His pain forgotten, he limped and stumbled across the bones to fall to one knee. He reached out and reverently touched one of the eggs with his hands, feeling the warm, smooth surface, thick as plaster.
He caressed it, as though his tactile gestures summoned it fully into being. To his delight, the egg responded with a slight shudder which he could feel in the webbing between his fingers, like an explosion far below ground. Life!
"Mister Pabodie!" called Neb.
But Pabodie was elsewhere. He was a boy pricking his fingertips on the spines of a sea urchin, full of wonder at the scope of creation and swept away by the notion of life so unlike his own.
He could almost feel the cool ocean air again.
And the air was cool. A shadow had fallen across the face of the hot sun.
Pabodie turned and looked up, thinking he would see a lingering storm cloud. What he saw caused the floor of his stomach to bottom out.
For a moment it was limned in fire, a demon wing intercepting the light of day. Pabodie knew what a mouse must feel as the fast shadow of a hawk falls across it – a curious euphoria, as if the suspension of the sun's murderous heat was a final gift from predator to prey to ease the coming terror and violence – a gust of refreshing coolness like an anesthetic preceding the sting of death.
It was the mate of the one they’d killed. A male. It was larger, and its cry broke the stillness and made his calf muscles lock. The father had spied a rat among its brood and was coming to remove the skulking pest.
Pabodie half turned, but where was there to go? The sharp shadow swept towards him...and was checked by a tremendous crash that sounded from down below and blew a decent sized hole in the creature's left wing.
It was Neb and his Mazeppa. She had blown the enraged father a kiss. Pabodie was spattered in its blood, but the diving pteranodon tilted and passed over the nest with a wind that made him stagger against the eggs.
Pabodie rushed to the wall, finding a hole in the branches. He peered down at Neb, who had mounted a high rock (not so high as the nest rock, but enough of a vantage to give him a clear shot with Mazeppa). He realized then that the canny hunter had suspected the existence of the bull all along, and had used him to bait it out. Though he burned momentarily at the old man’s treachery, it didn’t matter. They would both die now.
The big Sharps was smoking. There would be no time to prime a second shot. The male was arcing back and had spotted its inflictor. Another cry and it plunged towards him.
Neb flung aside his hat and the rifle, and when next his hands appeared, the big blade of his Bowie knife winked in the sun.
"Come on, you son of a bitch!" he screamed, and he uttered a bellow more animal than man, which the diving pteranodon answered in kind.
Neb did not shrink from that terrible attack, but bent his knees and sprung towards it, still yelling, leaping clear of the rock to meet it in a feat of agility that again made Pabodie question the nature and veracity of all the hunter's bizarre claims.
The spring took him nearly nine feet vertically. The colossal head of the bull darted with surprising speed, and its monstrous bill neatly transfixed the old man’s body through the torso.
Pabodie's last sight of Neb was of him clinging to the pteranodon's bill, one boot heel crammed in its nose hole, dragging himself like a determined Arthur up the length of the beak, stabbing the knife down again and again in a dying rage, as blood gushed from his roaring mouth.
This frenzied counterattack had confused the thunderbird; it bore its burden skyward, wheeled about, and flapped off to the south, screaming and turning and shaking its head, trying to dislodge the stinging pest.
Pabodie watched the winged horror become a black 'W' in the distance, then wheel out of sight around the side of the mountain.
Neb had bought him time, but he knew it would be back. He could still survive if he could shinny down before it returned. He could scurry down the mountains, keeping close to the gullies and ditches and staying out of sight. He would go like a rat where the thing couldn't reach him. If only his punctured leg would support him.
He had no time to treat it now. Once he was relatively safe, he would turn attentions to it. For now he hastily spilled his effects from his knapsack. The trifle of a tarsal fragment fossil to which he had attached such foolish importance only days earlier tumbled out, becoming indistinguishable from the other bones. It was nothing now. He had to make room for the more precious cargo.
The egg.
He would take at least one of them. Bear it on his back down the mountain, back to town, back to Connecticut, back to Yale. Probably it would die on the journey, but it was still a treasure to risk bearing. It would surely warrant a further investigation by the Survey. He would be the appointed head of the expedition. It meant a meteoric career and early retirement. Books, and lectures around the world, a large, quiet home off campus – maybe overlooking the ocean back in Kingsport - and a generous pension for himself.
He’d be in the history texts, and who knew? Patents could follow. If he managed two eggs and lucked out with a male and a female, franchises. How many zoos would pay for live specimens for their collections? How many private citizens? What about possible military applications for these creatures? Why, they could provide an air borne cavalry if they could be brought to heel. He would change the face of everything if only he could make it back to town.
With the noise and spectacle of the thunderbird and Neb he had not heard the crackling behind him. Now he perceived the high pitched squeals and excited avian cries.
He turned, stupidly holding his empty knapsack as three of the black eyed, newly hatched pteranodon, who had instinctively redoubled their hatching efforts upon hearing the familiar cry of their father, poked out of their broken shells and regarded him. Smelling fresh blood so close, the squawking hatchlings swarmed him in a slicing confusion of sharp angles and slashing talons, scissor bills pecking wildly at his shocked face, easily punching through his spectacles to his succulent eyes. He fell shrieking and flailing, blind as they pounced upon him, claws tearing up his belly and thighs and ripping away his genitals. Naturally adept killers, they brought him down and fell to shredding him like a paper doll. His gargling, frantic screams echoed down the mountainside as their slim little tongues darted out to lap his blood.
By nightfall the wounded bull thunderbird returned, flying low, tired and scarred with a hard-won supper. The grim widower was puzzled when it found his hatchlings waging tug of war with the remains of an earlier repast.
“The Blood Bay” came to me while I was reading John Steinbeck’s “The Red Pony.” Everything in it is a play on that story.
This was the second story I had published. I sent it off on a whim to a nominally Christian horror magazine called The Midnight Diner despite the fact that there really wasn’t much of any Christian theme to it. It swung the Editor’s Choice award for that issue and there was a cool fiery phantom horse in pastels on the cover. Second story published, second illustrated, so I was riding high.
I don’t hate horses, but I can’t say I have a very high opinion of their intelligence, mainly due to an incident from when I was a sophomore in high school. I spent the weekend with friends at a mutual friend’s ranch and while the guys were inside watching Speed Racer I wandered out to the corral where this huge black horse, Goliath, was saddled. I’m fuzzy now on why the horse was unattended and saddled. Maybe one of us had just ridden him. Anyway, I decided to climb into the saddle and trot about a little.
I don’t know why I thought I knew what I was doing, but I got up there, took the reins in hand, and gave Goliath the heels. That gargantuan beast took off running, and though I yanked back on those reins, I don’t think I knew exactly how much strength it took to stop a horse, or I thought I’d hurt him or something, like a dog on a leash. Anyway, he was not stopping.
He managed to run out of the corral (did I leave the gate open? I have no memory of this, but I guess I must have) and made a beeline fo
r a stand of bushes. I stroked his neck, tried to calm him down, but he was going in, so I let go and rolled backwards off his rump, landing on my knees while he went crashing into the bushes, like an idiot, I thought.
Of course now, having reread what I just wrote, it appears I was the idiot here.
Anyway, for a long time I didn’t have a good opinion of horses (though I find the cliché about the intractability of mules to be kind of an overstatement and will defend them), and I think this came from that place.
When you research a story, and it’s working, things start to click into place. For this, connecting Bucephalus and Xanthe were what got me excited in the writing of it.
The Blood Bay
Jonas stood with his foot on the bottom rail of the breaking pen fence between Clem and Panos, watching Henry bust a three-year-old appaloosa the afternoon his daddy, Famous Fallon, rode up with the bay mare strung behind.
Famous had run out on Jonas’ mama when he was four years old and it drove her to drink. She’d often told him this, and his Grandma said it was so.
They’d lived at Grandma’s outside of Bisbee after that. Whenever Jonas and his mama went into town for sundries, Grandma gave them extra money to buy two cans of peaches to sip. Peaches were mama’s favorite. Jonas never did get to taste them though, as mama always spent all the peach money at Skinner & Dunn’s Saloon while he waited outside on the boardwalk.
Davey Murdock at school said two cans of peaches didn’t buy half the whiskey Jonas’ mama drank. He said things about how she paid for it. The teacher hided Jonas with a switch for blacking up Davey’s eye.
Sober or drunk Jonas’ mama never missed an opportunity to badmouth Famous Fallon. Grandma said Famous had left mama for a whore soon as his business begun to pay off, trading her away like a steady mare for a flighty show filly. It was an apt expression, him being a horse trader and all.
Last March when Jonas turned eleven, his mama left him dozing in the shade in front of Skinner & Dunn’s. He woke to find her chasing a man, cussing him in the foulest language he’d ever heard.
The man didn’t turn around and mama went after him into the street, heedless of the mailman’s buckboard that ran her down, mashing her up till only her blue striped dress held her together.
Jonas’ Grandma toted mama’s share of hate for Famous after that. She cursed him as they knelt at their bedtime prayers and whilst saying their grace, clutching Jonas’ small hand till her horny fingers left white marks on his knuckles and ireful tears washed the deep lines in her cheeks.
Grandma told Jonas that Famous had hired that mailman to run mama down. She said the drunkard mama had chased into the street used to pimp that yellow headed whore Famous had married.
“They planned it,” Grandma would wail in a cracking voice. “They planned the whole thing.”
Hate ate Grandma up, some said. Jonas found her lying gray and stiff on the floor of her bedroom one cool morning two months later, a little spider spinning in her ear.
A neighbor wrote Jonas’ daddy and Famous came to get him.
Jonas and Famous sat across Grandma’s kitchen table where they had prayed his stock would die. Famous told Jonas he had stayed away on account of mama and Grandma, not out of any lack of affection for him. He told Jonas he was taking him back to his ranch, that he was going to do all he could to “shore things up betwixt them.”
Jonas just sat there, the edge of the tablecloth bunched up in his fist, hating him enough for three.
So Jonas came to live on Famous’ horse ranch on the outskirts of Delirium Tremens, in the San Pedro River Valley. Famous’ pretty yellow headed wife, Claire, was as kind as could be to Jonas. Jonas figured she had learned courtesy in her whoring days.
No question, Jonas hated Claire and Famous Fallon.
He liked the ranch, though. He liked the open air, and he liked school and the preacher’s daughter, Carrie Shallbetter. He liked the men who worked for Famous, Clem Dobbs, Henry DuMotte the flash rider, and the old Greek stable hand, Panos, whose three gold teeth twinkled when he laughed. And he loved the horses.
Because he took to his new home so much, Jonas felt guilty when he thought on mama. She was over him always, like the spider in Grandma’s ear. At night his dreams were full of iron tires, blood and blue stripes.
“Here comes your papa,” Panos said to Jonas. “Lady Missus!” he called to the house.
Claire emerged from the doorway, rubbing her hands on her apron and kicking dust across the yard.
Jonas’ stepmother was prettier than his mama, he had to admit, with her sunny smile and spun gold hair, and her buttermilk white skin dashed with freckles. He had never heard her cuss, nor seen her take a drink. For an ex-whore, she was pretty virtuous.
Show filly, he could still hear his Grandma hiss, like a nagging ghost. Planned it.
Famous’ gray, Lily Belle, was unusually skittish. She frog walked through the gate, snorting the whole time.
Famous swung out of the saddle and passed Clem the rope of the strange horse he was leading.
“Watch this one,” he said, meaning the bay. He stooped to kiss Claire’s cheek. “She took a nip at Lily Belle’s tail on the road.”
“Where’d you get her?” Clem asked.
“Up at Nearly’s,” said Famous. “’Wandered out of the desert so far as Jane can figure. She couldn’t get her to eat and the stage ponies won’t take to her.”
Jonas looked at the horse appraisingly. He feigned only mild interest, as he did whenever Famous was talking.
She was a dappled blood bay fifteen hands high with black points and strong slate hooves. She had a broad white blaze across her nose and a skunk-like rabicano salting of white hairs in her mane and broom tail. Her right eye was pale blue, the other coffee dreg brown. She was no youngster, but she seemed spry, if a little bony.
“What do you figure on doing with her?” Clem said. “She’s too old to sell.”
“Dunno about her being that old,” said Famous. “She’s ornery as all hell.” He looked at Jonas. “I thought I’d give her to you, if you can get her to eat.”
Jonas looked at Famous. Clem, Claire, and Panos swapped glances over his head and then did the same.
“Well, why not?” Famous said to them. “He’s frying size. ‘Bout time he had a horse of his own. ‘Be good for you,” he said to Jonas.
Jonas looked at the mare with new interest. Her head loomed over him, rendered a shadow by the noonday sun burning between her ears like a saint’s halo. It flushed the black from her salt and pepper hair, painting it glorious gold. The thought that she might be his twittered him up.
When Famous and Henry had eased a steaming new colt out of one of the mares last spring, Jonas had expected that colt would be his, but it caught the strangles and Panos had to put it down along with the mother. He hadn’t thought much about having his own horse since then, figuring the opportunity wouldn’t arise again within the year.
“You sure that’s a good idea, Mr. Fallon?” Panos asked, looking at the horse. “You said yourself she’s part outlaw...”
“Well, I figure Henry’s at hand to break her of any bad habits. Anyway, its better the boy’s first horse knows a little more than he does.”
“Who was her last owner?” Claire asked. “Do we know?”
Jonas could hear the motherly concern in her tone. It wore on him.
“I don’t think anybody’s gonna come lookin’ for her,” Famous said.
“Why not?”
“Well,” he said, rubbing his own ribs as if to work out what came next, “there was a saddle on her when they found her. It was bloodied up pretty bad.”
Claire sucked in her breath. Jonas gaped at the horse.
“I figure ‘Paches done for her last rider,” said Famous. “That bother you, son?”
Jonas stared into the horse’s bright eye, wondering whether she had seen her owner die same as he had seen his mother go.
“She’s still a good horse, Jonas,”
he went on. “But if you’re not keen on the idea...”
“I ain’t afraid,” Jonas snapped.
“No reason you should be,” Famous allowed.
“Honey...,” Claire began, in a worrisome manner.
Famous rubbed her shoulders and winked at Jonas.
“It’ll be alright, sweetheart,” he said.
Henry was trotting around the pen on the tame appaloosa, all broad smiles beneath the brim of his Stetson.
“I didn’t put on enough of a show for you all?” he called. “Next time I swear I’ll fall and bust my arm at least.”
“You’d do that just for the attention wouldn’t you, Henry?” Clem said.
“Don’t be sour, Dobbsy,” Henry said. “Anytime you want a lesson in peelin’ I’ll be happy to oblige.”
“Come over here, Henry,” Famous called. “Take a look at this horse I brang Jonas.”
Henry clicked his tongue and eased over toward the fence. The once feisty three-year-old rode docile as a dog now. Henry took off his hat to wipe the sweat from his bleach white forehead and guided the appaloosa with one hand. Had he been using a surer grip, he might have saved himself.
As the horse reached the fence, the bay mare turned her head to regard it. The appaloosa snorted and fought the bit with a wild shake of its head that jerked the reins from Henry’s hand. The next minute he was scrambling for the saddlehorn as it wheeled about and bolted, bucking wildly.
Henry strained to reclaim the reins, but the crazed horse hit the snubbing post head on in the middle of the pen with a crack, so hard blood spewed from both nostrils and ears.
Henry sailed over the horse’s poll, his neck snapping when he hit the ground. He lay twisted like a wrung rag, just as Jonas’ mother had looked when the dust settled in that Bisbee street. The appaloosa slumped to its knees, its brains glistening through the fissure split behind its forelock.
Claire screamed and clutched at Jonas protectively. He pushed her away.
Angler In Darkness Page 13