
Titan couldn’t help but be impressed. “Looks like you came through, boss.”
“Could have been a part of the winning team,” Thomas said.
Titan shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah. Missed out on that one. Loyalty is a bitch, huh?”
Dale didn’t respond. He loaded up his gear and went to his car. Thomas didn’t care that they hadn’t exchanged comments. He’d never liked what Dale had to say anyway. The big man knew that he’d been bested and that’s all that Thomas cared about.
“Looks like we’ll get to do some more shooting,” Kerena said.
“That we will,” Thomas said, looking over his shoulder at Bear. “That we will.”
It wasn’t long before Thomas had come up with a set of courses that he could run at the range. It had only been a couple of weeks since they’d won the Freeman Competition, but Thomas stayed hard at work. He’d included everything from beginning pistol to advanced carbine. The applications came flooding in to take courses at Prepperland, and Thomas took full advantage of the extra income. He entered the church where he and Bear lived. There was a new carpet smell that he reveled in every time he opened the front door. It was a silly little thing, but Thomas had learned not to take the small things for granted. He went into the bedroom where Bear was playing video games on her phone.
“Hey you,” he said. “Come here. I need to show you something.”
“What is it?” Bear asked. Her head was swaying from side to side; her pigtails slapping her in the face.
“Just come here,” Thomas said. He took her by the hand and led her outside. As they approached the Prepperland sign from behind, Bear could tell that there was a little more illumination coming from the face of the iconic marker. They moved around the structure, and there to behold was a completely renovated Prepperland sign. No burnt out lights or missing letters.
“Pretty as a Christmas tree,” Bear said.
“So are you,” Thomas replied. He reached into his pocket, got down on one knee and held out a one carat diamond ring.
“Will you marry me, Bear?”
Five minutes ago, Bear was mostly concerned with beating her high score on the driving game she was playing. Now, she was being proposed to in front of the Prepperland sign. She couldn’t think of a better time or place.
“Of course,” she answered.
Thomas slipped the ring on her finger, stood and embraced her tightly.
“Just so you know, your grandmother’s ring is back in your jewelry box. I got it back before I purchased this little gem here,” Thomas said.
“Never a dull day with you,” Bear reminisced.
Just then, a group of cyclists sped down the road in front of Prepperland. They were about twenty guys strong. Thomas felt the hair on the back of his neck stand tall. One of the men entered the compound and stopped next to the sign.
“Hey, can I ask what this is all about? I mean, what do you do here?”
Bear prepared herself for the backlash of comments that Thomas was going to throw out at the guy. Instead - very calmly - Thomas reached into his fanny pack and retrieved a business card. He handed it to the cyclist.
Bear shook her head, giving Thomas the - All right; you can wear the fanny pack and Scooby-Doo hat - look.
Thomas reached under his sweatshirt to retrieve his cap. He ran his fingers through his hair before securing the coveted headgear.
“We mostly do firearms safety and advanced sport shooting scenarios,” Thomas said.
“Cool,” the cyclist added. “I’ll be in contact.” He placed the Prepperland card in a pouch under his seat, waved goodbye, and rode off.
“Was that that hard?” Bear asked.
“Almost killed me,” Thomas answered.
That night, Thomas had the nightmare again. He was being chased by some unknown assailant, but this time, he was able to draw his pistol and fire. The projectile launched into the darkness never landing on target. Thomas knew then that the dream was never about what he was shooting at, it was just the fact that he’d had the courage to take the shot. The projectile was leading him into an unknown future for which he was now, ostensibly prepared.
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