by George Wier
After several minutes the Old Man stood.
His gaze met mine, and some form of communication passed between us. It wasn’t something I could have described in words, but was, instead, something instantaneous and timeless, both at once.
He turned and moved back the way he had come.
“Will I ever see you again?” I asked. “Or will I forget?”
He stopped and looked at me, and then he winked.
*****
“What was that all about?” Julie asked me when Franklin and I were back inside the car. I got the motor going, checked both ways, then put us back on the road.
“Just saying goodbye to an old friend.”
“I smelled him too,” she said. “You tried to cover his scent on your shirt with my perfume, but Cathy and I already smelled him on you and Wolf. I smelled him just now.”
“Were you afraid?” I asked. “I mean, sitting here in the car by the highway all alone?”
She chuckled. “Are you kidding? That’s the most honest smell I’ve ever had in my nose.”
“Yes it is,” I said. “Yes it is indeed.”
Julie turned and patted Franklin, who seemed to have a sudden burst of energy and wanted to shower both of us with attention.
“This dog is getting old, honey,” she said. “I wonder how much longer we’ll have him.”
“Oh,” I said, “I’ve got a feeling he’ll be hanging with us for quite some time to come.”
EPILOGUE
We took I-10 coming home because I missed the turn off to Austin at Highway 290. I didn’t care. I needed the miles to settle out. San Antonio was an hour or more ahead, and Austin would be no more than another hour north of that, so I settled onto the wide double-lane highway and coasted along. Franklin slept in the back seat. After a time I noticed Julie’s eyes fluttering, and soon she was down for the count as well. I almost woke her up to tell her to tilt the seat back, but she seemed okay.
I recalled that we were supposed to discuss baby names this trip. I supposed there would be time during the hours and miles ahead.
The Texas sun beat down on the high weeds and low scrub brush. The farther west you go in Texas, the trees become shorter—quite often stubby, gnarled and stunted things—and the loblolly pine, elm, pin oak, post oak, willow, bois d’arc and pecan give way to cedar, yaupon, and a hundred varieties of mesquite.
Julie awoke on the outskirts of San Antonio.
“Want to get something to eat?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Let’s find something. I’m thinking downtown.”
“That’s fine,” I said.
We turned off of Interstate 10 and drove south on 35. After a few miles the San Antonio skyline came into view with its Tower of the Americas, bank buildings and luxury hotels. The downtown area is a complex of one-way streets that curve and meander such that without a compass one can completely lose any sense of direction. But I had been there enough times during my life that I knew where everything was and how to get from one point to another.
“Let’s park here,” Julie said, indicating a paid parking area, “and walk around a bit. Maybe we can find a good restaurant along the river walk.”
“We’ll have to bring Franklin along.”
“An outdoor restaurant, maybe,” she replied.
I nodded.
We were out of the car and walking along busy sidewalks. I wasn’t certain of exactly where we were, but when we turned a corner, a feeling hit me in the pit of my stomach. I stopped and nearly doubled over. Tears came to my eyes, and I had no idea why.
“Bill? What’s the matter?”
I was almost blacking out. There was a stone bench close by and I went for it and dropped my head down toward my knees. After a moment it began to clear.
“Are you...crying?”
“No,” I said. “At least the bodies are gone.”
“What bodies?”
I looked up and saw where we were—a hundred yards away from the doors of the Alamo Mission. Crowds of people were standing at the door waiting their turn to enter the Texas shrine. Franklin licked my fingers.
“This whole area here,” I said. “There were no streets or park benches. There weren’t even any trees. This was all courtyard here. Where we’re sitting was the thrown-together posts of the shorn-up wall. All this,” I waved an arm, “it was just...slaughter. More than five thousand Mexicans stormed this place just before dawn. The few defenders killed more than twice as many of the enemy. It was a blood bath.”
I felt her head against my shoulder. “You’re talking like you were here.”
“I was,” I said. “I’m not sure I can be here now.”
“We don’t have to go any further.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I wiped away my tears, but the images of the dead and dying remained before my eyes. “I think I have to. I couldn’t come here, even as a kid. Let’s try to walk around.”
I stood slowly, and Julie laced her arm in mine. We walked through a gate and along the walkway beside close-cropped green grass beneath the cool shade. We were within the walls and all the noise of the city ceased.
Flagstone paths meandered among still, dark pools of water. I saw an orange, yellow and black fish broach the surface, then disappear. These were the koi ponds of which I’d heard but had never seen.
I looked back the way we’d come and through the entryway where the wrought iron gates were thrown wide. People moved about the streets out there.
For a moment I saw a battlement where there wasn’t one, suspended over the distant street, and the day turned to night. Two men were up there, talking.
“Why did you do it, Colonel Travis?” I asked.
He floated upward and hovered above the trees that couldn’t really be here—or at least they weren’t here in his time. He looked around for a moment, turning in the air, and then he looked down at me. For a moment, I was certain he could see me.
“You had to, didn’t you? You didn’t have a choice.”
I stood, looking up. As I did, the image faded and I was looking at the underside of the broad canopy of oak branches.
I looked at Julie. She cocked her head at me.
“What?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Well,” I said. “At least that’s over. Can we get out of here? I think I’m starving.”
finis
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The fact of the matter is that the reader can skip an Author’s Note (or, for that matter, a Foreword or an Introduction) and come away from a story having missed nothing. But for those seeking some esoteric insight, a little peek, perhaps, behind the magician’s curtain, these little digressions after the tale is told can sometimes be useful. I hope that the following peek will satisfy. But then again, as Bill sometimes says, hope springs eternal.
Okay, here goes.
I know little-to-nothing about the Tarot, except that I used to know some folks who kept Tarot decks about, and I was familiar with Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, a set of classic fantasy books that brings its own version of the Tarot to life. I knew what the cards were, but none of their meanings. When I wrote the lines that Cathy Baha tells Bill and Julie:
“You’re the Nine of Wands,” she pointed at me, “and you’re the Hierophant,” her finger jabbed the air in Julie’s direction.
I had no faintest idea where that was going or why. Later, well after it was written, an internet search yielded the following:
The Nine of Wands: ...When the 9 of Wands turns up in a reading, we can be re-assured that we have what it takes to get by. Even in times of stress and difficulty, inner strength will rise up to guide us forward toward our goals. And in the process we shall learn more about ourselves and our abilities, gaining a new all-round perspective which brings security and self-confidence.
This card tells us to trust ourselves. We have everything we need. There is no necessity to analyze nor question. And absolutely no excuse to give in to doubt!�
�
—Source: http://www.angelpaths.com/wands/wands9.html
Now how’s that for coinky-dink? Doesn’t that pretty well sum up Bill Travis? I promise, I didn’t peek. I just pulled it out of the air.
And this for Julie:
The Hierophant ...The Hierophant is a holy man, but is in essence both male and female. He has a healthy connection with life and living - someone who has experienced life in full and now has the experience and wisdom needed in order to teach others.
...
His abilities reside like seeds within every one of us. We all have the ability to travel where he has already explored. He holds the keys to transformation.
—Source: http://www.angelpaths.com/majors/hiero.html
Well, I may have missed on that one. In the Tarot Deck I purchased, you can’t tell that the Hierophant is male. I mean, come on. It could be female. Wasn’t there a Pope who was a woman? Oh. That was just a rumor. Still, it summates Julie to a large degree. For those who have traveled along with Bill and his family through these adventures, who was the smart one, huh? And she seems to have lived several lifetimes within one, wouldn’t you say? I’ll tell you, this is one of the reasons it’s so difficult for me to write Julie. She is far and away higher up the scale of experience. She knows things. She’s aloof and doesn’t get pulled in so easily—uh, I mean, after that first adventure. You might say she thoroughly learned her lesson. But that’s what the wise do, isn’t it? They learn. But man, they really learn. So, I decided to stick with this. I only found out this information when I was halfway through the book. You see I needed to know after Bill finally met the Old Man. At that point I had the option of changing it from the Nine of Wands and The Hierophant to something else, of going back and making them both something, well, sexy. But no. It was already a done deal. Cathy Baha was the ones flipping the cards, not Wier. I don’t flip cards, I just write lines, paragraphs and pages. It’s the other people who say and do. Thank God for that!
All right, I hope that’s satisfactory.
On to the eight hundred pound gorilla hiding behind the lampshade in the living room. What I mean is, in a word, Bigfoot. A show of hands, please. Who here thinks there is such a thing alive and walking the woods of the world today? One, two, three, five...fifteen... Okay, you can put your hands down now. That’s too many to count. Honest to God, more people believe in Bigfoot, UFOs and aliens, reincarnation, the Theory of Atlantis, and 911 conspiracy theory than there are people who believe that Oswald was the lone gunman. So who’s kidding whom?
It was only natural that Bill Travis should run into Bigfoot—or rather, I believe it’s more apropos to say a Bigfoot or sasquatch. There are far more Bigfoot sightings by credible witnesses in the Western Hemisphere every month than there are suspected Ebola cases. But I’m not here to build a case or otherwise try to support my fiction. I’m simply pointing out that there is a question, that’s all. The question itself exists. It is a tangible thing. It’s a topic. It is, in many quarters, important. There are Town Hall Meetings and local legislation has been passed making it unlawful to track, harass, trap, shoot, or kill a sasquatch. Don’t believe me? Look it up. It’s on the books, particularly in many counties in the Pacific Northwest, where the most sightings take place. But, Bill Travis running into Bigfoot? On the Texas Gulf Coast? Sure. Why not? It’s far more credible than, say, a piece of seemingly demon-possessed meteorite that can locate gold (Longnecks and Twisted Hearts) or billions of nanite micro-robots taking over and animating a five hundred year old Conquistador skeleton (Slow Falling). Right? I’ll share a well-kept secret with you. From time to time I get various comments on these books (I read all of them) and I also very carefully track the sales of each book and try to correlate the two. For instance, I received a very nice review for Slow Falling that said, in essence, “I loved the book, but there’s too much science fiction in this one. Wier needs to stick to the good old-fashioned mystery-thriller.” I’ve had almost identical comments on Longnecks. But, you know something? Those two books sell really well. And there’s another factor there as well. Those are two of my favorite books.
So, Bill and Bigfoot. It works. It has a kind of rhythm to it. So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The last point—and you knew I was coming to it—is the Karankawa. There were Karankawa tribes along the Gulf Coast up to the time of Texas’s settlement, but by then they had been mostly killed out by disease and outright ethnic cleansing. But were they truly cannibals? No. The historical evidence does not bear this out. I believe it was a rumor started by the Spaniards. We have all, at one time or another, run into a criminal. The one universal characteristic a criminal has (apart from outright laziness and an inability to keep an appointment) is that they tend to accuse others of doing exactly what they themselves have done. It’s a weird mechanism. Hey, if the shoe fits! The Spaniards were looking for Cibola, the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. After they shipwrecked, the found themselves without any food, and so—and this is borne out in their diaries—they ate their own dead. No lie. The Karankawa, who initially welcomed these people with open arms, heard about the cannibalism and would have none of it. They drove the Spaniards away at spear point, but not before many of the Karankawa were killed. The Spanish accused the Karankawa of cannibalism, as if to say, “We would never do that!” I tell ya, scratch a fanatic violently opposed to a thing, I’ll show you someone guilty of that same thing, which is why I distrust anyone so disposed on almost any subject.
Okay, I think all the bases are covered. Thanks for listening to me. It means a great deal that an author be permitted his apology. Besides that, it’s traditional. That’s all an Author’s Note is anyway. It’s either an apology (what they used to call an “Argument”), or it’s an explanation, or it’s a hall pass. Take your pick. So, again, thanks.
All right, so now we’re on to Book Eleven. The title is Desperate Crimes. As I’ve said before, there will be twenty-one of these beggars, and the last three will be prequels. I know you know all of that. I do like hearing myself talk, though.
Oh, one more thing: I included my short story, The Woodsman, and it follows immediately here. For those wanting the whole backstory on Wolf and the Old Man, it should prove insightful. When I originally wrote it, it had a bit of foul language, which I used to typify Wolf before his ultimate change in outlook. I have, however, edited the tale to make it more palatable for Bill Travis readers. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Like the old wine cooler commercials used to say, “Thank you for your support.” By which I mean, thank you for reading, thank you for your emails, tweets and Facebook posts, and thank you for keeping me in beer and skittles. I like you for that. A lot.
All the best,
George Wier
Austin, Texas
THE WOODSMAN
A Short Story
By George Wier
Wolf Dillard kept his Remington 12-gauge shotgun on his screened-in back porch next to the deep freeze. He could lay his hand on it unerringly on the darkest of nights. Nights like this one.
The screech had awakened him, and damned nearly nothing ever did. This wild screaming racket had pulled him out of a reddish, lurid dream in which he was poking Eula, the waitress down at the Piedmont Cafe, from behind. They had been out in back of the kitchen next to the spent grease barrel, and Eula kept saying, “Do that thing, Wolfie. Do that bad thing.” And Wolf had no idea what the bad thing was. But for some reason in the hollowest pit of the dream, he could think of little other than smearing the spent cooking grease all over her. And then, of course, Eula began screeching at him.
Only it wasn’t Eula.
He came awake in an instant and sat bolt upright in bed. The screech kept on going, only it seemed to carry along some weird utterances in it, like someone was trying to drown a big hog and the hog kept getting loose and coming up for air. Or maybe like one of those big gorillas at the Houston zoo when they were really ticked off about
something. It was a screech with mud in it.
Wolf slid into his boots and stepped to the back door. He was in his underwear. About that time the screech stopped.
The door open, his left hand found the barrel of Brewster. He hefted the gun, felt to make sure the safety was off, then lifted the latch on the screen door.
It was powerful dark out there.
The screeching had stopped and there wasn’t a damned sound to be heard anywhere. Not the warble of a night bird, not a single damned cricket scratching its hind legs. Nothing. And he’d never once before heard nothing in Karankawa County in his entire life, except the time the tornado came through and fizzle-bucked everything up but good. There had been about ten seconds of utter nothing then, and then it was all a shitstorm.
Wolf glanced upward to see the stars shining overhead. That was the only light on this darkest of October nights. And the stars didn’t give off enough light to take a leak by.
“Who’s out there?” he called at the top of his voice.
Nothing.
“I got a shotgun here,” he warned, but the silence rolled back at him with an oppressive emptiness.
He heard it then. A singular grunt. It wasn’t that all-fired far off, either. More like it was half way between the back steps and the barn.
The hair stood up on Wolf’s back. It was behind the pecan tree.
“All right, you damned gorilla,” Wolf said, and raised the shotgun to his shoulder. “It may not be gorilla season, but it’s open season on anything screaming in my back yard in the middle of the night.
Movement, suddenly. A whisper in the weeds. He felt the heavy yet soundless stride coming up through his boots. He tracked his gun to the right, squinted to make out something—anything—in the close darkness.