by Thomas Head
When they finally gathered their strength, it felt that they had struggled for ten hours, and yet, always, Tyler sat, grounded and calm.
It was as if he had been shooting clay targets.
* * *
A mere thirteen miles out from Beergarden, severe weather threatened, and the impossibility of going any further loomed more heavily than ever. The old boys were for proceeding at any risk, of course, but as the thunderclouds grew blacker and dropped in funnels here and theret, Dale, the head steersman, lost his temper and grounded their vessel on a sandbar.
Springing ashore, he flung down his river pole and refused to go on.
“By fuck!” Uncle Jickie grumbled, “Now listen, you insolent young shit,” but as lightening flashed, he could not sanely add anything more than that.
Indeed, any of them would be foolhardy to argue. A blast of wind, snapping the great oaks like a commando snaps necks, enforced Dale’s stance. They only boarded again to beach themselves more securely, fastening battens down over the bales of provisions. A few of them struggled to hoist a tent, but gusts of wind tossed the canvas above their heads. And before the pegs were driven a great wall of rain drenched everyone to the skin. By afternoon, the river had turned brown and violent. Plainly, they were there for the day—which meant they were there for the night, too. Navigating a swollen river is too dangerous a spot for even the most adventuresome man.
So, with ample patience, they settled in. And they at last managed to pitch their tents. Then they kindled the soaked underbrush and finally got a pile of logs roaring in the woods and gathered round the fire. They spent the afternoon hunkered down, which was fortunate for Doc as it allowed him time to draw his bandana down over his eyes and manage some sleep.
* * *
Doc could not have slept long, but he had the strangest, most vivid dream of his life. He dreamt of being old, and of Death, riding atop that large black steed he had called Little Fellow. He comes bursting up through the roof he had slept on the night before, like a screaming ghost, still atop his horse, and swinging his long scythe at him. Doc can see the bony zombie face under that hood, wiping blood from his pearl-handled scythe on the sleeve of his cloak. But it’s not blood. It’s afterbirth. Death hands him a baby. Then Emily, beside him, lurches and yelps, like she’s in some kind of birthing. And now Death is laughing.
Emily is talking to him in a language that sounds like kittens or birds. Death rides away but as Doc lay there, she slithers around him and starts telling him that what they did brought a life into the world...
But it would take seven lives out of the world too.
* * *
It was dark when Doc woke, and someone had added logs to the fire. Tyler and Kenzo were on guard.
He looked at Tyler, his best friend.
Tyler looked back at him.
He knew, Doc sensed.
Somehow, the living myth just knew…
The fire’s glare in the sky attracted a small, wild party of river rats, the wet-dread-locked water men—violent hippies, degenerates who had lost all taste for civilization and lived completely on the water with women but never any wives or children. Hillside lore had all manner of crazy shit to say about them. That they can read minds, place curses, see the future, et cetera. But Doc knew they were just a motley throng, just passing through; he had seen them before once twice, where the Red River wrapped his beloved Fort Campbell.
When Doc saw them, he gave a low signal, the low whippet of a loon. It was the signal to relax. Everyone among them loosened their grips on their M4’s, some even doing without opening their eyes.
At this, the wet men approached slowly, making a friendly show of things, waving and nodding before they drew off to a fire by themselves. They had either begged or stolen some beer in glass bottle, which they offered to them, only to receive icy stares from Tyler, Kenzo, and Doc. Then they just shrugged as if it didn’t matter to them. Doc watched the grotesque, oily figures leaping and dancing between the firelight and the dusky woods like forest demons. With the wind and rain rustling overhead, and the river’s shores sloshing heavily on the pebbles, and the washed piney air stimulating his blood like caffeine, Doc began wondering how many years of life on a boat it would take to wear through civilization’s veneer and leave one content in the lodges of river wilds. To dance among unseen spirits, beckoning them for protection from the Shado. Gradually, Doc became aware of Dale’s presence on the other side of the campfire. Doc watched as he rose, then went to about halfway between the two camps, and halted. He made an outwardly gesture, seemingly for want of joining them, but he sat on his feet, Indian style, gazing intently at their flames as if spellbound by some fire spirit.
“What’s wrong with that Dale fellow, anyhow?” Kenzo grunted, who was taking the last pulls at a smoked-out pipe.
“Sick—home-sick,” Tyler said.
“They say he came here with some of them… ratmen. You’d think he was near enough the river here to feel at home!”
“It’s not his old tribe he wants,” Tyler explained.
“What then?” Kenzo inquired.
“His woman, he’s mad after her,” Tyler said, and he took his own pipe to his teeth to mask his grimace.
“Faugh!” Kenzo grumbled. “Dale? He’s too young for that sort of shit. I’ve seen him bang half of Goback since he’s been with us. The idea of a young buck like that all sentimental and lovesick for some fat lump of a wet-woman! Come on! Am I supposed to believe that?”
“Doesn’t matter whether you do or don’t,” Tyler returned. “It’s a fact. He told me. His woman was a river rat. He tamed her…. he thought. Turns out, the water called her back. He’s been loony for her ever since.”
“Loony? The boy’s nary spoken a word about a woman!”
“It’s in his stillness, Uncle Kenzo… In his stillness.”
Kenzo looked at Tyler and muttered another unintelligible jumble of curses.
Doc turned his gaze from them to the fantastic figures. They were carousing around the other campfire now. One form, in particular, stood out more than the others. He was gathering the other rats in line for some sort of dance, a lunging, hypnotic jig that had an easy grace to it, one that was different from the motions of the other wet men. With a sudden turn, his profile was thrown against the fire, and Doc saw that he wore a long, braided goatee. He was otherwise clean shaven.
Then came one of those strange, reasonless intuitions that pop into one’s head but are never asked aloud: Was it true they can see the future? Was such a thing even possible?
Doc had hardly spelled out his own suspicions when the measured beatings of a drum rang out. There was a low, tuneless chant, like the voices of the forest. The rats began to tread a mazy, winding pace, which in a strange, unreasonable way brought up memories of his best friend’s wife, naked. The drums beat faster. The suppressed voices were breaking in shrill, exultant strains, and the measured tread had quickened. The boisterous antics of these children of the river suddenly fascinated him. They were swaying now, dancing in a way that could only be likened liken to the wiggling of a green thing under leafy cover. The coiling and circling, the winding and lunging, it all became bewildering, and in the center, laughing, shouting, tossing up his arms and gesticulating like a maniac, was the fellow with the pointed goatee. Then the performers broke from their places and gave themselves with utter abandon to the wild impulses of nature. And there was a scene of uncurbed, animal hilarity as Doc never dreamed possible. Savage, furious, almost animal-like, it seemed like at any time they could fall upon ground and start eating each other like zombies.
Even Uncle Jickie, who watched from the flaps of his tent, was unsure what to make of it.
Filled with a curiosity that he knew lures many to their undoing, Doc rose and went across to the thronging, shouting, shadowy figures. But suddenly a man darted out of the woods full tilt against him. It was the fellow with the braided beard. As quick as a the flashes of lightening overhead, Doc thrus
t out his foot and kicked his knee, and in the next instant dropped him with a punch. His comrades only watched as Doc put a foot in his chest and looked down.
The moonlight, only just visible through a break in the clouds, fell on his upturned face. He snarled out something angrily.
“What the fuck is the matter with you, rat boy?” Doc said, letting him up.
The wet man gathered himself in a sitting posture. Then he seemed shocked at the sight of him. “With me!” he muttered beneath his breath, momentarily silenced with astonishment. “Is it not you who seeks the Black Ones?”
“Who the hell have you been talking to!”
“Pardon a little insolence, mister, but I took you and your company for commandos, not fools!”
“Well mind your fucking insolence and there’ll be no deed to pardon it,” Doc said, pretending not to notice that he had not answered him. He was determined to follow his uncle’s advice and play a con at his own game.
But suddenly, despite himself, Doc was curious—they say these men can also see into another’s soul.
“Help you up?” Doc asked.
Extending his hand to give him a lift, Doc felt that his palm was deathly cold.
“Cold!” he muttered, throwing aside the hand Doc offered down to him. answered his thoughts. He stood, looking at him, but it was as though he was looking through him, or in him. “Cold as seven old tombstones!” With an absurdly elaborate bow, he reeled back among the dancers. “Frigid as a catfish’s asshole! Frosty as the death’s-head of your dreams! Farewell, grave skull!”
Doc froze, cocking an eye.
The wet man in oily clothing then went skipping madly back to his companions, drinking and dancing.
“Get up, Dale,” Doc urged, rushing back to where he still sat on his knees. “Get up. You know these people. He’s a fucking oracle or some shit! Talk to him. Find out what you can!”
“I speak fucking English,” he yelled back, “You don’t need translator.”
“Well is it true? Are you some kind of shaman?”
“Hold on!” Dale said, jerking him up back. What makes you think this guy’s a seer?”
“I don’t know, really know,” Doc began, clumsily conscious that he had no proof for his suspicions, “but he hinted at my dreams. If I’m wrong, what would will it cost them to find out?”
“Beer. Lots of it”
“That’s it?” Doc asked.
“He’s a hard one to read.”
“But he’s got the sight, you think?”
“Oh! When he’s drunk out of his regular sight, I imagine,” laughed Dale.
They walked together to the vessel.
“We haven’t got beer,” Doc said, and he began rummaging through bales of stuff with a noise of all manner of things knocking together.
His uncle and the rest of their company still watched wordlessly.
“What’s your plan?” Dale asked with a vague tone that suggested Doc had some shady purpose in mind.
Doc found a fine dirk in a walnut box. “Here.”
“A box? You’ll need more than that, Mister Doc.”
“There’s an excellent dirk inside. He could trade it for a barrel of beer, maybe two.”
“I could indeed,” the man said, suddenly behind them. “Come down to the sand between the forest and the beach in about an hour and I’ll have all manner of answers for you.”
The man then brushed past him with a look on his face that was hard to read in the half-light.
Chapter 35
There on the banks of those brown, raging waters began not his first compromise with conscience. Doc knew very well that his “uncles”, such that they were, would not approve. Indeed, they would not even emerge from their tents for fear of incurring the wrath of God for invoking the spirits that were about to be called upon. But Doc also knew that the rough-and-ready commandos sang epic poems about standing upon one’s own wits and cunning.
His only fear was a vague sense that he would arouse bad luck with calling on the powers of the unknown, but again, they were facing powers not fully known. For in as much as it was deemed “retro-fungal”, there been no lack of theories, and that the “rapture” had taken souls, rather than the entire body was one he’d heard tossed about McCarthy conversations more than once.
Suffice it to say, when Doc went down to the shore, the shaman was sitting in the midst of a new fire, swaying, and Dale was beside him on his knees. Dale motioned him to keep behind the shaman.
They must have sat there an hour, maybe more, before finally Doc heard his drunken lips mumbling his own name in a voice that sounded like a whispering fiend from old. Doc could not make out the nonsensical words, but something happened, something that is not easy to explain. For a strange moment, the darkness overcame him. It felt neither alive nor dead, but an indwelling for things from some ethereal world in between. Doc looked from the fellow out into the dark trees, half-expecting fairy watchers out there in the dark.
Then suddenly, coherent words emerged from his jumbled hissing.
“Devil’s wife—serve him we-eel this night. Tyler’s—friend too—his wife of the soul, taken. Taken before she was taken, long dead but still alive. Weelll enough, but still crying in horror. Babbles inside, the dark within the dark.”
“Ask him where she is,” Doc whispered over his head.
“Where’s the woman?” demanded Dale, shoving more liquor over to the shaman.
“Emily—thrown into the earth for later. As the squirrels do. The Black Ones put them away, puts them into the inescapable lair. The nest. The hole. Lets the apes eat them later. Eats them later.”
“Where—”
Dale shushed him.
“Dark,” the shaman went on. “That wax-face woman—hungry—a stranger at the teat. Doc—stuck in the devil’s mouth to his neck—broken nerves, the fear of hell for seeking it. Courage cut short, cut with the venom, with the bile, with the black smoke of his own thoughts.”
“What? What venom?”
Again, Dale shushed him.
“Small-fire pours from the mouth to make the Doctor-man bellow, bellow like a calf. Go—run home—go back, says the mind—run away, away, to live, says the heart,” the shaman said. And he stopped to look off at the stars, his eyes rolling back into his head.
“Ask him where she is,” Doc whispered. “Quick! He’s going to sleep.”
Dale wiped his beard on his sleeve and said, “Come back to now. Leave the dark, go outside. Where are you now?”
“Ah but you already knoooo…. Emily—hot in the halls of the dying,” drawled the shaman. “Emily—hot under the water that rises but does not fall. Nashville not far enough, ye fools. Take off your Human head! Put on the Zombie’s head! Don’t wear helms. No armor! Bare feet—softer,” and he rolled over in a sodden pose, as if asleep. “Nashville, it says. But it fails. All will matter not. Death settles the matter. In the end, it slithers around all, and Doc will burn and know why the Zombies fear not the cooling blue pain.”
Doc felt a shudder, looking at this silent, uncompromising pose. He seemed frozen in the stance of a crab, an impossible angle for a man to assume for longer than a moment.
And yet he did not move.
Then the earth rumbled, or else it was his bones.
And the shaman fell.
“Why do they come,” Doc whispered.
“They yet seek The One… The Black Ones search out the one, the one who cannot be turned. The one that remains as himself in death. They hear rumors, whispers, of the one who remains a man …. Inside her ooooo, but mistaken… misguided, they are. Trust, adventurers, the source is not fully of this world or the next, but a thing stuck between… Pray it does not seek to creep into your bones and flesh.”
And suddenly, the shaman snored.
Chapter 36
As Doc and Dale gathered themselves up from that encounter, the campfires were dead, or dying. There was a gray light on the water with an elusive stirring of birds through
the foliage overhead.
But not a sound came from the fellows.
The shaman lay with his bared chest not a hand’s length from the dirk they had given him.
Dale and Doc looked at each other with the same unspeakable things in their hearts: Did he see the future? Did his mind take flight from his soul to go to Atlanta, lair of the Blackwaters known as longmongers? Or was this all just an evil dream from a black moment of desperation?
In the end, it mattered little. And it made little sense. They only knew that Emily, and the legendary one that loved here, were suffering. Doc had no doubt of it. Doc looked over at Tyler. He was feigning sleep. The poor soul had not managed any real rest. Doc knew then he had to do what he could to help him get them back. He had to use every means at his disposal, even if every soul in what remained of mankind thought it folly—which is exactly what Dale seemed to think. Having spent time with the wetmen, he put more stock in words of the shaman, who had all but said they were doomed.
He and Doc stood silent above the sleeping shaman. Neither of them was moving, and neither was uttering a word. But Doc could see he was unnerved.
“Thundering fuckl,” Dale whispered. He shook his head, knelt down and picked up the dirk, placing it back in the fine walnut box for him. “It serves us right, the weight in our guts.” He was speaking in a low voice Doc had never heard him use. “We should have asked nothing of it! It serves us fucking right.”
He looked out at the water. Then he looked at the small trail back northeastward.
His eyes followed his slow, deliberate gaze.
“This is madness,” he whispered. “The madness of the self-murderer. ”
