Aeon Nine

by Aeon Authors

  “What’s the matter?” Travis thought Crockett might be reaching his breaking point as well. He tended to be an amicable person, but he looked as if he’d like to murder the painter.

  “There’s something wrong with these paintings, and he won’t acknowledge my attempts to learn what it is. You say you see a pine forest. Do you know what I see? A group of riders situated across a rocky ridge. The second regiment of the Tennessee Volunteer Mountain Riflemen, to be exact. I know those men; we rode together. Right there’s General Jackson in the lead, scanning that valley for signs of Indian activity. And in the back, a sorrel colt with an empty saddle. Like it’s my saddle, and they’re waiting for me. So you tell me why it is I see all that and all you see is trees.”

  Travis saw none of these things. “No two people view a painting the same way.”

  “I’m not talking about artistic interpretation,” Crockett said, unable to curb his frustration. “I’m talking about two people seeing something entirely different when staring at the same spot. I’m talking about the fact that this man might as well have pulled this mural out of my memory. And the fact that the damned thing is alive. Swear to God I saw it moving.” Crockett snapped his mouth shut, like he’d suddenly realized he might be better off keeping his ravings to himself.

  “It’s not just me,” he said, lowering his voice and stepping toward Travis so no one would overhear. “I’ve been talking to the men and they all claim to see different things in these paintings. They say one of Kimbell’s men walked right through a wall and never came back. He said he was going home.”

  The painter paused, as if eavesdropping on their conversation. Crockett watched Travis, waiting on a response, but the Lieutenant Colonel didn’t know what to say. Crockett was obviously farther gone than he’d believed. Yet, he couldn’t shake the memory of the deer bolting away in the blink of any eye. It wasn’t in the mural any longer, but it had been there moments ago. Hadn’t it? Travis moved toward the wall and he felt warm summer wind blowing from somewhere other than Texas.

  “I’m not saying I believe them,” Crockett said. “I just want to know what this man has to say about his paintings.”

  When Travis didn’t respond, Crockett stalked away, cursing. Travis stared into the brush, noticing for the first time the doe tracks left behind in river mud.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The painter’s brush stopped moving and he turned his eyes to Travis for the first time. The intensity of that stare halted any further advance, and Travis experienced the unsettling feeling that those eyes kept ancient secrets he couldn’t possibly comprehend.

  “You are but the walking dead, and I am here to provide the path.”

  The painter turned back to his work and he acknowledged no other attempts at conversation. Colonel Travis was left to wonder whether the old man’s words were a threat or a prophecy.

  Death came for them just before dawn.

  Four columns of Mexican solders assaulted the mission from different sides; pale golden light parted the horizon while choking black gunsmoke suffused the air. Bayonets separated men from their lives, and the defenders staggered beneath the horde of soldiers pouring over the walls, splintering the gates, driving them back with sheer numbers. In close quarters, the defenders fought for their lives with fists and knives; the blood of revolutionaries and Mexicans alike clotted in the dirt, mingled together in a harmony it could never have achieved in life, and as more souls fled their flesh, the walls became truly alive.

  Travis had just finished disarming a Mexican solder and killing the man with his own bayonet when he noticed the walls had disappeared. The scene surrounding him seemed conjured from the bloodiest pit of hell, yet beyond the fray grew the majestic pines of South Carolina. Others noticed too, through Travis understood now they were witnessing their own version of Paradise. Fighters from both sides of the battle reacted in amazement, yet none could slow the struggle without achieving instant death. Several men at the edge of the conflict bolted for the place beyond the walls, and Travis recalled the old painter’s words.

  You are but the walking dead, and I am here to provide the path.

  Even as he engaged another soldier in hand-to-hand struggle, he realized they would all walk that path in the end. It was their destiny, for better or worse. Whether the painter was a god or a demon, he understood the workings of fate. Why show them the way to Paradise if there was still a chance they’d live? Yet he knew he would fight this certain outcome until the final moment. But when given the choice of instant Paradise versus the ugly battle to resist it, he doubted all his men would share his resolve.

  Travis found the enemy soldier’s chin with the butt of his rifle, knocked the man to the ground and drove his bayonet into the man’s chest. He pulled it free and turned to another target, screaming in a ravaged voice. “Hold this place! Hold this place! Do not run. For your families and all you’ve built. Hold this place!”

  Amazingly, they reacted with a burst of vigor, pressing back the rapidly closing circle of Mexicans. Several more fled in terror—and a number of Mexicans joined them—but for the most part, the defenders remembered why they were there. They may not have understood what was happening, but the possibility of flight was beyond consideration.

  Travis killed another man. His mouth tasted of blood and he knew he was wounded, but there was no time to check. As he struggled to stay alive against the growing onslaught, he wondered if Paradise was indeed his childhood home. How long before he walked the painter’s path and what would he find at the end? Even amid the terrors of battle, the smell of pine breezes and tobacco rose above the blood and smoke. Travis couldn’t tell if any of it was real, but he seized on these sensations, using the longing they conjured to fuel his attack.

  William Travis released one last rally cry to his troops before a bullet tore through his skull and answered his every question.

  David Crockett had never been truly terrified before this moment. He had survived his share of skirmishes but this was a slaughter. If anyone was left standing in an hour’s time, it would be a miracle. Blood caked his clothes as he whirled through the battle, killing men with his knife and waiting for his luck to expire. All the while, he wore a red-toothed grin, screaming curses at the enemy and driving his men to greater heroics. Crockett might be terrified, but he would never allow anyone to know.

  He was so embroiled in the battle, he didn’t notice the mission walls had been replaced by a Tennessee ridge until something hit him in the back and knocked him to the ground. As he scrambled to his hands and knees, he saw General Jackson and the others, waiting for him less than fifty yards away. The general beckoned with a gloved hand, and the sorrel colt trotted toward him as if the general was sending it to carry him home. For an instant, he considered climbing into the saddle and riding for someplace beyond the horror. He thought of his wife and children, wondered if there was a place for them in his delusions. But he intended to make a place for them here. In the realm of reality. And he would not be persuaded by dreams.

  Crockett climbed to his feet and turned his back on temptation. A band of Mexicans surrounded him, yelling in Spanish. Crockett understood—they knew who he was and were debating whether or not Santa Anna’s demand for no quarter applied to American legends. Crockett decided to take the decision out of their hands. A wide-eyed solder half his age threatened him with his bayonet. Crockett grabbed the man’s rifle and pulled him forward, then slammed his knife into the Mexican’s stomach. He withdrew the blade and began to advance on another soldier when something heavy struck the back of his head and dropped him into darkness.

  Crockett knelt in the grass outside the mission. His hands were bound behind his back and several soldiers stood nearby, their rifles pointed toward him as if he were a monster that might escape and tear them to pieces. He stared at the billowing smoke that rose above crumbling walls, far enough away to witness the entirely of his defeat, but close enough to hear the crackling flames and to smell
the burning flesh.

  He could not recall how he’d come to the Mexican camp, but he understood he’d been spared because he was Davy Crockett. He also understood the rapid-fire curses directed at the men who’d spared him and the death sentence that had followed from Santa Anna himself. No quarter meant no quarter, and that applied to common men and congressmen alike. Crockett watched the sky grow gray as he waited for the gunshot that would end his life.

  And then he saw it—amid the smoke and flames there remained an unblemished section of the painter’s mural, and Crockett grinned, wondering how that stooped old man had managed to paint the outside of the mission walls too. General Jackson still waited for him, no doubt eager to pursue another band of renegade Creeks. The sorrel colt stamped the ground and whinnied, as if urging him to hurry. There were more adventures to be had, more legends to birth. Crockett nodded to Jackson, indicating he was ready to follow the general on one last ride across the fields of memory.

  When the gun barrel touched the back of David Crockett’s head, he closed his eyes and waited for his captors to send him home.

  Eat the Rich

  Daphne Charette

  “I won’t say the 2004 elections had nothing to do with it. I won’t say the hole in the ozone layer has nothing to do with it. I certainly won’t claim that being raised by an economist had nothing to do with it. Some problems are so large, so overwhelming, that issues of culpability and responsibility can seem impossibly convoluted. But I always find myself left with one simple question—who profits?”

  “EVERYONE’S GOTTA HAVE A SPECIALITY,” Moof says. Like his is being good at getting the guys to do shit, and at keeping the boxtops around—that’s what he calls hos, cause they got a box and he likes ’em on top, he says. Me, I generally like ’em any way I can get ’em—which isn’t often.

  “Now you, Raym, you don’t got no speciality.” Moof squats down next to Raym, shaking his head. Corton giggles—he’s the one staking Raym’s hands. I can hear the thud-thud of the mallet even over the screaming. Moof scowls at Cort, letting him know this isn’t fun time; he’s trying to make a point, here. Cort stops his giggling. Moof glances at the rest of us, making sure we get it.

  We get it. Jonah, who’s been a real jag-off lately, pales and looks away as Cort gets back to business. Thud-thud-thud. Raym arches and screams while Moof looks on with this sorrowful expression, kind of serious and regretful. Looking like he’s done all he could but it came to this anyway. Which he did, pretty much. Raym just wasn’t good for anything.

  I squat on my haunches, my arms wrapped around what’s left of my jeans, and look up at the sky. Snow spits out of it like flakes of dandruff, not very serious. Getting on toward spring, finally. My belly growls. I wish Cort’d hurry up.

  Low on the horizon the clouds are smeared with the same grayish yellow as the skin of a fresh corpse—jaundice, Moof says. All the piss and shit backing up in your body, poisoning your blood. The old man laughed when I told him that, said that was close enough.

  Cort moves down to the ankles, rips off the workboots that Raym found in a sub-basement in Levinsky’s, uppers all chewed to shit by the rats, but the soles’re still good. Cort looks ’em over, tosses ’em to Fiedel who’s what you might call our mechanical whiz, and goes back to pounding. Fiedel drops to the ground and tears off the rags and shit he’s had wrapped round his feet since Moof had to cut two toes off his left one. The stub’s still all black and oozing. I don’t like looking at it, so I look away.

  Out toward Westbrook there’s still a mustard-colored streak where the sun’s going down behind the clouds. That’s where Raym’s from—or that’s what he told us, anyway. He told us a lot of shit till Moof cracked him one and told him to shove it. I don’t know that I half-believe any of it. I don’t know that I want to.

  Thud-thud-thud. My belly growls. A dead leaf skitters along the cracked pavement. State Street, it used to be called. The old man told me that. I asked him what “state” meant, and he said it was like the Doaks, only bigger. A whole gang of people, thousands of them, more than you could ever imagine, he said. And there were lots of gangs—lots of states—and each state’d pick a couple of people to say for them, like Moof says for us, and send them all to a place called Deece to talk to each other. I asked him where Deece was, and he waved southward. Somewhere down there, he said, beyond Bosstown.

  It’s hard to imagine, all those groups, all those people. But I can sort of see it, too. Like us and the Proms—that cracks Moof up, the Proms; ho skirts, he calls them. That’s what prom means, according to him. I meant to ask the old man about that too, but I keep forgetting.

  Anyway, there’s us, the Doaks. That’s what our stake’s called—what used to be Deering Oaks Park, the old man says. When everything got all built up the Bosses left the park for show, and now it’s about the only farmable piece of land around till you’re out past Gorham. The Proms staked the eastern part of Portland, up along the headland, which is risky—the Bosses still come out there, sometimes, all bundled up with their breathing masks and shit to sail little boats on the choppy gray water, or at least the Proms say they do—but it means they’ve got access to the harbor and the salt flats and the old rotting piers.

  So a couple of times a year we get together to trade. The Proms’ll all stand along one side of Congress Square, which is neutral territory, and their eyes’ll glitter at the sight of our radishes and early peas and tomatoes and shit. And then Andy, who says for the Proms like Moof does for us, will heft a sack and send its contents spilling over the worn red bricks. Fish, usually, or mussels, wet with seawater and mixed with deep-green kelp, making my mouth yearn for the taste of salt. Sometimes crabs. And both sides stand there, eyes devouring, licking their lips, while Andy subtracts a fish from their pile or Moof adds another ear of corn to ours until they both nod and step back.

  Maybe Deece was something like that.

  I hear the bones splinter in Raym’s left foot, and realize he’s not screaming anymore. He must’ve passed out. I’m glad, though I try not to show it—Moof teases me already about being soft and asking stupid questions and wanting to know to read like Fiedel. Though I think the whole thing might be bothering Moof some too, weird as that seems. As Cort finishes with the last post I hear him whisper, “Shoulda had a speciality, Raym.” His words go swirling away with the spits of snow.

  I’m small, and quick, and good at worming into places. That’s my skill, my speciality. It’s why Moof and them let me hang around—I’m the one squirmy enough to go down manholes and wiggle through bars and shit. It’s nothing personal, what Moof’s doing, it’s just the way it is. You gotta have something to contribute.

  But I think Raym’s stories had something to do with it, too.

  I glance around at the others as Moof straightens and checks the light. Jonah, Fiedel, Scram and Deke are nearest to me. The rest are ranged on the far side of Moof. Twenty-eight of us—twenty-seven, now, all watching Raym, glad it’s him and not us (though Moof’s only staked two other guys I know of), but it’s more than that, it’s everything that’s different about Raym, the way his bones seem more solid than ours, his muscles firmer, his skin more pink. Even when he told us why that was and what it meant—or what he said it meant, anyway—we resented him. And none of us like thinking about the shit he told us either.

  So that’s a part of it, too, I’m pretty sure. Making the stories go away. But mostly it’s just plain survival.

  The shadows are deepening, now, and the breeze is picking up, pushing at the branches above us, making them creak. There aren’t many leaves left on them, not after all these years, and not many trees, either—most of ’em were cleared for growing space, and we still take down one or two a year for burning. But Deke says he can remember when they used to have leaves, green like the beans and corn and potatoes, and in the fall they’d turn orange and red and yellow like a fire flickering way up there above your head. Twenty years ago, he says. The old man says it’s longer ago
than that, and that Deke’s older than he remembers. I tilt my head back and try to imagine all that color. I asked the old man once how old he was. Sixty-three is what he said but I don’t believe him. Nobody’s that old.

  Somewhere in the distance, a dog yips. Moof says it’s time so we fade back, leaving Raym staked there as the sky goes from charcoal to black and the dogs start coming out. I sorta hope Raym doesn’t wake back up but he does when the first pack tears into him. I grip my knife hard—I’m not much use with a spear—and try to ignore the screams coming from under that pile of snarling, gnashing teeth. Then Cort spears a medium-sized one and chucks the body to me to bleed and skin, and I don’t have time anymore to picture Raym’s sandy hair sticking out in blood-matted spikes or his wide brown eyes watching the dogs eating his flesh….

  He’s still screaming when the first pack’s wiped out, eight dogs in all, their carcasses packed away into the little stone building we use as a meat-locker. “That’s good,” Moof says, “the noise’ll bring another pack quicker, that way.”

  We fade back again, and wait.

  Later, we go see the old man. Stuffed with meat, we sprawl around his fire, talking but not saying much. A half-eaten dog hangs over the flames, which crackle and hiss each time a gob of juice drips down. Off in the shadows I hear grunts, squishy sounds—the hos showed up, of course, when they smelled the hot meat.

  Way down beneath us is the pulse of the Bosses’ machines, the air-and-water scrubbers, the rumble of a tubie. The old man tilts his head, listens. “Supplies,” he says. I can never make out how he tells them from the passenger tubies, they sound the same to me. Every so often steam plumes up through a grate, heating the place even more. It’s one reason the old man lives here, deep under the wreckage of the old Civic Center. That, and he likes the cars.

  They glitter outside the fire’s circle—a flash of rusty chrome here, a sparkle along a shattered windshield there. Fiedel got one going once, and we took turns squealing it around the upper level of the parking garage, smashing it into the other cars till the old man made us stop. That was fun. That was a good day.