The Long List Anthology Volume 5

by David Steffen

  A few hours before dawn, Han Song brought him a cup of tea.

  “That’s good,” he said, squinting at the canvas. “I’ve got some pictures of those birds, too.” He settled at his workstation and sipped his own tea as he ruffled through his files. “You can use them for reference if you want.”

  A package hit Zhang Lei’s message queue—the only communication he’d received since leaving Luna that didn’t relate to his immigration status. The photos were good. Details of the cocks’ livid faces and dinosaurian legs, the pinfeathers sprouting from their bald backs, the iridescent sheen of their ruffs.

  He added crimson and madder to his palette and used Han Song’s photo of the cock’s flayed wattle to get that detail exactly right, then moved on to the next problem. He thinned the paint with solvent to make a glaze. No time to wait for fat oils to oxidize, for thick paint layers to cure. In places, the paint was so thin the texture of the canvas showed through. That was fine. He would never be a master painter, but this would be the best painting he could make.

  His friend’s photos helped. Gradually, color and detail began to bring the painting to life.

  “Thank you,” Zhang Lei said, hours later. Han Song didn’t hear him. Prajapati smiled from across the studio, her hands caked with clay to the elbow.

  “Don’t skip lunch,” she said. “Even painters need to eat.”

  “And sleep,” Paul added.

  Sleep. He had no time for it. And Dorgon was in his mattress, behind his door, in his closet. He would join Dorgon soon enough, and next year, when Paizuo’s rice crop had turned yellow, they could scream public challenges at each other through a Miao girl.

  Until then, there was only the work. Work like he’d never known before. As an athlete, he practiced until instinct overtook his mind. On the ice, he didn’t think, he just performed. In the studio, he used his whole body—crouching, stretching, sweeping his arms—continuing the action of his brush far off the canvas like a fighter following a punch past his opponent’s jaw. And then small, precise movements—careful, considered, even loving. But his intellect never disengaged. He made choices, second-guessed himself, took leaps of faith.

  It was the most exhausting, engrossing work he’d ever done.

  The eye of the cock flared on the canvas, trapped in the pointlessness of its drive to fight and fight and die. Zhang Lei hovered his brush over that eye. One more glaze of color, and another, and another, over and over until nobody looking at the painting could misunderstand the meaning of that vicious and brainless stare.

  Paul put his arm around Zhang Lei’s shoulders.

  “Come on down to lunch. The painting is done. If you keep poking, you’ll ruin it.”

  “Ruin yourself, too,” said Han Song.

  “He’s young, he can take it,” said Prajapati.

  They fed him rice and egg, bitter green tea, and millet cake. No fish soup. No Jen Dla.

  “She’s giving birth,” Prajapati explained. “Went into labor last night. Brave woman.”

  “We should break out Paul’s whiskey again,” said Han Song. “Drink a toast to her.”

  Paul laughed. “Maybe. We have something else to celebrate, too.”

  They all looked at Zhang Lei. His mouth was crammed with millet cake.

  “I don’t know. What?” he said though the cake.

  “Your button is gone, dear,” Prajapati said gently.

  He swallowed, pinged his ID. Zhang Lei, Beijing resident. No caveats, no equivocations. And no button.

  Marta, he whispered. Is it done?

  The notice has been sitting in your queue for half an hour. I pinged you when it came through. Looked like you were too busy painting birds to notice.

  Are the brawlers gone? he whispered.

  They’re on their way home. They can’t touch you now and they know it. I don’t recommend going to Luna anytime soon, but if you did and there was a problem, at least you could fight back.

  Zhang Lei excused himself from the table and stumbled out of the guest house. He skirted the cabbage patch and followed the trail to the pavilion, with its perfectly composed view. Up and down the valley, farmers walked the terraces, examining the ripening rice.

  How? You said it would be weeks, at least. Maybe never.

  I took your painting directly to the tribunal.

  That made no sense. His painting was upstairs in the studio, on his easel.

  They were impressed, Marta added. So was I.

  I don’t understand.

  The wet blood. Smart move. Visceral. The tribunal got the message.

  Blood?

  On the ice. They brought in a forensic expert to examine and sequence it. That gave me a scare because I had assumed the blood was yours. Didn’t even occur to me it might be somebody else’s. If it had been, things wouldn’t have turned out so well.

  My blood?

  I guess the tribunal wanted to be convinced you regretted killing Dorgon.

  Zhang Lei leaned on the pavilion railing. A fresh breeze ruffled his hair.

  I do regret it.

  They know that now. I’ll keep the painting for you until you get a place of your own. So keep in touch, okay?

  I will, he whispered.

  On the terrace below, Jen Dang walked along the rice paddy with four of his grandchildren. The farmer waved. Zhang Lei waved back.

  * * *

  Kelly Robson is a Canadian short fiction writer. Her novelette “A Human Stain” won the 2018 Nebula Award, and her novella “Waters of Versailles” won the 2016 Aurora Award. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, Locus, Astounding, Aurora, and Sunburst Awards. After twenty-two years in Vancouver, she and her wife, fellow SF writer A. M. Dellamonica, now live in downtown Toronto.

  The Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our Births

  By José Pablo Iriarte

  I seem to make an outcast of myself every time I’m a teenager. Which is fine, I guess. I’ll take one good dog and one good friend over being a phony and fitting in.

  Alicia points. “There he is, Jamie!”

  A couple hundred feet away, our trailer park’s newest resident grabs a box from the van parked in front of his single-wide. He’s gray-haired and buff, like if The Rock were an old man.

  Alicia and I are sprawled on top of a wooden picnic table in the park’s rusted old playground.

  She frowns, her eyebrows coming together to form a tiny crease above her nose. “I’ve never known anybody who killed someone before.”

  I shrug.

  “I mean, maybe I have, I guess, but I’ve never known I’ve known them. Know what I mean?”

  “No.”

  I don’t really care about the new guy, even if he did murder someone once. I’m mostly just out here to not have to listen to old Mrs. Francis concern-trolling my mom. When I was a kid who sometimes acted like a boy and sometimes like a girl, it was “just a phase.” Now that I’m sixteen, it’s “worrying” and “not safe for the younger children” and something we should “talk to a therapist about.”

  What Mrs. Francis doesn’t know is that I remember every life I’ve lived for nearly four hundred years—not in detail, but like a book I read once and have a few hazy recollections about. In over a dozen lifetimes I can recall, I’ve been male and female enough times for those words to mean little more to me than a particular shirt—not who I am.

  My mom’s too polite to tell a neighbor what she can do with her un-asked-for parenting advice. Trailer walls are thin, though, and if I have to hear it too . . . well, Sabal Palms Trailer Park might end up with two murderers living in it.

  Next to me, my dog Meetu nudges my hand with her head, asking for more scritches. She’s supposed to protect me from people who are as bothered by me as Mrs. Francis is, but would rather use their fists to try and fix me. People like Connor Haines, the biggest asshole in the eleventh grade. But the reality is that Meetu is basically a teddy bear trapped in a pit bull’s body.

/>   Alicia shifts on the table. “I can’t believe my mom let him rent here.” Her mother manages the park, so I guess she could have blocked him if she’d wanted to.

  “Even ex-murderers gotta live somewhere.”

  She gives me her patented don’t-be-an-idiot combination eye roll and headshake that I’ve never seen anybody else quite match. Even when it’s directed at me, I can’t help but grin.

  “There’s no such thing as an ‘ex-murderer,’” she says. “Once you kill someone, you’re a murderer.”

  I brush my hair out of my face. “He went to jail. He did his time, right? They let him out, so where else is he gonna live?” We’ve certainly had other people with checkered pasts here.

  “They shouldn’t have let him out. You take somebody’s life, you ought to rot for the rest of yours.”

  Meetu shoves her giant head under my arm and rests it on my lap. Guess I’m not going anywhere for a while.

  “There’s no heaven,” Alicia declares. “The Jesus freaks are wrong about that. There’s nothing but this. If people realized that, they’d take this life more seriously. You only get one.”

  She’s wrong, but I can’t explain to her how I know, so I don’t bother trying.

  A woman about my mom’s age helps the man unpack, while a toddler stumbles around the grassy area in front of the trailer. He seems kind of old to have a little kid, but maybe he’s making up for lost time.

  “I can’t understand what kind of woman would want to live with a killer, much less have a child with him.” She peers at the table beneath her and runs a fingernail along a carved heart that’s older than we are. “Not that I get wanting to be with any man.”

  The new neighbor comes out for another load. He glances our way, and even at this distance, our eyes lock, and a cold itch runs from the small of my back to the top of my scalp.

  I know him. I know him from before.

  I don’t mean I know his soul. I know him.

  Alicia gives me a little shove, and I realize she’s been talking at me for a while.

  “Are you okay?”

  I blink. Even Meetu looks concerned, her muscular head cocked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod, but she doesn’t stop staring and looking worried, so I add, “You’re right. It’s weird living next to a murderer.”

  Her face softens. “I didn’t hurt your feelings, did I? When I said . . . that? I wasn’t talking about you.”

  “Nah,” I say. “I know you weren’t.”

  The new guy goes back into his trailer.

  “What did you say his name was?” I ask.

  “Benjamin,” she answers softly. After a few quiet seconds, she adds, “You did a really nice job on your nails.”

  I glance down at my newly red nails. She’s painted them for me a couple times before, but this is the first time I’ve done them myself. I’m grateful that she doesn’t qualify the compliment. Doesn’t add, for a guy. But of course she wouldn’t—that’s why I—that’s why she’s my best friend.

  • • • •

  I try to let it go. So I’ve got a neighbor that I knew in a past life. So he’s a convict. The past is dead. Who cares.

  Over the next couple days, though, my mind keeps returning to Benjamin. I feel like he was important for some reason. By the middle of the week, I admit to myself that I’m not going to move on until I figure out what role he played in my life.

  I’m not quite sure how to do that, though. I could ask Alicia for help. She’s got a laptop and internet. I don’t even have a smartphone. I don’t want to open up the can of worms that is my past lives, though, so instead I decide to see what I can find out at the library.

  I feed Meetu an early dinner while Mom’s still at work, grab my backpack and bus pass, and head out.

  Once I’m there, I have to face the fact that I don’t have the first idea how to research anything about this guy. I don’t even know his full name.

  What’s B’s last name? I text Alicia.

  Avery. Why?

  What do I say that won’t make her ask a thousand questions I don’t want to answer? Just wondering.

  UR totally gonna snoop arent you?

  I consider possible deflections. Lying to Alicia feels scuzzy, though, and anyway, I can’t think of any lies to tell. maybe just a little

  I stare at my tiny screen, worried that she’s going to offer to join me. After a minute her reply shows up, though, and it’s just haha well lmk what you dig up.

  I sigh, feeling both relieved and ashamed of my relief.

  Even with his last name, I struggle. I don’t know how to weed out other people named Benjamin, other people named Avery, other murderers. I don’t even know when he went to jail—how long is a sentence for murder, anyway?

  Finally I stumble across what I’m looking for—a news archive from the 1970s, with a grainy black and white photo of a man that looks a lot younger, but that’s definitely him.

  A Vietnam War veteran, possibly shell-shocked and deranged since coming back. A crime of passion—the victim, his best friend’s wife. A body dug up by the shore of Peace Creek, not far away at all. Then I come across a photo of the formerly happy couple: Larry Dearborn and his wife Jamie.

  Janie. Not Jamie. Janie. But the name doesn’t matter.

  It’s me.

  • • • •

  It’s raining when I stagger out of the library. On the bus ride home, I lean my head against the window and watch the torrents sheeting down the glass.

  Janie would be in her sixties, if she’d lived. I don’t remember ever being old. I always seem to die young. I don’t remember dying. End-of-life memories are hazy, same as beginning-of-life memories.

  I glance away from the window and notice a little girl staring at me from the seat across the aisle. Her father sits next to her, but he’s focused on his phone.

  “Are you a boy or a girl?” she asks.

  Before I can catch myself, my stock answer comes out. “No.”

  She tilts her head in confusion.

  I imagine how I must look to her. Rain-soaked long hair, purple V-neck, red nails. Hell, she’s just a kid. “I’m a little of both,” I add.

  Her eyes widen. “Oh!”

  I turn back toward the window. Now that I’ve seen the photos and read the articles, bits and pieces of that life are coming back to me.

  Benjamin looks like I imagine a murderer would—big and tough and unhappy. The newspaper says he killed me.

  So why does that feel wrong?

  • • • •

  The next day, school drags on more than usual. I can’t focus on Henry James or rational functions when my alleged murderer just moved into the neighborhood.

  My walk home is the vulnerable spot in my routine, because Meetu’s not with me. So of course that’s when Connor Haines ambushes me.

  He’s sitting on the concrete Sabal Palms sign outside the trailer park. His sycophant friend Eddie stands by his side.

  A spike of fear travels through my body.

  “What’s up, Jimmy,” he calls.

  I don’t bother correcting him. I was “Jimmy” when he met me—it was only four years ago that I decided “Jamie” fit better. More importantly, Connor doesn’t care.

  I consider my options. I could turn around. Go inside the Steak ’n Shake one block down and wait him out. Or I could run and try to reach my trailer ahead of him, and hide out there. But if I wanted to hide, my hair would be shorter and my nails wouldn’t be red. It may cost me, but I won’t start running or hiding now.

  They fall in step with me as I pass the sign.

  “Where’s your dress, Jimmy?” Eddie asks.

  Eddie is smaller than I am. I’m not a fighter, though, and he can be brave knowing he’s got Connor backing his play.

  “It was too ugly for me, so I gave it to Connor’s mom.”

  I barely see Connor’s fist before it hits my face. I stagger sideways, tasting blood.
>
  “Why you gotta be such a freak, Jimmy?” Connor asks. “I don’t care if you like guys, but why you gotta act like a girl?”

  My clothes aren’t particularly girlish today: blue jeans and a teal polo. And I’m neither a gay boy nor a trans girl. Trying to explain is a losing game, though, so I just try to push past.

  Eddie’s fist lands in my stomach, driving the air out of me.

  Connor grabs my arm. “Don’t walk away when we’re talking to you, Jimmy. It’s rude. A real lady would know better.”

  “What’s going on, fellas?”

  Benjamin’s standing a dozen feet away. His arms are crossed, his sleeves barely making it halfway down his bulging biceps.

  “We’re just talking to our friend,” Connor says.

  “You’ve talked enough. Unless you want me to talk too.”

  Connor releases my arm and backs away. “See you at school tomorrow, Jimmy,” he sneers.

  “Yeah,” Eddie adds. “Don’t forget to wear your dress.”

  I watch them walk away. I understand what they’re saying—sooner or later they’ll find me when I have nobody to protect me.

  “You’re bleeding,” Benjamin says. “Is your mom home?”

  “She’s at work.”

  I probably shouldn’t say that to the convicted murderer.

  “Why don’t you let me help you?”

  My instinct is to mumble some excuse, but I don’t believe he’s a murderer. Anyway, I want to know how he fit into my old life and why everybody thought he killed me, so I follow him.

  His trailer’s one of the first ones, and I see his windows are open. Probably how he noticed Connor and Eddie harassing me.