Work in Progress
The Wolf’s Legend
T
Jeff Burt
hey lied when they said Henry Spotted Wolf
died and a strong wind blew. The day was dull
and calm. No one spotted anything significant.
No earth rumblings. No smoke. No rain. They
lied when they said Henry Spotted Wolf died
and the moon came red. I knew.
I was walking Sandy Road up the hill and the full moon
rose yellow. When I detoured to the trestle and packed
the package under the beams of the trestle in the thick,
sick black gob of creosote wedged between pillar and post,
I used a stick for the levered force to drag the pitch over
the bag I had to hide, and walked the railroad tracks and
the moon shined in my face until I caught Grasshopper
Hollow. And all the time the moon was yellow, and once a
thin cloud the size of a needle sliced the moon horizontally
as it rose, like it was making segments of it, like cutting
thin slices of cheese from a round.
No owl came out of the moon. No midnight crow flew
across it. It was just a bright yellow moon and my face up
against it climbing to home. I slept on the porch on an old
wicker chair. It was comfortable in the way that when you
don’t have a car but you get to drive one it doesn’t matter
what kind of car it is. All night it seemed the moon was
shining in my face, like earth had no rotation, or that my
side of earth would always be in darkness and the moon
would always shine on this side.
The train came thirty minutes late, and I can tell you it
never whistled. The engineer never whistles when he’s late
and only whistles when he’s early, and I’ve been near that
track a hundred times and I will testify to that.
In the morning I went to Lily Snow’s grave. She’s been
dead since I was fifteen. She was Henry Spotted Wolf’s
girlfriend twenty years ago when she was found pregnant
and abandoned on a night when it snowed. She went to her
grandmother’s and never went inside. Sat in a chair on the
porch. Died during the night.
Two days later the women at the church were stirring
large pots and using large ladles the size of turtles. Steam
filled the kitchen like smoke, curling up against the ceiling
and dropping down the walls, obscuring their faces. Two
women pinched dough shut. There was meat inside, and
every five minutes they pulled out a tray and put another
one in while five more trays were baking. The body had
been found.
They lied when they said Henry Spotted Wolf spit back
the bullet that killed him. I saw it rattle on the floor and
skid past and stick in the grille of the floor vent. I pried
it out. I put the brass on the track and it got eaten by the
wheels. I looked and never found it.
All these lies. All this myth.
JEFF BURT lives in Santa Cruz County, California, and works in manufacturing. He has
published in Rhino, Red River Review, Barnwood, Sixfold, Verse Wisconsin, and The Write Room.
He won the 2011 SuRaa short fiction award. He enjoys the aroma of a freshly sharpened #2 pencil.
16
THRICE FICTION™ • April 2014
N
Mike Ekunno
ot that it mattered where l sat but the gallery
gave a low down on the congregation. My
mid-way entry made the gallery my natural
habitat. A do-gooder usher downstairs had
thought to benefit me with his quixotic
cooing: “Got a seat for you here.”
Seat ko, shit ni. Who knows where that’d have had me
sandwiched — between two dudes wearing flowing lace
agbadas — my rough denim and white sneakers providing
the perfect sore thumb.
Instead I got installed at my favourite perch upstairs
with all the options. Jennie stood in the aisle facing me.
Did she come with IT? She turned to face the alter as if in
telepathic response. There IT was. Jennie wasn’t my First
Lady for nothing. What she packed behind was arrogant.
Delightfully so. Whatever the ushers’ uniform for the
Sunday, her designer was sure to outfit her bakassi with an
obtrusive flair which she carried on 6-inch platforms. And I
didn’t complain, really. I could trek behind those curves any
distance on the face of planet Earth.
Testifiers for the day were taking their turns on the
microphone. I sat forward in my seat and closed my eyes:
“Lord, I’m here today. Forgive your boy, I beg you. You
are a powerful God, the Highest. If you will only help me
to travel out, I promise to change. Settle me with better
something and let me begin to nak correct sputes from
fine fine boutiques. Give me my breakthrough so that I can
begin to climb better better stages like them Ali Baba, Julius
Agwu. Let me run my own show like Teju BabyFace, AY.
God, you’re too much. I praise your name, forever in Jesus
name, amen.”
I opened my eyes and reclined. The view below was
resplendent as usual. A rainbow congregation spread to
the terraced alter. The alter was majestic and draped in
white and purple. The lectern was spare and elegantly done
in chrome. It was back grounded by roof-high curtains
which parted midway to reveal DIVINE SANCTUARY OF
Issue No. 10
JERUSALEM MINISTRY INC. The alter job was straight
out of some interior designer’s brochure. Daddy Bishop and
Mummy and the pastoral team sat to the left of the lectern
facing the choir. The choir colours that day were lemon
green on dark green.
A few of the testifiers had had their turns on the
microphone and were serenaded by applause to their seats.
Two of them had been on “journey mercies” across the
country and one sister had a safe delivery.
Two of a kind. Whether pregnancy or travelling, both
are the same journey to the great beyond — potentially. One
blink of an eye and somebody can become a mere figure on
the nation’s maternal mortality statistic or having a ghastly
siesta by the roadside with cassava leaves as blanket.
One brother had come to see Daddy for success with US
visa application and was asked to sow in dollars which he
did. He went for the interview thereafter and got issued with
a multiple entry visa. “The Lord is good!”
“All the time!” we responded.
Jackpot, bigtime! You didn’t say how much you sowed
to give me an idea of how to go about mine. And sowing in
dollars — more like asking an anaemic patient to donate
blood for his healing.
A sister testified of delivera