Scott Nicholson - Forever never ends

He had seen, in that one long heartbeat, what life had to offer, and what the options were. Things could always change for the better. His aunt was gone, hopefully to a better place, but the living had a duty to live.

His mind felt clear, absent of color. Maybe he’d been the racist one, had taken an attitude too far, had shut himself away and enslaved himself to the very prejudice he loathed.

He sensed that the nightmare was over, that whatever had caused the horror had gone to its crazy grave, that today was the first day of something, that it was time to pick up the pieces and start all over again. It was time for a change.

Maybe sometimes people could change.

The trees looked vigorous and revived, as they did after a spring rain. James went out into the clean morning sun to see if anyone needed help.

Bill looked down at the stain where the devil had lain dying. The Lord had come to Bill in his moment of need, come on a white horse, no, as a white cloud, no, just pure goodness, shedding Bill of sin and darkness. The Lord had triumphed. Now Satan was back in hell, where he would lick his wounds for the next thousand years or so before he got up the nerve to try again.

But Bill wasn't worried. The Lord would always find a servant to work through, would always recruit somebody to serve as the right arm of God. Might made right, and right made might.

He took off his shirt and wiped the blood away from his neck and then cleaned the slime from the scarred cross. He carried the cross to the back of the dais and hung it gently on its hook.

Then he knelt and gave thanks.

Chester sat on his porch and watched the government trucks and research vans and men in foil suits crawling over his property. He didn't reckon their fancy meters and screens and snoop dishes would turn up much hard scientific evidence. All that was left was a damned hole in the ground. Everything else the alien had touched had flaked off and disappeared. Still, Chester knew the goddamned government liked to make a big show when it got the chance.

They'd tried to evict him and declare his farm a disaster area, but he told them in no uncertain terms that he wasn't leaving, that they'd have to send up a tank and roll over his ass before he would get out of his rocking chair. They could dig in the dirt and scrape the trees and bottle up creek water all they wanted, but Chester wasn't going to set foot outside his property for at least a couple more weeks. He just wanted to rock and stare off into space and forget.

Alien invasions were rough on an old-timer.

He lifted his moonshine to his cracked lips. He still had a few jars of Don Oscar's finest stowed away in the pantry, but soon he'd have to find a new bootlegger. He was going to miss Don Oscar.

His puppy sat at his feet, grinning around some wet leather. The little guy wasn't Boomer, but Chester figured one droopy-eared gasbag hound was the same as another. Chester had let him have Junior's abandoned footwear to gnaw on, to get his young gums toughened up.

The telephone rang. Chester had moved it out on the porch in case Tamara called. He liked the sound of her voice, especially when it was outside his head.

"Yuh-ello," he said.

"Chester. It's Emerland. Listen. Four million, how about that?"

"I told you the first ten times, no sale. Ain't changing my mind."

Emerland had broken both legs when a tree had fallen on him during the explosion. It had taken Tamara and Chester half the morning to carry him out, with him bitching and griping and threatening to sue every step of the way. Now the greedy bastard continually rang Chester from his hospital room, upping the ante.

"Dammit, Chester," Emerland said. "Can you imagine the publicity this is going to get as soon as the story leaks? Do you know just how much cash Alienworld will rake in after I get a theme park up and running? Can you just imagine? "

"No, Mister Plaster Pants. Ain't never had much imagination. Just gets a feller in trouble, as far as I can see.”

"Okay, four and a quarter, you old bastard. With residuals. You know, a stake in the profits.”

Maybe Chester could part with the place for five mil. It was only his birthright. Only dirt and weedy fields and falling-ass-down buildings and memories, and not all the memories were good. Every man had a price. But having Emerland swinging in the breeze was almost as much fun as a shitpile of money.

"Don't reckon so. Bye, now.”

"But, Chester — "

Chester hung up. He wanted the line free in case Tamara called. Of course, for a while there, she hadn't needed a phone. She just spoke right into his head.

And that was creepy as hell, but kind of natural once you got the hang of it. Except her "powers," as she called them, were fading, growing weaker day by day. So she'd started keeping in touch by phone. And that was okay, too.

He looked up at the thick white clouds, good solid April clouds a body could stick a pitchfork in and twirl around like cotton candy. He wondered if DeWalt was up there, part of the clouds, part of the sky.

The government men had taken his chickens. He didn't mind the least little bit. Fewer mouths to feed. He flexed his drinking arm.

He spat toward the yard but came up short. His porch had a new stain.

James was cleaning out Aunt Mayzie's things, packing them so his mother and her family could decide how to divide them up. With the funeral so fresh in everybody's mind, it wasn't a good time to dwell on material things. Still, Mom would want the saltshaker collection. She liked little knickknacks.

James looked at Aunt Mayzie's chair. A depression in the vinyl seat cushion made it look as if her ghost were sitting there. James sat in the ghost's lap and opened the coffee table drawer. It was full of dog-eared spiral notebooks and curling legal pads.

He pulled a notebook off the top and opened it. It was Mayzie's handwriting. He read the first page. FOR JAMES: SNOW ON FLOWERS

On hyacinth winds,

April walks a barefoot whisper across tilted fields

At the shore of warm green seas, she sneezes and mourns the coming of the hummingbirds and counts the tides with watered eyes as butterflies cut yellow trails

Her ice blue heart melts under the volcano-glass stare of the far fallen sun she glistens with reluctance

As night again collects its threads she breathes the mint of cooling hope and pulls the fabric, winters past, across her moondark skin

In dreams she cries the dew.

Poetry. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of poetry. And she'd never told him. He read some more, his heart pounding with excitement. Some of it was good enough to be published, as far as he could tell. Certainly better than some of the stuff he’d read in college textbooks.

Aunt Mayzie must have been writing for years, if not decades. And she'd never said a word. Here was her life, in a million syllables and fragments and broken thoughts and taped-over rips and smeary eraser marks. The symbols of her soul. He wondered if she would mind if he mailed some of it off. He had a few literary contacts from his days at Georgetown.

Maybe he could repay her in this way, by showing her work to the world. It was the least he could do. He was starting to come to terms with his guilt. Maybe he hadn't failed her. Maybe she had just been ready to go home to Uncle Theo and Oliver.

And maybe he'd stay in Windshake a while. He'd met Sarah on the street, when the press and the scientists and the National Guard had stirred up the town and started combing through the wreckage, trying to catch some of the drying flakes of the dead. He wouldn't mind getting to know Sarah a little better, and she'd had her own losses. Maybe they could need somebody together.

And besides, the place needed a town nig-no, make that an African-American. Or maybe just another human being.