Guns of the Waste Land: Departure: Volumes 1-2 Read online

  Guns of the Waste Land

  Book One: Departure & Book Two: Diversion

  Leverett Butts

  Copyright © 2013 by Leverett Butts;

  Leverett Butt has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This edition published 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For Laura:

  This may be the closest to a fantasy I write.

  I wish you could read it. I think you’d like it.

  For Neil Gaiman and Caitlín Kiernan:

  Who showed me not only

  that this kind of thing could be done,

  but how to do it well.

  Table of Contents

  Book One

  Guns of The Waste Land: Departure

  Chapter One - Percy

  I.

  II.

  III.

  Chapter Two - Gary Wayne & Boris

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  Chapter Three – Percy

  I.

  II.

  Chapter Four – Gary Wayne & Boris

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  Chapter Five – Guernica

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  Chapter Six – Gary Wayne & Boris

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  Chapter Seven – Percy

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  VI.

  VII.

  Chapter Eight – Rev. Tallison

  I.

  II.

  III.

  Book Two

  Guns of The Waste Land: Diversion

  Chapter One – Gary Wayne & Boris

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  Chapter Two – Rev. Tallison

  I.

  II.

  Chapter Three – Percy

  I.

  II.

  III.

  Chapter Four – Guernica

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  Chapter Five – Gary Wayne & Boris

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  Chapter Six – Percy

  I.

  II.

  III.

  Chapter Seven – Rev. Tallison

  I.

  II.

  Chapter Eight – Red Marten

  I.

  II.

  III.

  Chapter Nine – Gary Wayne & Boris

  I.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  VI.

  Chapter Ten – Percy

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  Chapter Eleven – Caleb

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  Afterword and Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Book One

  Guns of The Waste Land: Departure

  For through long days of summer

  I rambled through their orchards

  And oakwoods all green

  With the dew on the leaf;

  And now that I have lost them

  And lonesome among strangers

  I sleep among the bushes

  Or mountain caves alone,

  -“John O’Dwyer of the Glen”

  (traditional Irish ballad)

  The seas may row, the winds may blow,

  And swathe me round in danger,

  My native land I must forego,

  And roam a lonely stranger.

  -”The Highlander’s Farewell”

  (traditional Scottish ballad)

  It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.

  - Native American Adage

  Chapter One - Percy

  I.

  I never knowed my Pa. He run off about three months before I was born. He went off to fight the Indians with Ardiss Drake, him that was the bastard son of Old Luther (but wouldn’t nobody but a fool call Ardiss that to his face, not unless they was just fed up with life and lacked the sand to pull the trigger their own self).

  “Some Pawnee chief’s probably carrying your Pa’s scalp on his belt right now,” Ma’d say, then spit into the fire if we was in the cabin or on the ground if we wasn’t. “Serve him right,” she’d continue. “Least it’s just his hair gets to trample all over hell’s half acre now instead of the rest of his body.” Then she’d look out towards the little graveyard we had behind the cabin. Gramps was out there, too, but I always knowed she was thinking of the other one. “I finally got that rat bastard to stay around more ’n one or two weeks at a time, and he’s just about as useful now as he was then.”

  After the War Between the States, long before I was ever even thought about, Ma’n Pa moved out West. “Texas ain’t home,” he used to tell Ma, “but it’s got fewer Yankees than Georgia does now.” They settled in West Texas, and Pa became one of Drake’s Riders. So he spent most his time out to Bretton in Ardiss’ saloon with the other Riders playing poker, drinking whiskey, and keeping the decent folk safe from Redskins, bandits, and tax collectors.

  Ma and him used to live right in Bretton with the other townsfolk. Two doors down from Ardiss and right between Lancaster O’Loch on one side and Gary Wayne Orkney on t’othern. But after Pa got hisself scalped and kilt, she moved out there to the edge of the Waste Land on her Pappy’s place, and that’s where I got brung into this world.

  It took damn near forever before Ma would even talk about Pa with me. As a young’un, whenever I’d ask, she’d pull me into her lap and rock in her chair.

  “Percy,” she’d say, “Your Pa was a very brave man, but he was also a fool, which maybe I’m repeating myself.” Then she’d stroke my brow the way mothers all can do to make you sleepy and forgetful about what you asked. “You don’t need to fret about him, son.” She’d whisper and look out at our little graveyard, “He ain’t going nowhere no more, and he’ll always keep an eye on you.” Then just as I’d drift off to sleep, “You ain’t got no need now to leave your Ma. You just stay here.”

  And I did for fourteen years.

  About two weeks after my fourteenth birthday, Ma had a visitor. He showed up riding the biggest, cleanest, whitest horse I ever seen. He looked about as tall as God up there in that saddle. He was wearing a spotless white suit with his pants legs pressed into the tops of a couple of tan boots that came almost all the way up his knees. He wore his ginger-colored hair long, past his shoulders, and his mustaches and beard were well groomed. Everything about him from his wide-brimmed white hat to his oiled leather boots shone like sunlight. When he turned into our little yard and tipped his hat to Ma, I caught a gleam in my eye reflected from his hip.

  He wore a pair of pearl handled pistols slung low.

  Ma caught her breath when she saw him and clutched at her breast.

  “Percy,” she whispered. “Get on now. Go play at the creek. Ma has business with this gentleman.”

  When I tried to ask who he was, she shushed me and gave me a gentle push towards the creek.

  I spent the better part of the morning spearing fish in the creek. Before he died, Gramps used to take me out here and teach me how to do that.

  “Tell you what, son,” he used to say, “any damned moron can hook a worm and
trick a fish.” He’d hand me a stick he’d spent the morning whittling to a point. “But it takes a man of skill and perfection to gig one.” Then he’d take his own stick, stride purposefully into the creek, and absolutely fail to stick anything but the muddy bed. After a few times, I was able to gig at least one or two fish each time, so Gramps just got to where he’d smoke his pipe on the river bank and criticize my technique. Since Gramps passed on to the Sweet By and By, though, I often come out here to gig fish on my own and miss him.

  Today, though, all I could think on was the mysterious stranger what had come up, and why Ma wanted me gone so all-fired much. I was a little upset with her. I never could get no fish with my mind like that, so I had to take a breather for a while and set a spell.

  I had never seen nobody looked that clean before in my whole life. Not even Gramps when he took his Saturday night bath. I wondered who he was over and over until I begun to get the idea that maybe he was my own Pa. I had it all figured out. That would explain why Ma was so thunderstruck by him. He hadn’t never been kilt by no Indian. He’d escaped and had set off back East to lead them Pawnee away from his family. He’d stayed there all this time making his fortune, so’s he could come back when the coast had cleared of Indians and fetch us back.

  The more I thought about this, the better I liked it, and after a while, I knowed it was so. I rose up from my bank and strode out to the middle of the creek with my spear in hand. I wanted to show Pa how well I could fetch dinner, and damned if I didn’t gig twelve fish that morning.

  He was just stepping off our back stoop by the time I got back with the fish. He had his hat under his arm now, and he was looking back over his shoulder at Ma, who leaned against the doorway with a strange look in her eyes, kinda grateful and sad all at once. Her hair was down where it had been all bunned up before, but other than that there wasn’t no change. When he passed me by, I held the fish up to him, but I couldn’t get no kind of sound to come out of my throat. He smiled at me, and I realized his teeth was white, too. Then he rustled my hair so my scalp tingled. I offered him the fish again.

  “Take ’em into your Ma, son,” he said and motioned in her direction. “I reckon you all will eat well tonight.” His breath smelled like jasmine.

  Son, I thought, he called me Son. Then you all will eat well. He ain’t stayin’.

  I didn’t mean to, but I kinda slumped back to Ma. She didn’t pay me no mind nor scold me for being sulky and rude to our visitor. She just kinda pulled me to her side and absently stroked my hair, but her eyes never strayed from him.

  “Be seein’ you, Laney.” The man said as he pulled himself into the saddle and tipped his hat to her before puttin’ it on again. “I’ll tell the boys you said hey.” Then he flicked the reins and turned his horse around and was gone out of the yard like he hadn’t never been there to begin with.

  “Who was that, Ma?” I asked looking into her faraway eyes.

  Ma’s voice hitched a little when she tried to answer. “An angel, Son.”

  Then I knew Pa really was dead, and he wasn’t never coming back, but I was glad to have got to see him this once.

  During supper that night, Ma still didn’t say nothing. She never was what you would call a big talker or a social butterfly, but that night it was worse. Ma had a way to look at a fella and have whole conversations without opening her mouth. She could look at you and you knowed she was there, like she was inside you and kicking around your secret thoughts, but not like a thief or nothing, more like a librarian setting everything in its place.

  Tonight, though, she kept staring at me, but the feeling was all different. It was like she was the one with the secret thoughts, and I couldn’t get in there and straighten 'em out. It was like she was there, but at the same time, she wasn’t. I figured she was thinking on Pa, but since I never knowed him, I couldn’t join her in her thoughts. There was a river between us, and I couldn’t swim it. We ate our fish in silence.

  If I coulda knowed something about Pa, I felt like we coulda talked that night. But Ma hadn’t never told me nothing about him except what I done told you, which as you know wasn’t nothing of a much at all. I tossed and turned all night. I wanted to know about my Pa, but I knew now, that if Ma wasn’t gonna talk about him after spending all midmorning with his angel, she wouldn’t never talk. I’d have to find out about him on my own, but I didn’t know where to start.

  Then it hit all at a sudden, like a blaze of glory. If Ma wasn’t gonna talk, Pa’s saddle partners probably would. There ain’t nothing a cowboy likes more’n to sit around telling stories about the old days, and I bet if I could find one or two of Drake’s Riders, I could find out all I wanted and more about Pa.

  And I knowed where to look, too.

  Bretton was a good ways off and the sooner I started on foot, the quicker I’d be there. I wrapped my slingshot, some smooth tiny creek rocks, and a couple of leftover fish in my good winter coat, then I tied the arms of the coat onto the end of my spear and crawled out the bedroom window trying hard not to wake Ma in the next room.

  I might as well have stomped around all I wanted and played the fiddle to boot, for all the good it did me to sneak. Ma was standing by Pa’s grave when I slinked that away to hit the road from behind. I got ready for a hiding and began laying plans for setting out the next week.

  “If you’re set on going tonight, boy, you best take Lippy,” she said as soon as I got up close to her. Lippy was our mule. He was about eight days older than God, but he was all we had to pull the plow.

  “Ma’am?”

  “If you’re set on going, you’ll never get there this side of forever just on your feet,” I could see glistening streams on her cheeks in the moonlight. “Take Lippy.”

  “How you gonna plow without Lippy?” I asked setting my pack down next to Gramps’ wooden cross.

  “I reckon I got along just fine before I had you to look out for me,” Ma looked down at Pa’s marker. I figured she couldn’t bear the sight of me all packed up to go. “I reckon I got along fine without that mule, too. Take Lippy before I change my mind, boy.”

  “Yes’m.” I turned towards our stable.

  “I didn’t keep your Pa’s saddle when they brung him back,” Ma said quietly. “I didn’t plan on needing it, so I told Lank to keep it or burn it or throw it away for all of me.” She paused as if so much talking all at once had wore her out. “I’ll go fetch you a quilt to throw on Lippy’s back. It ain’t much, but it’ll do.”

  “Yes’m.”

  I went on into Lippy’s stable when Ma didn’t say nothing else and turned for the house. I fixed up a harness for the spear and found an old canvas bag I could stow my gear in and sling over Lippy’s rump. By this time Ma had brung in the quilt. She showed me how to fold it into a make-do saddle so I wouldn’t get so rump-sore on the trail.

  When this was finished, I turned to her to tell her bye and make promises to come back that even then I knew would have been lies, but she stopped me.

  “If you’re hungry, and there ain’t no fish to be caught or game to kill, steal what you need to live, food or money, but ask forgiveness at the next church you pass.”

  “Yes’m.” I opened my mouth again to make the empty promise, but she cut me off again.

  “If you see a lady or a child in need, you got to help’em. Ain’t nobody but fools nowadays to look after womenfolk and their young’uns.”

  “Yes’m.” I opened my mouth again, but she grabbed me around the shoulders and shut me up a third time.

  “If you see anything you don’t understand while you’re out there,” she said, “don’t be asking foolish questions. You won’t like the answer none too much like as not. It’s a good way to get yourself shot asking the wrong questions at the wrong time.”

  I knowed better by this time to try to get a word in edgewise, so I just kept my mouth shut and waited for her to continue.

  “You better get. Don’t say another word, or I can’t bear to let you go.” Then
she pulled me to her again, and I squeezed her little body tight (I hadn’t ever realized how little she was). She put her arms around me and squeezed, too, but it didn’t have no real strength behind it, like hugging a corpse.

  Then I mounted Lippy, kicked his shanks and we ambled out the stable and through the gate. Ma wasn’t nowhere to be seen when I turned back to wave one last time.

  II.

  I wandered days and camped nights. I had to camp under the open sky on account of I didn’t think to bring no tent or nothing. The Waste Lands get awful cold at night, and all I had was the quilt Ma give me, and while it could get pretty toasty on a winter night in a cabin and helped by a fire, it provided little comfort under the stars without even a campfire to help. Gramps had tried to teach me about setting fires like the Indians, knocking rocks together or rubbing catgut and twigs, but none of it ever took with me. I never really figured on needing it back then, but lying on the cold ground at night with only a quilt for comfort, I sure wished I’d a listened to him. Eventually, though, I discovered that if I could wrap the quilt around me and find a place to lay with my back protected and get Lippy to settle down in front of me, I could keep fairly warm at night, or at least not freeze to death.

  I reckon Lippy and me traveled about three days before we ever caught on that I had done got lost somewhere. I remember one morning when I was overcome with curiosity about Pa and his days with Ardiss, I asked Gramps whereabouts Bretton was, and he said it was quite a bit east of our homestead, and I asked him which away east was, and he pointed at the sun.

  “Thataway,” he said. “The sun’s east of here now.”

  Well, I’m sure you can see what my problem was. I had lit out at night when the sun wasn’t nowhere. I had always figured on getting out a ways from home and sleeping under the stars. I figured that way the sun would wake me up in the morning, and I’d follow it. And that’s just what I did, but I must of fallen asleep on the wrong side of the sun because I’d follow the sucker all day and it seemed like I’d wind up just about where I started again.