Comments..

I've been trying to post comments, but it won't work.. So I will do it this way

A Country Woman:   I thought this was really good.  Your best expression of your nemesis plot that I have read yet. I was intrigued by the character and her actions. The transitions into verse were interesting , definitely made the plot move... If there was a part 2. I would be excited to read it.

V: the lineation really compliments the theme of the poem.. As the lines spill over and suddenly stop, it added a sense of out-of-controlness.   Very good job conveying emotion, intense poem.

Until the Landscape Rang:  imagery stood out amongnst all else.  The part where he turns to fluid and then resolidifies is great.. Very interesting to imagine.  I thought the story flowed along well and was very easy to read and understand.  And, of course, I dug the pop culture plugs.   

A Country Woman

R. Boon

December 20, 2013

A Country Woman

With forced calm, Rachel set aside the solar panel and lifted the lid of the incubator, looking at eggs inside.  The February temperature, mid 80s day, 70s through the night. That helps, she muttered to herself, thinking and muttering not much separate in these, her lonely days and longer nights.  If only the little solar battery would last through a night.  All those nights getting up, checking the temperature, transferring the eggs so carefully against her skin, bundling up till her skin was itself an inferno, layer over layer, though never quite the 99.5 ideal.  Just never below 97.

            She looked at the eggs, smooth, simple.  Brown and blue and green.  Something exotic that had amused Mary.  Seven eggs.  We—funny to say that.  We, when it’s just me here.  But there will be others.  If I can find ways to feed them, find protein and fat without shooting everything that moves.  And I would do that, too, but that bullets are also hoarded now.  She poured a bit more water into the tray beneath the eggs. We need every one of them to hatch.  Seven—not a great gene pool, but if we can just keep these alive, someday a trader will come through with more chickens. 

            She touched the one blue egg.  To be so impractical, they always told me, being a professor of Medieval Rhetoric, learning Old English, the ancient rhythms and riddles and prayers.   Nu scylun hergan   hefaenricaes uard  metudæs maecti  end his—she broke off here, again, at the start of Caedmon’s Hymn.  Her purpose, Her nurturing and angers, giving this middungeard, this middle earth, to the ones who will care for it.  That’s where the praise should fall.  Her fingers felt the struggle inside this one lonely blue egg.

            My coop needs repair, she thought.  I wish Kate were still around.  She always called herself “a handy gal.”  And she would be handy now.  Moved to Iowa before…  She closed her eyes, felt the grit in one.  Yes, Kate fell out of my world just before the world fell apart.  She looked down and talked to the eggs.  I’ve worked so hard on feeding you, all of you in this future.  I have persimmon trees back there in the chicken yard, and some mulberry, and those old twisted plums, fruits that will drop for you in different seasons.  I need to get some pear trees.  And for us, learn how to use the hickory nuts and acorns.  I’ve read about that.

There was a noise from a brown egg.  Rachel gave a startled laugh.  Almost.  Maybe today.  Soon, you there, scrabbling for bugs and--no, there won’t be corn.  A bitter laugh.  Corn.  Was that the start?  The blights that ran through America’s monoculture, that wiped out a whole season’s corn.  And no seed.  All of it sterile, by design, and the corporations with nothing to offer.  A little famine?  Or, a lot of famines, stretched over a year and a half, and the storms and floods and droughts.  All of it in two bad years.  So fast to crash the whole world.  Food riots in Egypt, across Africa, into the Middle East.  And China desperate, buying up all the grain they could find.  Then India, and Pakistan.  And oil supplies cut.  And threats and military actions.  And then all at once, that one explosion of rage and we lose a thousand years. 

            She wiped her hand on her apron.  The half-full jar of peanut butter sat on the table, the very clean spoon beside it.  I cleaned out how many stores?  And I put in that special order, just in time.  500 jars.  16 servings, two tablespoons, in each jar.  8 grams of protein, 16 grams of fat. Don’t ignore that.  Fat isn’t the evil anymore.  Two spoons a day, by myself, that stretches out some seven years. The damn plastic jars won’t even last that long, hidden, buried, dispersed in a dozen places.  Not enough, but it will keep us going.  And there will be more of us.  More women.  I won’t leave the rest on their own.  Not forever.  And I have the pumpkin seeds.  And the cows.  If I can learn to make cheese, keep milk longer, trade it.

The patrol had ridden through two weeks ago, warning about three drifters seen off the old Interstate.  No mail.  How she ached for a letter.  Some personal link, someone out there. Not just…. She had known as soon as she saw the firelight just over the hill that night.  No one would waste that much wood these days.  That Mary and Frank… 

            Ah, the “noble fragment,” she said and chanted the old poem to the eggs:

Then, Holofernes grew joyful, that tramp and drifter,

Gold-friend of warriors, glad o'er his wine-cups;

Laughed he, shouted he, raised clamor and uproar,

That the children of men might hear in the distance

How the stern-mooded leader stormed and bellowed,

how he burned and destroyed and believed in no future,

How, insolent, mead-drunk, he mightily urged  

Braves on the benches to bear themselves well.

Thus did the evil one all day long, with rape and fire--

And so I found a last old bottle of scotch, she said, still talking to the eggs, found the jars and measured out the milk, fresh and wholesome, and made them ready, made my plans and put on a nice skirt—yes, a skirt, no tailored suits for me, no department meetings, no conferences in Chicago or Boston—brushed my hair, and went to visit, the concerned neighbor lady, concerned, competent, not too old, not too plain.  And I walked over the ridge, and saw what I knew I would see, the barn gone, still smoldering.  I had a little hope when I saw the chicken coop still there, and the house. 

And then there was Frank, Frank’s body out in the yard, disfigured, parts taken as trophies, or for grisly humor.  I didn’t see her till I got closer, didn’t see Mary there, naked, and…  Their boy, too, the 12-year old.  Naked, violated, thrown out for to feed the wild beetles and crows.

How my hands shook.  And my legs.  I almost turned back.  But one of them saw me.  Came out.  I made my offer.  My barter, for the chickens, trying not to look at their crimes.  How they laughed.  Hauled me inside.  I opened the box and showed them the jars.  The two followers, they grabbed the milk, guzzled it right down, the sweet, dear poisoned milk.  Yet,

Quick to his bed, in this house violated and stolen,

Led they the wise-mooded woman; went, then, stout-hearted

Heroes, to announce to their prince that the pure-souled Judith

Was brought to his tent. Then, waxed the illustrious one,

Ruler of boroughs, blithe, thought the bright- souled woman

With foulness and shame to corrupt,

And the third, their leader, he took me and the last jar of milk and the scotch into the bedroom.  He drank and touched me, and drank, too slow it seemed, and I closed my eyes and never screamed, said nothing till I felt him slump off me, and then—

they lay in a stupor, undone with stupidity,

Outstretched his troopers all drunk, for blind death had blasted

them, Of all their good things deprived.

With her own right hand, no longer shaking,

Then, the curly-locked lady, our dear Judith,

With flashing falchion smote the foeman detested,

The hostile-hearted one, the headman upon whose head

Fell the whole horror, she half cut through, then

Severed his neck, that swooning he lay there

Drunken and wounded. Not dead was he yet, now,

Nor gave up the ghost again vehemently,

With might and main, the mood-valiant woman

Smote the heathen hound that his head whirled rapidly

Forth on the floor; lay the foul carcass

Lifeless behind, his spirit departed

Down 'mid the damned in dire abasement,

Ever thereafter in agony fettered,

With serpents be-wound, in torments bound,

Firmly fastened in the flames of perdition,

When death took him off.

The chickens they’d slaughtered, she whispered.  That mild hope destroyed.  They didn’t even know how to clean them.  And just these few eggs, these few eggs, this slightest window into a future.  Not a good gene pool, but someday, someone will come up the road.

A tiny crack showed in the blue egg shell.  She touched her stomach.  A triangular piece of shell flecked away and she could see the tiny beak.  I hope it’s a girl. 

Websource for Judith:  J. LESSLIE HALL, 1902,

 http://archive.org/stream/judithphoenixand00halluoft/judithphoenixand00halluoft_djvu.txt

© 2013, Robert E. Boon

Until the Landscape Rang

R. Boon

December 25, 2013

Until the Landscape Rang

He slid and spiraled down the road, drinking, gliding on the ice, amused at his every near-fall, inviting the moon to laugh along with him.  The ice storm had danced through all afternoon, coating trees and grasses and fence posts and phone lines.  No one was out driving.  Near the bottom of the hill, he came across an enormous yellow road-grader, there waiting for the snow that was expected to follow.  He up-ended the bottle of cheap red wine and tossed it behind him.  He stood, unsteady on the glassy surface.  He held up one wavering finger in front of him, picked the spot and touched the road-grader’s engine.  It came to life with a dinosaur’s bellow and then lurched forward, buckling the pavement across both lanes, then sputtered to a stop.  He fished around in his pocket and pulled out an impossible length of bent rebar, and used the thick iron to puncture crankcase and tires.  He spread his arms, sliding backward, and yelled to the moon, “Edward Abbey would be proud!”  He trailed a finger along the road-grader’s proud yellow paint, and crumbling patches of rust appeared.

Humming, he stepped off into the fields.  “Revealed complexity,” he laughed, looking at the ice that coated what would usually not be seen.  He spotted a bottle tossed out by the Franklin boys, a bottle stolen from the Buy-and-Drive Package store.  He shook the bottle, drank, and felt the whiskey fire down his throat.  He sang “You know that it would be untrue / You know that I would be a liar, / If I was to say to you…,” then pulled at the whiskey again.

                                

  He wandered through the fields, touching stem and branch, alive in the moonlight, stepped along without breaking any of the ice.  The alcohol pulsed inside him.  He emptied the whiskey, and spoke to the bottle, “just a wee sup more,” in a put-on-Irish accent, “a wee drop,” and the bottle complied, refilling a third.  He drained it.  “But na’more, I suppose,” and tossed the bottle far out into the field.  “Girl, we couldn't get much higher,” he sang, then added, “what bullshit.”

He stood for a moment, listening to the near-mute water. “Brother Creek,” he called out to the glassy trickle, gravity-pulled, moving north to south.  He began to race along the creek edge, looking for another bottle, dropping his human shape, moving into the ice, racing along, a fluid moving against gravity, inside all the tubes of ice coating stems and trees and grasses, became himself a spreading field of moonlight, breaking tubes and icy jackets as he burst from one to another.  The whole field began to ring with the shattering.

He found an empty brandy bottle.   He flowed back into a human shape, picked up the bottle, coaxed it to fill.  He downed half of it in one long pull, and stood reciting a poem he liked:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this

In a long time; and many a change has come

To both of us, I fear, since last it was

We had a drop together. Welcome home!"

Convivially returning with himself,

Again he raised the jug up to the light;

And with an acquiescent quaver said:

"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

“Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this

In a long time; and many a change has come 

To both of us, I fear, since last it was      

We had a drop together. Welcome home!” 

Convivially returning with himself, 

Again he raised the jug up to the light; 

And with an acquiescent quaver said: 

“Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.”

He drank, then fumbled with his trousers, taking a long piss across the weeds.  Ice broke, and with a wave of his hand, pigweed, knotgrass, thistle, purslane and wild mustard blossomed, scattered, took hold, and would not soon leave this farmer’s field.  He recited again,

For soon amid the silver loneliness      

Of night he lifted up his voice and sang, 

Secure, with only two moons listening, 

Until the whole harmonious landscape rang—

He stopped the poem, drank.  A mile away, he heard the high-pitched chorus, the yips and yowls.  “Ah, my little gray cousins!”  He finished his brandy and sang, loud, off-key, in a gathering howl, “The time to hesitate is through, / No time to wallow in the mire”—he paused, laughing, “but I like the mire, too,” and sang again, “Come on baby, light my fire, / Try to set the night on fire/ Try to set the night on fire.”  He shifted form again.  “Wait for me,” sang Coyote, bounding through the ice.

 

   
© 2013, Robert E. Boon

 

V

We spent hours together like they were lifetimes 

Quiet kisses in the cozy corners of your couch. 

Nestled in your neck and yours in mine. 

How could you forget

The brightness behind our eyes lit the dark

Huge warm smiles that carried the toiled tattered miles away 

Laughter that was as easy as the breath we breathed 

And somehow you forgot 

I've been wiping dead skin and dust from this heart

Picking up the pieces of what I believe is me

Killing my memory of you one death a day

Yet I am unable to forget. 

That's love...? 

Carcass

R. Boon

11/26/13//12/8

Carcass

            Dragging the deer carcass uphill on the gritty road, muttering every few steps, Daniel, old Daniel, he muttered to himself, struggled against the weight.  He snarled at his three dogs, who followed too close, pulling on a dangling leg or bit of hide, pulling the wrong damn way. 

            He stopped in the middle of the road, tugging at his torn coat, wriggling cold toes through the holes in his shoes.  “Damn headhunters.”  Saw off the antlers, leave the rest.   And no sense.  “No sense,” he shouted at the dogs, who danced back and then resumed tugging at the carcass.  Take the antlers, gut the old boy, hault him miles and miles, slung ‘im in a ditch.  He forced a few deep breaths.  “Damn 8 foot ditch, too!  Lucky I could drag him downstream to get a better slope.”  He looked down at the deer, its head hanging limp, and said to the deer, “last year, one carcass lasted the dogs all winter.  They were wrestling over one piece of hide in April.  We appreciate you stopping by for us.”

Daniel flexed his cold fingers, looked out at the stars, a cold, cold night.  “Look up there, Cory,” he said to a young dog.  “See the trail we’ve moved?  There over to there.  These damn constellations change so fast.”  He turned back to the deer.  “Thanks, by the way…”  He shifted the weight.  “Been 12,000 years we’ve been at this round here, and you never get any lighter.”  He cocked his head, listened at the presence, that sound in the grasses, crashing through the hard frost, the hooves of ten thousand generations, echoing just at the edge of the last great ice.

He didn’t notice the truck til the dogs started in, barking and growling.  The truck stopped dead middle of the road, headlights full on him and the carcass.  Daniel let the carcass drop and signed the dogs to run off into the fields.

Two young guys got out of the truck, engine still running.  The driver hung back at the edge of his open door.  The passenger, a young guy, trying hard to be a redneck, boots and jeans and flannel shirt and cowboy hat, ran round toward him and said, “What the fuck, old man?  Where you going with our deer?”

            Daniel lifted up his ball cap, ran a hand through his hair, shook loose the greasy gray strands that hung a couple foot down his back.  “Your deer, is it?  Gutted and throwed in a ditch?  Horns took off, and not a bit of the meat?”

            The driver called out, “Ryan, it don’t matter.  We’re done with it.  Let’s get out of here.”

            Ryan yelled back, not turning his face away from Daniel.  “Ain’t the point, is it, Hal?  This old fuck thinks he can pick up anything he wants.  Don’t have to even have a gun, or sit out in the cold waiting.”  He pushed up next to Daniel, only the deer carcass on the ground between them.

            Daniel glared back at him.  “So you got a tag for this, or just out killing anything you find?  You kill just for the trophy?”

            “Not any of your business, old man.”  He fumbled one hand at the back of his jeans, where the pistol was tucked into his waist.  “You some kind of government-fucking-agent?  Huh, old man?  You some sort of fed?  Gives a shit about all the little bunnies?”  He stepped forward, over the carcass, pushing Daniel back.

            “Ryan, it ain’t worth it.  Let’s get some more beer, go look up Suzy,” Hal called out.  He took a step closer, rubbing his hands, tucking them under his arms.

            Daniel heard the low growls out in the darkness, and let out his own low growl to warn the dogs back.  He leaned closer and stared into Ryan’s eyes, then breathed out slow and heavy, the mist coming up around both of them.  “Yes, the old give and take,” he muttered, and let Ryan see the ghostly herd around them, the spirits of the millions that once thundered these hills.

            Ryan lurched back, stumbled over the carcass.  He pulled the pistol as he hit the ground and shot into Daniel’s side.  Blood dripped on the carcass, which stirred to life and enfolded Ryan inside the hollowed out rib cage.  His arms became the deer’s forequarters, his legs the deer hindquarters.  His head joined through the deer’s neck.  A great rack of horns, 20-point at least, grew back on the mutilated head. 

The stag, Ryan, struggled to his feet and tried to struggle away.  He ran toward Hal, trying to ask what had happen.  Strange bawls and grunts came out instead of words.  He pushed forward.

“What the fuck?  What the fuck?” Hal called out, scrambling back toward truck. 

Ryan moved at him too fast, goring Hal again and again, til Hal fell back, twisting on the ground in pain.  The dogs came in from the field, barking, and Ryan, the stag, ran out to join the ghostly herd.

Daniel came over, looked at Hal on the ground, and shook his head.  He stepped into the truck, put it in neutral, and let it roll back cockeyed into the ditch.  “Come on, dogs, let’s get home.  I need to heal up.”  He whistled, and walked up the road.

            Only two dogs followed.  Daniel turned, and saw Rachel nuzzling Hal.  She lay down beside him and put her head on his chest.

            “Ah, no.  This one?  Really?” said Daniel.  “He’s pretty far gone.  And likely a shithead, just like his buddy.”  He whistled again.  Rachel put a paw on Hal’s chest.

            Daniel sighed.  “Fine, damn it.”  He stepped back down the road and knelt beside Hal.  “Ok, get off him,” he said to Rachel.  He rubbed his own bullet wound, til his hand was coated with blood, and then rubbed his hand into Hal’s wounds.  He shivered, with the sudden loss of heat moving out of him.  He stood up and watched the recovery, the wounds closing, Hal’s body shifting.  He whistled.. 

            “Come on,” he called to his four dogs. “Cory, Justin, Rachel, Hal.”  They all started back up the hill.  “Sorry ‘bout that deer.  Maybe the next carcass will stay put.”


© 2013, Robert E. Boon

               

Rational Thought

R. Boon

December 6, 2013

Rational Thought

            He loved running, hard, chest heaving, great plumes of lung-steam swirling past him like tormented fog.  Night skies, December nights, the bright moon diffused behind water-color clouds, just on the edge of storm, an icy rain, snow.  Like a scene in that Bergman film.  Seventh Seal, wasn’t it?  And he loved the bare trees, their limbs ever-finer, not skeletons, but this reaching out in subtle patterns, strategies to manipulate solar energy.  An alien intelligence almost.  The only ones smart enough to deal with climate change.

            He stopped at the creek, tapped at the damp sand, where the creek struggled to flow.  A bad summer, disguised by a little rain last month.  He leapt across, from one rock to another.  That same old song came back, stuck in his head.  I was tired of my lady, we'd been together too long, / Like a worn-out recording… He tried to growl the song out of his head.  And in the personals column, there was this letter I read / "If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain…if you have half-a-brain”… He picked up speed, running across the open field, trying to only hear his own hard breath.  …making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape / I'm the love that you've…

            Surprised, he hit the ground, rolled twice before stopping on his left side.  He twisted slightly, and whimpered once at the pain.  Damn, they shot me!  He controlled his breathing, flexed his ribs.  Not broken, but a damn big slug.  Bet it’s a 30-ought-6 in there.  He snarled, and his front paw scratched at the ground.  A hard pulse of anger rose up in his gut.  He winced, and snarled again.

            Ok.  Ok.  Suppress that first urge to just go total full-berserk and rip out every throat I can find.  Remember The Incident last July at that church fireworks thing.  Don’t need ministers to start quoting Lon Chaney movies from the pulpit again.  He twisted around and licked at the wound.  Maybe these guys with the rifle are just scared.  He sniffed the breeze.  Lot of adrenaline, sweat.  Lot of cheap whiskey, too.  Four humans.  He focused on the bullet inside, felt it start to move.  Or maybe it’s that human dominance thing.  ‘See something, shoot it.’  Assholes.  Are they ever going to read Genesis the right way? Why don’t they just go blow away their boss at Taco Bell? “Fight the man, don’t shoot the wolf”—that would make a good bumper sticker.

            He squeezed his gut once more, and the bullet oozed out, fell on the bloody grass.  Yep, 30-ought-6.  Fuckers.  He staggered to his feet.  I got to eat.  That healing took a lot out of me.  He sniffed the breeze again.  Aw, yeah.  A bull, right over that ridge.  He trotted over, spotted the bull, and took it down in three seconds.  He ripped into the throat and shredded the chest open, going for the blood-hot heart.  Ok, don’t overdo it.  I need some energy, but I don’t want to be at my laptop tomorrow morning still seeing hunks of organ meat stretching my belly.  He bit into the heart.  Yeah, but remember that bull over in Calloway County a couple years ago.  Bet he weighed in a ton and a half.  Huge fucker.  Could have made five human meals just on his balls.  Ripped him open and lost it.  Blood-wild.  Tore him to shreds, rolled in that sweet blood for an hour.  He let out a satisfied growl and pulled loose a tendon in the bull’s throat.

            But what a pain, walking back to my apartment in human form, into those streetlights, just covered in blood.  How does it go in Hamlet? “Head to foot

Now is he total gules, horridly tricked

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

Baked and impasted with the parching streets,

That lend a tyrannous and damnèd light

To their lord’s murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,

And thus o'ersizèd with coagulate gore,

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus

Old grandsire Priam seeks.” 

Love that shit.  He ripped the heart totally free from the bull’s carcass.  ‘Eyes like carbuncles’—can’t beat a line like that.  And there I was, blood boy, in the neighborhood, almost home.  That old guy shrieked and pissed himself.  But those two college girls—they wanted to chat me up.  Guess they could see what they wanted.  Might have gone somewhere if their damn poodle hadn’t flipped out.  What self-respecting dog wears a pink ribbon?  He rubbed his muzzle across a leaking artery, breathed the blood, felt the urge grumbling in his throat, felt a half-erection further down.  Ok, ok, don’t lose it, don’t go full out bloodlust.  Get that damn song back—getting caught in the rain…blah, blah, into health food, something… into champagne…meet you by tomorrow noon…something, hmm, hmm, bar called O'Malley's where… He lapped at the surging blood.

            Behind him, from where he had been shot, he heard human voices, and a couple dogs.  Assholes, bringing their dogs.  I like dogs, except maybe poodles.  No reason to drag them into this. He gave a low growl that raced along the ground.  He heard the dogs yelp and refuse to follow their humans.  Their stupid humans.

            He picked up the heart, ready to leave.  He heard the pop just before he felt the pellets sting into his hide.  He didn’t stagger at all this time.  Really?  A shotgun now?

            He set down the bull heart, turned and noticed as he ran the three older teens in front, the two boys, one with a rifle, just beginning to take aim, the other with the shotgun, finger on the trigger, the overripe and drunk girl with them, noticed this as he ripped through the rifle arm and then the shotgun’s chest and crushed the girl’s throat.  These three lay there, beyond any rescue, twitching, collapsing, faces and body parts open to the moon, like some panel in one of those creepy 70s horror comics.  The fourth, a younger boy, 13 or 14, held the cheap whiskey bottle, too startled, too overwhelmed to even let that drop.  The clouds opened enough that the view was clear. The boy stared into his eyes.

            This one—is he swearing to kill me when he grows up?  The life quest he’s always hungered for?  Or will he dream tonight of running beside me? You’ll see me again.

            He shifted just enough to have some human voice.  “Go.  Go home,” the guttural snarl.  The boy paused one last moment, then turned and ran, still clutching the whiskey bottle.

            The enormous wolf howled, a howl no one would challenge.


© 2013, Robert E. Boon

 

Unrestricted Vision

R. Boon

November 23, 2013

Unrestricted Vision

            “Where is that good fer nuthin cow?” Lily called out, not quietly.  She was a stout woman, with a ridge of gray hair streaked through her black bun, which people whispered about, connecting the mark to her powers.  She expected to be listened to.  “Uriel?” she called, stepping out the screen door onto the sagging porch.

            Uriel Vanoy, her husband, walked back down the road, his work boots half-laced, flopping, his overalls loose.  His big brown mutt, Gabe, followed him, touching his hand every third or fourth step.  “Lily, darlin’, they can hear you cross the river and three counties into Illinois.”

            “Maybe they can, but you don’t seem to.”  She lodged her hands on her hips, elbows flared out.  “Where’s the cow?  Where’s my bucket of milk?”

            Uriel smiled.  “I kept out a good quart, for us tonight.  But that old widow up the hill with all them kids, well, she had some need, so I let her have the cow for a few days.”

            Lily opened her mouth, said nothing.  The screen door slammed behind her.

            They both heard the loud engine noise of Jed Miller’s pickup running down the road, hard.  Lily stepped back out on the porch, as the truck slowed.  Jed, their nearest neighbor here in the bottoms, leaned out the window, and said, “it’s the boy.  Pete broke his damn arm rollin’ them logs up to our woodcut.”  He nodded at his son.  “Looks bad enough I’m gonna take him to the clinic, up on the bluff.” 

            “Better stop for Rosy and take her along.  You’ll never hear the end tof it otherwise,” Uriel called out.

“You’re right,” said Jed. “I’ll get her.”  He touched his hat and roared off.

            Lily set her mouth hard.  “Didn’t I tell you to get right down there to Pete and warn him about that log?  I saw it clear.  No reason for that arm to be broke or them to have to pay for a doctor.”

            Uriel shuffled the dust and didn’t look up.  “Well, Lily, I was gettin’ the cow up the road, the other direction.  I was on my way.  Just not fast enough.”

            “Forty some years, and you still have no respect for my vision.  Next month, we’re getting a phone line put in here.  There’s no depending on you to keep people safe.”  She returned inside, slamming the screen door again.  The hinge wobbled.

            Indeed, Lily had vision and people for fifty miles around would come ask her advice.  Louise Becker came in to ask about her daughter’s engagement, Brick Henry needed to know about taking those “damn St. Louis tourists” out on his john boat, Suzy Jackson asked about the weather next month when she wanted to go to Little Rock, others came in to ask about canning, or which dress pattern would get the most attention.  She refused to talk to George Robinson about the stock market, calling it “immoral gambling.”  She sent a note to Wanda about the blacksnake that was going to get into her henhouse. 

            By six, everyone knew it was too late to call.  Uriel came into his wife’s little parlor that doubled as her meeting room.  “Lily, I feel bad about Jed’s boy, not listening to you and getting over to there fast enough.  Let’s walk up the hill and catch a ride into town.  We’ll have a real nice supper at Richardson’s Café.  I bet Freida’s got some of her peach cobbler fixed up.  Might even have some nice cold cream to pour over it.”

She refused, righteously.  “You need to fix that hinge,” she said, and went back to making vision notes for folks tomorrow.  Uriel let her alone, and cooked up the best meal he could, set out the dishes nice, and even opened the last jar of raspberry jam.  They didn’t talk much, but Lily smiled when he piled two extra scoops of butter and jam on her biscuits.

            After supper, he took her hand.  “Come on, just you and me, old gal.  Let’s walk up to the bluff and look out at the river and watch the stars.”

            She smiled back at him.  “Oh, Uriel, you may not ever have a responsible bone in your body, but you are the sweetest man.”  She squeezed his hand.  “I’m tired.  Let’s get to bed.  Long day tomorrow.  I have a dozen visions I’ve got to get out to folks.”

Uriel nodded.  “Let me check the critters, and I’ll be in.”  Outside, he whistled at Gabe, who bounded up, all enthusiasm.  Uriel bent down, rubbed his cheeks and ears.  “Gabe, old boy, time for you to get out of here.  I’m gonna open up the pen, let them damn pigs out, and I want you to head em up to high ground over there.  And you stay there.  You stay up there.”  He pointed, walked two steps, pointed.  And so it was, when he let the pigs out, Gabe was at their heels, headed in the right direction.  “Bye, Gabe,” he whispered, low enough not to distract the dog.

            Uriel went in, washed his hands and face, and climbed into bed with Lily, who was already fair asleep.  He held her tight, through the first tremors that no one would notice if they weren’t up, walking around.

He remembered the terms of his gift, way back when he was a kid, way before he met Lily, crying out into the blackest night, and the great voice out of the penetrating light had answered, blessed him to know, to really know, yet had added, “the greater the vision, the more restriction—suggest, lead, but you can’t tell people the future, you can’t control the great events of the world.  People must have their own will, choose their own destinies.”

In bed, he whispered, “Aw, Lily, I’ll always love you.  Wish we could a had another forty years.”  He kissed the back of her neck, and stroked her cheek.  She turned and looked at him, blinked a couple times, and smiled back.  She kissed him, lightly on the lips, as the great fault in the earth slid loose, and the whole valley sunk fifteen foot in a second, and the great river rushed in, killing everyone and everything that hadn’t already gotten to high ground.

© 2013, Robert E. Boon

   

John (chapter draft) Jim

Muffled static, like sandpaper across my eardrum, scratches and crawls up my spine one aching vertebrae at a time.  It seems to go on and on, labored breaths of uncertainty and panic, commotion and dissonance molest the receiver. It hasn’t even dawned on me that I haven’t taken a breath until my lungs begin to burn with fire. 

“Hello,” the weary voice slips into my ear, heavy and full of fatigue. I recognize it like a ghost, an echo from the past. 

“Emma, honey?”

“John, you’re okay,” she pauses,“...alive?” Her voice is like a warm hug. A distant embrace held apart by so much death and malevolence. 

“Emma are you safe? The Clarks? You’re with them?”

“John...” 

“Mr. Clark is a strong, resourceful man. He knows how to survive.”

“John?” 

“You are in good hands with him, he will keep you safe.”

“John! They’re dead.”

Little beads of sweat, filthy and brown, cool and wet sting my forehead. I collapse against the corner of the phone booth like a prizefighter taking a pummeling against the ropes. I'm lost in the muttle. I stare at Joe pacing the parking lot. He looks like he’s aged years in the past week. His white shirt smattered with tiny crimson rorschach's, his Beatles mop twisting in the warm Atlantic breeze.  A far different kid now than the one I met spinning tales beyond his years and serving me Dark and Stormies on the last living day of our lives.  We fled Carolina Beach and made it as far as Wilmington, NC before the hoards pushed us northeast towards the coastal town of Hampstead. With our backs against the ocean we soon will have to face the enclave of dead.  

Word spread that Camp Lejeune, the Marine Base, was a refuge, others said the it was the source of the outbreak, plague, pestilence, whatever.  The only thing we know is that everyday it’s getting worse and it seems to be sprawling in every direction. The things, the horror we've witnessed imprint themselves in black bloody globs, staining our sleep with gore and bits of flesh, lingering the way vomit does in the back of your throat. 

"John? Are you there?" Emma says. 

I hear her, but I don't. I can't make the connecting. Joe is kicking a rock across the parking lot. I see a twenty something kid, transformed, evolving into something no one thought he could be, not even himself. The fact is, we no longer exist! All we knew, all we thought about us, as people has changed. A simple singularity connects us all now, the will to survive. The how, the why is a greater enegima than it ever was before. Purpose be damned. A hero made in one split second of a decision or casualty a half a second too long.  

"John? Say something."

"Are you safe?" I stammer. 

"Yes. John what is going on? Where are you?" 

"North Carolina. Was attending a conference when it all began."

"I'm scared."

“Me too. Do you have a...I mean, how are you protecting yourself?”

I already know I must reveal my secret, expose her to my shame. 

“There’s a bat, I keep in my car, but I panicked. I’ve been hiding in your basement for days.”

I must tell her. I don’t want to but it’s the only way to keep her safe.  

“Emma, don’t go outside. I need you to listen to me. I need you to go to the attic. In the corner, there’s an old trunk. Inside is a small wooden box. I need you to get it. Can you do that?” 

“Yes, I can.” 

I hear her steps on the hardwood. With each one the static rises and crackles a little more. The signal is fading, along with the chance of disconnect growing and separation hovering on permanences.  I have to do what I can to keep her safe. 

“Emma? You need to set the phone down. We can’t lose the connection!”

“Okay, John.”

I can almost feel her set the phone down with care, like putting a sleeping baby in their crib. Her steps slowly recess and fade away. The attic door squeaks on rusty springs as she pulls the chain and lowers it to the floor. I hear her first step and then she’s gone.

At the top of the attic stairs, our christmas tree, ornaments and tinsel of christmas past, frozen in a time when love breathed a deeper breath within those four walls. Next to it, a bookcase, surrounded by draping and worn out insulation, a makeshift eulogy of a life past and forgotten strun amongst the shelves. Pictures of Emma, age five and up, until there were no more. Pictures of Sabrina and I, when things were...not perfect, but not weary as they soon would become. A collection of memories, more illusion than actual remains now. The trunk in the corner was my grandfather's, a WWI relic. Inside, wrapped in Emma’s favorite blanket is small wooden box finished and stained with a secret. It will feel heavy in her hands and the weight will shift inside when she moves it. She will try to open it but it is locked, the last line of defense and protection against myself.

Joe has wandered a little further down the road, a little too far for my comfort. The Shell station yielded nothing more than a few bottles of water, Red Bulls and potato chips and this landline. A populous on the edge of uncertainty  will strip everything in sight for a chance at survival. A luxury I suppose of being at the beginning of the end in a familiar place and surroundings. I am not. I am out of my element. I am thankful for Joe. Lords knows I wouldn’t have survived this long without him. The sound of footsteps make their way back to my ears in between crunches of static. As Emma picks up the phone Joe’s disappears just out of my view and my nerves begin to rise.

“I have it John, but it’s locked.”

“I know honey. I need you to go into the kitchen now. The reception should reach.” 

Just then a loud thump pounds against my ear. Through many miles of telephone wire, I know exactly what the sound was and where it emanated from. Again it hits the front door with force and I hear the wood in the door frame split. Emma screams, helpless my blood turns cold. 

I don’t know if it’s a looter or a “Z”, either way they are coming through my door.

“Emma, in the kitchen drawer, the one by the stove, are a set of keys to unlock the box.” Another bang against the door and the glass cracks. 

“You have to hurry. Whatever is trying to get in, is gonna get in. You have to accept that baby."

"John I'm scared."

"I know honey but you have to focus. Get the keys and lock yourself in the bathroom." 

My own wits shatter before me as Joe comes running into view. The shotgun bounces heavy on his back and against his head. He's waving frantically and the intensity of his eyes glow even in the daylight. The stretch wiggles it's way up my nose before I even catch eye of the oppressors. We are being hunted. My attempt to keep my Emma safe has now put Joe and me in direct danger. Joe struggles to retrieve the keys to the Impala from his pocket mid stride. We don’t dare try and make a stand and fight. In my haste to stop we didn’t make a thorough sweep of the area. There’s no telling how many there might be wandering, waiting for us to screw up. The knot in my stomach grows and it feels like it might burst right out and onto the dusty phone booth floor.

“I have the keys. There are so many. Which one is it?” Emma squeals in agony. I am painfully aware that I have no time to explain or answer her question. That my time is running out and that I must leave. That this is possibly the last time I will ever hear her voice. That I must leave her to her own, abandon her again. 

“Emma honey, I must go. I’m in danger. I love you so much. Never forget that. Hide and keep yourself safe. I am coming to you. I will come for you.”

“John, wait...I don't know which one. There has to be over a hundred keys!”

Joe is screaming. 

Emma is crying. 

Z’s are quickly approaching. 

My head is caught in the toil.

“Emma, I am sorry honey. I love you. I cannot tell you which one. I don’t know, but one will open it, I promise. I am coming for you.” 

There is no more time. I cannot bring myself to hang the phone up. It seems too final. I let the receiver fall and it bangs against the glass. Joe revs the engine as I spin around the front of the hood. I am cut off from the passenger door by one of them. A mailman, perhaps in his fifties and recently bitten, a Freshy.  He snarls and is quick, not like the others approaching behind him. He bites the air with ferocity and lunges at me. I kick at him, exposing a limb to the fray and a possible bite. I kick again, knocking him off balance enough that he staggers back and falls into another. I grab the door handle as Joe is already pressing the accelerator. The gas station begins to slowly disappear behind us and I catch the phone booth in the side mirror. The receiver still swaying back and forth. Uncertainty on the other end. 

“I will come for you,” I mumble to myself, “I will come for you.”

Fracking

R. Boon

11/17/13

Fracking

2013:  6,526,548

            Seven hours before, the conversation had gone like this:

            “Hey, bossman, you sure we want to do this?  We don’t have clearance to be fracking here.”

            Josh Aaron spit on the ground and flipped Jack off.  “Dumb roustabout.  Do your job.”

            “But aren’t we too near the Lake?  A lot of Dallas water comes from Lake Ray Hubbard.”

            “So what?  We’re just using lake water and a little sand, and it’ll go right back.  Everybody drinks bottled water these days anyhow.”  He checked the well head once more.  “Ready?”

            “Yeah, but boss…”

            Josh patted Jack on the shoulder.  “You saw those ground scans.   There’s a finger of the Barnett Shale over here, and looks like it has an incredible layers of gas in there, if we just bust it up enough.  You just keep that casing stable.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”  Jack hit the switch and the high-pressure pumps kicked in, shaking the ground as the water, sand, chemical mix shot down into the earth.  He gazed away at the canopy of city lights from Dallas-Fort Worth, at the cars racing over the causeway.  He was pretty sure the main line sucking water straight out of Lake Ray Hubbard was illegal. His friends Matt and Pete waved at him from the trailer.  Matt turned on some Sinatra song he was always humming and went in for coffee.  “I get no kick in a plane, / Flying too high with some gal in the sky…”

***

2015:  92, 149, 667 

Around 11 that night, there were pressure changes, a little a first, then wild swings.  Pete was checking the gages, was on the line asking about doing a fast shut-down.  Things smoothed out, then an hour later, all the gauges stopped dead, as if the injection stream was going into an empty pocket, something so enormous there was no resistance at all.   Then flow completely stopped, lurching, pushing back.  Jack could tell some of the casings had buckled.  The ground around the well head shifted, then fell away from their rig, then the rig, the pipes, casings, all were pushed up thirty foot, then pulled down and snapped off.  Jack began running toward high ground.

When he turned to look, the trailer was caught at the edge of the new pit.  He saw Josh’s truck pull up at the service road.  And rising out of the pit, he saw—he shook his head and sniffed the air, wondering if gasses were tricking him.  He saw a swirl of tentacles? Tongues? Sick flesh laced with red and gold energy flashes, like solar flares, and then gaps of dizzying absence.  Each flash scarred away part of Jack’s vision, and radiation began to shrivel lines across his skin.    In his head, Jack heard it announce itself:  “I am A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e, your god returned…”  Jack whimpered and wanted to look away. 

            At the edge of the pit, not floating, but crawling, came a different pulse of darkness, like the sludge of raw oil, convulsing, bulging with cavities and mouths, a stench and a sense of absolute—hunger.  Jack heard again in his head, “I am Thuut, Master Lord of the Dark.  You will feed me.”  An amoebic pod rushed out and pulled Josh from his truck, crushing his legs and dissolving his skin.  Josh kept screaming, until only his head and spine were left and dropped.

On the other side of the pit, A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e  reached out with its tentacles and neatly sliced through the trailer walls, then as quickly sliced through Matt and Pete, sucking, taking something from them, blue and green flashes, folded into the vortex.  Souls, perhaps.  The discarded limbs and parts crawled the ground, searching for each other, combining in random, twitching clumps that scampered off toward the highway.

A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e sniffed the air.  “Three hundred million years, trapped below with our last great feast.  This time there are even more lives to use.”

Jack felt Thuut pulse an eagerness, watched a pod reach out to the Lake.  Where it touched, a pink-orange mist rose and rushed across the city.  Jack could see through Thuut’s mind the joy of dissolving the 6 million people there, leaving them a strange jelly, filled with twitching eyeballs and grasping fingers.  A swamp of boiled flesh, more than Thuut would be able to consume in years.

“You waste them,” said A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e, flaring brighter.

“They are humans, and will breed enough to refill a 100 such cities,” answered Thuut.  “And did you not feel the joy of their agony?  The shattering of all their reason?  How I have hungered for that.”

            “Yet I am the higher being, and you must have my sanction for such events.”

            Jack watched Thuut swell.  He threw up, then found Thuut reaching into his mind, to find other full cities, Houston, Tulsa.  He walked down the hill. “You have no right.  No right to come here.  No right to take away all those lives, to leave nothing.”  He stared at the gods, feeling his face begin to melt.  He felt Thuut’s rage reach out to him.  And felt it stopped.  Stopped by the laughter of A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e.

            “A human claims the value of human life,” laughed A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e.  “It believes they should not simply feed us.  That they should be remembered.  So be it.”

They changed him.  Thuut swirled around him, healed his body and made it unbreakable, immortal, and A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e lashed him with his fire.  “You are now become a god with us.  You will catch the memory of every human death, for all time.”

And the memories, the essence, of the six million recent dead flowed into Jack, and he screamed and wept and crawled away, and hid himself in dark hills and burning forests, but nothing stopped the dead from joining him, for hundreds of years, as A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e and Thuut moved and destroyed most of what humans had built, and deaths soared.

2078:  1,899,443,146

***

            Jack no longer was compelled to follow the swaths of carnage, his feet bleeding, survivors cursing him, stoning him, offering worship, pleading.  He rested in the great desert that had once been the plains of Kansas or Nebraska.  Another joined him in death.

2156:  4,287,231,432

            He spoke with the voice of billions inside him.  “It is enough.  The balance has turned.”  With one collective thought, hard as an obsidian knife, he sliced a deep gash in the earth, and thrust Thuut and A^ble’y^egha!k!lrayun-e back into darkness.  Billions inside him wept and rejoiced.  Jack reminded them, “at 7 billion, we shall have the strength to find their worlds, and destroy them all.” 

More lived, more died, and the vengeful god grew strong.

© 2013, Robert E. Boon