The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  My excitement proved costly, for I extinguished three scraps of blazing debris before I succeeded. But in a few more seconds I managed to edge a few burning papers along the street and into the open door under the swaying wall.

  And then, just as those tons of cold death spilled down toward Chestnut Eyes I did it. I touched the burning papers to the chemicals.

  There was an explosive pwooj!—then the hard crash of avalanching stones.

  It was done now.

  The impact of the falling wall shot me outward in all directions. Then everything was quiet, and the jolts of falling bombs had passed. I disentangled myself from a mass of bluish smoke—smoke that was not me.

  “Are you there, Chestnut Eyes?” I asked in my own way of speaking.

  “I—I seem to be alive . . . Yes, I’m still alive . . . And yet, I can’t be. That wall fell on me. I must still be in there—dead. These words I’m saying aren’t real words . . . I’m only thinking—in another world. I didn’t really hear someone call me Chestnut Eyes. I’m just—”

  “Do you see another world around you?”

  “I only see the same world—but through different eyes.”

  For moments she murmured bewilderedly, wafting along in a bluish smoky form, and I knew she was experiencing strange bodily sensations. Her emotions and thoughts, too, were possessed with an ooziness.

  “What has happened to me?” she cried. “Who am I? What am I?”

  Then I whispered to her that her life had been changed, that it had been the only way to save her.

  I could sense that woeful feeling that enshrouded her. She spread her smoky arms over her head and face—or perhaps that was only as it seemed to me, for her cloudy fluffiness was in a constant state of movement.

  “You were about to be killed, Chestnut Eyes,” I said to her over and over. “I couldn’t let it happen. There were the chemicals—and I remembered how they had mixed with fire to change me . . . I hope you won’t be too angry. Tell me, Chestnut Eyes, that you believe this will be better than final death.”

  On that point she made no response, as I was to remember long afterwards, wondering if my action would prove an unkindness.

  But now she began to exclaim in a lively manner, and her spirits lifted.

  “You are Virgil Lamstead! I know you, of course—your manners, your voice—or do I hear a voice?” She added anxiously. “I’m not dreaming, am I? You are listening?”

  “Every word is music, Chestnut Eyes.”

  “But you were killed. Bill and George, your American friends, told me—many days ago.”

  “Not killed—changed—transformed to smoke—living smoke—the same as you.”

  “Please, Virgil, if that were true—” She broke off and her confusion held her in silence for a moment. Then with a burst of eagerness she exclaimed, “But it is true. It was you that caused me to roll away from the flames—”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been watching over me. I remember seeing you, and wondering about such a curious cloud of smoke. It was you that brought the firemen—”

  “Of course. There, you do believe in me. You see, we are not dead. We live! We are still able to help! This is our world—our civilization. It’s turning to smoke, and we’ve turned with it. But even in the form of smoke we’ll go on fighting. Won’t we?”

  “It’s all so bewildering,” Chestnut Eyes said plaintively. We had drifted over rooftops and were floating downward toward the surface of the river. It was so easy to float downgrade.

  The water’s surface was so inviting.

  And Chestnut Eyes did look so relaxed, coasting along beside me, as if this new steamy amorphous existence was the very self her war-weary soul craved.

  I talked on, challenging her to see this new outlook on life as I saw it.

  “We’re the fumes of a great fight, Chestnut Eyes. We still have a part to play.”

  She was silent.

  Then the whistle for all-clear sounded and in a moment Chinese children were bobbing out of shelters, singing their all-clear song.

  “Whoooo! We’re still fighting!”

  Chestnut Eyes gathered into a tighter knot of smoke, as if summoning her strength.

  “Yes, Virgil,” she said. “We have a part to play. Lead me on.”

  It was several days later that we began to get wind of a spy ring operating on the outskirts of the city.

  We had been able to rise above the hills at night and see the hidden signal lights that directed Japanese scouts to this spy ring.

  By daylight we followed the devious courses of those spies who were bold enough to show their faces.

  Among them was the traitorous Kong Wah, who appeared to be an armless beggar.

  He carried a straw basket on his chest and went about pleading passionately for bread and gold. The sight of him wrung pity from many, who supposed him a war victim.

  The stumps of arms that hung from Kong Wah’s broad shoulders were covered with dosed sleeves. No one actually saw those stumps of arms.

  We followed Kong Wah. It was interesting to see what pains he took to make sure no one was following him. We were right over his head, close enough to see the wicked light shining in his eyes.

  He led us up the hillside, past the toiling gardeners tending their little two-by-four patches of beans on the terrace; past the plodding carpenters trying to make two damaged houses into one good one. Then we followed him across the heaps of rock that had separated that edge of Chungking from an ancient retreat of legendary Chinese gamblers.

  We watched Kong Wah cross a perilously narrow ledge where one misstep would have sent him over a three-hundred-foot drop. But Kong Wah knew his way.

  In a moment we were in the cave of Ho Lo and his spy ring. The legendary cave of gamblers was now a link in the Japanese gamble for empires.

  We spread ourselves too thin to be noticed. Chestnut Eyes kept reminding herself that we were in no danger. There was already some smoke in the cave. Yellow oil lamps were burning in an inner room.

  From a farther room came the intermittent screams of a boy being tortured.

  A gang of eleven men—most of them Japanese—were lounging on benches or on the damp floor apparently paying no attention to the screaming of the boy. The baseness of the scene made Chestnut Eyes recoil.

  This man without arms made the twelfth. Presently a comrade removed his catch-basket, together with his outer shirt and the stubs of arms. Then Kong Wah’s real arms were revealed, strapped tight to his body. The men unbound them.

  “How have you fared?” Ho Lo asked, reaching into the basket.

  The fakir laughed cynically. “I have wrung tears to flood the rivers.”

  “It’s a pity you can’t collect more gold and less tears.”

  “He’s losing his touch,” someone mocked. “We should chop his legs off.” Everyone laughed.

  The cry of the boy ceased.

  “What’s happened to our music? Didn’t you have a torture record on?” This from Kong Wah.

  “He’s been on the frying pan long enough,” said Ho Lo. “He ought to be ready to. turn.”

  They brought the boy in, wired to the cross-bar of a frame of timbers. His fingers and toes were knotted together with wire behind his back, and a single strand of wire suspended him from the frame.

  “Into their eyes and nostrils,” I whispered to Chestnut Eyes.

  We kept our snaky bodies spread thin, but drew our smoky fingers thick and hard into the eyes of the ring-leaders.

  Ho Lo was shouting at the boy as they unwired him and set him on his feet. “Now, you turtle’s egg, you son of a rich father, maybe you will go and find us the thousand gems we demand.”

  The wild eyed boy shook his head. “Then you’ll be tied up as before. And this time we’ll hang weights to your belly . . . Or have you changed your mind?”

  The boy’s pain-racked face twitched. The tall Japanese leader, Jokolo, a confederate of the Chinese traitors, moved toward him with the wires,
and the boy uttered no protest.

  Then someone said to the Japanese, “What’s the matter, Jokolo? Is this business getting your gall?”

  “There’s nothing the matter.”

  “Your eyes are pouring tears, you fool. What’s happened to your heart of steel?” the speaker accused.

  “Smoke in my eyes,” said Jokolo. And the traitorous Ho Lo echoed, “Smoke I I’ve got it too.”

  “Neither of you are the men you used to be,” Kong Wah muttered. “Tears never—”

  “Stop your nonsense. Give the boy some more—oooh!” Jokolo wailed and clawed at his eyes. “Where’s the damn smoke coming from?”

  “There’s no-smoke in here—no more than—eeegh!”

  In a moment we had four of them fighting at the air like wild men. They darted for the entrance tunnel.

  “So you fellows can’t stand it,” someone taunted. “You’re walking out—” The accused didn’t wait to reply. They were out in the open air, and by this time Jokolo was shrieking, “I’m going blind. Blind, I tell you!”

  Chestnut Eyes and I didn’t let up the pressure for an instant.

  Jokolo ran out into the open and stumbled over the cliff and went down—down—

  The three who had followed him were more careful. They stopped at the cliff’s edge and looked down in awe. We released our grips on their eyes momentarily. They began to mumble superstitious sayings, and the rest of the gang, having followed to the door, wondered what dreadful mysteries were at work.

  Together we suddenly renewed our attack on the traitorous Ho Lo. In a dizzy terrified instant he reeled to the cliff’s edge. Three men tried to drag him back—and two of those three went over with him. Their cries faded into sickening whines as they fell—cut off by a dull crush on the rocks far below.

  In that moment the boy who had been tortured slipped out of the cave and raced off to freedom.

  Immense relief was in the whisper of Chestnut Eyes.

  “We’ve done it. He’s away. And they’ll never dare touch him again.”

  “They’ll never have a chance,” I replied. I sent her on down to the Yangtze to wait for me on the cool waters. I would finish this house-cleaning before joining her.

  Some days later I began to brood over the quietness of Chestnut Eyes.

  She continued to help me with the weird tasks that befell us through the stricken city. But I sometimes felt that I was losing touch with her. I began to ask myself again whether I had been cruel to spare her the relief of death.

  I said to myself, “That spy ring was too much for her.”

  What might happen to her? Through long afternoons, floating high above the city, I would look down on Chungking funerals, wondering about my own existence—and hers. Whether we were slated for some death as strange as our new life I could not know.

  It might be that a creature of smoke was destined to be wafted away on the breezes, diffusing into the air a little at a time, so gradually that not even his daydreams would be disturbed. When he became too scattered ever to collect himself together, that would be death. Or would it?

  There was no one to ask, no books to consult, only a puzzle to leave hanging in the winds until the fatal time might come.

  These thoughts made me wad myself into such a tense, tight cloud of smoke that I must have frightened Chestnut Eyes, as I floated down toward her.

  She was hovering close to the ground at the edge of a rolling field of hay, and appeared to be preoccupied with chasing wisps of hollow straws. I must confess I was amazed to find her so far from the city and in such a state of idleness. The fact is, I had been looking for her for many hours. She observed my approach in startled manner.

  “Is it you? Why are you that way?”

  “What way?”

  “All bound up so tightly, as if a hurricane wind were threatening you. Are you trying to turn into stone to resist some danger?”

  “Precisely my feelings, Chestnut Eyes,” I said. “These strange disconcerting feelings must have carried over from my old life, I think.”

  “I don’t understand.” She waved a gesture for me to settle down beside her.

  “I used to wonder, in my philosophical hours, whether people don’t live and have their being by virtue of a host of anxieties. The stronger and tenser the nerves, the surer the grip on life.”

  “Surely you don’t mean that anxiety and nerve strain are good?”

  “But they are good—at least within limits. Look over there and you’ll see an example.”

  We watched an overzealous farmer driving four pigs down the road. “Is that man under any tension?”

  “I don’t know. He seems to be trying to keep the pigs in the road. Why?”

  “The harder the job, the more his nerves have to exert. It’s that exertion of his nerves that keeps him from being a scatter-brained fool.”

  “I don’t know what you’re driving at,” said Chestunt Eyes.

  “If someone tried to take those pigs away from him, he’d fight like a demon.”

  “That would be too bad,” said Chestnut Eyes. “It would be like China’s having to fight for what is already her own.”

  “Too bad, perhaps,” I agreed, “but his life would suddenly have a lot more meaning. But suppose he were to go to the other extreme?”

  “And refuse to fight?”

  “Yes. Suppose nothing ever confronted him to make him pull his nerves together. Suppose he slipped into a state where he never had to exert himself.”

  “Then he would be delightfully relaxed,” said Chestnut Eyes.

  “Precisely like his pigs,” I said. “There would be no difference.”

  “Virgil, I’ve had enough of your supposings,” said Chestnut Eyes. “If you want to talk about nerves, talk about nerves. If you want to talk about pigs, talk about pigs. But don’t mix the two together.”

  “But the point is, here we are, you and I, turned into forms that don’t have to eat, or fear the cold, or endure pain, or drive pigs—”

  I was interrupted by some specks of color appearing on conspicuous points along Chungking’s hill tops. The triangular lanterns were being hung on the crosspoles. That meant that a new Japanese air raid was on the way. It meant that the Jap planes had taken off from their bases far down the Yangtze. “Lanterns, Chestnut Eyes.”

  She made no answer. Again she was chasing hollow straws along the ground playfully; forcing her smoky breath through them to hear them sing.

  Her whimsies had never been more disturbing. Death was riding the skies. Tomorrow there would be more burials. “Won’t you come with me?” I asked. “Where are you going?”

  I summoned a determination that had been growing in me for many days. “I’m going up.”

  “I’ll stay—this time,” she replied in a soft child-like manner.

  I drifted away from her, and every whimsical word she had said clung to my thoughts. Had my warning struck home? Had I found her on the point of letting go, drifting away from it all? These reflections stung me and I coiled and humped into a smoky knot as I climbed into the skies. It was late afternoon. The city below me was winding up its day’s trade before gathering up for a visit to the shelters.

  I attained a high altitude by the time the lanterns on the hilltops changed.

  Now they were round lanterns—the second warning. The bombers, though still many miles away, were speeding onward.

  The network of Chinese communication was at work, reporting every move, and Chungking was making ready. I could see the people hurrying like thousands of little ants, carrying huge baskets and bundles on their backs, moving in orderly lines to the cavern shelters of the hills.

  In my own way, I was quivering, setting up a series of air currents around me. This was going to be a new test for me.

  Now the planes came into view like little arrowheads of gnats so insignificant they appeared against the vast sky.

  Again I climbed until at last I was nearly on a level with the leader of the squadron.


  Now it was a matter of seconds. My filmy body stretched out in two thin, almost transparent ribbons. The first big bomber plowed straight toward my station. I struggled to gain speed, as a man runs before leaping at a passing train.

  The roaring air vibrated through me. I had the sensation of being drawn into humming strings of a vast musical instrument. Propellers cut through me, but somehow I caught on, even though I was spreading into countless tapering shreds.

  Now I was speeding with the squadron and I seized to the bellies of a whole line of planes and clung like a long gaseous octopus. Through the tornado of whipping winds I rode, an invisible passenger.

  I curled my myriads of tentacles around the planes in vain for an entrance. There was none. Not until the bomb hatches began to open.

  That was the instant that my dangling branches folded, hissed up into the bombers’ bellies. Was this a last tour de force that would amount to no more than a mad gesture? Was I pulling apart to be torn into nothingness?

  Ah, but already I was achieving. In five different planes at once I succeeded in thrusting bunches of my smoky form past the line of bombs, up to the controls to gouge the eyes of the pilots.

  I gouged. At once the pilots in the several planes began to slap at their eyes. They snarled and cursed this strange something they couldn’t understand. Two of them shot out of formation and swung through sharp curves.

  Men with beastly faces were going mad from tortured eyes. And though my pressure against those orbs seemed an attack against stony, merciless things, I was getting results.

  Two planes, cavorting as if piloted by blind men, came into a mid-air crash, then hurtled down, screaming through the air, leaving a comet-trail of flames behind them.

  And they left me behind them, freeing my ribbon-like branches to slither into other bomb hatches.

  Now I found eyes wild with fear. And I combed them mercilessly. The unaccountable crash of my first two victims had created a panic among the followers. By this time bombs were being dumped indiscriminately. And blinded pilots were shooting out in tangents heedless of their directions.