Wasteland Blues

by Scott Christian Carr

  The crone rubbed her hands. “Sleep, boy. Sleep and my poultice will be your best cure.” Then she turned to her visitors. “And now that my table is free again, we’ll set out some supper.”

  David Cane’s ring hung loosely on her bony finger.

  ***

  As Magdalena set out the supper, Mother Morgan sat in a high-backed chair, smoked a thin pipe, and listened to Leggy explain their journey, occasionally casting a critical remark at the girl’s preparations.

  Soon enough supper was ready—goat’s milk cheese, wild rabbit stew with carrots, and green beans from the kitchen garden. Leggy watched as the boys set to. He was hungry, and the food looked so good it almost hurt, but something wasn’t setting right with him. The old woman noticed.

  “No appetite, eh? This good-for-nothing girl’s a terrible cook. I’ve tried to teach her, but she doesn’t take to learning, do you daughter?”

  Magdalena said nothing.

  “No,” said Leggy. “It’s fine.” He bent and began to eat in earnest, hoping to spare the girl from the old woman’s sharp tongue.

  When they had finished, Magdalena cleared the table with a brisk efficiency, then stood near her mother, hands clasped in front of her.

  “Go on,” said the old woman, gesturing to a corner of the cabin. “Up to the loft with you. I expect our guests want to talk a spell, and then get some rest.”

  “Goodnight,” said Magdalena, nodding her head toward the guests.

  Leggy couldn’t help but return the gesture, even though he knew she wouldn’t see. She went to the far corner of the cabin and scurried up a small ladder. They heard her shuffling around above them for a minute, and then it was quiet.

  Mother Morgan lit her pipe, and then held the travelers in her gaze. “So you plan to cross these mountains, eh? Into the Wasteland?”

  “That’s right,” said Derek.

  “You know the way?” she asked.

  “He says he does,” said Derek, nodding toward Leggy.

  The crone raised an eyebrow.

  “I been over these mountains before,” said Leggy.

  “Before you lost your gams,” said Mother Morgan with a malicious cackle.

  Leggy merely nodded.

  “Well,” she said, “I’ve roamed these mountains for more than fifty years, ever since my wretched husband settled us here.” She turned and spat on the floor. “Might be, I could point out a shortcut or two, if you’re interested.”

  “Hell, yeah!” said Derek.

  The woman showed her yellowed teeth. “You’re an eager one. Are you that anxious to die?”

  “The sooner we leave, the sooner we get where we’re going,” said Derek.

  Mother Morgan sucked her pipe for a moment, then pointed at Teddy. He’d gorged himself on the fresh food, and now, in the warm, dim closeness of the cabin, his great head lolled down toward his chest.

  “I see I’m keeping my guests from their slumber,” she said. “Let’s blow out the candles and say goodnight.”

  “What about the shortcut?” asked Derek.

  “Patience, boy. Your friend will be on his back for at least two days. You’ll hear of your shortcut soon enough. Though I’ll tell you right now, and for nothing, that your best shortcut is to turn around, go back home to suckle your mamma’s teats.” She cackled and drew closer to the table. “In the meantime,” she said, her eyes alight with avarice, “might you princelings be interested in a poke before sleep?” She looked at the ring on her finger. “This bit of gold would do for the three of you.”

  “You mean…go and lay with the girl upstairs?” asked Leggy.

  “Of course,” said the crone. “Unless you happen to fancy me?” With a laugh she pulled open her bodice to reveal a pair of withered dugs. Teddy awoke with a start. Seeing the old woman with her dress pulled open, he launched into a fit of laughter. He pounded the table with one meaty fist and cried “Looky, Derek! She got wrinkly boobies! Wrinkly boobies!”

  The crone closed her dress, her eyes bright with a wild light.

  “But,” said Leggy, his mouth dry, “but…she’s your daughter, ain’t she?”

  “So she is, and a good-for-nothing girl. Well, at least she’s good for one thing.”

  Leggy shook his head.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the crone. “Did the bug that took your legs get your pecker too?” She made a snipping motion with two fingers.

  Leggy said nothing, so the crone turned to Teddy and Derek.

  “How about you young bucks? Fancy a poke? One at a time or both at once. Whatever’s yer fancy—”

  “Not Teddy,” said Derek. “He wouldn’t know what to do with a girl.”

  Red blush crept up Teddy’s cheeks, and he turned away from the table.

  “But you know what to do with a girl, don’t you?” Mother Morgan said, eyeing Derek from top to bottom. “Oh, yessiree, I can see lust in yer eyes, boy.”

  ***

  Derek stared at the ring on her finger. It was thin, but it was gold—he’d taken it from his father’s cold hand just before Teddy had tossed him to the radar rats. He’d paid for John’s life, and apparently for more than that. He glanced at Leggy, who slowly shook his head. That decided it.

  “Not just one night,” he said. “For as long as we’re here.” He held Mother Morgan’s eyes until she nodded. He stood up.

  “Guess I’ll see you fellas at breakfast,” he said, climbing the ladder that led to the loft.

  “Glad to see one of you’s got something in yer pants.” Mother Morgan laughed. As Derek disappeared into the loft, she snuffed the candles between her callused fingertips and cast the room into darkness.

  The loft was tucked among the bare beams of the ceiling, and Derek had to crouch as he came through the trap door in the floor. The musty space was dark, save for a single candle. He could make out the shape of the young woman, sitting up in bed. She pushed a blanket aside, and Derek could see that she wore a light shift. He suddenly found himself breathing heavily, his head and groin throbbing.

  Magdalena began to lift her shift, exposing milky thighs.

  “Is your friend resting all right?” she asked.

  Derek stumbled forward, kicking off his boots and shrugging out of his trousers. He lay on the mattress, which was lumpy and smelled of hay. Up close he could see the girl’s eyes. Pink pupils with no irises stared up emptily at him. Then he got on top of her. He felt her body beneath his, taut as a wire. A sudden urgency consumed him, and he took her quickly. Then weariness overcame him, profound and irresistible, and he rolled off her, already plunging into deep sleep.

  As he fell, he heard the girl ask, “Will the others be coming up?”

  ***

  Leggy awoke the next morning beside John, who lay unconscious by the hearth. Magdalena removed his bandages. The wrappings were yellowed with pus, and the skin around the bite marks was spiked through with angry red lines. She bathed the wound, applied more poultice, and wrapped John’s leg in clean bandages. He groaned and his eyes fluttered open. Magdalena stroked his face and spoke soothingly. John stared at her in fevered fascination for a long moment before he fell back into unconsciousness.

  “He’s still sick,” said Magdalena, turning to look at Leggy with her dead eyes.

  “Will he live?” asked Leggy.

  “Who can say?” said Magdalena. Then she rose and went out to attend to the goats.

  Leggy pressed his own palm to John’s forehead. Still hot, but not as bad as yesterday. Maybe he’d make it.

  In the meantime, Leggy had his own bodily concerns—he needed to pee, and badly. He thought about waking Teddy, still slumbering beneath the table where they’d supped, to lug him outside and prop him up behind the shed. He didn’t want to have to be carted everywhere like an
infant, but his other option, walking on his hands and his stumps, was just as distasteful. He felt there was something undignified in getting around on his hands, as if he were an ape. And Derek, or Mother Morgan, was sure to have some smart remark if they saw him do it. Dammit, he missed his chair!

  Clenching his teeth against the rising urgency of his bladder, he scanned the cabin. Derek was still up in the loft. Who knew where that old hag was? Reckoning that wetting himself would be more embarrassing, Leggy propelled himself forward by pressing his palms against the floor and swinging his hips out in front of him. As his stumps touched the ground he brought his arms forward again. In this manner he moved steadily and with good speed. The door was just a few strides away. Suddenly, just as he reached it, it flew open. Mother Morgan stood in the doorway, bearing eggs in her apron. She looked down at Leggy and smirked.

  “Well, don’t you scoot along nice and proper. Calls to mind a three-legged dog I once had. My husband wanted to shoot the thing, but I told him that dog would get along just fine. And so do you.”

  Leggy brushed past her and out into the daylight.

  “Don’t piss in the well,” she called. “That’s all I ask.”

  Leggy didn’t piss in the well. He pissed on her tomatoes instead.

  ***

  The day passed quietly. Teddy, once he awoke, made fast friends with the dogs and goats and spent the morning with the herd. Derek and Leggy earned their keep doing chores—Derek chopping wood and fixing small holes in the roof, Leggy weeding the garden.

  In the afternoon, Magdalena returned to the cabin. She squatted down beside John, who still lay unconscious, and checked his bandages. As she did, she addressed the old woman. “I thought I’d go out to the salt lick and see if I can get a buck.”

  “What about them goats?” asked Mother Morgan.

  “The big one’s watching ’em.”

  “The feeb?” she shrieked, unconcerned that Derek stood nearby, plugging wattle into a small hole in the wall.

  “He’s good with them,” said Magdalena, shrinking into herself. “And the dogs are there.”

  “Girl—” began Mother Morgan, raising her clawed fist, but Magdalena interrupted. “I thought he could go with me, to carry the body back,” she said, tilting her head toward Derek. “It’s our chance to get fresh venison. We can lay up most of the meat for winter.”

  Mother Morgan looked closely at Derek, and then back to Magdalena. “Is this some excuse to get his pecker between your legs again? That the meat you want?”

  The young woman blushed, and her palms flitted over John’s ears. “No.”

  Mother Morgan scowled. “I suppose some deer meat would be worth a lay. Don’t come back till you shoot something. I’ll fetch in them goats myself.”

  Mother Morgan turned to Derek. “And don’t you be thinkin’ this is a freebie. You’ll pay all right. Everyone pays Mother.”

  Derek stood and opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

  “G’won then. She moves quick on the trails.”

  Magdalena stood up quickly, grabbed the rifle and fled from the cabin.

  ***

  The old woman was right—Magdalena moved fast. As Derek came around the back of the house, he saw her disappear over the rise of a rocky slope that led into the forest. He caught up to her at the edge of a thick wood. She had a stick in one hand that she held in front of her, tapping the ground as she went. The long rifle was slung over her shoulders.

  Derek fell in step beside her. He was breathing hard, partly from exertion, and partly in anticipation. He looked at her bosom. Her breasts were small, but firm and round. He’d gone too fast the night before to pay them much attention, but he thought he might remedy that oversight now.

  “We’re not going to do it in the woods,” said Magdalena.

  “No?” asked Derek.

  She said nothing.

  “S’all right. I paid in advance for tonight. And tomorrow night, if we’re still here.”

  “We’re here for venison.”

  “Fine,” said Derek. He put his lust aside and looked around as they crossed over the threshold into the woods. The air was cool enough to make him shiver. He’d never seen this much plant matter in his life—trees, bushes, flowering shrubs, all bursting up out of the ground in a riot of life. All that growth pressed in on him, branches snatching, vines wrapping round his ankles. He fixed his eyes to the ground. If there was a path here, he couldn’t see it anymore. He wondered if he’d gone insane, following a blind girl into the forest. Maybe she’d lose them both or maybe she’d abandon him here, slip away and leave him to wander helpless as the sun went down and night crept out of the roots and branches.

  He stumbled and fell, landing face first in a patch of bushes dotted with white flowers and yellow faces. He stood and found his hands sticky with resin. Magdalena stopped, turned, and sniffed.

  “Mountain Misery,” she said. “You can grind the leaves to make pitch. I’d recommend you don’t touch your hands to your eyes until you’ve washed.”

  “How much farther?” grumbled Derek.

  “Not far.” She strode ahead, leaving Derek no choice but to follow.

  They walked perhaps another quarter hour when they came to the trunk of an old oak that had been toppled in a storm before Derek was even born. Magdalena crouched down and motioned for Derek to do the same. She pointed over the trunk to a stand of trees about fifty yards away.

  “There’s a deer trail over there. We put a salt lick up here at the beginning of spring,” said Magdalena.

  Derek squinted through the dappled light and thought he could make out a lumped shape at the base of the trees.

  “I get it,” said Derek. “We wait till a deer comes for a taste and then shoot it. Well, hand over the rifle and get comfortable.”

  “You aren’t shooting,” said Magdalena. “I am.”

  “Bullshit,” said Derek.

  “Hush,” she said. “Just be silent and wait.” She laid the barrel of the rifle across the trunk, threaded her index finger gently through the trigger guard, and then seemed to withdraw into herself.

  Derek frowned. He hunched down beside her and waited. Magdalena was so silent beside him that he became aware of how loudly he was breathing. As he quieted himself, a stillness trickled into the spaces where his breathing had been. It seeped up out of the ground like a spring, pooling around his ankles, rising up to cover him until he was immersed. Woodland sounds flitted across the surface of the stillness above him.

  He drifted for an unknown time until he was startled by the loud crack of a snapping twig. He popped his head up over the log to see a large horned creature at the salt lick. It raised its great neck and fixed its eyes directly on Derek’s. In an instant it gathered itself to spring away.

  Thunder boomed inside Derek’s head.

  He leaped over the fallen oak and into the open. Derek saw a flash of tawny skin as two other animals vanished into the woods. He sprinted to the salt lick. The buck had collapsed in the brush. It was dead.

  He turned back to their hiding place. Magdalena had come over the trunk and was using her stick to feel her way across the clearing, her broken eyes fixed perpetually on the middle distance, as if she were looking at something beyond Derek. Smoke rose lazily from the barrel of her rifle.

  When she reached Derek and the dead buck, she squatted and ran her hands over the length of its coat, and then up and down the branches of its horns.

  “Big one,” she said, smiling to herself. She unwound a hank of rope from her waist. “Find a good long stick. We’ll truss him and carry him home on our shoulders.”

  “How’d you do that?” demanded Derek. He didn’t believe in witches or bruja, but he felt strange, as if this girl had enchanted him.

  She ignored his question
and instead bent and began the grueling process of dressing the buck. Derek stood over her for a long moment, watching her quick hands working the blood and guts. Already the parasites were abandoning their host in droves—ticks and fleas swarmed from the deer’s fur, seeking better fortune in the tall grass. Derek headed off to hunt up a stick.

  ***

  They returned to the cabin after dusk to find John sitting at the table, flanked by Leggy and Teddy. His face was sallow and his eyes bleary, but he smiled as Derek and Magdalena came inside.

  “Look, Der-Der! Johhny’s all better,” squeaked Teddy.

  Derek strode over to John and put a hand on his shoulder. “I knew you’d come through.”

  John smiled and nodded.

  “How you feelin’?”

  “A little weak,” he said, “and lightheaded. But there’s no more pain.” John’s eyes slid past Derek to Magdalena, who was hanging the rifle over the fireplace. When she turned around he saw her damaged eyes and blanched for a moment, then cleared his throat.

  Magdalena came toward him and put a palm on his forehead.

  “You’re through the worst of it,” she said. She put a small jar in his hand. “Be sure to apply this poultice every morning, and wrap your leg in clean bandages. Now you just need to get your strength back. Please eat something.”

  John prodded his calf gently, and looked up at the blind girl.

  “I dreamed of you,” he said.

  She smiled.

  “You put your hands on me,” said John. “There was healing in your hands.”

  She turned her head away. “Not in me. In the medicine.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Magdalena,” she said softly.

  At that moment Mother Morgan poked her head from the loft. “About damn time you got back,” she said, scuttling down the ladder. “It’s getting dark and still no supper on the table.” She leered at Derek. “Get what you were after?”