Beneath Ceaseless Skies #156 Read online

  “Will you teach me to read? I want to know what’s on the other pages.”

  Oruguaq smiles. “What do you think we’ll be doing this winter?”

  That’s plenty of time to convince Oruguaq that she’ll get even more stories with two assistants. If Tamke wants it.

  Copyright © 2014 Alex Dally MacFarlane

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Alex Dally MacFarlane lives in London, where she is pursuing an MA in Ancient History. When not researching ancient gender and narratives, she writes stories, found in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, and The Other Half of the Sky. Poetry can be found in Stone Telling, Goblin Fruit, The Moment of Change, and Here, We Cross. She is the editor of Aliens: Recent Encounters (2013) and The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (forthcoming in late 2014). Visit her online at www.alexdallymacfarlane.com.

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  THE GOOD DEATHS, PART II

  by Angela Ambroz

  The day Augustus died, I heard the voice of the Lord Up Above telling me to take my smashers and destroy the saloon in Kiowa, Kansas.

  Now, I had never been to Kiowa before, but I—a meek human woman, a simple, plain-spoken woman and widow and sufferer—would never think to question Our Lord and Savior.

  I went to Kiowa. I stood in the streets of Kiowa. I found some rocks and weighed them in my hands.

  They felt like shards of the Holy Lord’s righteousness itself, firm and unconditional, and they crashed into the glass windows with a satisfying commotion. Of course, the men—those drunkards and louts—came screaming outside, brandishing weapons and their johns and all sorts of foul language. What can you expect from such types?

  When they saw what I was—and I am a woman who tends to be noticed—some laughed, some continued hollering, but none dared stop me. I am big, and I am powerful. Augustus once said I must have been a bulldog in a previous life, and indeed I welcomed that supposition.

  I towered above those men, and—by the Lord—I threw the Hell Realm out of those stones.

  After ten minutes of work, all the windows were smashed wide open, bits of glass lying like glittering teeth scattered in the muck, and I had sweated through my undergarments and bodice. The men stood around me, quiet now and staring.

  “There!” I said. “You wet-brained fools! There’s your fun and there’s your damnation for the day. Now get the hell out and get on home to your poor wives and little ones! And don’t you dare try to clean anything up!”

  “At least grace us with a name, fair lady!” one grime-marinated idiot yelled from a safe distance. “Or tell us who sent you!”

  “Gentlemen—and I am funning you in calling you that—the Almighty Savior of mankind sent me: His Holy Gloriousness, the Buddha Himself. Now who’s gonna argue with that?”

  “He speak to you personal, did He?”

  “Every day! Every damn day!”

  Every day through the grass and the soil and the sky, there He’d be. I saw His righteous face in the tumbling clouds, and I heard His laughter in the brook. I knew it sounded insane, but I had seen Him everywhere in Kansas—and in parts of Texas and Missouri, too—and I was sure He disapproved of all this drinking. Just like He disapproved of the war, and of the slaves, and of all our damn human stupidity.

  * * *

  I was mending my bodice the day the man came.

  I smelled him before he knocked; an earthy, unwashed scent, layered with old booze. He came to the window, peeked in, and then gave a polite rap. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, felt his shadow on my back, and pretended not to notice him. He rapped again.

  Muted: “Ma’am?”

  “You go on back where you came from!” I yelled over my shoulder. “We don’t take in tramps here.”

  He tapped his fingers against the window, drumming. “Ain’t a tramp, ma’am. Doctor Leonidas Lazarus Suttner. A professional. I’m a physician. Been called out to one of the mining towns, up in Indian territory. Was wondering if I could stay a night or two to get my bearings and some rest. Been traveling for weeks, you see.”

  My Augustus had been a doctor. The Lord Buddha said coincidences were a sacred thing.

  Reluctantly, I turned around.

  A uniform gray color, his hair was wild and his eyes were wild, and he looked half-dead to me, all pale and rheumy as he was. He also looked like he had lost his mustache comb, and his shaving blade, and his soap. A yellowy white shirt could be seen poking through patches on his army jacket; a jacket, I noticed, which had been turned inside out.

  “Do you drink liquor?” I asked.

  He stared at me hard. “No, ma’am.”

  I squinted, transmitting my acknowledgement that he was a damn filthy liar. A fog, that’s what the Lord said lies were. Especially intensely lied lies.

  I turned back to my needlework.

  “You can stay in the barn then. There’s a stream about a mile off. I expect you saw it when you arrived. If you leave now, you might have enough light to do some washing and come back. There is a stink about you, sir. It is permeating my window.”

  I heard him walk away; boots crunching in the grass. The footsteps faded, returned. “I can’t seem to locate the barn, ma’am.”

  “It’s the stall with the half-starved cow in it, you cock-eyed fool! Don’t get smart!”

  “Thank you kindly, ma’am.”

  * * *

  So now we were two fools. Me and good ol’ Leonidas Lazarus.

  He seemed to cringe at being called ‘Leonidas’, so I stuck to ‘Suttner’ or ‘you there’. He told me his friends called him ‘Len’ or ‘Leo’, but I thought that was just an undignified thing to call any man. The Lord gave us our names, as they were. Why did we need to go infantilizing ourselves, clinging to a childhood softness we no longer had any right to?

  My house—a plain soddy in a field’s depression—didn’t allow much air in or out, and so I kept the door open when I did my cooking. Leo Suttner hovered in the doorway. The sun was bright; blinding me to anything but a silhouette. I worked on, pushing the grits around the pot and getting a slab of dough ready and refusing to acknowledge him or the muffled growl in his stomach.

  Augustus said you never let a man come into your home like that—men and women being unattended, and the third present was the demon Mara!—but I didn’t abide by that no more. Not when I had to tend to the labor and the farm and the selling of our measly crop, or else die by starvation. Furthermore, I was taller and bulkier than every man I had ever met. Furthest most, upon dying, Augustus had turned into a Hungry Ghost, of all things. A damn thin-necked, fat-bodied Ghost that I had had to chase off the farm just two days after the funeral. That alone permanently proscribed him from giving me any advice from beyond the grave ever again.

  Suttner, though. Suttner was a sly, small thing. I didn’t worry about my ability to overpower him or chase him away, should it have come to that.

  “Beautiful country, ‘round here,” he said.

  “Where you from?” I packed the dough together, punched it, pulled it apart.

  “Back east.”

  “Oh, no kidding. You mean you wasn’t raised on Indian lands?”

  He pursed his lips. “May I come in?”

  I gave him a long look. Finally: “If you must.”

  The stove was smoking up the house, and he coughed and waved his hat in front of his face as he approached. I watched him enter, tracking him with what folks called my bulldog glare.

  He sat himself at the table—dragging the chair against the swept dirt floor—then he placed his hands on the tabletop, kneading his knuckles. Trying to hide the trembling in his fingers. I wondered what this one would turn into when he died. Probably a garbanzo bean, all pale and slimy and useless.

  “So, you fought in the war then, Mister Inside-Out Coat?”

  He rolled his shoulders with a wince. “You have seen past my disguise, I guess.”

  “Is that thing blue or gray? For the li
fe of me, I cannot tell beyond the muck.”

  “I was an army physician, and now I practice to the civilians. Just a physician. As I was back East, and as I shall be out West. I request no more historical questions.”

  He was kneading his knuckles hard, so I let it be. After a moment’s silence, he cleared his throat.

  “Ma’am, you never told me your name.”

  “You can call me Carrie Amelia Nation.”

  “Like ‘Hold A. Country’?”

  I said nothing but kept working the dough. My old friend, the fury deep within me, my angry heart, loomed distantly on the horizon—hurtling towards me like a tornado on the plains, dancing in its happy rage.

  “How do you spell that?” he asked.

  “Any damn way I please, is how!”

  * * *

  Oh, Earth. Oh, Kansas. Oh, soil.

  There were days—most days—that I hated my life, this burden that Augustus had left me. This filthy farm. This pitiful crop. But still I pulled up my skirts and pushed down the hoe and got yelling after those lazy sons of bitches calling themselves day-workers.

  And, in the blazing heat and dust, rare moments of clarity.

  I could feel the Lord Buddha’s holy presence pushing against my forearms and hands as I dug into the earth. I could sense His happiness at what I was doing; expanding my plot, setting down the seeds and digging my roots into the ground. He said to seek no attachment. And what better detachment than uprooting yourself from hundreds of miles away, dragging your sorry items halfway across America (discarding many of them along the way), and then planting yourself down in some new, wild, godforsaken territory. A tumbling weed to Nirvana.

  Anyway, sometimes the soil on my so-called farm was so dry you could inhale half of it. But by the brook, little patches glistened wet and moist with promise.

  The Holy Lord Himself had had bad soil too, I reckoned. I didn’t know much about far-off Lumbini, Holy Land of His Magnificent Birth, but I had heard preachers tell of its hard, clay-like soil and shrubby flora and pathetic little patches of grass. The Lord Up Above may have been born an Earthly prince, but His kingdom sure sounded dry to me.

  What a nice feeling, when the shared cosmic suffering of His teachings felt so true.

  * * *

  The second night, Leonidas Lazarus Suttner did not appear to be readying himself to continue on his ‘travel’ to the ‘mining town’ in ‘Indian territory’, nor did he appear to be sleeping.

  Instead, I heard his muffled voice and low thumps in the barn, and then I saw his shadow moving across each window in succession: north side, east side, south side. Flit, flit, flit. He paced a perimeter around the house before stepping through the tall grassy field to the south, where he walked and walked out into the darkness until I finally lost sight of him.

  I wondered if he had gone away forever, but, some time later, he reappeared for another few loops around the cow, the soddy, the edge of the field. By then, it was two in the morning.

  Drumming on the window.

  I had the single candle burning, just enough light to let me work on my mending, and my eyes couldn’t adjust to the darkness so soon. But I pointed my face in his direction and growled, “What?”

  “Acknowledging the inappropriateness, hoping you feel trustful and generous, can I come in?”

  “Now? You want to come in? Now?”

  “Well. We’re both obviously up, Miss Nation.”

  “Missus Nation.”

  “My apologies.” I could see him clearly now, fading into view, wide-eyed and fidgety. “So, can I come in?”

  I shrugged. “If you must.”

  He bustled inside, closing the door quickly. He was hunched over, stomping both feet, keeping his hands jammed under his armpits and glancing periodically back at the black.

  “You afraid of the night, then?” I squinted, trying to poke the thread through the needle.

  “A touch.” He pulled the chair from the table—his chair, it was becoming—and sat a distance from me. “I renew my apologies, ma’am. I’ll just be a few moments.”

  “Bet you could use a drink now, huh?”

  He stared.

  “Oh, don’t think you’ve fooled me, Suttner. I smelled the stink on you when you were just coming up to my porch.”

  He rolled his eyes and readjusted himself, trying to get warmer. He seemed to be fetching around for an appropriate response, eventually smiling a little. “So you call that a ‘porch’ then?”

  I put down my mending. “Why do you mock poor ladies thus? All right, I’m humble. And if you haven’t noticed, I am running this entire operation alone.”

  “I concede. Very admirable. And Mister Nation’s....”

  “Dead.”

  He shifted in his seat. “The war?”

  “Liquor!”

  “I see.”

  “But, yes, he was also in that chaotic operation. A sawbones. Much like yourself, I imagine. Came out here not nine months ago. Came out here to chase the devil, it looks like!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you apologizing?”

  “The freshness of it, I suppose.” Suttner shrugged. “Nine months.”

  “Yeah. Well. We all got our wheels to break.”

  “Amen, amen.”

  * * *

  The Lord spoke to me that night. He said to take my hatchet, dust it off, and get to those towns and saloons out there. Those damnable pits of damnation.

  “HATCHET THEM, CARRIE NATION!” the Lord’s voice thundered in my ears. “HATCHETATE IT ALL, IN MY NAME! I WILL STAND BY YOU!”

  No human—no animal, no Hungry Ghost, no Demi-God, no particle of disease roasting in the sunlight—could have resisted that call.

  I pulled my bodice tighter. I tied up my boots. I smoothed down my skirts and tucked strands of hair behind my ears. And then I opened the door, stepped out into the chilled night, and took the hatchet from beside the door.

  I set out for town.

  * * *

  Protection, Kansas. Four miles away.

  When I arrived, the first glimmers of dawn were just poking over the eastern horizon. It was a red dawn: pure and angry.

  Protection itself was quiet. The saloon’s door was closed. No one in sight.

  I began to smash.

  * * *

  I don’t recall exactly when, or how, or why it all went wrong. Some confusion transpired between the friendly Fury inside myself and the Lord’s natural fury, external to me; the rage in the sun and the dust and the winds.

  First: a fire started in the saloon. I had smashed my way inside, and I had struck a keg, knocking over a stove. Liquid and fire had come pouring out, a river of fiery booze all the way back up to the bar.

  I fled.

  Now, outside, the air was picking up, and licks of flame were stretching higher and higher into the sky. I let my hatchet fall to the ground. More flames; the next house went alight. And another.

  Beyond the edge of the town, a gyrating tower of brown-white air was pulling itself together, upright, belly dancing like a harlot. And it was hurtling towards Protection, lurching towards the town as if consciously intending to strike.

  Air that whipped my hair around; that took my glasses and threw them off my face. Air that bit at me like the demons of the Hell Realm, tugging at my skirts and kicking up sand in my face.

  Heat from the saloon: sparks flying faster than I had ever seen, shooting through the street and lighting up the post office, the barber shop, the homes of these people that I did not know. It was a fight between the fire and the wind, and I was in the middle.

  “Get into the cellar!” someone yelled.

  What cellar? Fire was blowing through the town, gutting its buildings, smoking up any protective shelters we might have had. People were running out of their homes, coming to expose themselves to the elements just as the tornado was laying into town. I considered stealing a horse and running back to the farm, where I could fall to my knees and pray to the L
ord Buddha to forgive me, forgive me—

  “Everyone get into the bank vault!” a man cried. His stiff collar was flapping away from him. “It ain’t gonna go up in the fire—it’s the safest we’ll be! Frank, round everyone up that you can find and get them to the vault!”

  The vault.

  It was crowded, dimly lit. Huddled children. A girl in tears. I rubbed my forehead with both hands, scraping sooty grime away with my fingernails. If I pinched my nose, I could smell ash in the mucus.

  “What in the hell is happening out there?” a man asked. “How did that fire get started?”

  “Damned lightning, I guess.” Another: fat, red nose. “Oh, sorry, Ruth.”

  “Damned!”

  “Shh! Ruth! Proper folk don’t use that word.”

  “Well, the Lord Buddha Himself must be angry about something.”

  “Ha! Sure.”

  I held my hands together, pressing hard. Beyond the vault, we could hear crashes, booms, and the high wail of the wind.

  “All those folk out there....”

  “If they’re smart, they went into their cellars. Wind probably blew the fire out.”

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  “Hell of a coincidence.”

  “What?”

  “The fire. Right, ma’am?”

  I looked up. The man’s eyes were watery, his white beard yellowed at the tips. He was looking straight at me. The others in the vault noticed and turned as well, curious. Suddenly I was noticeable again. Suddenly, I was the six-foot monster again. I heard a child’s laugh.

  “I reckon you know something about that fire,” the old man said. “Don’t you, Miss?”

  “My name is Missus Carrie Nation, and I do indeed know about that fire.” I fixed him with my glare. “So what is it to you?”

  “Wait, what do you mean, you know about it?” The bank man looked back and forth between us. “Jeremiah, what are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” He looked at me. “What am I talking about, Missus Nation?”

  I inhaled. “I suppose you could say the fire is my fault.” Movement, murmurs. “But I don’t regret what I have done, nor do I despair at the tornado. Why not? Well, because they are both a punishment of the Lord Buddha for our sins, for all our fighting and money-making and boozing, and I say we should be happy to receive them!”