by Don Webb
The Count walked to my desk. He reached to grab it, when it seemed the ring of its own accord rolled over and slipped onto his hand.
“No,” he said, “It’s a trick. It isn’t my ring. It’s his. I didn’t steal it from him. I didn’t.”
The Count’s face was white with fear. He was trying to pull off the ring but couldn’t manage it. Blood poured from his finger.
The Constable hesitated, not know whether to grab the Count or me or both.
The Count’s struggle was both comic and terrifying. He bellowed in pain and rolled on the floor as thought fighting a score of men. A huge bear of a man—his fight against a simple band of gold made no sense. I have heard few men be really afraid. Men talk about fear, or whisper about their fears, but only animals whimpered like this. I was appalled and enthralled.
The Count said, “I’ll confess. I killed him.. Just get the ring off. It bites.”
The Constable ordered me to remove my spell from the ring. I started to say that I hadn’t put any spell on it, but then I remembered my failed invocation from the night before. I said a couple of words to end the enchantment.
The ring came off, and the Constable took the Count away. The ring had bitten the Count severely; his finger was hanging on only by a scrap of bloody skin. I guess the enchantment had opened its mouth.
Over the next few months we learned the story. Winslow Carvenell had discovered a document describing the birth of the twins. The first-born twin had a large birthmark on his back, the younger was unblemished. Winslow, with the ugly strawberry-colored blotch on his left shoulder, was the true heir. The doctor who had delivered the children had mixed up the details later, and the old count was happier with an unblemished heir anyway.
Winslow had approached William asking for the title and lands. After all, Winslow would only get to enjoy it for a few years, and then it would pass back to William. William didn’t want to relinquish power—even for a few months to the grumpy old scholar. He decided to slay his uncle.
He knew that I had often quarreled with old Winslow. One day the Count had visited me hoping to find some way to incriminate me. I remember he had asked to borrow some ancient book of poetry, as I had searched among my badly organized library he noted that I was using the ring as a paperweight. This proved to him that I didn’t know the value of gold, and was therefore unworthy of it. Or at least was unaware if it. He stole the ring to plant in the scene of his crime.
William resides in the king’s dungeons, where I hear he has very bad dreams. The fonder of the line, the red knight, had been known for fearsome forms of justice. Apparently William dreams himself as a guest in his ancestor’s dungeon-courts.
I live much as I did before, but increasingly wonder if I should die ring-less. Now that I have penned this little story, perhaps I should try a sonnet for Shina.
Shall I compare thee to the mystery of dream?
Thou are more mysterious and more rare.
A good start....
THE SYRINGE
Mr. Randolph Holland’s prize possession was an old-style glass hypodermic syringe. It had served him and his habit well for twenty-five years. Despite what you may have read on the subject, junkies can live a very long time—long, anonymous, gray lives in cheap boarding houses—with two-bit jobs which have only the function of serving the monkey. Such syringes used to be the rule, but plastic with its disposability now dominated the market.
“Never misses the vein,” he used to boast. “Always hits blood.”
Mr. Randolph Holland not only lost his prize possession but also his life (although in a sense he had lost it years before) to a pair of the street thugs named Crazy Eddy and Rico.
“Man, this guy didn’t have shit,” said Eddy cleaning out the boarding room with leisure. Mr. Holland had been quiet about his going, so the boys weren’t worried that his neighbors would be dropping in. They had watched the old junkie.
“Let’s pull him off the bed,” said Rico. “We can stay here for a while, sell his shit tonight.”
They pulled him off the bed. Rico took out a package of condoms and they amused themselves.
Later as night fell, Rico asked, “You want to shoot up his stash? There ain’t enough to sell.”
“Nah, I don’t do that stuff. Makes you too slow.”
Rico was more catholic in his tastes than Eddy. As he prepared his fix, he said, “I ain’t never seen a syringe like this. I bet that old cocksucker used this for years man. Look the metal’s green on the handle. I wouldn t stick it in me.”
“I washed it man. What are you worried about. Maybe it’s haunted. Maybe it’s used to biting the blood of the living every night.” Rico managed a pretty good Lugosi for the word blood. He filled the syringe from the spoon, and tied off his right forearm.
“Don’t talk that stuff with him stuffed under the bed.”
“We didn’t wake him up before, we’re not going to wake him up now.”
Rico went to shoot up. Suddenly his arm jerked and the syringe plunged full into his shoulder.
“Shit.”
He injected the entire contents and then pulled at the hypo. The plunger on the back came out and blood pouredf rom the device.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!”
He was loud, very LOUD.
All Eddy could think of to do was hit hard. Ring his bells. Quiet him down. He punched Rico’s nose, and Rico fell.
Eddy didn’t even breathe for a while. Just listened. There were people talking, and toilets flushing, and TVs—but no knock on the door.
He checked Rico. Rico was not going to get up.
He would stay here a few hours, then clear. He gathered up the money from the two bodies, and he turned off the lights so it would look like no one was home.
It was a long wait. Everytime he heard somebody in the hall, he damn near pissed himself. All he could think of was “drinks the blood of the living.” What a stupid bastard to say something like that. Better not think it too much.
He wondered how many times the needle had tasted blood. Once a night for—he couldn’t figure it out. When would the blood become a habit for the needle, like junk for the junky?
Something rolled in the floor. Someone had kicked the needle. Oh god, should he risk the light. Stupid son of a bitch. Stupid—
That was his last clear thought as he felt the needle prick his arm.
MY HEART
SHIFTING AS SAND
My capture had been the irony of ironies.
War was newly upon us, and I had seen its strange fever grow in Naema. It had grown in many of our friends, but we had young children, which should be a cure for the fever. At first I had argued with her. I did not feel the need to rid “our country” of the French. “Our country” was drawn on a map in Europe. The French were newcomers, much as we Arabs were newcomers taking land from the Berbers. If we drove the French away, surely the Berbers would drive us away?
My arguments fell on deaf ears, or rather ears full of new words, that packed them as tightly as the wax packed in the ears of Odysseus’s sailors. I found a sublime solution. I would take her to see her family in the South, in the Haut Plateau. It is not like the North. Nothing thrives in the southern wilayat, and she would see that life is more precious than principle. Her family lived here in a miserable little village, she would see her mother fussing over the children, and she would yearn not to put them in danger. This was good, because the war will not last. France will win.
I shed my Western clothes for the trip. We would go as Arabs to see Arabs. There was a small bus that runs into the Plateau once a week, and Naema, the children and I boarded it. She did not chatter about the war as we drove into the sea of sand. She spoke of her mother, of favorite foods and games. She taught songs to the children. As the sight of sand became everything, lines drawn on a map could not bother her. The bus climbed onto the snow-covered Plateau and her spirit soared like a desert falcon. I had always found the emptiness oppressive, perhaps it mirrored emptiness w
ithin me. So as she told our children the stories of Ali and Fatima, I entered into a silent dream of her family reunion. I could see her mother running to meet us, her stupid brother with his rotten smile, the cousins and hangers-on joyous because a fatted goat would be slain. I heard the laughter and tasted the hot sweet tea, and the showing of family treasures.
The land of the Plateau lies flat and stretches as far as is painful. The snow, as a white as blank page made it worse. I knew that history, that old enemy of mankind, hungered to write something here. We saw the village long before we arrived. There was no one to meet us, but from the bus we could see her mother sitting in her doorway, her veil tossed overhead, crying loudly. I held the children back, while Naema ran to her mother. Behind us the bus drove on, stranding us here for a week.
Her brother, in his stupidity, had killed a cousin because of a minor quarrel, and was now hidden in the desert. Her mother was alone, the more distant family members having suddenly found reasons to be elsewhere.
She looked dully at the chocolate we had brought, the tea and the olive oil. We moved in, and we began telling her that she would have to come to the city with us. Life is too hard in the South for an old woman. She had the arguments that you expect—her friends were here, she must wait for her son; she could not survive in the noise of the city. But she knew and we knew that she would be joining us in a week.
We went to bed. It seemed that I had no more than closed my eyes, when the house was filled with sound. A gendarme came looking for the fugitive brother. He knew a man was in the house, he had seen, he was nobody’s fool. Naema was yelling he was mistaken that I was her husband fresh arrived from the city, and I was staring a gun pointed at my face, being told to rise and dress.
The gendarme said that I did not dress as a city dweller.
And that was that.
Since my lot was cast before I could speak, I chose not to speak. I knew his type, the same sort of bureaucrat that I deal with everyday. There would be no argument. I would be held until Saturday and then sent by bus to the city where all things would be resolved. So I went along meekly. I would sleep in the jail. Not much different than my mother in law’s, except that I could perhaps hope for a more comfortable bed. Besides this served my plan well. Naema would see the sort of things the war could lead to and abandon her notions.
However the gendarme awakened me at dawn. I kept up the pretence I could not speak French, and he told me in halting Arabic that I must go with him to school. In did not understand this sudden need for education, but saw his gun as checkmate in our little game.
He tied my hands together and we set off. He rode on a donkey and I was pulled behind, at a very slow pace, so that I could walk unhurt. Suddenly I realized that we were leaving the village. Perhaps he meant to kill me, I would be sad to die where I could not see a tree or any green thing. I was very tired I tried to tell myself that I would be dying for the sake of my family, because I thought if I had a reason, I would at least have inner way out of this absurd situation.
I walked a long way. Longer than I had ever walked. Maybe I would simply walk across the great emptiness and dissolved into it. The gendarme began to speak to me. Since he thought I was ignorant of his tongue I known that he merely talked to fill the void with words.
He was Corsican, a countryman of Napoleon. He tried to tell me what good things the French had brought to the land. How their law was better than Berber law or Islamic law. How I would have a trial and everything would be fair.
I liked it better then there was only silence in the vastness. The snow was thin, but it made my feet very cold.
At last we came to another village, so like the one had left I wondered if we had merely gone in circles.
We went to a schoolhouse where a pale and weak looking schoolmaster signed for me like a shipment of grammar books. I listened to them discuss me. Was I one of the rebels? The schoolmaster was to deliver me to yet another village, where perhaps justice waited for me. Like a camel they tied me to a post outside of the school. The schoolmaster showed me his sidearm, no doubt useful in classroom discipline.
After a decent interval the gendarme departed and the schoolmaster took me inside the tiny school. I could see that he didn’t want to have me. He did not relish the job of jailor. I realized that many French might be as uncommitted as I. Perhaps together we could muster enough apathy to leash the dogs of war.
He fed me, and told me in passingly good Arabic that he too was born here. The words did not inspire any brotherly feelings in me. He asked why I had done it. By “it’ he meant of course the stupid murder by my stupid brother-in-law. So I muttered some nonsense. He did not ask me my name. I doubt that Arabs often have names, but then I did not ask his.
He took me to his bedroom for the night, pointing at a cot with his pistol, which by now I was sure had never been and would never be fired. I undressed and lay down. He did the same and shortly thereafter began to snore. Sleep did not come to me. I am not an adventurous man. I did not know how to plan an escape, or consider that I could pull the pistol from his sleeping hand, and make my get away. Where would I go? If I fled I would be a criminal. If I went through this charade I could possibly clear my name. I lay awake until I needed to make water.
I rose and went to the courtyard.
There in the moonlight was Naema, her brother and another man.
She spoke quietly and quickly, “Don’t worry Fadlan! Tomorrow he will take you to Tinguit. We will be on the road and free you. Courage. We can’t take you now.”
They turned and ran into the moonlight. So strange had the scene been to me, that I stood there wondering if it had been a dream. It was not a scene from my life, and all I wanted was the scenes from my life back. I made my water and returned to my bed.
We rose the next day. I saw that he was lost as I was. We were brothers in our lack of commitment. I wanted to say something, but what can you say to your reluctant captor? My numbness, my emptiness comes out when I opened my mouth. I let him tie me up and he lead me out of the village to a limestone cliff at the edge of the Plateau. He had taken me to a path, one branch leading east and the other south. He surveyed the two directions. There was nothing but sky on the horizon. Not a man could be seen. He turned toward me, and I tired to share my emptiness with him. He could at least know that he was leading one like himself. He handed me a package. Not understanding I took it. “There are dates, bread, sugar. You can hold out for two days. Here are a thousand francs too,” he said, “Now look there’s’ the way to Tinguit. You have a two-hour walk. At Tinguit you’ll find the administration and the police. They are expecting you.” He took my elbow and turned me rather roughly towards the south. “That’s the trail across the Plateau. In a day’s walk from here you will find the pasturelands and the first nomads. They’ll take you and shelter according to their law.”
I thought I should tell him that I would be saved by my family if I went east. I wanted him to know that it was not too late to avoid action, which will only take us form the things we love. That we could hold onto our routines and not have war. Because when war comes, it will eventually call us to its service. “Listen,” I began.
“No, be quiet,” He said. And he was still the man with the gun, even if he did not believe in that which had given the gun to him. He waked away. I headed east. I saw him look at me with some something like horror.
I laughed, but I knew he could not hear, in fact could not hear when he had been standing besides me. I was walking to a temporary peace, but war would swallow us up. The day would come when I would believe and he would believe, and an unseen hand will lift all the chess pieces on the board, and our silent days of waiting and our nights of dreaming our own strange games would end.
THE JOY OF COLA
It was Austin, Texas, but it could have been anywhere in the shadow worlds.
The crazy kids were the same age as Bill. They lived across the street in the dirtiest worst smelling house he had ever seen., It had a
graywater system that meant they used their bathwater to poop in, and they only flushed when there was a lot of poop and the whole damn house smelled like ma privy. The kids were activists. The leader of the pack was some girl that got books for prisoners. Project Inside Out or Upside Down or some damn thing. Not educational books, books by Stephen King and murder mysteries. Yeah those guys need that. They were in prison, they aren’t supposed to read.
Bill never had any damn time to read. He worked for $10.00 an hour which meant he could pay his mortgage, buy his diabetes medicine and have basic cable. He used to read. The girl had come by yesterday asking him for used paperbacks. He had offered her The Book of Mormon. He wasn’t Mormon, but the kids further down the street kept dropping them off. The girl was offended and went off about loving prisoners. He shut the door in her face.
He plopped down in his cheap (bur clean!) recliner and watched TV. It was from another planet where you could achieve bliss by drinking Pepsi. There was this girl with a pierced navel dancing. It was the girl from across the street. He had seen that navel. She must be rich. Some trendy star that was slumming in the gray water swamp. The Joy of Pepsi. He thought about jacking off to the image, but was too tired and just went to sleep.The next morning he had a plan. He would kidnap the girl, and hold her hostage to Pepsi. He wouldn’t be hard ass about it. He didn’t want her to suffer. For the first time in three years he called in sick, and then he went to New Atlantis Used Books and bought all of the Stephen King and Rex Hull books. He read the sections on kidnapping in the Hull books and bought the duct tape. He put the soap in the sock and then he put a letter in their mailbox asking that Brittany drop by he had books for her. Then he went out and bought a case of Pepsi and one of Pepsi Light.
It was four in the afternoon when she came by. Her long red hair was done up in the filthiest dreds he had ever seen. A little pus oozed out around her navel ring.
“Come in.” he said, “The books are in the back.”
