Israel fell as if from the spindly arms of heavens angels unto the world below; all froth and brimstone smelling like a charred ember of divine and spurious invention. He was alone inside his cottage of wood and thatch. He was lifting a lit cigarette to his lips and pulling. The wind outside, dark and forwarding gloom, beat and battered at the ramshackle display with furious torrent. Israel wondered off handed lay if the whole thing might collapse.
"Storms a might angry tonite" said Ol Jim the halfwit from out of the creeping dark.
"Yup"
"Thinking she'll collapse?" Israel shook his head.
"She ain't yet."
"I spose"
Israel flicked the ash from the glowing end of his smoke, and cast a look at Jim, his bare outline stark against the blackness of night.
"You sleepin?"
"I'm talking ain't I?"
"Go back to sleep Jim" he pulled on the cigarette.
"Why'don you stop telling me what to do?"
Israel sat back in his rocker and looked out through the fogged and dirty glass window at the storm raging beyond.
"You awake then."
"Reckon so"
"Good"
"Good?"
"Yea"
Israel made out the dim form of Jim turning over and pulling his weather worn coat around him like a womb.
"I thought you said you was awake?" Jim didn't answer. Israel stared into the darkness and puffed away.
"I said I though you was awake, are you not answering me now?" Jim turned back over.
"And what in the hell do you have to say?" Jim sat up.
"Lots."
"Oh really?"
"We got to talk about this Jim," he pointed toward the door, "we can't just leave it."
"We had to, there was no other way. Might I remind you we never would have got into all this save for you"
"That's a damn lie"
"Is it now?"
Israel stood.
"It's a damn lie and you know it," he shook with anger. Jim was on his feet now.
"It's not a lie you old codger! If it weren't for you an your goddamn magics we'd still be in there, cooling our heels like the rest of em. But no, you just had to be the goddamn magician, you just had to be the goddamn sorcerer, you just couldn't leave well enough alone!"
"This ain't my fault"
"Hell it ain't"
"You better watch that tongue"
"Or else what?"
"Don't test me" they were face to face and Israel could smell the whiskey and cornmeal and plaque on Jim's breath.
"You can't hurt me none Israel, you never could and you never will." He turned and walked back to his coat. "You ain't strong enough."
"You ain't my boss"
"Never said I was"
"And you ain't my leader!"
"An you ain't nothing but a dried up old hasbeen that never was! You're a drunk and a bastard and a mistake on gods grey earth Israel. Old man shoulda kilt you years ago, back before things got so messy. But he didn't."
"Kilt me?"
"Back in Hazelton when we was suppressing them Indian folk, he done said you'd be a problem. He done asked me what I thought, and I told him you was harmless."
"You lie"
"Never done once"
"You're a goddamned liar"
"I saved your sorry ass, and it wasn't the first time neither. Nor the last" Israel, beet red and shaking, stepped forward.
"You lie"
Jim spun with such force Israel never even saw the blow. It landed across his face and knocked him to the ground, overturning his chair, his cigarette burning into his fingers. Blood trickled from his chin. Jim was standing over him, giant and terrible like some gnostic archon wings aspread in a horrifying and medieval way. Israel trembled.
"You ain't worth the spittle" Jim said, receding into darkness. Israel pulled himself up with the overturned chair and slunk against the far wall; slouching in a pose signifying calm but belying the cold, damp, and visceral fear brewing in his gut like churning peat. He spit a leathery tasting hunk of mucus and blood, a single tooth with it, onto the dusty floor of the cabin and stared into the dying fire for a moment.
"You ain't so big yousself," he said, spitting again.
"What you say?"
Israel stared into the fire. He was silent for a moment.
"You gon mute over there?" The dome of Jim's bald head peaked through the murk. Israel waited a moment, studying the laccolith and sloping ridges of Jim's forehead. He was building up courage; strength.
"You ain't so big yousself," Israel stared back into the fire, "you thinks you is, but you ain't."
"Oh really."
"Yea really. You're a maggot likes the rest of us."
"Pray tell?" Jim's eyes suddenly shone as they met Israel's; vivid and malicious.
"What?"
"Sorry. Fancy talk and all, tell me what you mean by that and all...I ain't so big and what you said."
"Bout maggots?"
"Yes. Tell me about the maggots," Jim's voice sounded distant. Without body.
"We's all maggots Ol Jim, its true. Each and every of us is born that way, ain't a damn thing to be done about it. We born different. We born evil. It ain't like birds or bees or, even a goddamn wolf is gotta eat, that's why he kills is all. He ain't wrong for the killing, hell, he's right by him and by god. Cause it ain't with intent. You see I met me a spellweaver by name Cloit back before..." He paused, "in you know, in there. Well anyway, he told me about intent and all that. We'd the only ones it did that, you see, we's the only was at kill just for the pleasure."
"Do go on..."
"Well I..." He'd seemed to have lost track of his thought. It was the fear, he was falling under the spell of a captor; a natural phenomena occurring in humans when feeling very deep, very real, emotional stress or fear. He'd gone from degrading to praising and most assuredly soon he'd be begging. Right now he was only preparing for the begging.
Israel was stammering through a ragged explanation. Jim sighed.
"Your story got a point, Israel?"
"What?"
"I said your story got a damn point? You been going round and round on this and I'm getting a might annoyed at it is all," he rubbed out a moth that had landed on his arm and held up its crumpled body for examination.
"Yea it's got a point."
"Oh really."
"Ya, quit asking me that would you"
He flicked away the tiny insect's shattered frame into the volute most of dark and rose. Striding across the hardwood cabin floor, slowly, pained and with a decidedly purposeful step, until he was kneeling before Israel, their faces level, he placed a firm and steady hand on his brother.
"Then get to it."
"I was fixing to-"
"Get to it."
Israel didn't move for a second, then cast away his eyes.
"It's just talk is all"
"Talk?"
"a, a bunch of talk is all"
" so you ain't got not point then?" Israel looked at him hard.
"Do ya?"
"Do I? I wasn't the one with the big sermon." He stood and moved toward the window, turning to chide his brother, "Come on preacher, ain't you the one with the goddamn message?"
"I ain't preaching none"
"Sure sounded like some preaching to me," he was back in the shroud of nocturnal embrace, obscured from Israel's vision. Israel watched the fire.
"And eat your damn sup"
"I ain't want it."
"What? You ain't hungry after all that sermonizing?"
"Yea. I ain't hungry."
"You ain't ate all day is all"
"I'm alright."
"Ain't healthy."
"Ain't your business"
"Right so it is" Israel cast him a glance.
"I'm yet your guardian is all, I'm responsible for you"
"The hell you is," Israel snapped, leaning forward, "don't forget I'm older than you Ol Jim. Ye bastard"
"Don't forget you been declared unfit by them there in that city. Cording to their law, I'm yet your caretaker, brother."
"The hell you is, a rutting bastard like you is my guardian, and plus there ain't now law out here."
"Law remains"
"What?"
"No matter whereun you go, law remains. That's the way of the world."
"Ain't no goddamned law out here"
"There is my brother, there is a law older than any other."
"And what's that?" Israel stared deep into the encompassing dark beyond the dying fire. Jim chuckled.
"It ain't got a name brother"
"How's it not got a name?"
"I done told you is was old"
"It's gotta have a name"
"It does, but I'll spare you from the hearing of it." Israel made a face. "You couldn't understand if you tried Israel." They sat for a moment and Israel waited for Jim to speak. But he didn't.
"So?"
"So what."
"So what about it?"
Jim was turning again, agitated and stern his voice erupted from the darkness.
"What about what?"
"Yer law you was on about is all"
"Law..."
"Yeah, law. You was saying that its out here as well?"
"Was I?" Jim yawned.
"Wells I disagree on that." He spit into the fire, "it ain't law out here."
"Isas true?"
"It's something different out here"
"Hush up and let me doze will ye?"
"It ain't law."
"I ain't looking to has a philosophical discussion with ye Israel, go to sleep. And eat your sup." Israel spat, there was still some blood in it and in shone in the embering coals like brushed and polished steel.
"I ain't eating that no mores is all." Jim was up and Israel could hear him coming cross the floor with each creak and moan of heavy, lumbering feet. But he couldn't see him, not in all that dark.
"You ain't?"
"No, I ain't...where's you at?"
"Why? Is it too good for you?"
"You know what it is, you tell me"
"I know what it is"
"It's wrong is all. Don't The Lord teach us better?"
"Better than what?"
Israel squinted into the blackness but could see nothing. The murky deep of an inner space, cold and uninviting, in which he searched was like the sanctum of some doom lord yet to rise and ride and christen the land with a ceremony of blood; sanguine like a winter rose upon the nothing of empty space where life once was.
"Where you at?"
"You don't want to eat it cause its her right?"
"Who?" Jim peered from the vast voidal abyss like a shimmering arrow.
"That little girl. The one from before. From yesterday or so."
"She was perty is all."
"Perty?"
"I mean before she was dead"
"Ain't like we kilt her"
"Ain't it?"
Jim strode to the window once more. The storm outside had ceased for the time being.
"It ain't us that kilt her. She was kilt in there, by them. Ain't a thing that could be done about it. What they discard us our gain. And we got to survive any means we can"
"I knowd that but still"
"But what?"
"She didn't deserve none of that."
"None of what? She signed the same bargain we all did."
"What bargain, I didn't sign me no bargain"
"Yes you did brother, the eternal bargain. We all live to die, that's the price of this life."
"Ain't no bargain if you ask me"
"No one is." Jim went back to his spot and lie and was quickly asunder. Israel watched as his pale frame disapperated before the falling light of the now dead fire. A crow was calling in the cool summer air, its comrades not far off, returning the shrill tirade with cries and hollers of their own. He inhaled deep the sundering gloom.
"No I guess they ain't."
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