by Carol
Washburn spurs his horse, which hesitates a moment, then mounts the stone bridge. It takes constant urging to keep the horse going, picking its way across the sloping pebble-clad surface, to the center. Here Washburn stops the horse, or allows it to stop. He sits at the highest point of the bridge's curve, astride the joint between two worlds, but looking at neither. He reaches up to tug at his hat’s brim and is mildly surprised to find himself bareheaded. He scratches his forehead lazily, a man with all the time in the world. Then he turns his horse around and starts back down the bridge to Brimstone.
The crowd watches as Washburn rides toward them. They are motionless, silent. Then, realizing what is about to happen, they scatter for the shelter of wagons, duck down behind water troughs, crouch behind grain sacks.
Only Little Joe Potter remains in the dusty street. He watches while Washburn dismounts, shoos his horse out of the line of fire, walks slowly toward him.
Little Joe calls out, “Hey, Washburn! Come back for your hat?”
Washburn grins, shakes his head. “No, Little Joe, I came back because it’s our dance.”
They both laugh, it is all some ridiculous joke. Then, suddenly, both men draw. The heavy bark of their ,44s crashes through the town. Smoke and dust obscure the fighters.
The smoke blows away. Both men are still standing. Little Joe’s gun is pointed dowm. He twerls it, and watches it fall from his hand. Then he collapses.
Washburn holsters his gun, walks over to Little Joe, kneels, lifts his head out of the dirt.
“Goddamn,” Little Joe says, “that was one short dance, huh, Washburn?”
“Too short,” Washburn says. “Joe, I’m sorry ..
But Little Joe doesn’t hear this. His eyes have gone blank and unfocused, his body is limp. Blood trickles out of two holes in his chest, blood stains the dust from the large exit wounds in his back.
Washburn gets to his feet, finds his derby in the dust, wipes it off, puts it on. He walks over to his horse. People are coming out now, there is a buzz of conversation. Washburn sets one foot in the stirrup, begins to mount.
At that moment a wavering, high-pitched voice calls out, “Okay, Washburn, draw!”
Washburn’s face contorts as he whirls, trying to get his gun-hand clear, trying to spin out of the line of fire. Even in that cramped and impossible posture he manages to get the .44 drawn, spins to see the freckle-faced kid ten yards away with gun drawn and aimed, firing.
Sunlight explodes in Washburn’s head, he hears his horse scream, he is falling through the dusty floors of the world, falling as the bullets thud into him with a sound like a butcher s cleaver swung flat against a side of beef. The world is coming apart, the picturemaking machine is smashed, his eyes are a broken lens that reflects the sudden destruction of the world. A red light flashes a final warning and the world goes to black.
The viewer, audience and actor, looks for a while at the darkened screen, stirs in his easy chair, rubs his chin. He seems to be in some distress. Then, at last, he belches, and reaches out and turns off the screen.
The Age of Libra
by Scott Edelstein
Scott Edelstein says, “I feel a work of art should stand completely on its own. Hence, 1 prefer to remain in the background and let the story do the telling.
"I will say, however, that 'The Age of Libra' is the best short story I have written, to date."
Homa stood at the top of the wooded hill, gazing down at the village below. The buildings blended with the surrounding trees, forming a mosaic that defied his vision to distinguish details. Thin smoke rose from a corner of the village, where the power plant was located.
The afternoon was cool; the sky held a sprinkling of clouds. Homa could feel the intermittent sunlight pressing lightly on his head and back. He was barefoot; the dry grass and clover brushed softly against his feet.
He searched the path to the village with his eyes. He did not see anyone approaching. He squatted, preparing to wait, then stood and walked over the crest of the hill and down, away from the village.
At the bottom of the hill was a small stream. He knelt and drank, relishing the taste and the cold of the water. He settled down nearby, beneath a big pine tree on a small mat he kept there.
He closed his eyes and attempted to meditate, but his mind would not empty.
Her facial muscles were taut, her lips pursed. "Youre drunk again,” she said.
Homa felt a rush of anger, could feel for a moment his heartbeat quicken.
She persisted. “So you're twenty years old and you've decided there's nothing for you in life; why shouldn't I argue with you? Do you think we raised you so you could live in a village? So you could throw your life away?”
“I've already signed the papers. I have to report within seven days. You can scream at me without stopping for the whole week and the papers aren't going to unsign themselves.” He felt the tenseness in his throat; his voice threatened to turn to a squeak.
She rushed toward him, and for a moment Homa thought she would strike him. He took a step back, then checked himself. At the age of twenty he was still frightened by his own mother. She did not strike him, or touch him at all, but walked jerkily across the room and collapsed into a chair. She was silent and Homa turned away, hoping the incident had ended and wondering what to do next. Then he heard sobbing behind him. He whirled. “Look, you can't change what's already happened,” he said. Her sobbing continued.
He turned and stared out the window at the city, a mass of concrete and metal and bodies and filth that stretched far past his own gaze. He had assumed that his decision to live in a village would have been? a turning point in his relationship with his parents. He had hoped it would have provided him with some sort of revelation about his own personality. But nothing had changed; it was as if he had not signed the papers, had not make a commitment; except that he would have to report to a retirement center n seven days.
Behind him, his mother was speaking hysterically into the telephone, pausing to sob or wipe her eyes and nose with a tissue. She looked ludicrous to Homa, standing there, speaking into a shiny black object in her hand, as if that object could offer her some sort of solace.
Staring at her, and then staring back out of the grimy window at the concrete and metal shells, he felt only a vague confusion. There was not even a loneliness to nurse, just a slippery sensation that something was happening behind his back that he could never glimpse.
His mother hung up the telephone. He waited, expecting an announcement.
"Your fathers on his way home right now,” she said, “to talk to you.”
“I won't be here.” His own words dissatisfied him; they held no distinction. He searched his mind for a sentence that was uniquely his, for words that embodied his own personality. He found nothing. “Vm going out ”
“No, you re not ”
“Don’t order me around. I'm not your servant. I'm going out. I'll be back later on. I'll talk to you both then.”
“Where are you going,?’
“I dont know. What does it matter?"
“I dont want you going out and smoking that marijuana or getting drunk.”
“I dont want you crying,” he said. “Is that going to stop you from doing it?"
“You’re such a big-mouth,” she said, the last words turning into a shriek. She ran to him and struck him with clumsy blows; he reeled backward, stunned.
Homa opened his eyes and stared into the creek. He could change his environment, but his past clung to him like an infant to its mother.
He rose, and drank again from the stream. The water did not refresh him. He strode further into the woods. He kept walking until he could see the fence at the edge of the woods, and the farmland beyond; then he stopped, gazing into the distance, trying to clear his mind of thoughts. He could not do it. He walked to the fence, glanced at the sign
which said DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE.
He seated himself, crossed his legs, and placed his palms on his knees. He closed his eyes, then thought, I'm still expecting something to happen, hoping to get some sort of vision.
A maintenance tractor was approaching, its scanners seeking malfunctions or breaks in the fence. The tractor driver sat hunched over his controls, staring straight ahead.
"Good afternoon,” Homa shouted at the man as the tractor approached. “Hows the wife and kids?”
The driver did not respond; he concentrated on his driving.
“Hey,” Homa yelled at him, raising his voice further, “Want to stop a while and have a talk? Listen, I'm not going to do anything; they don't sell weapons in the village, you know. At least look at me, will you? Damn it, will you at least look my way?”
The driver's gaze did not waver.
“I'm going to die tomorrow,” Homa shouted. “Today's my last day on this Earth. I've been here almost one full year. Tomorrow I meet my maker. What do you think of that?” Homa jumped up and trotted along the length of the fence, keeping up with the tractor. “Your fly's open; hadn't you better zip it up? Hey, watch it, there's this huge hornet on your ear.” Homa gave up, slowed to a walk.
He turned away from the fence and walked back up the hill.
His father wore a perpetual scowl on his face. Homa thought the scowl was grimmer than usual; he thought there was a hint of desperation in his fathers eyes.
“Look, Dad, what am I supposed to do, build a time machine and go back and relive the day over again? I signed up for retirement; whether or not it was a stupid thing to do doesn't matter anymore. So can we please just drop of the abject? I'll be around for another week; lets live that happily, at least, okay?"
“But you haven't answered me—why? Why? What would make you want to retire, at the age of twenty? Think of all the things you havent seen, the things you havent done." The arguments were always the same, a string of accusations and demands and incredulous questions, repeated over and over and over. “I didn't raise you to throw your life away at the first opportunity."
“What else is there to see? It's nothing but eat and drink and breathe filth every day of your life, living in a box in the middle of millions of other boxes just like it, working all day at dulling your brain and your senses, and then dying. Ending with one year of happiness, one goddamned year of freedom. And by that time your mind and body are all so ruined that that year doesn't mean anything—you're dead already. It's a slow process; every year you die a little bit more, until by the time they finally put you to sleep you hardly feel it. If I can have one good year of my life, I want it now; do you understand?"
“No, I don't understand." His father drew nearer, put his hand on Homa's shoulder and pressed down. “Let me tell you something. What you don't think about is us, your mother and I. You think we enjoy living the way we do? You think we had any reason to live? Well, we did, Dave—it was you. And now you’re taking our whole lives away from us. There was nothing we could have done for ourselves, but we wanted you to be something. You could have been someone famous, someone important.”
“You’ve told me that all my life. Will you please get it through your skull that I just can’t be this ‘somebody important’ you keep talking about? Sure, there’s still hope for a few; how many—one out of a hundred thousand? The geniuses, the top athletes, the kids who are bom rich or who inherit a fortune, they get something more out of life besides another breath of filthy air. I'm not one of them; I’ve known it all along. You’ve just been afraid to admit it to yourself. And now it’s too late, do you hear me, too late for you, or Mom, or me, to do anything.”
The hand fell off Homa’s shoulder. “You snotty kid,” his father said. “You did it all for spite. You always want your own way. Always Dave first, Dave before anybody else.”
“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” Homa found himself shouting. He felt the first wash of tears coming to his eyes. He blinked, focused his eyes on his mother, who sat quietly in a straightbacked chair, rubbing her hands together nervously, crying.
“Nothing matters to you.”
Homa suddenly found that the situation was totally out of his control: ironically, he felt as if a huge burden had been taken from him. “Fuck it, fuck it, fuck you all,” he found himself saying, and abruptly he was at the front door, pulling it open. His father was behind him, barking orders; his mother sobbed in the background. He began shaking his head and stumbled outside, slamming the door behind him. Too angered to wait for an elevator, he bolted down seven flights of stairs, through the lobby, and out the door of the apartment building.
He stood on the sidewalk, catching his breath. The buildings loomed around him. The sky was gray.
Amanda was waiting for him just over the crest of the hill. She lay on her stomach, idly brushing her hair off her forehead and moving one foot back and forth against the ground in a slow rhythm. A paper bag was beside her on the grass.
She saw him as he approached, and she raised herself to her knees, still brushing the hair out of her eye. He kissed her lightly and knelt beside her. They stroked each other’s hair.
"You’re very late,” she said.
"No, you were,” he said, smiling. "I waited for a while and then went down by the creek.”
She patted the paper sack. "You weren’t at lunch, so I got something for you. It’s some quiche and some grapes.”
He lay down beside her, kissed her gently again. Her tongue gently skimmed the surface of his teeth. "I’m not really hungry,” he said, although he was.
Sometime later he discovered that they had removed their clothing and were making love. Homa tried to recall the previous minutes but could not; his mind had the habit of going off on its own for minutes, sometimes hours at a time. Sex, once one of his major preoccupations, could no longer keep his attention. Even as he worked his body against Amanda’s and struggled to hold onto his awareness, he felt his movements becoming automatic. He concentrated all his energy on making love.
But he forced himself, and afterward Amanda kissed his eyelids and offered to massage him. She kissed the tip of his nose and said, "You’re tense. All over.”
He raised himself on his elbows and felt something building inside of him. He waited, and the pressure remained but neither lessened nor broke. He tried to force it to break and failed. He pressed his mouth on Amanda’s. They embraced, and for a moment he hoped that they would make love once again, but they both soon drifted into sleep.
He had walked the streets of the city for half an hour, hunched against the wind and the grime. With each step his course of action became more obvious. He tried to find a phone booth with a working phone, but could not. Finally he stopped inside a crowded, hot lunchroom and called his parents from a pay phone there. His mother answered.
“Hello; Mom?”
“Dave? Where are you?”..
“I'm calling from a restaurant, Mother. I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to the retirement center now. I decided there wasn’t any point in waiting out the week. Take the money out of my savings; it’s yours.” He paused, uncertain how to continue, waiting for a response.
“What? Did you say you were retiring this minute? Wait a minute, Dave, you come home and we’ll discuss this.”
“No, Mom.”
“You’d better listen, young man. You come right home and we can discuss this over dinner.” She was stem and insistent, but her voice had broken; Homo could hear her crying softly.
“I’m your flesh and blood, so I guess I’m your slave, too, is that it? Look, Mom, don’t wait up for me, okay?” He paused again, expecting her tone of insistence to change to sorrow.
“Listen to me, David—”
“Goodbye, Mom”
id Scott Homa 1977-1998 David Scott Homa 1977-1998 David Scott Homa 1977-19
The retirement center had an unassuming exterior; outside hung a single large sign, in gold and green, which said USDRS RETIREMENT C
ENTRE. Inside, the center could have been mistaken for the waiting room of a very expensive doctor.
The waiting room was empty except for the receptionist. Homa strode to her desk and stared at her. “My name’s David Homa” he said. “I signed up earlier today. I’d like to retire right now; I’m waiving my seven day extension.”
She smiled professionally, and ran her finger down a list of names on the desk beside her. “All right, sir, if you'll wait just a moment Til get things arranged for you. Are there any personal articles you wish to take with you?"
He shook his head. “Just what I have on me. I was told I'd be issued clothing and so forth at the village.”
“Yes, sir, a selection of clothing is available.” She pushed a button and, bending forward slightly, said into a microphone Homa could not see, “Ten-ninety, Waiver, Homa, David Scott.” There was a loud buzz, and a door behind the desk swung open. “Right through the door, please,” she said to him, still smiling. “Just go around in back of my desk.”
He smiled back at her, walked through the door, and heard it shut behind him. As an experiment, he tried to turn the doorknob. It would not turn.
He was in a tiny cubicle about the size of a passenger elevator. The walls were imitation wood-paneled. Set into the wall opposite him was a large television screen.
Abruptly, another door slid shut over the first one, and he felt the room move downward. He realized that he was indeed in an elevator. The television screen lit up with an image of a mans smiling face. There was a faint hum, and the man began to speak. “Welcome to the United States Retirement Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Retirement Services. Every year, the population of the nation increases by over ten million. To help keep this increase to a minimum, the United States sponsors sixteen hundred and forty-five retirement villages throughout the nation.” The man's face was replaced with an aerial view of a large cluster of buildings set in a wooded mountain valley. The buildings were painted in shades of brown and green. “Each of these villages houses twenty-nine hundred residents, who stay, free of charge, for a period of one year. During this final year of their lives, they are supplied with comfortable living quarters, meals, clothing, toilet articles, cleaning and laundering services, and two hundred dollars per month to spend in village stores. A wide variety of entertainment is offered, and the large and highly trained staff of your village will do their best to meet your personal needs, whatever they may be.” The voice fell silent, and the picture changed to that of a slightly larger cluster of buildings, also surrounded by woodland. The woods here were hilly rather than mountainous. A woman’s voice replaced the mans. “This is Redwood Village,” the voice said, “in northern California. This is a resort village designed for single members of your own age group. The residents of Redwood Village range in age from eighteen to thirty. Redwood Village is one-half male, one-half female.” The elevator stopped its descent, but the doors behind Homa did not open. *This is the entrance to an underground railway car which will take you to Redwood Village,” the voice said. The television screen grew dark, and the elevator doors opened behind him. Homa turned and saw yet another set of closed doors. “When the doors open,” the voice continued, “please step inside and strap yourself into the seat. The train travels at very high speeds; therefore, it is not safe to move about the cabin while the car is in motion. The trip will take about twenty minutes. The United States Government would like to thank you for making your important contribution to the welfare of the nation, and hopes your stay at Redwood Village will be a pleasant one.” The last set of doors opened, and Homa entered the tiny curved chamber, sat down in the single padded chair.