The Devil Delivered and Other Tales Read online

  William smiled back, then headed over to the pool table. The tall, well-dressed man was racking the balls for a solo game. The local boy sat at a distant table, looking glum. William leaned on the table and picked up the cue ball. “Finally,” he said, “some competition.”

  “I’ll break,” the man said.

  William dropped the cue ball into the man’s hand. “Mother wants me to do some spying for her,” he said.

  Daniel Horn nodded. He walked around the table and set down the cue ball. “It’s a hard life, William, and you’re harder than most.”

  William found a cue stick. He raised one end and sighted down it, pointing the tip at Daniel, as if holding a rifle.

  Leaning on the table for his opening shot, Daniel paused. Their eyes locked. “Careful,” the young Lakota said, “that once belonged to Sitting Bull.”

  William lowered the cue stick. “She wants me to follow up a rumor about you closing the borders.”

  “You want me to tell you? I will.”

  “Nope. All I want to know is, open or closed, will you let me do my research?”

  “That what you call it?”

  “That’s what I call it.”

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed as he prepared to break. “Don’t see why not,” he said. A moment later the cue ball was a white blur; then a loud crack scattered the balls. Two thumped into pockets. Daniel looked up and grinned. “Better get out of that bootsuit, William, you’re in for a hot one.”

  William shook his head. “I live in my bootsuit. It lives on me. We are one.”

  “Sometimes you scare me, William.”

  “Sometimes I mean to, Daniel.”

  TWO

  Entry: American NW, July 1, A.C. 14

  Something heavier than an angel, something more like a witch, a woman of earth and stone—only this could have made her so tenuous to his touch. It is now an age of angels, gauze-thin and adolescent. But when he’d looked upon her face, something elder had been visible, a time abandoned in despair; he’d seen the solid anguish lining her face, and he made his smile soft as he let her into the room.

  Sweat of the land between them, a smell of moss and cobble-cool flesh that he imagined alabaster and serene. Stel had left him with a gift, a warmth like sun-brushed wood taking root into what had been virgin soil. Not virginity of the flesh, but of the spirit.

  Days since his last meal. Things out there crowding ever closer, eager to know this new stranger in the dreamtimes. What made the night important: he was already almost gone, wind-tugged away from civilized life. It could have been easy, to have just simply left, without a backward touch or glance.

  One last time crawling out of his thermal-controlled rad-shielding skin, once more unto the mortal coil. He thought then that a ghost stepped into him, a presence that understood the value of certain gestures to humanity—the one she’d give to him, the one he’d give to her.

  A young man crafted by the tools of progress.

  An aging woman tired of sleeping alone.

  Touched human.

  Touched young.

  “That wasn’t pity,” he said afterwards.

  “That wasn’t bad,” she replied.

  Net

  CORBIE TWA: Somethin’s cooking at Boxwell Plateau. Any shivers on the vine?

  STONECASTER: Just this, Corbie Twa, the Argentinians made an official call to the Lady at Ladon Inc. NOAC got to them, goes the very soft twang. So maybe Boxwell’s dead. And Ladon’s homeless one more time. The last time.

  CORBIE TWA: What about Saudi?

  STONECASTER: You’ve been in the Swamp too long, mucker. Saudi was knifed a week ago. Now NOAC’s got the embargo sewed up tight. Ladon can’t even buy a scrap heap and a hamburger.

  JOHN JOHN: This path ain’t for gossip, muckers. Clear or get deep.

  CORBIE TWA: Just fillin time, John John. Caught the last set of entries. Someone’s slidin fast.

  BOGQUEEN: Got a thing against sex, Corbie Twa?

  CORBIE TWA: Seems a fall from grace.

  JOHN JOHN: Corbie’s got a thing, all right.

  STONECASTER: Just don’t know how to use it. Deep enough, John John?

  BOGQUEEN: You wish, Stonecaster.

  JOHN JOHN: The boy’s about to wander, muckers. Running a varied call, can’t be traced. All we’ve got is the American north-west. Big place.

  BOGQUEEN: And a snowstorm, which places him on the north side of the Midwest Hole. The town could be Climax, Val Marie, somewhere around there.

  CORBIE TWA: Climax? There’s a town called Climax? Can I spend a week in Climax?

  STONECASTER: So what’s this boy of ours up to? Theories?

  BOGQUEEN: Out under the Hole.

  STONECASTER: Suicidal? What a disappointment. There’s better ways, after all. Amuse yourself to death, it’s what everyone’s doing these days. I especially like the new Peasant Crusade. Imagine, dying at forty with a smile on your GO-FOR-IT-TILL-YOU-DROP face. All muscles and no fat makes Jack a dull boy, a dead boy.

  JOHN JOHN: I doubt it’s suicide. It’s a quest of some kind.

  CORBIE TWA: Oh no, a neo-pagan!

  BOGQUEEN: Anything but. This boy talks the tongue of science.

  CORBIE TWA: Really? I could’ve sworn it was soft porn with some hag named Stel.

  BOGQUEEN: Can’t wait to pick at your bones, Corbie Twa.

  CORBIE TWA: Get in line, lady.

  Lakota Nation, near Terminal Zone, July 1, A.C.14

  Behold these valleys of salt, and above, the sky of blinding white. Patches of nothing mar the world.

  William darkened his goggles another setting and swung his attention to the snow-crusted valley below. A creek carved a route along the valley floor, slipping under old wood fence lines still tangled in barbed wire. Small twisted trees rose along either side of the creek, the branches thick with ice-wrapped buds.

  He sipped lukewarm water from the spitter, clamping his teeth down hard on the plastic tube where it sat against the corner of his mouth. Behind him, near the tepee rings, his shield tent luffed in the steady wind, the sound like ghosts drumming on sand.

  William watched two vehicles converging toward a low rise just above a bend in the creek. Their dark domes glinted dully in the afternoon’s light as they crawled steadily like insects over the rolling terrain. After a moment, William rose from his squat and faced east. A half mile away, the old blacktop highway stretched its way in a long, lazy bend southward. Terminal Zone, old Rural Road 219, a dead track reaching into dead land. Lakota Border.

  He took another sip of water, shouldered his pack, then headed down into the valley. His boots crunched as he crossed a sinkhole where the day’s heat had failed to melt the snow and ice. Elsewhere, the yellow prairie grasses shivered stiffly in the breeze, matting worn-down rises and rumpled hills.

  A man had climbed out of each vehicle. They stood side by side at the edge of the creek and watched him approach. William waved. The taller of the two, dressed in the latest issue bootsuit, waved back. The other, old and bent and wearing a faded jean jacket, raised his head slightly, his mirror sunglasses flashing white, then looked away.

  “Today’s the day?” William asked as he strode up to them.

  Daniel Horn slowly shook his head. “Your sensiband’s flush, William.”

  “Almost sunset.”

  The old man gestured at William with a chopping motion of one hand. Without looking back, he said, “He doesn’t care. He doesn’t live under it.”

  William smiled. “And he that liveth seven score years shall no more fear God’s wrath. Good afternoon, Jack.”

  Jack Tree chopped his hand a second time, turning to William. “I’ll never show you the secret places, Potts. Never.”

  “I never asked.”

  “We were arguing,” Daniel said.

  William looked around, his grin broadening. “A private one, huh?”

  “About you, William.”

  William pulled up his goggles and squinted until his eyes adjuste
d. He glanced at Jack Tree, then back to Daniel. “You closed your borders?”

  “This morning.”

  “An empty gesture,” Jack Tree said, shaking his head.

  William studied the old man. The wind picked up strands of his long gray hair and tugged with steady rhythm. His high-tech wraparounds looked snug and sleek and insectile. His cheeks were scored with deep wrinkles, the brown folds and black tracks mapping their own valleys, dry creeks, and ridges.

  “Hardly empty,” Daniel was saying. “NOAC needs oil. Same old story. Fuel to keep the Pakistanis toe to toe with the Sikhs. The machine’s thirsty, and the moneymen are sweating.”

  “Sanctions,” Jack Tree said, facing Daniel at last. “It’ll break us apart.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  The two fell silent.

  William reached under his absorption collar and scratched his neck. The material’s osmotic qualities were fine for reclaiming moisture, but it felt like fire ants when friction heated it up. “What about my research?”

  Jack Tree pulled off his glasses, his eyes sharp and black amidst a nest of wrinkles. “Research? Research your way back home, boy. This ancient land never belonged to you, no matter how hard you pretend.”

  William said, “I found a den yesterday. Three antelope inside.”

  Jack Tree frowned.

  “They’re fully nocturnal now. And smaller. Their front hoofs are spatulate, like shovels. Imagine that.”

  “The animals are gone,” Jack Tree said.

  William shook his head and smiled. “Just changing their old ways. Behold necessity and adaptative pressures, selection in all its glory.”

  “Is this your research?”

  “No. But it’s interesting, isn’t it.”

  Daniel cleared his throat. “Like I said before, William, you do what you like. I’ll tell you something, though. If peace and quiet’s what you’re looking for, you might end up being in the wrong place.”

  Jack Tree laughed bitterly. “Welcome to hell, then, Potts, and it’s about to break loose.”

  “Old news,” William said, snapping his goggles back down.

  Daniel stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “Hell hath no fury like Nature scorned, Daniel.”

  JIM’S STORY

  Saskatchewan, Canada, July 19, A.D. 1972

  Dust-covered cars and trucks crowded the farmyard outside the house. Everyone else was inside, neighbors and friends and relatives all circling Jim’s mother, as if by numbers alone they could hold her there, in one place, forever.

  Jim knew they’d say something if they could. They’d yell and show their rage, if they could. He leaned against his mother’s Impala, rolling a cigarette. I can’t blame her. I can hate her, but I can’t blame her. Dad’s slipping fast, only days left now. Metastasis, the doctors called it. From the bones to the liver, and still spreading. He already looked dead, doped up against the pain, withered by the months of chemotherapy. Three-quarters gone, one-quarter left and going fast.

  He lit his cigarette. One of the barn cats had slipped out and now lay sprawled atop one of the herbicide drums lining the barn’s wall. The cat stared lazily at Jim, then blinked and looked away.

  The house door opened and Jim’s mother stepped out, her cigarette dangling from her lips as she paused and fished for a light. For a moment Jim hoped she’d see him, and he reached for his lighter, but then she found her own and lit up. Pulling hard on her cigarette, she went down the steps, every line of her long, angular body stiff with fury. The door opened again as Grandpa and Ruth came out. Jim’s heart jumped at seeing Ruth.

  My wife. I’ll never quite believe it. So beautiful, so solid, so sure of herself. And it was me she picked. Why? Why the hell why?

  Ruth’s green eyes scanned the yard until she found him. She shrugged: It’s no use. She stayed on the porch while Grandpa joined Jim’s mother. The old man spoke to her in quiet tones. Jim watched his mother nodding, her arms crossed tight against her chest. Smoke whipped in a stream from her face.

  From the city. It had always been obvious. She’d stayed only because of Dad, and now he was dying, and her son was a man, married to a country girl, which was right, and besides, all the words between her and Jim had been used up. The grief they shared was a chasm, impenetrably dark and too terrifying to cross. She wasn’t staying. She was going back, where being alone wasn’t quite so noticeable. I don’t blame her. She’s got her life, lots of years left. She wants to start over. I can hate her, but I can’t blame her.

  Ruth approached. “Roll me one,” she said, sweeping strands of auburn hair from her face.

  “Got some grass for later,” Jim said, watching her mouth, wanting to kiss it and keep kissing it.

  She smiled. “Not my style. You do the hippie thing.”

  “I love you, Ruth.”

  “I know.” She leaned against the car beside him, their hips touching.

  Three weeks married. All she has to do is get close and Christ, all I can think of is fucking her. Dad’s dying, Mom’s leaving, and none of it matters. Christ. He finished rolling her cigarette and lit it for her.

  “Thanks,” she said. Taking it from his fingers. They watched Grandpa and Jim’s mother talking, there at the foot of the porch steps, the old farmhouse rising behind them. The curtains in the windows were drawn. To Jim, it had the look of a place waiting to be struck by lightning, waiting to burn to the ground, sending human souls flying skyward in a shower of sparks, a final release there on the trail blazed by his old man. Release, and relief. He realized, with a sudden thud in his belly, that he hated death, hated it like a person—with a face, a goddamned smile, gold-capped teeth, and eyes as deep as the flames of hell. One of the curtains moved. Elly, Dad’s kid sister, peered out at the two talking in front of the porch. Her face withdrew after a moment, the curtain falling back into place.

  “We’ll be okay,” Ruth said.

  “I know. It’s all right.”

  “Like hell it is, Jim.”

  “I know,” he said again.

  “It’s not all right.”

  “No. It’s not all right.”

  “But we’ll be okay. Are you listening to me?”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t hate her, Jim.”

  “I don’t.” But he did.

  “She’s earned the right. She stood by him, all through this. It was hell for her.”

  “For all of us. Grandpa’s only son. My dad.”

  “It’s different. I know, you can’t see that right now, but it’s different.”

  He shrugged, wishing he weren’t so angry. “When I was a kid, Dad went and plowed up some holy land. A Medicine Wheel, and tepee rings. There was a cairn in the wheel. A shaman had been buried there. A holy man. Or a devil, a spirit, or maybe both, one taking care of the other. Maybe there was a whole lot that was buried there.”

  “You think he’s paying for it, now? Is that what you’re thinking, Jim?”

  He shrugged again, flicking the butt onto the dusty ground.

  “Is that what your grandpa says?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Didn’t think so.” Now she was angry. It was a mood of hers that frightened him, because it left him feeling crushed, and that made him feel like he was weak inside. For all the outward toughness, he was weak—he prayed she’d never find out.

  “You’ve been away,” he said. “At school. Grandpa’s not been himself lately.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  He shook his head. “He’s stopped talking about the old days. He told me it’s up to me now to remember. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m Métis. French and Cree, and it’s the Indian part of me that’s doing most of the talking in my mind. These days. It’s, uh, it’s the voice in my blood.”

  She was looking at him now, her eyes searching his face, or maybe studying it. She seemed to have shed her anger, but Jim wasn’t sure what had replaced it.

  “The voice in your blood?”

>   Suddenly embarrassed, he looked away. “Yeah. Sort of, I guess.”

  She was silent for a long moment; then she said, “Keep listening to it, Jim.”

  They both looked up at the sound of crying. Jim’s mother was in Grandpa’s arms. The stiffness was gone, and she looked almost childlike as she clutched Grandpa, her head buried against his shoulder.

  “Christ,” Jim gasped.

  “Go to her,” Ruth commanded. “Now, dammit. It’s not just her husband she’s leaving. Go on, Jim—you’ll never get another chance.”

  The scene blurring in front of him, Jim lurched into motion.

  Entry: American NW, July 1, A.C. 14, Midnight

  He lay in his tent.

  And these lizards have gone reflective. Crusty, muricated, a sleight of sunlight shunting elsewhere as they hug their own shadows. Wondering at what’s old about being new, the few generations of intense environmental pressures already forgotten except in the blood that threads their spines. And they hunt at night, amidst the hum and hiss of a thousand new species of insect in a hundred thousand iridescent colors reduced to gray beneath the moon.

  He hides in his tent, reflecting. His skin has billowed out and is geodesic and is now crawling with many-legged silhouettes. He sees the lizards leap against his taut skin, jaws snapping. Exoskeleton crunches softly in the darkness.

  Outside the lizards are feasting on Saint John’s bread, a mayhem banquet. And where is he, the one who giveth songs in the night?

  A few generations of intense environmental pressures.

  The Lakota hearths spread smoke haze across the plains. Seven generations lost in the wilderness, and now the eighth, rising once again, at last, rearing up and taking countenance of their ghost lands. The blood pumping from the ground has slowed, stopped. Somewhere vampires are screaming. The transport roads are barricaded now, the scattered small settlements isolated inside their rad domes; their skin taut and softly drumming to aborted intrusions from outside. Radio silence. The mute warnings of smoke signals unseen, unwitnessed.

  They remain this night in their secret places, the past sitting in their laps like a child long overdue weaning. The old ones flinch and caress innocent’s face, reluctant and angry at necessity’s harsh slap. The young ones, who no longer recognize innocence at all, are brash and abrupt in their dismissal. For the old, the past weeps. For the young, the past walks, a mindful shadow anchored to the earth but facing the sky. The old reach for an embrace. The young are driven to dance. For each, the past obeys, as shadows must. Anchored to the earth, but facing the sky. And those shadows that weep, they are reflective.