First Person Peculiar Read online

  But be that as it may, they are continually having these gala festivals—kind of like the Super Bowl, but without the two-week press buildup—in which Christians are thrown to the lions, and they have become overwhelmingly popular with the masses, though they are really more of a pageant than a sporting event, since the Christians almost never win and the local bookmakers won’t even list a morning line on the various events.

  I stay in Rome for almost two centuries, mostly because I have become spoiled by indoor plumbing and paved roads, but then I can see the handwriting on the wall and I realize that I am going to outlive the Roman Empire, and it seems like a good idea to get established elsewhere before the Huns overrun the place and I have to learn to speak German.

  So I become a wanderer, and I find that I really like to travel, even though we do not have any amenities such as Pullman cars or even Holiday Inns. I see all the various wonders of the ancient world—although it is not so ancient then as it has become—and I journey to China (where I help them invent gunpowder, but leave before anyone considers inventing the fuse), and I do a little tiger-hunting in India, and I even consider climbing Mount Everest (but I finally decide against it since it didn’t have a name back then, and bragging to people that I climbed this big nameless mountain in Nepal will somehow lack a little something in the retelling.)

  After I have completed my tour, and founded and outlived a handful of families, and hobnobbed with the rich and powerful, I return to Europe, only to find out that the whole continent is in the midst of the Dark Ages. Not that the daylight isn’t as bright as ever, but when I start speaking to people it is like the entire populace has lost an aggregate of 40 points off its collective I.Q.

  Talk about dull! Nobody can read except the monks, and I find to my dismay that they still haven’t invented air-conditioning or even frozen food, and once you finish talking about the king and the weather and what kind of fertilizer you should use on your fields, the conversation just kind of lays there like a dead fish, if you know what I mean.

  Still, I realize that I now have my chance for revenge, so I take the vows and join an order of monks and live a totally cloistered life for the next twenty years (except for an occasional Saturday night in town, since I am physically as vigorous and virile as ever), and finally I get my opportunity to translate the Bible, and I start inserting little things, little hints that should show the people what he was really like, like the bit with the Gadarene swine, where he puts devils into the pigs and makes them rush down the hill to the sea. So okay, that’s nothing to write home about today, but you’ve got to remember that back then I was translating this for a bunch of pig farmers, who have a totally different view of this kind of behavior.

  Or what about the fig tree? Only a crazy man would curse a fig tree for being barren when it’s out of season, right? But for some reason, everyone who reads it decides it is an example of his power rather than his stupidity, and after a while I just pack it in and leave the holy order forever.

  Besides, it is time to move on, and the realization finally dawns on me that no matter how long I stay in one spot, eventually my feet get itchy and I have to give in to my wanderlust. It is the curse, of course, but while wandering from Greece to Rome during the heyday of the Empire was pleasant enough, I find that wandering from one place to another in the Dark Ages is something else again, since nobody can understand two-syllable words and soap is not exactly a staple commodity.

  So after touring all the capitals of Europe and feeling like I am back in ancient Judea, I decide that it is time to put an end to the Dark Ages. I reach this decision when I am in Italy, and I mention it to Michelangelo and Leonardo while we are sitting around drinking wine and playing cards, and they decide that I am right and it is probably time for the Renaissance to start.

  Creating the Renaissance is pretty heady stuff, though, and they both go a little haywire. Michelangelo spends the next few years lying on his back getting paint in his face, and Leonardo starts designing organic airplanes. However, once they get their feet wet they do a pretty good job of bringing civilization back to Italy, though my dancing partner Lucretia Borgia is busily poisoning it as quick as Mike and Leo are enlightening it, and just about the time things get really interesting I find my feet getting itchy again, and I spend the next century or so wandering through Africa, where I discover the Wandering Jew Falls and put up a signpost to the effect, but evidently somebody uses it for firewood, because the next I hear of the place it has been renamed the Victoria Falls.

  Anyway, I keep wandering around the world, which becomes an increasingly interesting place to wander around once the Industrial Revolution hits, but I can’t help feeling guilty, not because of that moment of frivolity eons ago, but because except for having Leonardo do a portrait of my girlfriend Lisa, I really don’t seem to have any great accomplishments, and eighteen centuries of aimlessness can begin to pall on you.

  And then I stop by a little place in England called Saint Andrews, where they have just invented a new game, and I play the very first eighteen holes of golf in the history of the world, and suddenly I find that I have a purpose after all, and that purpose is to get my handicap down to scratch and play every course in the world, which so far comes to a grand total of one but soon will run into the thousands.

  So I invest my money, and I buy a summer home in California and a winter home in Florida, and while the world is waiting for the sport to come to them, I build my own putting greens and sand traps, and for those of you who are into historical facts, it is me and no one else who invents the sand wedge, which I do on April 17, 1893. (I invent the slice into the rough three days later, which forces me to invent the two-iron. Over the next decade I also invent the three through nine irons, and I have plans to invent irons all the way up to number twenty-six, but I stop at nine until such time as someone invents the golf cart, since twenty-six irons are very difficult to carry over a five-mile golf course, with or without a complete set of woods and a putter.)

  By the 1980s I have played on all six continents, and I am currently awaiting the creation of a domed links on Antarctica. Probably it won’t come to pass for another two hundred years, but if there is one thing I’ve got plenty of, it’s time. And in the meantime, I’ll just keep adding to my list of accomplishments. So far, I’d say my greatest efforts have been putting in that bit about the pigs, and maybe getting Leonardo to stop daydreaming about flying men and get back to work on his easel. And birdying the 17th hole at Pebble Beach has got to rank right up there, too; I mean, how many people can sink a 45-foot uphill putt in a cold drizzle?

  So all in all, it’s been a pretty good life. I’m still doomed to wander for all eternity, but there’s nothing in the rulebook that says I can’t wander in my personal jet plane, and Fifi and Fatima keep me company when I’m not on the links, and I’m up for a lifetime membership at Augusta, which is a lot more meaningful in my case than in most others.

  In fact, I’m starting to feel that urge again. I’ll probably stop off at the new course they’ve built near Lake Naivasha in Kenya, and then hit the links at Bombay, and then the Jaipur Country Club, and then …

  I just hope the Second Coming holds off long enough for me to play a couple of rounds at the Chou En-Lai Memorial Course in Beijing. I hear it’s got a water hole that you’ve got to see to believe.

  You know, as curses go, this is one of the better ones.

  ***

  I was asked to write a Weird Western story, probably because of my Doc Holliday series of Weird Western novels from Pyr … but I didn’t want to just write a shorter version of the same kind of story, so I looked north and west and came up with this one.

  The Sacred Tree

  There was a time when the Yakima tribe lived in peace with its surroundings and its neighbors. We welcomed the changing of the seasons, the migration of the birds, the spawning of the fish. We harvested our crops, hunted for meat when we desired it, paid tribute to the sacred tree that protected our pe
ople. We had lived this way for many hundreds of years; we expected to live this way for many hundreds more.

  Then the white man came.

  We tried to be neighborly and accommodating at first, but whatever we offered he took, and whatever we did not offer he also took. It was when he began taking first our land and then our women, against our will and theirs, that we realized we had to do something.

  Since it had been many years since we had gone to war, we had no war chief, and because I am the tribe’s medicine man, it was not long before my people came to me for guidance.

  “Tell us how to rid our land of the White Eyes,” they begged me. “You are the wisest of us all, Uqualla. Your word is our command, and you must tell us how to be free of the White Eyes once and for all.”

  “I will sit by the sacred tree that guards our village and commune with the spirits of those medicine men who came before me,” I replied. “Then you will have your answer.”

  “Tomorrow?” they asked.

  “I do not know,” I answered. “One cannot rush the spirits.”

  That night, as I was eating the evening meal, prior to consulting the spirits, there was a small commotion on the trail approaching the village. Many of our dogs began barking, and finally two of the White Eyes rode into the middle of the village on horseback. One was Combs, who claimed to be the Indian Agent, whatever that was, for clearly he was not one of the People and we had never met in council with his leaders. The other I had never seen before: he was tall, with a black patch over his left eye, and he wore a pistol on each hip, with another tucked in his boot. “Hello, Uqualla,” said Combs, not deigning to dismount.

  I stared at him and made no answer.

  “This is Mr. Sims,” he said, indicating his one-eyed companion. “He will be working with me.”

  He stared at me for a long moment.

  “Have you nothing to say?” he said at last.

  “You have asked no questions,” I replied.

  “I’m about to,” he said. “How many men live in this village?”

  “Why?” I said.

  “My government wishes to know.”

  “Again, why?” I replied.

  “We will be conscripting every fifth able-bodied man to join the army.”

  “What does ‘conscripting’ mean?” I asked.

  “We will be asking them to take the oath of allegiance and serve three years in the cavalry, probably as scouts.”

  “They will say no,” I told him.

  “They will not have a choice,” answered Combs.

  “Ah,” I said. “Conscripting means forcing.”

  “Try not to look at it that way.”

  “You will be forcing our men to join your wars against our brothers, with whom we have lived in peace for many years,” I pointed out. “How would you look at it?”

  “I am sorry you cannot see it our way,” said Combs. “Now, how many men are in the village?”

  “I will not answer,” I said.

  “Pete?” said Combs, turning to his companion.

  The man named Sims pulled out his pistol and shot two of our men before anyone realized what was happening. Both of them fell to the ground, dead.

  “We won’t count those two,” said Combs. “Now how many men have you?”

  “Forty-three,” I said, for I knew if I did not answer he would kill more.

  “Good,” he said. “I will return next week with Mr. Sims and a number of his friends, and I will expect nine men to be ready to join us. I hope you will not consider doing anything foolish.”

  He turned his horse and trotted away, followed by Sims, who looked disappointed that he had only been allowed to kill two of us.

  Once they were gone, most of the village gathered around me. Only two of them spoke English, and I explained to the rest what Combs had said.

  “So we must wear their uniforms and kill the Kalispel and the Quileute and the Suquamish or they will come here and kill us?” demanded Gray Wolf.

  “I will not join the White Eyes to kill my brothers!” swore Screaming Hawk.

  “Nor I!” cried half a dozen others.

  “I will kill,” said Tall Badger, and all eyes turned to him. “But I will kill whom I want to kill. And right now I want to kill Combs and the one-eyed man!”

  “Can your magic protect us, Uqualla?” asked Thunder Bear.

  “I do not know,” I said truthfully. “It can probably protect you against the two who came tonight, but if you kill them they will be followed by four, and then fifteen, and then one hundred. I must seek guidance.” I paused at looked at them. “I will sit by the sacred tree and speak all night with the spirits, and tomorrow morning I will know the answer.”

  One by one they returned to their dwellings, and I did as I had said I would. I communed with the Great Spirit that lives within the sacred tree, and by morning I had the answer.

  They approached me at sunrise, my people, and asked for my guidance.

  “I will not tell you to attack the White Eyes,” I began. “They have guns that fire many times, and you have only arrows and knives, and once you have unleashed an arrow you cannot get it back.”

  “Are you forbidding us to kill them, then?” demanded Screaming Hawk.

  I shook my head. “I am only saying that I am not ordering you to do so.”

  “But if we do …” said Thunder Bear.

  “If you do, then I will protect you.”

  “Will you grow us as tall as the sacred tree?” he asked. “Or will the White Eyes’ bullets bounce off us?”

  I shook my head. “You will still be men, and you can still be killed.”

  “Then what do you mean when you say that you protect us?” demanded Gray Wolf.

  “Listen,” I said, “and I shall tell you.”

  When I was finished, they all looked doubtful.

  “Is it possible?” asked Tall Badger at last.

  “It is possible,” I assured him. “But only if you return here. I cannot protect you in the land of the White Eyes, or even in the lands of the Quileute or the Kalispel.”

  “We shall do as you say,” promised Gray Wolf.

  The four of them mounted their ponies and rode away from the village of the People, and I did not see them again for three days. Then I noticed clouds of dust on the horizon, and a moment later the four of them raced into the village and dismounted in front of me.

  “We have ridden fast and far,” said Thunder Bear.

  “Did you accomplish your purpose?” I asked.

  “Combs and One-Eye are both dead,” said Thunder Bear, spitting on the ground.

  “But more White Eyes will be here soon,” added Gray Wolf.

  “Do they know which of the People they are looking for?” I asked.

  “They saw Screaming Hawk, and they saw me,” said Gray Wolf. “They may have seen the others. I do not know.”

  “You said to come to you when our mission was accomplished,” said Tall Badger. “We have done as you said. Are you still prepared to protect us?”

  “Have I ever lied to the People?” I replied.

  “Whatever it is you must do, you had better do it soon,” said Screaming Hawk, peering off into the distance. “Because here come our pursuers.”

  “Gather around the sacred tree,” I said, “and I shall chant the spell that will protect you.”

  And so I did.

  The White Eyes arrived five minutes later, six of them, all armed with both pistols and rifles. They knew exactly who they were looking for. They walked past the sacred tree and entered the village, shoving men and women aside, walking into every dwelling, threatening to kill us if we did not reveal the location of their prey. But we pled ignorance, and invited them to remain as long as they wished.

  “Damn it!” said their leader. “I know Gray Wolf is a member of your tribe, and so is Bright Hawk or Screaming Hawk or whatever the hell kind of hawk he thinks he is.”

  “You may search again,” I said. “We will not stop you
.”

  “As if you could!” he snorted contemptuously.

  “Stay as long as you wish.”

  He made a face as if remaining was the most unpleasant thing he could imagine. They made one last brief search of the village, then mounted their horses.

  “If I find out you were hiding them …” began the leader. He drew his gun, aimed it at a dog, and pulled the trigger. The dog yelped and fell over, whining and twitching in agony. “I’ll do to you and five of your men exactly what I did to the dog.”

  “But he’ll aim better,” said a second man, and all the White Eyes laughed.

  Then they rode away, and one of the women took a spear and ended the dog’s suffering.

  The next morning I was approached by Kamaiakan.

  “That was my dog they killed,” he said. “I will go into the kingdom of the White Eyes until I find the man who shot him, and then I will kill him.” He paused. “Will you protect me?”

  “It is not I who protects the People, but the Great Spirit who speaks to me through the sacred tree.”

  “Will the Spirit and the tree protect me? I will kill him regardless, but I do not wish to leave my two daughters without a father.”

  “The tree will protect you, Great Eagle, as it protected the four men yesterday.”

  “I am Kamaiakan,” he corrected me.

  I shook my head. “From this day forward, you are Great Eagle.”

  “But I am named for the greatest chief in our history,” he protested.

  “If you want my protection, and the protection of the sacred tree, you are Great Eagle,” I said. “What is your decision?”

  He considered for a moment, then nodded his head. “I am Great Eagle.”

  I laid a hand upon his shoulder. “Go and do what must be done.”