Prayers to Broken Stones (14 page)

Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob closed his eyes and smiled. “But I read to you also from John 3: 16, 17,” he said. “I find no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” Brother opened his eyes and said, “Amen.”

“Amen,” said Old McCarty. “Let’s see what Santa brought us this year.”

Conversation and laughter resumed. Tara cuddled next to Brother as the Clan gathered around the tree. “I’m afraid you won’t have a present,” said Tara. Tears filled her eyes. “Santa brought the presents on the second Sunday of Advent. I guess he didn’t know you were coming.’

“It doesn’t matter,” said Brother. “The tree and presents are pagan customs. There is no Santa Claus.”

The girl blinked but her nine-year-old brother Sear chimed in, “He’s right, Tarie. Uncle Lou and the hunters get this stuff when they make the November voyage to the warehouse. They keep it hidden up on the twenty-seventh floor. “I’ve
seen
it.”

Tara blinked again and said in a small voice, “Santa brought me this doll that I just got. Sometimes he comes back on Christmas Eve to bring us canned fruit. Maybe he’ll bring you something if he does. You can share my doll ’til then if you want.”

Brother shook his head.

“Hey, look!” cried Sean. “There
is
an extra present.”
He scrambled under the tree and came up with a blue-wrapped box. “I bet it’s extra ’cause Uncle Henry died last month an’ they forgot not to put it out.”

Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob started to return the present to its place but the Holy Spirit spoke to him then and he began to tremble violently. A hush fell on the group and the Clan watched as Brother calmed himself, tore off the wrapping, lifted a leather sheath from the box, and exposed a long blade to the light.

“Wow!” breathed Sean. He grabbed a yellowed pamphlet from the box and read aloud. “ ‘Congratulations. You are now the proud owner of a Christian Survival Network LINAL M-20 Survival Knife. Each LINAL M-20 is a whopping twelve inches long and yet is so perfectly balanced that it cuts and thrusts like an ex … exten
 … extension
of your own hand. The LINAL M-20 blade is crafted entirely of 420 mo … molecular stainless steel and is tough enough to split wood or shatter bone. In the pom … pommel … of your LINAL M-20 is a precision RX-360 Liquid Damped Compass. Unscrew the compass and you will find a complete Survival Network Kit including a packet of waterproof wrapped matches, half-a-dozen fishing hooks, sinkers, nylon test fishing line, a sewing needle kit, an 18-inch cable saw capable of cutting down a small tree, and, of course, a copy of the CSN Miniaturized Bible.’ ” The boy shook his head and exhaled. “Wow,” he said again.

Old McCarty also shook her head and looked at Lou, the eldest of the hunters. “I don’t remember that being in the Warehouse load,” she said sharply. The hunter shrugged and said nothing.

Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob slipped the knife in its sheath and the sheath in his belt. He listened as the last whispers of the Holy Spirit faded away. He smiled at the group. “I will go now to the rooftop to prepare the Way,” he said softly. “In the morning we will gather to hear the Word.”

He had turned to go when he felt Tara’s small hand tugging at his pantleg. “Will you come and tuck us in first?” she asked.

Brother glanced at Rita, the girl’s mother. The young
woman took her children’s hands and nodded shyly. Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob followed them toward the dark hallway.

The children’s bedroom had been a book storage room for the publishing company that had once had offices on the floor. While the children slipped into their bedrolls, Brother looked at the shelves of rotting books, each one marked with the small red bantam emblem.

Rita kissed her children goodnight and stepped into the hall.

“Will you be up on the roof all night?” Tara asked Brother. The child was hugging her new cloth doll to her in the tumble of rags that made up her bed.

“Yes,” said Brother, stepping back into the room.

“Then you’ll see Santa and his reindeer land when he comes back,” she said excitedly.

Brother started to speak and then stopped. He smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I imagine I will.”

“But you said …” began Sean.

“Anyone up on the roof tonight would see Santa Claus and his reindeer,” Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob said firmly.

“Now let’s say our prayers,” said the children’s mother.

Tara, with eyes still wide, nodded and looked down. “God bless Mommy, and Old ’Em, and the ghosts of Daddy and Uncle Henry,” she said.

“Amen,” said Sean.

“No,” said Brother. “There is a new prayer.”

“Tell us,” said both children.

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,” he said, “Bless the beds that we lay on.” He waited while the two repeated the rhyme and then he went on. “Jim and Tammy, Jan and Paul,” he said, “Find the demons, smite them all.”

The children recited flawlessly and Tara said, “Will you really see Santa?”

“Yes,” said Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob. “And goodnight.”

Brother looked in on the Clan before going to the roof. A small group had been huddled near the tree, murmuring, listening to Old McCarty, but the hunters scattered under Brother’s gaze and went to their bedrolls. The matriarch stood and returned Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob’s stare for a long moment but then she too looked down and moved away, just an old woman shuffling off to bed.

On the rooftop, Brother kneeled at the Formica altar and prayed loudly for several minutes. Finally he stood and removed all of his clothing. It was very cold. Moonlight reflected off his pale flesh and the curve of the Sacred Dish. Brother took out the plastic buckets and set them beneath the four corners of the altar. Then he removed the long knife from its sheath, held it high in both hands until the steel caught the cold light, and clamped it between his teeth.

Brother moved silently across the rooftop until he blended into the shadows near the head of the stairwell. He knelt there, at first feeling the rooftop gravel against his bare knee and tasting the cold steel in his mouth; then feeling nothing but the rising exaltation.

It did not take long. First came the gentle noises from the stairwell, then the shadowy figure emerged from the darkness, and finally came the soft voice. “Brother Jimmy-Joe?”

So it was not to be the old woman, thought Brother. So be it.

“Brother Jimmy-Joe?” The small figure moved toward the altar. Moonlight touched the dark braid of the doll’s hair. “Santa?”

Brother Jimmy-Joe Billy-Bob said a silent prayer, removed the blade from his teeth, and moved forward softly and swiftly to celebrate the coming day.

I’m interested in how few writers cross the osmotic boundaries between science fiction and horror, between genre and what those in genre call mainstream. Or, rather, I should say that I’m fascinated with how many cross and do not return.

Part of it, I think, is the vast difference in states of mind between dreaming the dark dreams of horror and constructing the rational structures of SF, or between tripping the literary light fantastic and being shackled by the gravity of “serious” fiction. It
is
hard to do both—painful to the psyche to allow one hemisphere to become dominant while bludgeoning the other into submission. Perhaps that’s why readership of SF and horror, genre and New Yorker fiction overlap less than one would think.

Whatever the reason, it’s a pity that more writers feel constrained—sometimes by limitations of talent or interest but more frequently by market considerations and the simple fact that they find
success
in one field—to stay in one genre.

Of course, the exceptions are always interesting. George R.R. Martin moves easily between genres and expectations, rarely repeating, always surprising. Dean Koontz left SF just as he was becoming a star there—possibly because he sensed his destiny lay in becoming a supernova elsewhere. Edward Bryant took a “sabbatical” from SF a few years ago and has been producing world-class horror ever since. Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula K.
LeGuin “graduated” from SF to mainstream acceptance. (To Vonnegut’s credit for honesty if nothing else, he allows as to how he gets nostalgic every once in a while, opens the lowest desk drawer where he keeps his old pulp SF efforts, and then urinates into it.) Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and others write their most memorable fiction in SF, but they deny any association with the field. Neither lady mentions urinating into desk drawers, but one suspects that they would feel a certain pressure on their respective bladders if forced to accept a Hugo or Nebula.

Harlan Ellison simply refused ever to be nailed down to a genre—even while he revolutionized them. We all have heard the stories where Ellison suffers the ten-millionth reporter or critic or TV personality who is demanding to know what descriptive word comes before “writer” in this case. Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror?

“What’s wrong with just … 
writer?
” Ellison says softly in his most cordial cobra hiss.

Well, what’s wrong with it is that the semiliterate have feeble but tidy little minds filled with tidy little boxes, and no matter how much one struggles, the newspaper article (or review, or radio intro, or TV superimposed title) will read something akin to—
“SCI-FI GUY SAYS HIS SCI-FI STUFF NOT SCI-FI.”

And the next step is for someone to stand up at a convention (sorry, a Con), grab the microphone, and shout—“How come you’re always saying in interviews and stuff that you’re not just a science fiction writer? I’m proud to be associated with science fiction!” (Or horror. Or fantasy. Or … fill in the blank.)

The crowd roars, righteousness fills the air, hostility lies just under the surface as if you’re a black at a Huey Newton rally who’s been caught “passing”—revealed as an oreo, or a Jew in the Warsaw ghetto who’s been caught helping the Nazis with the railroad timetables, or—worse yet, a Dead Head at a Grateful D. concert who’s been found listening to Mozart on his Walkman.

I mean, you
are
at this guy’s convention. (Sorry, “Con.”)

How do you explain to the guy gripping the mike that there are a thousand pressures forcing a writer down narrower
and narrower alleys—agents trying to make you marketable and pulling their hair out because you insist on staying a jump ahead of a readership, publishers trying to shape you into a commodity, editors trying to get you to Chrissakes be consistent for once, booksellers complaining because your new SF novel just came out and it looks silly racked with your World Fantasy Award winning novel (which is really about Calcutta and has no fantasy in it), which, in turn, is next to your Sci-Fi opus and your fat horror novel (it is horror, isn’t it? There wasn’t any blood or holograms or demon-eyed kids on the cover …) and now … 
NOW
!… this new book has come out … this
thing …
and it looks, oh sweet Christ, it looks … 
MAINSTREAM!

How do you explain that every modifier before writer becomes another nail in the coffin of your hopes of writing what you want? What you care about?

So you look at the guy with the mike and you stare down the irate booksellers and you put your editor on hold, and you think—I
can explain. I can tell them that the one wonderful thing about being a writer is the freedom to explore all venues, the luxury … no, the responsibility … to work with the dreams the Muse sends you, to shape them to the best of your ability and to send them along whether a guaranteed readership is waiting or not; I can explain the compulsion to write a good book whether the cover artist knows what to do with it or not, explain the honor involved in trying new things despite the fact that the manager at the local B. Dalton’s has racked your most recent novel in
OCCULT NON-FICTION
and asked … no, ordered the distributor not to send any more books written by this obvious schizophrenic. I can explain all that. I can take every single reader, every defensive SF chauvinist and horror fan and snooty New York reviewer and sparrowfart reader of “serious fiction,” and show them what being a writer means!

And then you look out at the guy with the mike, and you think—
Nahhh.
And you say, “My next book’ll be SF.”

The next story is SF. I loved writing it. I loved returning to this universe when I finally used “Remembering Siri” as
a starting point to write the 1,500 or so pages of
HYPERION
and
THE FALL OF HYPERION.

Oh, and the seed crystal for this tale was the thought one night, while dozing off,
What if Romeo and Juliet had lived?

You know—Romeo and Juliet? By that sci-fi/fantasy/ horror hack who wrote sit-coms and historical soap operas in his spare time?

Watch for the allusions. And the illusions.