by David Liss
“One of the downsides of the incorporeal lifestyle is that I am now unable to slap some sense into you. Haven’t you heard the good news about the one who is always prepared?”
“Yes,” I said. “I can’t believe you buy into that.”
“I wrote that. I wrote that for you, Estrada. You’re the guy. It’s my first posthumous hit.” Blaine sang a few verses, as I stood staring at him, too smoked up to move. It was no wonder that the cult’s adherents were all people who enjoyed groundsmoke and that the hymns had a relentless rhythm and extremely loud vocals. They were getting their information from the ghost of a last gasp metal frontman.
“I’ve got to find Lisa,” I said and I staggered toward the barracks. I passed General Santa Anna, who was loitering in his epaulettes, on the way. We exchanged bows.
When I reached the barracks, Parker Saenz was there, fiddling with the lock. “You’ll need your bow,” she said, passing it to me. “First Hank, then as many as you can.”
I reached out to hug her and found I was trying to throw my arms around a flock of squawking black grackles.
* * *
Hank was in a meeting with his team leaders, dividing up what remained of Texas’ land between his underlings. I shot him in the throat as he assigned West Texas to a man named Abe who was wearing a necklace of finger bones.
“The cattle are loose!” someone screamed and the men grabbed their guns and ran to the barracks, which Parker had opened. Prisoners were streaming out. Amid the chaos, I shot as many of Hank’s guys in the back as I could.
* * *
“Lisa, I thought Ilost you,” I said. She was embracing our daughters and Elias. We were aboard The Jolly Barista, which Milo had driven down with the last of his truck’s gas. Milo had rallied nearly all of Trip Edmond’s farm to the cause and three other boats were assembled outside the Alamo, packed with whoever was rash enough to follow a malnourished baker into a naval battle on dry land. We heard snickering from inside the mission, where what remained of Hank’s team was holed up. We looked like fools, but I tried not to be critical.
“It’s a classic stand-off,” Elias said. “But they’ve got the numbers and the guns. We’re going to die in these boats.”
“There’s always hope,” I said. I was still pretty blitzed on groundsmoke and there was a roaring in my ears like the wind of the gulf“.
* * *
“Who called it? Who called it?” Milo said, strutting across the deck in his captain’s hat. “I hate to say I told you so, but I did.” There was nothing but ocean in all directions and we had long conceded his point. A more mature person would have dropped it by now.
“You called it, Milo,” I said, for the hundredth time. We’d been at sea three days and he was still celebrating. Even Cerise found his high spirits insufferable and she had threatened several times to throw herself overboard.. Then the two of them would argue, and Milo would end up apologizing, and then they’d start kissing passionately in a corner of the boat, turning everyone’s stomachs even more than the choppy seas.
“I wish you’d left me to die,” Elias said, shaking his head as Cerise swept Milo into a backbend kiss.
* * *
“It’s kind of embarrassing, Lees, but you know this new god everyone’s so into lately? I’m kind of worried that it’s me,” I whispered. We were standing on deck together, watching the garbage islands float past.
Lisa gave me a look so full of contempt that my heart melted. It was just like the old days. “You can’t just be normal, Eric. You always have to have some crazy delusion.”
“I know I’m just an ordinary guy. I know that. But think about it—the mighty archer? The one who is always prepared? The one who walks among us, as in door to door?”
“Honestly, I’m embarrassed for you,” she said.
“It sounds bad. But all these mighty deeds he supposedly did? Like half of them are mine. I don’t know if I should say something or let it go or what.” Blaine had been writing my life story into his posthumous hits, and whenever somebody poured a libation to the mighty archer or fasted so as to win his favor I felt guilty.
“That one right there could be land,” Lisa said, pointing to a dark streak on the horizon. Birds had been flying over us for two days, and the way they didn’t nose dive onto the deck and die gave us hope. Lisa had agreed to name the baby Milo, which worked well for either a boy or a girl, but that was before we had any reason to expect we’d live to see the child born. I wanted to pin her down on the name now that our outlook had improved from certain death to small but significant chance of survival.
“I’ve got it. Milo Santa Anna,” I said.
“That’s bizarre,” Lisa said. But we weren’t bound by the old ways anymore. We could do what we wanted. We ate fish that we hoped was not slowly poisoning us and we planned to raise our children in peace and freedom, never knowing first-hand the taste of human flesh. (Which, for the record: excellent.) “Why would you want to name our baby after that jackass?”
I wasn’t sure which jackass she meant, or how much Lisa was ready to hear. But I confessed that on that day, at what we were calling the second battle of the Alamo, just before the gulf poured in and drowned the defenders, General Santa Anna had tipped his hat to me. Then he had raised his arm and at his command, the water seeped up from the ground beneath our boats, flooding the plaza. The waves that crashed over the Alamo were full of soldiers on horseback, carrying the flag of Mexico. “I saw it all, just like I see you now. It was that clear.”
“You were pretty high, though,” Lisa said.
“Yes I was,” I said. Lisa kissed me as we sailed past a garbage island made of rubber ducks.
The End
Eileen Curtright lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband and three daughters. Her novel The Burned Bridges of Ward, Nebraska, is forthcoming in November 2015.
