Mothership

by Bill Campbell

  As I’m sure you’ve noticed, death isn’t the great equalizer it’s made out to be. Layers of hierarchy remain, interlaced by the tangled webs of power and privilege. The dead, after all, are human, and what could be more human than an unnecessarily oppressive bureaucracy at the end all be all of existence? Anyway, through whatever combination of sinister string-pulling and luck, this particular departed old-timer is obviously immensely powerful. If nothing else, you can tell because he’s completely unfazed by the presence of two no-nonsense COD soulcatchers in his living quarters. The guy’s from way-back-when, judging by his threads. He has on an elegant 18th-century-type jacket, complete with poufy nonsense at the collar and doily cuffs.

  The wretched feeling only grows stronger as he sits there, smiling and looking off into nothing. I like to do things cleanly, gather what information I can before slicing an afterlifer into oblivion, but wave after wave of nauseating bitterness is fouling up my flow. I notice Riley’s glow flicker wearily. This’ll have to be quick.

  “What’s up with the dead kids?” I say, pulling a shiny spirit-killing blade out of my cane. He doesn’t speak, but I got his attention. Without moving his eyes, the old ghost focuses all his energy and concentration on my weapon.

  “Listen,” Riley says, producing his own glowing saber and directing it at the easy chair, “we being nice by talking to you right now instead of just getting this over with, but we could certainly—”

  You dare address Captain Jonathon Arthur Calhoun III, boy?

  The voice is a sharp slither inside our heads. The old man just sits there smiling.

  “Excuse me?” Riley demands.

  “What do you want?” I say.

  The Calhouns were once a well-respected family. It feels like a knife is cutting away parts of my brain with each word. Kept New York harbor a central point in the transatlantic slave trade. Ran a de-facto empire from our estates in the Hudson Valley. A name known all over the civilized world. Three generations later, my fop of a great-great grandson has further disgraced his noble lineage.

  “Is he talking to us?” Riley whispers.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  My knees are starting to give out. I’m not sure if I’m holding off ending him from fascination or fear, but the no-turning back point’s fast approaching.

  And now: Here I am in this faggotine city of corpulence, cross-breeding and cowardice, shackled to a worthless, slave loving progeny. Still: I manage to have my fun, wreak my vengeance in a manner fit for pharaohs.

  “The first born sons,” I say. “The tenth plague. You’re a dipshit just like your great grandson.”

  The old man turns his shaggy sneering face toward me for the first time and I almost double over with nausea. The extinction of the black race has to begin somewhere. Why not in the uppermost echelons?

  I’m done finding shit out. Time to endgame the situation. As I step forward to engage the ghost, the office door swings open and John Calhoun bursts in. He’s wearing tighty-whiteys and a stained, white t-shirt. He looks pissed. Gone is the forced smile he had flashed again and again that afternoon. “What the hell do you think you’re doing in my office, Detective?”

  He stands directly between my blade and his slave-trading, child-killing ancestor. A cruel laughter erupts in my brain like a bomb going off. “Get out of the way,” I say. I’m trying to put on a calm front but a shiver has found its way into my voice. Both Calhouns hear it. The laughter in my head gets louder. “I have to destroy that chair.”

  “That chair is an heirloom!” John Calhoun screams.

  “I bet,” Riley mutters.

  “I’m calling the police,” Calhoun announces, as if that settles the matter. He produces a cell phone and I swat it out of his hands with my cane. He glares at me in total disbelief. I swat him again, higher this time and he falls out of the way and cowers in a corner.

  “Let’s get this over with, man,” Riley says. He’s beside me now, weak but ready to move. “Hold off Captain Underpants and I’ll deal with Grampa.” I feel his icy hand on my shoulder, steadying me.

  The transmission comes in blaring and staticky: Councilman Arsten to agents Washington and Delacruz. We both straighten to attention at the sound of Bart’s nasally voice. Be advised, the entity known as Captain Jonathon Arthur Calhoun III, deceased 1846 of New York State, is a confirmed protected entity. He is not to be touched, harmed, or insulted. I try to concentrate on holding my blade steady, keeping both Calhouns at bay. Riley starts breathing heavily. Under no circumstances is he to be dispatched into non-existence. This concludes Emergency Executive Order 203–14 of the New York Council of the Dead. Failure to comply will result in banishment and termination.

  When the transmission ends, all I hear is the ghost Calhoun’s piercing laughter. I lower my blade slightly and then bring it back up. I feel Riley bristling and burning like a fireball beside me. There’s a pause. Then Riley lurches forward. I see the blade flash and the old man’s face suddenly looks frail and desperate. You ever notice how old people do that? Act all powerful until things don’t go their way. The ancient phantom moans, gurgles and then shrivels out of existence. On the floor lies the crumpled pile of wood and fabric that had once been a Calhoun family heirloom. I feel suddenly light on my feet. The whole room takes a breath, like the steam had been let out of the pressure cooker.

  John Calhoun, still cowering in the corner, stammers nonsensically. Riley and I look at each other. I can’t decide if that’s disappointment in his frown or just the sullen satisfaction of a grim job well done. I had hesitated. When he moved, the whole world had moved with him to deliver that divine justice; I could feel the sacred pantheon reveling in his victory around us. But the repercussions of defying the Council are devastating. We don’t have much time. Death’s angry bull’s-eye is already swirling toward Riley.

  Calhoun screams and I realize that Riley has made himself visible. I guess once you’ve tossed the rulebook out, you might as well go all the way.

  “You’ve caused a lot of problems,” Riley says.

  “Jesus, what are you?”

  “It’s not about me. Maybe if you’d spent more time studying your own people before you came studying mine, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “I—I don’t understand!”

  “I think you do, but I’ll let it slide. Imma need you to do me a favor, though, Mr. Calhoun.”

  “Anything.”

  “Put some of that degree’d-up intellect of yours into dealing with your shit,” Riley says, “and move out.”

  “What are you going to do?” I ask. We’re strolling slowly back down toward the darkened river.

  “I don’t know yet,” Riley says. “Get the hell outta here, for starters.” We both laugh weakly. I light a cigar.

  “About what happened back there—”

  “I did what I had to do,” Riley cuts in.

  I know those words are gonna haunt me. We walk a little further in silence. I try to ignore the image of that great warehouse with all its misty apparitions flickering into a frenzy as word of Riley’s disobedience spreads. Icy fingers will twitch anxiously. A flurry of messages will broadcast out. The gears of supernatural war are about to begin thundering toward the ghost beside me.

  “They’re gonna send me after you,” I say.

  “I imagine so.”

  “Things will get messy between us.”

  “They don’t have to.”

  I nod. We shake hands and walk in separate directions, drifting off into the New York night.

  The Parrot’s Tale

  Anil Menon

  A long time ago, in the land known to its happy inhabitants as Tamil Nadu, there lived a young woman, Shanti, and her old Brahmin husband, Sankara.

  Now in some parts of the world, such a situation is a recipe for disaster. Not so in the land of the Tamils. Here the Gods were benign, the men honorable, the women mostly chaste, and the children mischievous. The mornings were filled with Sanskrit chants, th
e afternoons with the songs of the women working in the fields, and the evenings—why, the evenings were the best of all. The women would decorate their lustrous black hair with white jasmine blooms; their lithe brown bodies would curve to the metres of ancient Sangam poets; and when they laughed it was as if the rice fields had accompanied them home. It was the best kind of paradise: cow-friendly, tree green and people rich.

  No one was more conscious of these facts than the young wife. As if she hadn’t been lucky enough in her location, time and culture, her husband was also a great Sanskrit pundit, learned in all the sixty-four arts, including cock-fighting. How many women can say that of their snoring clods?

  But on some nights, fragrant with kurinji flowers, it was impossible not to contrast the snores of her scholar with the distant sounds of necklace shells jouncing on makeshift beds. To take her mind off certain images (it is unnecessary to list the moist details), she would offer silent prayers for her husband’s long life.

  Perhaps if the wife had been literate, she would’ve known what to do. Doesn’t the Panchatantra say that a wife delights in four things: pickles, gossip, night and a husband out of town?

  Didn’t the poetess Vijjika say that human adultery inspires the bees and thus flowers the world? Imagine a world without flowers!

  A monk goes to the lady of a house: lips, navel, full bowl and hungry spoon. Come, come. Who are we to judge? Aren’t we all jouncing beads on Lord Venkateswara’s bejeweled neck?

  But alas, the pundit’s wife was illiterate.

  Now, like so many other men, Sankara enjoyed going to sleep with his head in his wife’s lap. She had strict instructions to massage his eyebrows till the third snore emerged. To prolong her pleasure, he would resist sleep with all his might.

  He would get chatty. He would tell her stories.

  An appropriate number were from the Ramayana, extolling the virtues of Lady Sita, namely, domesticity, a rigorous fidelity, and a fair waist blessed with three folds. But he had many other stories. Stories to guide her when he wasn’t around. Stories to point out her limitations. Stories about the illusory nature of change. Stories that proved this world, her world, was the best of all possible worlds. Sankara was an inexhaustible fount of stories.

  Once, when the elder was narrating the first conjugal night of Lord Shiva and Lady Parvati—couched of course as a recipe for chiroti, a delicious cake made from semolina, saffron, slurp and expense—Shanti’s slim fingers timidly petitioned a privilege that no mistress should ever deny and every harlot should learn to perfect. But as the Manusmriti cautions, wives are neither!

  “Wife!” squeaked the pundit, utterly outraged. “You are asking me to tell a story that cannot be told!” Then he placed her fingers where they belonged, namely, on his eyebrows. “Listen to what is told.”

  The tale that cannot be told! Now, this heresy has many names. Some poets call it “The Parrot’s Tale,” for when a claim has no legitimacy, its father is most likely a parrot. The Tamils call it “The Sound of the Kiss,” but then, everything sounds like a kiss to that happy race. The soft-spoken Telugu, Pingali Suranna, confused it with the story the Creator, Lord Brahma, was attempting to tell his wife, the very beautiful and very learned Lady Saraswati. Obviously, no such story exists. How is Lord Brahma to tell a tale to His very beautiful and very learned wife if everything He utters at once turns into fact!

  Doubtless, other races have their own apophatic fabulists, their own liberation theologies.

  Since Shanti had been instructed to pay attention, that is what she did. She listened intently, paying attention to the drawing and release of each breath, seizing hold of the onset, nucleus and coda of each and every precious syllable. So determined was she to listen that on some nights the young wife would fall through the gaps into the telling.

  Stroke upon stroke of her husband’s eyebrows; oars dipped into the still waters of the mighty Kaveri. Across the shore, on the other side of the terraced temples was a mango grove. There she would find waiting for her? Well, what does it matter who she found? She had no use for names. In time, her womb began to dream.

  One dawn, the old man awoke to find his wife bustling about, looking tired but happy. As the Manusmriti cautions, it is a foolish husband who finds a quarrel in this situation; a tired wife means a busy wife, and a happy one means a good meal. Still, her cheerfulness was such that curiosity gained the upper hand.

  “Wife. That swollen lip. Explain.”

  “An errant bee, husband. It mistook my lip for a flower.”

  “Hmph. And that tear in your blouse?”

  “From a stray thorn while picking firewood.”

  “Hmph. You should be more careful. A loose woman’s virtue and her clothes are soon parted.”

  And then the pundit told her a pithy story from the Hitopadesha to make the lesson real. He would’ve expounded further (why else did she have ears?), but he had to go to work.

  Now, there are some people who appoint themselves God’s roosters. The old scholar was one of them. Each morning, he walked to the terraced temple by the river to awaken Lord Venkateswara with prayers.

  But this morning, he was strangely agitated. Pollen, passion; thorns and bees. How careless his wife was. She was beyond instruction. He remembered the old saying: you may narrate the Panchatantra to a parrot all day, but it’ll remain a parrot.

  “How true,” reflected Sankara, as he passed a gnarled and ancient mango tree. His wife was that parrot.

  Just then, two large and wet plops landed on his right arm.

  “Inauspicious. Inauspicious.” He wiped the bird droppings away and looked up.

  There were two parrots in the mango tree, lovely specimens, decked out in bright greens, face-slapped reds and flashes of yellow. It was as if each were the tip of some color-drunk paintbrush. The birds gazed right back at him, cocking their heads, this way, that way, in the disconcerting manner of the species.

  “Truly a storyteller,” commented one of the birds, “at this very moment—”

  “We sit clothed in his words,” completed the other.

  Sankara immediately realized of course these were no ordinary parrots. Uncertain as to the recommended emotions, he joined his palms together in a namaste.

  “Forgive me, O noble birds. Please feel free to peruse any and all of my stories. I’ve consumed many a text, so your enjoyment is bound to be rich in the nine savors.”

  And he opened his eyes wide, so that the birds could gaze all the more conveniently into his soul.

  “So many stories pundit,” began one bird, “so ferocious a faith in stories and yet—”

  “Yet,” interrupted the other, waggling its engorged black tongue, “born of all that stories cannot tell, here I am—”

  “Here I am, born of all that stories need not tell—”

  “Cannot tell a kiss, beloved, only taste one—”

  Sankara closed his eyes.

  At this point, for a proper appreciation of all the emotional savors, the conscientious storyteller may invite a member of the audience to jointly narrate what happened next not with words, but responsibly lewd use of their tongues. Indeed, should such a member be available, it is recommended the entire tale be so narrated.

  When the old man re-opened his eyes, the parrots were gone. Red-green-yellow leaves fluttered, as if the mango tree were daring him to doubt.

  Sankara sank to the ground, slack-eyed, mouth open, knowing the moment that comes to all storytellers had come. The stories in him scarcely paused to say farewell. The more modest ones pulled up their pirate pants and emerged as bees. But others just tumbled out, helter-skelter and higgledy-piggledy, as naked as the day they had been made. Words tore through Sankara’s husk, swirling and flailing, circling and streaming, like a gust of wind pursuing itself through the jagged hollows of bleached trees.

  Forget about awakening Lord Venkateswara; the din woke up the entire village. It wasn’t long before Shanti arrived on the scene.

  Her husband, a
man who would rather explode than let out a fart in public, was sitting by the side of the road, dhoti half-undone, shouting in Sanskrit. She didn’t understand the words, but they made her cheeks burn.

  The young woman clasped her palm over her husband’s mouth.

  A good thing too. He had declaimed Vatsyayana’s arousing Fifth Adhikarana in its entirety, howled through Damodara Gupta’s Doctrine of the Bawd, insisted on open-bloused selections from Rupa Goswami’s Ujjvala Nilamani, and had just begun outlining the courtesan Muddupalini’s thesis on the composition of triangles given two straight lines called Krishna and Radha. Even Lord Venkateswara probably hadn’t expected the old man to let go of telling so thoroughly.

  Shanti helped her husband to his feet. He was staring at her as if he’d never seen her before.

  And she was a sight: hitched sari, disheveled hair, half-revealed waist, ladle in hand and flushed cheeks. All women, the incomparable Kalidasa has remarked, are at no time as beautiful as when they’re caught cooking interrupted.

  “What happened,’ cried the wife. “Tell me what happened, lord.”

  This, of course, was what the pundit could no longer do. He tentatively touched the gentle rise of his wife’s stomach.

  “Is this the parrot’s tale, wife?”

  She simply didn’t know how to answer such a profound query. Had she been literate, perhaps it would’ve been different. Shanti might have said something counter-profound, such as:

  “Dear husband, a woman has five knots. The first two keep her from nakedness and may be undone by a husband’s hands alone. One knot may be given to a lover. The fourth is loosened to her liking. And the fifth? Why, the fifth is what cannot be undone. A knot that now unfolds in me.”

  But alas!

  Shanti placed Sankara’s hand on her shoulder, and led her Brahmin home, now as docile as a newborn calf.