IGMS Issue 17 (14 page)

I yelled. "Look out, Frankie, behind you!"

She pointed her right hand's index finger back over her shoulder, never even looking. Small was gone. Just a smoke wisp hung in the air.

It got solemn. I could see Big and Medium looking at where Small had formerly been. Then Big cursed.

"Hey," he yelled up to Medium, on the roof. "Remember Abilene? Together -- go!"

He whipped up his revolver, and at the same time Medium, on the hotel roof, aimed his repeating rifle at Frankie. Everything went fast and slow at the same time: Frankie brought up both hands, pointing an index finger at each of those gunslingers, and two guns fired, then fired again, and fired again.

When I opened my eyes, the guns were still going off, and Frankie still stood pointing her fingers. But, in the alleyway and up on the roof, there were only smoke wisps, iridescent in the sun. Big's revolver had fallen onto the dirt street and Medium's rifle had fallen down onto the street, too, and both those guns writhed as if in pain, shooting off bullets, some of which went into the ground and some hit the sides of buildings and one broke a window in the Post Office, until there were no more bullets in those guns and they just lay there.

"Those three were hacks," Fitzpatrick Duprey said.

From a pocket inside his coat he drew out the wand. He contemplated Frankie, looking like a man about to enjoy a broiled t-bone, and savoring the anticipation. Frankie, expressionless, waited.

"I brought down Chin Poo Ling with this, up north of San Francisco," Duprey said. "And down in El Paso, or just east of there, Hoover Semprebond called me out, and he's ashes now."

He wanted to get Frankie on edge. But she just looked blank, like always. I wondered if she'd killed so many men she'd gone dead inside herself. Meanwhile, the sheriff kept on talking trash, and I hoped Frankie could see he meant to get her distracted.

"The thing is, Frankie, taking you out, that'll be a feather in . . ."

Exactly then, in mid sentence, he whipped up that wand and it shot out a lightning bolt, streaking toward her throat. Frankie threw up a hand and caught the bolt on her palm. She looked like a reflection in water, when you drop in a pebble and the waves make the image waver. But then she got clear again, as if the waves ran themselves out, and that lighting bolt drooped. Its tip touched the dirt. Then it collapsed altogether, writhing on the street while it faded away.

"That was the easy one," Duprey said. "Try this."

He waved the wand, and a spear hurtled at Frankie, shrieking -- it stopped two feet from her upraised hand, and quivered, as if struggling to finish its job. I could see her lips moving, as if she and the spear argued. It went on a long time. Then I saw her straining: as if against powerful resistance, she forced up her fist, thumb up, and the spear shuddered. That went on a while. Then the spear moaned and turned to bendy rubber. Frankie twisted her fist and the rubber spear tied itself into a knot, flared, and only ash sprinkled down. Frankie still had her fist out, twisted now with her thumb pointing down.

"Tired?" Duprey asked.

"Leave," she said. "You'll find other jobs."

He looked at her, thoughtful. Then he grinned, and touched his hat brim, pretending to doff it to her. He turned his back to her and walked toward his sheriff's office. I could see what Frankie couldn't, because of his turned back: he had that wand held up by his chest, mumbling to it.

I ran to her, yelling: "He's working that wand!"

Just then Duprey spun around, and the wand sent a dozen bowie knives screaming toward Frankie, from a dozen different angles, whizzing so fast you could hardly see them, and one came toward my left eye, too fast to duck, so I shut my eyes and waited to die. I suppose I screamed.

Everything went quiet. I opened my eyes.

Frankie had both arms out, sweeping them through the air, and that knife stood frozen just an inch from my eye. All eleven of the other knives stood frozen, too, trembling. I thought Frankie's face looked terribly weary and strained. But she made another pass with her hands: in unison, all those knives, including the one in front of my nose, turned around, pointed back the way they had come. Frankie looked as if she were lifting a huge weight, maybe too heavy for her. Those knives struggled to turn back toward her, and she moaned, sweeping the air with her hands. Suddenly, all twelve knives shot back the way the came, at Fitzpatrick Duprey. Twelve hilts stuck out of him, at various spots.

He looked down at his white suit, which was beginning to redden. Then he shook his head at Frankie.

"This new suit's ruined," he said.

He fell onto the dirt, dead.

Frankie collapsed back against the Okie Corral's boards, sinking down, until she sat in on the ground. I ran up to her, crying, and asked if she were hurt. She breathed hard, like after a race. Finally, she turned those smoked glasses toward me.

"Become a school teacher," she told me. "Librarian is also good."

Just a few minutes later, we all were in the Ascending Angel's saloon. Placido sat at a table, grinning like a chimpanzee. Every so often he'd peek at Frankie, sitting alone at the next table, counting the five-thousand dollars he'd just paid her. His lower lip would tremble, seeing all that money going away. But then he'd remember the scary sheriff was dead and cheer up again. Marigold stood behind his chair, her hands on his shoulders, as if they were posing for the official picture marking Placido's inaugural as Austro-Hungarian emperor. I felt wretched, seeing my mother betting our future on that human junk. I think she'd convinced herself that Placido actually cared about her as a person and I was about to speak up when Sweetie Hieronymus slithered into the saloon, doing damage assessment.

"What did he pay you?" he said to Frankie. "I'll double it, just as a signing fee, annual salary and benefits to be negotiated."

"She's mine!" Placido yelled, eyes popping.

Because of her smoked glasses, and her blank expression, I couldn't tell what Frankie thought. She just folded her fee from Placido and slid the bills into the pocket of her leather trousers. Then she sat back in her chair. Two tables away, Nellie Bly furiously scribbled on her pad. Only one person spoke, and I realized it was me, looking at Nellie Bly.

"Take us with you," I pleaded. "Marigold and me -- take us away from these horrible men!"

Nellie barely looked up, she was so busy with her notes. But I did get a response from Sweetie Hieronymus.

"Shut up, you little whore," he said, and he raised his hand to swat me.

And then he wasn't there. On his chair lay a dusting of ashes.

Nobody said anything. Frankie finally got up. She walked upstairs, still looking weary. I thought Johnny might go after her, but then I noticed he wasn't around. All at once, Placido wailed.

"Sweetie!" he sobbed. "My big brother!"

That outburst certainly surprised me, and gave me much to contemplate. Meanwhile, though, Johnny Duncan came in from the back rooms, with his arm around Dee Dee Wister, a barmaid. He looked around, as if he wondered what was going on, but then he leaned down and nuzzled Dee Dee's cheek, which is the exact moment that Frankie came back down the stairs, wearing her shapeless gray dress again, carrying her valise. She turned those smoked glasses on Johnny and Dee Dee. Nellie Bly also saw them, and she looked stunned, I thought, and hurt, too.

Frankie walked out the saloon's door and left it swinging behind her. Johnny hurried over to the door and looked over the top. "Damn it, Frankie," he said. "Sometimes a man needs the company of a woman who doesn't scare him half to death."

From the other side of the door, I heard her voice: "You done me wrong, Johnny," she said. "You done me wrong."

And he was changed. I believe she still loved Johnny, despite his being untrue, loved him too much to make him ashes and smoke. So she only made those long legs of his a lot less long, and right away he got a new nickname, which was Shorty Duncan, and I do believe his new physical stature matched his moral stature. From the way Frankie stood taking a last look at him, I think she did, too.

After that I helped Nellie Bly carry her valises down to the Depot, where Frankie Payne also stood waiting for the afternoon train.

"Help us, please?" I said to Nellie.

"I have appreciated your assistance, Susanna," she said. "When I get back to New York, I'll definitely see what I can do."

When I last saw her, she was boarding the train with Frankie. They were deep in conversation. And she had her notebook out, and her pen.

A few weeks later, when Nellie Bly's story finally appeared in the New York
World
, I read it raptly. She wrote that Juno Frankie Payne came from Hoorn, New York, where her father worked at a plant making boats for Hudson River shad fishermen. His wife, Nellie wrote, had a broken nose, and one or the other of her eyes always was blackened. Also, the father went after his daughter, until one drunken night he backed the teenaged Frankie into a corner and ripped at her dress -- she reached deep into her soul, willing him to burn, and he did, Nellie wrote. And she had a quote from Frankie Payne: "I guess sometimes it's your career that chooses you."

Other than that, her entire story about the phosphate mines and what happened in Duster was mostly based on what I had told her and showed her, and I can testify that it was accurate. However, she never mentioned me. I confess to feeling disappointed.

At the end of her New York
World
story about the Duster incidents, Nellie Bly asked Frankie what she considered the moral.

"This story has no moral," Frankie said. "It doesn't even have an end, all it goes to show is that there's no good in men at all."

I'd extend that to both genders, personally. I do believe, however, that sometimes, especially if you practice Precise Observation, you will see glimmers of decency, and that is redeeming.

Eye for Eye
was published in 1990 as a Tor double novel, along with "Tunesmith" by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. It is currently out of print, although it is available as an audiobook.

Part 1

Just talk, Mick. Tell us everything. We'll listen.

Well to start with I know I was doing terrible things. If you're a halfway decent person, you don't go looking to kill people. Even if you can do it without touching them. Even if you can do it so as nobody even guesses they was murdered, you still got to try not to do it.

Who taught you that?

Nobody. I mean it wasn't in the books in the Baptist Sunday School -- they spent all their time telling us not to lie or break the sabbath or drink liquor. Never did mention killing. Near as I can figure, the Lord thought killing was pretty smart sometimes, like when Samson done it with a donkey's jaw. A thousand guys dead, but that was okay cause they was Philistines. And lighting foxes' tails on fire. Samson was a sicko, but he still got his pages in the Bible.

I figure Jesus was about the only guy got much space in the Bible telling people not to kill. And even then, there's that story about how the Lord struck down a guy and his wife cause they held back on their offerings to the Christian church. Oh, Lord, the TV preachers did go on about that. No, it wasn't cause I got religion that I figured out not to kill people.