Ben Soul

bureau drawers, but too many mice had dropped offerings there. She lay on the sheets, closing her nostrils against the residual smell of other occupants. She wondered if the bedding had ever been washed. For one brief nostalgic moment, Vanna missed Delta’s House and El Serrucho Oxidado both. Then she fell asleep.

  Rats copulating in the walls woke Vanna near midnight. She considered getting something to eat, and decided to wait for morning. She was no longer sure enough of her ability to brazen out any confrontation. Some caution had crept into her nature, from where she didn’t know. Something had happened to her that she didn’t quite fathom during her confrontation with La Señora. The rats completed their coitus and Vanna went back to sleep.

  Vanna dreamed she was in a parade. A loud brass band behind her played the Tit-Willow song from The Mikado off key behind her. She could not march in a steady cadence. Every time the chorus began with “Willow, tit-willow, tit-willow” she had to pause on one foot, the other raised in the air, while the “-low” syllable was drawn out for several measures. Her knees began to ache, and she fell, right in the middle of the street. The crowds roared their disapproval. The band wound down its music like a record dying as a phonograph lost power. Silence fell.

  Vanna looked up at a blue and brass sky. The sun was burning her. A great shadow loomed over her. It was an ape, drool dripping from its yellow teeth. It bent down. Vanna closed her eyes. She feared it was about to kiss her. The ape took Vanna’s knees one by one in its paws and massaged them. It hurt, but it healed. When the ape was done, he stood, one paw out to help her to her feet. She used him to stand.

  A calliope had supplanted the brass band. The parade was evidently continuing, with Vanna once again at the head of it. Unaccountably she had obtained a baton, which she realized she was to twirl and hurl into the sky. As she did so, she suddenly realized the baton was a snake holding itself rigid. At least the calliope kept a sort of rhythm. Vanna did not recognize the tune at first, until she found herself muttering the words “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” under her breath. The parade route turned right, marched a block, turned right again, marched two blocks, turned right again, marched a block, and turned right again to begin all over.

  A tumbling acrobat snatched the baton from Vanna’s grasp, and preceded her on the route marching on his hands and twirling the baton with his feet. It was a snake no more, only a simple metal tube with bright plastic ends. He tossed it to Vanna, and she caught it. It was a snake again, one that hissed at her. Then it crawled up her arm and wrapped itself three times around her neck. Its tail tickled her left ear, and its tongue flicked in and out of her right ear.

  “The emperor waits for you in the throne room,” the snake hissed. “Your time is upon you. You who were empress shall enter a new condition.” The snake unwound from her throat and slithered down her back and onto the pavement. It disappeared in the crowd. The acrobat followed it. Vanna tried to follow the acrobat, but a sudden honor guard of giraffes ridden by baboons with scarlet rumps surrounded her. Something gripped her left big toe. She looked down. An enormous bright red lobster was clamped to her foot. She kicked and screamed at it. The lobster flew away. Something thumped against the wall. She woke herself up. Her left big toe was hurting inside her sock.

  Hoping that her pain was internal, and not the side effect of rodent teeth, Vanna sat up, and turned on the feeble light overhead. She examined her toe. Blood seeped through her sock. Vanna cursed the Folded Arms and all its rats. She opened the tiny window in her room and looked out on the alley. By the gray light she judged dawn had come. She heard a scurrying noise behind her, and brought her head in and turned to see what made it. She saw a rat’s tail disappearing into the wall. The overhead light began swinging in the breeze from the open window.

  Vanna collected her suitcase and slipped down the rear stairs. She opened the back door and set off an alarm. The alarm shorted out and sparked a fire in the tinderbox building. As Vanna fled down the alley smoke and flame began to climb the spaces between the old walls. In places those walls had holes, the result of one or another fight or falling drunk. The flames leaped for the larger oxygen supplies in the corridors. By the time Vanna was three blocks away the entire structure was involved in the conflagration. Seventeen derelict men and one desk clerk died in the flames and smoke. The rat that bit Vanna’s toe escaped through a narrow hole to a neighboring building that suffered only smoke damage. The rat lived to beget many more rats who in turn begat other rats, and so the circle of life continued among the rodents of Las Tumbas.

  Princess Valiant

  Willy Waugh tried sleeping in the cottage the village had set aside for him for several nights. Each night he woke numerous times unable to breathe. Several other times he woke from horrible nightmares about assaults on the llamas. After two weeks Willy went to Ben.

  “I can’t sleep cooped up in a house,” he said. “I need my outdoors. I’m moving back to the llama shed.”

  “You’ve given the cottage a fair try, I suppose,” Ben said. “Should we keep it for you?”

  “Find somebody else to live there,” Willy said. He went back to the cottage and gathered his supply of briefs. He carried them up the hill to the llama shed. There he laid them carefully on a pile of clean straw, then went to the pasture to check on the llamas. They gathered round him and nuzzled his cheeks and neck. He smiled and murmured to them, “I’m home, kids. Not to worry.” From then he lived among the llamas.

  The cottage remained empty for several months. It was high summer before she came, seeking sanctuary.

  One afternoon Ben and Dickon were at Wong’s Emporium having a cola in the shade. Summer dust drifted through the air. The sun gilded patterns the breeze wove. The traffic on the highway was frequent by San Danson standards. Several cars had passed in the last hour.

  She came on foot, an uncommon approach to San Danson Station. She wore a dusty ankle-length dress with heavy looking skirts. The dress was cut from an iridescent material that shimmered and shifted from floral patterns to butterfly patterns to abstract designs as she walked. It shifted colors with a speed that made its hues seem liquid poured over the cloth. She had a shawl loosely draped around her shoulders. It was crocheted from variegated wool that incorporated a multitude of colors. The sun played hopscotch on its looped threads. She wore a dusty white turban on her head. Ben wondered if it was a towel she’d stolen from a motel. Her valise was battered beige cardboard. The handle was pulling loose from the case. Her stride was strong and manly.

  She came up to Ben and Dickon sitting on the Emporium steps and stopped in front of them. She towered over them, for she was a tall woman with broad shoulders. She stared at each of them for a long moment. “Is this San Danson?” she asked. Her voice was husky, either with dust or with whiskey. She exuded a heavy lilac perfume mingled with more earthy undertones of hot humanity. Weariness dragged at her dark complexioned cheeks.

  “Yes,” Ben said, “it is.” Her shoulders relaxed. Relief flooded her lined face. Her piercing blue eyes softened. She put her valise down and tucked a stray tendril of iron gray hair under her turban.

  “Thought I’d never get here,” she said. “I’m Princess Valiant Crow, Val to my friends.”

  “Well, Ms. Crow,” Dickon said, “come sit on the stairs. They’re shady.”

  “Can you direct me to Ben Soul?” she said.

  “I’m Ben Soul.” Ben stood and held out his hand. Prickles ran along his backbone. What could this woman want? How did she know his name?

  She ignored his outstretched hand. “We have business together,” she said. Ben dropped his hand.

  “What sort of business?”

  “Is this one safe?” she asked, identifying Dickon with a jerk of her head.

  “How do you mean, safe?”

  “Does he know what ranges your pasture up yonder on the mountain, including the disguised one?”

>   “Yes. What disguised one?”

  “Don’t play coy with me. I come from fields beyond the known fields. I know who you are, I know about the disguised one, and I know what her mission is. I know of the babe, as well.” Her blue eyes glittered with power. They looked as though lightnings flashed from cornea to pupil. “The holy one in the pasture has called me.”

  “Oh?” Ben’s face showed his skepticism.

  “You’ll want credentials,” Val said. She knelt to open her valise. A beam of light shot from it, illuminating the wrinkles on her face. She extracted a worn envelope and shut the valise. “Here,” she said, handing the envelope to Ben.

  Ben took the envelope carefully between two fingers. He frowned at it. He turned it face up so he could read it. It was addressed “To Whom It May Concern.” It had been opened at some distant time in the past. The hand was familiar. Ben had seen it before, many times. He extracted the single sheet that reposed inside.

  To Whom It May Concern:

  This note introduces to you Princess Valiant Crow, whom you may identify by the crow tattooed on her left shoulder. She is a bona fide Servant of the Balance. All men and women of good will may trust her.

  Signed this 7th day of March, 1994, by Minnie Vann.

  Ben recognized Minnie