FSF, December 2007

by Spilogale, Inc

  For Li'l Wallace's benefit, he said, “Shush now, little miss, you know no one gonna hurt you here, we're decent folk here, no one gonna treat you with any disrespect, come now, Ivan's gonna take you back to your home."

  And when he looked up into Li'l Wallace's eyes, suspicion and fear were fading. Li'l Wallace blinked and smiled uneasily and let a breath out. His eyes said: you handled that well. I hope.

  Ivan nodded and walked back toward the pond. Li'l Wallace stood behind him, uncertain whether to follow, and Ivan said, “I'll see you tomorrow, brother."

  The brown duck quacked at him by the side of the pond. Wanting bread. But he had no bread left. Sarah's little body was warm and light against his. He leaned his head back a little to look in her eyes. She would follow him anywhere. She didn't care if he was white or black. He was her sent angel.

  Ivan felt the sting of tears.

  Could it be different, this time? What if there was no shaping, no manipulation, no harvesting; what if he gardened her soul, not for himself, but for her? She was his now: very well, he would be hers. His heart was racing; he felt her total attention, the silence in her mind, the way the collected clear themselves away to make room for the master's will, and it sickened him. He could cherish her, like a daughter. Would it bring her back to herself? He'd freed prizes before, abandoned them to collapse into madness. Not this time. Too late to turn back. He steeled himself: this time there would be only love, a father's love!

  He put Sarah on her feet as they approached the porch steps. She leaned in toward him, inhaled the scent of him as it breezed off his shirt, his jacket, his skin. He looked down at her, scratching his jaw, and opened the door.

  "Muriel?” he called in, escorting the girl inside. He sat Sarah down at the kitchen table and scooped generous curls of ice cream into a bowl. He heard Muriel coming down the stairs as he handed Sarah a spoon.

  Muriel stopped when she saw the girl. She had not expected a third person in the house. The two of them locked eyes.

  "This here is our new friend, Sarah,” Ivan said.

  "Hello, Sarah.” Muriel nodded, a nod of extreme politeness, a nod in which no one could find any insolence at all. Her spine was knotted tense. She looked around the room at the chairs, wondering if she should sit down. Smiled broadly. Tried not to wonder where this girl's people were, if they were looking for her, what they would do if they found her here. Trying to trust Ivan. Just a little girl eating ice cream, Ivan saw Muriel tell herself, trying not to think of torches and dogs.

  Sarah shrank back a little. She glanced at Ivan, looking for some cue or instruction. She found it in his expression and put down the spoon.

  "I don't mean to be any bother, ma'am. Your husband was kind enough to help me after I took a fall on the road. He kept saying nice things about you and so we thought I might like to meet you is all.” Sarah sparkled at her hostess. Her smile was warm and innocent, smudged with vanilla.

  "Oh,” Muriel said, relaxing a little. “Of course.” She stepped forward and opened the napkin drawer. “Well, you're certainly welcome here."

  Sarah flicked a look back to Ivan. He smiled to reassure her. Well done, little one. We will convince my Muriel. She needs a little time for these fears of hers, fears from the world beyond this house. They don't belong in this house anymore; they don't matter now.

  Sarah stroked her chin, mock serious.

  "Now if I had to guess, I'd say you made this delicious ice cream yourself, am I right, ma'am?"

  Muriel laughed and turned back to the girl. “Oh yes, and it's kind of you to....” She stopped and looked at Ivan. He realized he was stroking his chin in exactly the same way, and jerked his hand from his face. Muriel handed the girl a checkered napkin. “Sarah, would you excuse us for a minute?"

  Sarah did not move. Not until Ivan dismissed her. Then she collected her bowl, flashed a jealous glance in Muriel's direction, and went out to the porch.

  Muriel waited until she heard the screen door swing shut. “Ivan, what in Heaven's name is going on here?"

  "I'm sorry, Muriel,” he said.

  Maybe Muriel hadn't believed Ivan's stories until now, not all the way. She'd listened attentively to all he told her about what he was, what he had been, while she fell in love with him. But for her it was just a bad old life he'd led, as if she'd married a man who had fought his way up from being a back-alley drunk. She hadn't thought too much about the people he'd left behind. “You're sorry?"

  "I just wanted to talk to her, Muriel—I was curious, and then—she was in a bad way, and I thought we could help her—” He gritted his teeth with the effort of leaving alone the tension knotting the muscles of Muriel's neck, the panic in her eyes. A mortal man would soothe her, wouldn't he? Li'l Wallace would soothe her. But where was the line? Did he err, in keeping his face flat, his movements drained of their power to unravel her fear? She turned her face away. “Li'l Wallace came up and I had to be Negro again. The child panicked, so I ... I had to...."

  "How could you?” Muriel whispered.

  "Muriel, it ain't like that. I don't want a prize or a tool. It's—it was just—the girl's about to be orphaned. We could ... she needs us."

  "You promised me, Ivan.” Muriel whispered. It burned like a bullet through Ivan's heart.

  "Muriel, I know it was wrong. But it's done. We can do this with love, Muriel, as a family—"

  She whipped around to face him. “Ivan, how can you be what you are and be such a fool? Look in that little white girl's eyes, look at how she looks at me. That's not a daughter, Ivan. That's a slave. Is that what you think I want?"

  It would be so easy, so easy. “Oh Ivan,” she would say. “You're right, I'm just shocked is all—but that poor little girl—bring her back in. Let's make this work."

  And then he'd have lost her. He'd have two slaves.

  "This is what I am, Muriel,” he hissed. “Should I just abandon her? I'm responsible for her—"

  Muriel walked to the sink and held onto it, seeking purchase. “You're responsible to me, too, Ivan. You chose me too. You said ‘I do.'” She wiped at the corner of her eye a few times as if something was stuck there. “So what, then? Are we going to run away from my home and family? Set up a new life for you and your white daughter, with me as the maid?” She leaned forward at him, her face flushed dark as wine, her voice shaking. “Or are you just gonna change everybody so they don't mind any that she's white? Or so they don't know no more? Are you going to just work some of your tricks on Aunt Gertrude and Li'l Wallace and the preacher and the police? Are we all gonna end up as your trained puppies?"

  He stood up from his chair, his hands at his sides. He put his ice cream spoon down on the table. If the others of his kind had been there, they would have heard volumes in the clatter of that spoon. Muriel just looked at him. So he said, “I can never give you what you want."

  Muriel burst out crying.

  That surprised him, and for a moment he felt a little surge of terror from an ancient part of him. What was he losing, that mortals started surprising him? He hadn't been paying attention. It had been easy to see them clearly, in the old days, like dangling string above a kitten, knowing how the kitten would jump. Now he'd fallen into a mysterious country.

  He put his arms around her, and she bowed her head to push her forehead into his shoulder.

  "You fool, you fool,” she sobbed, “I don't need no baby, I just want you."

  Like a fist, some kind of joy or sadness forced its way from Ivan's chest up through his throat and out through his face. Its passage was sudden and unexpected, and Ivan sighed. He did not know who he was anymore.

  They held each other. Her tears cooled his shoulder, and he could feel the tremors dancing through her. And then he tasted his own tears, unbidden, cool on his cheeks.

  "Ivan,” Muriel said in a throaty whisper, “You tell me straight now. I don't want your good intentions, I want the truth. Is there any hope for that little girl? Can you undo what you did?"

&n
bsp; It was safe here, in Muriel's arms. In this safe place, he thought about the plan he'd made on the walk back home, and he could smell its stink of pride—the pride of princes. Muriel felt it in the silence, and she stiffened.

  "You mortals,” he said, the words muddy in his throat, “you walk around with this huge—emptiness in you, like wanting back into the womb. You think we'll fill it. Once you get that hunger ... you don't let go. You'll die for us, but you won't leave us. Maybe I can make her forget, but the hunger stays."

  "And if you keep her here? Or we go off with her?” She shook her head. “Or you go off with her alone? Is she going to get better?"

  "I don't know."

  Muriel pulled away. “Good Lord, Ivan! Guess!"

  He looked at his hands. “I think she'll be something like a child, and something like a prize, and maybe that'll twist her up.” He could feel his cheeks get hot. “No. She won't get better. And I'll have to be ... what I was."

  Muriel shook, her eyes closed. She put her hands over her face. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus,” she said.

  Ivan said nothing.

  She wiped her tears on her apron. “I can't give you up willingly,” she said. “God forgive me. I can't make you stay. And I can't follow you into that."

  "I know,” he said. He thought of Aunt Gertrude, of Li'l Wallace, of Henry, of the preacher, of Bob Pratchett the white foreman at the mill. How long before he damned them all? He was a fool.

  She saw it in his face. “Ivan. Listen to me. You got to leave folks alone.” She reached a hand out to touch his cheek. “And you can, I know you can. You ain't no demon, Ivan. You're just a sinner like everybody else."

  He kissed her, and took her close. He squeezed his eyes shut and smelled the salt of her tears, mixed in with dish soap and sweat and vanilla and the spice of cedar wood.

  Then he blew his nose into the paper napkin and wiped the sweat from his brow. She looked away from him, down at the table, as he got up and left the kitchen.

  Sarah was sitting dutifully in the twilight, looking out onto the dark oval of water and the first eager stars that blinked above it. She heard the screen door swing open and turned, bright with anticipation.

  "It's time to go home,” Ivan said.

  She shook her head, unsure if she had heard him correctly. He offered his hand and she took it. Her fingers were cold from the outside air and the ice cream inside her. They walked through the ragged grass over the hill.

  In her face was a wolfish joy—she was soaking him in with her eyes. Somewhere behind that need was that lonely little girl, brave enough to pray in a lonely cemetery. His chest throbbed with pain.

  Her lips shivered and her teeth clicked together. He wanted to give her his jacket, but how could she forget him then?

  They reached the road. He let go her hand.

  He stepped back from her and slouched, scratching his head. He spoke in a new tone that was neither paternal nor comforting, but like that green-eyed nigger who lived in the house by the pond.

  "Well, I hope you enjoyed your dessert. Now run along afore anyone sees you hangin’ round here."

  He saw the arrow of panic as it stabbed through her. Where was her Ivan? Where was her angel sent? Who was this man? “No, no,” she said, looking around her. Her head was foggy. She wiped at her eyes. She looked at him: some harmless nigger standing with her under the cold night sky. She stepped away. “What—"

  Ivan forced himself to turn and wave respectfully, to walk away.

  When he glanced back, Sarah was hugging herself. Her thoughts burned the air. A moment ago she had been saved, she had had a father and a home. Had she been with Jesus? No, she'd eaten with some niggers—shame leapt burning to her cheeks.

  She pushed past a fence post and began to run. God had seen her, seen her naked soul, seen everything there was of her to love, and abandoned her. He did not love her at all.

  The lost soul fell into the night.

  Coldness made a fist in Ivan's belly as he crossed over the hill to his house.

  He pulled his jacket around him and stared ahead. Muriel had turned the porch light on so that he would not stumble.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  The Bone Man by Frederic S. Durbin

  Readers with strong memories for names might recall Mr. Durbin as the author of “The Place of Roots” in our February 2001 issue. His short fiction has also appeared in Weird Tales and in the magazines for younger readers, Cricket and Cicada. His 1999 novel, Dragonfly, is set around Hallowe'en—as is his new story, in which a stranger comes to town on the wrong day....

  It was hunger that made Conlin turn off the route. At least, hunger is what he decided to call the sensation, a growing restlessness that pulled his gaze to the exit sign, that made him search in erratic, highway-driver glances for what might lie behind the billboards and guardrails. It would be just more empty fields, he knew; but he wanted to be down among them now, and to find a place to fill his stomach.

  The T intersection at the ramp's bottom gave no hint which way led to civilization; the blacktop to the left actually looked more promising—wider, and with a blur of buildings at the horizon—but Conlin turned right and headed east along a gravel-popping oil road. He was going on instinct, which had never failed him yet. Something about the dusty forest bottomland in that direction beckoned him, the trees vivid in their autumnal colors. Rutted pastures, sagging wire fences, water troughs streaked with rust—landscapes like this never changed, not in the thirty-odd years since Nixon had resigned, not ever. Under a hot midday sun, pigs wallowed in mud on Conlin's left. One stood against the weed-grown fence and flared its nostrils as he drove by. Creepy animals, pigs, especially the big ones—lots of brain behind those beady eyes.

  The road undulated like a roller coaster, each dip getting lower as it descended to a hidden creek somewhere beneath the red-gold-russet-olive-gray masses of the trees’ crowns. Conlin liked low places, the woody, forgotten corners that were hard to see into, hard to get into. Those were useful places, not that he needed one now. This was pleasure, not business.

  He could see a town ahead, beyond the first thicket of trees. No usual green sign announced the name, but it wasn't worth reaching for the map. Standing astride the community was a telltale water tower, dull silver and rusting on its legs like one of H. G. Wells's abandoned Martian machines. No name painted there, either. Conlin toggled his driver's-side window down a couple inches, letting in the cool air. Even behind the smells of hogs and dust, it had a purity, clean as the pale light on trees going to sleep.

  Conlin knew why he'd taken the exit. It wasn't just about food. Little towns reminded him of where he'd grown up. Home—the concept no longer held much meaning, certainly no nostalgia. But he guessed the porches and the alleys never really left you; you never stopped hearing the rattle of boxcars and the slam of their couplings. He liked to drive through these places now and then to see that they still existed.

  He hadn't eaten in about sixteen, seventeen hours—a busy night, a few hours’ sleep, and then a steady focus on driving. No point racing back to Chicago. The job had gone well. He'd found Enfield—it was on the map if you looked close.

  The road climbed. An International Harvester truck loomed at the hill's crest, as suddenly as if the Earth had opened up and disgorged it. Conlin swerved slightly to the right, the weeds brushing his fender. The truck's driver raised a hand amiably and was gone in a puff of diesel fumes and scattering pebbles. Country people usually waved, not that they trusted you. Hi. Hey. Howdy. As a rule, Conlin avoided getting out in small towns, but he'd come quite a way since Enfield, and old Cooper wouldn't even be officially missing for about five days. Cooper was “on a fishing trip."

  Cooper had made it easy. Thought he was safe in Enfield, but you weren't safe anywhere. Now Cooper was inside a double roll of sturdy, ventilated plastic mesh, weighted down with big field rocks at the bottom of a creek much like the one ahead. The plastic would last forever—that was the beauty of plastic
. Cooper wouldn't last, though. Conlin thought of catfish nibbling on the old man and then being caught and served up themselves on dinner tables, in the diners. That notion shouldn't be so amusing.

  Tapping the brakes, Conlin guided the Malibu down onto a one-lane bridge across a muddy creek. Like the water tower, the bridge was old-style: riveted girder rails no higher than the car's windows, and uniformly rusted to a pitted orange-red; raised tracks for the car's wheels, sun-bleached timbers with a gravel bed between. The hog-wallow stream wandered out of the pasture to the north and away under the gloomy woods to the south.

  It was a perfect day, one of those midfall days when the sky seemed to be having a clearance sale on sunlight, Everything Must Go. Not a cloud in sight.

  Conlin flinched at a flicker of motion and swerved again. He'd had the impression of someone standing just at the roadside, maybe some old farmer about to lurch across without a thought in the world for oncoming cars. But no one was there. It had probably been a trick of the tree shadows and the long banner rippling beyond, on the verge where the forest made way for the town.

  He blinked at the banner. It was fixed to four stakes and had black letters on its billowing orange length:

  PARADE FRIDAY 7:00

  Parade. Today was Friday. Conlin smirked in recognition. Hallowe'en, the holiday when it was suddenly okay to lurk in the shadows and watch the world through the eyeholes of your mask. The sign didn't say “Hallowe'en.” It didn't have to. The occasion was obvious from the date and the colors. Conlin felt a tickle of impulse—why hurry back, indeed? He could eat a leisurely lunch, then hang around until dark. See a parade. Take life slow. Smell the flowers. Hallowe'en was the only holiday that had ever made sense to Conlin. It wasn't about all the noble, altruistic feelings people pretended to have; it wasn't about the supreme Beings they dreamed up and tailored to their needs. It was about the two realities, masquerading and death.

  Houses: big ones stood out on the flat horizon, flanked by barns, sheds, vehicles, a few tall trees. But here in the town the houses clustered thickly, some one-storied, some two-. Porches on most. Huge old oaks and elms in the yards, leaning over the shingled roofs.