400 Boys and 50 More

by Marc Laidlaw

  Hands went up. “The tree! I know, I know! It’s England.”

  "That’s right,” she encouraged. “And the piece he transplanted?”

  “America!”

  “Very good. And do you remember what happened next? It isn't shown in this painting, but it was very sad. Tinsha?”

  “When His father saw what He had done, he was very scared, he was afraid his son was a devil or something, so he tore up the little tree by the roots. He tore up America.”

  “And you know who the father really is, don't you?”

  “The . . . King?” said Tinsha.

  Grant and his guide went on to another painting, this one showing a man in a powdered wig and a ragged uniform walking across a river in midwinter—not stepping on the floes but moving carefully between them, on the breast of the frigid water. With him came a band of barefoot men, lightly touching hands, the first of them resting his fingers on the cape of their leader. The men stared at the water as if they could not believe their eyes, but there was only confidence in the face of their commander—that and a serene humility.

  “This is the work of Sully, a great underground artist,” said the jeweler.

  “These . . . these are priceless.”

  The Indian shrugged. “If they were lost tomorrow, we would still carry them with us. It is the feelings they draw from our hearts that are truly beyond price. He came for all men, you see. If you accept Him, if you open your heart to Him, then His death will not have been in vain.”

  “Washington,” Grant said, the name finally coming to him. An insignificant figure of the American Wars, an arch-traitor whose name was a mere footnote in the histories that Grant had read. Arnold had defeated him, hadn't he? Was that what had happened at West Point? The memories were vague and unreal, textbook memories.

  The jeweler nodded. “Yes, George Washington,” he repeated. “He was leading us to freedom, but He was betrayed and held out as an example. In Philadelphia He was publicly tortured to dispirit the rebels, then hung by His neck after His death, and his corpse toured through the Colonies. And that is our sin, the penance which we must pay until every soul has been brought back into balance.”

  “Your sin?”

  The Indian nodded, drawing from the pouch at his waist another of the shriveled icons. Christ—no, Washington—on the cross.

  “We aided the British in that war. Cherokee and Iroquois, others of the Six Nations. We thought the British would save us from the Colonists; we didn’t know that they had different ways of enslavement. My ancestors were master torturers. When Washington was captured, it fell to them—to us—to do the bloodiest work.”

  His hands tightened on the figure of flesh; the splintered wood dug into his palm.

  “We nailed Him to the bars of a cross, borrowing an idea that pleased us greatly from your own religion.”

  The brown hand shook. The image rose to the golden mouth.

  “First, we scalped Him. The powdered hair was slung from a warrior's belt. His flesh was pierced with thorns and knives. And then we flayed Him alive.”

  “Flayed . . .”

  Grant winced as golden teeth nipped a shred of jerky and tore it away.

  “Alive . . . ?”

  “He died bravely. He was more than a man. He was our deliverer, savior of all men, white, red, and black. And we murdered Him. We pushed the world off balance.”

  “What is this place?” Grant asked. “It’s more than a museum, isn’t it? It’s also some kind of school.”

  “It is a holy place. His spirit lives here, in the heart of the city named for the man who betrayed Him. He died to the world two hundred years ago, but He still lives in us. He is champion of the downtrodden, liberator of the enslaved.” The jeweler’s voice was cool despite the fervor of his theme. “You see . . . I have looked beyond the walls of fire that surround this world. I have looked into the world that should have been, that would have been if He had lived. I saw a land of the free, a land of life, liberty, and happiness, where the red men lived in harmony with the white. Our plains bore fruit instead of factories. And the holy cause, that of the republic, spread from the hands of the Great Man. The King was dethroned and England, too, made free. The bell of liberty woke the world; the four winds carried the cause.” The jeweler bowed his head. “That is how it would have been. This I have seen in dreams.”

  Grant looked around him at the paintings, covered with grime but carefully attended; the people, also grimy but with an air of reverence. It was a shame to waste them here, on these people. He imagined the paintings hanging in a well-lit gallery, the patina of ages carefully washed away; he saw crowds of people in fine clothes, decked in his gold jewelry, each willing to pay a small fortune for admission. With the proper sponsorship, a world tour could be brought off. He would be a wealthy man, not merely a survivor, at the end of such a tour.

  The Indian watched him, nodding. “I know what you’re thinking. You think it would be good to tell the world of these things, to spread the cause. You think you can carry the message to all humanity, instead of letting it die here in the dark. But I tell you . . . it thrives here. Those who are oppressed, those who are broken and weary of spirit, they alone are the caretakers of liberty.”

  Grant smiled inwardly; there was a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “I think you underestimate the worth of all this,” he said. “You do it a disservice to hide it from the eyes of the world. I think everyone can gain something from it.”

  “Yes?” The Indian looked thoughtful.

  He led Grant toward a table where several old books lay open, their pages swollen with humidity, spines cracking, and paper flaking away.

  “Perhaps you are right," he said, turning the pages of one book entitled The Undying Patriot, edited by a Parson Weems. “It may be as Doctor Franklin says. . . .”

  Grant bent over the page and read:

  “Let no man forget His death. Let not the memory of our great Chief and Commander fade from the thoughts of the common people, who stand to gain the most from its faithful preservation. For once these dreams have faded, there is no promise that they may again return. In this age and the next, strive to hold true to the honor’d principals for which He fought, for which he was nail’d to the rude crucifix and his flesh stript away. Forget not His sacrifice. His powder’d wig and crown of thornes. Forget not that a promise broken can never be repair’d."

  "I think you are right,” said the jeweler. “How can we take it upon ourselves to hide this glory away? It belongs to the world, and the world shall have it.”

  He turned to Grant and clasped his hands. His eyes were afire with a patriotic light. “He brought you to me, I see that now. This is a great moment. I thank you, brother, for what you will do.”

  "It’s only my duty,” Grant said.

  Yes. Duty.

  * * *

  And now he stood in the sweltering shadows outside the warehouse, the secret museum, watching the loading of several large vans. The paintings were wrapped tightly in canvas so that none could see them.

  He stifled an urge to rush up to the loading men and tear away the cloth, to look just once more on the noble face. But the police were thick around the entrance.

  "Careful, Grant,” said David Mickelson at his elbow.

  News of the find had spread throughout the city and a crowd had gathered, in which Grant was just one more curious observer. He supposed that it was best this way, although he would rather have had his own people moving the paintings. The police were being unwontedly rough with the works, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that.

  Things had gotten a little out of hand.

  “Hard to believe it’s been sitting under our noses all this time,” said Mickelson. “You say you actually got a good look at it?”

  Grant nodded abstractedly. “Fairly good. Of course, it was dark in there.”

  “Even so . . . what a catch, eh? There have been rumors of this stuff for years, and you stumble right i
nto it. Amazing idea you had, though, organizing a tour. As if anyone would pay to see that stuff aside from ruddies and radicals. Even if it weren’t completely restricted.”

  “What . . . what do you think they’ll do with it?” Grant asked.

  “Same as they do with other contraband, I’d imagine. Burn it.”

  “Burn it,” he repeated numbly.

  Grant felt a restriction of the easy flow of traffic; suddenly the crowd, mainly black and Indian, threatened to change into something considerably more passionate than a group of disinterested onlookers. The police loosened their riot gear as the mob began to shout insults.

  “Fall back, Grant,” Mickelson said.

  Grant started to move away through the crowd, but a familiar face caught his attention. It was the Indian, the jeweler; he stood near a corner of the museum, his pouchy face unreadable. Somehow, through all the confusion, among the hundred or so faces now mounting in number, his eyes locked onto Grant’s.

  Grant stiffened. The last of the vans shut its doors and rushed away. The police did not loiter in the area. He had good reason to feel vulnerable.

  The jeweler stared at him. Stared without moving. Then he brought up a withered brown object and set it to his lips. Grant could see him bite, tear, and chew.

  “What is it, Grant? We should be going now, don’t you think? There’s still time to take in a real museum or perhaps the American Palace.”

  Grant didn’t move. Watching the Indian he put his thumb to his mouth and caught a bit of cuticle between his teeth. He felt as if he were dreaming. Slowly, he tore off a thin strip of skin, ripping it back almost down to the knuckle. The pain was excruciating, but it didn’t seem to wake him. He chewed it, swallowed.

  “Grant? Is anything wrong?”

  He tore off another.

  * * *

  “His Powder’d Wig, His Crown of Thornes” copyright 1989 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in Omni Magazine, September 1989.

  THE NINETIES: FIRST-PERSON READER

  Looking at the stories I published in the first half of the Nineties, I see an almost smug confidence, a swaggering sense that I knew where I was going with my fiction and was in full control of my career. At times I would like to slap myself. But I know now that nature itself would soon be doing the slapping.

  Within a few years, we had a child, and then another. I could no longer think of my stories as my children, having real actual children. Like many others before me, I found it very hard to focus on writing. My greatest ambition was to sleep.

  In my search for more options, not to mention pure escape, I took to playing and reviewing videogames. Fascinated by overlooked possibilities for storytelling in games, I found myself (and my family) soon transported bodily into the game industry. Most of my writer friends seemed puzzled by the move. Seeing it from their point of view, it probably didn’t make much sense to give up a quasi-literary career to engage in a form of entertainment as disreputable in the ‘90s as comics had been in the ‘50s.

  But its very luridity made it irresistible. As the child of teachers, who had made his living in such respectable fields as typing and filing, writing and selling books, I had finally found a career of which my parents could disapprove!

  WARTORN, LOVELORN

  It was summer in the wine country, in the cleft of a hilly vale steeped in green heat. I had a noseful of dust, pollen and sex. Our sticky bodies separated slowly as we sat back in the remains of our picnic, the white cloth dirty and disheveled. Carcasses of roast game hens and rinds of soft cheeses were strewn about. The dry, greedy earth had drunk most of the vintage from a toppled bottle, and what remained we quickly swallowed.

  My companion rose, gathered her cast-off skirt and blouse, and went into the trees while running a hand through her blonde locks and smiling back at me. As I twisted the corkscrew into the mouth of the last bottle, I heard a muted whine, a soft explosion, the beginnings of a scream—all in the shady confidence of the forest.

  I called to her without remembering her name. She did not answer.

  I started to rise, then remembered my own nakedness. My gun lay out in the dust, tangled in my trousers. As I scrambled over the tablecloth, twigs broke and leaf-mould crackled in the woods. I claimed the gun and turned to face the forest. Where were my guardians?

  A shadow moved between the trees in hazy webs of light. I saw a glint of red-gold, like the heart of a forest fire. No one had hair like that except my hosts, the royal family.

  “Prince?” I called, thinking that somehow he had discovered my indiscretions with his sister last night; and now, in retaliation, had murdered the innocent I’d picked up at the edge of the woods.

  The figure with the flaming hair stopped behind the tree where my friend had fallen. I heard a low chuckle, and despite the heat I felt a chill. That was not the Prince’s laughter.

  “Don’t move!” I cried, my finger less than steady on the trigger.

  Out of the shadows she came, still laughing. The rifle strap cut between her breasts, her weapon holstered so that I knew she did not intend to fire on me. Even so, her eyes were a fury.

  “Princess,” I said.

  She mocked me with a shake of her head. “Dear Prince, whatever will I do with you? Was it only last night you filled my ears with promises of fidelity? This is a poor start.”

  “You’ve gone too far,” I said. “That girl—”

  The Princess took a step into the sunlight and her hair turned molten. “Was she important to you?”

  “She was innocent,” I said, momentarily blinded by her hair but pretending otherwise, not trusting her for even a moment with the knowledge of my vulnerability.

  “Should that have saved her?” she asked, her voice tiptoeing around me through spots of glare. I tried to follow her with my gun; she was toying with me.

  “If you’ve a fight to pick with me—”

  “Oh, come now. If my father insulted your mother, would she go out of her way to slap him in the face? Don’t be ridiculous. She’d pay her soldiers to fight, and plenty of innocents would die. This little ‘love’ of yours was in my way.”

  “I didn’t love her,” I said. “You needn’t have bothered.”

  As the glare receded, and her face went into shadow, I saw the Princess stoop to snatch a pear from our picnic and take a bite. I lowered my gun and began to dress, she stared at me with a curious smile while the juice ran down her chin, her throat. She was dressed like a huntress, in soft brown leather and tall boots. As I began lacing up my shirt, she stopped me with a touch. “Don’t,” she said.

  “Are you mad?”

  Her grip tightened on my wrist. She clenched her teeth behind her smile. “Will you tell on me? Why not carry as before? Only I will ever know that once you broke our promise.”

  I tore my arm away from her. “What do you want? We’ve had our pleasure but it can never happen again. What if we had been discovered last night?”

  She took a step closer, pressing against me, her smell aphrodisiac. “It would have simplified everything. We would be planning a spectacular wedding now. It’s what our parents want: the children of both countries formally wed.”

  I kicked through the remains of the picnic and fled into the woods, knowing that she was on my heels. A few yards into the shadows I came upon the body of the girl whose sweat and musk still flavored my tongue. Fallen leaves clung to the wreck of her face. As I leaned against tree trunk, the Princess caught me from behind, her nails cutting into my ribs. She twisted me toward her, biting at my lips. I stumbled against the tree, fighting her off, but she grabbed my hair and we both went down into the loam. She was naked beneath her brief leather skirt.

  “I don’t want this,” I said. My body hinted otherwise.

  “We’re two of a kind, Prince, and you know it.”

  I made myself relax. She believed my imitation of submission; her eyelids narrowed, pupils drifting to one side. She wasn’t seeing me, though her hands were all over my body. She tremble
d, already close, so close that I could feel myself being sucked along with her.

  Then I looked through the grass and my body went cold. She was looking at the twisted limbs, the torn belly, the sun-browned breasts draped in a bloodied blouse. The tree trunk obscured my view, but I knew the Princess had a clear sight of my dead lover’s gory face.

  “My God!” I rolled free of her. She lay panting in the grass, her body wracked by spasms. I tore myself away from the sight and ran toward my car and my guardians, toward the borders of home.

  * * *

  My private jet left the Princess’s airspace shortly after sunset; it was another hour before we circled and came to earth. That was time enough for her to destroy the old pattern of my life, as I soon discovered.

  Instead of the black ultralight carriage that normally awaited my return, an ugly armored vehicle idled on the airstrip. Arqui’s car. In constant fear of assassination, he never traveled in anything less secure than a street tank. Inside, Prime Minister Arquinian sat breaking pencils and cleaning his fingertips.

  “You’ve done it now,” he said as I took an uncomfortable seat beside him. “Mind telling us what happened over there?”

  By “us” he meant himself and the Queen Mother, who watched from a two-way in the roof.

  “How much do you know?” I asked, casually opening the wet bar which the P.M. never left behind.

  “How much?” I could see he was in a rage. “They’ve declared war! It’s finished now, all the treaties. Five years of my life, you ruin in a pleasure jaunt that was meant to ease tensions.”

  “It was fate,” I said with a shrug.

  “Well, what happened?”

  “I met the Princess.”

  “The Princess,” Mother said, as if she understood perfectly. She had been a princess herself once. “You two had a fight? A lovers’ tiff?”

  “Lovers!” Arquinian waxed apoplectic. “My God, and it came to this? The casualties are already past counting. Can’t you talk to the girl, reason with her, if she’s the cause?”

  I shook my head, raised my hands. “There’s no reasoning with her, she’s in a passion. I’m all she wants.”