David Ohle - The Pisstown Chaos

"That Jake'll be warm. Their cooler don't cool anymore. We ran out of ice two and a half years ago when the ice house burned down. Can't keep meat fresh, either. It's all we can do to keep the flies off it and pick out the worms.

Ophelia's imp took her at a fast trot around the block to the stable, where she found Hobson sitting on a bench outside his livery, whittling.

"Help you, Miss?"

"I'd like to bed down this imp for the night."

"Only got one empty stall, the most pricey one. I'll throw in a bucket of groats and a pail of clean water. We got stud service here. You innarested?" He struck a match and lit a gel can on the ground. The dazzling blue flames gave off a minty odor.

"Can't you see, it's a gelding."

"Sorry, Miss. I'm half-blind. Doc says I'm infested. It starts in the eyes. Your vision gets lost."

"I'm so sorry to hear that. My grandmother was infested. I know what a trial it can be."

"Like I said, the stall's pricey, a buck and a half, but it's all I got. Tomorrow's Coward's Day and there's a lot of rough riders in town to give them heck."

"It costs more to lodge an imp in this town than it does a person."

"How about this. You take your imp in there and you feed it and water it and in the morning, you clean the stall. I'm getting too stiff to do much anymore. I'll cut the price to a buck."

Ophelia peeked into the stable. "Even in bad light I can see three or four empty stalls."

"Those are reserved for very important people. Reverend Hooker, for one. He's been known to ride into town with a couple of his Guards late at night, looking for fun."

"I'll pay now. It's getting late."

"You seem to be a good natured young lady, so I'll make you another offer. Back behind the stable here, I got a nearly new, seldom used, Q-ped that I'll trade you even for that imp of yours and of course there wouldn't be a charge for the stall."

Tired and anxious for a Jake, Ophelia agreed to have a look at the Q-ped in the morning light before making a final decision.

"She's a slick machine," Hobson said. "Belonged to my brother, Hobby. They sent him to Permanganate Island for something or other. I forgot what it was. Me, I can hardly pedal, stiff as I'm getting. Easier just to sit on an imp and go places that way."

Ophelia said good night to Hobson, who cautioned her to use the side entrance to the theater to avoid the crowd of shiftees waiting in line at the front. "It says no admittance, but don't pay that any mind. Go on in and down the stairs. The Flamingo's been running a one-man show lately. Calls himself Moldenke of the Afterworld. He claims he's been there and back. I think you'll like it."

"Thank you so much for your help."

Hobson nodded, blew out the gel can and sat in the dark. "You can't miss the theater," Ophelia heard him say. "It's the only place around with electric lights."

Ophelia could already see a dome of light beneath low clouds only a block or two away. Before ducking around to the side entrance, she stopped to look at the hundreds of shifted males standing in line, some of them fighting to keep their places. All were engaged in trading ideas about what mating techniques they planned to attempt. Some were showing their organs to others.

On the stairway down to the Flamingo, Ophelia smelled urpflanz cigars and heard light applause. She found an empty set of pedals and ordered a Jake. Moldenke hobbled onto the stage without introduction or preamble and told another tale of his post-life experience: "It wasn't too long before I was ordered to get aboard the Amber Princess, a vessel that seemed out of time. There were flying imps perched in the rigging, a flock of a hundred or more individuals. Their legs were thorny and chitinous and they had thickly-clawed, parrot-like feet. I had never seen such a being over here on this side. You felt a jolt of static electricity if you got too close to one that was laying an egg. Rather than make a nest, the imps launched their eggs from the rigging and watched them break apart on the deck.

"The ship's mates, whom we seldom saw above deck, wore clothing that was styleless, featureless and poorly made. If it wasn't gray, then it was brown, or black. They looked gaunt and sick and seemed perpetually wracked with pain. They had craggy, liver-spotted, misaligned faces, dotted with hairy moles.

"The Princess was a wooden ship. Whether it was propelled by wind and sails or a steam engine, I was never certain. I could hear a dull rumble from below, as if from boilers, yet I saw masts, rigging and rope above deck, though I never heard the flap of canvas, even on the windiest days.

"We workers slept in bags under the stars, sometimes awaking covered with frost. Some of us were struck in our sleep by falling imp eggs. When the ship made its ports of call, we combed beaches and shores for teeth. We were given sealskin bags to carry them in. We turned in our bags when we got back to the ship and the teeth were sent below decks for processing.

"Once I found a cluster of teeth as big as a cabbage. I dug it out of the sand and washed it in seawater. The surface was rough, scarred and barnacled, but when I held it up to the sun I could see sixty or seventy distinct teeth inside, uniform in size, and filled with gold. This was quite a puzzle, how this ovoid cluster of teeth had come to be cemented together by barnacles. As I was standing there mulling over what the answer might be, one of the ship's mates came along the beach and said, 'That's a valuable piece. Finders keepers. Listen to me. Don't go back to the ship. It belongs to you, kit and caboodle. Yet I feel I'll be owed something for not turning you in as a thief. We'll take that to a tooth cutter. What's inside is priceless, worth at least a hundred bucks.'

"Taking the mate's advice and allowing him to come along, I ventured on foot all the way across the Fertile Crescent to Bum Bay, where tooth cutters were abundant.

"The mate said, 'Your kind are always getting into trouble. My presence will be a mollifying influence if any monkey business gets started.'

"At the first cutter's shop we passed in Bum Bay, a master tooth cutter and two apprentices were at work polishing and cutting lapis. I lifted my bag to the countertop and the master cutter turned to the task of assessing my chunk of teeth, which he remarked was the biggest he'd ever seen. He broke it in half with a blunt, thick knife and a small pry bar. One tooth fell away from the rest. The cutter examined it. 'It looks like gold in there,' he said, `but is it?' Gold is easily charged with electricity, so he rubbed it with a cloth and it quickly became so charged that a coin would jump six inches and cling to it. And a visible, painful spark struck the cutter's finger when he tried to pry the coin loose.

"There was another test. Tooth gold burns with a yellow flame and gives off a strong, resiny odor. The cutter shaved a tiny sliver of it with a surgeon's scalpel and held it over a candle. It flamed up bright yellow and gave off a strong odor. He was satisfied it was pure and genuine.

"The mate and I turned back across the Fertile Crescent and walked for five days, stopping only once at Jacob's Well, where a dredging operation was going on. The clam-shaped dredge, manipulated by a steampowered crane, was raised from the murky depths and dumped a load of mud, bones and rotting vegetation on the shore. At the same time a man in deep-sea diving equipment surfaced with a basket of silver bracelets, jade necklaces, copper chisels, statuettes, other vessels and valuable ornaments.

"The mate said, `You see, the settlers who once lived here believed that in order for something to be a sacrifice, it must be of great value. That's why so many small bones are dredged up. Sometimes they threw their children in.'

"`I suppose I have no choice, then,' I said, and threw the two halves of my tooth cluster into the water, much to the chagrin of the mate, who made every effort to throw me in, too, although I managed to hold my ground until he had calmed down."