New Wave Fabulists

by Bradford Morrow

  Haden picked up Nelly and slid his hand under the back of her sweatshirt. It happened so fast that she didn’t have a chance to protest. But when he touched her bare back she understood instantly what he was doing and smiled like she had never smiled before in her teacher’s presence.

  Nelly looked at Mrs. Dugdale and opened her mouth wide like the ventriloquist’s dummy she had just become. It was all right though because she knew what was about to happen. Out of her little girl’s mouth came a man’s deep voice—calm but a little threatening too—Simon Haden’s voice.

  “You mean old bitch! You haven’t changed at all in thirty years. I’m sure you’re still torturing your students when no one is watching. When your door is closed and you think you’re safe. Remember Clifford Snatzke, huh? Remember what you did to him? Well, surprise! You’re not safe and some of us do know exactly what you do, Bully. Shithead.”

  Nelly mouthed his words perfectly. She could feel Haden’s hand on her back manipulating her, but she didn’t need to because the two of them were wholly in synch with the words. What he wanted to say she wanted to say, and she did.

  When he was finished and staring triumphantly at Dugdale’s stunned and then frightened face, Haden barely heard a voice nearby say, “Well, it’s about time. Bravo.”

  He shifted his eyes over and down and there was dapper little Broximon, hands on hips, a big smile on his face. Where had he suddenly come from?

  A million or a billion synapses and connections and whatever else suddenly jumped across Haden’s brain. Something big was taking form in there, something was coming clear. He suddenly looked at life around him. At the street, the cars, the people, the sky, the world. An instant later, Simon Haden understood.

  He gasped through a mouth that reappeared the moment he made his discovery. He lowered Nelly Weston to the ground.

  This city, this planet, this life around him was his own invention. He had created all of it. He knew that now. Where had he created it? In the dreams he had every night while he slept.

  He looked at Mrs. Dugdale and was almost as surprised to see she was smiling at him and nodding. So was Broximon. So was every person nearby. A small dog on a leash was staring and smiling at him too. He knew the dog’s name—Birmy. He knew it because he had made it up one night. He had made up this entire world.

  Simon Haden finally realized that he was surrounded by a land, a life, a world that he had created every night of his life in his dreams. Everything here was either fashioned by him, or taken from his conscious world and carried over into his dream world so that he could play with it, fight with it, or try to resolve it in a place of his own.

  At forty, Simon Haden had had more than fourteen thousand dreams. A lot of material there to build a world on.

  “I’m dead.” He stated this—he did not ask it as a question. He looked at Broximon. The little man kept smiling but now he nodded too.

  “That’s what death is—everyone makes their own when they’re alive. Then we die and all of our dreams come together and form a place, a land. And that’s where we go when we die.” This time Haden looked at his old third-grade teacher for corroboration and she nodded too.

  “And you live in that dreamland you created until you recognize what it really is, Simon.” She said it cheerfully in the same tone of voice one would use to proclaim it was a beautiful day.

  Thoughts, images, and particularly memories shot back and forth across Haden’s mind like tracer bullets in a night firefight. Octopus bus drivers, cars that flew, beautiful blind women—

  “That blind woman—I remember her now. I remember the dream she was in. She was always saying the same thing again and again. It drove me nuts. I had the dream right after I got married. I dreamed—”

  Broximon waved the rest away. “It doesn’t matter, Simon. So long as you realize what this is all about, you can fit the individual pieces together later.”

  “But I definitely am dead?” For some reason, Haden looked at little Nelly Weston this time for the answer. She gave a child’s big up and down nod to make sure that he understood.

  He gestured with both hands at the world around them. “And this is death?”

  “Your death, yes.” Broximon chuckled. “And you created almost all of us at one time or another. That is, except for Mrs. Dugdale and things like that giant bag of caramels on the bus. Remember how much your father loved caramels?”

  Haden was very afraid to ask the next question but he knew that he must. In a low voice, almost a whisper, he asked, “How long have I been here?”

  Broximon looked at Dugdale who looked at Nelly who looked at Broximon. He sighed, puffed out his cheeks, and said, “Let’s just say you’ve had this meeting with Mrs. Dugdale a lot but before this, she’s always won.”

  “Answer me, Broximon. How long have I been here?”

  “A long time, pal. A very, very long time.”

  Haden shuddered. “And I’m just realizing now what it’s all about?”

  “Who cares how long it’s taken, Simon. You know now.”

  The woman and the girl nodded vigorously in agreement. Haden noticed that the rest of those around them were nodding too in much the same way—everyone clearly agreed on this point.

  “Well what am I supposed to do with it? What am I supposed to do now?”

  Mrs. Dugdale crossed her arms over her chest and wore a very familiar expression on her face. Haden remembered it well. “You finally passed first grade, Simon. Now you move on to second.”

  An icy chill tiptoed up Simon Haden’s spine. “Death is like school?”

  Again, every one and every thing grew the same smile and looked very pleased at his progress.

  The Invisible Empire

  John Kessel

  —Inspired by Karen Joy Fowler’s story

  “Game Night at the Fox and Goose”

  WHEN HENRIETTA AND HIRAM PATTERSON arrived at church that Sunday, Henrietta’s arm was bound to a splint, tied up in a sling made from a blue kerchief. In the quiet chat of the congregation before we entered, Henrietta allowed as how she had been kicked by the mule, but I was not the only observer to notice Hiram’s sidelong watchfulness, and the fact that their two boys kept their mother between themselves and their father at all times.

  The congregation was more subdued than usual in the wake of the news of that week. Robert and I sat in the third pew; Sarah sat with her husband and three children a row ahead of us. Lydia Field, her black hair piled high beneath a modest straw hat, kept watch from the choir loft. Beautiful Iris sat in front with her beau, Henry Fletcher. Louellen was not a churchgoer, and Sophonsiba attended the colored church.

  As the Pattersons took seats in our pew, I nodded toward them. Hiram, shaved clean and his hair parted neatly in the middle, nodded gravely back. Henrietta avoided my gaze. Their older boy took up a hymnal and paged through it.

  The service began with the singing of “When Adam Was Created.”

  When Adam was created,

  He dwelt in Eden’s shade;

  As Moses has related,

  Before a bride was made.

  I looked up at Lydia in the choir. Her eyes closed, she sang as sweetly as an angel; one would think her the picture of feminine submission. Another angel was Sarah, mother and homemaker. Certainly Henry Fletcher considered Iris an angel sent from heaven to entice him.

  I felt for Robert’s hand, and held it as I sang.

  … This woman was not taken

  From Adam’s head, we know;

  And she must not rule o’er him,

  It’s evidently so.

  The husband is commanded

  To love his loving bride;

  And live as does a Christian,

  And for his house provide.

  The woman is commanded

  Her husband to obey,

  In every thing that’s lawful,

  Until her dying day.

  As the song ended, the Reverend Hines climbed to the pulpit. He stared down for som
e time without speaking, the light from the clerestory gleaming off his bald pate. Finally he began.

  “I take my text, on this day of retribution, from the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 5, verses 22 through 24. ‘Wives, submit to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.’”

  The minister rested his hand on the Bible. “My brothers and sisters, the sword of a righteous God is raised over the heads of those rebellious women who walk among us today. They think that by hiding in the dark, we will not see them. But to the Lord God Almighty, there is no darkness but the darkness of eternal perdition to which those women condemn themselves. God saw Eve when she ate of the forbidden fruit; he sees you now.”

  Did God see when a father in Bristol, Connecticut, knocked the teeth of his eighteen-year-old daughter down her throat because she entertained the attentions of a boy he did not approve? Did he see when Charles S. Smith, a married man, got with child the simple-minded eleven-year-old Edith Wilson in Otsego County, New York?

  “But my message today is not only to the wives,” Hines went on. “Brothers, I ask you: why was Adam cast from the garden? It was not because he ate of the apple! I put it to you that he was cast out because he sacrificed his judgment to that of his wife. The minute Adam saw Eve with the apple of which she had eaten, he knew she was damned. Adam’s sin was that he loved Eve too much. He loved her so much that, despite his knowledge that in violating the injunction of the Lord God she had committed the gravest crime, he could not bear to see her damned by herself. So he ate of the apple too, and damned himself, and all of his posterity, with her.

  “From that one act of submission to a wrongheaded woman have come five thousand years of suffering.

  “My word today to you wives is obvious: obey your husband. He is born to a wisdom you cannot grasp; his hand is the hand of the Lord. When you turn against a man, you turn against the utmost power of the universe. If you have transgressed, the Lord demands you confess. Remember, Jesus forgave even the woman taken in adultery; he awaits your repentance with arms open in sweet forgiveness. But for those whose hearts are hardened, only the angel of death awaits. Speak now, and be saved, or hold your tongues and be damned for all eternity.

  “My word today to you husbands, in particular and most direly to those who know of the sins of your wives yet keep silent out of love, is simply this: you must act! You bear the burden of the Lord’s command, to be the head of your wife. Your own salvation, her salvation, and the salvation of the community depend on it. Do not think that, by protecting her, you show mercy, any more than by joining Eve, Adam did. By protecting evil, you condemn yourself, and your children, and the children of every other man to evil.

  “All across our land, in these days of rebellion, this challenge is put to all, male and female. ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’

  “Let us pray.”

  As Reverend Hines led the Lord’s Prayer, I bowed my head and recited the words with the others, but my ears were burning. Beside me, Robert’s eyes were closed. I glanced up and saw Lydia’s head held rigidly forward.

  After the prayer, the reverend called on the congregation to testify. “Now is the time! Do not be afraid of your neighbors’ reaction. Do not wait, thinking perhaps that tomorrow, or next week, will be soon enough. Tomorrow or next week you may be dead and burning in hell; no man knows the hour of his judgment!”

  He waited. The church lay silent. I saw Iris’s golden head tremble; Iris is a foolish girl. I remembered how she had fretted at the talk she had aroused when she’d worn red bloomers to the cotillion. Her commitment went little farther than reading smuggled copies of Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. But she did not rise.

  In the end, no one did. Reverend Hines’s scowl told all that was needed of his displeasure.

  After the service, as we stood beneath the huge oak outside the church, I made a special point to take the reverend’s hand. I thanked him for calling us to our conscience and deplored the lack of a response from the congregation.

  “God have mercy on their souls,” he said. “For I will have none.”

  “I hope their silence only signifies the personal repentance that must precede the public one,” I said, and stepped aside.

  As Robert shook hands with Hines, Lydia Field touched my arm, and mentioned to me that the quilting circle needed to get together soon.

  Robert is a carpenter: he built our house with his own hands, on an acre of ground a mile outside of town. It is a finer house than our income warrants, with extra bedrooms that we have not had cause to use. In truth, the house, like our lives, is a work in progress, perhaps never to be finished. In the evenings, after quitting his shop, Robert works mounting crown molding, laying oak flooring, trimming windows.

  I fell in love with Robert when I saw him work. He is never a talkative man, but in his workshop he becomes a silent one, except for the aimless and off-key tunes that he hums, unaware.

  He leans over the bench, feeds a long strip of maple through the saw, pumping the treadle steadily with his foot. He inspects the result, measures it, marks it, and slides it into the miter box. His eyes are quiet. His lips are closed in an expression that is the faintest prelude to a smile, but not a smile itself. His hands are precise. He takes up a box saw. He does not hurry, he does not dawdle. A shock of hair falls into his eyes, he brushes it away, and it falls back. In the mornings I shake sawdust from his pillow.

  After we had returned from the church and had eaten our dinner, Robert changed out of his Sunday suit and went to work on the stair rail in the front hall.

  “It’s Sunday,” I said, wiping my hands. “The day of rest.”

  “But we aren’t the sort who regulate our lives by the Bible, are we?”

  He did not return my stare. “Would you have me be the kind of woman Jordan Hines prefers?”

  He shrugged the canvas strap from his shoulder and set down his long toolbox. “I don’t look to Jordan Hines for my conscience. But some things are wrong. Killing a man in cold blood is wrong.”

  “But killing a woman in hot passion is all right. And breaking her arm is not worth notice.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  “Henrietta Patterson is a mouse; she wouldn’t take a step outside her kitchen without her husband’s leave—more’s the pity. Name a man in this town who has been killed.”

  “Susannah, can you blame me if I am troubled? This cannot go on much longer before you are found out.”

  “For every woman found out a hundred more will rise. Laura D. Fair was murdered by a mob in Seneca Falls ten years ago. Did that stop anything?”

  He knelt beside the box and took up one of the balusters he had turned on the lathe that week. “I did not marry Laura D. Fair. At least, I didn’t think I was marrying her. I married for love and a family, not revenge and violence.”

  I turned from him and went to the kitchen. He laid down the baluster and followed me. As I stood at the counter, my back to him, he touched my shoulder.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “If we never have a child, I’ll still have you. That’s why I’m worried. I could not bear to lose you.”

  I had not seen my woman’s bleeding in more than a month, but I wouldn’t get our hopes up only to suffer another loss. “I won’t sit by and watch a woman like Henrietta Patterson pretend to be kicked by a mule when everyone in town knows it was her drunken husband.” I turned from him and went to our room.

  “Susannah!”

  I closed the door and lay on the bed, dry eyed, heavy with sudden fatigue. He did not follow. After a while I heard the sound of his boots in the hall, and the snick of the folding rule as he measured the stairway. Dinah, our cat, jumped onto the bed and curled up beside me. As the afternoon decline
d I fell asleep.

  When I woke it was evening. I took off my dress and donned a pair of men’s trousers and a man’s shirt. Worn, sturdy shoes, leather work gloves. I found Robert in the kitchen, the sleeves of his work shirt rolled to his elbows, eating bread and cheese. On the table lay the newspaper from the day before.

  ‘SISTERS

  OF FURY’

  EXECUTED

  Presidential Assassins

  Hanged in Philadelphia

  The ‘Drop’ Falls at

  Three Minutes Past Six

  O’Clock

  President Hendricks Declares ‘Justice Done’

  Female Protests Quelled

  Philadelphia, July 22

  The last chapter of the conspiracy to assassinate the President is finished.

  Saturday, at six in the morning, the twelve women convicted of treason and murder in the assassination of President Cleveland were put to death. In execution of the sentence of the Military Commission, duly approved by the President, the prisoners were hanged by the neck until dead in the courtyard of the federal penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  The painful scene was unattended by either extraordinary accident or incident, and was conducted in the most solemn and quiet manner.

  Witnesses report that the last words of Helen Araminta Macready, leader of the hooded women who assaulted the President last May during the monthly tea held on the White House lawn, were “Death to all seducers.”

  Robert looked up at me. His eyes slowly passed over my clothing. He didn’t speak.

  “I am going out tonight,” I told him. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  The six of us gathered at the barn at the Compson place at midnight. In the hardscrabble fields remained only twisted, dry stalks of last year’s corn; the burnt shell of the house stood stark in the moonlight, the brick chimney rising like a sentinel over the ruin.