THE FRESCO
THE FRESCO
Sheri S. Tepper
CONTENTS
Things that go bump in the night
Benita—SATURDAY
Incidents—SUNDAY
Benita—MONDAY
Benita—TUESDAY
Senator Byron Morse—TUESDAY
Benita—WEDNESDAY
Benita—WEDNESDAY EVENING
Angelica—WEDNESDAY
Law enforcement—WEDNESDAY
Chad Riley—THURSDAY
General McVane—THURSDAY
Jerusalem—THURSDAY
Afghanistan—THURSDAY
Benita—THURSDAY
Jerusalem—THURSDAY
Washington—THURSDAY
Mrs. Chad Riley—THURSDAY AND FRIDAY
Bert Shipton—FRIDAY
Benita—FRIDAY
Pistach management—MONDAY
Law enforcement—MONDAY
Incident in Virginia—MONDAY
Senator Morse—TUESDAY
Pistach management—TUESDAY-THURSDAY
Benita—FRIDAY
Bert—MONDAY
Benita—TUESDAY NIGHT
Benita—WEDNESDAY
Law Enforcement—FRIDAY
Benita—FRIDAY
Senator Byron Morse—FRIDAY
Among the Shizzalizaquosmn—SATURDAY
Benita, bound—LOST WEEKEND
Benita—MONDAY
In Afghanistan—TUESDAY
Benita—JOURNEY OUT OF TIME
Revelation
Benita—TUESDAY WEEK
The Cabal—TUESDAY
Benita—WEDNESDAY
The morning after
On Inkleoza—SOMETIME
Benita—ONE YEAR LATER
Things that go bump in the night
Along the Oregon coast an arm of the Pacific shushes softly against rocky shores. Above the waves, dripping silver in the moonlight, old trees, giant trees, few now, thrust their heads among low clouds, the moss thick upon their boles and shadow deep around their roots. In these woods nights are quiet, save for the questing hoot of an owl, the satin stroke of fur against a twig, the tick and rasp of small claws climbing up, clambering down. In these woods, bear is the big boy, the top of the chain, but even he goes quietly and mostly by day. It is a place of mosses and liverworts and ferns, of filmy green that curtains the branches and cushions the soil, a wet place, a still place.
A place in which something new is happening. If there were eyes to see, they might make out a bear-sized shadow, agile as a squirrel, puckering the quiet like an opening zipper, rrrrip up, rrrrip down, high into the trees then down again, disappearing into mist. Silence intervenes, then another seam is ripped softly on one side, then on the other, followed by new silences. Whatever these climbers are, there are more than a few of them.
The owl opens his eyes wide and turns his head backwards, staring at the surrounding shades. Something new, something strange, something to make a hunter curious. When the next sound comes, he launches himself into the air, swerving silently around the huge trunks, as he does when he hunts mice or voles or small birds, following the pucker of individual tics to its lively source, exploring into his life’s darkness. What he finds is nothing he might have imagined, and a few moments later his bloody feathers float down to be followed by another sound, like a satisfied sigh.
Near the Mexican border, rocky canyons cleave the mountains, laying them aside like broken wedges of gray cheese furred with a dark mold of pinon and juniper that sheds hard shadows on moon glazed stone, etched lithographs in gray and black, taupe and silver.
Beneath feathery chamisa a rattlesnake flicks his tongue, following a scent. Along a precarious rock ledge a ring-tailed cat strolls, nose snuffling the cracks. At the base of the stone a peccary trots along familiar foot trails, toward the toes of a higher cliff where a seeping spring gathers in a rocky goblet. In the desert, sounds are dry and rattling: pebbles toed into cracks, hoofs tac-tacking on stone, the serpent rattle warning the wild pig to veer away, which she does with a grunt to the tribe behind her. From the rocky scarp the ring-tailed cat hears the whole population of the desert pass about its business in the canyon below.
A new sound comes to this place, too. High in the air, a chuff, chuff, chuff, most like the wings of a monstrous crow, crisp and powerful, engine-like in their regularity. Then a cry, eerie and utterly alien, not from any native bird ever heard in this place.
The peccary freezes in place. The ring-tailed cat leaps into the nearest crevice. Only the rattler does not hear, does not care. For the others, staying frozen in place seems the appropriate and prudent thing to do as the chuff, chuff, chuff moves overhead, another cry and an answer from places east, and west, and north as well. The aerial hunter is not alone, and its screams fade into the distance, the echoes still, and the canyon comes quiet again.
And farther south and east, along the gulf, in the wetland that breeds the livelihood of the sea, in the mangrove swamps, the cypress bogs, the moss-lapped, vine-twined, sawgrass-grown, reptile-ridden mudflats, night sounds are continuous. Here the bull gator bellows, swamp birds call, insects and frogs whir and buzz and babble and creak. Fish jump, huge tails thrash, wings take off from cover to silhouette themselves on the face of the moon.