The Shaman Read online

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  by Shannon Lee Martin

  Copyright 2015 Shannon Lee Martin

  The shaman smoked the smoke and drank the drink, and as their influences flowed over him and through him, he began to chant the chant as he became the calm and the calm became him. Sweat glinted gold from his dark brown body as he swayed toward and away, toward and away the bright orange flames of the sacred fire that threatened to singe his kinky black hair.

  At the height of the chant a dark brooding horn sounded a cold dirge from a char-blackened hilltop. The shaman=s eyes flared open with shocked awareness. He raised his arms into the air and shook them, sweat flying, one of the salty beads hitting me in the eye.

  The shaman moaned once, and fell back violently to the hard dirt floor, head thudding with a slight bounce.

  I sat there for hours as the shaman=s eyes stared away into the depths of something that caused my imagination to soar as I partook of a moderate bit of the shaman=s smoke. I lay back on a thin tattered cushion, relaxed, all my senses seeming to melt away into the dry earth beneath me.

  The soft interlude of my dazed dreams was interrupted abruptly by a piercing wail from the prone shaman. He went from horizontal to vertical, it seem to my saturated senses, without bending a limb. He lumbered toward me, saying with a rumbling rasp, AChild, CHILD!@

  I stood, and he staggered into my arms.

  ASee boy, SEE!@ Before I could flinch or twitch or react in any way, the shaman clasped his hands around my temples. I felt a sharp pain at the base of my skull, and the shaman looked into my eyes and smiled. My vision blurred, the faint whiff of the smoke in my nostrils, my eyes, MY SOUL. . .

  * * *

  We walked along a winding road amidst an endless sea of ancient pine trees, dying slowly of thirst. We were all that remained of the slave caravan=s guardians, five of us out of fifty. A band of renegade White Devils had set an ambush to save their fellow beasts, murdering the merchants and burning their wagons. They captured, beat, stripped, and herded for sport what remained of us guards. There were twelve of us left at the beginning of the march, picked off one by one every noon on high. Won=t be long till we=re down to four. I wonder if the next one will be me.

  Every one of those devils claimed to be members of the long-destroyed Aryan Nation. They were most likely from the wild herds that still roamed the Rocky Mountains, but that=s not what disturbed me. Three of them bore the holographic tattoos of the Aryan Stormtroopers. The last legion of that group was thought to have been destroyed twelve years ago, and if they were from the Rockies, that meant they might have access to at least some type of High Technology that lay hidden in one of the many undiscovered Fortresses of the Fourth Reich. Not that it matters. I=ll get an arrow through my neck soon enough.

  If only I could have some of my wife=s fried chicken before I die. I can almost smell it now, the aroma it has when it=s still hot from the fryer, steam rising from a pile of it stacked on a plate, the grease-soaked paper towels, the steam, the heat, my flesh boiling away, the sun sucking moisture from my blood, eyelids stuck to my sun-dried eyes. . .

  ATumoc! Tumoc!@ Slap! ATUMOC!@ Slap slap!

  AStop slappin= me, Jumon. I can hear ya nigga.@ I said, shakin= off my daze.

  AYou was zonin= out on us again, m= man,@ said short, stocky Jumon. You gotta keep yoe shit together if we gonna have a chance of makin= it to the highway. We gotta stick together, man, you hear me?@

  AYeah, I hear ya. How much further to the ruins of Odinvale? We ain=t there yet?@

  AFool, it was twenty miles twenty minutes ago, you think. . .shit man. We=ll get there. Keep it together. It=ll be alright.@

  AWe won=t make it by noon. It was nice knowin= ya.@

  AMan, will you give me some peace? You been actin= strange ever since you fell and hit your head on that rock last night.@

  AGee, do ya think that might be sayin= somethin=? Why was you slappin= me anyway? Shit, man, I oughta kick the shit outta you for somethin= like that.@

  AWell, if you hadn=t been starin= all blank eyed at that damn tree behind you for the past five minutes. . .Lets move man.@ Jumon turned back to the dirt road where the others were waiting. We had just left the crumbling ruins of a dead town behind us, the stumps of concrete foundations giving way to shrubs, saplings, then pine. Tall, thin Lamont had a hard-on from the stiff breeze that squealed down through the towering pines. Or maybe it was because he was constantly scratching his balls.

  AYou been lookin= at my ass again, Lamont?@ asked Leon, his own penis almost hidden in his folds of fat. He could move pretty quick for a man of his size, though, which he proved when he dodged a blinding-fast left hook from Lamont.

  AFuck you Leon, you fat motherfucker. Whitey must be savin= yoe big dump truck, Jabba the Hut, fat tittied ass foe last, so they can take you back to they herd so you can feed they ass through the winter.@

  AHA HA, HA HA HAH!@ boomed Joseph. He was the tallest man of us, even as he doubled over clutching his belly from laughter. One of his arms was as thick as two of my legs together, and if any of the people of New Africa could truly be called black, and not just extremely dark brown. . . Joseph was black. Blacker than coal, than precious crude oil, blacker than a starless moonless midnight. His deep basso voice could hurt your ears even when he whispered, it seemed.

  AJumon=s right,@ I said. We gotta get to the highway. But if we don=t get to Odinvale, we don=t get to the unmarked depot, we don=t get the jeep, and we don=t get to the highway.@

  The others looked at me like I=d lost my mind, which I probably had. Jumon was shaking his head with frantic exasperation.

  AWhat the hell are you talkin= about? We=re goin= through Odinvale because that=s where this fuckin= road goes to, and this fuckin= road goes to the fuckin= highway, where we have a chance of gettin= rescued.@

  ANot while we=re talkin=, said Lamont. He resumed walking down the dirt road. We followed.

  Joseph chuckled, and spoke with a thick Jamaican accent. AWe won=t make it ta no highway Jumon. You and Tumoc are livin= in a fantasy-fuckin= la la land.@ I always enjoyed the way he sounded.

  AHe=s right. We all dead. It=ll be noon soon,@ said Leon. AI hope they get me next. I=m tired of waitin=.

  We continued on down the dirt road, and the sun continued its rise toward zenith, making us forget how hungry we were, and almost making us forget our baking thirst.

  We heard the grattling sound of the 1987 Ford Ranger tearing its way from the distance behind us. We did not try to evade it. We already knew the hard way that we were closed in by both sides of the thickly wooded road. The Devils watched our progress, but did not interfere. My hands went subconsciously to my head. The worst part about it wasn=t really when they killed one of us, or the anticipation of death or the beatings. For me, the most dread came at the moment they took the dead man=s scalp, and made us watch as they did it.

  In the distance, we began to hear the whoop-whoop and yee-haw of their insane war cry, that was taken up by the host of Devils in the dark forest. Their wild hollering always gave me a cold shiver, to know that they were so close, and we couldn=t see them.

  Almost as one, in that eerie way they had, they began to chant the paean that had been theirs for nearly a century.

  AWhite Power! White Power!@ You could almost see them throwing that right-handed salute of theirs into the air, the stretched rictus grin on their hate stained faces. Oh, how they still continued to prove themselves the animals they truly were! These ignorant, stupid motherfuckers would pay for their nature --

  The twang of the bow came from in front of us. Lamont=s cry was a miserable screeching wail as he clutched at the blacked-feathered fletching of the arrow that impaled his head from temple to temple. His knees shook, he staggered, and another arrow flew from th
e woods to bury itself deep in his chest. His mouth and eyes made motions like silent pleas, and he fell like a toppling statue, slamming hard into the leaf-strewn road, forehead first, his rich black blood quickly mixing with the yellow dirt of the road, to make thick, sticky puddles of mud.

  AI got iem! I got iem! Lord Christ, I got that nigger with a head shot! God damn. Goddamn! Yeeee -- haww! You see that, Paw? You see it? That was worth the week=s wages I paid for it, yes sir ree!@ said a high-pitched voice from nearby.

  AYeah, I saw, Lormond. I saw. Now you go and git his scalp sose the rest of us git to kick the shit out of some more nigger ass. Hurry up now, boy.@ That voice was quite a bit older, rougher.

  AOk Paw.@ I=ll bet he was real proud of his boy.

  A gangling youth of no more than fourteen came out of the woods first. When I laid eyes on him, I was shocked. The devil was definitely a half-breed, yellow skin, dark wavy brown hair, thickish lips. And though his nose was sharp and thin like a devil=s, I would have been proud to call him an African, under other circumstances. He would have been a second-class citizen, yes. . .I couldn=t believe what my eyes beheld. I looked to my remaining companions, and they were as shocked as I was.

  The boy went to Lamont=s lifeless corpse, gripped his kinky fro tightly, and took his grisly trophy.

  Out from the darkness of the thick-boled pines a man almost as