Katabasis

In the Stingaree they stand on their soapboxes and preach revolution: socialism, single tax, salvation, Christ and Marx running together in an uneasy blend to the winos, the workers, and the whores, in English, Mandarin, Spanish, Chinook, Creole. A better world to come, or a better world in this one, if you’ll convert, repent, organize, strike!

A fight’s been brewing for weeks, ever since the cops raided Wobbly Hall on Haymarket Day. The wobs won’t take that lying down, and the call’s gone out for bodies to swarm the city. Arrest one, arrest all, until the jails swell and burst, until the merchants throw up their hands and turn vigilante, until newspaper publishers drive their cars into protests, until the city forbids speaking on the street, until the governor sends a special investigator to try to corral the horsewhip boys back into line, until the cops burn down the Stingaree and drive speakers and listeners both out into the waste places. Or try to, anyway: block the roads, search the trains, drag the rivers, the Wobblies will slip in to organize.

But that’s all in the future. Now it’s just a tense, searing atmosphere that hangs over the neighborhood, hot and dry and dangerous as a Santa Ana wind. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do but hunker down, cling tight to each other, and brace against the fires yet to come.

Wet Season, Dry Season

In the seventh year of the siege and a traveler comes up from the south, a refugee of sorts, fleeing sorrow. “They came out of the desert,” he says, and then has to stop and explain more about what he means. Children of a green land, they have seen the sea, the winedark sea, and they have heard of Egypt, of course, and the spreading sands, but after seven years the geography of everything except the area around Wilusa has gotten fuzzy. But he’s a good speaker, so there’s not a fire that isn’t happy to share a meal with him and listen to his story at the end of another day’s fighting.

“They came out of the desert,” says he, “and crossed the river. The city’s gates were closed against them—” a bitter laugh from the crowd— “but they tramped around the city—” another laugh, this one even more edged— “for seven days and nights. The music they played! A wild thing, all ram’s horns and reed flutes, the pounding of their feet keeping time. Like a voice speaking out of a whirlwind. Time seemed to slow, then stand still, then run backward. The sun blazed motionless in the sky, one day, two, three, and the walls quaked and fell and they came in among the houses with fire and sword. Men they killed, and women, and children; blood for blood, they said. We ran, from the river to the sea, we ran, and along the coast toward stranger lands. What can you do when the gods have shut their eyes to your suffering?”

The bitterest laugh of all.

Grapes of Edom

Three am and alone at last, praise god! Alone with the raccoons living in the culvert and the coyotes prowling around the lake; the crows have settled for the night, the seagulls are god knows where, and the pigeons are huddled together for safety. But the streets are empty, and all the lights are off in the apartment buildings, save for the regular scattered insomniacs. Carol the Paulian is alone, unwatched, unheard, unremarked, standing in the middle of the street, looking up at the moon, able to breathe fully for the first time in sixteen hours. With each breath she grows larger, unfurls like a flag.

She haunts the parks, the alleyways, the warehouses. Like an owl, she lingers in the waste places. Daytimes, her coworkers mutter about muggings, pursesnatchers, human traffickers, cougars coming down from the mountains. Well, perhaps; the one time she was mugged it was broad daylight in a nice neighborhood. Mostly she sees no one, and the few people she does see are hurrying somewhere on their own business, equally eager to avoid eye contact. She carries a knife in her pocket, not for protection, but merely because a knife is a useful thing to have.

Xeres

Though it be not written down, let it be known that I am drunk.

Alcohol, a vast ocean of specific knowledge. Do you know— no, listen. Do you know? All alcohol is pure spirits, all flavors come later, after the sugars have been eaten, passed through the invisible dying cells of the flocculent yeast, up the copper tubes, down to the terracotta pots, there to reswallow traces of earth, of pear, of agave, of horseradish, of nothing in particular. In Xeres, the solera drips across decades, the angels, wings and eyes and fire, dip their mouths toward the open barrels and take their share.

In the bar, the bartenders love her. Cedar asks questions, offers no wisdom, but is enthusiastic about everything. This one tastes like dirt. This one like apples. This one comes from the highlands, you can tell (they say) because of how unsweet it is. Cedar, who has swallowed the spirits of a hundred cities, nods and gasps and prods, and they love her for it. A mouth to taste and an ear to listen. She learns, as she learned the rope paths between the trees, as she learned to harvest ears, storing it all within her word hoard.

You are drunk, they tell her, eventually: go home. Yes, she says, indeed I am, I am made merry with alcohol; and by this grown wise.

Universal Childcare

Ellis is passed from stranger hands to stranger hands, poked and prodded, smelled and weighed and manipulated. Every time he opens his mouth to shriek they pop something into it, a nipple, a bottle, a toy, a thumb. He loathes their rough skin, their faces sprouting hair, the orange smear of wax deep in their ears, the long hairs curling from their noses. They jiggle him on their knees and if he had the power to strike them dead, they would die. He laughs, helpless, betrayed by his body, giggles and chortles and wiggles mechanically, and his face turns red and then purple with fury and they sweep him up into the air, as if vertigo and the illusion of flight should still his fury. Their voices are loud and mumbling, a senseless jangle of consonants grinding together like rockfall, pushed past yellowed, misaligned teeth and pale gums. He beats at them with his fists, reaches for their faces to gouge out their eyes, bites down with all his force on their hair. He hungers, and they feed him, but he hungers still, falls asleep uncovered and dreams of burning skies, seas of plague, choking fumes, trenches hipdeep with blood.