Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 23

by Kelly Link Gavin J. Grant

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  The deer was puny, hardly even dog food, but Chapsky had already pulled the trigger before he took in her proportions. Shit; he might stick to fishing. Fish were easier to dump back in, easier to carry. But still, he could congratulate himself for putting one over on the Philadelphia fat cats who practically shot out their car windows. They'd be careening all over the county, stoking fires in their outsized fieldstone fireplaces in their “rustic” lodges when hunting season opened. Let McGrath loose and he'd shoot out their high beams. In any case this little doe was one less leg of exported venison.

  All of a sudden there was a streak across his field of vision. Chapsky ducked down compulsively. Why should anyone be privy to his lame shot, his flask uncapped, his loose pants and two-day stubble? Maybe just a bird or a bird's shadow. Sometimes a mother animal would come looking. Sometimes she spooked when she took in the immature thing still twitching in its carcass, and bolted. Other times she'd get up close before she realized, and then Chapsky had to look away because his fist-sized heart was affected. He didn't mind saying it. It sickened him. Bled his ulcer. He'd seen the look in the bloodshot eyes of his infant daughter—wrath and bewilderment. Like a fish gasping out of water, like any mother animal cut off from its baby. But that was the weird thing, thought Chapsky. The infant they cocooned in white and rolled away towards the exit light at the end of the corridor—it was like she already had the fury and the fear of a mother. All at once—a baby and a mother. That was womankind for you. He'd never told Marie. He wouldn't cause her pain he couldn't fix with diamonds sparkling in a knife sharpener. Marie rising from the pink bath water to get dinner started. Soft floral vapor from her dark hair, he knew she could never resist plunging her head under at the last minute. He'd have to shoot. He couldn't bear to see the animal stepping around her fawn, nostrils quivering.

  He pulled himself up against the wall of the tree stand. He raised his rifle and started. A dark, human vulture, on top of his animal. “Hey!” he shouted hoarsely. A weird dream figure wrapped in doe skin. Not a Pocahontas dress or some hokey Western fringes—it was halfway between a woman and a deer, a deer mermaid. He had never been to the ocean. He felt he stood absurdly like a kid playing ship on the prow of his tree stand, or a foul-mouthed sailor. The ears were soft with a pile like velvet.

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  Chapsky could taste the canker sores on his intestine. Like rolled up shards of cooked tomato skin.

  Marie actually called it a fruit, the tomato.

  "What'd Marie put in your flask, Chapsky? Wine? Cough syrup?” Rankin had snorted when he told them. And McGrath clapped his mitt on Chapsky's shoulder all concerned and then split a gut saying, “Now you know what the vets been dreaming!"

  But he didn't care about the insult. It was enough he'd got away with his own heart. She'd come after him, the doe's steaming heart juice running through her fingers.

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  Ana's Tag

  William Alexander

  Ana and Rico walked on the very edge of the road where the pavement slumped and crumbled. They were on their way to buy sodas, and there were no sidewalks. They made it as far as the spot where the old meat-packing factory had burned down when Deputy Chad drove up and coasted his car alongside at a walking pace.

  Ana was just tall enough to see the deputy through his car window and the empty space of the passenger seat. Her brother Rico was taller, but he wasn't trying to look through the car window. Rico was staring straight ahead of him.

  "Hi kids,” said Deputy Chad.

  "Hi,” said Ana.

  "I need to ask you both about the incident at the school,” the deputy said.

  "Okay,” said Ana when Rico didn't say anything.

  "It's very important,” the deputy said. “This is the first sign of gang activity. Everyone knows that. Gang activity.” He tried to arch one eyebrow, but it didn't really work and his forehead scrunched.

  Other cars slowed to line up behind the squad car, coasting along.

  "What's the second sign?” Ana asked.

  "The second sign,” said Deputy Chad, taking a deep breath, “happens at night, on the highway. It involves headlights. Do you know that keeping your high-beams on at night can blind oncoming traffic?"

  Ana didn't. She nodded anyway.

  "Usually a driver has just forgotten to turn them off, and the way to let them know is to flash your own high-beams, just briefly. But they drive around with the high-beams on deliberately. If you flash at one of their cars, they pull a quick and violent U-turn and follow you, very close. Sometimes they just do it to see where you live. Sometimes they run you off the road. Bam!” He smacked the top of his steering wheel.

  Ana jumped. He grinned at her, and she grinned back.

  "What's the third sign?” Rico asked, without grinning.

  "I can't tell you that,” said Deputy Chad. “Ask your parents. It is the last ceremony of initiation, and it involves blonde ten year olds."

  "I'm ten,” said Ana.

  "You're not blonde, so you're probably safe. Probably."

  "Oh,” said Ana. “Good."

  The line behind Deputy Chad was now seven cars long, coasting slowly. None of them dared to pass a cop.

  "So,” said the deputy. “You can see why we need to put a stop to this kind of thing right away, before it escalates. Do you know anything about the incident at school?"

  "No,” said Rico.

  "What's the graffiti of?” asked Ana.

  "It is deliberately illegible,” said the deputy. “It's in code. Probably a street-name. A tag. Graffiti is often somebody's tag, delineating whose turf is whose. It looks like it could be in Spanish."

  Ana and Rico's parents spoke Spanish. They used it as their secret language, and slipped into Spanish whisperings whenever they didn't want Ana or Rico to understand them. Sometimes, in public, Ana and Rico liked to pretend they could speak it too. They would toss together random words and gibberish and use an accent because both of them could fake a pretty good one. They hadn't played that game for awhile.

  Rico bent forward a little so he could look through the passenger window. “I'll let you know if I hear anything about it,” he said.

  "Good boy,” said the deputy, and smiled a satisfied smile. “Be safe, now.” He drove off. Cars followed him like ducklings.

  "Perro muerto,” said Ana. It meant dead dog, or maybe dead hair. It was one of their nonsense curses. “He thinks you did it."

  "Yeah,” said Rico.

  "Did you?” Ana asked.

  "Yeah,” said Rico.

  "Oh. What does it say?"

  "Not telling."

  "Oh,” said Ana. Rico pushed Ana to his right side so he could walk between her and the moving cars, and then he made a sign with his left hand. He tried not to let Ana see him do it. She saw anyway, but she didn't ask. She cared more about the graffiti. “I'll do all the dishes if you tell me what it says."

  "No."

  "Okay.” Ana thought about how long it would take to get to the East Wells high school, try to read the painted wall, write down all of her guesses and walk home. She decided she could make it before dinner. Maybe Rico would tell her if she guessed right.

  They were almost to the gas station, which had a much better selection of soda to pick from than the corner store. The last part of the walk was uphill, and Ana had to work harder to keep up with her brother.

  "Do you think there really are gangs?” she asked.

  Rico shrugged, and smiled a little. “Gangs of what?"

  "I don't know. Gangs."

  "I doubt it,” he said. “East Wells isn't big enough to put together a gang of anything bigger than two people. Deputy Chad is just really, really bored.” He reached up and twisted his new earring stud. He'd pierced it himself with a sewing needle. An
a had held the swabs and rubbing alcohol while he did it. She'd felt obliged to help, because she already had pierced ears so she could offer him the benefit of her knowledge.

  "Don't forget to clean that when we get home,” she said.

  "I won't,” he said. He sounded annoyed. Ana decided to change the subject to something casual and harmless.

  "Why isn't there a West Wells?” she asked.

  Rico stopped walking. They were in the gas station parking lot, only a few steps away from soda and air conditioning. Ana turned around. Her brother was staring at her.

  "What did you say?"

  "West Wells,” she said again, trying to be extra casual and harmless. “We live in East Wells, but it isn't actually east of anything. There's just, you know, the woods by the school and then endless fields of grain on all sides. There's no West Wells."

  Rico exhaled, loudly. “That's right,” he said. “There is nothing to the west of this dinky little town. You are absolutely right.” He walked by her and went inside. Ana followed. She had questions, endless questions bubbling up somewhere near her stomach and she had to swallow to keep them there because Rico was definitely not in an answering kind of mood.

  She shivered in the air conditioning, even though she'd been looking forward to it. Rico knew which soda he wanted, but Ana took a long time to choose.

  * * * *

  Ana got her cat backpack from her bedroom closet. It was brown and furry and had two triangular ears sewn onto the top. She pulled a stack of library books out of it and replaced them with a flashlight, rope, chocolate-chip granola bars, band-aids, a notebook and magic markers. She filled up the small, square canteen that had been Tio Frankie's with water and packed that, too. Then she took out the flashlight, because it was summer and it didn't get dark outside until long after dinnertime, and she needed to be back by dinner anyway.

  "Did you clean your ear?” she asked Rico's bedroom door.

  "No,” he said from behind it.

  "Don't forget. You don't want it to get infected."

  "I won't forget,” he said.

  She walked to the East Wells high school, taking a shortcut through two cornfields to keep off the highway. It wasn't a long walk, but during the school year almost everybody took the bus anyway because of the highway and the lack of sidewalks. Rico liked walking, even in wintertime. Ana saw him sometimes through the bus window on her way to East Wells Elementary.

  She walked between cornrows and underneath three billboards. Two of them said something about the Bible. One was an ad for a bat cave ten miles further down the road. Ana had never seen the bat cave. Rico said it wasn't much to see, but she still wanted to go.

  Ana crossed the empty parking lot in front of the high school, and skirted around the athletic field to the back of the gym. She knew where to find the gym because it doubled as a theater, and last summer a troupe of traveling actors had put on The Pirates of Penzance. After the show Ana had decided to become a traveling actor. Then she decided that what she really wanted to be was a pirate king.

  A little strip of mowed lawn separated the gym from the western woods.

  Three of Rico's friends were there, standing in front of the graffiti. Ana could see green paint behind them. They were smoking, of course. Julia and Nick smoked cloves, sweet-smelling. Garth wore a Marlboro Man kind of hat, so he was probably smoking that kind of cigarette. His weren't sweet-smelling.

  "Hey,” Ana said.

  "Hey,” said Julia. Ana liked Julia.

  "Hey,” said Nick. Nick was Julia's boyfriend. Ana was pretty sure that her brother was jealous of this. Nick and Julia were both in Rico's band, and both of them were really, really tall. They were taller than Rico, and much taller than Garth.

  Garth didn't say anything. He chose that moment to take a long drag on his cigarette, probably to demonstrate that he wasn't saying anything. Garth was short and stocky and scruffy. He wasn't in the band. He had a kind of beard, but only in some places. He also had a new piercing in his eyebrow. It was shaped like the tusk from a very small elephant. The skin around it was red and swollen and painful-looking.

  Ana thought eyebrow rings were stupid. She liked earrings, and she could understand nose rings, belly-button rings and even pierced tongues, but metal sticking out of random facial places like eyebrows just looked to her like shrapnel from a booby-trapped jewelry box. She didn't like it. The fact that Garth's eyebrow was obviously infected proved that she was right, and that the universe didn't like it either.

  "You should use silver for a new piercing,” Ana told him. “And you need to keep it clean."

  "This is silver,” said Garth. He didn't look at her as he said it. He looked at the tops of trees.

  "Don't worry about him,” said Nick. “He likes pain. He gets confused and grumpy if something doesn't hurt."

  "Oh,” said Ana. She edged around them, trying to get a better look at the wall and the paint.

  Garth threw down his cigarette, stepped on it, and reached out to knock the cloves from Nick and Julia's hands. “Bertha's coming,” he said.

  Bertha walked around the corner. She was the groundskeeper. Rico used to help her mow the school lawn as a summer job, but this year he hadn't bothered. Her name wasn't really Bertha, and Ana didn't want to ever call her that, but she didn't know what Bertha's name really was.

  Bertha sniffed and smiled. Her hair was a big, feathered mullet.

  "One of you isn't smoking cloves,” she said. “One of you is smoking real cigarettes, and I am going to bet it isn't the one with the kitten backpack. One of you is gonna buy my silence. ‘Why no, officer, I sure didn't see any young hooligans smoking near your site of vandalism.’”

  Ana, Nick and Julia all looked at Garth. Garth grunted, handed over his pack of cigarettes and walked away. He walked away into the woods.

  "Bye, Ana,” Julia said. “Say hi to Rico. Tell him we need to rehearse.” She took Nick's arm and the two of them followed Garth.

  Ana could see the graffiti, now. It was red and green and it wasn't anything Ana knew how to decipher. Parts of it were swoofy, and other parts had sharp, edgy bits. It looked like it was made up of letters, but she wasn't sure which letters they were.

  Bertha lit one of Garth's cigarettes. “Gonna have to rent a sandblaster,” she said. “Won't come off without a sandblaster, and it's brick so I can't just paint over it."

  "Deputy Chad thinks it was gangs that did it,” Ana said.

  Bertha snorted. “Town isn't big enough for gangs,” she said. “Doesn't matter anyway. This is just somebody marking their territory. This is colored piss with artistic pretensions."

  Ana took out her notebook, but she didn't have any guesses to write down yet. “How's the novel?” she asked Bertha. This was the usual thing to ask. Bertha had always been writing a novel.

  "Terrible,” Bertha said.

  "Sorry,” said Ana. She wondered if it was better to be a novelist or a traveling actor, and decided it would still be better to be a pirate king.

  "What's with the notebook?” Bertha asked. She flicked her cigarette butt at the graffiti, and it hit the bricks above the paint with a shower of orange sparks.

  "I'm going to draw it,” Ana said, “I'll take it home and figure out what it says, and then ... then maybe I'll know who did it. I'll solve the mystery."

  "Have fun,” Bertha said. She opened a door in the gym wall with one of the many jingling keys at her belt and went in. The door shut behind her with a loud metal scrape.

  Ana drew the graffiti tag. Luckily she had the right colors of magic marker. It took her seven tries to get it right.

  * * * *

  The screen door squeaked when Ana opened it. The kitchen lights were on. One cold plateful of food sat on an otherwise bare table. Ana's mother sat at the other end, face down on her folded arms. She was snoring. Ana hid her backpack under the table, and put the plate of food on a chair and out of sight.

  "Wake up, Mama,” she said.

  Her mother wo
ke up. “Where have you been, child?” she asked, annoyed but mostly groggy.

  "Here,” Ana said. “I've been here for hours. Sorry I missed dinner."

  "You should be,” said her mother. “Where—"

  Ana pretended to yawn. Her mother couldn't help yawning, then, and this made Ana yawn for real. “Bedtime,” she said, once she was able to say anything. Her mother nodded, and both of them went upstairs.

  Ana snuck back downstairs to throw away her dinner and fetch her backpack. She ate the chocolate granola bars while sitting on the floor of her bedroom studying the graffiti in her notebook. She thought it might say roozles, rutterkin or rumbustical, but there were always extra letters, or at least extra swoofs and pointy edges to the letters, and the longer she stared at it the less each word fit.

  Ana slept. She dreamed that her kitten backpack climbed snuffling onto the foot of her bed. She woke up when it stepped on her toes, and once she was awake she could see its pointy-eared outline. A car drove by outside and made strange window-shade shadows sweep across the wall and ceiling. Maybe the car had its highbeams on.

  Her bag moved. She kicked it and it fell off the edge, landing with more of a soft smacking sound than it should have. Ana wanted to turn on the light, but the light switch was across the room. She would have to touch the floor to get there. She decided that now would be a really excellent time to develop telekinetic powers, and spent the next several minutes concentrating on the light switch.

  Another car went by.

  She got up, tiptoed across the floor and turned on the light. She turned around.

  The backpack was right at her feet. She didn't scream. She swallowed an almost-scream.