The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan

  Ma’am ignored her. She was reaching a hand down into the bosom of her dress, rooting around as if for a hidden dollarbill.

  Easter extended middle and forefingers. She made a circle with thumb and index of the other hand, and then vigorously thrust the hoop up and down the upright fingers. “Two peckers and one cunt, Hazel Mae – did that ever happen?”

  As soon as she saw the strands of old beads, though, yellow-brownish as ancient teeth, which Ma’am pulled up out of her dress, lifted off her neck, the wonderful sureness, this wonderful strength, left Easter. She’d have turned and fled in fact, but could hardly manage to scoot away on the pew, so feeble and stiff and cold her body felt. She spat out hot malice while she could, shouting.

  “One, two, three, four!” Easter staggered up from the end of the pew as Ma’am gained her feet. “And we even tricked that clever Freddie of yours, too. Thinking he was so smart. Won’t never do you any good swearing off the old Africa magic, Hazel Mae! Cause just you watch, we gon’ get this last one too! All of yours –”

  Ma’am slung the looped beads around Easter’s neck, and falling to her knees she vomited up a vast supper with wrenching violence. When Easter opened her tightly clenched eyes, through blurry tears she saw, shiny and black in the middle of puddling pink mess, a snake thick as her own arm, much longer. She shrieked in terror, kicking backwards on the ground. Faster than anybody could run, the monstrous snake shot off down the aisle between the pews, and out into the gray brightness past the open church doors. Easter looked up and saw Ma’am standing just a few steps away. Her mother seemed more shaken than Easter had ever seen her. “Ma’am?” she said. “I’m scared. What’s wrong? I don’t feel good. What’s this?” Easter began to lift off the strange beads looped so heavily round her neck.

  At once Ma’am knelt on the ground beside her. “You just leave those right where they at,” she said. “Your great grand brought these over with him. Don’t you never take ’em off. Not even to wash up.” Ma’am scooped hands under Easter’s arms, helping her up to sit at the end of a pew. “Just wait here a minute. Let me go fill the wash bucket with water for this mess. You think on what all you got to tell me.” Ma’am went out and came back. With a wet rag, she got down on her knees by the reeking puddle. “Well, go on, girl. Tell me. All this about Sadie. It’s something do with the old Africa magic, ain’t it?”

  THE LAST ANGEL supped at Easter’s hand, half-cut-off, and then lit away. Finally the blood began to gush forth and she swooned.*

  *Weird, son. Definitely some disturbing writing in this section. But overarching theme = a people bereft, no? Dispossessed even of cultural patrimony? Might consider then how to represent this in the narrative structure. Maybe just omit how Easter learns to trick the Devil into the chicken? Deny the reader that knowledge as Easter’s been denied so much. If you do, leave a paragraph, or even just a sentence, literalizing the “Fragments of History.” Terrible title, by the way; reconsider.

  – Dad

  PEOPLE PRESENTLY DWELLING in the path of hurricanes, those who lack the recourse of flight, hunker behind fortified windows and hope that this one too shall pass them lightly over. So, for centuries, were the options of the blacks vis-à-vis white rage. Either flee, or pray that the worst might strike elsewhere: once roused, such terror and rapine as whites could wreak would not otherwise be checked. But of course those living in the storm zones know that the big one always does hit sooner or later. And much worse for the blacks of that era, one bad element or many bad influences – ‘the Devil,’ as it were – might attract to an individual, a family, or even an entire town, the landfall of a veritable hurricane.

  White Devils/Black Devils, Luisa Valéria da Silva y Rodríguez

  1877, August 24

  THERE CAME TO the ears of mother and daughter a great noise from out on the green, the people calling one to another in surprise, and then with many horses’ hooves and crack upon crack of rifles, the thunder spoke, surely as the thunder had spoken before at Gettysburg or Shiloh. Calls of shock and wonder became now cries of terror and dying. They could hear those alive and afoot run away, and hear the horsemen who pursued them, with many smaller cracks of pistols. There! shouted white men to each other, That one there running! Some only made grunts of effort, as when a woodsman embeds his axe head and heaves it out of the wood again – such grunts. Phrases or wordless sound, the whiteness could be heard in the voices, essential and unmistakable.

  Easter couldn’t understand this noise at first, except that she should be afraid. It seemed that from the thunder’s first rumble Ma’am grasped the whole of it, as if she had lived through precisely this before and perhaps many times. Clapping a hand over Easter’s mouth, Ma’am said, “Hush,” and got them both up and climbing over the pews from this one to the one behind, keeping always out-of-view of the doors. At the back of the church, to the right of the doors, was a closet where men stored the cut wood burned by the stove in winter. In dimness – that closet, very tight – they pressed themselves opposite the wall stacked with quartered logs, and squeezed back into the furthest corner. There, with speed and strength, Ma’am unstacked wood, palmed the top of Easter’s head, and pressed her down to crouching in the dusty dark. Ma’am put the wood back again until Easter herself didn’t know where she was. “You don’t move from here,” Ma’am said. “Don’t come at nobody’s call but mine.” Easter was beyond thought by then, weeping silently since Ma’am had hissed, “Shut your mouth!” and shaken her once hard.

  Easter nudged aside a log and clutched at the hem of her mother’s skirt, but Ma’am pulled free and left her. From the first shot, not a single moment followed free of wails of desperation, or the shriller screams of those shot and bayoneted.

  Footfalls, outside – some child running past the church, crying with terror. Easter heard a white man shout, There go one! and heard horse’s hooves in heavy pursuit down the dirt of the Drive. She learned the noises peculiar to a horseman running down a child. Foreshortened last scream, pop of bones, pulped flesh, laughter from on high. To hear something clearly enough, if it was bad enough, was the same as seeing. Easter bit at her own arm as if that could blunt vision and hearing.

  Hey there, baby child, whispered a familiar voice. Won’t you come out from there? I got something real nice for you just outside. No longer the voice of the kindly spoken Johnny Reb, this was a serpentine lisp – and yet she knew them for one and the same and the Devil. Yeah, come on out, Easter. Come see what all special I got for you. Jump up flailing, run away screaming – Easter could think of nothing else, and the last strands of her tolerance and good sense began to fray and snap. That voice went on whispering and Easter choked on sobs, biting at her forearm.

  Some girl screamed nearby. It could have been any girl in Rosetree, screaming, but the whisperer snickered, Soubrette. I got her!

  Easter lunged up, and striking aside logs, she fought her way senselessly with scraped knuckles and stubbed toes from the closet, on out of the church into gray daylight.

  If when the show has come and gone, not only paper refuse and cast-off food but the whole happy crowd, shot dead, remained behind and littered the grass, then Rosetree’s green looked like some fairground, the day after.

  Through the bushes next door to the church Easter saw Mr. Henry, woken tardily from a nap, thump with his cane out onto the porch, and from the far side of the house a white man walking shot him dead. Making not even a moan old Mr. Henry toppled over and his walking stick rolled to porch’s edge and off into roses. About eight o’clock on the Drive, flames had engulfed the general store so it seemed a giant face of fire, the upstairs windows two dark eyes, and downstairs someone ran out of the flaming mouth. That shadow in the brightness had been Mrs. Toussaint, so slim and short in just such skirts, withering now under a fiery scourge that leapt around her, then up from her when she fell down burning. The Toussaints kept no animals in the lot beside the general store and it was all grown up with tall grass and wildflowers over ther
e. Up from those weeds, a noise of hellish suffering poured from the ground, where some young woman lay unseen and screamed while one white man with dropped pants and white ass out stood afoot in the weeds and laughed, and some other, unseen on the ground, grunted piggishly in between shouted curses. People lay everywhere bloodied and fallen, so many dead, but Easter saw her father somehow alive out on the town green, right in the midst of the bodies just kneeling there in the grass, his head cocked to one side, chin down, as if puzzling over some problem. She ran to him calling Pa Pa Pa but up close she saw a red dribble down his face from the forehead where there was a deep ugly hole. Though they were sad and open his eyes slept no they were dead. To cry hard enough knocks a body down, and harder still needs both hands flat to the earth to get the grief out.

  In the waist-high corn, horses took off galloping at the near end of the Parks’ field. At the far end Mrs. Park ran with the baby Gideon Park, Jr. in her arms and the little girl Agnes following behind, head hardly above corn, shouting Wait Mama wait, going as fast as her legs could, but just a little girl, about four maybe five. Wholeheartedly wishing they’d make it to the backwood trees all right, Easter could see as plain as day those white men on horses would catch them first. So strenuous were her prayers for Mrs. Park and Agnes, she had to hush up weeping. Then a couple white men caught sight of Easter out on the green, just kneeling there – some strange survivor amidst such thorough and careful murder. With red bayonets, they trotted out on the grass toward her. Easter stood up meaning to say, or even beginning to, polite words about how the white men should leave Rosetree now, about the awful mistake they’d made. But the skinnier man got out in front of the other, running, and hauled back with such obvious intent on his rifle with that lengthy knife attached to it, Easter’s legs wouldn’t hold her. Suddenly kneeling again, she saw her mother standing right next to the crabapple stump. Dress torn, face sooty, in stocking feet, Ma’am got smack in the white men’s way. That running man tried to change course but couldn’t fast enough. He came full-on into the two-handed stroke of Ma’am’s axe.

  Swapt clean off, his head went flying, his body dropped straight down. The other one got a hand to his belt and scrabbled for a pistol while Ma’am stepped up and hauled back to come round for his head too. Which one first, then – pistol or axe? He got the gun out and up and shot. Missed, though, even that close, his hand useless as a drunk’s, he was so scared. The axe knocked his chest in and him off his feet. Ma’am stomped the body twice getting her axe back out. With one hand she plucked Easter up off the ground to her feet. “Run, girl!”

  They ran.

  They should have gone straight into the woods, but their feet took them onto the familiar trail. Just in the trees’ shadows, a big white man looked up grinning from a child small and dead on the ground. He must have caught some flash or glimpse of swinging wet iron because that white man’s grin fell off, he loosed an ear-splitting screech, before Ma’am chopped that face and scream in half.

  “Rawly?” Out of sight in the trees, some other white man called. “You all right over there, Rawly?” The fallen man, head in halves like the first red slice into a melon, made no answer. Nor was Ma’am’s axe wedging out of his spine soon enough. Other white men took up the call of that name, and there was crash and movement in the trees.

  Ma’am and Easter ran off the trail the other way. The wrong way again. They should have forgotten house and home and kept on forever into wilderness. Though probably it didn’t matter anymore at that point. The others found the body – axe stuck in it – and cared not at all for the sight of a dead white man, or what had killed him. Ma’am and Easter thrashed past branches, crackled and snapped over twigs, and behind them in the tangled brush shouts of pursuit kept on doubling. What sounded like four men clearly had to be at least eight, and then just eight couldn’t half account for such noise. Some men ahorse, some with dogs. Pistols and rifles firing blind.

  They burst into the yard and ran up to the house. Ma’am slammed the bar onto the door. For a moment, they hunched over trying only to get air enough for life, and then Ma’am went to the wall and snatched off Brother’s old Springfield from the war. Where the durn cartridges at, and the caps, the doggone ramrod...? Curses and questions, both were plain on Ma’am’s face as she looked round the house abruptly disordered and strange by the knockknock of Death at the door. White men were already in the yard.

  The glass fell out of the back window and shattered all over the iron stove. Brother, up on his back legs, barked in the open window, his forepaws on the windowsill.

  “Go on, Easter.” Ma’am let the rifle fall to the floor. “Never mind what I said before. Just go on with your brother now. I’m paying your way.”

  Easter was too afraid to say or do or think, and Brother at the back window was just barking and barking. She was too scared.

  In her meanest voice, Ma’am said, “Take off that dress, Easter Sunday Mack!”

  Sobbing breathlessly, Easter could only obey.

  “All of it, Easter, take it off. And throw them old nasty beads on the floor!”

  Easter did that too, Brother barking madly.

  Ma’am said, “Now –”

  Rifles stuttered thunderously and the dark wood door of the house lit up, splintering full of holes of daylight. In front of it Ma’am shuddered awfully and hot blood speckled Easter’s naked body even where she stood across the room. Ma’am sighed one time, got down gently, and stretched out on the floor. White men stomped onto the porch.

  Easter fell, caught herself on her hands, and the bad one went out under her so she smacked down flat on the floor. But effortlessly she bounded up and through the window. Brother was right there when Easter landed badly again. He kept himself to her swift limp as they tore away neck-and-neck through Ma’am’s back garden and on into the woods.*

  * Stop here, with the escape. Or no; I don’t know. I wish there were some kind of way to offer the reader the epilogue, and yet warn them off too. I know it couldn’t be otherwise, but it’s just so grim.

  – Dad

  Epilogue

  THEY WERE BACK! Right out there sniffing in the bushes where the rabbits were. Two great big ole dogs! About to shout for her husband, Anna Beth remembered he was lying down in the back with one of his headaches. So she took down the Whitworth and loaded it herself. Of course she knew how to fire a rifle, but back in the War Between the States they’d handpicked Michael-Thomas to train the sharpshooters of his brigade, and then given him one of original Southern Crosses, too, for so many Yankees killed. Teary-eyed and squinting from his headaches, he still never missed what he meant to hit. Anna Beth crept back to the bedroom and opened the door a crack.

  “You ’wake?” she whispered. “Michael-Thomas?”

  Out of the shadows: “Annie?” His voice, breathy with pain. “What is it?” “I seen ’em again! They’re right out there in the creepers and bushes by the rabbit burrows.”

  “You sure, Annie? My head’s real bad. Don’t go making me get up and it ain’t nothing out there again.”

  “I just now seen ’em, Michael-Thomas. Big ole nasty dogs like nothing you ever saw before.” Better the little girl voice – that never failed: “Got your Whitworth right here, honey. All loaded up and ret’ to go.” Michael-Thomas sighed. “Here I come, then.”

  The mattress creaked, his cane thumped the floor, and there was a grunt as his bad leg had to take some weight as he rose to standing. (Knee shot off at the Petersburg siege, and not just his knee, either...) Michael-Thomas pushed the door wide, his squinting eyes red, pouched under with violet bags. He’d taken off his half-mask, and so Anna Beth felt her stomach lurch and go funny, as usual. Friends at the church, and Mama, and just everybody had assured her she would – sooner or later – but Anna Beth never had gotten used to seeing what some chunk of Yankee artillery had done to Michael Thomas’ face. Supposed to still be up in there, that chip of metal, under the ruin and crater where his left cheek... “Here you go.”
Anna Beth passed off the Whitworth to him.

  Rifle in hand, Michael-Thomas gimped himself over to where she pointed – the open window. There he stood his cane against the wall and laboriously got down kneeling. With practiced grace he lay the rifle across the window sash, nor did he even bother with the telescopic sight at this distance – just a couple hundred yards. He shot, muttering, “Damn! Just look at ’em,” a moment before he did so. The kick liked to knock him over.

  Anna Beth had fingertips jammed in her ears against the report, but it was loud anyhow. Through the window and down the yard she saw the bigger dog, dirty mustard color – had been nosing round in the honeysuckle near the rabbit warren – suddenly drop from view into deep weeds. Looked like the littler one didn’t have the sense to dash off into the woods. All while Michael-Thomas reloaded, the other dog nudged its nose downward at the carcass unseen in the weeds, and just looked up and all around, whining – pitiful if it weren’t so ugly. Michael-Thomas shot that one too. “Ah,” he said. “Oh.” He swapped the Whitworth for his cane, leaving the rifle on the floor under the window. “My head’s killing me.” MichaelThomas went right on back to the bedroom to lie down again. He could be relied on to hit just what he aimed for, so Anna Beth didn’t fear to see gore-soaked dogs yelping and kicking, only half-dead, out there in the untamed, overgrown end of the yard, should she take a notion to venture out that way for a look-see. Would them dogs be just as big, up close and stone dead, as they’d looked from far-off and alive?

  But it weren’t carcasses nor live dogs, either, back there where the weeds grew thickest. Two dead niggers, naked as sin. Gal with the back of her head blown off, and buck missing his forehead and half his brains too. Anna Beth come running back up to the house, hollering.