FSF, December 2007

by Spilogale, Inc

  He raised a hand to wave at them, its every tiny bone glistening and white.

  The crowds were waiting. There was only now.

  The night belonged to him; it always had. He sprang up with mounting glee, turned a somersault in the air, and landed nimbly on the street. Then he began to dance.

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  Plumage From Pegasus: Survival of the Fannish by Paul Di Filippo

  "In case you needed proof that books can save lives—Michael Auberry, the 12-year-old who disappeared from his Boy Scout troop on Saturday in North Carolina, was found alive Tuesday morning in a remote mountain area, and a children's book may have helped him survive. A few years ago Auberry read Gary Paulsen's Newbery Honor novel Hatchet, about a boy who is deserted on an island after a plane crash and learns to live off the land, and some of its survival lessons may have sunk in. ‘I think he's got some of that book on his mind,’ his father told CNN."

  —"Gary Paulsen, Lifesaver?", Publishers Weekly, 3/20/2007.

  * * * *

  "—and here to answer all your questions is Patrolman Ordway Dollarhide. As you know, Patrolman Dollarhide, along with his K-9 partner, Peanuts, was the brave and resourceful rescuer who discovered our lost camper, Michael Valentine Atreides, after a five-day campaign involving hundreds of searchers. We had hoped to have little Michael Valentine himself present, but the boy is just too debilitated from his ordeal to attend.

  "Now, please welcome Patrolman Dollarhide."

  "Thank you, Mayor Galliard. I appreciate the flattering introduction. But I was just doing my job. And to continue doing my job now, I find I have to take polite but firm exception to some of your characterizations of the case."

  "Why, I—"

  "No, please, let me continue, Mayor. There's no point in glossing over any of the details of this incident. It's the sorriest mess I ever took part in, and if we hope to prevent anything like it from occurring in the future, it's best to lay all the facts out straight."

  "Well, go ahead then, Patrolman...."

  "First off, Michael Valentine Atreides is not no little boy. He's thirteen and weighs more than me. I figure him at around two hundred and thirty pounds, give or take a Twinkie or two. Now, there's plenty of sources of drinking water in the Yollabolly Middle Eel Wilderness Area, and the temperature never fell below sixty degrees, even at night. So he could've lived off that fat of his for about another month. His life was never in no real danger then."

  "Still—"

  "I know, I know, it's no fun for a youngster to be lost all alone, even under those mild conditions. And his parents were going plumb crazy with worry and fear. But the facts of the matter are, Michael prolonged his own troubles and made ‘em worse by his irresponsible actions. And they all came out of his reading. Books! That's what caused this whole dang misadventure. Nothing but books!

  "I was in charge of debriefing the boy, and I took extensive notes. Notes which I'd like to share now with you all.

  "First off, we got the reason why Michael wandered away from Camp Wanna-Beah-Ledge-Un in the first place. He claimed he was looking to find the Lost City of Opar. That's some nonsense that comes straight outta those Tarzan books, stuff that thankfully never got in no Tarzan movie I ever seen. So right away you got him putting himself in harm's way due to crazy notions he picked up from a book.

  "What's he do next, when he gets a few miles into the woods and can't find his way home? He keeps on playing Tarzan and starts traveling through the treetops. Lord knows how a butterball like him even did it without breaking his fool neck. But through the treetops he went, making it impossible for our dogs to find his scent.

  "So after a day or two he's miles from where we expected him to be. Getting tired of Tarzan, he comes down out of the treetops. And what's he do next? He decides that he's living in—and I quote the boy without quite understanding what he's talking about—'an S. M. Stirling post-apocalypse novel.'

  "Now, he's right by the Big Bongwater River at this point. He could've followed it downstream straight into Junction City. But does he? No. Instead of using the common sense that God gave a grasshopper, he sets about trying to make a crossbow, to protect himself from ‘the Lord Protector's soldiers.'

  "As you can imagine, he didn't get nowhere fast with that project, so he switches to playing Conan the Dang Barbarian! The next thing we can figure, he's climbing a set of cliffs with a stick for a sword, heading for a turkey vulture's nest he's seen, just so's he can try'n bite the poor harmless bird's head off! That little maneuver throws the dogs off'n his trail even worse. But he survives that climb and ends up on the Parched Plateau.

  "By now it's day three, but Michael Valentine Atreides ain't done playing yet.

  "He was in a good spot to be found. The Parched Plateau is pretty bare and wide-open. The aerial searchers would've spotted him right off. But Michael decides now that he's living in some book called Dune, that he's a ‘Fremen native,’ and has to hide from everyone, including ‘sandworms.’ He's got a desert-pattern camo tarp with him. Did I mention he's been lugging a knapsack full of books and whatnot around with him all this time? Like he needs more goldarned inspiration! So anyhow he uses this tarp to hide anytime a plane passes overhead.

  "Now right here is where I want to call Michael's parents, Leia and Luke, to account. They're the ones who aided and abetted his bookishness. He would've been a normal kid if not for them. Turns out they're what're called ‘fans,’ second-generation fans in fact, making Michael third-generation. They even changed their family name to one outta of this here Dune book. The shameful way they raised that boy, without a lick of reality-based common sense, is almost a crime.

  "But back to Michael. He makes his way across the whole width of the Parched Plateau and manages to get down into the Lonesome Valley. What's he do down there? Seems the sight of an anthill, of all things, sets him off! He decides he's living in some book named City. He sets up what he calls a ‘huddling place’ in a little cave, starts building a ‘robot butler’ outta sticks and vines, and tries training up the ants to do his bidding!

  "That's where me and Peanut find him on day five, thank the Lord. But even then things couldn't go easy. When Michael spots Peanut, he flips out. Why? Well, you see, Peanut's wearing doggie saddlebags with his dogchow in it. Michael spots them innocent packs and starts screaming, ‘Puppet master! Puppet master!’ He hightails it for a quarter mile before we could catch up to him. Guess nearly a week in the Yolla Bolly done improved his stamina somewhat, because back at Camp Wanna-Beah-Ledge-Un he never done nothing except lay on his bunk and read.

  "Even when I was taking him outta the Yolla Bolly, he kept on squirming and fussing, saying his name was ‘Han Solo,’ calling me ‘Darth Vader,’ and begging me not to ‘freeze him in carbonite.’ That part might be movie talk, but I bet it's in a book somewhere too.

  "And that, as I might put it, is all she wrote.

  "Now, I'll be happy to take all your questions, if'n you can answer one of mine

  "Any of your reporter-types know a good literary agent for my story?"

  * * * *

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  Don't Ask by M. Rickert

  Mary Rickert's first collection of short stories, Map of Dreams, garnered some nice reviews over the past year and it is currently a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Her new story is a fantasy that might make you forget the women who run with wolves and make you think of the children instead....

  When the lost boys returned with their piercings, tattoos, and swagger, we rejoiced and greeted them with balloons, bubble gum, chocolate chip cookies, and bone-crunching hugs, which they did not resist. Only later did we realize that this was one of their symptoms, this acquiescence, not a sign of their affection for us, though we do not doubt their affection.

  How could wolves slope through town, unseen, and steal our boys from bicycles, from country roads, from the edge of the driveway, from our kitchen tables, dank with the scent of warm milk and soggy cereal; from our arms—wasn't it just yesterday that we held our boys close and sang them lullabies? How could they be taken from us?

  Yet they were, and we wept and gnashed our teeth, tore our hair and screamed their names into the dark. Through the seasons we searched for them so thoroughly that even in our dreams we could not rest and often awoke to find dewy grass stuck to the soles of our feet, dirt beneath our fingernails, our hair matted by the wind. We continued to search even after the Sheriff, with his hound dog face and quivering hands, said he would never stop looking but couldn't keep meeting with us and the very next day we woke up and no one waited at the door with pots of coffee and boxes of sticky, bright-colored doughnuts, and we sat at our kitchen tables and listened to school buses pass, not even slowing down for the memory of our sons.

  But why speak about sorrow now that our boys have returned? They are home again, sleeping with hairy feet hanging over the edges of little boy beds, wearing the too small T-shirts, the split pants that reveal their long bones and taut muscles which quiver and spasm while they dream.

  Of course we realized that in the years our boys were gone they had grown, this was the hope at least, this was the best possibility of all the horrible scenarios, that our lost boys were growing in the wolves’ den and not slaughtered by them—so yes, we are happy, of course we are, but what is this strange sorrow we discover in the dark? Why can't we stop weeping during this, the happiest of times?

  * * * *

  Years before our boys returned there was the return of the famous lost boy, stolen from the end of his driveway, the wheels of his blue bicycle still spinning when his mother went to the door to call him in for dinner and saw the bike there but did not immediately comprehend it as a sign of catastrophe. He was missing for eight years, and was a hero for a while, until he started committing petty crimes in the neighborhood.

  The famous lost boy, a man now, explains that he has been observing our behavior and the behavior of our sons. We cannot help but feel squeamish about the whole thing, we are uncomfortable with the notion that, after everything that happened, we have been studied and observed and did not know it. We discuss this in whispers in the high school auditorium, where the famous lost boy has come to speak. The therapists have their theories but we assume only one person has the truth and we are eager to hear what he can tell us about all our suffering, because, we say, nodding our heads and hugging ourselves in the cold auditorium, this happened to all of us.

  "No,” the famous lost boy (now a grown man with long, stringy hair) says. “It didn't."

  We have been advised by therapists and counselors, experts beyond the meager fourth grade education of the famous lost boy (by the time he came back, he was too angry and unruly for school) not to ask what happened. “They will tell you when they are ready,” the experts say.

  We ask them if they want maple syrup for their pancakes, what show they'd like to watch, what games they'd like to play. We spoil them and expect them to revel in it, the way they did before they were taken, but oddly, in spite of all they've been through, and the horrors they have endured, they behave as though our servitude and their eminence is a given. Yet, sometimes we ask a question, so innocent, “chocolate chip or peanut butter?” which they respond to with confusion, frowning as if trying to guess a right answer, or as though unfamiliar with the terms. Other times they bark or growl like angry dogs being taunted, but it passes so quickly we are sure it's been imagined.

  * * * *

  The famous lost boy wants us to give him our sons. “You can visit whenever,” he says.

  What is he, crazy? What does he think we are?

  "You don't understand them. Nobody does. Except me."

  We are not sure if this is true. The part about him understanding them. Perhaps. We know that we don't. The therapists say, “Give it time. Don't ask."

  We ask them if they want meatloaf or roast chicken and they stare at us as if we have spoken Urdu. We show them photographs of the relatives who died while they were gone and find it disturbing that they nod, as if they understand, but show no grief. We stock the refrigerator with soda, though we know they should drink juice, and Gatorade, remembering how they used to gulp it down in great noisy swallows (and we scolded them for drinking right out of the bottle) after games of little league and soccer, though now they are happy to sit, listlessly, in front of the computer for hours, often wandering the house in the middle of the night. We ask them if their beds are comfortable enough, are they warm enough, are they cool enough, but we never ask them what happened because the therapists have told us not to. When we explain this to the famous lost boy (though why do we feel we have to explain ourselves to him? He can't even hold down a job at McDonald's) he says, “You don't ask, because you don't want to know."

  We hate the famous lost boy, he sneers and ridicules and we do not want our sons to turn out like him. He is not a nice man. We just want him to go away, but he won't. Notoriously reclusive for years, he is now, suddenly, everywhere. Walking down Main Street. Hanging out at the coffee shops. Standing on the street corner, smoking. We are sorry to see that our boys seem to like him. Sometimes we find them, running together, like a wild pack. We call them home and they come back to us panting, tongues hanging out. They collapse on the couch or the floor and when they fall asleep they twitch and moan, cry and bark. We don't know what they dream about, though we think, often, they dream of running.

  They run all the time now. In the morning they run down the stairs and around the kitchen table. We tell them to sit, or calm down, but it doesn't really work. Sometimes we open the door and they tear into the backyard. We have erected fences but they try to dig out, leaving potholes where tulips and tiger lilies and roses blossomed through all those years of our grief. We stand at the window wondering at the amazing fact of their tenacity in trying to escape us when (and this is public knowledge, much discussed and debated by newscasters and talk show hosts in those first heady weeks after they were found) they never tried to escape their beasts.

  Sometimes we feel our neck hairs tingle and we find the lost boys staring at us like animals in a cage, frightened and wary, then they smile, and we smile in return, understanding that they will have these bad memories, these moments of fear.

  * * * *

  The famous lost boy sighs, and right there, in the high school auditorium, lights a cigarette, which Hymral Waller, the school board president, rushes to tell him must be extinguished. “What?” the word sounds angry in the bite of microphone. “This?” Hymral's words drift from the floor, hollow, balloon-like, “fire,” and “sorry.” The famous lost boy drops the cigarette to the stage floor and stamps it out with the toe of his sneaker. We gasp at his impertinence and he squints at us.

  "Okay. So, right. You're protecting your children by worrying about me and my friggin’ cigarette?” He shakes his head, laughing a little jagge
d laugh, and then, without further comment, turns and walks out the fire exit door.

  We should have just let him walk away. We should have gone home. But instead, we followed him, through the icy white streets of our town.

  He walks down the cold sidewalk (neatly shoveled, only occasionally patched with ice) beneath the yellow street lamps, hunched in his flimsy jean jacket, hands thrust in his pocket, acrid smoke circles his head. We cannot see his face, but we imagine the nasty, derisive curl of his lips, the unruly eyebrows over slit eyes, the unshaved chin stubbled with small black hairs as though a minuscule forest fire raged there.

  We walk on the cold white sidewalks, beneath the blue moon and we breathe white puffs that disappear the way our sons did. We keep our distance. We are sure he does not realize we have followed him, until, suddenly, he leaps over the winter fence (meant to discourage errant sleigh riding from this dangerous hill) into the park. A shadow passes overhead, just for a second we are in darkness, and then, we are watching the shape of a lone wolf, its long tail down, its mouth open, tongue hanging out, loping across what, in spring, will be the baseball diamond. We all turn, suddenly, as if broken from some terrible spell, and, careful because of those occasional patches of ice, we run home where our lost boys wait for us. (Or so we like to think.) We find them sprawled, sleeping, on the kitchen floor, draped uncomfortably across the stairs, or curled, in odd positions, in the bathroom. We don't wake them. Any sleep they find is sorely needed and any interruption can keep them up for days, running in circles and howling at all hours. The doctors have advised us to give them sleeping pills but we are uncomfortable doing so; we understand that their captors often drugged them.

  "It's not the same thing,” the experts say.

  Well, of course not. The experts are starting to get on our nerves.

  And now, we realize, as we stand in the dark rooms of our miracle lives, we have been consulting the wrong professionals all along. We don't need psychologists, psychiatrists, medical doctors, or the famous lost boy. We need a hunter, someone who knows how to kill a wolf.