Barking Man: And Other Stories (Open Road) Read online

  Perhaps I can reason with him somehow? But this is all so senseless! It’s insanity, of course, I knew it would come, though I never suspected it would take such a form. Cautiously I peer back over my left shoulder. Wu’s eyes, hot rabid red, rise to meet mine for an instant, and he gives my tail an agonizing shake, as if to emphasize some point. He doesn’t want me to look at him? All right, I won’t. As I turn back, fixing my trembling muzzle between two bars to hold it firm and keep from crying, Wu shifts his bite again. I tremble to the core, for this time I think Ífelt one tooth cut through to bone.

  I must set my mind to something else, some distraction, anything. But I can summon no bright work of images to dance for me now; the pain drives everything before it. The interlocking squares, where the Changes are recorded, twirl before my eyes as crazily as Li’s wheel, as I struggle to fix on one of them, it hardly matters which. What was it that ironic draw of Peace was turning into? Wu bites through on a new and narrower section of my tail, and the fresh burst of pain seems to underline it:

  The wind drives across heaven:

  The image of The Taming Power of the Small.

  Thus the superior mouse

  Refines the outward aspect of his nature.

  Ohyesohyesohyes … That would seem to be my only choice for the moment. Clearly there is not the least thing I can do to change this circumstance. But oh, let me bear it with patience, with fortitude. I will let nothing forth from me but the gentlest acceptance, check Wu only with my meekness. Such is The Taming Power of the Small. And already, far out beyond the razor edges of this pain, I can envision the gently lapping borders of a great placid sea of calm.

  It’s been five days, or is it six, since last I was able to consult the oracle. The torment so steadily administered by Wu has kept my attention fully occupied. So painfully that at times I’ve been tempted to wonder what offense I could possibly have committed to bring such a punishment down on me. Though that question is itself inspired by decadent, almost barbaric thinking.

  Surely, it must be karma.

  But for most of last night, and all of today, Wu has left me in relative peace. Peace, if you like to call it that. He’s tunneled back into the chips again, and now rarely emerges even to eat or drink. While Li still rattles and scrapes interminably along the infinite curve of his wheel. How he keeps it up I can’t conceive … As for me, I have remained wedged here in this corner of the cell for the most part, reluctant to move because movement hurts my poor tail terribly. My tail, so recently a fine and flexible whip of flesh, is swollen to several times its normal size, and covered from base to tip with red-ringed puncture wounds, some still bleeding a little, most already beginning to fester. These last few hours the pain has dimmed to a dull ache—small comfort, since all it means is that amputation will doubtless soon be necessary. I cannot even flex it, though I can’t be sure if the relevant tendons have been completely severed, for any attempt in that direction makes me half faint from pain. To drag it limply behind me as far as the food dish or water spout is excruciating enough.

  In default of all else, I gather my sticks and laboriously calculate the Changes. Never mind that it’s broad daylight. Never mind that the “Boy” has come and that he’s watching me, has opened his notebook and is boring furiously into it with his pen. He’ll never comprehend the significance of my action anyway, so why should I trouble to conceal it?

  On the mountain, a tree:

  The image of Development.

  Thus the superior mouse abides in dignity and virtue

  In order to improve the mores.

  Dignity and virtue, what droppings, what owl pellets, indeed. This superior mouse is abiding in agony and idiocy, like it or not. Of course, it is true that the mores around here could bear a little improvement. Screek screek goes that demented wheel, so that I can barely string a thought together, and for one delirious instant I’m overwhelmed by the thought of how delicious it would be to fling Li down from it and gnaw some intimate part of him clear to the bone. But I must calm myself—

  Six in the second place means:

  The wild goose gradually draws near the cliff …

  Blah blah blah, six in the second place means nothing of much interest to me. On with it—

  Nine in the fifth place means:

  The wild goose draws gradually near the summit.

  For three years the woman has no child …

  Incomprehension. Sterility. Isolation. All perfectly appropriate to our condition now. And the second hexagram?

  Decay. I have no energy to examine the commentary on that; the one word says it all. And tumbles me, finally, into complete despair. Decay. Yes, decay.

  Throughout my life, ever since I first uncurled from my original bald, blind mouseling being and opened my eyes to the great world around me, I have had, it seems, only one truly serious fear. Put aside those dreams of owls and snakes, for death must come to all mice finally, in one form or another. No, what I fear far more deeply is chaos. A suitable bête noire, I suppose, for a mouse of my education, a Scrivener and expert in the Changes. Suppose that (as the barbarian mice who barely have a spoken language are sometimes heard to whisper) all our lore is only a meaningless hodgepodge of misunderstood gleanings and poachings from any number of other traditions. Suppose our Legend of the Voyage is nothing but a lie. What if we never had that former home or any of its appurtenances, no swords, kimonos, prayer wheels, not even any books? Then every geometric figure of my so carefully constructed memory would mean no more than an idiot’s unintended scrawl.

  During my years of study and apprenticeship, a picture was once described to me. Of course, I’ve never seen it. We’ve had no pictures now for centuries. (And if we never had them? Never mind.) Two mice dressed in the finest silk kimonos gathered with the broadest brocade sashes, impeccably groomed in every respect, of noble bearing and aristocratic mien, are kneeling opposite each other at a writing desk. They are busy with painting and calligraphy, playing long-handled brushes in smooth elegant swoops, seemingly so fluid, so effortless, but in fact most precisely controlled by subtle movements of the arm and wrist. The tidy scrolls of their finished work pile up on either side of them.

  Above them, seen as if through a cutaway section of the wall, are two more mice, this pair on all fours, naked, their dark fur bristling like the pelt of bears, eyes glazed with an unquestioning stupidity. They too face each other, and they too have their occupation. And what they are doing is eating books.

  As a student I learned and believed that this picture represented Past and Present—that’s to say, our evolution. But it has just occurred to me that it could just as well portray our Present and our Future, thus: degeneration. Oh fearful thought. But do I find anything around me to disprove it? It’s obvious that Wu’s mind has crumbled, and Li’s equally, though perhaps in a slightly less malign direction. Why, neither of them has spoken so much as an intelligible word for a week or more, nor have they given any evidence of understanding anything I might say. They are dumb now, brutal, they are animals. And soon enough, I’m sure, I’ll follow them. If death does not release me first.

  Three long scraping strokes of the pen distract me from these alternative despairs, and I glance up to see the last one tear across the bottom of a page—quite as if to underscore the finality of our predicament. The “Boy” lets the pen fall from his hand, crashing down heavily like a tree and rolling on the table. He knits his fingers together and lowers his long ski slope of a nose till it almost touches the bars over my head.

  “Well, Mr. Mouse,” I hear him say, almost as though he realized I understand his speech. “That’s all I’m going to be needing from you.”

  It’s a lucky thing I’ve never been prone to motion sickness, for the “Boy,” whether in some infelicitous fit of playfulness or for some other reason, is swinging our cell in wild arcs by the handle as he walks, so that I have to cling to the bars to keep from bouncing from wall to wall. It’s increasingly hard for me t
o believe that last remark of his portended any good for us. Wu must have found some kind of purchase on the floor. Even Li can no longer run, is fastened tight to the rungs of his wheel, swaying from side to side a little. I can’t see where we’re going, only a swoop of blue, a swoop of green, over and over and over. The legendary storms of the Voyage could not have been so much worse than this.

  An eternity of this maniacal yawing and pitching and then, abruptly, stillness. Through my considerable dizziness I see the “Boy’s” rubber heels receding, seeming to reel away, then gone. The landscape all around us tosses on a diminishing pendulous swing, then after a short age it comes completely to rest. I notice how the air is crowded with the song of birds; never before have I heard so many. As the motion stops, I begin to see something I’ve only heard described before: the yellowing stubble of an autumnal field. And not far past, a thicket of fruit trees of some kind. From among them I can hear the ripple of water—clean, uncontaminated water. I can taste the scent of barely overripe windfall fruit, tumbled into the maze of grass which we must soon be entering.

  For the door to our cell is open.

  Li hops down from the wheel and rocks back on his haunches, forepaws bunched before him, gazing at that amazing barless square. Wu, risen from the chips that still cling here and there to his unkempt fur, is similarly transfixed. Surely their hearts must be pounding as desperately as mine. But now is the moment when I must govern myself. And try to govern them as well.

  “Li.”

  He hears me now; he’s shuffling round my way.

  “Wu.”

  And Wu’s responding. He sits up, at attention. As they both turn toward me, I see that their eyes are clear and comprehending, though certainly very tired. Already the influence of the drug must be beginning to dissolve, we can all feel it now. One good sleep would restore us. I want to weep with gratitude, though I know I must be firm.

  “I have taken the oracle for the day, as follows:

  “The wind blows low over the mountain:

  The image of Decay.

  Thus the superior mouse stirs up the people

  And strengthens their spirit.”

  A brief pause, for effect. Li’s eyes are locked on mine. Wu’s lower a little. Guiltily?

  “I need hardly remind you that we have just passed through what I heartily hope will prove to be the most terribly degrading experience of any of our lives. We have been close, perilously close, to the Void.”

  With a certain satisfaction, I notice Wu’s head drooping a little more.

  “But never mind that now. What we have done is simply to provide ourselves with an example to avoid. We shall rise again, recivilize ourselves, surpass even what we were formerly, before this late catastrophe. We shall regain our self-esteem, and our regard for one another too. For we shall urgently require both as we strive to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

  “Perhaps I don’t need to recall for you that the second meaning of Decay is Work on What Has Been Spoiled. And—

  “Work on what has been spoiled has supreme success.

  “Are you ready now to undertake that work? Both of you?”

  Li’s eyes slide over for a glance at Wu, whose gaze remains lowered to my knees. After a breathless moment, Wu answers with, a barely perceptible bow, and I relax as I see Li follow suit.

  “Good. Very good. It furthers one to cross the great water. But one more thing before we begin. A matter concerning Wu. There is just one thing you have to do. You must complete what you’ve begun. I must ask you”—here I find I have to clear a lump out of my throat—“to bite off my tail.”

  His shock and distress are quite unmistakable, the emotion rocks him back on his haunches. It’s hard to rattle a Samurai mouse, though of course our ordeal has affected him.

  “Yes. No further questions, please.” I raise my paw. “It’s absolutely necessary … for health reasons. You must do it.”

  This time Wu’s bow is low, profound, ceremonious. He takes a step or so toward me, and for a moment I see his whole body framed in that intoxicating open doorway. Even as he bares his teeth, I see sincere repentance in his eyes.

  “As near the base as possible, of course.”

  Wu answers with a nod and a widening of his jaws. Yes, I can repose my faith in him, he’ll do what’s necessary. And Li will not attempt to interfere, though I can see the anguish on his face. And I, I will not cry out. So each of us will take our proper part, though little enough in our recent past has prepared us for this freedom.

  BLACK AND TAN

  UP UNTIL HIS FAMILY died out from under him, Peter Jackson used to grow tobacco. His place was a long ways out from town, up on the hillside above Keyhole Lake—you had a nice view of the lake from up there. It was forty or fifty acres that he owned, and an easement down to the lake shore. Maybe a third of that land was too rocky to farm and another third was grown up in cedars, fine old trees he never cared to cut down. There was the place his house was set and what was left you could grow tobacco on. He did just about all the work himself, hiring a couple of hands only once in a while, at cutting and drying time, for instance.

  “Tobacco,” he was known to say, and then he’d pause and spit a splash of it to one side of the courthouse steps. “Tobacco, now, that’s eight days a week …” Like most farmers he’d come to town on Saturday, visit the Co-op or the Standard Farm Store, maybe get a few things at the supermarket. When he got done his errands he might wander through the courthouse square and talk a while with this one and that one. One Sunday a month, more or less, he’d drive in with his wife and they’d both go to church, and two, three times a year he’d come in by himself and get falling-down drunk. At the end of his evening he’d just go to sleep in the cab of his truck, then in the morning hitch himself straight and drive on out home. Never caused anybody any more trouble than that. Later on, after he’d got the dogs, he cut out the drinking and the church along with it, right about at the same time.

  A steady fellow, then, and mostly known as a hard worker. Quiet, never had a whole lot to say, but what he said was reasonable. Whatever he told you he would do would get done if nothing serious kept him from it. That was the kind of thing any of us might have said of him, supposing we’d been asked.

  Amy was the name of his wife, who’d been a Puckett before she married. Never raised any objection to living so far out from town. She was fond of the woods and fond of the lake, so maybe that made up for whatever loneliness there may have been to it. They didn’t have any neighbors near, though a couple of Nashville people had built summer houses on the far side of the lake. Like Peter Jackson, Amy was a worker; she grew a garden, put up food for the winter. They were both in the garden picking tomatoes on the late September evening when she all of a sudden fell over dead. Heart attack was what did her in, faster than a bullet. Jackson said he spent a minute twirling around to see where the shot might have come from, before he went to her. They had been working opposite ends of the row, and she was already getting cold by the time he got to her, he said. And she not more than fifty, fifty-five.

  Jackson wasn’t as broke up about it as you could have thought a man might be, losing his wife in her prime that way. Or if he was, he didn’t show it much. There was a good turnout at the funeral, for Amy was well liked around the town. The old hens were forever coming up to him and saying how terrible they thought it was, and every time he told them, No. No, it ain’t so terrible, not really. If her time had come to go, then better she went quickly, with no pain. So everybody said how well he was bearing it. And then his children started to die.

  They had two children, son and daughter: June and Richard were their names. Both of them looked fair to rise above their raising, both going on past high school, which neither of their parents had. The boy was putting himself through UT Knoxville on an ROTC scholarship, and then one summer he got himself killed in a training accident, some kind of a foolish, avoidable thing. Well, he went quick too, did Richard. It put Peter Jackson back
at the graveside just under a year after they buried Amy. He was dry-eyed again, but tight around the mouth, and whatever people spoke to him he didn’t have much to say back. June stood with him the whole time through, hanging on to his elbow and sort of fending people off. It might have been she was already sick herself by that time, though nobody knew anything of it yet.

  June was the older of the two. She’d gone to nursing school in Nashville and kept living there once she was done, had herself a job at the Baptist Hospital. After she got that cancer she stayed on as a patient a while but there wasn’t anything they could do for her, and in the end she came home to Keyhole Lake to die. Peter Jackson nursed her right on through it, never had any other help at all. It wasn’t quick or anything like it; it kept on for five or six months and you didn’t have to hear a whole lot about it to know there must have been pain and to spare.

  It was mid-March or so when they buried her; there’d been a hard winter and there was still some thin snow on the ground. Peter Jackson stood alone this time, grim and silent for the most part. Nobody had a lot to say to him either. He had gone lean under his hardship, but he was still a fine-looking man, and people said he looked well in his funeral suit. Of course, he’d had his share of opportunity to get the hang of wearing it. As a young man he’d had deep red hair, and now it was rust-colored, patched with gray. His eyebrows were thick and bushy, turning out in devilish points at the sides, and underneath, his deep-set eyes surprised you with the brightness of their green. This time he wouldn’t turn back from the grave once they had filled it, and after a minute the priest walked over to stand with him. Shoulder to shoulder, they looked like a matched pair, Mr. Chalk in his black cassock and Jackson in the suit.