Cream of the Crop 11/Cream of the Crop 11-1.iso/faq/df9601g.zip/5L

Text File | 1996-01-01 | 18KB | 413 lines

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  THE FEAR OF THE BIG NOTHING
    by Franchot Lewis
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    In Chinatown at 7th and H on top the Friendship Arch stood
  him, invincible, on guard. I dreamt that he, a horrible-looking
  thing, that was buried centuries ago in Beijing, was returned
  in his visible form, and was not to be denied my mind neither
  in this world nor in the other, and neither could I keep from
  his. For years and years I tried to break this bond. I turned
  to prayers and to professors. None provided me with hope. I went
  into the alleys behind the shops in Chinatown targeting myself
  for the reptiles. I came upon two bad boys using the night to
  sell the ancient death under modern names and I lit into them
  with great bravo and temper that I wished would have carried me
  away from here to my rest.

    In Washington where I have lived as a hermit, shutting myself
  up in my house on Irving Street these past ten years, going out
  at night only for food, I did this deed. These two bad boys were
  drug boys with dead hearts and gray souls and were busy selling
  the meanest crud then on the street to three long-haired sons and
  a grungy daughter of Falls Church that lay across the river. As I
  grappled with the drug boys, away, quick, like they would swim the
  river and not take the tunnel train, the kids from suburbia ran.

    One of the drug boys, a criminal wretch, got me on the ground
  between a trash dumpster and his foot; the other cocked a gun,
  fired at me, but the bullets became blanks. I saw sudden horror
  overtake the drug boys' eyes. The skin of each smoked, cooked to
  charcoal black and their hair turned the color of the whitest
  white. Stupefied, they fell down dead. He, the guardian who sat
  on the Arch, avenger, and particularly a slayer of dealers in
  opiates, hovered over them. He snatched their souls from their
  bones and hurled the souls around and flung them. They went
  howling into a pit of a dimension of endless darkness, and the
  bodies broke into dust that he kicked about. The two were damned;
  religious rites were denied them.

    He took me up, dangling me by my arm as if I was a disobedient
  child. I yelled. I tried to slither free of him so to tumble to
  the street in a terrible fall. He wouldn't loosen his grip.

    I shouted, "Why has Good Fortune forsaken me?"

    He sat me under the archway. It was very late and the traffic
  was slow. He looked at me gravely. I spit into his mud eye. "This
  is America!" I shouted. "You are out of your territory! I am not
  Chinese!"

    "Why do you live such a shallow life?" He asked. "Would you dig
  yourself a shallow grave?"

    "I don't even know any Chinese," I shouted. "Why do you keep
  haunting me?" I said other things, made mention of every slur I
  could recall and when I finished he gave a wink, rose in the air
  and took his post on top of the Arch.

    And suddenly the traffic wasn't slow and an H Street bus was
  honking to get past, and a taxi whose driver was popping his
  temper's cap --  and cars, a sea of cars. I jumped as if I was a
  child who had been told to stand in the corner and strangers had
  come into the house. I felt so embarrassed. I hated it. People saw
  me standing in the street conversing with something that was unseen
  by them. He who stood atop the Arch was looking, still winking down
  at me. I knew that at any time a cop could come. Soon enough, I
  heard a car door slam and the grunt of a gruff throat.

    "Get out of the traffic! We will be wiping your butt off the
  street!"

    And when I stepped out of the street, my head and neck dripped
  with sweat. The water did not quench the flaring tightness in my
  chest nor cool my temper, but was fuel. I looked red-faced furious,
  confused.

    A small Chinese lady with a hunched back and a head that bobbed
  as she walked, leaning heavily on a cane, approached me.

    "You can see him up on the monument?" She said, "You ride the
  tiger's back."

    I attempted to ignore her and walked away, going up the street.

    "Wait!" she struggled to follow. "Please!"

    I kept walking.

    She sobbed, "I can't walk as fast as you."

    The few people around, those coming from the restaurants,
  stopped and looked. The woman drew a scene. "Please, wait. I am
  not an ugly old lady. I was glamourous once before calamity came
  and my looks were gone."

    "Lady, did he do anything to you?" The policeman pulled up and
  jumped back out of his car, ordered me to stop. He called to the
  Chinese lady, "Mama-san?"

    The lady waited until she got closer, then she shook her head.
  "No, Mr. Policeman."

    I let out a huge yawn.

    "He is my friend," she said.

    I began to walked away.

    "Please!" she said. "Wait and talk to me."

    The policeman shrugged, put his hands over his shoulders and
  then got back into the squad car, and I remembered why I was out.
  I reproached the policeman.

    "I've made a notation of your badge number," I told him.

    He let out a huge yawn.

    "Why did you stop me? Is it a cultural thing?"

    He took off the badge on his uniform. "This isn't mine," he said.
  He replaced the badge with one that had black tape over the numbers,
  and with a scowl said, "You have a complaint?"

    "I sure do."

    "Fine. File it at the station." He started up his car and drove
  away.

    "Young sir," the Chinese lady tapped my sleeve. "Everybody here
  is a shadow, except you and I and those who can see the guardians."

    The uptown bus passed by, and I swung my arms and made fast
  with my feet and ran to catch it at the next stop. The Chinese
  lady called to me. I wasn't going to look back. To get away from
  the dreadful woman I covered the distance twice as fast as I'd
  ever done. I sprinted pass the bus which stalled and now crawled.
  The motor puttered. The muffler dragged its tail down in the
  street and sputtered smoke like a down trodden English dragon
  dying in the moors.

    The Chinese woman pursued, impeded by her handicapped form.
  The bus reached me before the woman did. As the bus pulled into
  the stop, I thought of boarding quickly, of resting my then tired
  feet, of easing my butt into a seat, and for a few soothing
  moments, taking my mind from, if not forgetting, things that have
  been so troublesome. The bus door opened. I was struck in the
  face by a rush of cold air and was pushed backward.

    "Jump on. Drop the exact fare in the box and grab a seat," the
  driver's voice echoed. The voice sounded as though it belonged to
  a soul-less body. The driver looked as if he had been raised up,
  and perched like a stone bird on a chair.

    "No!" I replied. I turned to exit.

    "Get in!"  he ordered. "Pay the fare! Sit!"

    A vacuum sucked me in. The door slammed shut. The vacuum
  inhaled: ooo! I was sucked into the interior of the bus. The
  interior was desolate, as though the bus housed years of abuse.
  Shocked, I was thrown into the back seat. The bus was a dark
  sepulcher. On each side of me and all the way up to the front,
  I saw bodies seated up-wrong that needed to be lain down in
  decent burial. The bus was a hearse, was a grave, and I had
  really stepped into it!

    The bodies weren't stiffs. They were active, very. The dead
  dude seated on my right with a M-16 bullet on a string hung around
  his neck and a hole on the left side of his forehead from a mine,
  screeched at me: "Don't punk out, homey. Got to step to it. Got to
  go hard, or the street's going to carry you, and lay you out like
  a fool with gun smoke in your face."

    "Get away from me, petty criminal!" I screeched back.

    His friend at my left came at me. Stepped into my face like he
  wanted his dead breath to hug me. I stepped to him and to his seat
  buddy, told those two shallow mud heads with holes in their heads
  to piss off. They punked, screamed for the driver to stop and put
  me off.

    "Can't scare me, can you? So you want to put me off? Well, put
  me off!" I challenged them.

    They screamed again and again, "Nigger . . . wigger, what are
  you? Think you are something! You're nothing! You're nothing!
  You're nothing!"

    Their screams went right through my ears. My nerves pounded from
  the irritation. But what could I do to dead bones other than put
  dirt on them and give them the rite of burial? I got up and moved
  to a seat in the middle of the bus. The two followed me. Other dead
  gathered around.

    "What are you? Vampires? Vampires don't scare me," I said.

    But from that night, following behind me like a witness at a
  funeral, would lurk one or more of those terrible dead who, as
  soon as the night fell, would come to bug me and try to carry me
  back to that bus of dead mud heads with holes in their heads.

    "Ghouls don't scare me; death doesn't scare--"

    One of those terrible things cut me off, told of his last day
  as a man and of the terrible things he did. "I gave people pain,
  hurt them bad. I was a gangster. I hurt women. I hurt old people.
  The day I died I hurt a child, gave him such pain. I heard his
  soul leave and go swoosh!"

    Again I reacted not like the dead ones hoped. I yawned.

    "I'm going to hurt you bad," the thing said. "You are condemned
  to be with us."

    A few days after this, on a Monday midnight, I went again to the
  Arch. The guardian took time out of his watch to come down and talk.

    "A restless pace, a restless place," he said.

    "You don't scare me either," I said. "I am afraid of nothing."

    He frowned.

    "I've got your number, Mr. Bogeyman," I said.

    He replied, "Given yourself a deep burial in sacred ground?"

    "Sacred? You mean scared? Scarce?," I faked a laugh. "I am not
  scared."

    "Sacred," he said. "Where you wish your soul should rest."

    Almost at once people came with the noise of loud throats
  croaking like frogs, and with tempers to get me back on the
  sidewalk and out of the traffic of the street. Out of the corner
  of my eye I saw that a mud head thing had come. Its presence was
  now a tradition and its kind's right. The people mocked me with
  their dumb mouths, and the dead thing grinned when he saw me
  jumpe back out of the way of a car that wanted to pass without
  stopping. He was pickled with laughter, happier than a pig in mud,
  because I jumped.

    "Scared of death? Scared of injury? Of pain? Scared?"

    "I let a car get by!" I replied. You must remembered that the
  guardian will not allow me to be run down in the street and if I
  hadn't jumped, he would have carried me to the sidewalk himself.
  "I am not scared," I answered.

    Weeks, months, went by -- and where would I have gone, if not
  to the Arch? If I hadn't, the guardian would have barged into my
  house, into my time alone. And what of the dead ones' derelict
  bus, that great relic of centuries past, an ancient mariner's
  lost ship on wheels? It still rode the streets of D.C. The dead
  ones still came. They lost none of the hope that caused them to
  pursue me. The terrible things hoped to scare me. They creaked
  about, glowering with envy and anger because I carried myself
  well, afraid of nothing: not man, not ghouls, not death, and not
  of gods either.

    When they sucked me into their bus, tried to suckler me, I
  hissed at them. "Boo!" I hissed. "Boo! Boo! Boo!" Since reaching
  adulthood, I've been afraid of nothing. "When I was a child I
  could be frightened, but no more," I said.

    At once, all the dead things grew silent, like a great quiet
  that rides up after a storm and is heard in every ear. The bus
  driver pulled over to the curb and in a fierce windy voice told me
  to get out. I refused. Not that I liked the dreary scum on board
  but I intended to show them my contempt was mightier than theirs.
  Before I went I made the witless mud heads do hoops and perform
  great leaps in the air. I was haughtier than any ghoul who ever
  lorded over a frighten mortal. I rode those things' asses.

    I told them to their horror how frightfully pathetic, unfunny,
  and uselessly unuseful they were. I skipped off that bus. But I
  did not rejoice long. The sad things on the bus had only for a
  moment forgotten that I was among the few who saw and sought to
  escape the guardian of the Arch, and saw their bus driven up and
  down the street. I talked my way out of the bus because a hideous
  display of dead bones left me yawning.

    The months turned into the years. Though I knew I could,
  wouldn't, I tried to stay away from the Arch. I tried to leave
  D.C. Each time I boarded a plane, or caught a train, the guardian
  came for me and took me in hand to the Arch and I swore never
  again to run. I hoped the guardian would tire of my lies and let
  my bones be broken free of him. But my lies never seemed to vex
  him. I asked him why.

     He answered, "The ebb and flow, the rise and fall of the tide."

     As we went on talking, a driver speeding down Seventh street
  tried to stop and his car went sliding towards me. I hadn't seen
  him coming. Only when I heard the squeal of the wheels did my eyes
  turn from the guardian who stood up high on the Arch, my back
  headed southwards towards my home, my bones were going backwards
  as my feet tried to scatter in opposite directions. I didn't see
  any people. I saw the dead things. I was among many of them. The
  whole right aisle of the bus and the driver too, had come along,
  and they sure did look like a happy group of ghouls. "Main man,
  give him a hand!" they mocked in one voice. And for a moment,
  while I was sure that the car was going to drive my body and soul
  asunder, my face must have shown alarm: Awake! The soul is almost
  free.

    Then I rose into the air. At the will of the guardian, I rose
  as high as the moon. The hideous things that were giving each
  other high-fives the minute before now scowled like ninnies and
  looked uglier, all at once.

    "Why do you? Why must you?"

    "The flow of the tide," the guardian replied, "the ebb and rise."

    I gathered my self and went home. I stayed in a week, two, a
  month. I had my food delivered. At the end of the month the
  guardian dropped in to my house. He came in large, slid the roof
  back. His visit did not surprise. His appearance did: my manner,
  his dress. His was as ugly as ever, uglier as I soon would see.
  Gone was the ancient Chinese costume. He wore clothes off the rack
  from the Hecht's Store.

    "Main man, what's been keeping you?"

    "What?" I stared. I wasn't sure if the words came out of his
  mouth.

    "What do you expect, dude?" He grinned, like he was from the
  sunny Isle of Manhattan and not from ancient China. He leaned
  back, rocked on his heels, "A house call chore," he explained.
  "Thought I would go modern."

    I was horrified. I turned away from the guardian. I was too
  angry to look into his face.

    "I disappoint you, you want my old timely dead Eastern mode,"
  the guardian yawned. "The flow and tide have turned westward at
  a relentless pace, and so--"

    "SO WHAT!" I shouted. "You sound like those dead mud heads with
  holes in their heads. I held you high, now you have dropped down
  with them."

    "So I'm now covered with mud then? Partly?"

    "Leave me alone. I despise you."

    "Partly right? Partly . . . you are afraid."

    "I'm not afraid of you."

    "You know what scares you."

    "Nothing."

    "No scary thing?"

    "No."

    "I know. The big nothing."

    "What?"

    "Talking about nothing--"

    "I take nothing from nobody."

    "I know . . . Nothing."

    "What?"

    "The nothing."

    "The big nothing what kind of crap is that?"

    "The big nothing."

    Then the dead things came, and when I saw that their dead mud
  eyes were empty of jealousy and anger, I asked the guardian if he
  had done anything to them like he had done to himself. He answered
  no; said that the dead things have remembered mortals' prime fear,
  the fear of the big nothing. This they had forgotten.

    The dead things got happier and were prouder, and they stormed
  about my house laughing, dancing, shouting out loud, and have done
  so ever since.

                               (DREAM)

  Copyright 1996 Franchot Lewis, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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  Franchot Lewis lives in Washington D.C. and writes short stories.
  You can email at: [e-mail]
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