Disclaimer: Scully, Mulder, Skinner, and other characters belong to 1013 and Chris Carter. The prose, however, is mine. If you see this story castigated on someone else's site in the guise of MSTing, I did not give my permission, nor waived my secondary copyright. Category: Angst with a _very_ tiny bit of slash. Rating: R Summary: 'Vestigy' takes place in the near future, after the planned invasion of the planet, focusing on the radically altered existence of Walter Skinner. Readers may have to work a little to follow this story, as I have tried to write it "clear as mud" in the spirit of Chris Carter, but hopefully things are not as obscure as they may seem and, to quote LoneGunGuy, "The pay-off will be big." You may want to read my other vignettes, especially 'Clutching at Shells,' to get some of the background "essence," as 'Vestigy' fits into that line of events. Those stories can be found at Gossamer, MulderTorture Anonymous, or In Our Humble Opinion (http://home.earthlink.net/~iwonder). I hope you give 'Vestigy' a try. Thank you for reading and thoughtful feedback is always welcome and appreciated. The lyrics to "Mockingbird Hill" aren't mine. I wish I knew who they belonged to. If anyone knows the songwriter, please e-mail me. Vestigy by lisby@earthlink.net For Marlene Morris, who is always there. And for LoneGunGuy, Liliana, Quercus, and Jen Collins, who read and said, "Write more! Write more!" So, I did. *********************************** To: Jeremiah Goderville, Goderville Ghetto April 21 Cochise Ghetto Dear "Jeremiah": I think I like Petunia better. I marvel that I am writing to you--that we are allowed to communicate. Back in the Simpleton camp, the day we said good-bye on the train platform, I never thought to see or hear from you again. That would have been a great shame after all we endured together. It snowed here last December (yes, it does sometimes snow in "Helldorado"). That night I was alone in my cot and damned cold. I thought about you, me, Mish, and Snappy on the day the guards told us snow was coming--each of us with our pitiful standard-issue quarter tent, throwing them in together and-- voila--instant domicile and instant family. Remember how we--what did Mish call it?--"puppied" for warmth? Good old Mish. When I was assigned to a delivery train, she was in decline. I hope she made it to a ghetto--that she died somewhat free. I had to laugh at the front of your letter, after I finished crying. I sat down on the steps outside Schiefflelin Hall and bawled like a baby. At least I wasn't alone. Seemed like almost everyone who got mail yesterday was crying. I guess we made a caterwaul, because Young Major Chancellor sent his Bluttos to disperse us. "To a bald beefcake with wire-rim glasses. Hung like a moose. Inventory #DJT-1411. Might now be known as 'Sundance.'" Well, like you and your companion, Mr. Skinny, the Moose and I have adopted a more dignified moniker. We--I am now called Warren. I had a few productive fugues in Sanctuary, and while I'm sure that my name was not Warren, I'm certain it sounded something like it. Your letter wasn't long enough, Petunia. I do, of course, understand not wanting to waste paper in case I wasn't identified. We have two FEMA general stores in Tombstone and what little paper they had was gone in a rush. I work in the Sheriff's Office, so I was able to find something to write on there--in fact I've hoarded about fifty sheets for the future now that I know you're out there. Anyway, next time, write more. _Please_. (BTW, your letter did not appear opened. Does mine?) I am glad to know that you're not out in the fields all day at your hoary age, growing food for the Feds. Your well-being is important to me. You were the first person that I _knew_ I had known before. I still can't tell you what we were to each other, but...well, knowing you were delivered and are alive is like knowing a piece of my old self lives, too. We don't get much news of the outside here, but just holding your letter means the Federals are sure the Rebel cause is lost. If they thought we were not properly penned in our "autonomous enclaves" they wouldn't graciously allow mail go through. But what the hell does it matter if the Feds have run the Earth over? I'm not going to squander any of my hard- stolen paper writing another word about them or a world I can hardly recall. You asked about my situation. As I mentioned, I work for the sheriff, Wyatt Earp. (I hear Goderville has a queen. Do you have to bow and call her "majesty"?) Don't think I am anyone important. I'm not. I'm just a lowly peace officer--like I was in the camp--one of about 150 for all of Cochise. I also do a lot of the paperwork for everyone else because I can still write and read. The Federals need "detailsdetailsdetails." (I'm doing my Young Major impression, but that'll whoosh right over your head.) I deliver stacks of reports to the governor, Old Chancellor, and he just rolls his eyes. He's seems to be a cut above most of the Federals. Fair and flexible, unlike his nephew. Anyway, that's where all the paper goes--right back to the Feds who gave it. I'm assigned to patrol the town itself. I got lucky in that. I didn't want to live in an isolated mining community, or cover some huge swath of ranchland where the only fun is wandering across wombless dead cows and women sundried into mummies since the flies won't touch them. I have a room above the Occidental saloon and whorehouse. Among my riches I've got a cot, a trunk, a coal stove, a kerosene lamp, and three sets of clothes. What more could I need? Sure beats the hell out of Simp camp and our thin bedrolls and stitched-together tent. Of course, that sure beat the hell out of the Factory. Which reminds me--how's your hand? Did the nerves regenerate at all? They must have. Your handwriting looks pretty good. Shit. Someone just told me that the delivery train is pulling out in a half hour. I want this letter to be on it. I've got just enough time to jog down there, so I'll sign off for now, but I'll start another letter tomorrow to go on the next train out. Too bad I want you get this letter so desperately that I can't afford an address tit-for-tat. "To a spry, wicked old devil with a roadmap face and PKL-2410 tattooed on his saggy ass"??? Yours always, Sundance/Warren April 22 Dear Petunia, Before the proprietor's wife popped in to tell me about the mail train, I was going to write that there isn't much for a peace officer in Tombstone to do. Since this is the "capital" of Cochise, the governor and his troops are here, and they usually take it upon themselves to buffalo the drunks and glower after Curly Bill's gang when they've pulled some stupid shit. That suits Wyatt and his brothers just fine--it gives them time to make this a better refuge for the freed prisoner. We deputies do a lot of community service. There still aren't enough houses for all the Delivered who have left Sanctuary, so we spend a lot of time building--mostly in adobe. There is a paucity of wood, as you might imagine. Wyatt says he came out here with Governor Chancellor, a squadron of Bluttos, and about two dozen Simpletons. I heard him say that Chancellor hand-picked him to be the nonmilitary leader back when he was newly shaped at Chancellor's Factory. The old man gave Wyatt and those original Simps their names, too. The whole thing is supposed to be some kind of joke, only no one here remembers why it's funny. Sometimes I think I nearly do, but then...nah. Old Chancellor had good instincts. Wyatt is cool and logical in his dealings with the Federals (we've had about a dozen public whippings and only one hanging in the last year). Old Chancellor seems truly fond of Wyatt. The sheriff appears to reciprocate. Chancellor's housewoman is always bringing lunch invitations around to Wyatt at the office. He gives the woman a nod with a smile like a glass of cold iced tea. Yeah, that's an arty description, but I think you're man enough to make something of it. I'm glad it's not me going to lunch with my own Manufacturer. I couldn't look at the man who made me without gagging. I sure as hell know I couldn't eat with him. After I signed off my letter, I headed for the station. It's about a half-mile away. The main street here is called Allen and it's home to almost all the saloons--a bevy of them, painted like prostitutes, doors always open. The saloons are never hurting for business. Frankly, Petunia, we've got a lot of people here trying to drink away the few memories they retain. Good- quality Federal booze is costly, but available. Most people drink hooch. There are dozens of stills in town; sometimes the air smells like whisky. And the ranchers do a nice business on the side making brew, then carting it into town. Although drunk Simps cause almost all the trouble that Curly Bill's gang and the Lights don't, the Feds have no problem with the daily booze-o- rama. It diverts us. And making and selling hooch is the only real enterprise in Tombstone. I found Allen Street too quiet. Usually, the boardwalk that runs up either side of the trafficway is so crowded that I take my chances with the horses, skateboards, bikes, buggies, and Fed hovercars and walk in the road. But the boardwalk was almost empty and the hurdy-gurdy's tinkle bounced off the ceiling of Kate's as I passed by. Empty gaming tables in the Oriental. Nobody home at the Spreading Chestnut Tree. But the closer I got to Haskell Street--that's where the train station is--the more ruckus I heard. Finally, I picked up my pace to a run and came around the corner with my hand going for my gun.... No, I don't have a gun anymore than I did in Simp camp. I still keep reaching for it, though. The station platform was packed with people, all shoving and pushing and shouting. There must have been hundreds of letters flying through the air in a desperate attempt to get them on the train, which was already pulling out of the station. Some of doors of the empty delivery cars were open and people were trying to pitch the letters inside. Others were running along the track to do the same. I saw red tracers going up from the warning flares that the Feds were firing as they came riding the other way down Haskell Street, inadvertently driving bystanders toward the station. The crowd on the platform was surging forward, washing up against those in the front. I tried again for my residual gun, cursed, ran faster, and cut over to the tracks. Savor this image, Petunia: your Sundance--bald pate reflecting the sun's zenith, manly sweat glistening across my upper lip, muscles rippling (although I doubt you could see them through my baggy worksuit). I leapt up and caught a handhold bar on the side of the engine car, stuck my head through the open window of the door and yelled, "Federal agent! Stop this train right now!" The skinny, lantern-jawed engineer startled, stared like a scarecrow, and finally threw on the brakes. "You don't move this fucking thing an inch--not one more fucking inch!" I shouted as the train squealed to a halt and the engine's noise died back. I heard a lot of screaming and the Young Major's voice over the bullhorn telling the crowd that they were violating the peace rules and the next shots fired would be real. I looked back over my shoulder at red smoke and shrieking chaos--but just then the Earps arrived, with Wyatt riding ahead to intercept Young Chancellor while the others dismounted and made for the platform. I jumped down from the engine and sprinted after them, pushed my way through the panicking mob, until I was up there with them, urging calm. I saw there were about a dozen people on the plankboards, all trodden down in the hysteria of mass retreat, but I didn't see anything bloody on the tracks--just a scatter of envelopes. Virgil Earp climbed up the side of a boxcar to stand on its roof. He fired off a blue flare and started shouting orders to stand and listen. The effect of our training still amazes me, Petunia. Within a minute everyone was standing and facing Virgil, all quiet but for the moans of the injured at our feet. Virgil Earp is a big man--taller and broader than me. If you saw him, your wizened old heart would go pitty-pat. He's your type: blonde, blue-eyed, barhandle mustache. He and Wyatt are twin Clones, except that Wyatt has come out thin and sinewy. Anyway, Virgil has a big, booming voice, but he gives off about ten fold of that "daddydaddydaddy" essence you attribute to me. The Simps just love him. Anyway, Virgil kept talking calmly, telling everyone to place their mail in a pile on the platform and go on home. The peace officers would make sure it went out on the train. Everything was all right. No one would be punished. Just put the mail in a pile and go home.... I was watching Wyatt when Virgil said no one would be punished. He was still astride his horse right along side of Young Chancellor's hovercar. He gave a nod to Virgil. The Young Major was scowling, but the Fed troops held back. When the people began to do as Virgil told them, I saw the Young Major speak into his headset and the mass of black body armor began to recede. With the Feds moving off, we turned our attention to the injured. There was a man not far from me who was groaning and trying to sit up. As I knelt by his side, I saw the Young Major's hovercar pass, heard the godawful engine hiss. Reminds me of languishing in my cell at the Factory, waiting to be "reinforced," hearing the hourly perimeter patrols. Eight patrols and my rest time was up. They were punctual bastards. On the platform, I started gulping and sweating, then fought like hell not to run off in whatever direction my feet would take me when I saw Young Chancellor in conversation with the engine driver. The scarecrow was pointing my way. Medical staff from Sanctuary had arrived on the platform, and one helped me lift the trampled Simp to his feet. I let the Angel slip an arm around the man and walk him off. When I looked back toward Young Chancellor, I found Wyatt blocking our mutual line of sight and used the chance to escape down the platform and into the station itself. It's a wooden clapboard shed, really, where the Feds do a final inventory of delivered Merchandise before they let the Angels start their triage. It was hollow and hot inside, buzzing with flies and a few of those fucking bees. I heard that ringing again in my ears, Petunia. My own blood like a river whispering. I went with the river--just let go like they taught us in Sanctuary--let it take me back to a place and time not quite expunged. I saw that I was holding my arm and there was blood leaking through my fingers. It was outside--dark, but there was some sort of illumination behind me--and beyond, I knew without seeing that some huge pointed shape jutted up into the sky. There were panic sounds from a large crowd. And a man beside me. I remember big dark eyes looking into mine with an intense concern that scared me. His voice was a thick velvet ribbon. "Let me help you." Then he looked at the wound and his mouth hinted a smile. "It's just a graze, sir. It's okay--it's just a graze." I must have stood there for a long time, Petunia, just doing the Blank Simp. (God, remember the Blank Simp Dance around that big Amer-Indian woman's campfire? We even made the guards laugh. It felt good to cut up like that--even if we were the butt of our own joke.) "Hey, Warren--you in there?" That was Wyatt. I blinked at him. "You need to go to Sanctuary?" I shook my head to clear it and told him I was fine. His blue eyes narrowed but he let the lie slide, told me I'd saved some lives by stopping that train, that I'd done a damned ballsy thing by telling the engineer I was a Fed. I'd put my ass on the line for the people and he wouldn't forget that. Now I should go on home and stay inside until some drover got drunk and gave Young Chancellor someone else to thump on. I tried to smile as his hand clasped my shoulder, but I didn't tell him that he was wrong--that "federal agent" just came out of my mouth. I believe I was a law man, but I've conjured my former myself as what I am now: a peace officer, but now...? Petunia, was I a Fed? Was I committing the atrocities you, Snappy, and Mish fought against until I screwed up or something and they threw me in a Factory, too? Fuck, Petunia, I might have been "somebody," just like you've always thought, only maybe I was somebody on the wrong side of Right. I can't think about this any longer. April 24 No mail train yet. I guess I'll start writing smaller. Weight will probably be a consideration in what they ship through and I don't want to push my luck with too many pages. But I don't want to stop writing either. So, I hope someone in Goderville has a magnifying glass. There were Lights last night down toward Bisbee. I watched their strange ballet from my window. It's actually more like a mating dance, the way they circle each other, drop those shimmering feathery tracers, shoot straight up into the night as if to see which can vault the highest. I saw Morgan Earp and a posse of deputies and medics head for Bisbee this morning. They'll stay there for a few days until all the women are recovered. I've been on that detail before. It's rough. We spend all day finding out who's missing, then ride around all night chasing the Lights, trying to find drop sites and get the women back before the sun comes up. Dehydration kills them quickly after whatever they're put through: as little as two or three hours in the morning sun can be fatal. There's nothing worse, Petunia, than to find a woman among the ocotillo and crucifixion thorns who could have been saved if you'd gotten there a half hour sooner. The Lights visit Tombstone, too. Of course, we don't remember them. When the posses from Bisbee, Willcox, and the Hooker Ranch show up, they find us staring at the walls just like Morg's posse surely found the Bisbeeians doing this morning. But the Lights don't come here as often as they do the other settlements. Rumor says it has something to do with the governor: They only come when he's gone from town. I guess they need Old Chancellor or they wouldn't give a damn if he blew his brains out on the roof of Schiefflelin Hall. Jim Earp told me Chancellor did that once. The Lights took up his body, put him back together somehow, and dropped him off right in the middle of Allen Street. I'm not sure I believe that story. It's pretty today, Petunia. One of those clear blue-sky afternoons when just looking up at the heavens makes me think I'm just a hair's breadth away from knowing everything. Not just about who I was, but _everything_. There are so many mysteries and they're not just reflected in the vastness of sky, but in the little beauties all around us, right next to us. Right below us. Bessie--the Occidental's madam--is under my window, hanging her smalls out to dry. She's an ugly woman, but damned if she can't sing. Was it meant for me to stop just now, to scratch my head, and think, 'Gee, beauty from ugliness...what a concept'? If I was a Fed, Petunia, then maybe the Factory fueled a refiner's fire. God, I hope so. You, my friend, are being offered a very different opportunity. I'm not sure what it is, but I know your spirit needs no refinement. Only someone who has always been truly good could have shown me the many kindnesses you have. I wish you were here. Maybe someday they'll let camp family be together. Bessie is singing. "When its late in the evening, I climb up the hill, and survey all my kingdoms while everything's still. Only me and the sky and the old whippoorwill sing songs in the twilight on mockingbird hill." I hope the sunset is coming on as sweetly in Goderville. Sundance April 27 Still no mail. I helped offload some Merchandise yesterday, though. I've noticed that each Delivery brings a few less Simps. The trains used to be packed. Aboard the one that delivered me, there was just enough room for everyone to sleep in rows, like spoons tucked up against each other. And during the day there wasn't much to do except wait for a turn at one of the tiny barred windows to take a few breaths of air and peek at what was passing by. In the beginning there were real communities out there-- prosperous Federal metropolises untouched by war. Then, as we traveled further south, I saw burned-out towns garrisoned with Federal troops. I got my turn at a window once as we passed a gallows. There were hundreds of bodies, swinging and rotting, bloated and black. It took four days to get to Cochise. Twice, after we'd entered the desert, the train stopped and sat on the tracks for inexplicable hours. I cannot describe the misery in my boxcar. There were about one hundred people inside when we left Simp camp. More than twenty died before we reached Tombstone--maybe a baker's dozen during the last forty-eight hours. I'd tell you more about it, but, well...I'm sure other deliveries were worse--I just hope yours wasn't one of those, Petunia. And at least you went west, not south. Maybe the heat wasn't so bad. Maybe it wasn't as crowded in your boxcar. Maybe nobody died while nobody could help. Tombstone received about fifteen new Simps in yesterday's delivery. It used to be two or three hundred per shipment. We're always prepared for a crisis when we open those boxcar doors--people in extremis, people still in the shock of manufacture. But yesterday, most of the new Simps were first-line goods; only three needed the Angels' immediate care. We greeted the rest with kind words and cool water and an inhalation of The Happy. Wait...sorry. You don't have The Happy in Goderville, although you may have something like it. Our head Angel at Sanctuary, John Holliday, whips up a mild anesthesia that started off with the cornball name "Doc's Patented Happy Gas." That devolved into The Happy. It knocks back whatever pain the Delivered are feeling and sedates them slightly for the final processing. Sometimes when the red lights of those code readers start strobing, the Simps will fugue and...well, we've both been there; done that. I'm not sure if it's the same where you are, but in Tombstone, the Feds keep everyone away from the station when the shipments come. After the Merchandise is taken to Sanctuary, Wyatt writes out the inventory numbers on a blackboard on the front steps of Schiefflelin Hall. And if a newcomer is coherent enough to answer questions, Wyatt will also add his or her nickname and a Simp camp of origin. Pretty much the whole town will come watch Wyatt put up those numbers, places, and nicknames. It's rare, however, when anyone recognizes family. Misery loves company, and the evenings after Deliveries are bedlam on Allen Street. One night a few months ago, I stood outside the Oriental with Morg and Virgil, watching the drunks and the Feds, trying to gauge which encounter could set off a full-tilt crowd bash without Earp mediation. I've always felt bad after deliveries, too--as bad as the people who cram the saloons and trot crookedly down the boardwalk. As I said, Virgil's an easy man to talk to. That night, I found myself telling him about you and Snappy--that both of you had been delivered and I knew where to. I talked about Mish-- explained that she was dying and when we'd parted at Simp camp, it had been a final good-bye. I had no one else from camp left to hope for. No reason to wake up in a horse trough full of vomit, but I wanted to. Virgil laughed--soft laugh, like a furry rumble. He put his hand on my arm and I felt as if those blue eyes saw nothing else in Tombstone but my soul. "Warren, you ain't looking for the ones you remember. You're looking for the ones you forgot." I gaped at that truth hanging there on the beam of Virgil's avatar light. Haven't felt the need to get drunk too often since then. The post-train drinkathons (we call them Unboxing Nights) have recently simmered down. I thought perhaps people were giving up on camp family as they adopted ghetto family, but when the mail came, the sauced hoorah started up again. Now people are drinking because the first train brought them nothing, or the last train brought nothing new and delivered no family. But Virge is right--those are just surface woes. Deep inside, they're all waiting for them, aren't they? What do you call them--the ones we've forgotten--old loves, old kin, vestigial entities who hold the chord that leads us back to Self. What are you to me, Petunia? I'll tell you: You are a Vestigy. Yeah, I made the word up. Shakespeare made up words, too, and look where it took him. (Do you remember Shakespeare?) You can't be a ghost because you're alive--and you're going to stay alive for a long time, God willing. And you're no mere vestige, because to me, at least, that word implies something there but no longer necessary. You live and are important as a testament, as a key, as a living path that I might take home, if I can overcome the dread of what I'll find at your origin. I am infected with fear, Petunia. I don't want to have been an evil man. What if we discover that my connection to you is sinister--that I was your Blutto sugar daddy in the holding pens while you were waiting for manufacture? That I was the Federal mole who turned you in? Jesus. Bessie is calling me down to dinner. April 28 Wyatt says there will be a mail train today. Good thing, too. Despite my microscribble, this will be a hefty packet. Right now, we're collecting the outgoing mail here at the Sheriff's Office. We'll take it down to the station when the train comes in and make sure it gets put aboard. Just another squirt of oil on the cogs of public order, courtesy of the Boss Earps. I didn't write more yesterday because I was called into the office for a premail powwow, then was sent down to the station for some empty transport sacks. When I got there the sun was setting: the sky was pure pink behind the mountains and the gravid moon already out and pearly white. Cochise is a dry, glaring daylight hell, but I find the nights here lovely. The temperature drops with the sun and there's a sense of serenity that floods the landscape with the dying light. Serenity and a transverse flow of vitality to the population. As the sun slips off to brighten the planet's anterior, the people of this ghetto come out and live. And some leave the cocoon of Sanctuary for the first time to take a few experimental flaps around their new habitat. I saw one such white moth yesterday. The station master had left the bags in a pile on the platform and I scooped them up, lifting my head to see a little stick-figure emerge from around the other side of the shed. It was a tiny person--puny is really a better descriptive--wearing white. He--she--I couldn't tell--was facing the sunset, taking a few wobbly steps away from me that made my heart sick to watch. I remember those kind of steps--coaxing each muscle to do its job, each joint to bend, each bone to support my weight--my body and mind in agreement that the shit had been kicked out us, but utterly clueless as to the reason why. 'Where a Newborn wanders, an Angel follows,' they say around here. I heard this one's voice before I noticed his form. He leaned against the clapboard shack, in the wedge of deeper night under the roof's overhang. The tip of his cigarette cherried as he inhaled. Rebel drawl. "Mr. Earp, I presume?" I adjusted the heap of sacks to balance on my hip. Tried to speak through the ache of memory. "Warren Earp." He stepped out into the twilight. The full white caftan and pants didn't hide the gauntness of hard manufacture. I imagined the x-ray shadows of ribs and knees and hips beneath skin. I imagined Snappy's naked emaciated corpse the day you and I were ordered to help carry the dead out of the boxcars. How you even knew Snappy was still alive, I'll never understand. I forced my mouth to quirk. "And you're Mr. Earp?" "No, I'm Boggs, actually." The smoke drifted up from his mouth in a slow haze. "Luther Boggs. They forgot to take my name somehow. I didn't have to borrow Wyatt's like a secondhand strumpet." The hollows around his eyes were deep and his words were molasses, but the Angel's dark pupils glinted life. He offered me his cigarette pack. "No thanks, I don't smoke." I shook my head, then tipped it to gesture down the track. "Is that your charge?" He glanced over his shoulder. "Yup. That's Amy. This is her first trip out of the nursery." I looked back at the frail figure on the platform. She was staring into the distance, it seemed, with her back yet to us. I felt this uncomfortable crawly motion in my stomach and thought about the first day at Simp camp when I stood staring at the razor wire. I still don't know why it fascinated me. I don't think there was any real reason, actually--I was amnesic and clusterfucked and just didn't know what else to do. Then you had the kindness to come and lay your hand on my shoulder. I'll never forget the warmth of your touch. I wanted to go to that woman, Petunia, and give her the same regenerative touch. I would have, if her Angel hadn't been there. "What do you think she's doing?" I asked, pulling at my shirt collar as though it was actually causing the constriction of my throat. Luther Boggs smiled at me wistful. "She looking for someone." He took another drag and blew smoke out of the corner of his mouth, stood silent and holy as the scent of burnt cloves finally traversed the few feet of still, flat air between us. "Aren't we all looking, Mr. Earp? And when we find them, we can redeem ourselves." I think I nodded. I know I mumbled "good night" and walked away. And I know I woke up this morning with one hell of a hangover. Call it a half horse-trough evening, Petunia. And the Moose saw some action, too. It's time for me to let this letter go. Jesus, if I don't hear from you.... Well, I'm on duty tonight. That'll put the kibosh on misery turning this Unboxing Night into a full horse-trough special. Yours, Sundance May 4 First of all, Petunia, I know that your ghetto's queen is not called Zulah Zulikah and she is not a six-foot-tall black woman. Virgil, whom I would choose to believe first on any day, says that she is a petite, pale person named Sylvia Godervia. The only truth in your claim, he says, is that she has coal black hair. I'd like to know, however, if you are pulling my leg about tutoring her son. Is this a child or an adult child? We don't have any children here. None have ever arrived on the trains and all our women's ovaries have been harvested. Thank you for the word pictures of the prairie and the people of Goderville. About your description of the Fill in the Blank Simp Trivia Contest that you organized. My guts are still hurting. One of girls was turning a trick in the room next-door. She pulled away mid-fuck to see if I was dying. When I read your reportage aloud she laughed until she swore she'd wet her bloomers. Pretty soon her John was there, too, and Bessie's husband, Jim--all of them stinking up my room with rose water and sweat and cigarette smoke while I read and reread and they doubled over, laughing. You know, Petunia, everything else can be borne, so long as we still laugh. Keep it up. Keep 'em laughing and one day you'll be king of Goderville. Maybe king of the world, if The Things inside the Lights can laugh, too. You asked about Curly Bill. No, Bill's hair isn't curly. It's blonde, long, and straight as a plank. And about his "gang": they're self-proclaimed resistance fighters. And by resistance, I mean bold strikes like filling Young Chancellor's hovercar engine with sugar. About six months ago, the governor outlawed them to the desert, hoping the sun, rattlers, or coyotes would do the deeds he didn't want blotting his conscience. Well, so far, the whole gang is sunburned and cranky, but otherwise hale. And now the peace officers of the area have to deal with pilfered supplies and Federal hullabaloo when the gang sets out to fleabite. For example, take last Tuesday. It was payday for the Bluttos. It might be similar in Goderville: on payday the garrison heads out to Tucson on leave. They're replaced by a garrison from Fort Apache or some other post. This rotation system keeps the Bluttos from rooting, from forming attachments. Well, last Monday evening, Bill's gang slipped into the governor's office and diverted the incoming e-cash to fuck-knows-where. No one noticed until the Bluttos tried to spend their pay in Tucson on Tuesday night and computers choked. And to garnish this devious dish, the same night, the gang slithered back into town and made off with the Young Major's laundry. I shit you not. It was damp off the line. Wyatt and Virgil spent most of the morning at the governor's office. "It wernt purdy," was all Wyatt would say. Virgil just sat at his desk and bit his lip. The rest of us went out back and belly laughed. It's a few hours later. I had to run some errands--get some more kerosene and write a letter for one of girls who works for Bessie. Do they hound you to write for them, too--the people in Goderville? I often wonder why some of us can read and write, some can only read, some can do neither. It seems so unorganized that I have to believe it's an unintended byproduct of manufacture. Anyway, ever since the mail started going through, scribe stands have sprung up all along Fremont and Allen Streets. It's good old- fashioned Capitalism. The folk around here will pay what the market can bear and desperation for outside contact is a heavy load compared to the FEMA plastic credit tokens in their pockets. I've been writing a lot of letters--not for credits, though. One of Bessie's girls or boys would have to turn three tricks to pay the going rate for a letter. I don't like that, Petunia. I live with these people. They're family. They're trying to survive as best they can, just like me. So I scribble for free. I've been going down to Sanctuary, too, to write for the Newborns. In fact, I've seen that woman again--the one I saw at the tracks. Amy (it's actually Aimee, I'm told). And Luther Boggs, her creepy Angel. Hell, I've got the paper and the time. Might as well give you the "scenic" version. Our Sanctuary is lovely old place--then again, it actually might be the same age as the new parts of the ghetto. Buildings around here take on a weathered air pretty quick. I recuperated inside Sanctuary's adobe walls, three feet thick. It's cool and dark and like heaven, Petunia. There's a shaded inner courtyard surrounded by a loggia. Smooth brick floors. The beds are soft, and loose white cotton gowns hide what's no one's right to penetrate. Everything is the opposite of the Factory with its frigid refinement rooms and hot airless cells, bleating alarms, and banging cage doors. In our Sanctuary, they bathe the Newborns in the courtyard in big wooden tubs. The soap's homemade, and it's scented with lavender, sage, and other flowers and herbs from a garden that the governor lets Doc Holliday irrigate. Can you smile any wider? You remember our talks about Sanctuary, right? Your fantasy was that it would be full of clean, honest smells; no sweat stench, no stink of blood or shit or rape. I don't know what you found in Goderville, but I lived your fantasy here with an Angel named Mary--an old woman with silvered hair in a long braid. She took care of me fine. I always smelled like patchouli, never had a five o'clock shadow, and whenever I cried she rocked me. I think I might have glommed onto Mary as a permanent mom if she hadn't suffered a stroke soon after I left the cocoon. When she died, I first met Virgil Earp. He was a pallbearer. Told me, "I guess Mary was just waiting for you to fly before she took off herself." I helped carry her box up to Boot Hill and left Mary in the cream-colored dirt. I've planted some cactuses there since then. Sanctuary isn't as crowded now as it was during my stay. The Newborns get lots of attention when they want it and solitude when they don't. When I went down there last week, Aimee was having the latter. I found Luther Boggs outside her room, his ass on the brick floor, back against the wall, elbows on his knees, taking a long drag off a clove cigarette. "Mr. Earp," he drawled. "Charmed to see you again." "Please," I nodded my invitation, although I have to tell you that my balls were considering a trip north. "Call me Warren." "I'll have to." Boggs's smile showed yellow front teeth. "As soon as anyone else comes by, we'll have a Confusion of Earps." I grinned. Ran my hand over the smooth skin of my scalp. "Only two Earps make a Confusion?" Luther Boggs patted the floor beside him on his right and stubbed the last red life from the cigarette on the bricks to his left. "Well, maybe it should be least three Earps. Unless they're Clones. In that case, the rule reverts to a duet." I laughed and decided the creep factor wasn't so high that I couldn't sit a spell. I was on my way home, having already used all the paper I'd brought--even brown wrappers from sugar and flour packages saved up by one of the Sanctuary cooks. I apologized that I couldn't write for him or Aimee. He waved an absolution, told me he had no one and that Miss Aimee was not ready for my services. I asked him what he knew of her, as a variation on the perennial, "So, what do you remember of the Time Before?" I swear, Petunia, it always reminds me of two dogs smelling each other's assholes. Boggs told me that Aimee was tattooed with CWA. Working with the Peace Commission, I've learned that CWA is a factory somewhere near what was Richmond, Virginia. I don't remember Richmond or Virginia, but Wyatt tells me it's east, near the ocean, that the city resisted the Federals and a general named Sherman burned it down. According to Boggs, Aimee has been at Sanctuary for about five weeks. She arrived nearly boxed (I think I might remember her Delivery--she was one of the last critical cases), then spent a week in Doc's private quarters while he made saving her life a robust crusade. Once she was stable, Boggs took her under his (soi-disant) "half-plucked stringy wings." He says he's lost a few more feathers since she became his charge. "Aimee sobs in a most plaintive manner," he sighed and lit another cigarette. Took a long drag while staring dead ahead. "Then she rages-- calls down the Holy Ghost and wants to know 'why, why, why did he do it? Why did he?'" "He?" Boggs just shrugged. "I embrace her, or I hold her down on the bed so she can't hurt herself or me, and I tell her she'll know why he did it one day. Yes, Mr. Earp--er--Warren, all be revealed." Then Luther Boggs blew a smoke ring, said that cloves don't taste shit like tobacco. "I remember tobacco. It was crisp and yet--hirsute. I miss that peculiarity. This body could care less, but I miss it." I cocked my head at him, but he didn't notice, just moved into telling me that Aimee has Distant Early Warning. She's one of those women who start screaming about an hour before the Lights slide across the sable sky. A few of Bessie's girls are Screamers. They just freeze up, eyes all wide and hard, and as soon as I see those mouths open, my blood turns to sludge. Nothing like knowing the night will bring emptiness with a hairy aftertaste like Luther Boggs's tobacco. Luther described how when the Lights last came, about three days after her delivery, Aimee sat bolt upright out of a coma in Holliday's bed. She was white-skinned and blue-lipped, with darkness around her eye sockets like front doors to a void that sent Doc calling on saints and grabbing for his hooch flask. Boggs said that Doc told him he'd never seen the dead rise before and he never wanted to see it again. And he nevermore wanted to hear that sound she made. Like a howler monkey. Now, I don't remember howler monkeys any more than Richmond, but I could imagine their wail. My gut shivered and I was sorry that I'd asked about Aimee. Felt pins-and-needles in my hands as Boggs changed the subject, saying he'd seen me with Mary in Sanctuary, that he had been surprised at my health compared to the others; it was a rarity to see a man delivered from the camps who weighed more than a hundred odd pounds. By then, the tingling had moved into my arms and legs and shoulders--my fucking beefcake shoulders, pulsing with lead electricity, pulling me down into whatever ooze I arose from through manufacture. Goddamned Boggs, he's as spooky as Virgil Earp. But Virge glows all over when he gets holy; Boggs just radiates through the ocular orifices. I felt his clammy hand under my chin and he tipped my face up to look me eyeball to beady, vibrating eyeball. "They broke you hard and fast, remade you, and moved you out." I was panting. Skin and bones sparkled. Muttered something like "nice theory." Then Boggs's mouth shaped a weird smile. "If you've got things to forgive yourself for, Warren, best get on with it. Go on now. Don't make the mistake I did and wait to become redemptive. Do it now while the life still flows in this body you own." My mouth went slack and the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up as the buzzing subsumed me, and the gray tunnel shot me straight through, bullet-fast, into recall. Quivering ashen night and I was running-- running hard and my lungs were burning. My feet ached in ridiculous shoes of rich leather, narrow and pointed. A long coat blowing. Tie flapping. A city somewhere and a gun in my hand and people coming out of row houses, banging on each other's doors to ask if the news was true-- how could it be true? I was headed for F--F something--a long, bouncing word and a long way to go but I knew I had to reach it. I had to find them and we had to get the fuck out of Dodge. Run, you sonofabitch. Run, Wa--War--Wal-- "Warren, come back. " Boggs's voice snapped my tether. "We don't want to trip the suicide function. That's enough for now." Boggs was still cupping my chin--holding my hand, too, while I sweated and took air in gulps and then just melted all over him. He let me cling to him like I did to Mary. When the worst ended, he lifted me to my feet. Boggs is a scrawny little weasel, but he got me up and held me there. "And the meek shall inherit the Earth." That just came to me from god-knows- where. Do you? I feel like I really ought to know where that comes from. Well, we ended up in the Sanctuary's big kitchen while Boggs brewed some chamomile tea. I usually love the aroma of the herbs that dangle in big bunches from hooks screwed into the ceiling rafters, but damned if the smell didn't make me sick then. I retched, finally, into an empty pot that the Angel held for me. "Oh fuck." I spat. Wiped my mouth on my sleeve. "I'm sorry." He'd already whisked the pot away, and patted me lightly on the back as he plunked a cup of water on the table beside me. "Just take little sips, Warren." I did. After awhile I sipped the tea, too. I asked him if he'd ever heard of a place called Dodge. He said no, he hadn't. I'm writing too large. I didn't see Aimee that day, but I did the next evening. I was down at Peace Officer Central, filling out paperwork. My hand was swollen from all the writing I'd done at the Occidental and Sanctuary, but somebody has to scribble out the reports that make Young Chancellor smile. We'd had a pretty shitty Saturday in Cochise. No use going into needless detail, but there were bee problems over in Bisbee and Lights over the frickin' Hooker Ranch and a whole shitload of missing cows turned up mutilated in our arroyo. One woman turned up, too. Henry Hooker's ghetto daughter, Missouri. They found her face down in three inches of muddy water. Drowned. There were a lot of reports to write and I was trying my best when Virgil pushed the door open. He'd just ridden back from the ranch and was covered in travel dust, still wearing his wide-brimmed hat, visor, chaps, cravat, and long canvas coat. Yeah, it is usually hot as H-E-double toothpicks, but getting crisped by the sun is bad. It's so dry here, we hardly notice that we're sweating, so we cover up, try to keep drinking water, and ignore the rest. Anyway, his role as a Cochise fashion plate aside, there was big ol' Virge, still managing to exude tenderness from beneath his protective clothing and his worn-leather facial skin, with his arm around the shoulders of this tiny woman wearing white. "You've got a visitor, Warren...I think. Honey, is this who you want to see?" She looked to me, looked back at him, and nodded. Determined. Virge dragged another chair up to my desk and helped her teeter over and sit. Even got into his locker and gave her his sandwich, saying that she "sure looked sore hungry." Then he whispered to me in mid-fuss that she'd come up asking to see "the man who writes" and he didn't have a clue where her Angel was and if he found the sonofabitch over in the Oriental at the faro table while his charge was off wandering, he'd coldcock the silly fuck. I might have smiled, but I was staring at Aimee. Elaina. Loraina. Jane. If I had chosen her name, it would have been one of those...something like them. She'd been very pretty. Before. I could see the residue of that beauty. Christ, Petunia, we're a race of ghosts like shredded curtains in windows. Last lingering traces. She'd been so lovely once. Could be again, my heart suddenly spoke. No, the violins didn't swell, like in those propaganda films they fed us in camp: a tide of strings at the moment the Simpleton realizes that what's been done to him was really, truly for the best--that in the ghettos was mercy and rebirth and the tending of Federal 'caretakers.' Uh-huh. It was just a pristine little knowledge blended with the pumping of my ventricles: Aimee could be herself again. Virgil waved a hand in front of my face. "Shit, Warren. The whole ghetto's gone loony today. Not you, too." "I-I'm okay," I told him. Cleared my throat. Aimee's attention had gone off. She was playing with the salt pork in Virgil's sandwich. He stroked his blond mustache, grunted, and walked away. Alone, and with her attention diverted, I could pull back to see Aimee in the real world's light. Enough arty-farty. You just want to know what she looks like. Well, she has eyes like blue lapis locked in the recesses of the sockets. (Why do all the freaky ones have blue eyes--or black eyes like Boggs's? Brown-eyed people are never full of hellspawns and demonsouls, or are bodhisattvas like Virge.) Aimee's probably little more than five feet tall and weighs about eighty- five pounds. Her skin was milkwhite once, but she's so suncooked it looks like someone purposefully burnt her, leaving red spots from popped blisters on her face and arms and the back of her neck. From the pitiful length of her hair, I can tell it's only been about four months since a camp welcoming committee shaved her head. What has regrown is mostly gray, but there are some threads of dull copper mixed in. She's got a bad case of the gaunts, but her face isn't much lined. I'd have to say she's in her early forties, but hell--she could be twenty-five for all that Factory changes us. Some of us. I asked her softly, "You want me to write a letter for you?" Aimee's lips firmed with resolution and she nodded. I got out my stationary, then had to rummage around in my locker for a fresh pencil. I've learned to use erasable lead when playing scribe. No one gets it right the first time. Back at my desk, I noted that Virgil's sandwich was gone but for crumbs on the waxed paper. Thought Aimee must have breathed in that sandwich. I smoothed the stationery with my hand, picked up the pencil and wrote the date and return location in the right-hand corner of the top sheet. "Who do you want to address it to?" I could see her mind working and her mouth trying to follow suit. "H- him." It was a teeny whisper--odd from below her resolute gaze. "Who?" I leaned forward, craning to hear. She took a deep breath. "Him. You know. HIM." "I don't know him. What's his camp name?" She shook her head. "It's HIM," she insisted. "What did he look like?" I asked, thinking that I could address her letter the way you did. You know: "Short guy with red hair, cauliflower nose. Missing fingers." Someone on the receiving end would figure it out. Aimee smiled for a long moment, enjoying an inner vision. But as soon as she tried to annunciate, the face she saw was gone. I watched her chest begin to heave under the white caftan and her eyes were filling, shining wet. "What about location?" I asked quietly, thinking I could still manage by sending her letter to the ghetto peace authority with a plea for assistance. "Do you know where he was delivered?" Her lungs were bellowing faster and faster. "Never mind," I placated. "We'll just write the letter and figure out the rest later." Petunia, you know how this turned out. We wrote no letter. There couldn't _be_ any letter because shadows can't connect, or closure come from recounting deeds that are husked and scattered. What the hell could Aimee do except exactly what she did? Stutter. Stop-and-start. Frustration. All that I learned was that whoever He was, He must have died trying to save Aimee. I was angry for not having done the deed myself. I'm redundant in this world. He was unique. Eventually, Aimee started to bawl. Boggs wasn't lying: her weeping was like a million years in purgatory. The spaces in between her sobs left me time to dwell on transcendence and to hope that holding her against my chest could further mine. Of course, you're without sin, so I'm not sure if you'll understand me. I wish I could tell you that Aimee calmed while in my arms, but no. Once grief petered out, her anger escalated. Pretty soon my hands were locked around her wrists--around thin bones that felt surprisingly like steel-- trying to stop her from tearing at herself, then thumping me. And damned if she didn't knee me right in the balls. I lost my grip on her then, and her deceptively frail form escaped while my stomach rolled ninety-degrees, along with my visual plane. While I was guppy-gulping, Aimee wiped everything from my desktop in a great imitation of God's Vengeance. Papersheet storm. Paperclip rain. Then I saw my own knees and Virgil's dusty boots, and heard him yelp and her shriek. All I could do was yip the words "mother fuck." Let's be brief: there were a few casualties. My eyes are still swollen and my lungs ache. Virgil's got some scratches down the side of his cheek with pretty emerald scabs. Aimee caught his blood spray right in the face. Happily, Doc says, she must've been exposed to Clone blood in the past. Her partial immunity kept her from dying. Luther hadn't been remiss, by the way. Miss Aimee sneaked out of Sanctuary without telling him. He thought she was napping in her room-- she'd even made a dummy shape on the pallet to fool him. Boggs says she's paranoid, that it's one of her charms. He's a good nursemaid, Boggs. He tended me quite kindly for the two days I was laid up in Sanctuary. But here's the icing, Petunia: that night, while I was under the influence of The Happy, Curly's gang overtly came to town. Wyatt said they spent the evening quietly drinking at Kate's. In fact, they were so subdued that he didn't rusticate them and no one actually noticed when they departed Tombstone. Wyatt told me that at around six a.m., he and Morgan walked out of the Earps' house, sipping coffee in the cool morning, heading for Allen Street to sweep the drunks off the boards before Young Major finished his breakfast. They came up on the governor's place and there, painted in whitewash along the upper story, right beneath Old Chancellor's bedroom windows, they read: 'Another Sister Falls. God Rest the soul of Missouri Hooker.' I could imagine the deadstop jingle of spurs, the curl of coffee steam in the air, and Morgan--a little pitbull with an incongruous whine--looking up at the squint-eyed blonde. "Awwwww, heeeel, Waaatt." I nearly snorted my vegetable broth. Wyatt cocked a yellow eyebrow, then sighed and said I should eat up and feel better because he needed me in two days. Henry Hooker wanted to bury Missouri on Boot Hill. He'd asked for a town funeral, Old Chancellor'd said yes, and his nephew was steaming mad. Well, that made my soup curdle. See, George Chancellor the Elder is the FEMA-appointed governor here. George Chancellor the Younger is the top Federal officer. Despite their shared names and genes, the two men are diametrically different, although I've heard that in youth the elder was also a strutting pair of jackboots. The Young Major has a pouty lower lip and the untempered certainty that whatever the Feds are up to in the outside world is Right (note the capital R). But we Simps are the results of misplaced mercy; he doesn't believe that the manufacturing process permanently molds the Merchandise. We're all destined to become dangerous recidivists. Now, here's one to move you from disgust to terror: Virgil told me there was a ghetto called Magic Kingdom somewhere down south. One of the resident Simps supposedly shook off the suicide function and taught other Simps to do so, too. News of this spread through Federal channels to Old Chancellor, and through him to Wyatt and Virgil. Before long, word came that the entire ghetto population was boxed. Not a single Simp left alive. The on-site garrison killed them all with some sort of gas that settled and leeched into the soil. There is no Magic Kingdom now. One of the Federal lieutenants stationed at Magic Kingdom was George Chancellor the Younger. Wyatt and Virgil think the Feds sent Young Major here for his uncle to rein him in. But he was promoted, not demoted for Magic Kingdom, and issued a commendation, according to Wyatt. So, Petunia, don't let anyone mock your local peace officers, or whatever they're called in Goderville (Knights? Merry Men?). We're keeping things nice-nice so we don't all end up wheezing last breaths of bloody foam. I'm on night duty this evening and the sun's going down. Time to seal this one up for the next mail train and walk to work. I'll think of you with every step. Love, Sundance P.S. Is that cough any better? P.S.S. I have to add this on--You know the sandwich that Virgil gave to Aimee? Well, she didn't eat it. She squirreled it away in a pocket of her robe. Luther found it later, when they were hooking her up to the toxin siphon to clean her blood. He said she would have added it to a secret hoard in her room. Said he has to go through her stash everyday to make sure nothing's rotting. Then Luther just smiled and called her "the sweet cross I bear." May 5 Petunia, you sly dog-- I just finished reading your letter of April 30th. You boffed Queen Sylvia. Unbelievable. No, I take that back. Not unbelievable at all. Everywhere you go, you've got them on their knees, waiting to suck. I'd be genuflecting right now if I was beside you. And stop it with the "lord knows why anyone gets wet and horny" crap. Yes, you are a verifiable "Ankhnaten" (I can't believe we both remember this bag-of- bones), but what you fail to understand (I cannot believe you just want an ego massage) is that no matter which ancient pharaoh your body resembles, you bring vitality to everyone around you. Even in the darkest days of our camp life--the blizzards, Starvation Week, the dysentery epidemic--you managed to turn our attention to something from which to suckle hope. I remember when--what was her camp name?--hell--that Amer-Indian woman. The day she was whipped for mouthing off. You found a crocus and held it in front of her eyes while she hung there to bleed for the mandatory hour, stripped to the waist in the March wind. You were showing her all the little details, the tones of purple on delicate petals, bright yellow stamen. I heard you say, "Nothing can stop the colors from resurfacing through the earth." She stared glassy-eyed, but she saw those colors and her spirit remained on the promise of your words. I wish I could remember what you were to me before. Nothing has changed; it remains blank but for the surety that we were connected...and that you had your awful smoking habit. It's why you're coughing, but you know that. And I don't give shit if smoking cloves is not the same as tobacco--I've already had that lesson in Luther 101--it's still inhaling carbon into your delicate breathing sacks. I don't want to hear this "sin of your choice" stuff, either. I've already told you that you are without sin. Do I sound peeved? I am. Worried, too. The funeral is tomorrow. The Earps are everywhere--riding back and forth between Hooker's and here, trying to make sure that everything is going to go smooth. You should see this town. I learned that Missouri Hooker started off her ghetto life as a Soiled Dove in Willcox. Some of the local ladies knew her slightly and are having a fine time publicly showing their grief. The Occidental, where I live, is draped in mourning banners. Even the street prozzies have got black crepe hanging from their cribs. Tomorrow, Hooker is going to distribute 300 mourning rings made of braided locks of Missouri's hair. My god, her corpse must have been shaved bald, don't you think? They are bringing Missouri to Tombstone tonight. She's going to rest for the evening in Schiefflelin Hall under the eye of an honor guard that Hooker's assembled. Morgan was over with Virge this morning at the ranch. Told me that he'd heard Henry promising Wyatt not a single world would be spoken about the injustice of his daughter's death, the blankety- blank cowards. The gurus would wax on metaphysics, he heard Hooker say, and not even glance at the Bluttos with their guns auto-aimed. But what if something goes wrong and we all die because of it? By goodgoddamn, somebody was going to screw up and get us all boxed. But Mavismotherofgod, just give Morg a chance one day he'll teach those sorry SOBs what it feels like to be in our shoes; he'll wup some Blutto backside.... I told you Morgan was incongruous. Bessie is trying to make me tie on a black armband. I think I'd like to make her eat it instead. I went over to Sanctuary this morning to check on Aimee. She's up, finally, and not too much worse for the clone blood fever. No, I did not bring my writing supplies with me. I found Aimee in a tub in the courtyard, up to her shoulders in bubbles, cursing out Luther as he poured a pitcher of water over her head. "Now, Miss Aimee, you carry on all you want, but you're getting your hair washed if I have to get some other Angels and even poor put-upon Warren Earp over there to hold you down while I do it." Luther tipped his head in my direction and she followed with her eyes. I watched her lips tighten. Hell, I thought, I'm forever The Man Who Couldn't Help Her Find Him. I smiled apologetically. Then Aimee smiled, too. She has a big, stoopid grin that brings light to her face, makes it a thousand years younger. She shook her head like a wet dog and told Luther to get on with it before she made him sorry. He frowned and pinged her in the middle of the forehead with his index finger. "Don't follow Luther Boggs to the devil, Miss Aimee." Her lower lip curled. Luther raised his brows high, harumphed, and went to pump more water. I ended up laughing, ended up spending a while with them, listening to them bicker and banter. When Aimee trashed the Sheriff's Office last week, I thought she wasn't capable of any real interface, but she is. What she can't seem to do is control her emotions. A lot of us have lost any ability to feel by the time we're delivered (how many walking cavities have you got in Goderville? We're full up). So, it's strange and refreshing to see a Simp with a core of feeling, unconsumed. Uncamouflaged. For example, Aimee wants to go to Missouri Hooker's funeral. Luther told her like hell if she'd walk to Boot Hill, weak as she is. She sulked, slump- shouldered, then gleamed all fiendish--said he couldn't stop her from going alone. He replied that Newborns couldn't go crawling without their Angel. That's the town's rule and Virgil (he stressed the name) would be around to enforce it. Her eyes narrowed, lips knotted, then another solar smile and guess what she popped up with? "Warren Earp will take me!" No, Warren Earp would be on duty and could not take her, I had to explain. Well, this set off a torrent of tears that dissipated to sunshine when Boggs glowered and conceded, "Maybe." I must have known children before, Petunia, because I know that babies do this, too--shift from sobs to giggles, fingersnap. Like little maniacs. That's Aimee right now. I had to pause to get ready for work. I need some new worksuits. The ones they issued me in camp are getting threadbare. Maybe I'll spend some credits on proper Helldorado garb. Maybe I'll grow a long droopy mustache, too, like Wyatt and Virgil's. My face still produces hair-- unlike my scalp. I might as well take advantage of it. Now I'm alone at the office. I'm supposed to mind the shop and do the reports while the others patrol or are at the Hooker Ranch, getting ready to sally thiswardly with Missouri's coffin. We're all ready for her. The Bluttos appear to be, too. Young Major has got them placed for high visibility all over town and they aren't suffering even a cross look. There's been several thumpings today. For spitting, one man got his jaw broken by the butt of a gun. Guess the Fed thought he was making a statement. On top of it all, a mail train is coming. I want to get this out to you. I sure hope I get something in return. Give your queen a pat on the ass for me. Sundance May 9 Jesus, Petunia, I'm knackered, but I need to put things down on paper. If they do read our mail, I'll probably be put on some Federal shitlist. Hell, if they read our mail, you'll never get this letter--but I'm going to take the chance and tell you everything anyway. Back on the morning of the 6th, I took the reports down to the Governor's Office, past black-armored Bluttos at every corner. The boardwalk was full, but less-than-exuberantly populated. People were keeping their heads down. Through the Spreading Chestnut's swinging doors, I saw Doc dealt into in a running poker game that's lasted more than a year. Nice to see the man away from his patients, but he looked ghostly, a cigarette quivering between his lips. His woman, Kate (the same one who runs the saloon) was behind him, draped around his shoulders. It looked like her weight, and it ain't much, was nearly more than he could handle. The governor's office is way over on Fitch Street at the edge of town. Beyond its elderly brick facade are the long, bland barracks and parade ground of the garrison, then, at a distance, the Simps' burying place on Boot Hill. I could see some folks up there, maybe digging Missouri's hole. The Bluttos wear climate-controlled body armor, so there's normally marching and other useless exertion happening on the parade ground just because they _can_, but the field was dead empty when I legged up. The door to the Governor's Office was open and before I reached it, I heard arguing. Came up quiet and stood outside. It was George and George. I caught glimpses of the Younger as he strode back and forth across the floorboards. With each heel thud there was an echo like a tame explosion in the pockets beneath the joists. The governor was sitting at his desk. He's a short, white-haired man, as fat as we're all thin. Bushy sideburns and blue uniform that was crisp and smart once, but has been much reduced by our desert existence. It took me a minute to understand the gist of the argument: the honor guard I mentioned earlier--the one Hooker put together--well, Curly Bill is part of it--is part of it right now, as I write. Seems Bill and Missouri were 'close.' In fact, the reason Bill's gang is still kicking is in part because Henry and his clan are fitting them out and putting them up at the ranch during bad weather. You know, Wyatt and Virgil _might_ have clued me in to this. Then again, they know I don't fancy Hooker's much. I fugued there once, bad, when they slaughtered a calf. They tell me I curled up like a doodlebug. I don't remember a damned thing after the knife peeled back the skin of that little cow's throat. Anyway, Young Major was marching back and forth, half insensate because the governor had okayed Bill's participation in the funeral. "The sonofabitch should be pissing while the noose chokes him off." "I don't consider stealing your underwear a capital crime, Georgie," the uncle replied. Told Young Major that it was the governor's job to keep us controlled, docile, and ready to be used if the need arose. If letting Curly Bill into town for the funeral cooled tempers and gentled grief, then it worked toward his mandate. "You're too kind to these vermin, Uncle George," Young Major scoffed. "You're soft." "Soft?" "Yes." I heard a grunt, then the governor's low retort: "You may think yourself an example of wherewithal against the Rebel enemy, my boy, but ordering subordinate officers to fire the gas canisters while sitting in a hovercar six miles outside the death zone hardly qualifies--at least not in my book. But then, you've never been inside a Factory, let alone run one." Youthful sarcasm syruped the nephew's reply. "Yes, yes, Uncle George, I know all about Cherry Hill--" "Yes, Cherry Hill," the old man's voice raised. "Cherry Hill earned its reputation. Why do you think captured Rebels invented all those clever ways to commit suicide rather than be shipped there? Why do you think Rebel leaders still needed by the Program were trusted to my revision? I didn't just sign the pay vouchers and order provisions at Cherry Hill, I remade those prisoners myself. I upped the electricity; I turned the wheel; I listened to them scream for pity, and when I had broken their bodies, I administered the drugs and adjusted the machines that rewired their minds! I did it with these hands--manufactured at least a hundred of the Simpletons in this camp alone. I invested myself in recreating them so they could live to serve the Project because it was my duty. Now it's my duty to watch over them as a father." I knew I shouldn't be hearing, knew I should run the hell away--well, first tip-toe a few yards and then pigsqueal zoot. But I was glued. Peeped around the door frame and glimpsed Young Major, arms crossed on his chest. "You give them too much freedom and too few examples of strict punishment. The discipline here is slack." "The Elders do not feel as you do, Georgie." Smug. "I've heard otherwise." "Then your informants aren't rimming the right assholes. Look here." I heard the hollow clink as the governor tapped on his computer screen. "This came this morning. They're sending second-line Clones here. second- line prototype-A Clones." Saw Young Major lean across the desk to squint at the monitor. "What?" "Yes. And they hardly send those models to trash ghettos, do they, George?" It was right then, Petunia, that I saw a pair of Bluttos swaggering my way. I didn't have any choice, but my heart was in my throat as I carried the reports through the dusty front room and to the door of the governor's workspace. Both men looked up at the sound of my footfalls--Young Major scowling, Old Chancellor smiling thin-lipped and prissy. "And here's one of my favorite fellows now. He writes the Peace Office reports, George, and I must say, he has a natural predilection for stating the facts succinctly, with an investigator's eye. He's proven well-worth the effort of his manufacture." The old man left me a pause in which to thank him, but my tongue felt withered. When I'd stared dumb too long, he lifted his hands for the stack I carried. I gave the papers to him, dropped my eyes and turned to go. "You--what's your inventory number?" the Young Major demanded. I looked back to see him observing me, slit-eyed. Told him DJT-1411. The Young Major nodded and gestured for me to go. I did. Fuck, I ran. The sonofabitch had remembered me from the train station. I don't want him to know who I am. The shakes got me, and then exhaustion took over. I fell asleep and it's now around five. A rooster smells the sunrise and is bellowing under my window. The little prick. To continue: I sprinted from the governor's to find Virgil at the peace office. He listened, solemn, petting his mustache. When I mentioned the prototype-A Clones, the lines in his forehead deepened. Virge said he didn't know what kind of Clones those are--maybe he used to, but he doesn't now. But, he added thoughtfully, "Sure sounds like we're gonna get us some new population." He told me that Wyatt wouldn't let Young Major dick with me, to calm down, go have a glass of hooch, and head out on patrol. I did. Actually, I had _three_ glasses of an amusing domestic blend and my body felt nice and loose by the time I started my rounds. Ended up bumping into Boggs and Aimee on the boardwalk by Kate's. He was holding a beat-up old umbrella to ward off the solar vehemence. Lord, Petunia, Aimee smiled so big, then flung her arms around me. "Hello, Warren Earp! Take me for my walk. I'm pissed off at Boggs. He sucks." "Now, leave the man alone, Miss Aimee. He has to work." The Angel tried to lever her off, but she just hung on tighter. I found myself hugging back, burying my nose in her hair, smelling lingering traces of soap and Doc's menthol rub for sore muscles. Holding her just felt so right--like it was my right. Like I had earned it somehow. "I want to go see the body," she whispered conspiratorially. "Nope." Luther shook his head. She turned to glare at him. "Devil ears! I want to see the body!" "Miss Aimee, you want to spend another night swaddled?" "I'm not going to fugue if I see Missouri Hooker's stinking body!" "How do you know that? Yesterday, you fugued when you saw me cracking seeds, and what the hell was that all about? You're still too shaky for all this. I don't wa--" "I don't care what you want! IDON'TCAREIDON'TCARE!" Aimee shouted, and I winced as all eyes--including those of the Blutto at the corner post--redirected toward us. Luther Boggs noticed the attention, too. Fumed in undertone, "Aimee, if gettin' you through this was not paramount to my salvation, I'd wring your neck over turkey dinner. Look at this." He frowned, held out his clenched fists. "You're making me devolve. Shame on you." Aimee's lower lip poked out at him. Boggs pointed at it. "You just put that away, Missy Earp. I'm not going to be tempted by you. You don't know what it's like when that gas starts bubbling up, starts burning your lungs when you can't hold your last breath of clean air no longer--" I shook my head. "What...? What are you talking about?" But the Angel ranted sotto voce, "--You can't know what it's like and I do, and I don't never want to go through those last moments again. I am not going to let you push me back to Hell, Miss Aimee. No ma'am. I shall not." Then Boggs told her that she was his sacred trust and he had to do right by her. Her daddy got him sent here to make sure she survived. As soon he mentioned her daddy, she burst into tears. Told the Angel to shut the hell up, that her father was dead, and shut up! She pulled away from me and launched herself at him. I stood, reeling from the drink and their peculiarity, thinking I should intervene. But they weren't attacking each other. Those two scrawny, gang-screwed people hugged, kissed, and cried instead. Well, it ended up that I agreed to take Aimee to see Missouri Hooker. Boggs chastened me not to let her have her evil way in everything and left us. As I watched him retreat--white cotton gown, flapping hemp sandals, bent-up umbrella casting limited shadow--I felt Aimee's hand slip into my own. I asked her what Boggs had meant about her father and she said she didn't know. I asked about the gas--I mean, what a weird synchronicity after hearing all this talk of Magic Kingdom. Aimee said Boggs told her he'd died once by breathing poison. "He died once?" I raised an eyebrow. Aimee shrugged. "Sometimes people die and come back. HE came back." "He did?" We weren't talking about Boggs anymore. She nodded, leaned close against me as we strolled. I felt her hip's motion down against the outside of my thigh. Aimee's such a little thing, but so full of pluck. "Once I helped him hide his blown-off head," she confided. "You did? And He came back from that?" "He always came back. They always thought they'd got him, but he kept coming back." I didn't add "until now." When I asked if today she could remember his name, she looked up at me, squinting into the sun. "Whose?" "His." "I don't know who you're talking about. Come on, Warren Earp. Walk faster. Holy Mary! Look at that lady's funeral weeds!" I told you the Tombstoners were decked out, Petunia. So were the folk arriving from the Hooker Ranch. Jet black everything--frock coats, hoop skirts, mohawks. Charcoal around the eyes. The number of mourners grew as we came up on Schiefflelin Hall. The line to view Missouri was pretty long, and although as a peace officer I could have jumped it, waiting gave me a chance to stand with Aimee. She didn't say much, but while we queued she held onto me, looked up with such intensity that I feared myself drunk enough to make a radical misassessment. When I traced her eyebrows with the pads of my thumb, I noticed for the first time that they're are colored like the copper threads in her hair. The awareness made a sudden vivid picture in my mind of what she had been before the Factory raped and beat and shocked and drugged away her beauty. God, I could just see her, Petunia--shoulder-length hair turned under at the ends, lightly freckled pale skin, painted lips. A full, healthy face. But her expression--there was no smile before my mind's eye. No giggle. No wicked glimmer in the eyes or gimmegimmenow scowl. Neither unreined sadness nor joy. She had inner light, but merely an accidental beauty masking tired determination. I leaned down and, very softly, kissed her new lips--rough, sunburned and cracked. Yeah, the hooch-ease spurred me on, but I would have done it anyway, sooner or later. Petunia, I think I love her. I think I always have. Once Aimee and I got inside Schiefflelin Hall and into the big ground floor meeting room, we saw Bill poised like a gargoyle at the head of the coffin amidst an orgy-storm of midnight crepe that swathed the windows and dipped down from the ceiling in inverse arcs of misery. Bill was fancied up in black, too, with his long yellow hair in twin braids, and thick black- framed glasses perched on a beaky nose--one ocular cracked and the opposite earpiece mended with silver tape. The hollows of his cheeks had been darkened by charcoal and five turkey feathers poked up from the back of his head. Me, I felt quite funerarily unfashionable in my patched dreary olive worksuit. (Well, at least _my_ glasses made it through the war intact.) As we got near the head of the line, Aimee was craning to see poor Missouri stretched out in her box. "Hey," she whispered to me. "She looks pretty good. No real visible decomp. No smell of putrefaction. She ought to mummy-up really nice out there in that hot dirt. Maybe we can dig her up in a few years when things are safer, then cut her open, and learn the real cause of death." It could have been the drink, the school boy's emotions jittering my breast, or the sick fear that someone in body armor might have heard what she'd said, but I laughed. Saw heads turn and trailed my guffaw into a cough. Curly Bill eyeballed us as we approached the coffin. Aimee pulled away from me and hurried to the corpse, her feet loud on the risers up to where the coffin sat. I avoided Bill's stare, stepped up beside her and looked down at Missouri. The woman hadn't been all that pretty in life, and death had done nothing for her. Her face was mottled by lividity, mouth pulled back by rictus to show a busted incisor. It seemed that her lids lay abnormally flat over her eyes. But her soft brown hair was nicely brushed and she was wearing a red satin dress that I'd seen on my favorite girl over at the Primadona Whorehouse. Satin isn't easy to come by. That gift was sure was touching...if it wasn't a stunt to get Celia Loreli more business, that is. Aimee pointed at the discoloration on the corpse's ankles and wrists. "Ligature marks. And look at that." "What?" I shifted nervously. Bill was still staring and the sniffling mourners behind us were creeping up impatiently. The tip of Aimee's finger traced the crescent of Missouri's fingernails. "There's green under there. Some bastard's got defense scratches. Missouri didn't go down quietly. Good for her. Penny and I fought, too. But she believed they were from space. I never did." I swallowed and grabbed her hand. "C'mon. Our turn is over." "No, I'm not done!" her voice hiked. I snagged her in an eyelock, snagged both her hands, too. Impressed with some sort of psychic dynamite that we needed to be history. Outside, I dragged Aimee around the corner of the building, under the shade of the roof's overhang. I pulled her against me. "You've got to watch what you say." Let my lips trace her ear after speaking my warning. I tried to make her understand that things were edgy now--edgy in general--and that any innocent mumbling could be heard as...well, you know. I don't need to explain it, Petunia. I expected Aimee to tell me off like she does Boggs, but she lifted up on tiptoes to kiss my cheek, then told me I'd never been much good at helping them find the truth, anyway. "Helping who?" I asked her. "When?" "In the Before Time. You never helped us all that much, but we didn't get mad because you were always so good at making us happy." My headshake was a reflex. "Yes," she nodded to counter the denial. "Think back, back, back. Before The End came. Back when we still had our baby." "What?" My hands locked on either side of her face. Although I was squeezing too tightly, she was smiling sweetly, gently--like you'd humor a child or a fool. "Aimee, what are you saying?" I demanded, feeling sudden sweat, but no heat. I felt sick. Cold. Something niggled at the back of my mind--wiggling through gray matter. "She was a good baby." Then Aimee's lower lip sank, started to tremble. "I want her back. I want Him back. I want you." And then the tears came in a great rush, Petunia, and she clung to me weeping brokenhearted. I just soothed her, stroked her back, feeling her vertebrae like pebbles beneath the path of my hand, feeling birdcage ribs against my stomach, the bones of her pelvis poking my thighs. Felt glittery shivers as I saw myself comforting that other, softer woman with the red hair. The hands that petted her were stained with blood. More dried blood on her cheek--on the sleeve of my shirt...a small bloody handprint. I hardly remember what happened next, Petunia. A lot of shouting and the blue sky tilting and Curly Bill's Grim Reaper face above me (the Reaper is the Lord of Death, in case you don't remember). Pretty soon, I saw Virgil's face, too. It was Virge whom I could hang onto, use as a rock from which to reel myself in--or start to, until some garrison medic jabbed a spike into my ass cheek. The Federals don't like us Simps fuguing in the street. Whenever one does, folks try to hustle the Simp to a private place, but if that fails to happen fast enough, a Blutto starts talking into his headset and a needle man appears. The injection, it seems, is a cocktail of sedatives and the mind-wipe drugs used in the Factory. Simps go out quick and stay out, and when they wake up they usually can't recall what got their underwear in such a bunch. Usually, but not always. This was one of those times. I didn't forget. I'm writing to you from Sanctuary, where I woke up the next evening. Missouri Hooker had already been consigned to Boot Hill. Yup, I missed the service, but Doc would soon tell me that things had gone well. Rather blandly, actually. Nobody'd been shot down--not even a blue flare fired. "But, " Holliday would add, "the night is a dew-eyed virgin." I felt like crap in a blanket when I first woke up. A brownish-gray headache. Sore everywhere.... There was a candle on the window sill. I watched it flicker, trying to remember myself. As I gradually recalled being Warren Earp of Tombstone, I began to wonder how much I'd drunk or who had thumped me. Eventually Boggs came into the dim little room and got me up off the soft pallet on the bricks. I didn't remember him at first--but then it all clicked. I smiled. "Hi Luther." "Hi yourself, Warren." Then he ranted. Ranted and ranted. I just sat where he'd put me, in a rocker under the loggia's roof, and grinned big and drooly. Eventually Doc came by and shined a penlight into my eyes, tested my reflexes, made me move all my fingers and toes and count to one hundred. Not all once, of course. Doc appears a debonair wastrel: goatee and thin mustache, fancy embroidery on his robe, a small gold loop earring, and an decided air of vampiric dissipation. But Holliday is utterly devoted to life. I told you how he worked to save Aimee--he's endeavored so for many others; the fine handwork on all his robes has been done by grateful Newborns. Holliday dragged up another rocker, sat and started to ask me questions, and drip by drip, it all came back. Or, as much as I've told you, anyway. At one point, I got distracted by a movement off to my right--turned my head to see Curly Bill standing in the passage to the kitchen under the diffused light of a pierced-tin lantern. Boggs brought Aimee. She slumped into Doc's vacated rocker, looking like road kill. I wasn't the only one who had gotten drugged down. We had apparently engaged in a fugue duet. Aimee was purely herself when they tried to test her and see what she remembered. She bent over and covered her ears, yelling that she couldn't hear Boggs or Doc, couldn'thearthemcouldn'thearthem, just get the fuck out of her face! It was finally established that Aimee remembered nothing beyond our kiss. Even in my numb emotional state, I was glad she hadn't forgotten it--doubly glad when she looked at me and smiled, then got up and sat on my lap. She snuggled in, draping her legs over the arms of the chair and resting her head on my shoulder. After awhile, I noticed a gathering on the other side of the courtyard: Doc, Boggs, and Curly Bill. Then Wyatt and Virgil arrived. There was conversation with bodies expressive, but voices kept low. Now and again, one of them gestured toward us. Aimee had fallen asleep, was breathing with a phlegmy sound in her throat. I let my head rest against the chairback, dozed off myself. Doc had been right about the dew-eyed virgin thing. The evening after Missouri's Funeral topped any Unboxing Night we've ever had in town. Before morning, Sanctuary was filled by folks with buffaloed heads and alcohol poisoning, bleeding slashes from stumbling through glass windows, paralysis from breathing too much red flare smoke. When the casualties began to come in, they tucked Aimee and me away in her room. I awoke again and again to crying, cursing, and clattering out in the courtyard. Aimee sawed logs through it all, but she wouldn't let go of me--hung on and sniveled when I tried to change positions. All right, Petunia. I know what you're waiting for. Surely, Aimee and I share a past. We must. We _do_. I've realized over the last few days that my love for Aimee is not new, jiggley, and exciting. It's old, weathered to the point of permanence. I'm certain of it. And I feel relieved, somewhat, by the realization that whoever I was before, I was capable of love. Aimee doesn't remember what she said about the baby. When I brought it up, she diverted her reply into chatter about wanting to have a baby. She doesn't realize she can't do that now, that none of the women here can.... And, yes, of course, Petunia, I am wondering if I was the father of that child whose bloody handprint I still vividly see. I am also left to conjecture about Him--Aimee's Him. Petunia, I've been thinking.... Might _you_ be Him? I know. It seems--well, too hopeful, too good to be real. But maybe we were connected as family and have survived to find each other. I mean, Jesus, there have to be some happy endings--right? I wish Aimee could meet you. If she recognized you then we might know for sure. Mail train today. Time to send this one out. I hope to get word from you. There wasn't a letter on the last train. Since I'm already in Sanctuary, I can't put myself there if I don't receive anything, but.... Yours, Warren May 11 No letter. Where the hell are you? I left Sanctuary, went home this morning. Allen Street still looks like a used-up harlot from Missouri Misery Night. When I walked up, Jim and some of the regular Johns were putting new front windows in the Occidental. Jim pointed at dark marks on the clapboard wall--the fingerings of fire--and explained that some rowdy geezer had gotten torched by a Fed right there. Poof! The poor sonofabitch had gone up like a January Christmas tree. Jim said he hadn't seen anyone flamed since the day he was captured by the Feds at the Battle of Skyland Mountain. "Phew." He shook his head. "Sure was a stench." I thought I could still smell it. Made my stomach list. About twenty-five people died on Missouri Misery Night. That's about one for every year of living Missouri Hooker had. She's got herself quite an afterlife household. The Feds are still on high alert, but no one's pressing them. The population looks self-abused and ready for a quiet nap on the porch swing while somebody else buries the fresh dead. Curly Bill's gang did cause a jot of trouble last night. They broke into a still on the outskirts of town, got drunk, and yowled at the full moon. No one chased them off until they fired some blue flares at the moon's silver sphere, hanging in the sky like a blank Simp's face. Soon afterward, Wyatt's posse rode past Sanctuary and the ruckus stopped. 10:15 PM Aimee has been here. Boggs spent the evening down in the saloon while we stayed in my room doing what we did every night in Sanctuary. No, Petunia--no sex. Not yet. We cuddle. Sweet, huh? Yeah, it is sweet. I like it, although I do have to harness the moose in my pants after she's gone. Tonight we sat by my open window enjoying the cool air, and because no one was screaming out warning, it felt safe to look at the stars. I've been asking Aimee several times a day if she can recall anything from before. Of course, curiosity motivates me, but I also do it for her. I can listen and hold onto her memories, even if she cannot. When she's better--more integrated, more comfortable as her new self--she'll appreciate that someone collected these flecks of auld lang syne. Tonight, Aimee remembered some things about her early childhood: a dark-haired mother who made her eat string beans against her will; a dog who clawed a hole through the backdoor; an airplane trip with noisy, excited siblings; a father who read from a novel; and one name--"Aayrab." When I asked if she could recall anything about me, Aimee said that I was stern and "always told them 'use the book.'" I wondered if it was the same book her father read from, then I had to swallow sudden fear and disgust that I might _be_ her father. When I asked, however, she looked at me wide-eyed and snickered. Thank God. I also asked about Him. Aimee said that the lights had taken Him ever since he was a boy. That they took his DNA and made Clones and put a monster inside him to eat other monsters. Says that she'd pulled their monster out of him once before realizing it was better to leave it asleep along his spine. Leaving it meant he would live, "even if the monsters ate all the other people." Yes, I know that what she says raises so many more questions, but I can only probe nonchalantly. I might trip her suicide function. Anyway, this stuff about the monster inside Him--does it mean anything to you? What's DNA, by the way? I don't remember. When I asked her, she'd already forgotten. May 12 Boggs came to see me today. He sat me down in a booth in the saloon and over twin cups of rusty-black coffee, demanded my "intentions" toward Aimee. I cocked my head, forehead furrowed. "Aww, don't tell me you don't know?" he whined, thumping his tin cup against the tabletop. A little splatter on the wood where the liquid landed. "Don't know what, Boggs?" "Aimee says she's leaving Sanctuary and she's living with you. She's coming out tomorrow--says it's Holy Day Sunday and that's the best day to be born again." It was the first I'd heard of Aimee's rebirth, Petunia, but I was not averse to the idea--just concerned about her timetable. Boggs got into a tizzy, but when he calmed we were able to talk it through. Yes, I told him, I want Aimee; I want her with me for however many years I have left. But no, I said next, I wasn't ready for her and she was not ready to leave him, and maybe she never quite will be. We agreed that I'd ask for a town lot close to Sanctuary and start work on a house. When it was done, then she'd leave the cocoon and come to me. Now we just had to convince Aimee to be born on another--later--Holy Day Sunday. I went to see Morgan Earp. He's in charge of the Town Lot Commission. I expected to find him in the peace office, but one of the other deputies told me that none of the Boss Earps were in, that if I needed something I'd better go over to their hacienda. The look on his face was queer, but I was conceptualizing adobe dream cottages, and just dumpity-dumped toward the Earps' big house on Fremont Street. Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil live there with their multiple ghetto wives and adopted grown children. I've got a good view of the hacienda from my window at the Occidental. Some evenings, I see them up on the flat roof, talking or playing mournful guitars. When sound carries right, I've heard them sing about the Lights swinging low, coming to carry them home. I guess the Clones believe there's a Heaven of some kind up there in the midnight black. When I arrived at the hacienda, no one answered my knock but I heard voices through the window of a room on the second floor. Knocked a bit louder. Still no response. Then a woman's shout from above, "Come on in, for chrissake!" I followed the voices up a staircase toward one of the rooms at the far end of the hall. I'll save you the descriptive journey to what I found, Petunia. Wyatt was in that bedroom, flat on his stomach with a blood containment plaster on his back, Earp women hovered over him wearing biohazard protection masks, and Virgil sat next to his brother, holding his hand while Wyatt moaned, soft and high, like the newly Delivered often do in their distress. I smelt the metallic stink of Clone blood but no spray hung in the air, nothing burned my lungs. Covered my mouth and nose, despite. I was stunned. There was the man upon whose shoulders our promise of a new life rested, openly suffering. It scared me shitless. Virgil finally looked up, did a small doubletake, then spoke quiet and droll, "Oh. Hullo. You wasn't who we expected." "Who is it, Virge?" Wyatt's eyes were squeezed shut. His face was sweaty and white. "It's just Warren, little brother," Virgil soothed. "We was going to invite him over anyway, might as well be sooner than later." "I came to see Morgan." I said stupidly. One of the women cursed, then pulled off her hood and threw it down. Morgan wasn't fucking home, she spat. He was in the Hoosegow. I blinked and stuttered "Wh-what?" but she was yelling at the others, telling them to deal with this dumb sonofabitch who'd wandered in from the road. "Now, Mattie, don't displace on innocent people," Virge chastised, but disharmony bloomed as Wyatt yelped in sudden pain and swore at the women tending him. One started to weep quietly while Mattie cursed Wyatt in return, and (as the cherry on top) a yellow Labrador poked its head from beneath the bed to bay in baritone. "Somebody get that goddamned dog out of here!" Wyatt shouted, then turned his face into the pillow. Virgil grabbed onto the mutt's collar and dragged it out, gave it a shove toward the door, and captured me with an arm around the shoulders. "C'mon, Warren. Let's go." The dog padded ahead of us, nails clicking, down the long hall and the stairs. It howled again, then collapsed in a heap by the front door with its head on front paws. Virgil regarded the dog with arms crossed on his chest. When it stayed quiet, he looked toward me, began to explain. The other night when Curly Bill's Gang shot at the moon, they did it with Morgan's stolen flare gun. The Blutto patrol found it out there in the dirt the next day. Flare guns can be lethal weapons, and Morgan's one of only three Simps allowed to carry one, so losing it to the Gang was a capital offense. As Young Major was fixing to string Morgan up, the brothers hurried to Old Chancellor, who rolled his eyes and lumbered over to the Fed barracks to ixnay the necktie party. Technically, however, Young Major has the right to mete out punishment. He decided that after a public hanging, the next-best fun was a whipping. Virge and Wyatt argued that Morgan couldn't take it. His health just isn't that good. "Well," Virge sighed, "Young Major told Wyatt that _he_ could take the whipping for Morgan, or get his ass fucked by the regiment instead, if he'd like. Wyatt said, 'Fair 'nuf, I'll take the whipping.' All the old man could do was forbid a public punishment." Young Major gave Wyatt a fifty lashes in the privacy of the Hoosegow's inner courtyard. Morgan had to watch. Fifty lashes. Damn. Twenty would have killed a human. Once I got five at the Factory as reinforcement. As they tied me to the lashing post, I remember not feeling not just fear but utter frustration. They'd taken my identity, my dignity, my health. Whipping a broken man like me--I was no threat to them any longer. I'd become nothing. I couldn't even remember my goddamned crimes. Sorry my writing is getting shaky. My hand's cramping up. May 14 Well, Morgan's been released from confinement and I have a town lot about 100 yards from Sanctuary's gate. Jim and some of the peace officers are helping me build. We marked the foundation today, cleaned it of scrub, and started leveling. There'll be two rooms--a living space and sleeping area. You know, I do like the brick floors in Sanctuary and Doc's got an unused mound of them out behind his garden. I think I'll ask if he's willing to part with some. Wyatt is already up and moving around, albeit slowly, leaning on the arm of an adopted son. These Clones and their accelerated healing--you push 'em down and they pop right back up like a...a...I don't know what I'm seeing. It's a springy clown. Maybe you know what it's called. Anyway, he walked by this morning, and paused to watch us work. Holliday came out and berated him for standing in the afternoon sun. Wyatt told Doc to shut up. "Then bake away," the robed man replied with a elegant wave of dismissal. "You're a daisy if you don't land on your ass. Newton, son, bring your father into my place when he needs attention." Holliday spun heel and cut back across the garden. Shortly, I saw Wyatt sway and Newton took him inside. A little later, Boggs and Aimee brought us cool herb tea. While we gulped it down, Aimee spun in circles on the patch of clean, flat dirt, exclaiming, "I love my house! I love my house! Oh thank you, Warren Earp!" Damn, she makes me smile. May 15 A mail car came unexpectedly today, attached onto the back of a Merchandise train. I pawed through the mail sacks as soon as we heaved them into the office, but there was nothing from you. I can't help but wonder if you're getting my letters. Maybe the Feds are reading them and making a fat file on me. Or maybe something's happened to you. With every day that I'm not corralled and trotted off to the gallows or Rehab, my belief grows that its the latter. Shit. Petunia, damn it, if I were to lose you now, it would be a terrible thing. The more I learn from Aimee, the more I am convinced that you were Him. You can't return to the Bright Origin until we know that for sure, and preferably not 'til long afterward. Last night, in the quiet, while Aimee and I lay on her pallet holding each other, she was able to describe Him somewhat. She said that he was about my height, with dark hair. Said he reminded her of a "boy cat," whatever that implies--but I don't see any of it as inconsistent. Your hair must have been a deep brown before it turned gray. And you're tall. Pretty lithe and limber for such an old coot. I can believe that Aimee spoke of a younger, pre-Factory Petunia. She also described his temperament. He often deserved a good punk slap, she said (like when he ran off and got notoriety for finding some old ship), but he was an endearing man, and we both loved him. He was funny and "very kind to people with hard lives." I don't know about the punk- slapping part, but the rest of her description sounds like you. I do wish you would write and tell me if anything resonates. Do you possibly recall stumbling across the carcass of some seafaring vessel? May 20th Another two mail trains have come and gone and still nothing. My worry is turning into panic, but I will try to write as if my guts weren't cinched in an ice-block knot. I hope the image is graphic enough to persuade you that if you _can_ write, you'd better. The house is coming along. Aimee's been down with influenza. It took Wyatt down, too, just a day after he got back to work. He vomited and passed out right on the Allen Street boardwalk. That was scary. No one-- not even the other Clones--thought Clones could catch the flu. The people of Tombstone have gone so far as to form a prayer circle around the hacienda to speed his recovery. Having the sheriff off the streets is unnerving everyone. Sure, they love Virgil. They love him like a pastor; Wyatt is like God. When the Lord isn't walking the streets, folk begin to fear and doubt. Consequently, there's been a lot of drinking and a lot of broken heads. Bill's gang has taken advantage of Wyatt's absence. Somehow they "liberated" the FEMA warehouse of every blessed roll of crapperwipe in Tombstone and got real arty at places around town connected to the Feds. And wouldn't you know it, that morning, while everyone was wandering around looking at the pretty streamers, it rained for the first time in two months, so we didn't even get to collect the goddamned stuff for reuse. I was one of the ones who had to clean the globs of asswipe off the Governor's Office. Let me tell you, clotted woodpulp bakes to brick like concrete. And I got to hear the taunts from the Bluttos that there'd be no more paper delivered 'til the end of summer and too bad there isn't much around here in the way of leaves. Ha ha ha. If I ever get a hold of Curly Bill, I'm going to kick his butt good. Write me or else. I mean it. Warren June 17 You're goddamned right I'm pissed at you. Leaving me hanging for nearly two months while you--what the fuck were you doing? You went on a "progress" with Queen Sylvia? So, let me get this straight--a progress is where queeny-pie and her court canter from settlement to settlement and enjoy the hospitality of the local dukes and counts? And you were so busy riding your cockhorse between Banbury Crosses that you couldn't even drop me a note? You scared the piss out of me, you bastard. And yes, you're right that it's good I am forming attachments here. God help me if I was sitting around pining for letters from you. And stop smiling apologetically. I know you are, so knock it off. And put out that fucking cigarette. Well, from what you say in your letter, you and Sylvia are an delightfully odd pair. As mad as I am at you, I still laughed at your description of the formal dance where you stepped on her train (I've got this mental picture of a fat, big-lipped queen with a red heart on her belly, and she's shouting "off with his head!" Any ideas?). I'm glad Sylvia was able to tell you what "auld lange syne" means. Honestly, even as I wrote the words, I wasn't sure myself. It's reflex vocabulary and I just go with it. Maybe Sylvia can tell me what I wrote above--the "cockhorse" thing. I'm clueless. Glad to hear that the royal meandering revealed all is (mostly) well in Goderville. The crops you grow must be feeding the North--God knows, the whole South looked poisoned from my boxcar vantage. FEMA has a vested interest in keeping the Simps of your ghetto content. I was very sorry to hear about that stillborn baby, however. I can imagine the obsession that woman's pregnancy caused, and the general grief when it was born deformed and dead. So, the queen's son is a young Clone? (You called him a Hybrid, but I think we're talking about the same thing. Green blood is the giveaway.) In the time you've been teaching him, have you noticed accelerated aging? Virgil told me he thinks he "growed up mighty quick." Thinks all Clones might. A jack-in-the-box! Yes, that's it! Queen Sylvia comes through for us again. Today was a Holy Day Sunday, and I walked Miss Aimee Earp across the threshold of our new home. It's as fit a place as I can make for her, Petunia. I rounded up what I could with my credit tokens--the kind of things you need to get by: a stove, pots and pans, a couple of quilts, lanterns, tin plates and cups. Virgil's adopted daughter Sadie turned out to be quite a carpenter, too. We've got a settle in front of the fireplace that will box off the heat (I told you there are cold days in hell), a table and chairs, shelves, a dry sink and a cooling box. I built a coop and a fence for three chickens Bessie gave me.... That was a sad parting, Petunia. Bessie cried and hugged me tight with her thick, muscled arms, then pressed a bundle against my chest. No, it wasn't the chickens. They were already in their pen. It was two outfits for Aimee that she and the girls had sewn. That got me good. I sniffled and promised I'd come round every day to see them, told her I loved her and Jim and the girls, did everything short of calling her "mommy." Aimee is asleep on the haytick. In the quiet light of my lantern, her naked body looks gold and healthy. Shadows hide the scars and relaxed unconsciousness masks the rage and grief I saw just awhile ago. It was a hell of a wedding night. Aimee started off saying she was game to try, and at first things went well. I stroked her back, kissed her, nibbled my way along her clavicles. Seemed like we were moving in the right direction, with our breathing growing louder, skin getting sweaty, and the Moose poking her stomach and thighs. I fixed on one of her nipples. It was dry and rough in my mouth and her flesh slack, but I had the damnedest sensation--recollection--of caressing and sucking the silk-soft nipple of a round young breast. Of feeling like I shouldn't because another man owned it--then remembering I had to flush the load of crap I'd learned in childhood, that this woman had chosen us both, and that the man and I had chosen each other, too. Separate lines--her and Him, me and her, Him and me--had joined, and it was right. I was buoyed by ecstasy, Petunia--because I want so to believe you were Him. If you are, then we all loved equally, like a triangle. Equidistant. Equal love. That sudden understanding drove me to push ahead perhaps faster than I should. I burrowed my knees between her legs and pressured them open, sucked hard on her lip while I made to angle myself in.... Suddenly saw stars. Aimee was pummeling me, thrashing and shouting. Christ, the profanities she knows. I struggled with her, trying to dodge her blows, murmuring "I'm sorry" then shouting it when the words had no effect. Aimee'd slipped into a full- blown freak-out fugue--the kind both of us had on the street the day of Missouri's viewing. The things she was saying, Petunia--no, not saying-- screaming. "Not again" predominates. Aimee also sobbed a name. "Moldin! Moldin, help me!" It sounded like Moldin, anyway. I fought her down to the mattress, hoping that she wouldn't invert my scrotum before I could roll her up in the blanket like the Angels do in Sanctuary. I did it before she did me--got her swaddled, held her tight in my arms while she bucked and struggled and threatened to kill me or whoever she thought I was: her rapist, her Manufacturer, the black shadow fallen across her old life. Aimee went limp. I thought she'd overloaded, but just when I'd settled her onto the haytick those blue eyes popped open and her teeth bared. Her faint had been a ruse and I was staring into the maw of a scapegoat with the mind to retaliate. Aimee thumped me good, Petunia. Clawed like something prehistoric. Scrambled to her feet, threw the wooden chairs, and lobbed the frying pan. She ran outside naked, through the night, over the rough ground toward the silhouette of Sanctuary. I followed, buck nude myself, with the Moose still up and bobbing and my pale ass mooning the moon. When I reached her, she was sucked up for protection against Luther Boggs, wiggling like she wanted to get beneath his skin. He wore a baleful frown. Spectral dark hollows under his eyes and cheekbones. Didn't say a goddamned word to me as I stood there, she wept, and the candlelight wobbled. I went home, washed my feet in the footbath and picked a thorn out of my heel. I put on my worksuit, righted the chairs, sat at the table, and wanted wholeheart to hunt something dead. Boggs brought Aimee back a few hours later, her body hidden by a clean white gown. I met her on the doorstep. She smiled at me, shrugged, and went into the house. Boggs took a long drag on his cigarette and shook his head. "It ain't gonna be easy, Warren. Salvation never is." "What is it with you?" I snapped, wanting to slam my fist into the adobe wall or his face or my own face. "All I hear from you is about salvation. Just what the fuck is your deal?" Boggs's grin was eerie. Smoke slipped out through thin lips. "I am the ghost of a very bad man." "Aren't we all," I scoffed. "Nope." Boggs pursed his lips then relaxed them. "If that was so, there'd be no scale upon which to measure second chances." "So, what you believe is--you believe that this new life of ours is a clean slate--a fresh chance to get it right? That sounds like the shit they fed us in camp. You didn't buy into that, did you? You really don't believe that the Feds and FEMA and the Lights are going to raise a finer world? You don't begin building paradise by doing what they did to us--to Aimee. Shit," I hissed. "Maybe you and I were bad men, Boggs, but I know goddamn well she was no bad woman." He tossed away his spent cigarette. The ember burned weakly on the dirt as he leaned against the door frame. "Warren, I know my crimes. I can recall them like I know my own name. I killed people. I murdered my family. At the end of my life, someone showed me the path away from damnation. From the minute I died, I starting following her, living in her brightness. You know who I mean." "You're talking about Aimee. You knew her before...you knew her in the camp." My shoulders were so stiff. I let them sag. Rubbed my own neck. "I thought you said her father sent you." Boggs nodded. "Cap'n has friends in high places." "I see." "No, you just think you do." The bastard smiled. "Tell me, Warren, have ever you recalled one tiny thing to prove you were a bad man?" I had to admit that I remembered nothing solid, then one of those weird empty quiets set in. Silent soulessness as I floated, as it congealed, then a bitter burst: "I failed. I fucking goddamn failed! I couldn't protect Him or save Him or the child or her...or the fucking world! I couldn't stop it. The day--it came...oh shit, we couldn't stop them! We tried to fight but they caught us at Cold Harbor...." Cold Harbor? My recollection rushed away suddenly, like it had poured into the earth, leaving me to shrivel in tears. I hung onto the killer Angel. "Did you know me in the Before Time?" I asked, my voice thick. I sounded plaintive. Pitiful. I was ashamed to sound like that. Boggs was rubbing my back as I clung to him. "No. But I know someone who did. You just be patient awhile. He'll be around soon." Color me stupid, Petunia, but I believe him.