To Your Scattered Bodies Go

"You can move on, Sir Richard," she said. Her lip was curled. "Lord grab me, I don’t like being second choice. You could of asked "er where nobody could of seen you. I got some pride, too." He was silent for a minute. His first impulse had been to lash out at her with a sharp-pointed insult. But she was right. He had been too contemptuous of her. Even if she had been a whore, she had a right to be treated as a human being. Especially since she maintained that it was hunger that had driven her to prostitution, though he had been skeptical about that. Too many prostitutes had to rationalize their profession; too many had justifying fantasies about their entrance into the business. Yet, her rage at Smithson and her behavior toward him indicated that she was sincere.

He stood up and said, "I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings."

"Are you in love with her?" Wilfreda said, looking up at him.

"I’ve only told one woman that I ever loved her," he said.

"Your wife?"

"No. The girl died before I could marry her."

"And how long was you married?"

"Twenty-nine years, though it’s none of your business."

"Lord grab me! All that time, and you never once told her you loved her!"

"It wasn’t necessary," he said, and walked away. The hut he chose was occupied by Monat and Kazz. Kazz was snoring away; Monat was leaning on his elbow and smoking a marihuana stick. Monat preferred that to tobacco, because it tasted more like his native tobacco. However, he got little effect from it. On the other hand, tobacco sometimes gave him fleeting but vividly colored visions.

Burton decided to save the rest of his dreamgum, as he called it. He lit up a cigarette, knowing that marihuana would probably make his rage and frustration even darker. He asked Monat questions about his home, Ghuurrkh. He was intensely interested, but the marihuana betrayed him, and he drifted away while the Cetan’s voice became fainter and fainter.

"…cover your eyes, boys!" Gilchrist said in his broad Scots speech.

Richard looked at Edward; Edward grinned and put hands over his eyes, but he was surely peeking through the spaces between his fingers. Richard placed his own hands over his eyes and continued to stand on tiptoe. Although he and his brother were standing on boxes, they still had to stretch to see over the heads of the adults in front of them.

The woman’s head was in the stock by now; her long brown hair had fallen over her face. He wished he could see her expression as she stared down at the basket waiting for her, or for her head, rather.

"Don’t peek now, boys!" Gilchrist said again.

There was a roll of drums, a single shout, and the blade raced downward, and then a concerted shout from the crowd, mingled with some screams and moans, and the head fell down. The neck spurted out blood and would never stop. It kept spurting and spurting while the sun gleamed on it, it spurted out and covered the crowd and, though he was at least fifty yards from her, the blood struck him in the hands and seeped down between his fingers and over his face, filling his eyes and blinding him and making his lips sticky and salty. He screamed…

"Wake up, Dick!" Monat was saying. He was shaking Burton by the shoulder. "Wake up! You must have been having a nightmare!"

Burton, sobbing and shivering, sat up. He rubbed his hands and then felt his face. Both were wet. But with perspiration, not with blood.

"I was dreaming," he said. "I was just six years old and in the city of Tours. In France, where we were living then. My tutor, John Gilchrist, took me and my brother Edward to see the execution of a woman who had poisoned her family. It was a treat, Gilchrist said. I was excited, and I peeked through my fingers when he told us not to watch the final seconds, when the blade of the guillotine came down. But I did; I had to. I remember getting a little sick at my stomach but that was the only effect the gruesome scene had on me. I seemed to have dislocated myself while I was watching it; it was as if I saw the whole thing through a thick glass, as if it were unreal. Or I was unreal so I wasn’t really horrified."

Monat had lit another marihuana. Its fight was enough so that Burton could see him shaking his head. "Flow savage! You mean that you not only killed your criminals, you cut their heads off! In public! And you allowed children to see it!"

"They were a little more humane in England," Burton said. "They hung the criminals!"