Prophecies, Libels & Dreams
Page 24
The chupacabra crouched on the shavetail’s chest, tearing at the neck of his blouse with its childlike hands, and when the shavetail’s white throat was exposed, the creature leaned over him and placed its snout against the shavetail’s skin. I heard the sickening sound of flesh being punctured, and then the chupacabra began to suck. The noise of its sucking was delicate, almost dainty, and so too was the almost tender way the creature held the shavetail’s head steady in those small hairless hands. The shavetail shuddered and quivered, but he did not struggle. His eyes fluttered open and he stared at me in horror.
My knees were suddenly as wiggly as noodles. As my carbine began to slide out of my grip, I remembered it and somehow managed to raise it to my shoulder, though so shakily I was in danger of shooting myself. Then I recalled why I had lured the chupacabra in the first place and why I was lying in the dust, feeling the blood trickle down my back. But if the shavetail hadn’t carried me to the rocks, I would be dead now, and perhaps that cancelled the other out. I fired and the hammer clicked uselessly. I was out of ammunition.
And then another shadow fell across us, and I looked up to see a stocky man in a calico shirt, red head-band holding back black hair. I knew him well, and indeed, once won a dollar off him in an ant race, back up on Turkey Creek.
Geronimo.
He bent down and took a hold of the chupacabra, pulled on it slightly. It did not detach from the shavetail, nor halt its sucking. I thought Geronimo would wrench the chupacabra off the shavetail, but he did not. He merely rubbed its back in a circular motion, while chanting something in the Apache palaver. After about ten seconds of this, the chupacabra let go of the shavetail, and only then did Geronimo wrench it away. The chupacabra dangled limply in his grip, its muzzle stained red, its belly now fat and swollen. Geronimo dashed the chupacabra against the rocks, barking more Apache as he did so. In a flash of green light, the chupacabra flamed briefly, and then was nothing more than a settling of ashes.
I didn’t even bother to lift my rifle. But Geronimo did not raise a hand against me. He just glanced at the shavetail, lying limp and deflated, and shook his head as though he was puzzled.
He said in Mexican: I have never seen one eat a man before. But there is much I have not seen. The poor lieutenant. It is not a good way to die.
Geronimo turned then, and left us. And though I might be chided for it later, I called for the boys to hold their fire, and so he returned to his horse unmolested and rode away. We wrapped the shavetail in his bedroll, tied up each end with a rope, and then lashed the package over the back of one of the remaining horses. By the time we got back to the post, Geromino and his comrades had crossed the Line into Mexico, where our troops could not easily follow. Colonel Grierson wrote a beautiful report of the shavetail’s heroic death in a scrape with the Apaches, and his tribute was so well done that Mrs. Colonel sent it to the Army and Navy Journal, where it was printed on page two. Later, the shavetail’s parents paid to have the shavetail’s body removed from the post cemetery. It was wrapped in oil cloth dipped in wax, and shipped Back East in a wooden coffee where Uncle Billy was the guest of honor at the internment in the national cemetery across from Washington City. The boys and I took up a collection and sent a wreath.
But before that happened, it was a hot time along the Line, with Apaches running this way and that, and the boys chasing after, before Lieutenant Gatewood persuaded Geromino to surrender, and he and all his pals were shipped off to Florida. We rode behind the captain, who was a seasoned campaigner and as sober as they come, but I couldn’t help but think that perhaps the shavetail wouldn’t have done us such a bad turn after all. In the end, he showed sand, and I regretted the joke we had played upon him. A joke that hadn’t really been funny after all.
But I couldn’t figure it either and neither could Mickey Free, couldn’t figure why the chupacabra had killed him. Like Geronimo, Mickey’d never before heard of a chupacabra hurting man, woman, or child. The creature was hideous but steadfast in its habits, and it tastes ran to goat only. It was only much later, when my army days were long behind me, and I had naught to do but think on the auld lang syne, that I realized the joke had been on me and the boys all along, with the poor shavetail the punch-line. For what do they call the cadet who graduates last in his class at the Point, as did poor Lieutenant Cameron?
The goat.
Afterword to “Scaring the Shavetail”
The character of the incompetent junior lieutenant is a staple in messhalls and barracks throughout the world; here it has been transplanted to a fantastic desert world which is clearly based upon Arivaipa, once a territory of the Republic of Califa, now its own sovereign nation. Seeing as it is doubtful that an enlisted soldier would be capable of writing with such skill, this historian believes it is safe to postulate that this yarn was written by an officer, incognito.
While the depiction of military life was obviously written from experience, the events and characters referred clearly spring from the overgrown imagination of the author.[1] Similar tales were published as a series Beedle’s Half Diva novel, perhaps by the same novelist.[2]
This historian can personally attest to the existence of the chupacabra, having had a close encounter with one of these appalling but mostly harmless creatures, during an expedition to excavate the ghost-town of Calo Res.[3]
[1] Yagathai, P.T.J. Rowels, Chap-Guards and Jingo Bob: An Illustrated History of the Spur in Arivaipa. Pumpkinville, Arivaipa: Fly Trap Publications, 8-Tochtli-156-17.
[2] The Colonel’s Daughter or Winning her Spurs. Bexar: Beedle’s Half Diva Novels, n.d. Trials of a Staff Officer. Bexar: Beedle’s Half Diva Novels, n.d. A Garrison Tangle or Love Among the Guidons. Bexar: Beedle’s Half Diva Novels, n.d
[3] For more information on chupacabras see Vespa Nyx’s Morphologies of Arivaipan Desert Creatures, including the Chupacabra, Hila Monster, Rollaway Skink & Jackalope. New London: Museum of Unnatural History Press, 1312.
About the Author
Ysabeau S. Wilce was born in California and has followed the drum throughout Alaska, Spain, Mexico, Arizona, and Elsewhere. A lapsed historian, she turned to fiction when facts no longer compared favorably with the shining lies of her imagination. Prior to this capitulation, she researched various arcane military subjects and presented educational programs on how to boil laundry at several nineteenth century army forts. She is a graduate of Clarion West and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the James Tiptree Award, and won the Andre Norton Award. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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