Warren Tall Men and Other Tales

Modern Myths & Stories
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-2663-7
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Reihe: Tall Men and Other Tales

From the Author of Spirit of Orn comes a new, sprawling Western mythology. In Tall Men and Other Tales, the legacy of the American West is alive and well in the lives of the very Tall Tales themselves! After a falling out, John Henry, Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, and Johnny Appleseed lead separate lives and are forced to either remain true to their roots or fall into obscurity as the frontier disappears forever. A novella in four parts, Tall Men and Other Tales affixes itself to the frightening reality of the modern age: one without opportunity. Can the heroes of American Yesteryear come together before it's too late? Included in this collection is selection of Post-American short stories called 'Other Tales.' Featuring coma patients, super-intelligent factory workers, and black-ops pixies!

Greg Horton is a professional graphic designer from Santa Rosa, California. He is currently every which way but loose, in a constant state of caffeination, and surrounded by a loving family that was slightly larger than he expected.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Warren, Stuart

Warren, Alyssa

Leseproben

1 Prologue   A warm breeze was coming in off the bay, heavy and humid. Steam ships puffed billows of acrid smoke into the waning marine layer, each plume brooding for a moment before disintegrating into an opaque haze. The Mary Ann was approaching the pier off 24th Street as freedmen deck hands threw heavy ropes off the starboard to be tied down. Hobbling down the damp gangplank was a towering, formidable black man, with a blue rag shielding his mouth from the smoke. Over his shoulder rested a battered sledge with a hickory haft, and in his hand a burlap sack. Wooden crates of cotton rushed past him on the narrow path, carried by freedmen dock workers back onto the boat. The port was all hustle and bustle, loud cries breaking over the waves, muddled by the endless rush of water and shrieks of seagulls. The hammer man nodded, approving, and navigated down the ramp to the unforgiving terra firma. A shipping office, erected inconveniently in the center of the pier platform, was taking freight and processing fares. Underneath the receiving sign, swift freedmen were labeling the parcels with ink, dipping roughhewn sticks with horse hair bristles into buckets of tar—N.O.R. for New Orleans, B.O.S. for Boston. Gulls danced on the roof. One of them, a male, flapped his raised wings, intimidating reluctant suitors around a nest made of newspaper clippings and ripped clothing. A group of white men, loitering a few feet away from the largest stack, twenty and three bales of cotton, were heckling the freedmen. One of the vagrants stepped forward, sticking out his chest with misappropriated masculinity, and crossed the path of one of the dockhands, a slender man in his mid-twenties with shoulders hunched forward sheepishly. The sepia toned youth, clutching a parcel pressed close to his chest into a faded linen shirt stained with molasses and tobacco, lowered his freckled eyes fearfully. “Let me pass,” he said, exasperated. The hammer man couldn’t hear the white man’s reply over the cacophony of the Mary Ann’s bell, signaling the next wave of passengers and cargo to be loaded. The white man’s demeanor worsened. He began throwing up his arms, encircling the boy, who staggered backward, dropping the bale. Before the altercation became violent, the participants were interrupted by an agent from the Freedman’s Bureau who had stepped out of the shipping office on the dock. He was an aged white man dressed in a fine suit—suspiciously similar to a military uniform, with an array of gold buttons up and down commanding respect, under counterfeit auspice. Clean shaven, a full head of golden brown hair, and a cross around his neck, he vigilantly held up his hand, like an archangel come down from heaven in a Michelangelo oil pastel. As the hammer man approached he could hear the agent berating the group of vagrants with cutting, bombastic rhetoric, imbued with hope and optimism, being positioned on the cusp of a proposed new age of brotherhood and humanity. “See here boys!” he cried out, his gaunt face long and stretching out each word with urgency. “This man has a right to work under the Bureau Bill of 1865, as assured by our most beloved President Lincoln. The young man may not be hindered based on the merits of the color of his skin.” “These niggers have no right to take our jobs away from us,” one of the men yelled. His voice was tinged with a strange accent: not quite German or Irish, but some corruption of the two. He stepped forward, to the approval of his peers, freckled, with orange red hair and mustache. He raised his arms, summoning all his strength for a furious assault. But the Bureau agent smirked, stalwart. His large ears flapped as his mouth curled in. “Séamus, you and your men stink of sin and drink. Not a single of these upstanding, hardworking negroes could get work before the Bureau advocated for them. I’ll see to it, until your repentance is public, that they continue in such a manner.” The agent turned back to the shipping office, where a bearded man, frostbitten with age, was busily glancing over long strips of telegraph paper, pacing hurriedly back and forth. “Mr. Bowman,” the agent called out. “Wh-what?” the clerk stuttered, looking up through thick eye glasses. “You don’t take kindly to drunkards and sinners in your line of work. Why, before I came here, how many parcels did Séamus here lose?” Mr. Bowman frowned, lost in the paper. He glanced up a moment, counting his fingers absently. “Why, tuh-twenty… puh-puh… parcels.” “Twen-ty parcels!” the agent repeated robustly. “And that m-man right there, buh-behind Séamus,” Mr. Bowman added with unsettled speculation, pointing to a portly, balding man at Séamus’s shoulder. “Rrr-reckon he’s a sodomite, tuh-too.” All the men turned back to the small, now nervous-looking man. “I always knew, Gregory…” one of the men mumbled in a small, accepting voice. “Those nuh-negroes… wuh-work hard, anyhow,” Mr. Bowman added, and disappeared back into his shop. “Buh-better than any whu-white folk…” The agent scratched the side of his chin, distracted for a moment, before rallying his thoughts. He turned to the young black man, grabbing the lapels of his coat, and surveyed him. “What’s your name, son?” The man froze, scratching his head speculatively, and after a moment quietly spoke up. “Thomas, suh’.” “And your surname?” the agent pressed. “Harper. From Jefferson County Mississippi, suh’. Master’s name was William Harper...” Turning to the white men, the agent scowled at them. “What a strong, dignified name! A child of our Most Almighty God, working to feed and better himself!” He wagged his finger at the white men, who stepped back, repulsed. “Shame on you all for denying this man the pleasure of his toil, the work of Adam, to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The white men scoffed, their number disintegrating into a grumbling of invectives and disparaging sentiment. They dispersed, finally yielding. Gregory, lingering on the sun split docks, spit angrily onto the pier. “Fuck you, carpetbagger,” he growled. The agent brushed off the straggler with a stroke of his hand. “Go’wan! Just you remember, this is Wright Cuney’s town! So get out and stay out!” From afar, the hammer man watched. He let out a muffled laugh, shaking his head, and continued past the shipping office down 24th Street. As he passed the group of trespassers, they regarded him with hateful eyes. But the hammer man paid them no mind. He continued along the thoroughfare, crossing between the paths of carriages and pedestrians. The blissful morning sun warmed his bones, made him whole. New buildings were being built in the port area, already three floors high. The hammer man craned his neck to get a better look at the Corinthian columns, their capstones and flourishes. It reminded him of Virginia, the diminished regal qualities of Southern sensibility slowly being discarded for the taller kind of buildings he heard spoken of in New York City. Brick and mortar structures were erasing the old wooden ones, which were gradually being removed as the new buildings approached the water. A burgeoning downtown skyline masked the ocean horizon, the largest obstruction the new opera house. The seaside splendor rivaled that of New Orleans, a place the hammer man had only seen in pictures and paintings back in Virginia. On the corner of 24th and Mechanic, a rosy, Parisian style café bustled with activity, hedging in customers with paisley iron latticework spackled over with thick off-white paint. Inside, a delicate, well dressed proprietor was walking table to table taking orders and directing waiting staff primly. A black man at one of the tables drank coffee and smoked a cigarette as he read a fresh copy of The Galveston Daily News. The hammer man made eye contact with him, and the patron returned the glance with a well-intentioned smile. The hammer man stopped a moment, eyes searching the road. Opposite the café stood the Waterfront Saloon. Hanging in the window, behind greasy glass, was a hand painted sign in red letters reading, “New Management”. Chips of paint curled off the storefront. Out back, the pounding of nails of wood could be heard. A Carpenter was measuring space for new cabinets while his apprentice sanded and stained the finished pieces. It was the place all right. Nodding, the hammer man hefted his bag and walked across the street. Outside, on the porch, a burly cowboy was seated beside a small wooden table and an empty seat, his boots kicked up onto the hitching post, smoking a long rolled cigar. Black puffs of smoke rose up along the brim of his hat, flipped up and facing out flat. Golden spurs glinted in the sunlight from the heels of his shit-covered boots. The cowboy’s grey vest was immaculately pristine and the leather chaps over denim pants bore no scuff or mark. His face was inexplicably dirty, smudged with grease and soot, age etched by a millennia of smoke. The cowboy looked up and grinned, champing on the bit of his cigar. He took off his leather gloves and gestured at the seat next to him. The hammer man took off the cloth covering his face, and exhaled a sigh of relief. “Howdy, John Henry,” the cowboy said between the cigar and his...