Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set (13 page)

The afternoon came and two dozen died in the heat. Evening food rations were parceled out. Still Ragsdale sat, heedless of the eggs and potatoes in the folds of his shirt. The prisoners who eagerly came to him with cash were sent away grumbling about how smugglers held out on goods to drive up the price. But Ragsdale cared nothing for their money. Because out there, in the high bristling trees beyond the stockade walls, was soap and coffee and bacon and perhaps a pint of fine bourbon.

All he had to do was cross the deadline.

He stood on trembling legs. His eyes were bright and looking toward where vintages might need stamping.

As he broke into a run, he heard shouts erupt from the tents, and from the little circles of men gathered around their cooking fires. But he didn't stop, he didn't even hear them, and then he saw what Tibbets must have seen.

A large shining field, rolling out in gold and green and red, all harvest colors. And to the sides, under shady trees, were stalls and wagons loaded with every luxury known to civilized man. Crisp tents and bright campfires stretched into the distance, and the smell of frying bacon mingled with the woodsmoke.

Ragsdale vaulted the rail and shouts rang from above. Still he ran, the blood roaring in his ears. A wetness poured down his head, surrounded him, and he lost his balance as darkness fell.

Dawn found him outside the walls. He searched for Tibbets, but saw nothing but scrub forest. Sounds from the prison gate drew him back to the edge of the woods. The grave detail was heading out. Ragsdale thought that McCloskey would take his place at the front of the line, but all the prisoners were strangers.

Ragsdale saw his own corpse down near the end of the line. A fifty-cent corpse. He looked hopefully at the two hard-eyed Union prisoners that carried the flesh that Ragsdale had so recently worn. Ragsdale was annoyed that someone had made fifty cents off his corpse. That money was rightfully his.

Maybe he could hail the soldiers, send them away with a quick profit and no work. Ragsdale searched his boots for money and found none. Someone had robbed him as he lay dead. And he had nothing to trade. He watched from the woods as his body was counted, then thrown in the ditch and buried.

As the dirt was thrown over his face, night fell, then the sun rose and found him watching the next grave detail. Again his corpse was dragged before his eyes. A different pair of soldiers carried him that morning. He again felt the anger at someone profiting from his death.

A week of such dawns, a month of funeral processions, and Ragsdale became accustomed to the stench of corpses. In fact, he welcomed it. Because the stench helped drown out the maddening aromas that drifted through the trees, the exotic smells of soap and coffee and bacon, goods that were being enjoyed by others in peaceful distant bivouacs. If only Ragsdale had some money, he might go there and trade in the land where everything was free.

Sometimes, just as the dirt was thrown on the face of his corpse and night again fell, he heard laughter and singing from the far camps. It was the sound of men with full bellies.

A year passed, and Ragsdale still had no money, not even the fifty cents that his bullet-riddled corpse brought each day. He sat and watched the grave details, his stomach rumbling with an emptiness greater than hunger.

Ten, twenty, a hundred years of soft parades.

In the trees, forever in sight of the stockade walls, Ragsdale waited for the war to end.

THE END

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BONUS STORY: THE BLEEDER

By J.R. Rain

Leo Dershowitz stood in front of his painting and frowned. It wasn’t quite right. He had a firm image in his head of what he wanted and this wasn’t it. The color was wrong. And the shading was off. Yeah, that was it. The shading.

The problem was that the clear image in his head was fading, becoming hazy around its edges, amorphous.

Which meant only one thing.

He must be scabbing over again. He hated when that happened.

Leo looked down at his right arm, which hung over a white plastic bucket, inside of which was splattered with blood.
His
blood. Sure enough, the gash in his forearm was threatening to close. The steady flow of blood was nearly being cut off by a thick, congealing scab.

Using a very clean surgical knife, Leo deftly flicked away the scab, which broke off and fell with a splash into the bucket, itself partly filled with a finger or two of his own hemoglobin. Now, once again, sweet blood pumped freely from the gash just below his elbow, flowing rapidly over the many horizontal scars that lined the inside of his arm. Leo always thought the scars looked like piano keys.

Even though he had performed many such blood-letting rituals before, the site of so much blood at once gripped him briefly with nausea and an old fear. The fear of dying.

What if I bleed too much this time? What if I pass out and never awaken?

Leo knew the answer: If he passed out while bleeding, there was a very good chance he would never awaken. That he would bleed to death.

Then don’t pass out.

Good idea.

But Leo had learned long ago to ignore such inhibiting fears. He
had
to ignore them. Because the moment he began to bleed, the moment the life-force flowed from his wounds, a magnificent vision would appear. A vision that hovered tantalizingly in his mind’s eye. Clear as day. A vision that only lasted for as long as Leo would bleed.

And now, as the blood dripped steadily from his dangling fingertips, the vision, which had been losing it sharpness with the congealing of his blood, came starkly back into focus.

Leo had a painting to do.

He touched the tip of his paintbrush to his palette, rolled it gently, applying the perfect measure of light desert auburn mixed with pure white, and turned to the half-finished painting before him. And for the next hour or so he transferred the burning image of his mind to the canvas, twice more knocking away the damnable coagulating scabs.

And when the painting was done, when the bucket was splattered with his blood, Leo nearly wept at the painting’s beauty.

* * *

Seven years ago, Leo Dershowitz discovered his artistic muse. It came, quite literally, with a bang.

Seven years ago, the now very famous artist Leo Dershowitz would be the first to admit that he had been just a very average artist. None of his work stood out. He had been twenty-eight years old and he was miserable. By this age he was supposed to have been a famous artist, right? In the least, he was supposed to have his own art gallery, or a line of greeting cards.

Due to his predisposition for laziness, Leo had decided early on in life that he would become a professional artist. This was back in junior high, back when he was already sick to death of hearing his damn alarm clock going off each morning. It was on such a morning, after having pressed the
snooze
button for the umpteenth time, that he decided that he was going to find an occupation in which he
never
had to wake up early again, an occupation in which he could sleep in as long as he wanted, an occupation in which
he
made his own hours.

Having just made the bus and looking down at the fairly simplistic-looking Latin-American painting on his Spanish textbook, Leo was struck with an idea.

He, too, would become a painter!

After all, he enjoyed creating and didn’t his second grade teacher, Mrs. Garth, once say that a finger painting of his had been fairly good? She had indeed. Most importantly, though, Leo was fairly certain painters could sleep in as late as they wanted.

He never looked back.

Leo threw himself into art, taking class after class, in high school and college, leaving behind an insubstantial trail of uninspired paintings. You see, Leo wasn’t very good at painting.

Leo eventually flunked out of college. His major, of course, had been art. Many of his classes were before noon, and that just wouldn’t do.

In the real world, he refused traditional jobs, especially jobs that called upon him getting up too early. Leo valued sleep above anything else, even above eating and having a roof over his head. At one point he lived under a freeway overpass, where he sometimes slept all day, lulled comatose by the steady drone of car engines.

Interestingly, Leo really did love painting. And the more he doggedly pursued it, the better he got at it. But getting
better
at painting, didn’t necessarily mean he was still any
good
at it. At least, not good enough to earn him any sort of steady income.

Which is why he often lived with older women who supported him. He called them sugar mommas, but not to their faces. To their faces, he called them whatever they wanted to hear. When the sugar mommas got sick of him freeloading off them, Leo would move back in with his parents. Leo didn’t care where he lived. As long as he had his precious, uninterrupted mornings—and a place to paint.

Through thick and thin, Leo Dershowitz never gave up. Give him that. He was going to make it as an artist, even if it killed him.

And, in the end, it did.

* * *

Seven years ago, Leo Dershowitz’s mundane, uninspired life would forever change with a shard of glass.

After a night of partying—and living alone for the first time in a long, long time (his last girlfriend had tossed him out after discovering him riffling through her purse)—he had been taking out the trash the next day.

The Hefty bag was full of glass bottles, some broken, from the small party he had thrown the night before. Leo often threw such parties with his local artist friends in Los Angeles, many of whom were not very good either. Leo hated good artists. He was deathly envious of them, mostly because he could not understand them.

So Leo’s parties were generally small affairs, filled with other artists like himself; that is, the uninspired, the hacks, and the unimpressive. Leo liked it that way. He was fairly certain that he was at least as good or better than most of his unimaginative friends, and that always made Leo feel good. Of course, if any of his artist friends did become too good, or too successful, Leo would drop him or her immediately—and have nothing more to do with them.

Now, heading to the dumpster that late afternoon, the half-asleep Leo swung the plastic trash bag about rather recklessly, a bag full of bottles and, most importantly,
broken bottles
.

Leo couldn’t help but notice when the bag stopped swinging. He especially couldn’t help but notice the blinding pain in his left leg.

He looked down. Amazingly, the bag appeared stuck to his leg. But that wasn’t right. No, a broken piece of glass, poking through the bag, was, in fact, embedded in his left leg.

Leo yelped—and pulled the bag away. As he did so, a crimson arch of blood spurted from the very deep wound in his shin. Leo felt lightheaded. He was certain he was going to faint.