Говард Уолдроп: Them Bones

I was carving on the pipe, trying to get the tusks just right, when they started yelling my name outside.

‘Yaz! Yaz!’ called the new Sun Man.

I came out with my spear.

The new Sun Man was already deeply tanned. He was carrying a small deer over his shoulder, something the old Sun Man would never have been seen doing. Everybody was out hunting and grubbing for roots.

Three guys who’d been across the River with him were there.

‘Yaz,’ said one, pointing back over the water. ‘The place you came from. Remember? Something funny’s going on there.’

‘What?’

‘The air is weird. It moves. Next to the tree where you tied the white cloth, and laid the orange thing on the ground. We ran a rabbit through there, and it went away, right in front of us. We watched the air move for half an hour. Then the air started making hooting noises. We left in a hurry.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

I went back inside our skin hut.

‘What’s up?’ asked Sunflower. She looked over her shoulder at me.

‘Oh, guy-stuff.’ I rummaged around. ‘Sun Man wants me to take care of some business for him.’

‘Will you be gone long?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is it across the River?’

‘Just a little way.’

She looked at me darkly. ‘Do you need some food?’

‘A little.’ I got some Army stuff I might need out of the bundle.

Sunflower gave me some food, leaned up and kissed me on the head. ‘Hurry back,’ she said.

I walked to the flap.

‘Tell me if you’re going forever,’ she said, very quietly.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

I kissed her. She looked away.

I went down to the River and picked out a canoe. There were lots not being used these days.

I had almost forgotten how the place looked, the bluff, the faraway bayou. It was noon the next day when I got there. I heard the hooting a long way off – a rising and falling klaxon sound, cycling about once every two minutes. It should keep the animals away, and bring in curious people.

Only there weren’t any curious people within twenty kilometers anymore. I doubt the Buzzard Cult people this side of the River would pay much attention. They’d probably think it just one more manifestation of Lord Death. Maybe they would take notice, and build a shrine to it when they found it.

The air was shimmering. Somebody was still alive, Up There. They must have found a way to reconnect me. Good old Dr. Heidegger. Maybe his sons or grandsons or daughters. Or someone ten thousand years from now, who’d read his notes and duplicated his experiments as a curiosity.

I picked up a one kilo rock, took out my map-marking grease pen, wrote who are you? on it, stepped out where the front of the gate should be, and tossed it gently in.

Then I dived flat to the ground.

Nothing happened. The air kept shimmering, the sound rose and fell.

For an hour. Then the sound stopped. Chills ran up and down my spine.

A little more than an hour later, by my watch that still ran, the rock came back out. It rolled to within a meter of me. Beneath my message was the hastily scribbled HEIDEGGER. leake?

I wrote one hour delay – rock coming through. what happened? and then threw it back in and waited.

The rock didn’t come back next time. Something light slapped into the grass. It was a lab notebook, with an extension cord wrapped around it for weight.

we lost the others. perfected machine. two way travel now possible. not much time left here but rest of group not in target years. where are you?

I wrote back: some world we never made, doc. no christianity. indians, arabs, vikings! i live in a mud hut, make pipes, fight aztecs, pile up dirt. everybody dying of plague brought by steamboats. alexander’s library never burned. over to you.

It was dark when the answer flew back. come back through. we need your help, leake. background level too high, all dying. help us find others, send them to right time as planned. wear cimp suit. we need your help.

I wrote WAIT on the lab book and sent it back.

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.’

© Howard Waldrop 1989

Howard Waldrop has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in 1989 by Legend.

This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.