Them Bones

by Howard Waldrop

  Then I started a fire, the only one for kilometers, and stared out across the waters of the bayou.

  I took a notebook from my pack, and started writing a sketchy account of my life since leaving Up There. I was on the third page when I stopped. I put down my map-marker.

  I thought of the world I was from, and the one I was in. Both were dying. Maybe if I went back, I could find a world that was alive, not threatened, not falling apart, not on the way to ruin. There had to be one somewhere.

  I looked at the CIMP suit. I looked at my spear. Then I looked at my watch.

  I tore a piece of paper out of the notebook, wrote on it, wrapped it around another rock. I threw it into the darkly shimmering air beyond the fire, and punched the stopwatch function on the watch.

  go away my note said. go away and die somewhere else, some other time. there is enough death here already. this world is dying but is not dead yet. i like carving pipes. i like fighting aztecs. go away. in one hour and ten minutes i will roll three grenades one after the other into the time machine. that’s ten minutes your time starting NOW.

  In one hour and four minutes the shimmering stopped.

  I could hear the pop of fire, the croaking of frogs, the buzzing of mosquitoes. At least we don’t have malaria or yellow fever yet. Maybe those are next.

  I got up and kicked out the fire. I left the Army stuff where it lay, all except for the extension cord, which I can trade with the jewelry maker so he can make necklaces from it.

  Toward home, then. I’ll return to the new village. I will become the pipemaker. I’ll marry Sunflower, if she will have me. I’ll hunt and joke with the guys. Everyday we’ll go out and pile a little more dirt on Took-His-Time, raising the mound. Someday it will be bigger than Khoka up the River, bigger than the sky: it will go up into the air and dwarf the bluff where Natchez should be.

  I’ll do that because Took was my friend, and what are friends for except to pile a little more dirt on you after you’ve gone?

  So I’ll become a Moundbuilder Rotarian, and live as long as I can, and do my best, and try to make life as nice as I can for those around me.

  But I still will not be circumcised.

  Toward home, then.

  ‘And being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted into thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh Pyramids pillars of snow, and all that’s past a moment.’

  –Browne, Urn Burial

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