Patrick E. McLean Weekly short fiction and serial fiction

If Dance only looked at one side of the street it could almost appear that Grantham had gotten back to normal. There had been a rough few days after the fire, but they’d buried the dead, said words over them, and moved on.
That didn’t mean that things were good but they could've been a hell of a lot worse. Food and supplies were dwindling, but since Dance had organized hunting parties, supplies were dwindling nice and slow. Sure, they'd have to do something about it, but right now the 203 surviving souls of the Town of Grantham were in need of a respite.
If they could keep from getting wiped out by the wildlife or savage tribes – and if the coffee lasted long enough — they just might be O.K.
Having given himself over to a philosophical turn of mind Dance could see how their predicament wasn't any different than any other frontier town. They were on the edge of the unknown struggling to survive. They had plenty of water and the weather, at least so far, was nice. He savored another sip of coffee and he resolved to enjoy what he could while he could.
Walking up the street and taking his own sweet time about it, Speedy Pete was headed towards the jail. When he got close Dance asked, "Pete, how in the hell is it that you ain't dead? I mean I ain't complaining. I'm just saying, I know which way I lay the odds on that one…”
Speedy Pete smiled slow and pushed his hat back. “Well sir, my Mama always said I'd be late to my own funeral. So what I reckon is… Death just shows up to where I'm supposed to be and when I’m not there, all punctual-lie, he get sick of waiting around. Goes off finds somebody else to do business with."
Dance was so stumped by the unexpected elegance of his Deputy’s explanation all he could say was, “Fair enough, Pete.”
"We step inside so I can make my report?"
"No, Pete she's in there schooling up them kids. Did you know that little girl can read?"
"School? But that school Ma’rm ran off. I mean afore we even… wound up here."
“I know Pete. But the Widow Miller is intent on her children getting an education. And I have reconciled myself to the fact that it's wise to stay clear of the entire enterprise so I don't get my head mixed up with any book larnin’. Somebody’s gotta think straight around here,” Dance said with a wink.
Pete missed the joke entirely and said, “You takin’ up with that Widder is one thing, but I’m not sure I'm OK with children living in a jail cell."
“Makes ‘em easy to contain,” said Dance, blowing another joke right by Pete. “Besides, we ain’t got no other use for them cells. They’re for holding people for the Judge, and as the Judge ain’t coming no more. Miscreants are getting fined or hanged.” Dance looked in his coffee and said, “Well, I suppose you could say the one’s gettin’ hanged are just getting fined everything.”
Pete puzzled on this for a moment then shook his head to clear it of philosophical speculations the same way that people will beat a rug to rid it of dust. Then he said,“Well, we got the watches all figured out, and I think them Polacks know where to be and when. But I can't understand a goddamn word they're saying most of the time.”
Dance said, “That's OK Pete, nobody can."
"They was jibber jabberin’ away about laundry! Something about that the Chinaman wasn't doing it for free no more. But I don’t think I heard it right. I mean why would a Chinaman watch a bunch of Polack’s laundry for free? Don't make no damn sense."
"And anything else around here does?" asked Dance.
“Well iffn I’m gettin’ any say in the matter, Sheriff, I'll take my mysteries in a language I can understand.”
Dance finished his coffee and said,”Let’s go down and see what the fuss with the Chinaman is all about.”
He took his cup into the jail and lifted a rifle from the rack. Penelope was sounding out words from a book and Mac looked up from a calculating slate to glare at the Sheriff. Dance couldn’t blame the b

Laura looked out over what was left of the Town of Grantham. Smoldering buildings. Bodies scattered across the street. She realized that this was the reality. This was the natural state. There would be no rescue. Not by Virgil nor anyone else. She felt an urge to lay down with the dead and be at peace. Then she looked back to her children, asleep in each other's arms, huddled against the wall of Saloon #3. She resolved to go in search of hope even if she no longer believed in it.
She walked around the corner of the building and entered the saloon. The dead and the wounded lay scattered on tables and on the dirt floor. The place smelled of blood and whiskey and tobacco. On a table in the middle of the room lay John Dance, his legs dangling off the end.
In the darkness, the Doctor staggered around drunk and covered with blood, seeming like another one of the wounded. She touched his arm. He shook his head and came back to his senses, shamed by her loveliness in this awful place. He wiped his bloody hands on his bloody shirt and straightened his collar. "You're not hurt, are you?" He asked with real concern.
"The Sheriff?”
"Gutshot,” said the doctor, "and at least one of the bullets is still in him.” He pressed his lips together and said, "there's nothing I can do."
She went to Dance and laid her hand on his face. She felt his strong jaw, noticed the wrinkles from smiling in the corners of his eyes, and felt the fever raging through him. Dance moaned and turned uncomfortably on the table. "Is there nothing that can be done?" she asked.
The Doctor shook his head and looked away. He stepped to the bar and took another pull from a bottle of brown liquor that was covered in bloody handprints. He swallowed hard and then looked at the wounded around him. The burned and the crushed and the shot and said, "God dammit… There's nothing to be done. Nothing to be done for any of ‘em.”
Laura realized he was wrong and walked out of the grisly saloon.
She headed South to where the freight yard had been. The flames had ravaged the wagons and their cargoes. All that was left was the metal of the wheel hubs and tackle and whatever metal implements have been in the cargo. Scattered here and there were the charred bodies of the unfortunate who had not escaped the flames. What she sought was gone.
She had not forgotten the miracle that it saved her child from the arrow wound. The snake oil salesman and his seemingly worthless product had somehow become the elixir of life itself. Now it seemed lost forever. Except for DuMont.
She had overlooked it in the chaos, but now she remembered DuMont. He had not been bent over coughing in pain. He had stood straight with vigor in his spine and spoke with a thunder in his voice. Somehow he had become a healthy man. And Laura had never known or heard of a man with consumption who had been cured.
She walked up the hill, her sights set on DuMont’s strange Victorian house that stood untouched on the rise above her. She shuddered as she approached through the carnage of the night before, but it did not stop her from checking the bodies. Many of their wounds seemed small and innocuous, blood stains in the shirt, more to be fretted over in the washing rather than a cause of death. But after the shock of looking at dead men had passed, she found them to be peaceful and they generated feelings of love and acceptance rather than pity or fear. A strange thought, born of fatigue: she preferred men this way. How much more docile and well-mannered, they were, non-threatening.
But among the dead she could not find the man she was searching for. She continued up the hill and found DuMont slumped on his own porch, bloody like the rest but unlike them, with a shattered bottle of Ol’ Bartloeermere the 2nd’s Magic Elixir next to him on the steps. Nothing more than a few pieces of shattered brown glass held together by paper and the glue on the back of the label.
At first, She thought he was dead, but then he

The town burned through the night and when the glow of dawn finally overpowered the glow of the embers, the townspeople who were still alive collapsed to the Earth from weariness. Exhaustion granted a temporary reprieve from the crush of defeat.
Half of the town had burned. The north side was spared only by the direction of the wind and the unusual width of the main street. The Morning Star mine works, the Morning Star Saloon, The First Baptist Church, the Miller General store and countless odd shanties, tents and hovels had been incinerated. In the grim dawn, no one picked through the ashes to find the bodies.
Somehow, Saloon #3 had survived. And, grateful for it, Laura Miller slumped against its east wall, clutching Mac and Penelope to her. The children slept, but Laura’s worries would not let her sleep. She leaned against the wall, feeling the air warm as the sun rose, and tried not to move. Let the children sleep, she thought. That they were still alive was victory enough… for now.
Mac shifted in his sleep and the rifle he clutched to his chest pressed into Laura’s cheek. She pushed it away and shifted. But that upset the delicate equilibrium. Pen’s weight shifted off Laura’s leg and it tingled back to painful life. She groaned and moved out from underneath the children. Pen muttered something, wrapped her arms around her brother, and fell back to sleep. Mack lolled his head to the side and began to snore.
As they slept they looked so innocent, but Laura feared that innocence had been lost. What they had seen last night — things as horrible as what she had seen during the war and on the run — the things that she and Virgil had tried to protect them — these things could never be unseen.
Mack had grown so big, yet in some ways, he was still just a foolish, beautiful boy. When the mine exploded, they had all come out into the street to see what happened. Then they realized the church was also ablaze. As they watched the flames jumped to the saloon and then the mine. The next time they looked they saw the store, their home, was on fire.
Then Mac was away, running into the burning building. Laura screamed, the one time in that whole night that she did. But she could not reach Mack to stop him. He plunged into the building and she clutched Penelope to her and waited in terror. In those long seconds, the roof caved in and flames rushed forth from the second-story windows. She said her jaw and willed – willed – that foolish boy to emerge from the flames.
There was a clatter of hooves and the rattle of an empty wagon coming down the hill. A woman bellowing like a man for everyone to get out of the way. Laura turned to see Jane Siskin, the woman who hauled much of their freight, standing in the bed of a cargo wagon, reins in one hand, whip in the other, driving a team of oxen hard towards the river.
When the wagon had passed, she saw Mac, his hair badly singed, running towards her clutching the ancient buffalo rifle that had decorated the wall above the weapons rack.
She shrieked at him, then slapped him, then clasped him, gun and all, in a powerful hug.
“Pa’s coming back, and he's going to need it!"
Laura nodded, not giving a damn about the gun, tears welling up in her eyes. And then the tears burst forth as she realized, with the town ablaze around them, the Virgil was never coming back.
"He's gonna need it to put things right. Don't you worry Ma, you'll see.”
When the fire had started John Dance had forgotten all about the Burdock’s. They had scattered into the smoke and chaos. Dance organized a bucket brigade even though it seemed hopeless. But then that crazy Siskin woman had come driving up the hill with a wagon full of water.
"Drove it right into the damn river," she proclaimed proudly. Buckets and hats and spittoons and any other damn thing they could find to hold water went in and were used to try and douse the flames. The Church was a total loss, so they had focused their efforts on th

Virgil had sat in the Nothing with the Shaman for an amount of time he could not identify. He asked, "I saw you dead. How is any of this possible?”
“It would be more polite if you asked me a question I could answer,” said Shaman, running his colorless fingers through the colorless grass on which they sat. “I am what you see, but I am not what you see. Your mind makes sense of it with the symbols it has.”
Virgil stared at him in mute confusion.
The old Shaman that was No One tried again. “All things have a symbol or a name, all things but me. I am no one. I am no thing. I am only that I am."
"Is this a riddle?"
"No,” said No One. “But because the truth is the wrong shape to fit into your head, you try to make it into a riddle. Some men try paradoxes. I like those best of all, they never go anywhere either."
"My wife… I came seeking…"
“Yes,” said No One, “I've tasted your desire on the smoke now for seven days – but here it feels like forever and still just an instant. See, paradox!"
“Where have they gone?” demanded Virgil, his hand on his gun.
"They have gone out of this world, to another. I think this not often done. Someone made a bridge. Someone made a tunnel. Someone made a tunnel through a bridge."
"Who? And how do I find this bridge?"
"Tunnel."
"Fine, tunnel…"
“It’s a bridge, you look up. But if it’s not a bridge, it’s a tunnel!” The old man who was No One laughed. “At least I’m pretty sure it is.
With an effort, Virgil removed his hand from his gun. He tried again, saying, “Who has done this?"
"One from here, one from there. From here the ones dug the tunnel to escape. From there, I think they built a bridge. No One shrugged. “Jave you seen anyone strange? Travelers, I mean?"
Virgil shook his head, no.
"Then perhaps someone has set a trap on the other side."
"How do I get there?"
"You would run into a trap?"
"I would ride into hell."
The Indian shrugged, “It is somewhere, I guess. But it all becomes nothing in the end.”
Virgil turned his head and spit. No One was shocked at this. He stared at the moisture hanging from the pigmentless grass and dripping on the colorless earth.
Virgil asked more questions and the Indian gave more unsatisfactory answers. This went on for an hour or an eternity, and Virgil had no way of knowing which it was. Virgil left, feeling that the Indian in the colorless place hadn't told him anything worth knowing.
Virgil did not remember leaving or even deciding to leave. It seemed that he had simply closed his eyes one moment, and opened them the next, to find himself riding on his horse, blinking against the profusion of colors he saw in the muted, eastern Arizona desert.
As he rode back from the Nothing to Nowhere the old Shaman’s words rang in his head, nothing could pass from one place to another without leaving a connection. But where would this connection be? What form would it take? A bridge, a tunnel? How might Virgil use it to return to his family?
He remembered the old Indian’s lopsided grin as he told him that the world was filled with women and that Virgil should go find another wife and have some more children. The Shaman said he was too old to try himself, but he had never stopped wanting to.
Virgil had cursed him then, saying, “If you can't do anything to help me then what are you good for?"
The old Indian had told him that People weren't supposed to be *for* anything. They’re just supposed to be. And added that people forgetting this fact was the source of most of the problems in the world.
He remembered setting seven fires to get to the Nothing. It only took him one night to return. The next afternoon, he spotted smoke on the horizon.
As he urged more speed out of his horse, he realized the shapes of the hills were familiar. He dropped the pack horse and spurs his tired mount into a weary gallop. But when he crested the hill and looked down at the spot where Grantham had been he saw that it still wasn't ther

Dance crawled until he passed out. He couldn’t say how long he slept, but he was brought back to consciousness by the peaceful sound of his horse cropping grass close to his head.
At this he spasmed in fear, rolled onto his back and crab-walked backwards, scrambling for his pistol. His horse looked at him evenly, knowing him for the fool that he was. When Dance realized his situation, he replaced his half–unholstered pistol and said a prayer of gratitude. Then he started looking for his hat.
He saw it a few hundred yards out on the prairie next to a burned black circle. He raised his eyes to the horizon and saw the black tower stabbing into the sky. He shook his head and said, “I never did like that hat, anyway.” Then he caught his horse and rode back to town.


With Archie in the lead McAllister and ten of the Teamsters crossed the street and made for the Morning Star mine. But before they could get to the mine yard, Jane Siskin stormed into their path. Gone was the dress of the night before and now she was in dusty leathers again. She planted her hands on her hips and said, “Now just where in the hell do you think you're going!?!”
Archie said, “And just whom in the hell you imagine you are addressing?"
"Oh, I ain't talking to you, your highness. These boys in on my payroll and that means they should have the courtesy to inform me before they go off getting in some foolishness. I mean, Clod there don't know no better, but I expected more from you MacAllister."
"Enough wi’ your haverin’ woman! My head’s not havin’ ’t this mornin. It’s bright and loud already and your man here is invited us to go for a walk in a nice, cool, quiet cave. So we've decided on a wee stroll."
Jane turned her skeptical eye towards Archie.
Archie told her of the disappearance of the silver deposits and their replacement with an ancient temple of unknown origin. Jane tried to look tough and unfeeling as he explained, but the memory of the darkness and the vision he had seen there were so fresh in Archie's mind she was captured by his retelling.
"Besides," concluded Archie, “since the road to Bisbee, and for all we know the entirely of the outside world, is gone, it appears you are out of the freight business and must seek a new line of employment. Might I suggest Archaeology?”
"Oh my sweet prince," at Jane with a smile. “It's you who don't get how the world works. Roads and towns come and go, but there is always – always – something that needs hauling. But let's have a look at what's in your root cellar. Then she hooked her arm through his and Archie escorted her across the street as if she had been a guest at the season’s finest ball.
As they assembled torches in the yard, Archie looked askance at the miners who stood around in small groups, muttering to themselves, “Bloody fools.”
“Why are you so angry at them,” Jane asked, “they're just afraid.”
“Superstition offends me. Right to my very core."
"You mean to tell me you don't believe in ghosts and spirits?" Asked Jane.
"Certainly not. I am a natural philosopher. I believe in what I can see with my own eyes, what I can verify with my own senses."
“What of God, ye English heathen? Have you seen him?” Asked McAllister good-naturedly as he tied a rag around a length of shattered board.
“Carefully recording the wonder of his creation so that we can better understand it, is that not worship?” asked Archie.
MacAllister smiled and answered, “Laddie, I’m just grateful when I walk in a church that the roof doesn’t fall in on top of me.
They filled a wagon with torches and rolled it as far as the mine tracks would go, then they all lit two torches a piece and advanced into the chamber. The twelve of them spread out in an attempt to fill the chamber with light. But there was something about the darkness. It retreated, but begrudgingly, stubbornly, as if still fighting to clock the secrets of the ancient Temple.
Jane asked, "then what was t

As Sheriff John Dance rode down to the river, Miguel, the Stagecoach agent, came up beside him. Dance gave him a skeptical look, and didn’t have time to get to the question before Miguel said, “I have responsibilities…”
Fair enough thought Dance. He cast an eye over Miguel’s horse and rig. It was packed light and well, and Miguel sat his horse easy. He looked like he knew what doing. Probably more than Dance did. Dance was no frontier hand or Indian fighter by nature. But the misadventures of his youth had taught him to travel fast and leave as little trace as possible. 
When they got to the river Dance reined, and without taking his eyes off the other side, Dance said, “We’ll head north along the river, see if we can find a place to ford, and any sign of that ship. First sign of trouble, I’m cuttin’ and runnin’. You understand? This is a scout.” 
Miguel nodded and said, “If I find a way across, I have to go to Bisbee.”
Dance said, “Miguel, you see any telegraph poles on the other side of that river?” 
Miguel shook his head. “It makes no difference, I must go anyway. It is my duty.” 
“It ain’t a duty, Miguelito, it’s just a job.” 
“I may not have a Star like you,” said Miguel, “But I have my duties.” 
Dance shook his head and decided he wouldn’t share his opinions about Duty and Bisbee with Miguel. Duty was just some horseshit made up by powerful people to get the little people to sacrifice themselves when it was convenient. And Bisbee? There weren’t no f****n’ Bisbee there anymore. 
Give it a few more days, and everybody would see that. It was just that most people, normal people with their settled lives, were slow to adapt to change. They ignored it, argued against it, and tried to resist it. But it was all foolishness. Things changed, the man who changed the fastest was the one who made the best of them. That’s how Dance had wound up as Sheriff in the first place.
Everything on this side of the river was normal for the first mile and even though the opposite bank was an unknown land, the river was peaceful and cool and Dance found himself thinking of the day he had come to Grantham, three years ago. 
He had ridden into town dragging a different name and a streak of bad luck that had felt a mile wide. If Dance was honest, right now, it felt like he was draggin’ something wider and worse. 
At the livery stable, Eli Johnson hadn’t known what to make of him when he handed off the reins to a battered old nag and said, “Take good care of her.” 
“Why?” asked Eli, not afraid of offending this stranger ‘cause any damn fool could see this horse wasn’t fit for anything but the glue factory. 
Dance had flipped him a newly minted silver dollar and said, “‘Cause I owe her.” That settled, he nodded his battered hat at the building made of thick, irregular stone across the street and asked, “Would I be right in thinking that’s the Sheriff’s office?” 
“Yessir, says so right on the sign,” answered Eli, thinking that this man had been out in the sun too long to have retained a grip on the obvious. 
The Sheriff’s office had a wide porch and awning of unpainted, rough-cut lumber. The windows, such as they were were in those rough stone walls, were long and horizontal, with the occasional cross openings. The place was a fortress, gunportd and all. 
Dance glided up the steps and pushed through the door without knocking. 
Inside were two desks - a rolltop stuffed with correspondence and a leather-topped one on the left of the door. There was a table, a few chairs, a half-full rack of long guns on the wall and a pot-bellied stove. What Dance didn’t see were any deputies, or anybody at all. At first. 
On the wall by the door was a collection of wanted posters, and as Dance was checking to see if his face was on any of them he heard the muffled cry of someone calling out through a gag. 
The back of the room was a wall of thick steel ba