Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection

by Jay Lake

  McAllen, he got himself out toward the Devil’s Kitchen. That’s a wild, wild land, looks like God dropped some old mountains into a thresher the size of Kansas, then let Leviathan vomit all over what fell out the ass end. All gray and brown and furze, covered with sand and ash and alkali and salt, nothing a fellow with any sense would ride into.

  But he saw smoke, you understand. And fire was on his mind more than anyone’s. Range fires could take his life in a hanging, if those hard words stuck around and took root in people’s thoughts. So McAllen probably figured on picking his way on in there and finding some camp of layabouts or Indians or deserters, or something he could lay them fires at the feet of.

  Off he went, leading his horse down a slope of scree and into one of them little, twisted canyons, following the smoke and his own sense of what was right and what was not.

  * * *

  Now the Devil, he’s one crafty son of a bitch.

  Yeah, I said that. You just mind your piehole or I’ll mind it for you, and you won’t like that one tiny bit.

  Crafty on account of that’s how the Creator made him. Lucifer, he’s practically the first of God’s children. Old Adam, more or less an afterthought he was. A gardener, really, set to watch the fruit trees and keep the snakes off the lawn. No, all the pride and power and glory went into the Prince of Light. When he done fell from Heaven, he took a piece of the Old Man’s heart with him. The meek might could inherit the Earth, but it was the prideful for whom the beauty of the day was first forged.

  After the Fall, though, the Devil he had to slink around in the dark patches and hide in the shadows and walk with the rotten side of a man’s soul in his hand. That’s why he hangs around even to this day in places like Hell’s Half Acre, what was the Devil’s Kitchen back then. Ain’t no place for him among the shaded cottonwoods or along a quiet bend in the river with a fishing pole.

  Still, a fellow’s got to eat. That’s part of our earthly estate, don’t you know? And the Devil likes him some barbacoa as much as the next man.

  Yeah, what they call barbecue now days.

  A good loin of pork or brisket of beef, dry rubbed with salt and some spices, then cooked long and slow over a bed of coals afore you slather on a compounded ferment of vinegar and tomato sauce—that’s a ticket to Heaven through the gates of the mouth. Food as righteous as any toe-curling sin.

  So here’s the Devil got him a roasting spit down in a dry ravine in the Devil’s Kitchen, and he’s got a dozen lesser dark angels to tend the fire and turn the spit, and a whole heifer off of Mr. Williamson’s land stuck up there roasting to feed his own hungers and keep his myrmidons at their labors. It was a good place for Lucifer, on account of no one ever goes there, and he could rest in peace until time called for more of his mischief to be spread upon this Earth or down in the dominions of Hell.

  Yeah, like that, kid. And you wouldn’t be the first one ready to sell their granny down to darkness for a mouthful of that hot, sweet meat fresh off the fire. No, sir.

  Devil was resting his spurred heels on a shattered knob of gray-white rock, a jug of white lightning in one clawed hand, a corncob pipe in the other, when Eustace Prudence McAllen led his old bay mare into the mouth of the ravine.

  Them demons, they giggled and cackled and sizzled as demons is wont to do. Old Scratch looked up to see what the fuss was and saw a beanpole of a man with a week’s beard looking back at him. Dark fellow, for a white man, in a pale canvas duster and a busted-down slouch hat pulled low over his eyes.

  “Boys,” the Devil announced in a voice like a flash flood down a canyon, “we got us a visitor.”

  You got to understand the Devil speaks all languages and none. Adamic, what everyone talked before the Tower of Babel, that’s the tongue of Heaven. Any man born of woman will understand it, on account of it’s the language God made us all to know and be known by.

  So while his vowels sizzled with lightning and bedded coals, and his consonants were the fall of hammers and the snap of bones, the cowboy McAllen heard this in English as plain as any what got spoke in the bunkhouse back at the Broken Bow Ranch, and in an accent as melodious as General Nathan Bedford Forrest himself.

  Which is to say, McAllen, he wasn’t fooled one tiny bit. The Devil can make himself fine and fair as any Philadelphia dandy, or he can be small and slick and mean as a scorched badger, or anything in between. But this day Old Scratch was taking a rest, so his tattered wings spread black and lonely behind him while the horns on his head showed their chips and cracks and stains.

  The only characteristic that marked him out from the chiefest among his lesser demons was the blue of his eyes, which were as deep and quiet as the lakes of Heaven. No creature born of Hell could ever have possessed such a gaze, and it was them orbs of light that marked the Devil still as being directly the work of God’s hand.

  McAllen saw the wings and the flickering, scaled tail and the great clawed feet and corncob pipe and the jug of shine, but most of all he saw those blue eyes, and he knew his time had come, and probably already gone past.

  He also knew from the barbacoa spit who’d been setting those range fires.

  “How do, neighbor?” he asked pleasantly, careful not to let his hand stray to the gun butt at his right hip. McAllen knew perfectly well that the six or seven wiry, bright red bastards tending that cow a-roasting could take him down before his second shot got off, and he knew perfectly well his first round wouldn’t do no more than irritate Old Scratch.

  “Smartly enough, I reckon.” The Devil sat up straight and set down his jug. “Strange place you picked to be riding fences, son of Adam.”

  McAllen touched the brim of his slouch hat. He dropped the bay mare’s reins, on account of she’d been pulling hard. “It’s rightly son of Allen, your worship,” he said calm as a millpond. Behind him, the horse bolted with a scream of fear to melt a man’s heart.

  Go, he thought, and carry the news of my death if not the tale of the manner of my passing. For it is given to some of us to know the manner and hour of our passing.

  Well, yes, you’re right. Even a deaf-mute idiot Frenchman would have known this was the manner and hour of his passing. And Eustace Prudence McAllen was none of those things.

  The Devil smiled, which was not a sight for the faint of heart. “Still no fences down in these lands, son of Allen.”

  “Just a fire down below.” McAllen summoned the courage that had stood him up against Yankee bullets and Oglala Sioux arrows and Wyoming winter blizzards and Texas summer droughts—that courage was needful now for him to walk slowly toward the Devil, measuring his steps with every care a man could bring.

  “My cooking could bring a circuit preacher to his knees,” the Devil said proudly. Pride was, after all, his overweening sin and greatest accomplishment.

  McAllen touched the brim of his hat again. “But your worship, the sparks from your fire keep setting the grasslands east of here to flame.”

  With a shrug, the Devil smiled again. “Fire is my servant and my only friend. What does it matter to me that the prairie burns?”

  Here is where Eustace Prudence McAllen showed what a clever man he was. He smiled back at the Devil, though his guts liked to turn to water, and said, “Except folk are setting the blame on me for them range fires. You ain’t getting the credit you rightly deserve.”

  At those words the Devil’s teasing of McAllen vanished in an eruption of wounded vanity. He stomped one great, clawed foot, what shook the ground so hard they felt the tent poles rattle over in Laramie. “By all that’s unholy, I shan’t be having you take the credit for my deeds, son of Allen!” His shout smoked the air blue and called dark clouds into swirling overhead. Flames snapped at the broken tips of his horns, and his wings spread wide with a creak like a barn in a tornado.

  No, no, they ain’t had no real buildings in Laramie till after the war was done and the railroad come to town. Of course it ain’t a camp now.

  Anyway, I got a story to tell, if you don’t
keep aggravating me like that. Who taught you manners, anyhow?

  “That’s why I come to you, your worship.” McAllen somehow kept his voice steady, though he nearly voided himself in his drawers from sheer, raw terror. “It ain’t right, and I reckon to set the record straight.”

  “I’ll straighten the record,” roared the Devil. “I’ll show them who’s Prince of Flame and Darkness around these parts.”

  At this point, McAllen realized he might of overshot his mark just a little bit. He hadn’t aimed to set Old Scratch on the folks of Fort Caspar and the Broken Bow Ranch. He hadn’t aimed for much at all, except to live a minute or two longer in the face of such wrath.

  He had his second fit of brilliance. “Before you go wreaking havoc across the land, your worship, maybe you ought to partake of your dinner.”

  Well, those words brought the smell of barbacoa back to the Devil’s nostrils, along with a strong whiff of the sulfur that has been his natural estate since he first fell from Grace. Like I said, there ain’t many that can resist the crackling lure of the slow-cooked meat.

  “Be damned if I won’t,” the Devil replied, then began to laugh at his own joke.

  McAllen, he laughed along with the Devil, because what else is a man to do in such a moment? The two of them stood there, cackling and howling like two lunatics, even the lesser demons capering and giggling through their needle-toothed mouths.

  Old Scratch strode with a purpose to the roasting cow and tore off a long, lean, juicy strip of meat, all crisped dark on the outer edge and dripping fat within. The smell that came off the carcass like to set McAllen’s brain on fire, reaching right through his nose and his tongue and lighting up the sin of gluttony as nothing else in the world could have done.

  “You want some?” the Devil asked, drippings running down his face from both sides of his mouth, his rotten fangs chewing the soft, sweet meat like it was manna fallen from God’s hand.

  The scent nearly undid McAllen. He was tempted, knowing he’d taste of the finest meal ever to be eaten by himself or any other man. Knowing likewise if he took food from the Devil’s hand, he’d be a servant of darkness for the rest of his days here on Earth, and damned for eternity beyond.

  He never was a churchgoing man, McAllen, but anyone who’s stood when the bullets fly or watched over the herds when the wolf packs are hunting down the moon knows better than to disbelieve. Life is too short and hard and strange not to blame God for what He done made of the world.

  Yes, even now. And I know none of you knotheads ever dodged a bullet in your young years.

  No, acorns out of a slingshot do not count.

  McAllen looked at that most perfect barbacoa steaming in the Devil’s grip, and reckoned if he didn’t take it from Old Scratch’s hand, he’d be next up on the spit. But like I said, he reckoned if he did take it, he’d be bound then and forever more in service, like that Faust fellow out of the old days in the Germanies.

  Death, or barbacoa?

  That right there was the temptation of Eustace Prudence McAllen.

  What would you have done? This here’s the point of the story, ain’t it?

  What would you have done?

  Really and truly, on your best swear, what would you have chose?

  * * *

  They heard the shot at the Broken Bow Ranch, clear as if someone had loosed a round off the porch of the bunkhouse.

  Folks heard it in Fort Caspar, too.

  Later on some claimed they heard it in Laramie, reckoned the noise for a boiler explosion or some such, but the railroad ain’t reached Laramie yet that year, so you can figure on them being liars or at the best misguided in wanting to be part of history their own selves.

  But the howl that followed, everyone heard that clear on to Fort Benton in one direction and Omaha in the other. Like a storm off the plains grabbing up sod houses and snapping telegraph poles it was. Anger and pain and rage and loss that caused drunks to stop beating their wives for a day or two, and sent even the randiest cowpokes scurrying into the revival tents for a good dose of prayer and preaching.

  You see, Eustace Prudence McAllen shot the barbacoa spit right off the posts and dumped the Devil’s dinner into the ashes and sand of the firepit below. He resisted temptation and bought himself a ticket straight to Heaven on account of nixing Lucifer’s vittles and vexing the ambitions of evil that day, in that place. Hell didn’t let out for dinner, see, on account of what he done.

  The Earth split open so that the Devil and his minions could chase themselves straight down to Hell, taking that ruined carcass with them.

  When Williamson and a posse of his hands came the next morning on the bay mare’s backtrail looking for McAllen, they found him lying flat on the ground deader than a churchyard dance party. His clothes were nearly burnt off his body, his hair turned white as the Teton glaciers.

  One last piece of crispy barbacoa was stuck between his teeth, and Eustace Prudence McAllen had the expression of a man who’d died with his hands on the gates of Heaven.

  They buried him where he fell, on account of none of the horses would sit still for the body to be slung across. Williamson kept the LeMat revolver, which the metal of them double barrels looked to have been frosted but never did thaw, and dropped that piece of barbacoa into a leather pouch to take home and study, for even then he knew it for what it was.

  There weren’t no more range fires for a long time after that. Some folks took that to mean McAllen had been the torch man, but Williamson and his hands knew better. They kept their dead compadre’s name clear, and they kept the herds well away from the edges of the badlands.

  Even now, if you ride out west of Casper toward Hell’s Half Acre—for the Devil don’t cook there no more, so it ain’t his kitchen now—if’n you ask around and folk like the set of your shoulders and the light in your eyes, there’s a barbacoa pit run by some of Williamson’s daughters and granddaughters. McAllen’s Barbecue, they call it. Place ain’t on no signpost or writ down in no tax rolls, but it’s there.

  Head for the badlands and follow the scent. Just mind who’s eating on the porch when you get there, because even the Devil himself can be tempted back to this corner of Wyoming when the wind is right and the cuts of meat are just good enough.

  That Which Rises Ever Upward

  * * *

  This was part of a shared project that editor Phil Athans put together. We never did get much traction with the concept, but I had a lot of fun writing this.

  * * *

  The Dreams of a Boy

  Attestation clutched his glowing fists tight and stared out into the pit, his mind aboil. His two khilain coins, clutched one in each hand, were not hot—whatever mystery of magic or technology lent them their light was more akin to the phosphorescent scum on the cave walls of his home village than it was to the bright heat of the Sunstrip that lit their days and glowered through their nights.

  Khilain. Nihlex Watershed. Up. Those tricky winged bastards could fly. Even the little lantern-plants bobbed up and down the pit’s air column when they were in fruiting season, flying in groups ranging from a dozen or so to occasional releases of a hundred or more. Though only fourteen, Attestation was a birthright Pitsman, like his father, and his grandfathers before them. He could no more spread wings and fly than he could set his face to glowing like the coins.

  All he could do was cling to the wall and dream.

  His village, Ortinoize, wasn’t much of a place. Built into a crack in the pit wall that ran roughly upward at a thirty-degree angle, it had all the charm of a staircase on which someone had dropped a great deal of junk. Not that Attestation was all that personally familiar with junk. Everything in Ortinoize was reused, repurposed, recycled. It was just old Sammael that taught the kids—he was an infaller, from someplace called Canada, outside the pit—he had a lot to say about the world and the way it was used, and was full of mysterious ideas like “junk” and “oceans” and “flight.”

  Except flight wasn’t so
mysterious. The nihlex did it every day of their lives. And everyone knew they were dumb as rocks.

  That some dumb old monkeys could find their freedom in the air of the pit was an offense to his spirit. Attestation knew this like he knew the back of his own hands.

  Eventually the Sunstrip faded to nothing more than a warm presence. The cooling air brought smoky scents and reinforced the ever-present flinty odor of the pit. Attestation slipped the coins back into his goat leather neck pouch, careful to fold them into a precious scrap of satin, then picked his way among the bamboo tubes that formed the foundations and scaffolding of Ortinoize and onward up through the warrens of the village to his own sleeping mat just a little too deep inside Marma’s Cave for him to see the dawning of each new day with his own eyes. This night, like every night, he flew only in his dreams.

  * * *

  Ortinoize had been founded, depending on whom you believe, by communards escaping bloody retribution for their utopian ideals, or by a group of drunken priests of some stick-god now forgotten except in the cruciform symbol that represented the village on those rare occasions when the village required symbolic representation. In either case, someone had gotten lucky in finding this crack in the pit wall, because a solid stream of fresh water flowed there that had never failed yet. Those founders had been smart about their water, and built an intricate system of cisterns and pools into which rock footings were braced so the inhabitants of the village were always above a water source.

  The rules on waste disposal were vigorously enforced. “Protect everyone’s water” was the cardinal law of Ortinoize. Everything always reeked of damp and dank and night soil and the strange green dreams of bamboo that sometimes grew so fast you could almost watch it unfold.

  This focus on water and architecture meant the village was in effect one giant building. It ramshackled on like Sammael’s staircase, with sleeping alcoves and pantries and little foundries all mixed together. A family might hold rights in half a dozen places, their linens and shoes closeted amid someone’s potted beans while they took their meals three ladders higher and slept in three other locations depending on mood, gender, and who was in disgrace with whom.