by Weston Ochse
“Voices rant on. Voices rant on time lethal.”
Time lethal. Simon pondered. Definitely too much like algebra. Almost astrophysics. Time lethal. He snapped his fingers and grinned. All the time. Conversation all the time.
“But what do they say, Billy? When they speak to you?”
Billy stared hard at Simon, like a mother to a naughty boy.
Simon got the message and switched. “Billy. God or fiends voices rant on time lethal…uhh…aysay ouyay.”
Billy’s eyes pinched together and his upper lip curled into the universal sign of huh?
Simon sighed. He wasn’t as quick as Billy. Besides Spanish and passable Arabic, all he knew was Pig Latin—and sadly more Pig than Latin.
He tried again. “Billy. Pay attention, now. God or fiends voices rant on time lethal.” Simon pointed to his own mouth and then at Billy. “Aysay ouyay.”
Billy Bones lurched forward and grabbed Simon around the collar, jerking the Brother close enough for Simon to smell the man’s lunch. The Dirty Bird stared hard into Simon’s eyes.
“Evil’s agent. Evil’s agent in dirty room. Is no amity, Simple Simon. Is no amity, Billy Bones. A rope ends it. Means movies. A rope ends it.”
CHAPTER 4
Monday—June 11th
Chattanooga, Tennessee
The sun dripped with enough humidity that neither Bergen nor Danny felt the urge to leave the confines of their air conditioned realm.
Danny watched as a crow landed upon a branch by his window. Crows should have been the Tennessee State Bird. They were everywhere. Almost as large as eagles, he was just happy they ate garbage instead of little boys, or he would have been carried off long ago like the sailors had been carried away by the Roc in the Seven Voyages of Sinbad.
He was kicked back on his bed, a dog-eared copy of Lord of the Flies on his chest, his hands behind his head. Bergen sat on a vinyl cushioned chest flipping slowly through an old John Carter Warlord of Mars comic book. A reading copy, it was too worn to retain any real value, unlike the thousand others inside the chest that were tucked inside Mylar bags. Every now and then Bergen would pause to see a four armed Barsoom Warrior hack at a monster. More recently he found himself also pausing when the scantily clad image of Deja Thoris appeared, his eyes dwelling around the space just south of her navel.
Danny’s room was like any kid’s, except with possibly more books. His twin bed sat right inside his door. The chest rested at the foot of his bed. The wall on the other side was filled with shelves his father had put up just last year. Odds and ends, old Burger King toys, a YoYo, some marbles from his uncle and an unused harmonica kept company with over three hundred paperbacks—and Danny had read every one. Against the wall opposite the foot of his bed was an upright dresser and a small desk. To the left of these was an almost floor-to-ceiling window, like all the windows on the bottom lake-side of the split-level. The wall beside the door was his closet. On the other walls were tacked book covers removed from all of his favorite books.
His mother had been furious with him for destroying the books, saying that they’d forever lost their value. To Danny the value was in the adventure. This way he could see the covers and the scenes from the book would flash through his mind. Danny thought the covers were far better than posters. Especially the covers of the Lord of the Rings—together they made one picture that showed all the land, from left to right unraveling the whole incredible tale from Fellowship to the Return of the King.
His father also swore to never let a video game in the house. No Sega, no Super Nintendo, not even computer games. Danny, for all his arguments, really didn’t mind. All he wanted was to have the things that other kids had, but of all his friends, only Clyde and Doug had video games and with the amount of time they spent outside, it seemed a waste, anyway.
And Danny enjoyed his books. When he was nine and sick with the flu for a week, his mother had introduced to him Frodo Baggins, Gandalf and Gollum. He’d recovered by Wednesday, but feigned symptoms, reluctant to return to school when the fate of Middle Earth was being played out between the pages of three crisp, old 1950s paperbacks. He hadn’t looked back since. He’d traveled the Glory Road with Heinlein, been a Mote in God’s Eye with Niven, studied the politics of robot social integration with Asimov and been a leper hero with Donaldson. He’d been scared by vampires and werewolves and laughed as crosses and silver bullets brought them down. He’d voyaged ancient seas and visited lost lands.
In fiction, he understood the best way to slay a dragon or kill an alien. But that was only fiction.
“My Dad called from work and talked to me. I asked him, but he won’t talk about it.”
“Yeah,” said Bergen.
“Why won’t he just come out and say he didn’t do anything?”
“What happens when you tell your mom that you didn’t do anything? Does it work?” asked Bergen.
“Well, no. But then I’m usually guilty.”
“But sometimes you aren’t, right? Sometimes you aren’t guilty.”
“And she still thinks I did it,” nodded Danny. “But Dad is different.”
“Is he?”
“Of course he is. He’s a grown-up. Innocent until proven guilty. It’s just us kids who have it the other way around.”
Bergen stared at Danny.
“Shit. Okay, I know.” said Danny. “But if he’d only explain, then everything would be back to normal.”
“No. Not everything,” said Bergen. “Your sister would still be gone, your dad would be pissed off that your mother ever blamed him in the first place, and your mother would be just as broken hearted as she is now.”
“So Dad’s not defending himself because Mom never should have blamed him. If only…”
“Yeah, if only.”
Danny turned his attention to the book. Scanning the pages, he tried to concentrate, his eyes threatened to tear. “The police were here last night.”
“What’d they do?” asked Bergen, his eyes large.
Danny sighed. “Took him away. My mom called them.”
I bet you think I did it? I bet you think I molested her, don’t you, you…
His father hadn’t said it, but Danny, sitting at the bottom of the stairs had filled in the blanks…Bitch.
“Don’t go doing something stupid,” said Bergen.
“Who me? Be stupid?” Danny smiled weakly.
“Yeah. You. Danny.” Bergen moved closer, his face a foot away. “If you feel like doing anything about this, make sure you tell me, all right?”
Danny stared at the pattern on his bedspread.
“Danny. Understand? You are going to tell me if you decide to do anything like run away or something, right?”
Thinking of his father almost calling his mother a bitch, Danny lifted his head. He tried to smile back at his friend, but found it took more energy than he had.
* * *
Ooltewah, Tennessee
Why don’t you die. Heated eyes burned from beneath a swathe of bloody bandages from the wounded soldier on the cot to his right.
Make the world a better place and stop breathing. Peppermint-coated hate from the thin lips of the nurse who changed his bedpan.
“You’re about the worst Goddamned excuse for a black boy I’ve ever had the displeasure of layin’ my eyes upon,” said a deputy, who giggled as a sober Maxom stilted along the center line of an empty highway, a humorless parody of the standard drunk test.
Oh Honey, what have they done to you? The shine of his mother’s love dulled as she finally realized the totality of his destruction.
Maxom spun in his sweat slick sheets, their length entangling him, wrapping, constricting. The scenes changed, each merging into the other. The wounded man, the nurse, the deputy, his mother and dozens of others, faces melting into faces melting into faces. The entire world hated him. Maxom’s existence was anathema, a doctrinal dichotomy to Darwin and proof that medicine could subvert the survivability of an unviable gene pool.
> He dreamed. His eyes moved wildly. His face scrunched disgust, the smell of burned and rotting flesh the only constant within the shifting of his tormentors.
Ignore them assholes. If it wasn’t for us, they’d be dead. They’re users, one and all.
The words bit, sliced and circumcised his fear. The figure upon the cross was no Jesus. The man was too large to be the Son of God and too profane to be a savior for anyone else besides Maxom. With his arms lashed to the bamboo cross and the spikes buried through triceps, Bernie commanded truth. His I Will Take No Shit voice ate through the miasma of Maxom’s nightmare.
Damn, but you can be a pathetic fucker sometimes. When you gonna act like a man? A puddle had formed at the base of the crucifix. Blood, pig’s fat and rotten flesh dripped from the space where Bernie’s feet had been.
“I’m not a man,” said Maxom. “I can never be a man.” A phantom itch from a phantom penis begged to be scratched, stroked and squeezed.
Stop acting like a simpering Lieutenant after his first artillery strike. You knew what you were getting yourself into. Like a hard dick makes someone a man anyway.
“Leave me alone.”
Leave you alone? Leave you alone? What, so you can wake up and continue going through life asleep?
Maxom’s next words were replied to before they were even uttered.
And don’t tell me you wanna die, ‘cause I guarantee you that you don’t. I’m there, Maxom. I’m dead. Remember what we said before each jump?
Maxom remembered. ‘Point yer ass to God and your nose to hell, and if you splat, just pretend you fell.’
Fucking A! We splatted, my friend. We splatted hard. I don’t think God was too pleased with us mooning him everytime we jumped out of an airplane. You wanna die? Then join me in hell. It’s a funny place down here. And not Jerry Lewis funny either.
“Do you blame me? Did I let you down?”
Stop your fucking whining? What’s our motto?
“Free the oppressed.”
No shit, Sherlock. So why do you think you lived? Think God goes around making mistakes?
Thinking of his own body, his life and the pain he’d never forget, Maxom nodded his head.
Think about it, Maxom. God must have had a reason. We both know you should’ve died. A hundred times dead. Look at yourself. There’s got to be a reason.
Before he could reply, Bernie was replaced by Maxom’s grandfather—icon, Lord of all Phinxes, first generation free man to the tribe. His hard earthen features sluiced through the Norwegian’s like sheers. The bamboo cross erupted into flame. White, ghostly shadows in pointed caps circled the blazing cross, holding hands, singing. At the lowest edge of his hearing, Maxom made out a mutated children’s chant:
Ring around the Nigger, Pockets full of chiggers,
Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down.
At the end of the verse, the shadows fell to their knees, only to alight once more and sing again. Over and over, their chant was an undertone to his grandfather’s nonplussed, commanding condemnation.
You might as well be an agent of the white man. They put you in your place but good, boy. Flames licked at his body, scorched skin peeled away. Steam rose as the sinewy strings of his muscles leapt and danced with the flames. His black and bony finger, a flame licking its tip, pointed towards Maxom, a KKK parody of Uncle Sam. You, boy! You creep along feeling sorry for yourself, forever wanting to die.
“No.”
Yessa. The voice boomed. My Daddy never felt that way. A million slaves never sang that song. Hell boy, if we was you, we’d weep ourselves into nothing.
“But Pappy…”
Shush now and remember. America is a place we built. The white man is a thing we molded. The future is a time we anticipated. Evil is the thing we fight.
The finger that had been pointing at him fell, dissolving in the air. More pieces of his grandfather began to fall as the steaming juices seeped free from the skin. The white shadows continued their circle, Ashes Ashes we all fall down. All around, his grandfather’s skin glowed amber as the fire seemed to be coming from within. Like a lampshade, the glow shone forth and illuminated the figures beneath him. Under each pointy hood was the face of Victor Charlie, each he recognized as one of the Vietnamese who’d tortured him as he himself was strapped and spiked to a cross.
His grandfather’s voice, no longer vibrant, hissed from around the cauldron of his mouth. We got the feeling sorry for ourselves done after the first slave ship hit the shores, so don’t you dare go and spoil it now.
The ring of KKK VC spun faster now, their movement creating circular plumes in the smoke, his grandfather the eye of their fiery maelstrom. The chanting became impossibly loud. Maxom had to strain over the demented children’s chant and the spit-hissing of his grandfather’s body to hear the last words.
Find God. Go to the place where you died and live again. You are needed. You are the beginning of salvation. De Opresso Libre.
And the body was consumed in a rush of flames. The VC were replaced by a conglomeration of real people from his past. His mother in her Sunday dress. Bernie in his dress greens, beret cocked rakishly on his grinning head. The recruiter who’d promised him adventure and the respect of a grateful nation. Childhood friends. Vietnamese enemies. A girl he’d once imagined flushed and naked.
Slowly they circled, holding hands and grinning as they stared up at him upon his cross, crucified a whole man with two arms and two legs, a full head of hair and the only scar from a fishing accident he’d had when he was twelve. Forgetting himself, Maxom laughed, then giggled as he allowed himself to wiggle much-missed toes and fingers. He guffawed as he stared down and watched as his no-longer phantom penis stood at attention.
His head lolled back as an invisible wind caressed him, teasing the fine curly hairs along his legs and body. He’d forgotten about the hair. The way it felt as a woman lay beside him and ran her long-nailed hands across his broad chest. The way it felt to shave—hot water to open the pores and cold water to close them. The way it felt when he scratched, rough and yielding and pleasant.
Grinning like a kid at Christmas, Maxom gazed lovingly at his circle of friends and those who had so influenced his life.
Mmm. Kentucky Fried Nigger, said the old white moonshiner holding his mother’s left hand. Which one you like, my lady? Original recipe or extra crispy?
Like a slap, the casual words destroyed any reverie he’d had. An itching began along his entire body.
Extra crispy, for sure. I like the way it crunches, replied his mother who turned and kissed the grizzled face of the man to her right—Mr. Smythe, the owner of the funeral home that had buried her.
The itching along his body erupted into searing pain as he noticed with revultion his mother’s tongue in the man’s mouth. The pain was white-hot, unquenchable fury as he relived the burning of the white phosphorus. His legs began to melt along with his arm. A wave of fire raged over his skin, consuming all of his fine hair.
If he was a dog, we’d shoot him, said a voice he almost recognized.
The flames died and the pain became a constant dull reminder. He watched as his skin peeled away in patches. Phantom dogs tugged at his lower legs, fighting and snapping over each piece. Starving children, their hollow eyes full of sorrow, caressed him with their hands and licked them clean.
The circle began moving counter-clockwise. Holding hands and skipping, they began to sing:
Nigger, Nigger on the cross,
No one cares about yer loss.
Their sing-song happiness and laughter drowning out his moans and screams. He begged them, implored them to treat him like a man. Like a person, a soldier who’d fought for his country. He begged them not to make fun of him, to help him, to save him. But their response was laughter and a redoubling of their efforts. They skipped faster, voices rising as they neared a frenzy. The chant changed:
Maggot Man, Maggot Man,
He has no feet, He has no hands.
Maggot Man,
Maggot Man,
He has no hair, He has no tan.
Maxom awoke shaking. He pulled his phantom legs up to his chest and wrapped them with a phantom arm. Maxom stayed that way for a very long time trembling in the warm Tennessee night.
* * *
On the road to Tombstone, Arizona
Damn it!
His key scraped off the lock twice before finally slipping neatly into the serrated slit. He’d been drunker, but not in recent memory.
It was all Pasquali’s fault.
Ortega shoved the Ford F-150 into gear and sped out of the parking lot of the Sorry Gulch Saloon, skipping over the curb into the street.
Yeah, he’d been drinking. So what? After all, it was three in the morning and no self-righteous sober person was on the road anyway. There was no one out there except cops. Well, that wasn’t really true. There were cops, there were drunks and there were illegals.
Ortega fit nicely into two out of the three categories, so as far as he was concerned, it was Death Race 2000 and he was out for points. There wasn’t a cop in the county who would pull him over. They had an understanding.
The truck slid onto Buffalo Soldier Trail on two wheels. He fought hard to keep the truck to the right of the center line. As it was, the more he concentrated the more he seemed to ride it, like he was a slot car on the electric track he had owned as a child.
…that sentimental asshole Pasquali who was now in lock-up, facing three counts of kidnapping, two counts of sexual assault, and one count of battery.
He’d told Pasquali to let them go. He’d fucking told him. Either dump them across the border or put them six feet under like the others. The bastard knew the rules. He knew them. And now, with a promise or two, a wink and a nudge and a decent district attorney, Ortega would be named and instead of being called Agent, he’d be an Accessory.
And if there was one thing Ortega did not have, it was a Get Out Of Jail Free Card.
There’d been three women—a mother and her two daughters. All had been detained by an enterprising young rancher West of Douglas. As usual, Ortega and Pasquali had given the illegals a choice—get bussed back to good old Mexico or pay The Tariff. Just like everyone else did eventually, they’d decided to pay The Tariff. They understood it was the cost of doing business.
