Lee Klein - Jrzdvlz

“I have told you a number of times that the beast, if it exists, is not my relative by blood. This is a simple almanac, something I read to fill my time. You cannot hold it, but Mr. Merkins can look on these pages and see that what I say appears here in print.”

Merkins sat with excellent posture, but leaned alternately to the left and right, like a bearded metronome about to nap.

Jukes slapped Merkins’ shoulder. “Confirm what he reads.”

Leeds politely held the back of his hand to mouth and nose. Merkins must have smelled of stale brandy, whiskey, mead: sweet scents cutting through others more sour.

“Merkins?” said Jukes.

The words swam one into the next: if reading the Constitution, he would not have recognized We the People. Merkins raised a cracked red hand over an eye.

“It says here,” he said, “it says…”

“Yes, yes, what’s it?” Jukes leaned forward, suspicions confirmed.

“It says the beast is this man here. It says the beast is a dangerous bird.”

“A dangerous bird?” Leeds mocked, incredulous. “It says nothing of the sort.”

“No, no, right here, right here.” Merkins pointed to an arbitrary line.

“Sinister. Yes. That word appears. Wings are mentioned. Yes. But—”

“You want me to believe you when mine good friend Merkins here, a schoolteacher, once the finest, confirms you untrustable.”

“I see the words clear as the flame of that candle and your friend covers an eye to read yet might as well have both eyes shut.”

“Oh here we go, here we go, Merkins, now this old man forces us out of his house, and how will he force us out with no strength in his arms at all? How might he manage, you think?”

Now covering the other eye, squinting, Merkins said, “Well, it does say here he’s the beast. It says a man like him will haunt the land forever and not until he is deposed will we know paradise.”

Merkins was not drunk enough to forget that Jukes carried knives—he’d often seen Jukes sharpening them—and he knew Jukes liked to throw them. They were not something Merkins wanted to enter his heart. And so he chose to let Jukes hear what he had wanted to hear. Yet if Jukes attacked this poor old man, Merkins believed he would protect him best he could.

“Take your finger from the book,” Leeds said. “It’s filthy, and the book is delicate.”

“Merkins, he values books more than his lives.”

“I value my peace and sanity,” Leeds said, “and you are upsetting both.”

“Transform then, beast, to protect yourself.” “If I could I would to run you out.”

“He threatens us, Merkins! He threatens us with transformation and death.”

“I have coins and modest jewels from my late wife. They are yours if you leave.”

“Hear that, Merkins. Show us shiny things, all smiles and peace. So easy he thinks it is. Gives us the book and we spare you.”

Leeds held the book as though some force within it protected from intruders. Perhaps Jukes was right about its abilities. An impossible beast might burst from the pages and protect those who loved it. If only the drawing of William Leeds emerged to annihilate these intruders.

The book was not much taller than the fists that gripped its sides. Leeds closed his eyes, pulled the book to his chest, and threw his arms toward the men again. He shoved the cover at his guests and unleashed a breath he’d been holding since he read to the men, before they had arrived, before any of it—a breath he had begun holding before his wife died, before his children were born, before he himself was born—a breath he’d started holding when the creators of the almanac encountered competition from Benjamin Franklin, when they concocted fictions to secure advantages for their practical compendium, when William Leeds walked into the wilderness away from wife and a dozen children, when they came to this country, when dissatisfaction spurred them to cross an ocean to this unproven place.

Leeds released his breath in a shockwave shout. So uncommon in his silent home, it seemed the windows would shatter once ears stopped ringing with the violence that had come from him, propelled by blood more than voice, from veins more than throat.

“Feisty, isn’t he?” Jukes said and stood. He reached for the blades strapped to the small of his back.

“Leave him in peace,” Merkins said. “He’s no harm. Let him rest. Look at him.”

All Leeds had to defend himself was this demonstration of his lack of defenses. The book he held in front of him like it could ward off evil. He stood frozen as though the men would leave if he tightly closed his eyes.

“You think I can throw a blade through the pages all the way to his skin?”

Jukes held a knife out so the handle pointed at Leeds, who saw no evil, heard no evil, as though his shout had devastated his senses.

“Flick wrist, pierce book and heart, nights end, summers stay forever. A blade that changes night to day, famine to feast.”

“Let’s make it back to the Bucket for a glass,” said Merkins. “It’s a book—no more, no less—and it’s a man, no better or worse than any other.”

“You read from it, you read from it, and you said it’s the beast, you read from it and said the beast’s in it. Look at him and tell me he’s not the beast, skins thickening, hardening, scaling into rightful self. I see the beast in this statue of a man. I throw this blade at the book without wasting more words.”

Merkins moved in front of Leeds. “I could not see the words well enough and only said what I said to appease you,” he said.

“Move away now so I can do what needs to be done.” Jukes flipped the blade he held in the air and caught it by the handle and with his other hand removed another knife and held both blades out.

Leeds’s eyes were shut so well he probably hardly heard what Merkins had said. If Leeds’s eyes were open he would have seen a swift movement in front of Merkins who stumbled toward Jukes and collapsed. Jukes flipped his blade again and pointed the handle at the book and threw it, one eye squinted for accuracy. If his eyes were open, Leeds would have seen the blade tumble toward him and enter the Genuine Leeds Almanack, dead in its center, and not continue through to skin.

He held the book so tightly it did not tear or fall. If Leeds’s eyes were open he would have seen Jukes pull the blade from Merkins’s throat and wipe the blood on his gasping friend’s leg. And then Leeds would have seen Jukes step ahead and flip the same blade that had downed Leeds’s defender and he would see the blade tumble through air again to enter his chest. His grip on the Genuine Leeds Almanack loosened, the book dropped, he lived for another moment on the fumes of what had been his life, legs liquefied, and there on the floor Leeds would have died if he had not released his grip on life the moment he had thrust the book at Jukes and exhaled that shout, hoping a fiction might emerge from the pages and protect him.

Jukes lifted the impaled book like it was unrelated to the man at his feet. He extinguished the candles, stepped around Merkins and Leeds, and then slipped into the night.

He headed toward town as though conveyed by the path at his feet. At the door of the Bucket he hesitated, impaled almanac in hand. An ordinary man may have taken this time to escape before the bodies were found and the hunt was on. But Branley Jukes was extraordinary.

He pushed open the door. Safe place, he thought, no one looks for me here, invisible like old smoke, no one knows where I went, what I did. Look at them alive in paradise, no one knows it’s the end of sorrows, our only trouble an overabundance of ease. No one knows they’ve entered a new realm now, summer heat will rise with the sun and never leave again, the beast slain by a most valiant Umbrian knight. Once they discover the beast they’ll rename the town for generations accused who sacrificed themselves so I could save everyone.