Days of Little Texas

by R. A. Nelson

  “No,” I say. “No. Not the vessel! It’s not the vessel I love. It’s what’s inside.”

  “Then tell it to me. You say I don’t know about love. Tell me something about it that I don’t know.”

  I grit my teeth and don’t say anything for a long time. Maybe I’m just trying to stay alive, hold things off as long as I can. But then it comes to me. The best answer. The right answer.

  “I never knew it would be so hard.”

  Just like that, she—it—looks like the real Lucy again. She’s holding out her arms to me.

  “That’s all right,” she says. “Come here, baby. Won’t you touch me? Come here and touch me like you did before. You know how bad you want to.”

  “Lucy never talked like that,” I say, clenching my jaw. “What have you done with her?”

  The thing touches the blue dress it’s wearing, like she did before. Lucy’s blue dress. Presses a hand over its heart. Lucy’s heart.

  “She’s here,” it says. “Lucy is with me. We are in here together. We will always be … together. This is where she wants to be, with me. That’s why she tricked you. Got you to come here. So you can be with both of us, Little Texas. And then we will all always be together.”

  “I don’t—I don’t believe you,” I say. “She would never be a part of you. She’s—she’s … good.”

  It pulls its arms back. “Is that the best you can do? Lucy is good? I’m supposed to be afraid of that?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Well, you do have a gift. You’re absolutely stuffed with light—together … we could do so much. I can offer you many things, Ronald Earl. How about… say … eternal life?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’m sure I would fit right in, if such a place existed. But I have to tell you, Little Texas, there is only this place.” It flings Lucy’s thin arms around. “This world. It’s all that has ever existed. Or will exist. So how about it?”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re evil.”

  It sighs. “This has been so much fun. But it’s time we got on with it. Didn’t I tell you? You’re here to perform a healing.”

  Drawing the word out, all sneering and slow.

  “Heal what? Heal you?” I say. “I don’t think anybody could do that. The Lord could, if He wanted. I’m not Him.”

  “Oh, let’s pretend. That’s what you’ve been doing all along, isn’t it? Pretending to be the Lord.”

  “You shut your mouth.”

  “Oh. Listen to the big man. What are you going to do, save me? All right, you get to be the Lord. Right now. This is your last chance to play. Heal them.”

  There’s a skittery kind of noise somewhere in the dark; I pick up the flashlight and turn my head just in time to see something at the edge of the beam. It clambers across one of the roots on its fingernails and drops at my feet.

  I jump back, aiming the light. Whatever it is, it’s all hunched over and gnarled up.

  Oh my Lord.

  It is—it’s a little man with bluish skin and close-cropped hair. Muscles stringy and knotted, face all tendons and bones. Big, square teeth like a horse. His feet are bare. His back is crooked over so far, he’s practically looking straight at the ground. But he’s not. The little man is watching me.

  We stand there studying each other, me in shock, him quiet but coiled up, ready. He paces this way and that in the little space. Then without warning, he springs at me and fixes his teeth on my arm. I holler out, knocking him back with the flashlight. I can feel the flashlight hitting bone.

  The blue man splays himself against the tree root, then lunges at me again, digging into my arm with his broken fingernails and hissing like a hognose snake. I beat at him furiously with the flashlight, smashing at his face, knocking him to the dirt. He lays still a minute, but I can see his chest rising and falling. Both of us wait like that, breathing hard.

  Another little blue creature slips over the root. I jerk the flashlight around. It’s a woman this time, with long, rabbity hair and eyes red as dogwood berries.

  She comes at me with her teeth and fingernails, ripping a hole in my shirt and slashing at my chest. I smash her with the flashlight, sending her screeching. Another creature drops over the root. Another. Another. They’re coming so fast, I can’t think, can only smash at them with the light. Can’t let them get me. I can’t. I swing the flashlight again and again, but there are more and more of them.

  Too many! They start getting their hands on me, biting, pulling, tearing with their nails. I swing for their skulls with the light, but they’re pulling me down between the roots, pinning me to the earth. The light sprays around, wild. I see shattered teeth, crooked fingers, pus-colored eyes.

  They’re trying to speak, but it comes out in a spitting, screechy growl. The rasping sound of their fury hedges up around me as they close in further and further.

  The mush that was Pastor Hallmark’s Bible is under my back, grinding into my shoulder blades through my shirt.

  But then the bluish people fall back, giving me room to breathe. I see its face over the big root again, looking down into the flashlight beam.

  “‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’” I manage to say.

  It genuinely laughs this time.

  “You really believe in him, don’t you?” it says. “Almost more than the other one.”

  The little blue faces bob in and out of the light, square teeth gnashing, mouths shaking with pure rage. It waves at them.

  “You think they’re mine, but they’re not. They’re yours. Don’t you recognize your own?”

  My own.

  Own. I nearly choke on the word. “Souls in amber,” it called them.

  The bluish people aren’t devils or demons. This is what they’ve become in centuries of pain and misery.

  The slaves of Vanderloo Plantation.

  The rusty chains clank in the branches, telling me, Yes, yes.

  The slaves begin to jostle and snap at each other, spreading their sharp fingers.

  “See how energetic you make them?” it says. “That’s good. I’m hungry. I’m always hungry.”

  “I won’t listen to any more of this,” I say.

  “That’s all right,” it says, waving an arm. “You see, they get hungry, too.

  “Take him.”

  They slam against me. Several clap their filthy hands over my face; my mouth is full of nasty fingers digging their way inside, clawing at my tongue. I bite down hard, making them scream.

  Biting, clawing, hitting. Their nails sting like nettles on my arms, tearing at my sleeves, raking my skin. I scream the words out:

  “‘O Lord God, remember me.’ … ‘My times are in thy hand….’”

  They are raining blows on me now, cutting me to pieces. My shirt is wet with my blood.

  I feel as if I’m sinking into the earth.

  I’m sorry.

  Sorry I didn’t do better. Sorry I lost my faith. Sorry I failed to help them.

  I’m sorry, Lucy.

  I fight as hard as I know how, but I’m getting dizzy, starting to feel like I’m dropping away. Is this what it feels like to die?

  Certain Certain’s face swims up in my head. I’ll never see him again, he’ll never know what happened to me. But…

  Wait. Wait.

  Even as I’m getting swarmed under, even as they are tearing at my clothes, my flesh, I realize something. They are mine. They’re all of ours. And I remember. I remember.

  “Lucy!” I yell. “I’m ready! I’m ready! I know what you want! I’ll do it! I’ll do it.”

  The blue people scream like they’ve been stabbed with an ice pick; their bodies slink away. I gulp in a huge breath, let it out again. It takes all the air I have just to speak. I shove myself up to a sitting position, spitting and coughing. Finally I’m able to stand, clutching at the big root for support.

  Its voice is a snarl, impatient. “What is it? What do you want?”

  I touch my cheek, feeling the claw
marks there, the warm, wet blood. “Anything can be hurt,” Lucy said once. I hang on to that picture of her. The true Lucy.

  “I want… I want to be with you,” I say, taking in long, gasping breaths. “I know that now. You’re what I’ve always wanted.”

  It licks its lips and pulls me over the root as if I were a baby. Takes my bleeding hand and puts it on its breast.

  “This is the real strength, isn’t it, Ronald Earl? The strength of the body. The flesh. There is no such thing as sin. No such thing as evil. Only energy and what you do with it.”

  It starts to take me in its arms.

  Think of that. Think of her body, I tell myself. Think of nothing else. You have to think of nothing else. Think of the white room. Taking Lucy there…

  Make it flesh, oh Lord… make it flesh….

  I lean in close to its body, my fingers closing over the rawhide cord around my neck.

  I jerk the cord loose and slam Certain Certain’s slave tag into the thing’s forehead.

  “Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee!”

  The thing shrieks in rage and pain. Instantly I feel a blazing heat sear my fingers, but I keep pushing and pushing till I can feel the slave tag charring its way into its flesh—I hold it there, flat against the thing’s forehead, forcing it to scorch its way deeper and deeper into its skin.

  My arm flares with a pain like I’ve never felt before, so fierce the inside of my head bursts with lights. But I keep pressing the slave tag harder and harder, wanting to drive my arm inside its head.

  Lord, let me see this great fire … let it take all of me… take me out of the earth … make me a sanctuary … let me go over, I pray thee, and take off its head….

  I keep pushing harder and harder, the pain becoming an impossible agony, the skin broiling off my hand, the muscles, tendons starting to burn away.

  The thing rocks backward, but I clutch even harder with my free hand, shoving the bones of my fingers deeper and deeper into its wound—it’s screaming now, and I’m screaming, too, and our screams join somewhere in the branches of the tree.

  And let me die the death of the righteous….

  It stumbles back away from me and sits down hard. I fall on top of it. My burning hand pulls free of the wound in its head.

  The thing groans and starts to lift itself up on its elbows, tearing at the burning square of flame on its forehead—

  I slam into it with all my weight, throwing my arms around its body. Screaming the only words I have left. Those old words from the Song of Solomon. The ones that freed Lucy the first time.

  “‘LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH’!

  “‘LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH’!

  “‘LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH’!”

  I scream the words into its chest, again and again and again. It rocks and struggles under me, trying to buck me off. I keep screaming the words over and over.

  “‘LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH’!

  “‘LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH’!

  “‘LOVE IS STRONG AS DEATH’!”

  I don’t know how long I shout it. How many times. I don’t know.

  Its body bows up beneath me, back bending, skinny arms taut as ropes. It shakes all over, and a big gust of breath pours from its mouth, sounding like wind.

  The thing makes a terrible rattling noise deep in its throat, and its body settles under me, easing itself down, down, down, till all the strength is gone out of it. And there is nothing left but weakness, then the weakness goes, too. It is still.

  I slump to the ground, falling over on my side, weeping.

  When I open my eyes, the flashlight is reflecting off the white bark of the trouble tree. I lift myself up on one hand and hold my burnt arm up to the light—it’s whole. Some of the pain is still there, but even that is bleeding away.

  I look….

  The small body in the leaves begins to shift and change.

  I watch it happen, breathing shallow. Watch the anger, the fear in its face, drain away.

  It’s getting smaller.

  The body sinks slowly, slowly into the leaf mold. As it sinks, a low sigh slips away on the wind. Then there is nothing but the leaves rattling in the branches of the trouble tree.

  It’s gone.

  A sound like a child’s gasp makes me turn—my breath catches—the blue people are still there.

  But they’re so still now. Still and watchful. Not hunched over anymore. Bodies tall, straight, unbroken. Skin glistening. Quiet. They look like … people. I can hear them breathing.

  One of them, it looks to be an older woman, peels off from the rest and goes up to the trouble tree. She touches the tree, stroking it with her fingers. Then slips like a dissolving blue smoke in the beam of the flashlight right up its trunk. Lost in the branches.

  Another one follows. A man this time. He looks back at me, looks at all of us, and passes into the arms of the tree.

  They all leave that way. Dark blue shapes touching the tree, then turning into a kind of powder, lifting up from the ground, till they are wafting away.

  Free. Free.

  Everything is gone. Everything except the wind and the tree and the night.

  My hand still aches … I don’t care. I might sit right here till the battery on the flashlight runs out.

  “You,” a voice says behind me.

  I try to get to my feet, but I stagger and fall. Try again, and this time she’s there to catch me. Her hot tears roll down my shirt.

  “I’m so sorry, Ronald Earl… I’m so sorry … I didn’t know! I didn’t know … I couldn’t. I couldn’t warn you. I tried, but I couldn’t…. It was like … it was like … oh please, please … keep holding me….”

  I don’t care if she’s made out of steam or sound or something that doesn’t even have a name. “You’re here,” I say, weeping into her hair, clinging to her, barely able to speak. “You’re … you’re really here.” Again and again and again.

  Lucy looks up at me, eyes gleaming.

  “For a little while … I don’t… don’t have much left in me. You understand?”

  “But… I… how …”

  “We thought… we thought we had everything figured out, but it… it knew.… I thought I would be safe … after it left to go … to where you were … but it took me … it took me, Ronald Earl… took me the minute … I came … I came here to wait for you … like being held by a thousand … arms … but you … God, Ronald Earl… you …”

  My words come out in pieces. “Certain Certain… I remembered … the slave tag … fear, hate … if that’s what was … holding them … I figured love …”

  “Shhh, shhh …” She pats my hair. “I know … I know.”

  It feels so good to be in her arms. Good beyond any good thing I’ve ever felt before. My breathing, my heart, it all begins to slow. And still we hold each other.

  “They’re okay now, aren’t they?” I say. “The slaves? They went home! Did you see them? I saw them, Lucy! I saw them go.”

  “I know. Yeah, they’re home. We did it. You did it.”

  “It felt… it felt so good! Seeing them go … knowing … nothing would ever … would ever own them again.”

  “But, Ronald Earl…”

  “Lord, how I wish Certain Certain could have seen it! All those slaves … free … free.”

  Lucy pulls back to look in my face. “The blue people … they weren’t the slaves of Vanderloo, Ronald Earl.”

  “But—I saw them! Lucy, I saw them go … they stroked the tree just like Certain Certain said, and then they went away … they’re free now, free—”

  “The slaves of Vanderloo were free a long time ago,” she says. “We didn’t free them. They didn’t have to be freed. They did that themselves.”

  “But… I don’t understand … what did we … who—”

  “Those were the owners.”

  I stand there listening to the wind. Holding her. Feeling the truth trickle over me.

  “The owners,” Lucy says after a little while. �
��And people like Thaddeus Palmer. I didn’t know myself until… until I was inside with them.”

  “But… I thought… I thought they were …”

  Lucy nods. “Oh, those were slaves you set free, all right. The owners and overseers and auctioneers … you see that now, don’t you? They were slaves, too. The worst kind. They enslaved themselves. And now I know why they brought us here—me and you—to help them. At first I didn’t understand that myself. But who better? I know, we didn’t do it, we weren’t alive back then … but we’ve benefited, right? From what our ancestors did? Even all these years later?”

  I look at the big tree in awe. “Certain Certain … he told me … it’s something we owe. All of us.”

  Lucy’s looking, too. The night is quiet. I don’t see anything there, but I think she does. Maybe she does.

  “I have to go, Ronald Earl.”

  I feel her voice in the middle of my chest like a branch that can’t unbend. I know before I can say anything that what she’s saying is true. But I have to say it anyway.

  “But you’re coming with me, aren’t you?”

  Lucy looks at me, her lips tight. She holds her fist out, reaches it out to me.

  “What?” I say.

  I put my hand out. She drops something in it. I can tell just from feeling it that it’s the little corner of brick I lost back at the plantation. I know the words are still there.

  “No. Please. No. Don’t leave me here alone. You can’t. Please, Lucy. I can’t stand it. I can’t. I have no one.”

  “I—Ronald Earl—it’s not up to me. It’s killing me. It’s killing me, too. But I have … I have … it’s a gift. I want to give it to you. Before … before I go.”

  “No! I just want you. I don’t care about any gift. Just—”

  She puts a finger up to my mouth. I can feel the heat coming off of it.

  “Please,” she says, looking into my eyes. “It’s happening faster than I thought. Hold still. I’m going. I’m going. This— it’s really hard. I have to put everything I have—all of it…”