Steve's Written Works

[Steve]

SMITE THE LAND

In the fall of 1917, when boys and men were being minced by the meat grinder that was Passchendaele, nineteen-year-old Don Mast, five days into the week that would end in his death, was holed up in a gulch in the eroded plains just behind the line, his steel pieplate helmet cocked back on his head, his face sullied with grey mud, and his new rifle cradled in his lap, bayonet affixed and pointing downward as he munched from his first and last meal that week: a tin of canned fruit. He held it out to the figure huddled beside him.

—Want some? Mast said.

There was no answer.

—Well suit yourself then. More for me.

He spooned his fingers into the mess and gobbled it hungrily. The pops of riflefire and the timpani thuds of artillery had formed a muted cacophony in his damaged ears. The rest of the squad cowered out there somewhere, in the nearby gullies and gouges formed by the shells. Now and then he would hear someone call out for a surgeon, their mother.

—I can’t see a goddamn thing. Not with all this fog.

He listened, ears pricked.

—The guns have stopped, he croaked. Maybe it’s over.

The figure beside him did not say anything about it and Mast slowly reached for his rifle and raised it to the lip of the ditch.

—Hey Joe. I ever tell you about the time I shot that Hun clear through the face? You wouldn’t of believed it. I couldn’t believe it myself. Both his eyes just popped right out the back of his head. God wouldn’t of recognized him after that.

—Hande hoch! A German in the fog.

—Well goddamn. They ain’t all dead after all. Stay still, Joe.

Mast took his rifle and slowly raised himself to a crouch when a shell burst just over the gulch.

—Kaiser Bill’s pitching blind, Mast laughed to himself.

He sat down in the muck and picked up his tin of fruit and guzzled down the dregs of it. He held the empty tin in his hand and rose to his feet but when he went to chuck it away the bullet tore through his belly.

—God.

He lay back in the sludge as a dark shadow pooled gelidly about him.

Then another.

—Nicht schiessen! Mast screamed as they shot him.

— Er war verrückt, one of them said, looking down at the sunbleached skeleton beside the boy they’d killed.

[Storyslinger]

Re: Smite the Land

good

[Frunobulax]

Re: Smite the Land

Short yet sweet--another winner.

[Jon]

Re: Smite the Land

I wish I could be such a complete writer.

[Steve]

This is the first chapter of a novel I just completed, one of two. I thought that it should explain my absence around here as of late.

Cheers,

Steve

AT FIRST LIGHT

At dawn he first heard the thin piping yells and he rose and stumbled to the door to see what new plague had befallen them. As the door slammed behind him he rounded the bunkhouse, running past the old woodshed toward the source of the cries. He did not have to go far. He stopped in the shade of a shagbark tree and looked about. A bloody sun climbed the eastern sky rapidly, coppering the rolling hills with an unseasonable warmth. A few bees balleted amid the branches. He sighed when he saw them, turned and without a word headed back to the shed. He pushed the ruined door open carefully and went inside. The faint sour odor of must. A thin shaft of light. He stepped in and coughed once in his hand and as his eyes adjusted he saw blood in his palm.

Well shit, he muttered.

He wiped his hands on his pants, swept it through the air to clear the dust from his view, looked into the gloom and saw huge woodroaches streaking for refuge amid the warped planks between his feet. Go on, he said.

He stomped his brogans once, twice on the soft boards to scare them off, then looked around in the dusty haze for what he had come for and saw the maul resting in the mold, which he thumbed off when he picked it up.

He went out then, carefully pulling the rotted door shut behind him.

A few bluejays flashed among the trees. He hesitated for a moment, then hefted the old maul on his shoulder and walked behind the shed and through the gate that divided the huge rolling pastures.

Soon he came to see them lying on their sides dappled and dripping in the morning light. He shuffled through the dewed grass, wiping away the last damp mold from his soles. He stopped once, shifted the maul on his shoulder then shuffled onward, his thin shoulders rolling as he walked to where they lay, a bloody triune. They lifted their heads and once more brayed their mournful pleas.

Is there anything you can do for them? a voice said.

He looked back at them. Children, a boy half his age and a girl even younger. The boy had his arm around the girl, siblings from the Ford place down the road and they stared at the dying wrecks of horses lying candled in the morning sunshine. He sighed, shook his head and stayed his course.

Mister, the girl said, following him. I asked you if they was anything you can do for them.

I'm sorry but there ain't.

But why not? Poor things ain't dead yet.

The man looked over at the ruined horses. He listened to the shrill cries when they bellowed. It's too late, he said.

But how come, the girl said.

He motioned with one hand. They's pretty much useless now, he said. All tore up like this. You'd be havin to watch em round the clock.

The girl was almost in tears.

The man came to the first victim, a stareyed filly less than six months old. Her intestines looped from its belly like sly bluecoiled snakes.

It's a mercy, he said. You'll see.

Well. There must be somethin we can do.

You don't have to kill em, the boy said. We'll take care of em. Ever day and night. He looked down at the blood bleaching the grass at their feet and paled. All three of em.

All three, said the girl.

The man shook his head. Naw, he said. You can't help em. Don't matter what you do. What would be the point? He lowered the maul and held it before him as though offering a benediction. Listen. Even if I could do somethin for em, they'd just be settin ducks for the dogs.

We could put em up in the barn, said the boy. That way the dogs won't get at em . . .

The man looked down at the filly. She rolled her eyes maddeningly back at him. Naw, he said again. You'd kill em just movin em. This way's better. Best look away now.

Come on Janey, the boy said, turning the girl's eyes away and looking quickly at the sky.

Easy girl, the man said to the horse. He stepped astraddle of the filly's head and swung the maul and crushed its skull with a single blow. It kicked a leg in a shuddering spasm and then was still.

He turned back and saw the boy and girl staring at him. The man spat and stepped over the prone body and hoisted the maul and went on, his pants freckled with blood. The girl followed after him, her lip trembling, her brother lolling after her wearily.

You're gettin paid to kill em, the girl called out after him. The man didn't answer, just kept walking with the dripping hammer in hand. The girl followed him with tears standing in her berrycolored eyes, toward a speckled gray mare which lay on its side wheezing loudly, a bright red froth on its muzzle.

Ain't you, she said.

The man looked at her.

She ast ye a question, the boy said.

The man said nothing.

Tell her.

The man looked out to the east, watching the first lines of heat in the morning redness which was cast upon the land. When he looked at the girl again she was still crying and trembling as though witnessing the death of a close relative.

Listen, the man said. You hear that, don't you?

She nodded slightly. Yes of course I hear it. It's awful.

Yes it is.

The boy was trying to calm the girl but she would not be calmed. The man sighed. They been layin out here since midnight. The dogs didn't even eat on em. Even if we could do somethin they'll die anyway.

He turned back to the dying mare. By this afternoon they'll be rotting and attracting the dogs back and coyotes too. Then we risk the others.

[mia/susannah]

Re: At First Light

I must say I really enjoyed your story. I would very much like to read the rest. I hope you get it published soon. It is very good.

[Jean]

Re: At First Light

Steve!!! at last



will you post the whole novel, or only exerpt?

[alinda]

Re: At First Light

Thats a question I'd like to know the answer to
as well. Hi Steve, its great to see you as
always, & your here with another wonderful tale to tell
marvelous news!

[ManOfWesternesse]

Re: At First Light

Steve! - damn good to see you back - and back with a bang too!
Nice chapter. Hope we get a chance to buy the published article!

[Steve]

Re: At First Light

Ah, it's good to be back!

Jean, Brian, Linda, and a new friend (mia/susannah, pleased to meet you, hope you guess m'name)! I've really missed you guys.

I'm also glad to see you enjoyed my writing. More to come!

[mia/susannah]

Re: At First Light

Good to meet you to Steve, and welcome back

[ManOfWesternesse]

Re: At First Light

Ah, it's good to be back!

Jean, Brian, Linda, and a new friend (mia/susannah, pleased to meet you, hope you guess m'name)! I've really missed you guys.

I'm also glad to see you enjoyed my writing. More to come!

You've obviously been damn busy while you've been gone Steve. Two new novels completed?
I like the 'More to come' bit!

[Storyslinger]

Re: At First Light

I'm glad to hear that you've been busy Steve. Can't wait for the rest. Your work is always great, and this is no exception.

[Steve]

Re: At First Light

*bows to Story*

Thankee-sai.

[Steve]

Dear readers,

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't been around much lately. School, work, my love life. . . all of it has been kind of piling on as of late. Well, now I'm back, and I've been a-wordsmithin'.

Over the last few months, I've been tinkering around with a play, which shows my roots in Southern Gothic fiction as well as bringing about that good ol' post-apocalyptica that you've come to know me for. Well, I finally completed it two weeks ago. It is one of my favorite pieces, partly because I was able to do so much with it. It's called The Rain, It Comes A-Burnin', and I hope you enjoy it. With nods to Faulkner and McCarthy and even Stephen King, I someday hope this play will see the stage.

Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, and thank you.

--Stephen J. Davis, playwright

[Steve]

Re: The Rain, It Comes A-Burnin'

CAST OF CHARACTERS

In Order of Appearance

PROPHET—a faceless narrator
DARL BUNDREN
CASH BUNDREN—his older brother
MAMA BUNDREN—his mother
MOLLY BATH—a young whore
CARP BOONE—leader of the posse
JELLON LAMB—the town preacher
PHILO HOLFE—a parishioner
WIDOW ROTH—an elderly crippled zealot
ECKER ABELON—a junker 

[Steve]

ACT I

SCENE I

A devastated and dangerous landscape infused with God’s drumming displeasure. What was once the safest, most prosperous place on earth has been reduced to a lawless, scantly populated wasteland. The machines have stopped. The government has fallen. At curtain rise there is a single light burning stage right where a PROPHET sits in a ring of stones. Like an ancient druid divining fortunes in the entrails of things. Behind him and to the right the soot-and-ash sky throbs like a rancid spiderbite and a foul rain falls in an incessant racket. It is important to note that we should not be able to see who the prophet is while he speaks his monologues throughout the play. The purpose, as we shall see, is to give distance to the events and place them in a completed past. The onstage prophet should nevertheless be within this circle of stones and while on stage should be kept in shadow save for the single light. And now we can begin. As the prophet begins to speak, the landscape onstage should become more visible.

PROPHET

The rain, it comes a-burnin’. An ill wind blows every day and every night shines forth an evil star and a day doesn’t go by that death doesn’t come knocking at your door. God left us that day. And he ain’t come back yet.


Lights come on at stage center. The audience should immediately feel the absence of sun, light, warmth—the world as it soon will be. The sounds of explosions in the distance. Low concussions like heavy timpani beats—death throes of civilization. Here the music should rise to a crescendo, balancing with the eruptions.

PROPHET

A screaming came across the sky. Fire spewed down from the heavens. The air filled with incessant shrills, scuttles, bloodcurdling howls. The machines stopped. The farmlands lay fallow, the soil polluted with toxins. O yes. I remember a time when years were quartered into seasons, when day became night. A time of dusks and dawns and suns and moons. But never again. No. Never again.


The thunder dies down for the briefest of instances to illustrate the point.

PROPHET

. . . for now is the time of Judgment.


Thunder crashes again as lightning flashes the stage in a brilliant flare, except for where the prophet sits in his oracle’s ring.

PROPHET

I remember it. There in the very blood of the air you could sense the most hellborn forecast. The devil was blood-bent. And then the rains came. An endless and boiling clamor that consumed the world that was and reduced it to a wet smolder. Like a great campfire pissed to smoke and ash. The crops—corn, wheat, tobacco—withered in its burning. But they were not the most important resource to be lost. The rains fell with blood and terrible laughter and the children wept. There’s a scripture in Lamentations that talks about how with their own hands compassionate women cooked their own children when there was no food to be had. Cooked and ate them. And that’s what happened with some of the smaller communes. A little boy or girl would get picked off the street and would end up roasted on a spit in that selfsame neighborhood and the parents would pay to eat the ones they birthed. All in good humor. But soon the weeping stopped. For God’s wrathful rain had one final, terrible consequence. What came down with the rain was worse that we could ever have believed. In Exodus the angel took only the firstborn. I guess this time around he thought it best to take the whole lot and the seed, too.


The thunder dies away and leaves only the rain. The prophet raises his hands to the audience as if placating them, begging them for mercy.

PROPHET

Gone were the voices of angels. Gone was the laughter of children like the clear peal of vesper bells. Forever lost. Those left began to turn savage. If the human race stopped with them, what was the point of going on?


The entire scene dims to black.

PROPHET

Those that died quick were the lucky ones. By the end of that first winter they were thrashing the whole world. Heads rolled, rolled, rolled down. Rivers of blood, sewers of gore, oceans of the wicked, headless, limbless. But the killing couldn’t go on forever. Eventually you’ll run out of people to kill. And so the boiling sea of blood and all the lopped and all the hacked-up humanity that swam within it drained from memory.


Lights come on downstage right revealing the exterior of a Baptist church partly in ruins. At the front is a sign bleached from the rain which reads LITTLE WATER WELCOMES YOU. Here a few REFUGEES are standing around the church to hide from the rain, their faces turned from the audience as though ashamed by their condition. Perhaps they are.

PROPHET

Then there was that one final purge. That is to say, not until the last of the wicked were plucked from the earth and cast back to perdition. The last mark of God’s condemnation was what they called the flux. A deadly plague that swept the land like the reaper’s scythe. You’d vomit all day, shit all night, break out in the most awful boils and rashes. What was worse was how fast it worked. You’d be laughing and breaking bread with your kin in the mornin’, go to bed sick and bruised and dyin’. No one knew how to stop it. They was some said it was God’s punishment for all the greediness and lies and sins of the flesh. Maybe that was it. And in the end it didn’t really matter. Every day over the next few years one house in the commune would be bedeviled by this selfsame flux, one family afflicted by its horrors. O, there were those rare folk, those who survived this malady and recovered, but they were few and far between.


The lights illuminating the old church and the refugees have dimmed to black.

PROPHET

When the bleeding came you knew it was almost over. If there was any justice in the world you’d die quick. Sometimes you did.


The lights come up in the church itself. In the chancel. The congregation of Little Water sits in their pews. Their heads are bowed in deference to the cross on the wall.

PROPHET

And sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes you found yourself knockin’ at death’s door and that was it. So the survivors banded together and burned the beds of the dead, the huts of the dying. It stank like a smithy. By and by the flux would burn itself out and the illness was gone. But they wouldn’t take chances with it. Without children to hold them down they turned to God. It all seemed to come back to God anyway. The communes that were left flocked to his altar to pray for his forgiveness. And the rains, they still burn. I guess that’s his answer.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen J. Davis
All rights reserved.

[Seymour_Glass]

Re: Smite the Land

I like it. The dialogue and punctuation kinda remind me of Cormac McCarthy.

[alinda]

Re: Smite the Land

Intentional isn't it Steve?

[Steve]

Re: Smite the Land

Well, McCarthy *is* one of my literary heroes.

[mia/susannah]

Re: Smite the Land

great short story Steve, keep writing and posting. Love to read them

[mia/susannah]

Re: The Rain, It Comes A-Burnin'

Steve,

You are a very great writer as I am sure you know. I hope this play makes it to stage. I enjoy reading stories and plays that writers like yourself post here. Good job!!!

[Seymour_Glass]

Re: The Rain, It Comes A-Burnin'

That's an awesome setup. I love it.

[OchrisO]

Re: Smite the Land

While I think that you are a very good writer, the lake of quotation marks for dialogue just makes it look like you are biting McCarthy's style, because he has very much made that method "his" in contemporary writing. Should you publish anything and stick to that style, literary critics all over will most likely view it in negative connotation because of that If I were you, I'd look for another method if I felt that I needed some sort of gimmick beyond the strength of the words to make my writing stand out. I would recommend trusting in the strength of your words and not trying to manipulate the physical style, though.

[Steve]

SCENE II

Early of a morning gray with daylight. A lantern hangs outside a stone hut on stage left. MAMA BUNDREN, a bustling and somewhat harriedlooking woman in her fifties, bends by an old woodstove and stokes the fire. There is an old kitchen table and three chairs, and a bunk near the rear. The door opens and her two grown sons enter, dwarfing their mother.

CASH

Morning Mama.

MAMA

Mornin. Mornin.


CASH BUNDREN, the elder and larger of the two, sits down at the table. Mama gets up from the stove sets a plate of gruel in front of him.

MAMA

How is it outside?

CASH

Well. It’s a mite slick outside.


DARL BUNDREN, the younger brother, takes off his threadbare stovepipe and sets it on the bunk. He shucks his heavy coat and sits down at the table. The brothers are junkers; scavengers of metal and refuse. The hut is made up of various bits of metal and wood they have foraged for.

CASH

We’ll be goin down to the valley today.

MAMA
(Shaking her head and wagging her finger)

It’s too dangerous to go down thataway, Cash.


Cash smiles at his brother. Mama sets a plate in front of Darl and sets her own down between them.

MAMA

So don’t you even start.

CASH

I reckon we could get a good haul down there.

MAMA

Darl, don’t you even pay no attention to your brother. He ain’t got no good sense.


She sits down at the table and she bends her head in prayer. Darl does the same but Cash spoons his gruel and takes a bite.

Mama looks at her elder son with great disapproval. Her hands are still clasped.

MAMA

Don’t you want to say grace, Cash?

CASH

O come on Mama. God don’t need to hear me say grace.

MAMA

If you want to keep eatin my food you’ll say it.


Cash sets down his spoon and grudgingly bows his head to pray.

CASH
(With great reluctance)

Good food, good meat, good God, let’s eat.

MAMA

Hush your ignorant mouth boy. If you ain’t goin to . . .

CASH

All right, Mama, all right.

(Bows his head again)

Bless this food to our nourishment O Lord and us to thy service. Amen.

FAMILY

Amen.


When they say this last Darl only mouths the word. The family then begins to eat, passing plates around. The lantern flickers outside as the rain falls.

MAMA

That water ought to be done.


Darl nods and silently gets to his feet and takes the pot from on the stove and pours steaming water into three cups. He blows on them and brings them over to the table. He puts one in front of each chair and then sits back down.

CASH
(to Darl)

Could make a pretty penny down there.

MAMA

I already told you no.


Mama gives Cash a withering look and he looks away at the stove. Darl is busy eating. Offstage a gunshot rings out, causing Mama and Darl to jump.

MAMA
(Sharply)

What was that?

CASH

Ain’t nothing, Mama. Someone’s out huntin.


Darl goes over to the door and looks outside. Mama pushes herself back from the table.

MAMA

Too close for hunters.


Cash gets to his feet as Mama starts for the door. Darl reaches over and takes an old .30-30 rifle from the corner and is on his way back out to the door when Cash intercepts him and takes it from his brother and slaps him on the back of the head with his open hand all in one motion as if he’d had practice at it.

CASH

Give me that boy, give me that. You get your coat on. Mama step away from there. We’ll be right back.


Darl pulls on his heavy coat and dusts off his stovepipe. Cash stands in the doorway with the rifle held loosely at his waist. He looks out in the rain and then looks back at his brother. The two of them step out into the rain and stand there. A moment later another shot rings out. Then another. Suddenly a figure bursts into view from stage right, causing Cash to raise his rifle and nearly squeeze off a shot.

CASH

Stop right there!


The figure freezes. It is a woman in her midthirties wearing a shabby robe. Her hair is a tangled gold. Her lips are blood-heavy and as clinquant as cut rubies. Her teeth are like pearls. She falls to her knees in front of them. Her name, as we shall soon see, is MOLLY BATH.

MOLLY BATH

Please. Please.


Cash and Darl look at each other. Molly looks back over her shoulder. Mama steps out after them.

CASH

Ma’am. Put your hands up.

MAMA

Fool son of mine. You put that gun down.


Cash lowers the rifle and steps back from Molly. Darl and Molly lock silent gazes.


MOLLY BATH
Please. Help.

VOICE
(Calling out from offstage)
Hold it right there!


Molly looks back with wide eyes as THREE MEN step into view, rifles and scatterguns in hand. Molly cringes back from them.

CASH

What is all this?

BOONE

Step away from that girl, Cash Bundren.


The man who spoke, CARP BOONE, steps forward with a rope in hand. Molly sees him and tries to crawl away. Boone reaches down and takes a swipe at her. Molly ducks and falls backward and Boone bends down and takes her by the arm. Darl steps forward to help and Boone points his rifle at him.

BOONE

I’d think twice before I’d get in the way, mutie.


He drags Molly to her feet.

MAMA

(Stepping forward)

What did that girl do?


Molly whimpers and tries to escape but the other two men step forward and seize her. Boone sticks his rifle against her belly.

BOONE

Get goin.


They drag the girl offstage. Boone walks after them when Mama grabs him by the collar. He looks back at her as though about to push her back but Darl and Cash step forward. This intimidating sight seems to change Boone’s mind.

MAMA

What did that girl do.

BOONE

What didn’t she do.

CASH

You was shootin at her.

BOONE

You want to know? Come down to the church and find out.

Copyright © 2008 by Stephen J. Davis
All rights reserved.