by Various
Dylan turned, real slow. “Rosco?”
Rosco held up the slug. “I found me a ghost, Sheriff.”
Dylan went for his six-shooter. Pappy’s gun cracked, twice, three times. This time, Rosco didn’t feel distant. He only felt the bleak seeping warmth of bloody justice.
He looked at the body splayed across the boulder, how the bullet had pierced the sheriff’s badge shattering the star. Thought how there were laws, and how some folks would never be able to follow them. Thought how even the ones who wear their faces of goodness still hide their rot on the inside, hide their hurt, and steal love away from others to fill the holes in their own lives.
“So,” came a voice at his shoulder, “now what?” As if someone was easing his arm down, the revolver dipped, slid into the holster. Like a puppet’s.
“Well,” Rosco said, “I figure I’ve got me a couple wizards to take in for a bounty, for starters.”
“You gonna tell your Momma what you know? About the sheriff?”
He turned his face to the moon, to the dark shapes that crawled along the canyon walls, hungry for carrion. “That’d break her heart, I reckon.”
“No doubt. But it’s wrong to lie, ain’t it?”
“I think,” Rosco said, turning to face the empty night where his Pappy’s ghost should’ve been but wasn’t, “that sometimes, it’s better if we do.”
“She was a cheat too, remember? She broke a law, the law between a man and his wife.”
Rosco shrugged. “At least she didn’t kill no-one.”
“You don’t think it was part her doing that killed me down here? You think she’s innocent?”
“I reckon I don’t know, and I ain’t one to judge. I reckon Sheriff Dylan pulled the trigger, and for that he’s paid his due. And I reckon that you can’t talk me into killing no-one else, no matter how you try. I done enough of that, right here.” It was a hurt he’d have to hide, he knew, forever. “Because at first, I thought you were just a wizard’s trick, thought the way you were talking at me about the sheriff, you must’ve been something Garth had conjured up, like he brought up that awful stench, and tried to pretend like he weren’t the one magicking it. But then he was dead, and I could still feel you there. If you were his magic, you should’ve died with him. But the slug. When the sheriff saw it, I saw the guilt in him. He would’ve shot me down, so I knew it was true, what you said he did.”
The shadows hissed and surged around him, creatures swarming closer, silvered shadows under yellow moonlight.
“And maybe I wanted to shoot that wizard hunter, ’cause of how he shamed me in the street. Maybe I wanted to shoot the sheriff, because he killed my Pa, and there ain’t no law as right as vengeance. If the Good Book taught me anything, it’s that revenge is right and lawful. So long as you only look at the old book.
“But Momma? My Pappy wouldn’t never want my Momma’s heart broken. Wouldn’t never want her shamed. Don’t matter what she did, don’t matter that she weren’t happy, or that she loved another man. Pappy always loved her, better’n any man ever could. Even Pappy’s ghost couldn’t be that bitter. So that’s why I reckon you ain’t no ghost, you’re just a black old spirit trying to do mischief, trying to spread it out of the Crooked Mile. Like the ways you sat at a fire with some cowboy and told him how you was my Pappy, how you didn’t die that day, but you been hiding out here all this time waiting to get back at the man who killed you. Yeah, we all heard that story, but I guess the sheriff believed it more than me.
“See, I came to terms with my Pappy being dead and gone long ago. I knew my Pappy never would’ve left me alone, never would’ve left me thinking he was dead just so’s he could get revenge. That ain’t right. But I guess Sheriff Dylan still had some guilt he’d never quite got past.”
The night swelled around him, darkness billowing upwards to blot out the moon’s lupine gaze, swallowing him in a flurry of wings and claws and teeth, scraping and scratching at his skin. Yet he felt braver now than he ever had, even with Sheriff Dylan dead, even knowing his Pappy was truly, truly gone. He had a peace about him now, because he knew that he’d be making his own way from here on out.
“Martha!” He called through the tearing darkness. The veil broke apart, a mass of white and red surging towards him between the shifting black.
“Don’t you worry about them,” Rosco said as he grabbed Martha’s reins and patted her on the neck, “they can’t hurt us. They’re against the law.” Rosco hauled first one body, then the other, onto Martha’s saddle and lashed them on, oblivious to the spirits swirling around him. Then he calmly let the horse walk, trusting her to take him out of the maze.
“Goodbye, Pappy.”
Shrieking, the darkness tore apart, wispy clouds against the night, drifting towards the coming dawn.
Rosco walked slow, easy, up the canyon. Thought how funny it was that now he’d be the one come walking into town with two dead bodies on his horse, him with his eyes grown cold from the killing, and how if he was sheriff he wouldn’t trust him, neither. But, he guessed, he was the sheriff now. He wondered if his Pappy would be proud to see him, Town Sheriff, hauling away the dead, and him not daring to cry nor quiver.
He rolled the broken hunk of lead between his fingers, thought how strange it was that something so small, just a little piece of metal, could do so much wrong in people’s lives, like rules writ down in a book or the way a man might feel about a woman in the quiet places where no-one could see, in those places where the rules and the laws didn’t make a whit of difference, down in the places where folk hide their hurt. How in places like this, down here among the dead and the crooked ghosts, there were no rules, no laws, only hurt.
He raised his arm and tossed the slug into the darkness. That was a hurt he was done with hiding. It could stay here, with the ghosts, where it belonged.
Adam Rakunas became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “Oh Give Me a Home” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Jul/Aug. 2013), edited by Gordon Van Gelder.
Visit him online at twitter.com/rakdaddy.
* * *
Novelette: “Oh Give Me a Home” ••••
OH GIVE ME A HOME
by Adam Rakunas
First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Jul/Aug. 2013), edited by Gordon Van Gelder
• • • •
IHAD JUST put the herd into their evening pasture when Leggo came over the rise. He was huffing and puffing on his old mountain bike, pushing his enormous bulk up the brown Sierra foothills. “Dude,” he said, leaning his bike against my Chevy, “you’re getting sued.”
“Again?” I shooed the last of the mini-bison into their paddock. One bull snorted and butted the post, making a hollow clang. He backed off, then horned up against the fencing, getting a faceful of sparks in return. I looked down at him and shook my head. “Always gotta push, don’t you?” I said, low and soft. The bull stared up at me, one dark eye ringed by a spot of white. He nudged the fence again, then loped to the water trough. Maybe I’d have to ease off on the next generation’s muscle density, though that’d affect my price per head.
“This is different, Brew.” He pulled a manila envelope out of his denim jacket pocket. It was already opened and looked a bit wrinkled.
I latched the gate and killed the power to yesterday’s fencing. “Reading someone else’s mail is a federal offense, Leggo.”
He rummaged around in his jacket until he produced a lighter and a joint. “So’s this, dude, but it hasn’t stopped me yet. Besides, you’re one to talk. How many laws did you break making these guys?” He nodded at the herd as he sparked up.
“Breeding.” I looked at the hundred or so minis roaming the new paddock, munching away on the sweet grass and clover. A few bulls wallowed in a mud patch while the cows tended to the calves. If it weren’t for the horns and humps, you’d have thought they were shaggy St. Bernards until you got close. “I prefer the term ‘breed
ing.’”
Leggo toked. “Prefer all you want, dude, but they still freak me out.”
“Even when you eat them?”
“Hey, just ’cause my mouth says ‘yes’ doesn’t make it right. Though, y’know, if you’re grilling more sliders later.…”
I glanced over the front page of the complaint while Leggo broke down fence on the old paddock. AMERICAN AGRICULTURE COMPANY (Plaintiff) vs. BREWSTER CARLSTON HIGLEY (Defendant), filed today in California Superior Court, right down the hill in Alturas. The words CEASE AND DESIST and a date from last month kept leaping out at me. “Leggo, do you have any other mail for me?”
Leggo blew out a skunky cloud and patted down his jacket. He handed me a stack of envelopes: checks from licensees who didn’t deal with online banking, a donation request from the UC Davis Annual Fund, and yet another manila envelope. It was stamped with a big Amagco logo: a pair of hands cradling a cornucopia stuffed with grapes, wheat, and what looked like a ham. They never had a good art department, even back when they were bombarding my folks with feed catalogs.
The letter inside was the usual threat: Amagco was going to sue the living bejeezus out of me if I didn’t stop breeding mini-bison and that I had thirty days to comply and respond. Of course, the letter was dated twenty-nine days ago. “Leggo, remember what I said about getting important letters to me in a timely fashion?”
“Sure,” he said, then coughed. “Courier brought that by this afternoon, right in the middle of my stories, no less.”
“Heartbreaking.” I looked back to the complaint.
“Tell me about it.” He yanked a fencepost from the ground. “All this legal stuff, it freaks me out.”
“More than narcos chasing you around the hills?”
“At least it was blatant violence,” said Leggo. “Plus, I could see them coming. But this? You should be like me, Brew, and get off the grid. If they can’t find you, they can’t sue you.” A tinny chorus of bhangra burst from his jacket, and he pulled his satphone from a pocket. “What’s happening, babe? Yeah, lemme find a better signal.…” He wandered away, leaving a trail of pot smoke and undone fencing behind him.
I sighed. The fencing could wait, but this fat stack of fun probably couldn’t. I kept turning the pages, wondering why six lawsuits’ worth of this grief hadn’t allowed me to figure out what it all meant, when the last page made my gut sink:
“Plaintiff presents this testimony to Lead Corporate Counsel, Marisol Cisneros.” Her name was on the C & D, too.
Leggo returned, the joint smoldering in his mouth as he thumbed away at his phone. “Dude, Elisa’s totally gonna give it up for me this time. We’ll head down to the casino in Redding, catch a show, play some slots, then back to my place—”
“I need you to stay here for a few days.”
“Oh, dude!” Leggo’s face fell. “This is Elisa Sueno! Cheeks like apples, ass like a cupcake! You can’t make me cancel on her!”
I showed Leggo the final page of the complaint and the chicken-scratch signature on the letter. “Whoa, dude. That’s gotta be, like, some karmic thing, right?”
“Just business,” I sighed. “So, can you stay?”
He put his hands in the air, then stubbed out the joint on the bottom of his boot. “If I gotta, I gotta. Just, y’know, make sure I’m stocked.…”
I grabbed my backpack. “There’s a case in the cooler, plus syrup.”
Leggo raised an eyebrow. “Real maple?”
“Would I short you on the good stuff?” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Just don’t eat them all at once, okay?”
“Moderation, dude.” He tucked the roach behind an ear. “I am the picture definition.” He belched, then started scratching his crotch.
“Right.” I waved to the minis, though they, of course, wouldn’t know or care where I was, so long as someone set up new paddocks for them every day. Still, Dad had taught me to be kind and courteous and respectful to livestock, so why not?
I climbed into the Chevy and turned the key, listening to the starter grind its way to life. “You gotta relax with that thing, dude,” Leggo called out. “It’s all in the timing.”
I sighed, took my hand off the key, then gave it a gentle turn. The engine rumbled, then roared.
“This’ll all work out, Brew,” yelled Leggo, hunched over the cooler and tearing into a package of frozen waffles. “The universe will provide.”
“Maybe,” I yelled back, “but I’ll still see our lawyer.” I gave the minis one more look, then bounced across the hills toward 395.
• • •
Gus was hunched over his battered Leaf when I pulled up. I killed the engine, and, without even looking at me, he said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Bruce, just give your bison away and leave me alone.”
“If I did that, how could I ever pay you?”
“By leaving me in peace, that’s how.” He opened the door and hurled his briefcase into the car. “I was all set for a quiet evening at home, and then I hear your truck coming a mile off, so now that’s shot.”
“In that case—”
“I already said, the answer is no.” Gus turned back to me; he had bags the size of baseballs under his eyes. “You always bring trouble.”
“Yeah, but you’ve won every time, Gus.”
“And look what it’s done to me!” he said, massaging his side.
I nodded. “You’ve got a point. You do look terrible.”
Gus gave me the finger and climbed in his car, and I dove after him. “Can you at least tell me what Amagco’s problem is this time?”
“Their problem now is probably what it’s always been,” said Gus. “Your little wonders are a threat to their business, and you’re too popular for them to pay someone to shoot you, so they’ll just try to kill you one inch at a time with legal fees.”
“Yeah, but what specifically?” I pulled the complaint from my backpack and held it out to him.
Gus looked at the envelope like it was a dead gopher. “I’m going home, and I suggest you do the same. You smell like you’ve been sleeping in manure.”
“I have. That’s how ranching works.”
“No, that’s how you work,” he said. “Even your mom, hippie that she is, doesn’t bed down with her herd every night.”
I cleared my throat. “How’s she doing?”
Gus tapped the steering wheel. “Go and see her, Bruce. Clean up first.” His eyes flicked to the envelope, and he snatched it out of my hands. “Meet me tomorrow at the market, and I’ll let you know how much I’ll charge you this time.”
“You’re the best, Gus,” I said.
He started the Leaf, its warmup chime half a tone off key. “You got that right,” he said, then zipped away.
• • •
I cruised through Alturas’s main drag, watching the ranchers’ kids parked in front of the Wagon Wheel, comparing pickups. It was a Friday night, and everyone who could get out was. A few vaqueros, their white Stetsons glowing in the streetlights, walked with their wives, some pushing strollers or dragging kids on roller skates. I knew this was a small town, but it looked big and bustling after three months with the herd.
Mom’s house was out on the south side’s outskirts. She’d moved there after Dad died, when I was finishing my postdoc work. The place never felt like home, even though she’d set aside a room for me. I pulled into the driveway, stopping in front of an ancient cattle trailer. The dents in its sides made me think back to years of hauling bison to FFA shows, especially since one side still bore the FRESH BISON JERKY sign Mari had made back in high school.
The house was lit up, which was a surprise. Most Fridays, Mom would have been in bed by now so she could get up early for market. The back door was unlocked, and I left my boots, bag, and jacket in a pile next to the washing machine.
Mom bustled about the kitchen, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, her short, gray hair matted down from the heat. She started when she looked up from her smashed potatoes and saw me. “I wasn’t exp
ecting you,” she said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. I looked past her into the dining room: the table was set for two.
“I can go if you’ve got company,” I said.
She shook her head, then went back to her potatoes. “You want to scrub up first, go ahead. Heater’s acting up again, so the hot water will be dicey. There’s some envelopes for you there.” She pointed to a stack on the counter.
“Thanks.” I grabbed the mail and ducked into the bathroom. As the room filled with steam, I flipped through the mail (fan letter, fan letter, hate mail, another request from the Annual Fund) before setting it aside. The shower stall floor buckled under my weight, and the hot water did indeed cut out just after I’d gotten shampoo in my hair. My teeth chattered as I rinsed. Mom’s guest hadn’t arrived yet, so I wrapped a towel around my waist and hopped into my room.
It was small and cramped, more of an oversized closet than place for me to sleep. After she’d moved in, Mom had unpacked my old trophies from high school and crowded them on a tiny shelf. The ribbons and medals from CDEs and county fairs were dusty and faded. In the middle of it was my thesis in its leather binding. It had been Mari’s idea, a ridiculous extravagance at the time, but it was still nice to see BISON BISON MINIMUS: SMALLER HOOVES, SMALLER CARBON FOOTPRINTS BY BREWSTER HIGLEY, Ph.D embossed in gold. That had been a wild time, cracking genes and running cultures and watching as each generation of minis had gotten smaller and stronger. As I flipped through the book, a picture fell out.
It was a shot from high school of me and Mari and Leggo, all of us in our blue satin FFA jackets, holding ribbons from the California state CDE our senior year. Leggo had won for his tomato plants, Mari for her Rock Island Reds, and me for my first bison, the runt of the herd we called Tonka. That was back when I still bred them the old-fashioned way.
Leggo looked about the same, shooting a goofy grin and miming chomping one of his tomatoes. Mari stood so tall and straight that it seemed like she was bigger than anyone in the room, even though she was a head shorter than me. She was usually the first to stand up to whatever feedlot cowboy who’d given me the business for Tonka. They’d never let me show him with the other cattle, no matter how many clean bills of health I presented. Just as well, since he would’ve beaten them, both in the contest and out in the fields. Exotic Livestock always felt like a cop-out category, but Mari was quick to remind me that a win was a win.