Gregory Adams's Blog, page 2

New review on Amazon:

A new five-star review for The River Above on Amazon: "Each story is easy to summarize, but hard to describe. Adams' command of language takes a simple concept like "the animals on a farm take over" and turns it into a slowly unfolding and unsettling experience. And then as you wrap up one weird wonderful story, you turn the page and enter another. I imagine this must have been what it was like to read Lovecraft in the 20s or EC comics in the 40s."

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The Most Selfish Man in All of Stretford Concluded

A week later, Roger was at the Old Trafford, and apart from Liverpool’s knocking Man U around and Nistelrooy nowhere to be seen, things were approaching fabulous.

The spirit of the sloth paw was seated next to Roger, lackadaisically sucking on a pint. There was no cheering the fellow up, and Roger couldn’t help feel a little bit responsible.
“Look, I don’t know how other lads took to these dooms you hitched them up to, but I’m sorry, you just didn’t press the right buttons with me.”

“The right buttons!” the spirit exclaimed. “I gave you a manor house! A big one!” He had, too. The man at the door had been a barrister, and it seemed that the old man who had been killed by the lightning had bequeathed his property to whoever possessed the sloth paw. Roger had produced the paw and gotten the deed, just that easy.
“I took your wife from you!” The spirit exclaimed. “Your children, too! She’s been awarded the big manor house gets half of your salary in support!”

That was true as well. Once the wife had learned about the manor house, she set about getting herself into it not only without Roger but also with all of their kids and as much of his money as she could manage. She got half, but what the spirit didn’t seem to understand, was that Roger had been giving her all of the money, and then just to keep her quiet. Getting a new house hadn’t lost him the old one, so his life was a bit richer, and a whole lot quieter, with more time to go to the matches, which was why Roger had moved to Stretford in the first place years before he met the wife.

“It’s the irony that does it.” the spirit said. “You get what you always wanted, then lose it along with whatever you had. It drives most men mad.”

But Roger wasn’t listening. A change was being made on the pitch. Then the announcement came, and Roger, along with tens of thousands Manchester United fans, stood and cheered as Ruud van Nistelrooy took to the field.

“Who’s that?” the spirit asked when things had calmed enough for him to be heard.
“Who’s that?” Roger said. “WHO’S THAT?”
There followed a lengthy explanation of Nistelrooy’s career and his many contributions to Man U’s victories, but now the spirit wasn’t listening. He read the fire in Roger’s eyes, saw at last passion in this man that had so far proved so impossible to punish. And although it wasn’t entirely cricket, the spirit of the sloth paw felt justified in doing what he did next.

The play on the pitch was heated, the players moving at top speeds, the ball a blur as it flew from midfield to striker, just ahead of the fullback–

There was a collision. Nistelrooy went down—stayed down. He lay on the pitch, twitching. The Liverpool fullback who had run him down stepped away with an awkward gait--he knew what had just happened. He had been near enough to hear the snap.

The stadium fell so silent that Roger overheard the spirit’s low chuckle. He turned on him in a flash.

“You did this, you bloody fairy!” he accused, his face red with fury, his fingers taking the spirit’s arm in a madman’s grip.

“I never!” the spirit protested, still grinning.
“Put him back!” Roger said, leveling one thick finger in the spirit’s face. “That’s an extra doom you gave me, now give me a wish!”
“Is that really what you want?” the spirit said, pleased to be getting through to the man at last. “It won’t be pleasant.”

“Do it now or I’ll put you back into that paw in a way less easy than what you’re used to!”
“I don’t actually live in the paw.” the spirit said.
Roger slugged him.
The spirit fell back into his seat, holding his bloodied ethereal nose. “Fine then!” he cried. “Have your final wish and your final doom!” He gestured dramatically.

The announcement came over at once: Nistelrooy had recovered and would be returning to play. Fifty thousand Manchester United fans exploded with a fervor that bordered on mania. The game resumed.
The spirit of the sloth’s paw leaned back, a paper napkin pressed to his nose, and waited. It wouldn’t be long now.

Nistelrooy drove the ball. A linebacker rushed him, and against all reason, Nistelrooy abandoned the ball and attacked him. He dug his claw-like fingers into his opponent’s flesh and tore at his throat with slashing teeth. Officials strained to pull Nistelrooy from the struggling linebacker. There was blood--a lot of blood--but the linebacker quickly got back to his feet. He seemed unsteady, but he waved away assistance.

Nistelrooy was penalized and play resumed.
However, the savagery had just begun. On the next play, Nistelrooy and the Liverpool linebacker he had attacked both downed other players, and there was more blood. Again, the offended players returned to their feet, refused assistance with clumsy waves of their bloodstained hands, and played on. The injured players had lost none of their purpose or agility, yet there was an unusual looseness to their limbs, an unnatural deadness to their eyes. They played on with mouths hanging open, blood and drool staining the front of their jerseys.

As the match continued, the violence escalated. The officials tried to regain control—and were themselves attacked. Somehow, play went on—shots were taken, kicks were blocked, the crowd, always enthusiastic, went into a genuine frenzy.

The spirit sank lower into his seat as the men around him shouted, cheered and clapped each other on the shoulders with blows fierce enough to stun hogs. He had been present at genuine battles where the bloodlust had not run so high. Couldn’t these mortals recognize that the horror building on the field would soon grow large enough to engulf them all?
Apparently not. The fans cheered, catcalled, hooted. The sight of the two rival teams actually ripping each other’s throats out had pushed some into a state of transcendent ecstasy. Roger himself was standing on his seat and cheering so ferociously that his voice had become a ragged howl, but he cheered on, flecks of foam about his lips.
The spirit tried to forget about the others and focus on Roger. That was his prey: the one human out of the entire 70,000 madmen who should be looking for supernatural payback from the apparent miracle that had put Nistelrooy back on the field. The spirit had been visiting ironic and often deadly punishment upon mortals long enough to know that Roger’s bliss would soon, inevitably, collapse into dread.

Then the violence escaped the pitch and overflowed into the stands, as the spirit knew it would. The players, officials, coaches and officials, now all infected with the zombie’s curse, abandoned play and scaled the partitions that separated them from the spectators. Once among the fans, they began biting, tearing and infecting the seventy-thousand men, women, and children who filled the stadium. The swelling ranks of undead soon swallowed up the lower seats and began to climb towards Roger’s section in a ghastly wave of frenzy, mutilation, and horror.

As the tide of undeath swarmed over the crowd, killing as it came, the spirit focused on Roger, watching for the moment of terrible irony that must surely come. Roger’s moment of pure misery would be short lived, but the spirit would savor it

That moment never came.

As the rush of hungry dead boiled up the stands with several Manchester United players riding the crest, jerseys smeared with blood, bile, and tatters of flesh, Roger stood with arms outstretched to embrace them, a delirious smile on his face.

Roger cheered even as the dead pulled him under. His last act as a living man was to point excitedly at the scoreboard, where the closing score showed Manchester leading Liverpool, three to two.

The End

The Most Selfish Man in All of Stretford

Roger didn’t consider himself a selfish man, and if the accusation were ever put to him, he could offer three items in his defense:

1. He did not covet. This was a simple fact, for while it was true that once a thing became Roger’s he was loath to part with it, he did not go about desiring every single thing he saw.
2. What he did want, would benefit others. For example: what Roger wanted most in the world was for Ruud van Nistelrooy to stay with Man U and get some bloody time on the field. Now who didn’t want that?
3. Roger took good care of his family. And if he did so to purchase silence from his wife, he still took care of them, and that, Roger would say, was the important thing.

One Sunday afternoon when he’d much rather be watching the match, Roger was instead following his family on an afternoon of taking in the garage sales—Roger thought of it as following, because he always seemed to be lagging behind his wife who sprinted from place to place like a rogue sow surrounded by a swarm of screaming piglets. Roger disliked shopping, because, as we have already said, he did not covet and would rather have his money than nearly anything it could be exchanged for, apart from the aforementioned silence.
Today Roger was buying that silence with his presence as well as his pounds, by carting the wife and fam to several outdoor sales that the wife had tracked down via notices in the Saturday paper. And even though he was the only man in England not watching the match, even though he’d already peeled away a week’s worth of wages on the contents of a dozen attics that would only go to fill their own attic nearer to bursting, he knew that these efforts would gain him only a day or two of peace at most. Around mid-week, he knew, the wife would invent some other thing to need desperately, and the silence would end. Roger was doing his best to keep a few pounds stashed away against that inevitable assault.
Then Roger found himself inexplicably drawn to a hideous object on display at an otherwise unremarkable garage sale at a large and impressive manor house. There, among the dusty lamps, wretched curios and ragged furniture, was the severed foot of an animal.
The foot was small, and seemed brittle. The three long claws of the prominent toes curled inwards against the palm as if the thing were still trying to make a fist long after being killed. No sooner had Roger picked the foot up than the withered old -- he guessed ‘proprietor’ would be the word, even though this wasn’t a proper shop-- rustled towards him in a cloud of attic dust and trailing cobwebs.
“Three wishes and three dooms the claw does hold!” the old man said, leering at Roger from one eye set above a grin featuring three dying teeth.
Roger didn’t want the foot, really, but the man’s sales pitch intrigued him. He decided to have a little fun. “That’s not very many,” he said. “Three wishes, I mean.”
“And three dooms,” reminded the old man.
“Yes, three of each, I get it. It’s still not very much. No matter how you slice it. And dooms? I know what wishes are, but what’s a doom, and why would a man like me pay out his hard-earned money to buy such things?”
“Each wish brings with it a doom,” the old man said. “The spirit that rules the paw exacts a terrible toll for each boon he grants.”
“I get it, Roger said, holding the foot up for a closer look. “It’s one of those monkey’s paw-type deals. But why’s the toes so long?”
“Well,” the old man began, a note of embarrassment sounding in his voice, “it’s the foot of a three-toed sloth.”
Roger frowned. “So it’s not even off a proper monkey?” He set the thing back down and wiped his hands on his trousers with an air of disgust. “Are you trying to pass a sloth foot off as a monkey’s paw? That’s criminal, that is.”
“But it will grant wishes!” the old man exclaimed. “And dooms! It will bring you happiness and despair as few men have ever known!”
“How much?” Roger asked.
“Two pounds,” the old man said.
“I’ll give you five pee.”
“Sold!” the old man cried, and he thrust the wretched thing into Roger’s startled hand. He yelled so loudly that Roger’s wife, a full three tables away across the lawn, heard the shout and fired off a glare at Roger that all but took his head off at the neck.
Roger had made the offer more or less as a joke, but now he could see he was stuck with the deal and he regretfully dug around in his trouser pockets for the coins while the wife shot fire from her eyes at him.
“I’m getting an early start on the dooms, thanks to you,” Roger said as he counted out the pence into the old man’s hands.
“That’s what you think,” the old man said. “Wait until you start making wishes on that bastard.”
“Why wait?” Roger said, “I wish I had my five pee back.”
No sooner had the words left Roger’s mouth than the skies—cloudy as was usual in Manchester- were ripped open by a bolt of lighting that bisected the old man with a million volts of pure power.
The blast knocked Roger back a dozen meters, where his trajectory was interrupted by his own minivan. Roger struck so hard that he dented the side panel and set the alarm to ringing. He blacked out for a time, but then came to -- ears ringing, sloth-paw in one hand, five warm but still spendable pence in the other.
#
The kids were at school, the wife at the market, and Roger on the sofa, watching the television and dulling his concussion with beer when the spirit of the paw appeared.
“How did you enjoy the first doom?” the spirit asked.
“It’s not too bad, really.” Roger said. “I mean, as far as dooms go. All I got was a hard knock and a week off. And I got my five pee back.” To Roger, that really seemed the most important thing.
“Ah, but do you not see the terrible fate that awaits you? See how the paw destroyed the old man? The curse of the paw?”
“I guess,” Roger said. “But then, the shape he was in, maybe it came as a relief, with the one eye and the three teeth, I mean”
“He was blown apart!” the spirit said, getting excited. “The same doom awaits you!”
“Being blown apart, you mean?” Roger asked.
“Something like that, something terrible.” Roger turned his attention back to the television.
There was a long pause. “How about the dent in the minivan?” the spirit asked after the silence had grown past awkward.
“Popped right out,” Roger said without turning to face the spirit.
“Well, you got off easy this time,” the spirit said, “but the next doom will tear your very world apart.”
“Well that’s not much incentive to keep wishing then, is it?” replied Roger.
“You will,” the spirit said with complete confidence. “You people always want something else.”
Roger pulled another beer from the tub near the couch and thought a moment. The Red Devils were top of the league, having put a scoreless Arsenal to bed in yesterday’s match. “I can’t think of anything,” he said.
“How about a new house?” the spirit suggested. “You can’t be happy with this crummy flat.”
Actually, Roger was, but the wife wasn’t, and if she wasn’t happy, he may as well be living under a bridge for all the pleasure she allowed him.
“Yeah, all right. A new house, then.”
The spirit cackled and disappeared just as the doorbell rang. Roger hauled his aching body off of the sofa to see what new doom his latest wish had brought.

To be concluded 2/21/2017

Big Al's Last Dance Concluded

Papa waited behind a semi-transparent black folding screen. There was a chair set on Tessa's side, and the message was clear: he did not wish for his only daughter to see him.

Mama had said that she knew Papa’s injuries had been severe, but he had refused to die. But Mama hadn’t seen him, and couldn’t prepare Tessa for the reality. He needed a machine to help him breathe. The small room was filled with the sound of machine and lungs straining in tandem.

“Tessa, my baby girl.” the shape on the far side of the screen rasped. “Please, sit.” Tessa sat: giving confession to Darth Vader. “Big Al told me you were beautiful. As beautiful as Mama.”

“You talked to him?” Tessa asked. Her lifetime’s worth of questions were swept away with that single stroke.

“He was here yesterday,” Papa said. “He came straight from your place. He told me he was going to shoot Mama and I should be resolved to it.”

“Why did you let him leave?” Tessa demanded, rising from her chair.

“He’s a guest, Tessa, not an inmate,” Papa replied. The shadowed hand moved again, commanding her to sit. Tessa stayed on her feet. “That makes it tricky. Also, I tried to reach him once before, outside. He’s resourceful. And brutal. My men came back in small pieces. He reminds me of me when I was young.” This last was said not as a compliment, but more as a deep thinker repeating particular conundrum that he had been puzzling over for some time.

“We have to stop him,” Tessa said. “I’ll stop him if you won’t.”

“No, Tessa,” Papa said. “He’s too good at what he does. More than that, he’s charmed – something looks out for him. The force is strong with him, as we used to say.” Tessa was so rattled by the reference, spoken by her own shrouded, unknown father, that she sat down to steady herself. “If we try to stop him and we fail, he’ll kill you.”

“I don’t care,” Tessa said. “I’ll die to kill the bastard who hurts Mama.”

“Mama said the same about you,” Papa said. “She called me yesterday. She has a plan. One that relies on you.”

“What do I need to do?” Tessa asked.

“Revenge your mother.”

“That doesn’t sound like stopping him.”

“We can’t stop him. It’s already done. When he came here yesterday, I offered him $200,000 to murder your mother. To do it quick, painless.”

“You BASTARD!” Tessa shouted, suddenly back on her feet.

“It was Mama’s idea,” Papa explained. “She told me, ‘Make it a job for him. Not personal.’ If it was personal, he might have taken his time with her. This way, it’s over for her quick.”

“That’s terrible,” Tessa said. She was shaking.

“The life of a killer is terrible,” Papa said. “If you allow one into your life, he brings that terror with him. The moment you danced with a killer, knowing what he was, you accepted whatever came after. Your mother knew this when she married me. That’s why she’s taking her misery now. If you follow her plan, your own misery may not come for at least as many years as she had. And those were good years,” he hissed. “I know, I was watching.”

Tessa swallowed it down, hating it. Papa was right: she had hung on Big Al’s arm, not questioning the guns she knew rode underneath his jacket. She never imagined they would be for anyone she loved. Only strangers.

“I said you would bring him the money,” Papa said.

It was in Tessa to protest again, but she kept quiet, and she listened.

“Al doesn’t trust you,” Papa said. “You have to deliver the money in a special way.”

“Tell me.” Tessa said.

Papa told her. Tessa listened, hating it, but knowing it would work.

If she had the nerve.

Papa read her thoughts “There are two things you must do to prepare,” Papa said. “The first is look at me. Look into my eyes. If you can do that for a full minute, you are strong enough for anything.”

Tessa looked. She recognized at once that it was more than the terrible things that others had done to him that made her Papa the hidden thing he was. His own acts had shaped him just as much. Papa hadn’t committed crimes, but atrocities; he wasn’t a criminal, but a monster. His inhuman strength of will had seeped into his flesh, corrupting it beyond what the knives, fists, and teeth of his enemies had been able to accomplish.

Is this what awaited Big Al? She knew then she was performing Big Al a mercy.

Tessa looked Papa in the eye. He was her father- a half of her whole, the wellspring of any darkness she had ever felt within herself, and the place she would have to search for the deeper darkness she would yet need.

She held her ground for a full minute. She did not waver, shake, or cry. Papa waved a hand, dismissing her. The same meek warden took her to another closed room, where she practiced the second thing. When she got it right, she was given the money to bring to Big Al.

The image of her Papa stayed with her. She was almost home before the asked the driver to pull over so she could retch.

The limousine brought her home, again without her directing the driver. Al’s oversized Cadillac filled the driveway. The limo dispended Tessa and sped off - the driver one less witness in whatever came next.

Tessa went into her own home, knowing that Mama was already gone. Sadness, fear, and regret fought for a place in her heart, but they would have to come later. Now, her entire focus was spoken for, wrapped up in the four seconds of action that lay ahead. She felt inside herself for the darkness she would need.

Al’s driver was waiting inside. He sat at the small kitchen table, a 9mm handgun resting on a placemat near his hand.

“Is that the money?” he asked, tilting his head towards the valise Tessa carried.

She nodded.

“Set it down, and step away.”

She did so. The driver stood up and approached the valise, carrying the gun with him. He took it back to the table. He leveled the gun at Tessa, and asked, “Is there anything you want to tell me before I open this?”

She shook her head.

He searched the valise, counted the money with a practiced hand. He checked for secret compartments, hidden knives, explosives, anything. When he was satisfied, he said, “Your mother is dead. It was quick. She never knew what hit her. She has been taken to a funeral home in the old neighborhood. Big Al is paying for the service, which will be respectful, which is more than she deserves.” He said all this with his small eyes fixed on Tessa’s own, reading her, looking for something that would give away her intentions. He saw nothing that concerned him. “Do you want to see him?’

Tessa nodded.

“Strip,” he said.

Tessa had expected this but she protested to put the driver off. He did not relent. "That’s the only way you are getting up those stairs,” he said. “Leave the underwear on if you like, but then I get to pat you down.”

Tessa stripped. The underwear came off. She’d never been naked in front of a man before and had wondered what kind of effect her nudity might have on the observer.

The driver drank her in. His eyes cataloged goosebumps, birthmarks, moles—every detail.

“Up you go,” he said, his cold expression ruined by his slightly parted lips.

Tessa climbed the stairs.

Big Al was in her room, sitting on her bed. He stood when he saw her coming. His coat was unbuttoned, and she could see he was wearing both guns. He really didn’t trust her. Was he perhaps even a little afraid of her?

No, not afraid. Big Al was careful, is all.

“It had to be done,” Al said. “She understood that even as she was putting everyone I cared about into prison.”

“I know, Tessa said.

Al looked at her. He did not offer to cover her up. He knew better than to leave her standing there naked, knew that he was being rude, but he also enjoyed part of this, and Tessa understood that she had been wrong about him. Big Al was a gentleman only to a point. He had weaknesses, and when those temptations were present, he was like anyone else. Tessa knew her own standards and knew she could never have settled for such a man.

This was getting easier.

“Can you understand?’ Al asked. “Can you see I did what needed to be done? I did it quick, out of respect for you. I took your father’s money, out of respect for him. I know he wants no favors done him.”

“I know,” Tessa said again.

Big Al stood there for another long minute. “What do you want to do?” he asked.

“I want you to hold me,” she said. “Like when we danced.”

Big Al shuddered. Had Tessa been clothed, he might not have been such a fool. But her nakedness was, despite all of his rigorous self-control, something he had dreamt of. And nothing seems so harmless as a naked girl.

“Show me,” Big Al said, his arms wide.

Before she left the prison, Papa had called a man into the conjugal visit room. The man was tall—almost as tall as Big Al himself. He wore two shoulder holsters, one under each arm. Tessa understood at once. “Show me,” the man said.

Tessa had moved to embrace the man, then to go for his guns. He caught her--gently.

“Al will pull you apart with his bare hands,” he said. Tessa looked up. It was an unremarkable face, yet wholly evil. She understood she was seeing another age of her father’s life: when he was no longer young but also not yet old—this was what he had been like when Mama had put him away - cold, untouchable. An unfeeling entity capable of anything, anything at all.

This was what lurked in Al’s breast, stronger than whatever love he claimed to feel for her.

This was what she was learning to kill.

Tessa ran to Al, pressed her face against his broad, strong chest. She looked down, hiding her eyes from his. She had seen everything he was feeling as she came forward: the lust, the disappointment.

Big Al had wanted her to be stronger, to hate him for what he had done, and because he thought she did not, he had lost all respect for her. Now she was little more to him than a thing to be played with.

His large, warm hands came down upon her naked shoulder, slid down her back. She put her own arms around him, hugged his chest, slid her hands up his powerful torso; let her small fingers slide into the left and right holsters.

Al felt it and began to move, but she had practiced this fifty times. She switched the safeties off, twisted the guns inward, and fired. The bullets tore into Al, crisscrossing on their way through his abdomen.

Al half-stepped, half-tumbled backward, leaving the guns in Tessa’s grip. Her fingers were numb and her wrists were on fire, but everything still worked. The guns spoke again—louder, this time, muzzles no longer stifled by Al’s body. The bullets hit him square but still, he did not go down. He gave Tessa the look that said ‘It will take more than that.’

She heard the driver on the stairs--when guns this big spoke, everyone heard. She had to move quickly, but she took the time to say, “Al, if I was half the girl you thought I was, would I let you get away with killing my Mama?”

Al’s expression changed—at once, he loved her again, and that love held him in place, giving Tessa time to work.

She turned and shot Big Al’s driver and bodyguard as he topped the stairs. The man was every bit as cruel as Big Al himself, but not nearly as big. Two rounds from the .44's blew through his chest and carried most of his rib cage with them as they exited.

Big Al went for Tessa. Four large bullets had left eight massive wounds, but he was still powerful, still quick. Tessa tried to move but Al folded her up in his arms, crushed her to him. She struggled against him, raising her head.

He covered her mouth with his, gave her the kiss he’d been holding back until their wedding night.

She felt it; all the passion he possessed, all the relief of at last finding a woman who was all that he had ever hoped for.

She turned the guns inward and shot him again, twice more.

She had never loved Al; it had been a game for her. She had always known, deep down, that he was weak.

Big Al died, then. The dark, hard light that burned in his killer’s eyes went out. He fell to the carpet, his huge frame robbed of the grace it had possessed in life.

Tessa dropped the guns atop Al’s body. She crossed to her window and peeked out through the curtains, mindful of her nakedness, and the blood that streaked her skin, marking her as a killer.

A limo waited, engine idling. Inside: an airline ticket, passport, cash, stock certificates, other gifts from Papa. Enough to begin a new life with an ocean instead of a river between her and New York. If she could get out in time.

The driver had cut her dress up when he searched it, looking for a reason to keep her from Al. She looked around for something to wear—the dress mama had given her lay across the back of the chair of her small writing desk. The last thing Mama had given her, the only store-bought dress she had ever owned.

Tessa sent up a hasty prayer for forgiveness as she slipped on the dress Mama had bought her in exchange for a promise not to marry Al.

Big Al's Last Dance Part One

Tessa sent up a hasty prayer for forgiveness as she slipped on the dress Mama had bought her in exchange for a promise not to marry Al.

Not that Mama had to worry about that anymore: Big Al was dead. Mama was dead as well, but Tessa was trying to block that fact out. It had all happened so fast.

But as quickly as things were happening, she needed to get out of the house faster still. The gunshots would attract attention, and there had been many shots. But she never had a choice in the number: one bullet wouldn’t keep Big Al down for long. Even after four, he had still been standing there, with an ‘is that all you got’ look on his broad face.

The dress slid over Tessa’s body with only a small struggle. She had to hurry, but she spared an instant to check herself out in the two huge mirrors that served as her closet doors. Low neck, high hemline, tight fabric tailored to a T by Mama’s own expert hands. A man seeing Tessa in the dress would have many urges, but NOT wanting to marry her wouldn’t have been among them. What had Mama been thinking?

The answer came unbidden: Perhaps Mama had meant for Tessa to wear the dress at the moment that had just passed. Perhaps she had envisioned a way Tessa could kill Big Al with her clothes on, instead of completely naked, which is how it had happened. How it had to be done.

No time. Tessa gave the room a final once-over, looking for money, jewelry, any easily pocketed resources, but allowing her vision to skip the massive body laid out on the floor. When she had taken all she could take in every sense of the word, she walked into the hall, stepped over the second dead man sprawled at the top of the stairs and ran down the carpeted steps, her high heels leaving small craters in the deep shag.

How had it all started?

It had all started with Mama, back when she was Tessa's age, and men had first started to notice her.

At 16 years old, Tessa’s mother had been the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood. By 18 she was married to an up-and-coming picciotto who made capo bastone four years later. Mama knew Papa was mafia—who could have missed it? The suits he wore, his big hands that commanded respect from waiters, cab drivers, shop owners, then police and judges when things began to go bad. But Mama had always counted on her husband to keep that life separate from their home life, or if total separation were not possible, then at least to keep it away from her.

The first year was good. A year after that, there was a family war, and after that, Mama spent her 19th birthday learning about the witness protection program with eight month’s worth of pregnancy resting on her thighs. She never wanted to see her husband again.

She never did.

The FBI moved Tessa’s out of New York City and over to Delaware. She took up dressmaking; found she had a gift for it. She delivered Tessa and regained her traffic-stopping figure. The dress shop did well. Tessa’s mom hated Delaware, and by Tessa’s twelfth birthday, had drifted closer to New York, into a small cluster of Italian blocks in New Jersey. The feds didn’t like it, but they couldn’t stop her.

And for a while, they were happy there. Mama knew how Italian neighborhoods worked, and within ten months of arrival, it was like she had been born there. The other women liked her, and of course, the men noticed her, but she kept her dealings with them to a minimum. She never even spoke to any of the married ones.

The men in Mama's new neighborhood took her rejection hard, but their wives appreciated Mama’s respect and kept their husbands in check. The men were stuck and could do nothing, except complain what a shame it was, a girl like Mama going to waste, and wait for Tessa to grow up.

Tessa grew to be every bit as tall and as breathtaking as her mother. She was so beautiful that men lined up to do things for her, and sometimes she would let them. Tessa had discovered New York City by the time she was thirteen. By fifteen, she was sneaking across the river every weekend and sometimes on school nights. She met countless men, but she was always careful. Tessa was smart enough to get big returns on small investments--and she never invested more than time. She didn’t know Mama’s whole story, but she knew enough that she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes her mother had—pregnant and single at ninteen.

Tessa had bigger plans than that.

It was across the river that Tessa met Big Al.

Al was big- very big. He towered over most men, and his shoulders were wider than the hood of an import. Al was handsome and dressed famously. Tessa had already learned enough from Mama to know that the jacket Al wore was tailored to emphasize his powerful build while concealing the two shoulder holsters he wore.

Big Al had Tessa all to himself fifteen minutes after spotting her in a nightclub. The group of men she was with—she had been favoring a high-nosed, velvet-voiced clotheshorse that kept giving her money and also buying her drinks--evaporated when Big Al came to their table.

Tessa soon found herself nestling against Al’s broad chest, his strong arm holding her close. He smelled fantastic. He bought drinks but never showed any money. Big Al gave orders with just a gesture of his hands, and men obeyed. What orders, Tessa couldn’t guess, but she felt that she, the most beautiful girl in the room (she considered this a fact and not vanity) belonged here with the most important man in the room (this was more than self-evident).

She even appreciated the way Al sat so that the guns he wore didn’t poke her in the ribs.

From then on, Tessa couldn’t get near the city without running into Big Al. Other men had been this persistent, but they had also made it clear what they were after, and that was when Tessa traded them in. Tessa knew what Big Al was after, as well, but he never asked. He just took her to the best, most exclusive nightspots, gave her whatever wanted, and kept his hands away from impolite places.

For a while.

Tessa could see it coming, although Al’s manner hadn’t changed. Then one night Al took Tessa with him into his own limousine. He usually sent her home from the clubs in cabs, or in a limo, if he had a spare one, but tonight, it seemed, was going to be different.

Big Al didn’t sit next to her, but across instead. He seemed to fill the entire back of the car, while Tessa imagined that to his perspective, in her little black dress and flowing hair, she was little more than a black zigzag across the white leather upholstery.

“Alone at last,” Al said.

Tessa wasn’t a girl to stay quiet. “Al, I like you a lot,” she said. “But I’m waiting until I get married.”

This was an exaggeration, but she was at least waiting for 18. 17 at the earliest.

“I know that,” Big Al said with his usual confidence. “I know all about you, Tessa. I know because I dreamed you. You are the perfect girl for me, and I would expect nothing less from you than to speak your mind.” He spoke quietly and with sincerity.

“So why the ride tonight?” she asked, confused that she had apparently underestimated him.

“I want to meet your Mama.” Big Al said.

The limo pulled up to Tessa’s house at six in the morning. Mama was already awake and dressed. She didn’t wait up for her daughter—she trusted Tessa too much for that—but her days at the shop began early.

Big Al opened Tessa’s door himself and walked her up the sidewalk to mama’s front door. Tessa hung on Big Al’s arm, lightheaded from the strangeness of the moment. In the ride across the river, Big Al explained what he wanted. He was proving to be more of a gentleman than she ever imagined.

Mama saw them coming. From 200 feet away, through a small window and in the sun-not-quite-up-but streetlight-are-already-off haze of the early morning, she knew what Big Al was. She also saw the diamond ring shimmering on her daughter’s finger.

“Please don’t do this,” Mama begged after Al has gone.

Tessa wasn’t planning on ‘doing’ anything. She had been surprised by Al’s proposal and had said sweetly but firmly she’d need to think about it. He insisted on meeting her mother nevertheless--a sentiment Tessa found both sweet and presumptuous--and she had gone along. He said she could wear the ring while she thought it over.

Now Mama was telling her what she could and couldn’t do. That put Tessa in the wrong mood--she knew already, deep down, that she wasn’t going to marry Big Al--it was too early to marry any man, never mind one more than twice her age, no matter how charming and sophisticated he may be. But Tessa saw Al’s proposal as one last fling in a long but nearly finished, series of dangerous flings. She had no doubt she could break it off smoothly—she had found she could handle almost anyone.

Except for Mama of course.

“He’s a killer,” Mama said. Absolutely right, as she always was. “He’s Mafioso trash.”

“I don’t care,” Tessa said. “He’s good to me. He takes care of me.”

“I raised you to take care of yourself,” Mama said.

That one stung. “He’s rich,” Tessa replied. "He buys me things.”

There was a pause: both women’s minds were racing, Mama’s searching for a way to defuse the situation, Tessa’s to escalate. Tessa outstripped her Mama and found the perfect, most cutting comeback: “I’ve never even had a dress from a store,” she said sharply. “You’ve made everything. I’m tired of living my life in home-made clothes.”

Tessa was a smart, perceptive girl, but she almost never used that perception to wound—except for certain men she’d met. She had never planned to hurt Mama, but in a few words, she turned what Mama had always believed to be her greatest gift to her daughter into a punishment. Tessa saw at once the damage her words caused and was frightened at her ability to harm. The blow cut Mama down. She looked lost, deflated, defeated.

Mama nodded and left through the front door without another word. Tessa stomped upstairs to her room and slammed the door, although there was no one to hear.

Mama didn’t open the shop that day. She went across the river herself—her first visit to New York since she had fled, pregnant with Tessa.

She did not feel as if everyone were watching her, did not worry that some long-delayed revenge for all the killers she had condemned to prison might come out of nowhere and end her. What she knew--and what the feds could never understand--was that as much as the families may hate her, they feared her more. Her beauty and strength of will had cowed many of the mobsters she had known when she was a girl, and she had lost none of her looks or any of her determination in the years since.

Then there was Papa.

Papa was still in prison. He would die there, but he wasn’t dead yet. Terribly injured in the battles to bring him to justice, wounded again when thrown to the wolves of the federal penitentiary while still vulnerable, Papa had somehow survived to rebuild his empire, starting in his cellblock and expanding outwards to encompass the entire prison and points beyond. Now his cell was his throne room, and each parole, each early release, sent another of Papa’s officers into the world, fiercely loyal to him, hardened by his tutelage that made the federal prison a crucible that forged iron men.

Mama had neither seen nor spoken to Papa since she that day had slapped his face and walked out of their home, but she knew that he still loved her. She knew that he was still a terrible power in the underworld and that she still enjoyed his terrible protection.

Nevertheless, Big Al frightened her. He had recognized her last night, and she knew it. It had been the possibility of someone like Al, a man who would not be intimidated by Papa’s wrath, which had kept Mama out of the city all these years, and now that he had found her, she knew her time was up.

Mama went to Saks Fith Avenue and bought a dress for Tessa. Then she went to her childhood neighborhood, a place still ruled by Papa and his associates, and waited for one of her husband's men--they had never divorced--to find her. If the feds were watching her, they would have though it suicide.

And they would have been right.

Tessa came home from school to find Mama waiting for her at the small kitchen table, dressed all in black, her long legs tucked under her chair. Tessa knew her mother to be beautiful, but even she was taken aback by the radiance high emotion had bestowed upon her.

There was a bottle of wine on the table, two glasses. Tessa sat down, poured a glass for Mama and then for herself. Tessa sat in silence as Mama extracted her promise not to marry Big Al, gave her the dress, and told her everything.

Later, she would learn Mama had told her only almost everything.

Tessa called a cab company the next morning to take her to the Federal Prison where her father was, but she needn’t have bothered. There was a limousine waiting for her when she stepped outside.

Big Al had sent it. The driver took her to the penitentiary without Tessa telling him that’s where she wanted to go.

A lesser warden waited for her in the parking lot. He escorted Tessa through the fences and gates that led to the front door. Tessa had never been to a prison before, and it gave her the chills: the high concrete walls that reached up to bludgeon the sky, set with towers that were higher still, each crowned with spotlights, sirens, and men with rifles who watched her like lascivious saints looking down from a stone heaven.

Tessa hustled after her guide, knowing that she would feel inexplicably safer once inside.

The warden led her past the many checkpoints and rituals for visitors without pause and stopped before a door labeled ‘Conjugal Visit Room 4.’ Tessa gave the man her most ferocious look of disapproval. The man was already terrified of her, and he took a step backward. “These are the most private rooms,” he explained. “Papa asked for it.” She waited for him to unlock the door as he’d unlocked so many in their journey towards the heart of the prison, and a long, awkward minute passed, Tessa waiting and staring, the warden trying to control his fear.

At last, he realized what was going on. “It’s open,” he said. “Go ahead in.”

To be concluded 2/8/2017

Strange Scenes: The Family in the Grass Concluded

Murdering Sam was the only one left.

Rachel came in the shack almost right away after me. I was a little surprised, but I guess the Family was busy enough with the others. Her silent presence comforted me, even if she kept her distance. That was more normal for her; all this hugging and fear was for Sawyer’s benefit, I knew. She was wise, this one, and feared the Family no more than you fear a flood or a tornado. If it was your time, you went, and there was nothing to be done. Being afraid made no sense.

There was more shooting, more horses being killed, the shack wall took another hard, drumming hit. It sounded like when a wave hits the side of a ship and you’re down below.

I lay on my cot, eyes open, waiting it all out, like I always did. There was quiet for a time, maybe a breath. The guns had stopped long minutes ago. The eating sounds began.

I heard boots on the porch; one, two quick, hard, steps, and then the door was pulled open, and Sam just flung himself in, no rifle, no pistol, no knife, just himself barehanded and covered in horse’s blood, eyebrows to boots.

Sam coughed and shook and watched the door, the whites of his wide-open eyes bright as a jackrabbit’s tail in the red that covered him. Through the door, there was nothing but sky and just the very tops of the tall grass at the bottom of the hill, the tips of the blades rippling like water, and seeming to glow a bit, as I had said before. Catching light that came from nowhere.

He kept watching the grass, even after Rachel shut the door.

By daylight, Murdering Sam was nearer to his old self. To his credit, he didn’t hold it against us, seeing him scared like he was. Many men I’ve known would have taken it as an insult, our seeing them scared.
He stood in the shack, gunless and not liking that, but he’d cleaned himself up as he could, and he was standing straight. “They come out in the daytime?” he asked.

“Some.” I said. “Not usually, after a feed like that, though.”

He looked to me. He might have killed me just then, if he had a simple way to do it, but he didn’t look up to throttling, and besides, he needed all of his strength for what he was to do next. Sam went outside.
Many men wouldn’t have. Gone outside, I mean. Curly didn’t want to, after that first night, when the Family took our horses and that Pony Express rider. But Sam went. He was still shook, you could see that. What man wouldn’t be? He walked slow, but his steps were steady, and his boots sounded out on the wood of the porch. He wasn’t sneaking out; he was walking, scared, shook and all.

The dooryard wasn’t bad, but the sides of the shack were painted red. The left, where Gibs had gone, was less so, and Gib’s Winchester was still there, pressed down into the fouled mud by one big three-toed foot. Sam lifted it up, popped the lever and looked to see if it was still loaded. The gun would have to be cleaned, but it was a gun, and Sam wanted all the guns he could carry.

Rachel was in the back, working the pump. Sam had used all our inside water cleaning himself up. She was surrounded by something out of the war, all blood and bodies and gore.

I hadn’t seen any of the big battles, but what I saw at Cooper’s Mill or Bethesda was enough for me to know I didn’t want to make a life at fighting, the way some folks seemed to. The Family didn’t have cannon, or scatter guns, or bayonets, but they could work a number on a horse, or a man. One horse was still here, mostly in bits, all the guts – what we’d call the ‘sweet-meats’ on a chicken – were gone, and the throat had been pulled out, but they left the rest of it for me, as they will. The blood from the torn neck had hit the side of the shack, and we’d heard it. There were more flies than there ever could be, out here in the middle of nothing. Where did all those flies go, when the Family wasn’t killing?

The other two horses had been dragged off. The grass was pressed flat where they had been pulled, maybe still kicking. Sam walked past Rachel to look at the trail the Family had left. The blades still standing on either side of the crushed ones were red with blood, black with flies. Going in there, with the tips of the grass closing overhead, would be like going into a mine, but a man could do it: he could follow the trail of flat grass, back to where they lived, or at least where they ate. I’d seen some Indians do it. Sam didn’t look like he wanted to do that.
He spent some time picking through the backyard, coming up with a knife, a pistol, a coil of rope, a good bridle. The saddles and all had been off the horses and up on the post. They’d been fouled by the blood, but a man leaving on foot couldn’t carry all that. Sam meant to leave on foot, I knew.

It wasn’t two hours before Sam was ready. He cleaned his rifle and revolvers, filled his water bottles, he even helped the girl and me cut up the horse and hang some of it out. I had salt from the wagon the girl had come on, so we salted some of it down. No one talked much. Sam was near as quiet as Rachel, speaking only when he wanted to know something or wanted me to know something about the work we were busy with.

About an hour before noon, he went around back for something, and the horse carcass was gone. We had just been in the front, cleaning some of the blood off of the bedrolls and other gear that had been left out back in the night. We hadn’t left it alone for very long, and Sam looked pale, knowing that the Family had come up and pulled that horse away, with no noise that we could hear. I was used to that by now. He didn’t say anything about it, or anything else, until he was ready to go. Then he spoke. That was about half-past noon.

Sam stood in the door that the grass made where the dooryard met the road. He stood and looked back at us, rope and bridle over his shoulder, rifle in his hand. He wore two guns now, instead of the one that he had rode in with. He wore one belt reverse because both belts were right-handed draws.

Sam looked at Rachel and me for a while, us up on the porch, me sitting in my chair, her standing and looking out at him, and him staring right back. When he had his words chose, he spoke.
“I’ve done some things,” he started, “that a man can’t be proud of. Some of them might have needed doing, others, I might have just done for anger, or to get something back.” He raised the rifle to me, but just to point. “But what you are doing out here, living with those things…” he was close to tears, I could see that. “You bring people here, with your shack.” He looked around, afraid to say what he was thinking, but maybe then he remembered that Mickey Sawyer wasn‘t here to laugh at him anymore. “That Family keeps you alive so more people will come,” he said, teeth held together tight, “and you know it. People come, and you know they will come, and then you take their things and eat their horses.”

I watched him and didn’t say a word. I thought how he looked younger, when he was angry. You could see through all the killing he’d done and the robbing and the war, and see he was still just a boy.

“They chose me.” I hadn’t meant for it to show, but I could hear the pride in my voice. “I didn’t choose them.”

Sam let the rifle come down, and he spit on the ground. He reminded me of a deserter I had seen executed once. That man had tried to run off to save his farm from something or other, I never learned what. When they brought him back, he was scared, but not repentant. He stood up and let them shoot him.

Sam had that look when he walked off. Scared of dying, but not of death.

They never let someone go. It’s maybe three miles, on foot, from where the grass first starts to come up to the plain where the river runs. That’s a long walk, in that narrow track, with the grass growing up tall on both sides, and only your thoughts for company.

They hit him less than a mile out. I climbed to the roof and watched it. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted him to make it; maybe I wanted to see him to die for what he had said to me. I couldn’t see Sam, most of the time, the road is too narrow and the grass too high to see the road itself, but you can see where the road is, like a crease running up the prairie. In any case, I watched the grass on either side of the road, knowing that was how they would come.

There was a breeze, so the grass was lively, but I could still see the Family, all four of them, out there like fish in dark water, told not by the sight of them, but the waves that they make.

When all the four ripples came together, I knew that was it for Sam.
All those guns, and he never got a shot off.

I let the afternoon pass, up on the roof, cross-legged like an Indian. Something was eating at me. The Family wanted only one living thing on this hill. It wasn’t about eating, or food, for the Family. It was about the way these creatures wanted things. They had left the dog for a piece, but he wasn’t the first dog. They always took the others, and they would have taken that one, before too long. They would certainly come for the girl.

I let Rachel do what she chose, but I knew she wouldn’t be staying. They wouldn’t have more than me.

I saw it as soon as I came down.

She’d changed the whole place around, making it the way she wanted. There wasn’t much to work with, but what there was, she’d moved. A bunch of my things were on the porch; what clothes I had, my boots, which I hardly ever wore.

She was sitting up on a barrel, her feet just above the floor of the shack. She was sewing on some cotton fabric she had over her lap. I could see it was some of her mother’s dresses. She was making curtains.

I gave a sigh and sat on the cot.

“Rachel,” I started, thinking I needed to tell her about it. I don’t why, I never told any of the others. “There’s a thing you should know.” She looked at me, mute, with no tell to her face. Then I knew how to say what I needed to say. “When I first come here, back just after the War, there were three of us. A Pony Express rider, and Curly, who was the groom for the ponies we were to keep here. I was the telegraph operator. I forget the rider’s name. Anyway, it wasn’t two days when an Indian come up and told us the story, how the Family wouldn’t have us here. He said the Family would let only one person stay, a man who had done a special thing. They would keep that man, they would bring him food, and he would grow wise in his years, as he lived here, naked under the sun and sky. The Family would even protect him, and kill any who came to harm the Medicine Man of the hill, but there could be only one man, and the Family chose him.

“We all laughed, of course, even if it scared us a little. That grass is tall, it could hide lots of things, but we didn’t think there was anything like he was talking about out there. The Indian didn’t care what we thought, of course. He went out into the grass to meet them, thinking that he had done that thing the Family wants from a man.

“He never came out of the grass, but that night, the Family did. They took all the ponies, and rider ran off along the track. We never heard from him again, but I don’t think he got very far.

“The next day, Curly wanted to run. See, the Indian had told us what the Family wants, Rachel, and what it wants is a man to have killed another man, and even though Curly and I had been in the army, and the War, we had never done such a thing. We’d both been clerks.
“Now, just killing a man is no proof against them. They’ve killed many killers. It’s how it’s done, and the mind of the man who did it. The man must be like them; he must kill without fear or remorse. He must do it coldly and with purpose, just as God himself does. Not many men can do this, Rachel, and before I killed Curly, I wouldn’t have suspected it of myself. "

That wasn’t what I meant to say. I sat quiet for a minute, looking at my hands on my knees. They were an old man’s hands, the skin was growing thin, and the tendons and veins rose up high over the bones.
“I killed him as quiet and cold as winter.” I didn’t know why I was still talking. I may have been cold in my killing, but Curly hadn’t been cold in dying. Killing him had been a chore I’d rather forget. “Then I threw all the guns into the grass, for they Family won’t have guns here. And everyone who has come since, I watched them die. I watch them get killed, as uncaring and far away as Jesus must have been when he was watching the War.” There was something going inside of me, some muscle that had been clenched was opening, or some nerve that had been dead was coming back to life. In a minute I was crying, Rachel watching, her sewing on her lap.

“I know all this,” Rachel said. Her voice startled me. I had forgotten how much Arkansas there would be in her words. I didn’t like how it sounded. “I dreamed it, the first night, in the wagon. That’s why I killed Mr. Sawyer up on the roof last night.” I listened to her, and that near forgotten muscle began to clench again. “I pushed him off the roof. The youngest one got him.” Her eyes were on me, but they were seeing that moment, seeing the littlest one –I called him Squab, having given all of them names—coming out of the grass, low and beautiful, his beak a sort of yellow ivory, the head striking out on that long neck like a feathered snake.

“They told me I can stay,” she said. “They said all I need to do is get rid of the other.” She pulled the sewing off of her lap, and I saw she had one of Sawyer’s pistols underneath. The silver Walker Colt looked huge in her small fists, but she held it steady.

I realized then that I had told her the wrong thing: I had told her how to keep living, but not how terrible living could be, how each death lingered, no matter how many there were, and how much we tried to pay them no mind.

In those first troublesome days, when I was not used to the idea of living and dying here, I had prayed for salvation. But after I had been living on the hill for years, a white man surrounded by Indian magic, sheltered by things made by their gods, not ours, I gave it up on prayer. I threw Curly’s Bible away into the grass with the guns. I would have thought that by now, I would have lost all faith in the puritan God of my own people.

But I had not. When she started shooting, my words and thoughts were to the God I had prayed to as a boy.

I thought he might know what this felt like.

THE END

Strange Scenes: The Family in the Grass Part 2

Part 2 of The Family in the Grass. Desperate outlaws have taken shelter in an isolated telegraph station. The man who lives there insists that there are monsters hidden in the tall prairie grass.

The girl showed up after maybe an hour. They was all in and around the shack by then. I knew their names, what they had done, who they was running from. The girl didn’t talk and I didn’t ask, but I knew she’d just run into the grass a little and then come right back out.

“This here’s Rachel.” I said. “She don’t talk, as I said, but she’s just fine. Rachel, this is Gibs, Sam, and Mister Mickey Sawyer.” Sawyer tipped is broad black hat at her. “He’s a rebel outlaw. You might of heard of him.”

Sawyer looked halfway between giving an aw-shucks and puffing his chest out. “Pleased to meet, you, missy.” He smiled to her, the ends of his mouth traveling up towards the low sideburns he wore. Rachel didn’t smile back. I’d not seen her smile.

The others just nodded, and kept eating my beans up. The simple one, Gibs, might be a danger to her, I thought, but I also saw that Sawyer didn’t see just a girl when he looked to her. He saw something else—a fellow Southerner, one of the people he had promised to liberate and protect. I knew he’d shoot Gibs, if Gibs touched her.

“Where’s Frenchy?” the one called Sam asked. I haven’t said much about Sam. Sawyer was in charge of it all, and wanted to be bad and mean and probably was, but Sam, Sam was the real killer here. You could hear it in his silences; you could see it in the way he didn’t look away from something once his eyes fell on it. To Sam, the only difference between a live thing and a dead one is he ain’t shot it yet.

Rachel didn’t answer Sam’s question, of course. Sawyer spoke up for her. “He’s probably lost out there in the ripgut.” he said. “He’ll turn up soon enough. Too soon, if I know Frenchy.”

Sam didn’t like that answer, you could see. He’d like what I had to say still less.

“He won’t be coming back,” I corrected. The three of them switched some looks back and forth and Sam squinted at me.

Sawyer leaned in his chair and put his boot up on the table. “You want to let us in on where Frenchy’s gone?” he asked me. He was as calm, comfortable, and dangerous as a snake.
I had given this story to maybe a score of people in my time here. Some folks listened, and some folks stopped me talking. “There’s these things, out there, in the grass.” I said. “I don’t know what, exactly they are. They look like birds, mostly, because they have feathers and beaks. But they’re bigger than birds. They stand tall as a man, and they have long tails, like an alligator or a lizard. I think they have scales, too.”

Sam scoffed, his own lip curling up on one side. You could see he’d already written me off for crazy. Sawyer was having a hard time not laughing, like how a bully will hold his cruelty until a smaller boy has finished with his tale. Gibs was still listening, his face like a boy’s.

“They was already here when the telegraph station was put in.” I said. “The Indians say they’ve been here forever. Their medicine men used to come out here and sit. If the Family--that’s what I call them, ‘acause there’s four of them, two parents and two young—if the Family let the man live, he was a shaman forever after. The hill’s sacred because the grass won’t grow up here. There’s also water, and the family will bring the medicine man meat from what they kill. I guess there was an old Indian here when the army ran the cables through.”

“What happened to him?” Gibs asked.

“Army shot him, I suppose. He was just an Indian.” I suppose the Army could have. I really didn’t know. “It was supposed to be a place where the telegraph and the Pony Express could meet up, but the Army had a hard time keeping this place manned. The riders always went missing, the ponies were always killed, and you can’t keep the grass down. Everyone thought it was Indians, so we drove the Indians off. I was sent out here in '60 with another man. He run off, after a while. I’ve been here alone ever since.” There were some lies in there. I had actually come here after the War, having served two years in the battle to restore the Union, but I didn’t want them thinking I’d shot any of their fellows or burned any of their cities. Curley hadn’t exactly run off, either. “The telegraph stopped working a while back, but it hardly ever did work right. I’ve been waiting for a man to come out and fix it.”

“Whater these birds look like?” Gibs asked.
I shrugged. “Tall, like I said. Big beaks. Big feet, with big claws, and a real big claw on one toe. They got arms instead of wings, but the arms have feathers on them, like wings. They got hands.”

Gibs looked doubtful. “That don’t sound like what I was thinking of.”

“These birds,” Sam said, drawing the word out so it was plain what he thought of me and my story, “Why do they let you stay up here?”
I shrugged. “They just do. The Indians always had one man living on this hill. I’m here now. I guess I’ll do for the Family.”

“But they got Frenchy.” Sawyer said.

“Oh yeah.” I said. “There’s no doubt of that. Up on the hill is bad enough but going into the grass, they won’t tolerate that. A horse makes it worse. They love to eat a horse.” Sawyer smiled and he kicked the table with his boot. His laugh was loud in the small shack.

Sam stood up and drew his pistol. He rocked it on his finger and put the muzzle near my face, hammer back and finger on the trigger. “I think this old man’s a deserter,” he said, talking to the others but looking me in the eye. “I think he hid out the war out here. Maybe he’s got some Indian friends in the grass, and they got Frenchy. Maybe he don’t know what happened to Frenchy at all, maybe nothing happened to Frenchy, maybe he’s just lost. But I heard all I’m going to about birds that eat horses.”

No one had pointed a gun at me for a good while. I wasn’t certain what might happen. “Rachel,” I said, talking slow so Sam wouldn’t get excited. “Bring those feather we collected here.” Sometimes, even a blessed man has to help himself.

She went across the shack and opened a long narrow box. Sam was still scowling, still holding the gun on me. She dipped her hand in and come up with some long feathers.
“Now see, that’s not what I thought they’d be at all.” Gibs said. Sawyer waved his fingers at the girl, and she crossed with the feather in her small hand.

They were long, as I said. The biggest was about three feet, wide as your palm at the end and blue, like jay feather. The quill was thick and black, not white, like on a natural bird. There were black and white stripes to it, and the whole thing kind of shone in that way feathers will. Some of the other feathers were red or pale yellow, but the all had those black quills and they all were bigger than any bird feather should be.

“I thought he was talking about ostriches.” Gibs said. “That dancer in Amarillo had these feathers that was as big as a horse’s head. She said they came from a bird called an ostrich. These look like pheasant feathers.”

“Mighty big pheasant.” Sawyer said.

“There’re tracks in the dooryard.” I said.

Sawyer looked at Rachel. “Do you know where those tracks are?” he asked, in that voice grown-ups use with simple children. She nodded her head and walked through the open front door. Gibs and Sawyer ran after her, Sam stood with the gun at my head. From outside we heard Gibs calling out, ‘Damn! Lookit the size of them,’ and ‘Here’s another.’ Sam rolled the gun back on his finger and eased the hammer back down over the cylinder. Then he spit on the floor and went out the door with the others.

They looked for a while, then Sawyer and Rachel come back in. There was a wonder in his eyes, a wonder and a thrill. He was one of these people that wanted to throw cartwheels when all hell gets loose. “Have you seen them?” he asked.

“I see them.” I said.

“And they’re birds?” he asked.

“Like birds." I said. “Bigger than any bird I’ve heard of.

“But they’ll kill a horse,” he said. “Kill and eat an entire horse?”

“They’ll kill your horses, you stay here too long.”

“Guess they will.” Sawyer said. His eyes looked down, for a minute, like he was figuring something.

Sam filled the door. He was a complete difference from Sawyer, you could see that at once. He didn’t see any fun in this, nor any adventure is getting caught up in some old Indian magic, which is how I had come to think of the Family. The dog went and hid under a chair.

“I say we shoot them and pull out,” Sam said.
The girl went to Sawyer, and he put his arm around her. Gibs stuck his head in the door, trying to look in around Sam.

“Pull out where to?” Sawyer asked. “Do you think that McGullis won’t figure out that we crossed the river?” he took his arm from around the girl and stood in the center of the shack, looking Sam dead in the eye. “They’re animals, Sam.” He put that in a tone that said any other idea was a fool’s notion. “Are we going to run back to where a posse of men with rifles are looking for us, because of some animals?”

Sam’s teeth began to work against each other, and his fingers went white around the stock of his rifle. Sawyer saw he had the lead and he kept at it. “Gibs!” he called, putting his voice loud so it’d get past Sam in the doorway. Gib’s head, stuck in the door up near Sam’s shoulder, nodded. “Tie the horses up in back and get up on the roof.” Gibs nodded again and was gone in a flash. “Now when they come, IF they come, we’ll be ready for them,” Sawyer told Sam.

Sam looked at me, his eyes low under his hat. He didn’t want to ask, what he was about to ask. “Anyone ever shoot one of these things before.”

“All the time.” I said.

“Ever do any good?”

I shook my head.

Sawyer just grinned at both of us, his eyes bright, his arm around Rachel again. She kept her small head on his shoulder, and watched Sam, her eyes as hard as stones from the river.

They didn’t have any meat, so they butchered the dog, had the girl cook it, and ate it. All afternoon, they took turns on the roof, watching the grass and the road back to the river. After their meal, Sam stretched out on the small porch and napped. There were a few hours before sunset, and you could see he wanted to be awake all night.

The Family didn’t let people stay long, but we were already getting on too long with these three.

I say three, because Frenchy never came back out of the grass.

The prairie night can be almost as bright as day; with a moon full and close shining down like a pale white sun. I had sometimes thought how I could sit on the porch and read, on nights like that, if I ever had a thing to read.

This night wasn’t like that. There was no moon that I could see, but no clouds, either, and no stars. The sky was dark and clean, and what light there was, seemed to come from the grass itself. The blades shone in the dark, like fresh snow will, even on the darkest night.

I was out on the porch with Gibs. His turn on the roof was done but he wouldn’t go into the shack. They wouldn’t let me go in, either. Sawyer and the girl were on the roof, and Sam was walking the around the hill. He was a quiet man, even in boots. Waste of time, being quiet.

“Get dark like this all the time?” Gibs asked.

“Some.” I said.

“I’ve rode with cattle,” he said. “I’ve been out in the prairie many a night, and I’ve never seen it like this.”

“They do it.” I told him. “They make a magic with the night sky, when they’re hunting. They’re not natural animals.”

Gibs gave a small, choking laugh. I didn’t know Sam was so close as to hear me, but he came over the porch rail, and grabbed my shoulder. I’ve been out here too long, without the proper nourishment for a man, so I’m light. Sam threw me over the railing into the dooryard with one hand. I managed to catch myself up, but my nose was still bloodied, I could taste it.

Sam threw himself over the rail again, his bootheels hitting the dust together. “I’ve heard enough of your magic bird talk,” was all the reason Sam gave for lighting into me, and he wasn’t finished yet: I heard a knife come free of a leather sheath.

No one had tried to kill me in a time. It’s not supposed to be able to happen.

Sam grabbed my shirt and pulled me up from the hard mud. The bare steel of the knife looked green in the spooky light from the grass. I could see Rachel and Sawyer’s heads against the empty sky, looking down over the edge of the roof at me. From behind the shack, a horse screamed.

About damn time.

Sam dropped me. Gibs gave a yell of his own, startled, scared. I heard Sawyer’s boots on the roof.

The horse gave another cry, and the other horses began to whinny and wail in fear. That’s a sound you’ll carry with you. I’d heard horses scream before, in the War, but then there’s all sorts of other noises mixed up with it: cannon, rifles, men screaming, praying. But out here, in the prairie, where it’s all quiet, and a horse is giving its last yell because one of the Family has their claws into it? That’s another sound altogether.

Sam went around the right side of the shack, grabbing his rifle from where he’d leaned it near the porch. Gibe went the other way, around to the left where the pump stood. I stood and brushed myself off. I heard one of them get Gibs, just come out of the grass and took him. He hit the shack wall hard enough to knock the pronghorn antlers I keep up there to the floor. Towards the back of the shed, guns blazed, and people were yelling. Sawyer was still up the roof, telling Sam what to do, where they were, while he worked his own rifle. I heard him shout out, and his rifle fell silent.

I went into the cabin. Should be back to normal, tomorrow. Maybe I’d even get some horse out of this. It’s not my favorite thing, horse, but I hadn’t any meat in a few weeks. Couldn’t bring myself to eat the dog they offered.

But I was counting my chickens too soon.

Strange Scenes: The Family in the Grass

I'm continuing my Strange Scenes series of posting short fiction every week. Read part one of my cowboys and monsters horror story The Family in the Grass here. Part two will post next week.

The Family in the Grass

They ran, but they didn’t make it.

Folk never do. I’ve never seen one come out of there, and that goes for Indians, too, not just regular folk. I stood on the porch and looked out into the tall grass. From here, I could see the tops of it, swaying as it does when things are happening down inside of it. I can tell by now the difference from how people move the grass, and the other.
It was over soon enough, and I heard the crunch of bones, the satisfied chitter of the Family as they ate. I saw a pronghorn come through the dooryard, with the calm way grass animals will when the Family has eaten. All was right with the world.
I went back inside my shed. I’d miss them, they was good to talk to.

People were coming faster, it seemed. It wasn’t two months after that another wagon came through. I was sitting out on the shed porch with the dog the last folks left, looking out over the grass, seeing nothing moving out there, today, but there was always nothing more than there was something. I just looked because there was nothing else to look to.
The dog saw the wagon first. He got to his feet, and his tail thumped on my leg. I turned and looked down the road, and here they come, a wagon full of people, the horse pulling through the mud, the father in the seat, driving the animal, but not too hard. There wasn’t any kindness to it, he was just tired, and I could see that. I went around back to get some water on. They was coming to me, I could see that already.

I had the trough full when the man came up to me. The dog barked some but he’s not a mean dog. I think he’s lonely of me, and liked it when people stayed. The man had his rifle, and I didn’t like him right then on the spot.
“You own this place?” he asked, the gun not pointed right at me, but near enough to keep me honest.

“No sir.” I said, letting go the pump handle and setting the water bucket on the edge of the trough. “The United States Government owns this place. I’m in their employ.” I told him my name.
He stood quiet for a time, his eyes going over everything. He didn’t like me working for the government, I could tell that. He was another homesteader, a man from the losing side of the War; I could see that about him. He was having a hard time about it. Getting west, I mean.
“Plenty of water,” I said. “Bring your team around and let them drink up, if you’d like.”
“What’re you doing out here?” he asked me.
“Telegraph station.” I tipped my head up to the wires that ran out from the shack.
“Your wires are down,” he told me. “Maybe six miles back.”
“Are they?” I asked. I had heard that before, from an Indian. Never bothered to go look, even though that was my only duty. I saw his boy look around the corner. “Water’s clean.” I said. “The dog and I drink it every day, and we’ve no trouble with it.” The boy was about ten. His mother joined him, in a moment. Pretty lady. They watched me over the man’s shoulder.
The man didn’t seem certain about me, yet, but then he seemed to say what the hell, and waved his family on. The boy ran up to the bucket and cupped water in his hands. The dog sort of danced over to him, tail wagging so hard that its backside curled around.
The woman and the boy came forward, towards the pump. They had a little girl, as well, but I hadn’t seen her yet so I didn’t know, then. The man said, “Where’s the road go?”
“Goes here.” I told him.
He gave me a sharp look. “Where’s it go after here?” I had it coming, I guess. I knew what he meant when he asked.
“It just goes here.” I told him. “Nothing more. If you want to keep going, you’ll need to go back and find another way.”
That took his mind off of me for a minute. You could see he didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to cross the river again. He walked over to where the grass started. The grass is taller than a man, stiff and sharp. Homesteaders called it ‘rip-gut’, and it would do a number on you, and your team. The Family never seemed to notice it, but then they’re not natural animals.

They stayed the night, as I knew they would. I told them not to. “There’s danger, here.” I said. “Sometimes, things come out of the grass. They might get your horse.”
The man looked me over again, his gray eyes going up and down, the rifle over his shoulder. He unhitched and watered his horse with the rifle always by his hand. His woman had taken the girl into my shack, because she had a fever. The man and the boy stayed clear of it. You could see he didn’t want my courtesy, didn’t want to be in my debt. “Indians?” he asked. I shook my head, and told him what I thought the Family was. “You’re crazy,” he said, and spit on the ground by my feet. They took the girl out of shack and put her in the wagon. Her name was Rachel, a name I’d never heard before except in the Bible.
They brought the girl out to the wagon and slept out there. I warned them, but not much. I get tired of it, same as anyone would. The dog hid himself well in the shack. He knew it, what was coming. After a few months of nothing but pronghorns, buffalo and jackrabbits, the Family gets restless.
I didn’t sleep much that night. There was lots of noise, lots of goings on. It started with the horses, as it does, and then the rifle went off, two, three times. Then the people were screaming, calling to each other, praying to the Lord.
Then came the worst noises, the ones that come after, when the Family eats.

When the sun rose, they were gone. There was blood on the ground, but not much. The mud of the doorward was trampled something awful. The Family’s prints were all through the yard, big chicken toes digging into the dirt. I looked but I didn’t see any unfamiliar ones. I hadn’t in my ten years here. The big ones just kept on, the small ones didn’t seem to grow. The grass was all knocked down in a few places where the horse was dragged in. The stems were black with blood, heavy with flies. I had seen it all before, too many times in my ten years here to take much notice of it. I was glad, in a way, because it meant the Family’d let me keep the dog a bit longer.
I walked towards the side of the shack. I spied a few feathers, but none as good as the ones I’d already gathered, so I left them. The rifle was there, still straight but empty and cold. I took it up by the barrel, and threw it far into the grass. One more gun for the prairie, out there with the rest, grass growing up through the trigger guard.
I heard something, then. From the wagon. The girl, coughing. The dog heard it, too. He looked up at me, his eyes bright, tail wagging. Maybe he’d been here long enough to know the rules, and figured he’d just been given some more time.
I looked at the wagon. The canvas top was all torn, the hitch was twisted, the tongues broken clean off. The horse may have been in harness when the Family came. The girl coughed again.
I took her in. I couldn’t do nothing else.

Rachel was a smart girl, but she didn’t speak. She was just about nine, and it was plain she could hear me just fine by the way she nodded yes or no to my questions, and how she looked at me all sad when she wanted me to stop asking. She’d seen them, I figured out that much. By moonlight, and moving fast like they do, but she’d seen them. The Family.
I guess she had the croup or something like it. There was nothing for me to do but give her water, and share what food I had. The Family brought me some of the horse, as they do, and about a week later, some buffalo meat. I had the corn growing in the back, and the Family never bothered with the flour, beans, salt or what have you in the wagons they attacked. Those things had no interest for them, so I took it all. In a few days, I had the wagon broke apart for wood for the stove. I didn’t have any other place to get wood, and I wasn’t going to need a wagon for anything. I sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere.

The girl started getting better, and the dog got nervous. But it was only about a week before we got more company. I knew they were coming this time, well before they knew we were there. I was hoping for it, you’d say. Praying for it. Much longer, and I might have to choose between the girl and the dog, and I didn’t want to make that choice right away. Rachel was a good girl. She cooked, and cleaned, and sewed my things, listened to me talk, and she didn’t seem scared of the Family. We never saw them, of course, but other people who had come through the first night, like Curly, they sometimes went mad. If Rachel had gone mad on her first night, I could manage with how she went.
A man came up on a horse, riding in a hurry, rifle across his saddle. The dog and I were on the porch again, out of the heat of the sun. Rachel was off in back of the place, in the corn patch, making a doll or some such. The rider saw the tracks, the hoof and boot prints that the ground had held and would hold until it rained next, and all this surprised him. His eyes went this way and that, but I don’t think he saw the dog and me, under the porch roof. The dog stayed low, watching the man with its head on its paws.
The man was still thinking what to do when three more came up behind him, all with rifles in their hands and mud on their clothes. I could see they’d crossed the river and done it fast.
I think the girl came out then, from around the shed. One of the men called out and all four drew down on the back of the shed, rifles snapping up like they were used to it. I couldn’t see her, but I guess the girl ran back around the shed. She didn’t scream that I heard, but that was no surprise.
“God Damn you, Gibs!” one of them called, and he spurred his horse. I stood up, and pulled my suspenders over my shoulders. Best look presentable for these fellas, was my thinking. I stepped out into the light, raising my hand to block the bright sun. Three rifles came over at me. The dog stayed on the porch, I saw.
“There was no one here when I come up last spring, I swear!” The one who had come in first called.
“Shut up,” another said. I looked over at him. He was the handsomest of the three, the youngest. Also the meanest-looking; you could see that he thought he was bad, a bad man. He had a look around his eyes I see on the Indians that come up here sometimes, the ones who think they’re so mean that the Family will take them in. “Anyone else in there?” the young one said, looking at me.
I told him no.
“Who’re you, then?” Like so many, he didn’t like that I might be in the army. My clothes were dirty, and I wasn’t wearing a shirt, but my trousers were still Union blue.
“Telegraph operator.” I said. One of the others told me the lines were down and I said I knew it. “There’s water out back.” I said.
“That your girl?” the mean one asked.
“Nossir.” I said. I figured out by now he’d been an officer on the Reb army, and he might like the sir. He did, the rifle dipped a bit. “Family of homesteaders came though. She’s all that’s left.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the one they’d call Gib said. He was the one who most looked like he wanted to shoot me. His hand was shaking, but that might be fatigue. It’s work, holding a rifle up with one hand, like it’s a pistol.
“Just what I said.” I told him. “Come now, let’s get those horses watered. No one’s gonna find you here, and you can’t go on anyways.”
I went around back, thinking they might shoot me in the back but also figuring they wouldn’t. The mean one was also the smart one; I could see that by then. He knew you could make a live person into a dead one anytime, if you needed to, but it didn’t work the other way.
I walked around to the pump. I saw that the first rider had gone through the corn, into the grass.
I remember thinking That’s the end of him, then.

To be continued

Strange Scenes: Epiphany

As unusual as the situation already was, the unexpected arrival of the three kings of distant lands made Joseph more uncomfortable still, if such were even possible.

The shepherds had already been visiting at the manger for several days. They had been more or less polite and gracious; taking turns singularly or in pairs, to view the newborn Messiah where He lay in the manger and doing their best not to disturb Mary, who was excited by the birth but remained too exhausted for the young couple to leave their simple lodgings just yet. Joseph had done nothing to dissuade the visitors, for they had come at the behest of an Angel of the Lord.

There had been a lot of that sort of thing in his life lately, and he expected he had better get used to it.

The infant was clearly something special. Joseph wasn't versed in the concept of a halo, but he'd seen the Angel of the Lord in a dream, and now knew divine light when he saw it. One couldn't say that the child actually shed light as a lighted lamp would, yet there was an undeniable brightness to him, and serenity that made Joseph feel better about everything just by observing the newborn.

The shepherds clearly appreciated the specialness of the child, yet while two were kneeling before the infant, a third burst in and crossed the manger in a rush to Joseph's side.

"Kings!" he whispered. "Kings from distant lands have arrived! They come on camels, and bring precious gifts!"

Joseph's first thought was of Herod, whose wrath the Angel had warned him of, but then the Shepherd explained that the newcomers wore the garb of Persia and Ethiopia, and the third that of the even more distant Orient.

Mary saw the concern on Joseph's face, and he felt the duty of protecting his wife and child fall full upon him, but then the child smiled at him, and a tremendous upwelling of faith calmed his heart. Joseph exhaled and remembered that so little of this was up to him. And besides, the Kings had already entered without invitation, as kings will.

Being kings, they were splendidly attired, and Joseph saw that they presented themselves without attendants, and equally surprisingly, with belts free of swords or knives, lacking even ceremonial or decorative weapons. Joseph and the shepherds at once fell in supplication, but one of the kings-- a tall, dark-skinned regent of some distant kingdom-- kindly bade them stand. Joseph and the shepherds rose uncertainly. The Christ-Child smiled in his mother's arms, and his beatific expression remained unchanged when turned upon his royal visitors.

Mary, for her part, was too full of bliss to be intimidated by their raiment or bearing. The Kings were gracious, were humble, were genteel. However, Joseph could not put aside their station above him. Yes, the Angel of the Lord had come to him, and yes, he had been appointed by the God of Abraham himself as steward to the Messiah, but even if the presence of the Christ Child, the weight of the king's authority was nearly stifling. In their garb, in their manner, in their speech, they were just so different.

The three kings presented their gifts and paid their respects. Then, after a moment of respectful observance, the Persian King said it would only be right to leave Mary to rest and to allow the other faithful to observe the Messiah. They bowed with grace and turned to leave through the side door of the manger. As the three kings passed Joseph, the Ethiopian king whispered “Please, sir, if we may. A quick word away from the young mother.”

Not wishing to leave his young wife alone, yet too cowed by their high aspect to refuse, Joseph reluctantly acquiesced. He shared a swift look with Mary, then another with a shepherd, who nodded as if to say 'I will protect her and the child,' and the gesture warmed Joseph's heart. He had absolute faith, but it was being tested at every moment.

They emerged into a narrow alley between the manger and the inn. Joseph could see either street was filled with shepherds and other common folk who had heard of the virgin birth; the other with camels, horses, and followers of the kings--more, Joseph thought, than even three kings would need.

"There are twelve of us," the Oriental King explained. "Twelve kings and magi who understood the meaning of the portents. Who knew," he said pointing up with one ring-laden finger towards the unusually bright star that shone over Bethlehem, "the significance of the star."

As he spoke, servants, each wearing finer clothes than Joseph, rushed down the alley and provided brocade-covered stools for the three kings and one for Joseph. The kings sat, and when Joseph remained standing, the Ethiopian King gestured, and Joseph took a seat.

"We mean to speak with the utmost respect," the Persian king said. "We want to share our wisdom with you, and what we are to share, we share with respect."

"To you, and your wife, and Jehovah." And all three bowed their heads in deference.

"Glory be to the God of Abraham," Joseph said, unable to think of any other appropriate reply.

"This blessed event was made known to you," the Persian continued. "By a prophet? A vision?"

"An Angel of the Lord spoke to me," Joseph replied. "To my wife as well."

The three kings stroked their beards and looked to one another.

"Was anything said of the child's gospel?"

"She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins," Joseph said. "He will teach the world the ways of peace."

The kinds nodded again.

"Joseph, we know the child isn't yours in a literal sense,” the Ethiopian began. “But it's clear you want to do the best you can for him," Then the three kings began speaking in a circular fashion, one and then the next, with hardly a pause in their declamations:

"You desire to protect your divine son, and your young wife," the Oriental King said.

"Yes. And to provide for the both of them," added the Persian.

"In a manner befitting his station."

"And your own position, as his parents,” concluded the Ethiopian. “It's no small honor, what you have been asked to do,"

"Thank…you?" Joseph stammered.

The kings were accustomed to being thanked, and they nodded in unison.

"This is why we have made a gift of gold," the Persian said. "So you may see to the child's well-being."

"Again, we thank you," Joseph said.

“There could be more," the Oriental said. "Much more."

"More gold?" Joseph said, not sure where all of this was going.

The Ethiopian saw the new father’s concern and made to calm him. “Worry not. We understand the troubles too much wealth can bring.”

“Taxes, thieves, the transport of such treasure.”

"You'd not have to worry about the keeping of it.”

“We'd see to it. In fact, we'd see to all your comforts,” the Persian said. “You could even come live among us.”

“If that would be agreeable to you."

“We'd do nothing without your express consent,” said the Oriental with a soothing smile.

"Yes, and to wait upon the wishes of a man such as yourself is not a simple matter for us, as we are kings, and you but a mere tradesman."

“But it is a courtesy we extend willingly.”

“Humbly,” the Persian concluded.

And once more the three kings nodded as one.

"You mean Mary, Jesus and I should… come live with you?"

"One of us," the Persian said. "You'd have your choice."

"And not just of we three," the Oriental said. There are twelve of us, remember.”

"Twelve kings?" Joseph asked.

"Kings and magi, yes." the Persian said.

“The balance of our number wait at the border.”

“We do not wish to appear as overwhelming."

"And then there is Herod, who might…"

“Take offense.”

The three nodded solemnly.

"We're not at all like Herod," the Ethiopian said. "We don't fear the Messiah."

The Persian put a hand on Joseph’s knee. "We respect your son," he said.

"And we understand that it is foolish to try and directly contest the will of Jehovah."

"One must be respectful of Jehovah above all else," the Ethiopian said. "Look at what became of Ramses."

"Yes, plagues and floods and death and he lost all of his slaves."

“An entire race!" the Persian said. "All gone simply because he wouldn't make accommodations."

"And that is all that we offer," The Persian said, bringing it all around again. "We wish to provide accommodations."

"You will want for nothing," the Oriental said.

"And be far from Herod."

"Would you accept our generosity?" The Persian asked.

Joseph was so taken aback by their manner and topic of conversation he had nearly forgotten the question. "I don't… I'm not sure. Leave Galilee?"

"And live in a palace, yes." the Oriental said.

"Any of our palaces.”

“You’d have your choice.”

"My palace has an oasis," the Ethiopian said. "And is near a river. Clear water, many trees. It's lovely, actually."

Joseph had no idea how he should answer. He wondered, and not for the first time, if one day Jesus, blessed with the perfect wisdom of the Holy Spirit, would council him on such dilemmas. But of course, the Messiah was only hours old, and while Joseph wasn't sure what to expect from the miraculous infant in the manager, he didn't believe he could go in and ask Jesus what he should do now.

Yet as he turned his mind to the question, he realized that he knew the answer. Ever since the Angel had come to him, he had been in tune with his faith, and the three kings did not bring with them the feeling of the Lord. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"I am grateful," Joseph said. "Yet I feel the Lord wishes for us to stay in Galilee."

With this, a deep hush fell between them.

The three kings did not gesture or speak, nor even turn towards one another, yet Joseph had the strong impression that they were somehow discussing next steps.

The Ethiopian spoke to fill the growing silence. "Are you certain you can dismiss such an offer? How will you provide for your son?”

“The Lord will provide?” Joseph replied. To his shame, the words emerged without conviction, almost as a question.

“Will he?” The Persian asked

“Your newborn son lays abed in a manger, surrounded by… by… livestock,” the Ethiopian said.

“An inauspicious beginning, some might say,” agreed the Oriental.

"I have faith,” Joseph replied, although he could not deny the peculiarity of his family’s circumstances. “The Lord will see to our needs and raise His Son up,” Joseph said. “He will bring hope to the poor and offer salvation to the wicked." He actually didn't know the Lord's plans, no mortal could, but the words felt right to say, and Joseph took that as a good sign.

"Sadly, that may not work for us," the Persian said.

"I beg your pardon?" Joseph asked.

"Absolutely will not." The Oriental said.

The Ethiopian stood and smoothed his kingly robes. "We have offered you a life of ease in one of our palaces; one where your wife and son do not need to be subject to the trials of poverty and the rules of tyrants such as Herod, and whoever will come after him."

"And you have declined," said the Oriental.

“Now let us tell you what comes next," continued the Persian.

"Persecution."

"Attacks from all sides."

"And none of it a thing you can defend against."

"We, and all like us, will endeavor to subvert the covenant of the God of Abraham, and the message of his Son."

"We will make sure that none will trust your Son’s intent, and fewer believe His word."

"He shall speak to thousands, and we will twist His words. He may perform miracles, but we will discredit them."

“Simply, with words of our own.”

"No swords, so soldiers, no brute force."

"Not until the end."

"And we promise that your child’s life of poverty and struggle ends with his death at a young age, at the hands of noble officials who will not break a single law to execute him."

"And his public death at the order of some governor or prince will be met by cheering crowds," The Oriental said with an almost melancholy finality.

"You cannot know all of this--" Joseph protested.

"It has already begun!” the Persian shouted, moving closer until his face was inches to Joseph’s own. “Yes, we have come here to cajole and even threaten you, but as we have acted with discretion and grace, our visit to the Messiah will be celebrated!"

"The shepherds already say, ‘Look at the kings who know to bring beautiful gifts to the Son of God!’"

“Why would you do these things?” Joseph half-wailed in despair.

The Ethiopian put out a calming hand. "Joseph, you have to understand. We are magi, but do not forget we are also kings."

"As kings we need subjects. Not just the merchants and the traders but also the poor."

"People like yourself and your wife," the Persian explained. “Who are the foundation of any kingdom.”

"Serfs. Servants. Laborers. People to work the land and to give the fruit of the land to us.

“Via taxes, tithing, rent whatever one wishes to call it."

"And let us not forget the cost of war and defense.”

“Yes, we need men and boys to serve in our armies and women and girls to bear the next generation of soldiers."

"These are all common requirements of a kingdom."

"And for the world we describe to function, the subjects of a kingdom must answer to their king, not Jehovah."

Joseph was confused. “You would dare meddle with the plans of the God of Abraham?”

“Not meddle. Oppose.”

"Opposition is necessary and desirable.”

“What the God of Abraham most desires from his people is willing fealty ."

"It is important to Him that his followers have a choice."

"Adam and Eve in the garden," The Persian said.

"And we respect that."

"You see, Joseph, we are that choice."

“It is how we serve Him.”

"And we will endeavor to make our choice an attractive one."

“He wants you, personally, to make a choice, Joseph, and he wants it to be a meaningful one.” The Oriental said.

“And therefore you and your family will suffer, as all of His prophets have suffered.”

“Jonah.”

“Moses.”

“Job,” this last name nearly spat out by the Oriental, who nevertheless bowed respectfully before turning his back and leaving the small group. A servant walked after him, brocade-covered couch in hand.

“Your mind will turn back upon on this day often,” the Ethiopian said. “In some other stable or manger or mean home, when your son is hungry or when your king is cruel, you will think upon what you passed over in this moment, and you will regret.” Then he bowed and took his leave as well.

That left only the Persian, who clearly felt he had said all that he had come to say, save one parting barb: “He could stop us,” the King said. “He has punished the world before, with a great flood. He could do so again with fire or plague or any bolt from His celestial quiver. Instead, He contends with us with words. We have all the words He has, and ten thousand mouths to speak them.” Then at last he bowed and joined his companions on the road. Faintly, Joseph heard the order given to make the company ready to depart.

Joseph returned to the presence of his wife and perfect child. He was shaken by his encounter with the magi and their words echoed in his mind, as strong, perhaps, as those of the Angel who had first borne tidings of the miracle birth unto him.

“Is all well?” the shepherd asked. Joseph saw that the man’s face had fallen to despair. He quickly realized that the man was no more than reflecting his own expression back.

“Yes,” Joseph said. “I am just feeling the sleepless nights. It’s not always restful, in a manger, I mean.”

“I know the truth of that!” the shepherd agreed. “Please, sir, have a seat and take your ease.” He gestured at a floor before the infant, where Joseph was surprised to see a small boy stood. He was wearing a drum. “This boy has followed the star,” the shepherd said. “He wished to play for the child. Sit, and listen. May it ease your burden.”

“Thank you,” Joseph said as he sat upon the manager floor. The boy began tapping upon his drum, a smattering of notes repeated in a slow circle.

The Shepherd, Mary, and even the animals of the manager all turned to watch the boy play. Jesus smiled at the sound of it, his small face bright with joy.

Joseph was relieved the drummer had caught their attention, for none could see him weep.

Strange Scenes: the Prize

Wrote this non-sequitur back in 2013, and I may have posted it back then. Wanted to do this one as a performance, haven't had the opportunity yet.

Strange Scenes: The Prize

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