New Wave Fabulists

by Bradford Morrow

  Sophonsiba crawled into the hearth and pulled our robes out of the chimney. She hurried back to the barn, her dark face gleaming, and handed around the robes and hoods.

  Lydia had brought the horses, and we mounted and rode east. I am not the best rider—Lydia has been a horsewoman since her youth—but my skill exceeded that of the awkward Sarah and Louellen. Still, we had all made progress in the last year. It was a hot night; the air hung heavy with not a breath of breeze. I felt the sweat gather at the back of my neck. The sound of cicadas in the oaks was deafening.

  The Patterson farm stood near the junction of Swift Creek and the Manahoc, forty poorly tended acres of cleared forest planted to corn and beans. We tied the horses in the woods near the road and moved silently up to the ramshackle house.

  The back door was open. We crept through the kitchen, past the room where the boys slept, to their parents’ room. Henrietta lay on her back cradling the broken forearm against her breast, waiting for us, her eyes glinting in the dark.

  Sarah motioned her to be quiet. Patterson stank of whiskey, and snored loudly, lost to the world. We fell upon him: one woman to each arm, and a pillow over his face.

  “No!” Henrietta cried. “Don’t hurt him!” But it was mostly show.

  “Megaera!” Lydia told Louellen. “Hold her back.” Louellen pulled Henrietta away from the bed. Patterson struggled, but in a moment we had him bound and gagged. Lydia lit a lamp; when he saw the hooded figures standing around the bed, his eyes went wide.

  We dragged him to his feet and pushed him out into the yard. “No, please,” Henrietta whimpered.

  The oldest boy, no more than eight or nine, woke and ran after us. His mother had to hold him back, wrapping her good arm about him. He stood barefoot in the dirt watching us with big eyes. His little brother came out and clutched his mother’s nightgown. “Mama?” he asked.

  “Hush,” his mother said, weeping.

  Sarah and Iris fetched the horses. Sophonsiba knocked Patterson’s feet out from under him and the drunken man fell hard. He cursed through the gag, rolling in the dust as Lydia tied him by a long rope to the pommel of her saddle.

  We dragged him out to the bridge over the creek. There we stripped him naked and tied him to the bridge.

  “His figure falls far short of the Greek ideal,” Iris said slyly.

  “Be quiet, Tisiphone,” Lydia commanded in a guttural voice. I do think that Lydia could find work as a medium, and it would not be a show—for I had seen enough of her to know that, when she spoke like this, she was indeed being moved by some spirit that was not quite herself.

  “Hiram Patterson. We are the ghosts of women dead at the hands of men. We are told you come of a good family. If that is so, it is time for you to get down on your knees in church next Sunday, confess your sins, and beg the forgiveness of your dear wife. You are marked. We will be watching. If you fail, rest assured that there is no place in Greene County that is beyond our reach.”

  Lydia extended her arm, pointing a black-gloved finger at him. “You will not receive another warning. We will have good husbands, or we will have none.”

  Then she turned to me. “Alecto,” she said. “Do your work.”

  Sophonsiba advanced with the torch. I took out the straight razor and unfolded the blade. When Patterson saw the torchlight gleam along it, he let out a muffled howl and lost control of his bladder. The urine splashed down the front of my robe. I slapped his face.

  Disgusted, I crouched before him. He writhed. “Keep still, or this will not go well for you!” I said. He legs trembled like those of a man palsied. When I touched the razor to his groin, he fainted. His body slumped, and he fell against the blade. Blood welled and ran down his leg.

  “I’m afraid I have nicked him,” I said.

  “Finish quickly.”

  He bled a deal, but the wound was far from mortal. I shaved his pubic hair, and delicately cut a circle and dependent cross on his chest.

  I was withdrawing the bloody razor from my work when Louellen hissed, “Someone’s coming!”

  A half dozen horses came galloping down the road.

  Sophonsiba hurled the torch into the creek while the rest of us ran to our mounts. My horse shied from the flash of our robes, tossing his head and flipping the reins from my fingers. I stumbled forward and grasped them, then awkwardly pulled myself into the saddle.

  “Halt!” one of the men shouted. A gunshot rang out; Sarah’s head snapped back and she dropped like a stone from her horse, her foot caught in her stirrup. The horse began to run, dragging her.

  Sophonsiba pulled a pistol from beneath her robe and fired at the men; at the sound of the shot her horse reared, almost throwing her. The men drew up and fired back. Louellen and Iris were already gone, and Sophonsiba kicked her horse’s flanks and surged away. I hesitated, thinking of Sarah, but Lydia grabbed my robe and tugged. “Ride!” she shouted, and we were off.

  We set off down the road toward Parson’s Knob, away from the creek. A couple more shots whizzed past us. When we crested the ridge, I spied Sophonsiba, Louellen, and Iris ahead of us. Instead of following, Lydia veered right, into the trees.

  “This way,” she called. I jerked the reins, almost losing my saddle, and swerved with her between the trees.

  Clouds had blown in, and a wind had picked up. In the dark it was hard to see the branches that whipped across us; I ducked and dodged trying to keep up. We descended through a series of gullies toward the river. After ten frantic minutes Lydia halted, and held up a hand for me to be quiet. We heard further shots in the distance.

  “The men must have been covering the road,” Lydia said. “They wanted us to flee that way. Louellen rode them right into an ambush.”

  “Will they tell?” We had all vowed death before betrayal.

  Lydia’s masked face turned toward me. “Louellen will not. Sophonsiba most definitely will not. Iris would—if she hasn’t already.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think they fell upon us by accident? They were forewarned. We have a traitor among us.”

  “It can’t be. If they knew, why weren’t they waiting when we came for Patterson?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We rode north along the river, picking our way quietly through the trees. The foliage was so thick here we had to dismount and lead the horses, and eventually we moved away from the river so as not to come out onto the road near the ferry landing.

  Leaves rustled in the stiffening breeze, broken by the occasional hoot of an owl. The temperature was falling and it felt like rain.

  I pondered what had happened to the other women. Sarah was surely dead. If caught, Sophonsiba would be summarily shot—and the others? Last winter the Martyred Marys had been hanged in Trenton. The governor had vowed “to expunge the viper of female vigilance organizations” from the state. Victoria Woodhull’s press had been destroyed; even Bloomer’s timid The Lily was forced to print in secret. In the aftermath of the president’s assassination, every man in the country would be on the alert.

  My horse nickered nervously, tossed his head, and I shortened my grip on the reins. Lydia held up a hand. “Willet’s Road,” she whispered and, handing me her horse’s reins, crept forward to peer into the clearing in the trees, looking, in her black robe, for all the world like some monstrous crow.

  She came back. “It’s clear. Let’s try to make it to the barn. I’ll take the horses from there and we can creep back into town before first light.”

  We remounted and rode west, away from the river. The road was deserted, and the sinking moon, dipping beneath the cloud cover, shone eerily, the oak trees with their sprays of leaves black against the sky. Twenty minutes later, as the Compson place arose out of the darkness, we heard the sound of horses.

  “Quickly!” Lydia hissed, and kicked her horse into a canter, heading for the barn just as the clouds opened and the rain began. I raced after her, and we jumped off the horses, pulling them inside. We peered out toward the r
oad a hundred yards away through the increasing downpour as three horsemen trotted by from the direction we had come. One of them was towing a horse that looked as if it might have a body thrown over the saddle.

  The rain drummed on the roof, drizzling through gaps in the boards. Neither of us spoke for some time. Lydia took off her robe and tucked it under her saddle pad. Mine reeked of Patterson’s urine. I buried it in some rotting straw in the corner of a stall and tucked the hood into the waistband of my trousers. “I’ll take the horses back to Martha’s stable,” Lydia said. “You can get back to town on foot.”

  “Who do you think those men were?” I asked. “I don’t see them coming from our town.”

  “I expect they were from Statesberg. Maybe joined by a few from town, but not many. We’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “I don’t believe Iris betrayed us. The men fired as soon as they saw us. Would they shoot at their own informer?”

  “I would not hazard a guess as to what a man might do,” Lydia said.

  I sat back in the straw of the barn’s floor, and watched the glint of a spider’s web in the corner of the doorway. “I begin to wonder if we can ever change them.”

  Lydia turned to me; her voice was fierce. “If men were capable of change, then reason would have done it years ago. For most, the only answer is death.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “You and your precious Robert! What do you think we have been doing? We aren’t changing their minds—we’re forcing them to stop abusing us because they know if they don’t stop they will be punished.”

  “That’s a counsel of despair. If you’re right, men and women will never live together in peace.”

  “Do you think Hiram Patterson is capable of having his mind changed?”

  “Maybe Hiram Patterson isn’t—but other men.”

  “Any men persuaded are regarded by others with contempt. Men like Patterson and Hines run the world.”

  I wanted to protest, to point out that no one had come forward in answer to Hines’s call at church. Instead I brooded. “If it comes down to open war between men and women, women will lose.”

  She tugged at the hood at my waist. “Why do you think you wear this?”

  Just then my horse neighed and backed up into the darkness. I turned and saw men in the road. They pulled up, sitting motionless in their saddles, and stared at the barn. I prayed they would pass. Instead they moved off the road toward us through the steady rain.

  Lydia grabbed her horse’s reins, fitted her boot into the stirrup, and pulled herself astride. “Sneak out the back. Stick to the woods. I’ll ride out front and outrun them.”

  Without waiting for my protest she kicked her horse’s flanks, crouched behind his head, and raced out of the barn. The men were startled; Lydia veered past them and out to the road. One drew a pistol and fired; I saw the muzzle flash in the dark.

  I did not wait to see what happened next. I crawled out the back of the barn and ran slipping through the mud for the tree line thirty yards away through Compson’s abandoned corn field. I did not look back until I was under the trees; the men were gone, chasing after Lydia down the Statesville Road.

  I ran for a long time. I had played in these woods as a girl, running with the boys, climbing trees, building forts, fighting General Lee and Napoleon and wicked King John in a thousand childish games. But though I knew the woods well, in the darkness and rain it was hard for me to keep my direction, and I became lost. I was still stunned by Sarah’s death. Perhaps it was a delayed reaction, or fear, or some late understanding of how mad our project had been, but I found myself sitting beneath the trees, soaked to the skin, sobbing.

  It must have been approaching dawn when the rain stopped and the clouds blew away. I could make out my surroundings and realized I was not far from home. I tried to stand, but a wave of nausea swept over me and I leaned one hand against the bole of a tree, bent over, vomiting.

  I had emptied my stomach and was wiping my hand against my mouth when I was seized from behind and thrown to the ground.

  “Susannah Mueller! Does your husband know you are out here at night?”

  I twisted my head and saw, standing above me, Everett Smith, who hung around the dry goods store and had occasionally done odd jobs for Robert. He had a bottle in his left hand and a pistol in his right.

  “Anyone might take you for a wicked girl,” Smith said. He waved the pistol at my outfit. “In such a mannish mode of dress.”

  “All right, Everett,” I said. “You’ve captured me. You’d best take me to the sheriff.”

  “What’s the sheriff ever done for me?” he said.

  He took a swig from the bottle, emptied it, and flung it aside, where it hit the tree and shattered. His pistol still on me, he fell to his knees, grabbed the front of my shirt, and yanked it up. When I tried to struggle, he slapped me across the face.

  We wrestled in the wet leaves, but he was too strong for me. He tore at my clothes, his hot breath stinking of whiskey, his forearm across my neck. Unable to move him, I felt with my hands in the ground around us, hoping for a rock or tree limb. My hand fell upon the neck of the broken bottle.

  Without a thought, I jabbed the bottle neck into his throat. He yelped and surged up, clutching at his neck, and I could feel the hot blood spurting over my cheek and shoulder. Smith fell back, making sounds like a hurt dog.

  “What—what’ve you done?” he gasped. His hand fumbled for the pistol.

  I kicked it away from him. He coughed, shuddered, and leaned back against the trunk of the tree. After a moment I crawled to him and tried to stanch the bleeding with my hood, with mud and leaves, with my hands. Nothing worked. I could barely make out his eyes as they glazed over. I sat watching as he bled to death.

  I stuffed my bloody hood into a hollow log and made my way in the lessening darkness back home. My legs were heavy with weariness, yet my mind whirled. When I closed my eyes, I again saw Sarah’s head snap back from the force of the shot. I prayed that Lydia was wrong about Iris. I wondered if the others had escaped, and realized that, if they had not, it would be better for me if they had been killed. Yet how could I face the day hoping for such a disaster, and knowing that Everett Smith’s body lay half a mile from our house?

  When I reached home, I crept quietly into the kitchen, undressed, and washed the blood from my face and hands with water from the kitchen pump. Dinah came in and sat on her haunches, watching me with feline imperturbability. I crammed my shirt and trousers into the woodstove, where the coals quickly set them afire.

  As I climbed back into bed, Robert lifted his head. “Thank God you’re back. I’ve been lying awake all night. Will this ever stop, Susannah?”

  “It’s stopped,” I said, resting my head in the crook of his arm.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  He kissed me on the cheek, and fell asleep. I lay there waiting for the dawn, my hand resting on my belly, thinking about whether I wanted it to be a boy, or a girl, or nothing at all.

  The Further Adventures of the Invisible Man

  Karen Joy Fowler

  —For Ryan

  MY MOTHER LIKES TO REFER to 1989 as the year I played baseball, as if she had nothing to do with it, as if nothing she did that year was worth noting. She has her unamended way with too many of the facts of our lives, especially those occurring before I was born, about which there is little I can do. But this one is truly unfair. My baseball career was short, unpleasant, and largely her fault.

  For purposes of calibration where my mother’s stories are concerned, you should know that she used to say my father had been abducted by aliens. My mother and he made a pact after Close Encounters of the Third Kind that if one of them got the chance they should just go and the other would understand, so she figured right away that this is what had happened. He hadn’t known I was coming yet or all bets would have been off, my mother said.

  This was before X-Files gave alien abdu
ction a bad name; even so my mother said we didn’t need to go telling everyone. There’d be plenty of time for that when he returned, which he would be doing, of course. If he could. It might be tricky. If the aliens had faster-than-light spaceships, then he wouldn’t be aging at the same rate as we; he might even be growing younger; no one knew for sure how these things worked. He might come back as a boy like me. Or it was entirely possible that he would have to transmutate his physical body into a beam of pure light in order to get back to us, which, honestly, wasn’t going to do us a whole lot of good and he probably should just stay put. In any case, he wouldn’t want us pining away, waiting for him—he would want us to get on with our lives. So that’s what we were doing and none of this is about my father.

  My mother worked as a secretary over at the college in the department of anthropology. Sometimes she referred to this job as her fieldwork. I could write a book, she would tell Tamara and me over dinner, I could write a book about that department that would call the whole theory of evolution into question. Tamara lived with us to help pay the rent. She looked like Theda Bara, though of course I didn’t know that back then. She wore peasant blouses and ankle bracelets and rings in her ears. She slept in the big bedroom and worked behind the counter at Cafe Roma and sometimes sang on open mike night. She never did her dishes, but that was okay, my mom said. Tamara got enough of that at work and we couldn’t afford not to be understanding. The dishes could be my job.

  My other job was to go to school, which wasn’t so easy in the sixth grade when this particular installment takes place. A lot of what made it hard was named Jeremy Campbell. You have to picture me, sitting in my first row desk, all hopeful attention. I just recently gave up my Inspector Gadget lunchbox for a nonpartisan brown bag. I’m trying to fit in. But that kid with the blond hair who could already be shaving, that’s Jeremy Campbell. He’s at the front of the room, so close I could touch him, giving his book report.

  “But it’s too late,” Jeremy says, looking at me to be sure I know he’s looking at me. “Every single person in that house is dead.” He turns to Mrs. Gruber. “That’s the end.”