One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist

by Dustin M. Hoffman

  Darkness settled as Ren led his sheep two miles out of their way, to Tommy Two Bags of Wool’s cave. Why build an office, Tommy always said, when God leases caves? Caves saved on overhead. Ren pushed aside the vines covering the cave mouth, cleared his throat, said, “You open, Tommy?”

  “A real business never closes. Sleep is for the unemployed, the retired, and the dead.” Tommy sprang from the darkness. “What can I do for my favorite shepherd?”

  Tommy neared Ren as he spoke, almost touching his chin to Ren’s chest. Ren smelled fish and rhubarb on his breath, could see a pus-filled growth on his tongue when he licked at his red mustache. At the conference, he’d looked majestic under the lights of the stage from ten rows away.

  “You sold me some bunk acres. There’re a bunch of idiots fighting there.”

  “You’re imagining things.” Tommy’s eyes glared wetly in the moonlight. “You just need to change your visualization techniques. Daily success-envisionment meditation with my eight-part series of motivational tapes will change those fears into fantastic.”

  “My eyes aren’t the problem.”

  “Ah, yes, it’s the classic overworked-shepherd syndrome. You should try my patent-pending Calmative Cave Mushroom Caps. Relax you into oblivion. But they’ll keep you sharp, too.” The lesion on Tommy’s tongue flickered as he spoke. “Bottom-dollar deal.”

  “I don’t need mushrooms.” Ren withdrew the arrow shaft he’d brought and lifted it to Tommy’s face. “I’m not imagining anything.”

  Tommy snatched the arrow, pressed it to his nose, slid his tongue down the shaft. Then he chucked it over his shoulder, into the black cave.

  “I appreciate you forwarding this concern to my attention.” Tommy gripped Ren’s shoulders. “You need to look at those salamander boys as an obstacle to overcome, an opportunity to improve your strategy. They are a gift.” Tommy released Ren’s shoulder. He pulled at his mustache. “But if it’s too much for you to handle, I can refund you two-thirds.”

  “Why not all thirds?”

  “The price of doing business,” Tommy said. “Or I could sell you some different acres for a few hundred extra. These ones are perfect and obstacle-opportunity free.”

  Maggie’s brother could loan Ren the money, would insist on no interest and that would be so much worse. Maggie and Flann would laugh about listening to wool grow, while they sweated out five thousand more flute shafts, while they took lunch break and played with Flann’s three boys and two girls, and before break was over, Flann’s wife would pop out another son.

  “I’m not buying more land. I just need a safe, quiet place so my herd can make lambs.”

  Tommy snickered. “You should consider taking my lambing class, Mary Had a Little Lamb and so Can You.”

  Ren reached into his pocket and twisted Maggie’s hair tightly around his thumb. Tommy smirked at him and then disappeared into his cave’s darkness. He rattled in the gulf of shadows and finally emerged holding out his palm. “Tell you what. A quick and easy fix. This will solve all your problems.”

  Ren looked down and, to his horror, saw a flute. But this one was different than the ones Flann and Maggie made. Its metal shaft glinted in the moonlight. This was a flute Flann would have no idea how to craft. Ren loosened the noose of Maggie’s hair around his thumb.

  “Next time you run into trouble, just give this sucker a blow, and poof, your worries will be eradicated. All for a low-low investment.”

  “What’s the price?”

  “Low-low investment, my wise friend. Not a single coin, but a barter.” Tommy’s tongue flicked fast, seemed to brighten his face, so that Ren could see his sharp cheekbones, the wisdom lines in his forehead. “All I require is just one sheep.”

  Ren needed another investment, and he could spare Franklin, surely, who was full of soldier blood and stupidity. So he made the exchange. Ren crooked the sheep and led him into Tommy’s cave. Tommy slipped the shiny flute into Ren’s pocket. When he withdrew his hand, Tommy was holding Maggie’s hair.

  “Oh, this is a fine coat from a rare sheep.” Tommy smiled, rubbed the hair against his cheek. “Let’s toss this into the exchange.”

  Ren yanked the hair from Tommy and stowed it back in his pocket. He clutched her hair in a fist as he departed. Now he had Maggie, his new land, and the flute that would fix everything else.

  Maggie was sleeping by the time Ren found his way to their bed. One of her hands lay splayed next to the uneven chunks of hair on the back of her head. Red slices and brown scabs flecked her fingers, casualties of flute work. He pulled Maggie’s hair from his pocket and swept the curls over the wounds, because the right hair cured all that ailed. He believed that as hard as he’d ever believed anything.

  She snorted in her sleep, and her hand disappeared beneath the wool blankets. Blankets made of his sheep. He pinched a loose thread hanging from the hem, imagined Winona’s haunches. Soon, once he had peace on his new land, he would have dozens of Winona’s daughters, all with fine wool, and he’d save all the softest hair to make blankets just for Maggie. So many blankets she’d never know cold again. Only warmth. A womb of wool. So many blankets. But then she’d never need his body heat, unlike the winters they’d spent when all they had was the one threadbare quilt. Back then they would drag that quilt to the stove, pull it tight around their toes, their legs twined, arms quivering until their shared body heat meshed and the shivering stopped and then they made love, softly at first, slow hip thrusts so as not to break from the blanket. And then Maggie would become daring, roll on top of him, yank off her sweater, and escape from the quilt, her bare breasts glowing in the frigid moonlight.

  Cold became another kind of touch then. Sweat stilled over goosebumps. Movement of hips and arms and bodies pressed, until heat wasn’t a thing to be kept in a blanket or locked in the stove but a burning between their waists that could fill a cold and empty house.

  But their heat never filled anything. Her belly never grew. And now they each had separate thick woolen blankets.

  Soon, soon, they would have more wool and more money, and that would bring Maggie back inside his blanket. He’d pay off the mortgages and build a second-story add-on to their hovel. She’d be comfortable and safe, and they would make love with precision and purpose. That would work. That would have to work.

  Maggie’s tired arms and scraped hands stretched across the mattress. Ren would need to push her aside to sleep on the same bed, would need to wake her from a dream he hoped was of those cold nights under the quilt. He took his blanket and curled up on the floor.

  When he woke at dawn, Maggie was already gone to her brother’s factory, the bed left unmade, blankets twisted like withered husks.

  The sky blazed pink when he got his sheep to pasture. Ren felt his fortune renewed, his to grasp like starlings fluttering overhead, and all he had to do was reach up and snatch one, wrap his fingers around spasming wings, squeeze a jittering heart. Today he’d implement active-shepherding techniques.

  He started with Whitey, who had taken to munching a yellow patch of brittle grass. His lips puckered around a buried stone. Ren thwacked Whitey’s rear with his staff, led him toward a greener area. As soon as Ren turned his back, Whitey moseyed back to the yellow patch to suck at the rock again. Ren tore fistfuls of green, pulled Whitey’s mouth open, and jammed the bounty between his teeth. He kept cramming grass until his stained fingers cramped. His arms throbbed with the work, his back smarting. This was real work, and it felt good. Blood pulsed through his arms, thrummed in his ears.

  The other sheep lingered in the greens, and Ren jogged from one to the next, shouting encouragement, jabbing his staff into the air, chanting, “Chew, chew chew!”

  By noon, sweat soaked his frock. This was the work his father and grandfather had never dared. They would have shaken their wrinkled heads at the idea of innovation. He wondered if Maggie’s brother was working this hard. He doubted it, doubted any workingman had ever worked so hard.

  Ren began
the next stage of active shepherding. He hooked the crook of his staff around the thick neck of his largest ram, Thor, and led him to Winona. It would be natural. His sheep just needed a little nudging. Today would be the day when the flock would flourish. The mood was perfect. Thor resisted, dragged his hooves, but Winona was nearing. Then came the clang of armor. Ren lost his grip on Thor.

  The shoddy man-boy crested the rim of slate. He waved his sword at Ren until he lost track of his footing and tumbled down the hill. He rolled all the way to Whitey’s feet, and Whitey licked the man-boy’s arm.

  “Hell of a sheep you have here,” the man-boy said. “Cleaning my wounds, I see. And I didn’t even have to call for a healer.”

  Ren thwacked Whitey away. He turned back toward the man-boy.

  “When I eyed you, down there with your mighty-fighty lungs and your tough old staff, I said to myself, ‘Thank Gurfay the Lucky Star Smasher above that my hero is here today,’” the man-boy said. “Just when you think it’s over, war breaks out again, and I’m outnumbered like a shepherd to his herd, though it would have to be about three times as big as your herd.”

  A giant boulder crashed into the earth a dozen yards away from them. Ren looked up to the basin lip and saw the arm of a catapult. In moments, four more catapults appeared. A group of men bustled around each catapult, hoisted fresh boulders. Ren wondered if they sweated and strained as much as him doing active shepherding.

  “You see, pops! Outnumbered. I tell you those big old stones make a man feel bitty. Might just be shit outta luck this battle.”

  Ren fingered the metal flute in his pocket, smiled at his secret. Another giant boulder thudded farther away. It must have taken a dozen men to lift just one boulder and a mule team dragging a cart for miles. A dozen wives and three dozen children left at home while they worked. The overhead was astronomical. And the effect was Ren and the man-boy could look up into the sky, watch these giant rocks blotting out the sun, and then move two feet to the left.

  The boulders hailed down. More halberd- and sword-wielding soldiers ran down to clang swords and sidestep thunking boulders. Ren rushed through the field, gathering his sheep into a huddle around him so that they wouldn’t be flattened. He thought he had all of them corralled into a tight circle, when he noticed, in the distance, Whitey lapping at a bloody, discarded breastplate. A shadow darkened Whitey’s fur. Ren grappled for the flute. He pushed it to his lips and blew. It made a pathetic squeak just as a boulder swallowed Whitey.

  Whitey’s blood seeped through the grass, and that was all that was left of his oldest sheep. Ren blew on the flute again, and no one noticed. The men kept clanging, and the boulders kept dropping. He lifted Winona and clutched her to his chest. She was heavy in his arms. He didn’t know if he could hold her until the battle finished, if it ever would.

  The sun eventually burned red, then hid behind the basin lip. The catapults ceased, the clanging blades silenced, and the soldiers retreated up separate hills. Ren didn’t see any bodies, any decisive victory. The only casualty was his lush grass, now acned with giant rocks.

  “A battle to rattle the ancestors’ graves!” The man-boy planted his foot on a boulder near Ren, puffed out his chest. “Guess that settles this fight for good. Until tomorrow, Shepherd.”

  Ren watched the man-boy sheathe his sword, crack his back, sigh with satisfaction. It all made Ren furious. “You certainly made enough noise to make your ancestors piss themselves laughing. What a joke.”

  “Now wait a goddamn minute. We’re honor earning here. Fighting for our lives.”

  “How much honor, do you figure?” Ren waited for no answer. “What are you even doing here?”

  “What aren’t we doing? This is for everything: Land, religion, freedom from tyranny and ogres—once they’re inevitably proven to exist. For the safety of my family, when I find the right buxom maiden, if you know what I mean.” The man-boy waggled his hips. “But peace mostly, I suppose.” He smiled, proud.

  “So that’s how it’s done. That’s how you make peace?”

  “Listen, Shepherd, peacemaking takes time. I don’t tell you how to do whatever you do with your sheep. My family’s been doing this for generations.”

  “You must be so proud.”

  “I’m walking away, Shepherd,” the man-boy flicked his sword at Ren, stepped backward, “so that I don’t make peaceful pieces out of you, my old ally.”

  Ren snorted and watched the man-boy as he turned, as his shoulders drooped, as his sword dragged in the dirt, as the man-boy became a tiny speck on the basin lip and then disappeared again.

  On his way home, Ren stopped by Tommy’s again. A sign that read FOR LEASE THROUGH GOD blocked the cave mouth. Ren leaned over the sign and yelled, “I want a refund, Tommy. All thirds, Tommy. All of it back.” Nothing stirred. Tommy was probably hiding, giggling, his hand over Franklin’s muzzle. Or maybe Tommy and Franklin were dead, a pile of mixed human and sheep bones picked clean by bobcats. Ren flipped the coil of Maggie’s hair around his index finger and peered into the black silence. He turned toward home. He hoped Maggie was still awake.

  But the hovel was empty. No Maggie. No note. Just a mass of tangled blankets. She was likely working overtime. Ren could do that, too. Ren could do overtime even better, could become more of a ghost than Maggie. He could win a family, a future, alone, without Maggie, without anyone.

  By moonlight, the half-buried boulders in his field looked like full bellies. Ren leaned into his staff, tired, dazed, but also focused, what his Grandpa Nork used to call the shepherd’s drunk. That was a joy he’d forgotten, something that Tommy Two Bags couldn’t teach. He watched his sheep disperse and maw at the night-blue grass.

  When the man-boy appeared, Ren wasn’t surprised. Ren slid behind a boulder and watched him stagger, lift a cask to his lips, drink. The man-boy spotted Thor and charged him. He smashed into his flanks and knocked the sheep over. Ren waited.

  The man-boy gathered himself and stood. He lifted his foot over the ram’s neck and then stopped. Ren heard him blubbering, one foot in the air, one on the ground, frozen like some kind of terrible dance. Ren was enjoying the show, the inanity of a soldier’s solo performance. Only a shepherd could do it alone. Ren fisted Maggie’s hair and then dropped it to the earth. He gripped the metal flute.

  The man-boy unsheathed his stubby sword, raised it high over Thor’s head. This was the man-boy’s work. Ren understood. He required a partner for fighting. It didn’t matter what the fighting produced. Production would never stop him. The man-boy would swing eternally at wisps in the dark.

  Ren pitied the man-boy for his pointless labor, for its endless inevitability. And he hated that the man-boy required pity. Ren’s grip on the flute tightened. He bolted forward, slammed into the man-boy. Ren stabbed his flute into the man-boy’s thigh. It pierced the skin, and the man-boy screamed. Ren pushed harder, twisted the flute, made him howl. The howl morphed into a high-pitched bleating. Winona lay on her side a few boulders away. Ren jumped up and ran toward his ewe. She looked unharmed but continued to bleat madly. He ran his fingers through her coat, up her legs, down her neck, checking for the hot wetness of the wound the man-boy must have given her. As his fingers scoured her body, he glared at the man-boy, who was slinking behind one of the boulders.

  Finally, his hands reached her tailhead. Under that, an unexpected roundness. A cold shock darted through his chest. There was the water bag, full and glistening. He hadn’t noticed her heaviness when he’d clutched her against the catapults. He’d missed the signs for so long. But here it was—a lambing. This was what he’d been waiting for, and it had been here all along. Ren knelt beside her and massaged her coat, cooed into her ear.

  A long time passed without the baaing he longed to hear. Just Winona’s heavy panting. He wished it would be faster. The man-boy kept peeking from behind the boulder. One eye, half a dirty, childish face, and then he’d duck back into his ambush. He lurked in the darkness like a bobcat, like Tommy in his ca
ve, waiting to pounce and collect. Ren wiped his hands against the inside of his robe. If he were closer to home, closer to Maggie, she could bring hot water and coffee. She could rub the ewe’s hind legs. They would be a team working perfectly together.

  But Ren was alone. Alone except for the man-boy, who leaned his head out from the boulder more boldly, his eyes wide and wild. Alone except for Papa Ander’s ghost hand that had guided Ren through his first lambing decades ago, patient fingers that never knew rush. Ren bunched his fingers into a cone and pushed inside Winona. She struggled against him. The flesh around his wrist tensed. If she continued to fight, she’d never have this lamb, never have another. He longed for Maggie or Papa Ander or even Grandpa Nork to steady her.

  The man-boy swayed above him against the stars. Ren was unable to defend his herd, his hand trapped, his fingers searching for wet lamb legs. The man-boy’s thigh oozed blood. The blood trailed down his leg, dripped onto the grass. He dropped to his knees. The man-boy’s hands wound around Winona’s neck, roughly, in a way that made her jump. But then she calmed, and the man-boy eased his grip. The flesh around Ren’s wrist loosened. He concentrated, felt the knotty angles of lamb elbows. He pushed the lamb deeper, until the elbows unlocked and the hooves lurched forward and out, and then the nose, the brow. He removed his hand, and the lamb followed.

  It lay on his land, motionless, a wet pile of blood and moon. The man-boy gulped air. Winona licked at the still lamb. It baaed. It baaed impossibly, a little screech in the dead of the night. This lamb would become a ewe, which meant Ren could become a success. But Maggie would not be home when he returned carrying the new lamb. So he had this moment, these scratches of new breath, Winona and her lamb and the man-boy, who’d lost his sword somewhere. His silent armor gleamed in the moonlight alongside the wet lamb.

  Conch Tongue

  I grab up my microphone and stroll to the front of the tour bus. The clicking cameras turn from the shanties out the window and aim at me. I tear a giant smile into my face, and one camera blinks. Nothing much to see yet. I’m just the guide, another dark woman wearing a collar and name tag. They smatter sunblock on their husbands, on their wives. The bus smells like coconuts and sweat. A middle-aged couple in matching yellow Hawaiian shirts clutch their fanny packs and quiz each other with a laminated exchange-rate chart. When I get to the front, the youngest couple—twenty-year-old babies, honeymooning and pretty as a pair of polished stones—tug my shirt hem, whisper-ask where they can score the ganja. I spread that smile bigger, keep moving, snap on the mike.