Apex Magazine - January 2017

by Apex Publications

  Card’s Ta-Kumsaw exemplifies the magical yet natural power of the environment and those in harmony with it. For example, in Red Prophet , he walks on foot two hundred miles in a day—a feat reminiscent of historical accounts of Tecumseh seeming to be everywhere at once—because the land comes to his aid: “It would kill a man to run so fast for half an hour, except that the Red man called on the strength of the land to help him. The ground pushed back against his feet, adding to his strength.” Some critics might point to such Othering as a modern instance of romanticizing the Noble Savage; others might argue that environmental ethics is a necessary component in a series dedicated to the moral instruction of a young hero, and few figures from history and legend better represent a connection to and fierce defense of the land than Tecumseh. Both sides probably have a point.

  An unusual and particularly powerful work is Beth Meacham’s short story “One by One” from the 1993 collection Alternate Warriors edited by Mike Resnick. Meacham imagines an alternate twentieth century in which “the Two Hundred Years War between the Shawnee Alliance and the European invaders” continues to seethe in the enormous half Native reservation, half mainstream U.S. state of Indiana, with acts of violence begetting more in an endless cycle. Rather than dying at the Battle of the Thames, Tecumseh had turned the tide of the war there. As Meacham writes, “the treaty that the U.S. had finally signed with Tecumseh’s grandson, just as the Civil War broke out, had guaranteed that the members of the Shawnee Alliance kept their traditional village sites and traditional farmlands.”

  In one of the tale’s most visceral and disturbing scenes, Army Counter-Terrorist soldiers force two Alliance Warriors to their knees before a statue of the heroic Tecumseh and shoot them execution style. The moment effectively underscores the nobility of one who would never have sanctioned such treatment of enemy prisoners of war; it also contrasts Tecumseh’s example as a principled leader with the less-than-noble tactics of both sides of Meacham’s ugly, inherited de facto war. The fact that this Indiana conflict is between peoples who have lived side by side for generations and intermarried is one of Meacham’s points: “Half the people in this state are related by blood or marriage to the other half … I suppose that’s what makes things so tense. There’s nothing worse than a family fight.”

  Perhaps the most significant work of science fiction featuring Tecumseh thus far came from Vine Deloria, Jr., noted Standing Rock Sioux academic and activist, author of works such as Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969) and God is Red (1994). His distinguished career included serving as both executive director of the National Congress of American Indians and board member for the National Museum of the American Indian, as well as winning the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas.

  During the U.S. bicentennial year of 1976, Christian Century created a series called “What If …? Rewriting U.S. History.” Deloria’s contribution was the first in the series, published for the January 7-14, 1976 issue. Written from the point of view of a very different 1976, its main idea is summed up in its title: “Why the U.S. Never Fought the Indians.” The fictional 1976 Deloria describes it by no means a utopia, but it is marked by the full engagement of the First Nations as influential players on North America’s stage at every step of the continent’s development.

  No so-called Indian Removals or Indian Wars took place in Deloria’s alternate timeline. Instead, Tecumseh’s confederacy grew in the second year of the War of 1812 with the addition of “the southern tribes–particularly the Chickasaw and Choctaw,” giving his coalition the strength to stand apart, not only from its opponent the United States, but also from its ally the British. Tecumseh, therefore, became the architect “for the whole pattern of American development.” Deloria’s work reads as an indictment of mainstream U.S. attitudes and formal U.S. policy toward American Indians, as well as a reminder of Native potential.

  In short, science fiction not only gave Tecumseh a new and different literary afterlife, but the genre also brought Tecumseh full circle, returning him to Indigenous hands and purposes.

  As the fields of history, ethnohistory, and Native American/First Nations studies grow and mature, scholars are finding new tools to employ in uncovering and understanding the life, times, and impact of the Shawnee chief. Some, like Yours Truly, write books about Tecumseh aimed at the college classroom in order to introduce the next generations to his remarkable story.

  It is Deloria’s counterfactual, science fictional vision in “Why the U.S. Never Fought the Indians,” however, that to date best captures the promise and the power of the once and future chief:

  “With the western frontier secured against both Americans and British, Tecumseh was able to negotiate as an equal with the other two parties … as a result of the Treaty of Ghent the Indian nations received from the European countries the political recognition which had been lacking for three centuries; at that point, with their title to lands guaranteed and a process of negotiated sales under the supervision of an international tribunal instituted, the real history of the United States began.”

  Editor’s Note: Our August, 2017 issue will be guest-edited by Dr. Sturgis. The issue will focus specifically on contemporary First Nations and Indigenous authors of North America.

  Amy H. Sturgis holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history from Vanderbilt University, teaches at Lenoir-Rhyne University, and focuses on Science Fiction and Native American Studies. An award-winning scholar and journalist, she is the author of four books and over fifty essays. In addition, Sturgis contributes regular “Looking Back in Genre History” segments to the Hugo Award-winning StarShipSofa podcast and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Hocus Pocus Comics . Her official website is amyhsturgis.com .

  * * *

  Disobedient

  by Barton Paul Levenson | 540 words

  Yes. I ran away.

  I didn’t bring her in.

  I’m sorry, General.

  But before you have them run me through,

  Just let me explain.

  I’m not a real good talker.

  Not like your silver-tongued senators,

  Or some Greek philosopher.

  I’m just a Centurion. An old soldier.

  But I had a reason.

  You know I’m no coward.

  When the German barbarians surprised us in the forest,

  Ran howling toward us,

  Their spears filling the air ahead of them,

  Their swords gutting the bearers and the scouts,

  You saw what I did.

  I had my sword out double-quick

  And waded into the thick of them.

  You recommended me for a medal for gallantry.

  Don’t you remember?

  Or when the British cut us off outside Colchester,

  Boxed us in, then set fire to the fields,

  Did I panic? I did not.

  I told my men to beat out the flames with their bedrolls.

  And it worked, didn’t it?

  So I didn’t run away because I was a coward.

  I’m not a coward.

  General, you would have run away too.

  Anyone would.

  There are things no man can face.

  Let me tell you how it was.

  The witch went into the caves,

  And you told me and Lucius to go bring her out.

  And in we went.

  We put candles in our helmets, like miners do.

  The passage twisted. We walked for what must have been miles.

  Couldn’t hear you and the cohort outside.

  Just long, low whistles, like the wind.

  You wouldn’t think there could be wind in a cave.

  But there can be, sir.

  We came to a fork.

  We laughed, Lucius and me,

  At the thought that a fork in the path would confuse us.

  I went left. He went right.

  I walked alone for miles.

  Then I heard Luc
ius scream.

  Tried to rush back, tried to help him, you know how it is.

  But I was lost. Couldn’t get back to the fork.

  Just darkness, and long, low, whistling wind.

  Then the candle went out.

  I’m not a superstitious man, Captain.

  I take care of lustrations and sacrifices,

  And leave the rest to the gods.

  Darkness don’t scare me.

  But I started to think the witch was following me.

  And all I could do was keep my hand to the wall to guide me.

  One hand on my sword, one on the rough rock.

  Kept thinking I was going to run into a wall.

  Kept thinking I could walk into a pit and never know it

  Until I fell.

  But I kept going.

  Because I’m a good soldier.

  And I had a job to do.

  I kept going.

  Sweating, anxious. I kept going.

  And then there was a turn to the right

  And there was light again.

  Green glow.

  Green, unhealthy glow.

  Unnatural.

  It was Lucius, a foot off the ground.

  Looking down at me. His face and hands were green.

  Glowing.

  He was dead, General. You’ve seen dead men.

  I’ve seen dead men. We know death when we see it.

  Lucius was dead.

  Gutted, hung up in mid-air with his belly opened like a fish.

  No man can live with a wound like that.

  He looked at me and grinned.

  And that was when I ran.

  Barton Paul Levenson has a degree in physics. Happily married to poet Elizabeth Penrose, he confuses everybody by being both a born-again Christian and a liberal Democrat. His work has appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, ChiZine, Cricket, Cicada, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and many small press markets. His novels The Celibate Succubus and Dark Gods of Alter Telluria are available from Barking Rain Press. Barton was banned from entering the Confluence Short Story Contest again after winning first prize two years in a row.

  * * *

  On the Edge of the Stone-Meadow

  Yes. I ran away. by Laura Madeline Wiseman | 139 words

  If cultivated to sweeten their tongue,

  they grow us staked or caged, hairless

  twigs and leaves, starred and starved

  core, lengthening and ripening fruit

  proof we would become whatever

  they required. If our skin split

  with abscess, dripped juice or grit,

  they pinched, pain obliterating

  as their hill-home against the sky.

  If some seasons, they thin us down

  by ropes and blades, anywhere

  our limbs cross or touch another.

  If our fruit windfalls, beckons wasps,

  honeybees, or forgers, they smoke

  the fields to win the best of our variety.

  If we’re as common as the Latin origin

  of our name, they’re ancient, well-known

  shapeshifts, divining the power change.

  Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of 25 books and chapbooks, include Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience (Lavender Ink), twice nominated for the Elgin Award. Her poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, Abyss & Apex, Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, Red Rose Review, Star*Line, Silver Blade, and elsewhere. Her latest book is Velocipede .

  * * *

  Wormhole

  by Tracy May Adair | 176 words

  I’ve almost lapped the light,

  nearly rounded the corner from one day

  to the next. Edges are always difficult: lines

  between here, there; then, now; together,

  alone. In the empty gap, whiteout fog

  forms. It doesn’t creep. It doesn’t bother

  me to be far out of touch. Devices

  meant for contact gag me

  with insistence. Everything I recalled was small?

  Overwhelmed. Avocados expanded,

  a boiled egg enlarged. I can’t see the curve,

  but it’s there. Pulling me hard to one side. Or,

  perhaps, jealously away. Accidents, events ,

  are common in dark spaces, which anyway

  you must cross. Language hurts

  my eyes. Touch underwhelms. I smell

  the sea six hundred light years away.

  Tracy May Adair holds a MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. She works in the coffee business, which affords many opportunities for global travel and for her to practice her photography skills. More practice needed! Her poems were recently published or forthcoming in Fickle Muses, Sediments Literary-Arts Journal, Olentangy Review , and Linden Avenue Literary Journal . You can read some of her thoughts about poetry, and life, at www.adair-author.com .

  * * *

  The Galatea

  by Amanda Pekar | 233 words

  You invented me, my maker—

  built me out of clockworks and gears,

  the Eve of my kind, the first metal foot on the Earth.

  A marvel, a myth come to life.

  I reread your manuals, your notes,

  graph paper brittle between bronze fingertips.

  They make sense to me;

  their logic sings through my mechanisms:

  a steady rhythm, a ticking clock.

  But the books in your library speak of love.

  Always of it, never saying what it is,

  their definitions conflicting and unsatisfactory.

  They dance around love like my predecessors move around curiosity shops.

  They paint a picture, as if it will spark an understanding.

  I stand before your name, inscribed in white stone,

  wondering if this is the proper way to kindle that first flicker of flame.

  Or if perhaps the spark has already flared,

  and it is what drives the engine inside me.

  Your colleagues ask, the world debates:

  is Galatea a person or a thing?

  Is she life or a trick of metal, the remnant of a great man’s mind?

  Only I know about the clock buried deep in my head,

  and how soon it will wind down.

  You in your mercy

  gave me the one thing that defines all life from the dead:

  a scarcity of time.

  Amanda Pekar is a graduate of the Alpha Writing Workshop. She is graduating with a BFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Prescott College in May 2017, and her work has been published in Alligator Juniper and plain china magazines. In her free time, she enjoys knitting and working on her first novel.

  * * *

  Soliloquy in a Cheap Diner off Route 66

  He paces back and forth, oblivious to the freeze frame surrounding him. by James Beamon | 3685 words

  3,800 Words

  He presses pause and life stops. The trucker in the red and black flannel shirt at the counter is stuck in mid chew of a meatloaf that was never meant to linger. The young woman in the blue jeans and white blouse holds an angry fist over a jukebox infamous for taking payment while withholding songs. Over in a corner booth, the family of four suspends their fight; the parents sitting across from each other stay their call for cease fire with desperate, open mouths while the young twin boys both gaze at their plates like generals assessing their arsenals. A french fry floats in the air.

  The brown-skinned waitress in front of Lolonyo wears a powder blue dress and a friendly smile. But Lolonyo sees how her full lips turn down ever so slightly, how her eyes don’t crinkle at the corners. He knows what that means. Lolonyo slides out of the booth and talks to himself, talks as if she can hear, as if she is taking notes with the pen frozen in mid scribble.

  “Why is this so complicated? It’s lo
ve… it’s universal! It’s the simplest, easiest thing to fall into besides potholes and debt. You would think I could stand up in front of her and announce what the fuck this is. You know, just say ‘Hello Aliza, it’s me, your Lonnie, your Mandingo warrior, your hero. You may not know it, but I rescue you from these black and white checkerboard floors and the dead-end job that’s got you walking back and forth across them. I deliver you from burnt coffee and raw nerves, long days and short tips and I save you from having to serve racist people like that greasy haired dude in the John Deere hat that keeps studying over here like two black people together signifies the sudden resurgence of the Black Panther Party.”

  Lolonyo pauses to glance back at the racist at the counter whose look has lost all its surreptitiousness now that he’s fully frozen. He looks like a ferret trying to hide behind a ball cap and a plate of over easy eggs.

  “What was I saying?” Lolonyo asks himself. “I mean, yeah, it’s a love affair. And this one starts with a harmless observation. She went for that the very first time, when all this was nothing more than an accident unfolding. You’d think it’d be surgical now that I got some experience. So what is she curving her lip down about? This time all I said was ‘you seem tired’. Simple, clean. Definitely harmless. So why is she looking at me like I’m at her front door trying to sell magazine subscriptions? She can pretend if she wants but I know that look. That shit is as plain as her nametag.”