The jackdaw spoke up then, its voice a buzz of suggestion. “What then burns in your hand, Jackanapes?”
Jack looked down to the sudden heat in his grubby paw and there lay the coins, not so dull now. The diva gleamed like the sun, with eleven little tiny silver moons circling its golden glow.
“But—”
The boots clicked their crimson heels together, and the snake heads said in slithery tandem voices: Darling Burning Boy, with us you shall be the Fleet-Footed Fancy Lad, the Red-Haired Child of Sunset. No obstacle you cannot leap, no hunger you cannot fill, no thirst you cannot quench. Come and let us jump for joy!
Looking at the red sparkly boots, the color of his dreams, what could Jack think of hungry tummies in the tenement home, waiting for their crusty sup? What could he think of a sick mamma and a skull-headed baby, coughing instead of cooing? What could he think other than the glorious tap-dancing of the slaphappy boots, the rich radiant red which filled his heart with warmth, flooded his brain with fun, and made his toes tap? Oh, our Jack was a good boy and perhaps for a tiny momento he did consider the cold little faces, the grinning Hunger waiting patiently in the corner, his mamma’s red swollen hands, but then the boots drummed a furious rhythm, and in that rhythm all else Jack forgot.
When all your life you have been cold, little inkwells, how can you then resist the fire?
The grammer took the diva and eleven glories and dropped them into the gaping maw of the jackdaw which flapped off into the dark shadows, still cackling. Then the knobby old lady flicked her hankie at Jacko, who jerked at the waft of hyacinth that washed over him. He coughed, and as he coughed she flicked again, speaking a strange word that crackled and snapped in the air, sparking, arcing.
Jack shut his peeps to the brilliant flicker and when he opened them full wide again, the grammer was gone, the darkness was gone, the shop was gone, and he stood, light-footed, in the center of the street. Rosy daylight suffused the air, pooling pinkly on the surface of the puddles and the wet walls of the surrounding buildings. He looked down, and the snakes hissed happily, little tongues tasting the clean morning air. Then his boots took to the sky like big red balloons, carrying him upward on their flight. The boots capered, they danced, they trotted, they gavotted, and they leapt full fifty feet in the air, tongues clacking with joy, Jack shouting with joy, as they flew.
Over the bright morning roofs they sprang, Jack and his Jackboots, traipsing across treetops. They jumped over the milk cart, and the trash cart, and little lines of childer trailing off to school. They scattered traffic brass and barouches, flyers and flowerbeds, leaping ever higher into the sterling blue sky. Never before had Jack felt so lovely, so wise, so tall and so very very clever, and in his happiness he yodeled a little tune, full of hope and wonderment. The red sparkly boots were just the thing, and now that he had them, he could not imagine his feet, his heart, his life, without them. The world was fresh and new, and Jack with it, all dewdrop eager-eyed, truly footloose and fancy-free.
But after a time, Jack grew tired of the jumping and wanted to rest. He watched the cool green grass bounce by his springs, and yet when he tried to halt so to rest under the shade trees, the sparkly red boots kept bouncing him along. He grabbed at railings as he passed, sweaty hands sliding from the iron; he was flying so fast now that it seemed perhaps the Wide World itself was moving and he was the one standing still. Jacko shouted for help—to the brass directing traffic, to the washwoman kneeling on marble steps, to the costermonger polishing her apples, but his shouts wisped in the wind and were lost. Still he bounced on, going ever higher and higher with each leap, until his ears rang and his head spun, and he was fair ill with dizziness. He snatched at chimney pots and streetlights, at lightning vanes and flagpole finials, but still he sprang onward.
Then suddenly he stopped.
Jackie stopped and he tumbled down into the dust and lay there, thankful that the bouncing had ceased, although his head still seemed to leap and spin, spin and leap. His tum twisted and turned but was too empty to urp.
“Well, now, little leaper,” a voice said, “How far can you go before you kiss the sun and burn your roly-poly red lips?”
Jack squinted up, but only a shadow could he see, bright sun burning behind a darkened head.
“I cry sorrow,” said Jacko, “and offer thanks. The boots fair well skint me.”
“So I see,” said the friendly voice. “Perhaps you’d like me to help you take them off?”
“Ayah so,” agreed Jack, whose tender tootsies, not yet used to being enfolded in leather, were now painfully raw. But no amount of pulling would remove the sparkly red boots from Jack’s wee feeties, and while you, clever tulips, are probably not surprised by this turn of the ankle yourselves, it came as a huge and utter gasp to our poor little Jackomydarling.
“You have bought a bargain,” said the gramper, for tugging and pulling had revealed him to be so. “And keep it you shall. The boots are tired now and need to rest, but once they have had their kip, you’ll be bouncing again.”
“But bouncing be done!” cried Jack. Now that the fun was resting, he was suddenly recalling the hungry siblings, the sick mamma, the coughing baby, all waiting for him to return with their chow. But now he had no money and no chow, nothing but sparkly red boots which soared and galloped but which could not keep Hunger at bay. “I must slip the boots and return for my flash, for the coins I need to buy munch for my dear loves at home.”
The gramper smiled, and shook his stick. A jackdaw flapped down and perched upon his shoulder, gazing at young Jacko with flat black eyes. “The shop is closed and the shopkeeper gone. What is bought can not be returned.”
“But my lovely lollies? My sweet mamma and my tiny siblings? The baby who coughs? Can they live? Must they die for my sparklies?” Tears begin to stir in Jack’s eyes, and all his joy in red was gone.
“Perhaps this consideration should have come before the purchasing,” the gramper said, “But such is the rashness of youth. You say you are fair well skint, of both flash and dash—maybe so.”
From its perch upon the gramper’s shoulder, the jackdaw spoke up then, its voice a burr of suggestion: “What then burns in your hand, Jackolantern?”
Jack looked down to the sudden coldness in his grubby paw, and there, caught in his fingers, gleamed a strand of pearls, tiny white moons strung on a golden cord. Never had he seen anything so round and pure, and yet how had it come to be in his hand? In his soaring, he must have snatched and noticed not.
“Did you not look before you leapt? Or while leaping look?” The stick was shook again, and pointed upward, towards an open window and a fluttering drape. “Doors are lock’d but who could imagine that larceny might leap on springy heels?”
The jackdaw opened his wings in a great flutter, launching upward with a hoarse cry, and when Jack lowered his shielding arm, the gramper and his fetch were gone. But the pearls remained, cool and knobby, and so too did the open window. Jack looked from one to the other, considering, and a rough red magick began to burn in his brain. He stood and tapped one red sparkly heel upon the grass. The snake head spit, and with the tamp Jack felt vigor anew course upward through his tender tootsies, his knobby knees, his empty tum, his sad heart. When he stamped again, this time with both heels, upward he soared, like an arrow, to the beckoning window.
When Jack bounced home to his family’s tenement room, laden down was he with gifts bestowed upon him by his bouncing boots and many open windows. With high springy heels and unlocked doors, roofs and balconies, the whole city was his huckleberry.
The tiny siblings greeted his arrival with weak squeals of joy, for instead of squashy kale pie, Jacko brought spicy chicken galantine, savory and strong. Instead of moldy cheese, there was cherry cream custard for afters and never more that sticky gritty spinach paste. The sick mamma and the baby who coughed got a spoonful of Madam Twanky’s Super Celebrated Celery Salt Med-I-Cine, which fixed them both right up. After much munching, Jack chucked
the horrible match pots out of the window, and the entire family removed to the Palace Union Hotel, where they reveled in lush carpets, hot water, and toast on demand. Hunger, left behind in the empty tenement room, slunk sadly down the street, looking for a new corner to call home.
And thus, darling dishrags, did wee Jacko take to a life of snuggery and sin, poaching purses, fixing races, mashing lovers, cutting cards. Thus was Springheel Jack born, the Bounciest Boy Terror ever to be seen. The reign of the Boots had begun!
Afterword to “The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror”
That Springheel Jack was an actual historical personage is disputed by many. Some historians see in him an amalgamation of several legendary outlaws: Aeuthur Flashheart perhaps, with a dash of the Dainty Pirate mixed in.[1] Others, including the learned philologist Emilio Zarendeo, are convinced that the character is as fictional as The Man in Pink Bloomers, perhaps even that bogey’s forerunner.[2] Though the Man in Pink Bloomers lacks springy boots, he shares other traits with Springheel Jack: a ribald sense of humor, a devilishly wicked aspect, and questionable sartorial choices. Lending credence to the Jack’s fictionality is that his tales can be dated to several different historical periods, and clearly no man, not even one possessed of magickal boots, could have that longevity.[3]
Yet a person by that name is mentioned in several famous autobiographies of the Pontifexacate and the Abenfaráx Period, notably that of the famed policeman Anibal Aguille y Wilkins (whom we shall hear more of later). These sources, including the incredibly rare Flora Fyrdraaca autobiography (only one copy of Flora’s Dare is known to exist[4]), make it clear that while Springheel Jack was an actual historical personage, the name was claimed by several different criminals over a period of years.[5] In any event, this tale’s fantastic tone, overly florid language and whimsical approach to larceny and mayhem mark it as clearly intended for children.
[1] See Winkle, Filonia. Flash, Dandy & Dainty: A Ethnographic Exploration into the Epistemology of the Outlaw in Califa Myths & Legends. Porkopolis: Widdle, Weedle & Tum, 17-Calli-156-17.
[2] Zarendeo, Emilio Espejo. The Man in Pink Bloomers is Under Your Bed & In Your Nightmares: The Reification of Prechildhood Revenants as Reflected by Hierarchical Quasi-Masculine Equipage & Post-Contextualized Narratives of Heuristic Longing & Privilege. Cuidad Anahuatl: Villaviciosa Alba, 4-Tecaptl-156-17.
[3] Gray, Penny & Robert Wise. The Springy Boots: Stories of Springheel Jack. Derry: Hockstetter Press, 4-Tecaptl-156-17.
[4] Kept under lock and key in the special collection of the University of Kuila and accessed with special permission only. A copy of Flora’s Fury: How A Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, And Learn the Importance of Packing Light, the third volume of the autobiography is rumoured to be in the private collection of the Keanuenue’oklani family, but this cannot be confirmed. No copy of the first volume, Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms and a Red Dog has ever been discovered.
[5] Aguille y Wilkins, Anibal. Burnished Buttons & Mustachio Wax: Sixty Years as a Police Officer. Califa: Hardnose & Hardy Publishing, Año Abenfaráx 75. Evengardia, Relais. Fifty Years on the Stage. Bexar: Shakespike Press, 2019. Wilce, Ysabeau S. ed. Flora’s Dare: How A Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, And Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room). New York: Harcourt Children’s Books, 2008.
Quartermaster Returns
“. . . That he escaped that blow entirely is due to the consummate good luck which enabled him to steer clear of that military maelstrom . . . he never had to be post quartermaster.”
Trials of a Staff Officer
Captain Charles King, 3rd U.S. Cavalry
I. Wet
When Pow walks into the hog ranch, everyone turns to stare at him. At the whist table, the muleskinner gurgles and lets fall his cards. The cardsharp’s teeth clatter against the rim of his glass. The cowboy squeaks. At the bar, the barkeep, who had been fishing flies out of the pickle jar, drops her pickle fork. On the bar, the cat, a fantastic mouser named Queenie, narrows her moon-silver eyes into little slits. At the pianny, Lotta, who’d been banging out Drink Puppy Drink on the peeling ivory keys, crashes one last chord and no more.
Even the ice elemental, in the cage suspended over the whist table, ceases his languid fanning. He’s seen a lot of boring human behavior since the barkeep brought him from a junk store in Walnuts to keep the hog ranch cool; finally a human has done something interesting. Only Fort Gehenna’s scout doesn’t react. He wipes his nose on a greasy buckskin sleeve, slams another shot of mescal, and takes the opportunity to peek at his opponents’ cards.
The barroom is dead silent but for a distant slap and a squeal—Buck and the pegboy in the back room exercising—and the creak of the canvas walls shifting in the ever-present Arivaipa wind.
Pow wobbles over to the bar—just a couple of boards laid across two empty whiskey barrels—leans on it—the boards creaking ominously at his weight—and croaks: “Mescal.” His throat feels as though he’s swallowed sixty pounds of sand. The barkeep stares at him, her mouth hanging slightly ajar. Against her garish blue lip rouge her teeth look as yellow as corn.
Pow licks his lips with a cat-coarse tongue and whispers: “Come on, Petty, give me a mescal. I’m powerfully dry.”
“You’re dripping wet,” the barkeep answers. Pow looks down, and yes indeed he is dripping, brown water seeping from his dirty uniform, turning the ground he stands upon to mud.
“Sorry,” he says. “Is it raining outside?” He looks back toward the door, which is a blazing rectangle of sunlight, bright enough to blind—it’s not raining outside. Arivaipa is a goddess-forsaken wilderness of a desert, where it only rains occasionally, and then usually in the dead of night. And anyway, if it were raining outside, it would be raining inside too, for the hog ranch’s roof is made of brush and is not watertight. The last good downpour was two weeks ago, and it had almost swamped the hog ranch out.
“Lotta—get the lieutenant a towel,” the barkeep says, but Lotta does not spring to the order. She shrinks back behind the wall of the pianny and wishes she were invisible.
“Lotta!” the barkeep repeats, “Get Lieutenant Rucker a towel or I’ll kick ya in yer hinder.”
While Lotta reluctantly follows the barkeep’s order, Pow wipes his face on the mustachio towel nailed to the bar; the towel, none too white to begin with, comes away black with dirt. The barkeep hands him a sloshily poured glass; he drinks it in one draught and bangs his glass down for more. The mescal is bitter and burning but it washes away the taste of mud in his mouth. He feels very clammy, and from the itch, there is sand in his drawers. The barkeep pours him another.
“Thanks, darling,” Pow says and bolts his second drink. The whist game has not resumed; the players are still staring at him, and he returns their glance, saying, “Ain’t you people never seen a man drink before?”
No one responds to this quip, and then the canvas curtains over the doorway to the back room part. Out staggers Buck, laughing, struggling to get her sack coat back on. She’s got her right arm in the left sleeve and that’s not going to work no matter how much she pulls. The pegboy follows her, grinning and snapping his galluses up over red-checkered shoulders. An air of satisfaction hovers over them both.
Buck outranks him, so Pow wafts a salute at her, and she waves at him drunkenly, collapsing in a chair at the other rickety table. The pegboy sticks a cigarillo in her mouth, another in his, and lights them both.
“Where the hell you been, Pow?” Buck says. The barkeep has already anticipated her desire and plunks a bottle of whiskey before her.
Pow licks the dirt from his lips and realizes that he has no idea.
II. Desiccated
Arivaipa Territory, where the sun is so hot that it will, after dissolving your flesh into g
rease, melt your bones as well. A territory of bronco natives and bunco artists, wild religiosos and wild horses, poison toads and rattling snakes. A hard dry place, an endless expanse of Nowhere. Why the Warlord wants to keep a thread of authority in such a goddess-forsaken place is a mystery, but the army doesn’t question orders, just follows them. Thus Fort Gehenna, and a scattering of other army posts, sown like seeds across the prickly rocky dusty landscape of the remote territory.
The hog ranch sits on Fort Gehenna’s reservation line, just beyond the reach of military authority and technically off-limits to army personnel. There are no hogs at this ranch, just cheap bugjuice, cheap food and cheap love, but these three attractions make the hog ranch a pretty attractive place to Gehenna’s lonely bored hungry soldiers. So a well-worn track starts at the hog ranch’s front door and wends its way through the desert scrub, up and down arroyos, by saguaro and paloverde, across the sandy expanse of the Sandy River to terminate behind Officers’ Row.
Down this track, known as The Oh Be Joyful Road, Pow zig-zags. His feet kick up dust, and the sun hits his shoulders, his bare head, with hammer-like intensity. The heat has sucked the wet right out of his uniform, which now feels gritty and coarse against his skin. His sinuses tingle and burn. He feels in his sack coat pocket for his bandana, but the pockets are full of sand. So he blows his nose into his sleeve, but only a thin gust of dust comes out.
His boots are full of sand too; near the cactus priest’s wikiyup he sits on a rock and pours them out. Were his toes always that black? They look like little shriveled coffee beans. His brain feels thick, as though his skull is full of mud. Pow marches on, his eyes slits of grittiness; his eyelids scrape at his eyeballs like broken glass. He can hardly see where he is going, but the urge to go is strong, and he can’t help but follow it.
Prophecies, Libels & Dreams Page 2