The February Featured Writer is John T. Biggs

Please feel free to email John at: johnbiggs73162@gmail.com

JENNY
by John T. Biggs

There’s no bird’s nest inside the pile of black-Jack oak I just split. No mother scissortail bird frightened by a hawk’s shadow, so the song I hear is something else. Jenny is warning me.

The Jenny-song says, “Unexpected visitors are on the way. Might be bad or good. Might pass through without changing anything, like hummingbirds on their way to Mexico. Might be dangerous, like a black bear, or a poacher. Might be invisible, like a Choctaw ancestor.”

Mostly Jenny’s birdsong says, “Watch out! Things will happen fast.”

My double bladed axe is in the air, at the end of a back swing, ready to turn another log to kindling.

Chop.

My two dogs come out from under the porch, their ears laid back, and their spine-fur bristled. They are looking at me to see if it’s all right to bark.

“Shush.” The dogs aren’t sure what that means, so they stand beside me, and wait to see what needs chasing off.

I nudge a stick of kindling with the toe of my boot, like I haven’t noticed the Jenny-song or the nervous dogs; as though I’m not worried about the sound of breaking sticks behind the cedar trees, or the voices arguing in whispers.

A man stumbles into the clearing like somebody shoved him out a tavern door. He’s a white man with a torn shirt, dirty denims, and an expression on his face that tells me we might not get along.

He looks at my axe and I look at the girl who follows him out of the underbrush. She’s as smooth and shiny as a picture in a catalogue in spite of a few snags in the fawn colored pants, and a couple of smudges on the light blue blouse that spills over her breasts like a waterfall. Everything about this girl is perfect except for the man she’s with.

“Pretty,” I say out loud, because that’s how I talk to myself these days. Then I whisper, “Pretty,” a second time, really soft. That won’t fix anything, but it’s good practice if I’m having company.

The white man wipes one hand across his lips and gives me a big fake smile, like people wear in family photographs after there’s been a fight.

He says, “My name’s Max.” I figure that Max doesn’t notice the sheath knife on my belt, even when I brush my free hand over it. The double bladed axe has Max’s full attention.

“My name’s Governor,” I tell him. “Governor Anotubby. No relationship to those Anotubbys who run the Chickasaw.”

I don’t mention Jenny. These two will learn about her soon enough if she wants them to. I know she’s watching, because a morning dove is cooing where there isn’t one, right behind the girl. I figure Jenny likes her, but she hasn’t made her mind up about Max.

The girl steps forward, extends her hand all limp-wristed so I don’t know whether to shake it or kiss it. “Je m’apelle Anne.”

“She’s introducing herself,” Max tells me. “My girlfriend only speaks French.”

“Well I’ll be damned.” I give her hand a quick shake and let it drop so Jenny won’t be jealous. “So you’re Jem Apple-Anne?” I figure it for one of those double names women from the city use. She didn’t appear to understand.

“What are you the Governor of?” Max has an accent too, something east of Tulsa and north of Ponca city…Chicago maybe or New York City.

“Just a name my mother liked,” I tell him. “I’m no politician.”

Max gives me another one of those photo-grins, which probably means he thinks he’s run across some stupid woodsy Indian he can take advantage of.

I get quiet, the way Choctaw farmers always do, waiting for the white people to fill the gap with noisy information. It doesn’t take long.

Apple-Anne steps away from Max and jabbers at me in her fancy language. She looks at the woods real hard and waves her arms around like a cheerleader who doesn’t think her team has got much chance.

“Shut up!” Max yells at her loud enough to give the dogs a start.

Apple-Anne looks back at the woods, then at Max, then talks at me some more, slower this time, like that might make a difference.

Jenny throws owl sounds over Max’s head. She makes rattlesnake noises in the brush behind him in the exact spot where Apple-Anne was looking. Tells me, Something’s hidden there, Governor, in her special Jenny-way. Max hid it, and I don’t like him a bit.

I make note of the place, but right now I have to settle the argument between Max and his pretty girlfriend. “Quit that.” I raise my voice loud enough to make the dogs tuck their tails, but Max doesn’t pay attention until I tap his wrist with my axe handle.

He looks at me like he’s just remembered I’m around. He tosses Apple-Anne’s hand away like it’s charged with electricity. He rubs the place I tapped him—even though it wasn’t hard enough to leave a mark. He wipes his mouth into another phony smile.

“Sorry,” Max says. “Guess I got a little carried away.”

Now I’m sure he has something hidden in the woods, because Apple-Anne is still looking there, and Jenny is making her rattlesnake noise. Max is looking all around like there might be snipers in the trees, but the one place he’s not looking is the hiding place.

“Are you going to put down that axe?” Max asks. “There’re riots going on. Everyone’s out to get everyone else. If we’re going to fight, I think we should have a fist fight.”

Jenny is making crow sounds all around us. I toss the axe down, because I know Max and I are going to fight and if it comes down to life and death, I’d rather surprise him with my hunting knife.

I clap my hands together. I shout threats. I walk toward him with my hands clenched into big Choctaw farmer-fists that look like they could break a mule’s jaw. I give Max a push, and his hands come up, waiving around like he might know some deadly Asian style of fighting.

I’ve been in a scuffle or two in my life, but not much more than that. I don’t know enough to stretch a boxing match into a dance or make noises like a cook in a Hibachi Restaurant, so I give him a good right cross to the nose, and jump back to see what happens.

What happens is nothing. Max sits on the ground sopping blood out of his nose with his ragged shirttail; wiping away some tears too, unless I’m mistaken.

I sit on a post oak stump a few feet away—within grabbing distance of my axe—and pretend people always meet this way in southeastern Oklahoma. “So tell me about these riots. You make it sound like the world just came to an end.”

Max gets his bleeding under control, and looks at me like I just told him I think the earth is flat. “You mean you don’t know?” He wiggles his nose around to make sure it’s not broken.

Everything turns Choctaw-quiet on the farm; everything except for Jenny’s bird sounds. She’s gone over to sparrows now, so realistic that one flies down and lands on Apple-Anne’s shoulder. The look on that girl’s face speaks wonder in any language. It’s a sure thing she’s Jenny’s favorite.

“Guess you’d better come inside and tell me all about it.”

*****

Max looks uncomfortable in my cast-off work clothes. He rubs the fabric of my old shirt between his fingers and sniffs them, checking if they smell like Governor Annotubby.

Apple-Anne is happy to be clean and warm. She doesn’t mind wearing one of Jenny’s old dresses, which seems to fit her perfectly. She sings a French song under her breath, as soothing as a lullaby. Jenny accompanies her with cicada music, harmony as perfect as an Easter Sunday choir.

Max doesn’t pay them any attention. He doesn’t seem to hear the Jenny-noises because he’s so busy telling wild stories about people getting sick and going crazy. “After the electricity went down, the riots started. No radio, no television, no air conditioning or lights. Nowhere in the whole damn country.”

I tell him we never had those things and we get along just fine. I don’t tell him who I mean by “we,” and he doesn’t ask, but he snoops around the inside of my house, making sure I told the truth.

I follow him through the house, talking friendly but watching him real close. “Candles and kerosene make all the light we need. There’s a wood stove in the kitchen for heat and cooking and warming water for a bath. Got five years supply of coal oil and a garden full of vegetables. Streams are full of fish. Forest is full of meat.”

“No telephone?”

“No lines,” I tell him. “Go out and see for yourself. No cell phone reception last time I checked and I couldn’t keep a phone charged anyway.”

Apple-Anne goes into the kitchen. She looks so good walking away that I can’t stop my eyes from following. Jenny doesn’t mind—she fills the cabin with mourning dove songs—but Max looks like he swallowed a thistle.

“You got a wife, Governor?” He rubs his nose where I poked him, reminding himself how our last disagreement worked out. “A girl who comes around?” He’s having trouble keeping his voice out of argument range, but he’s doing pretty well.

“Sort of.” 

I don’t tell him how Jenny went away seven years ago, how she’s still here even though nobody can see her anymore. I don’t tell how she comes to me in the night sometimes and kisses me or how those kisses taste like dandelion wine. I don’t tell him any of that, and Max doesn’t notice the finch songs following Apple-Anne as she brings a bowl of venison stew into the sitting room.

“Magnifique.” She smiles the way Jenny used to smile, her lips turned up at the edges like Cupid’s bow. I haven’t seen that smile for a long time, but there it is, exactly.

*****

It’s dark out in the country when the sun goes down. Dark inside my old farmhouse too. It keeps people close to lit candles when they’re up, and under covers when they’re not.

Jenny moves through the house, quiet as an owl’s shadow making sure everything’s exactly how it ought to be. Making sure Max hasn’t bothered Apple-Anne since I put them in our guest bedroom.

“It’s not my place to separate those two,” I tell the pitch-black air around me. Jenny makes a scurrying noise, like squirrels in the attic. Her way of telling me, There’s going to be trouble with Max, no matter what you do.

Rattlesnake noises remind me Max has something hidden in the woods. It’s hard not to squirm when I hear snakes in the bedroom, even when I know they aren’t real.

“I’ll check first thing in the morning.” I hold up my right hand like I’m swearing an oath. It’s dark but I know that Jenny’s eyes see everything.  “Really. As soon as the sun comes up.”

It’s close to midnight when rumbles from Max and twitters from Apple-Anne wake me. Quiet and low at first, so I can’t tell if it’s angry words or lively conversation, but pretty soon there isn’t any doubt. Darkness makes voices louder; a slap is louder too. There’s only one, then everything quiets down.

Jenny gives me a porcupine grunt, but I put things off. That slap was delicate, almost musical—the sound of a woman’s hand against a man’s face.

“Just wait,” I tell Jenny, “Things have a way of working out.”

She makes an owl sound back at me. That’s a scary noise for a Choctaw; it means something bad is about to happen. But Jenny doesn’t know everything, because pretty soon, I hear footsteps move across the plank floor—too dainty to be Max’s.

“She’s going to sleep in the sitting room,” I tell Jenny. “Max is going to let her be.”

Jenny sneezes the way dogs do when they think you’re being foolish, then everything turns quiet once again. I listen as long as I can, but after a few minutes, I pass into sleep without knowing when it happens.

*****

Strange people in the house make for strange dreams, like a body moving through the darkness, slow and quiet so there’s hardly enough shifting air to tell what’s happening. The curtains are open, but the moon is new and starlight’s not enough to see.

The pine floor in the hallway creaks—not with the memory of yesterday’s walkers—from the weight of someone trying to be quiet. By the third creak I’m wide awake, reaching for my hunting knife, because there are only two reasons a stranger sneaks up on you in the middle of the night and one of those is deadly.

I hold the knife in an underhanded grip, ready to use the edge or the point as the situation changes. The muscles in my arms fill up with heat. My mouth goes dry. My blood turns cold as well water. The battle plan is in my mind, ready to put into action a split second before the intruder knows I’m awake.

The weight of a hand eases onto the bed, but I am on the opposite side, already planning how to remove the sheets before blood soaks through to the mattress. It’s almost a disappointment when Apple-Anne slips under the covers next to me.

She murmurs something in French that is almost more arousing than the feel of her body. She doesn’t know anything about Jenny. Doesn’t know she exists. Doesn’t know she’s watching.

But I know. There’s a flutter of hummingbird wings around the bed, a nervous friendly sound giving me permission to follow wherever Apple-Anne leads.

There is no doubt who is taking the lead. Apple-Anne is the one who slapped Max and left his bed for mine. She’s the one risking rejection, though she probably can’t imagine it. When she closes her mouth over mine I taste last evening’s venison stew, and something else.

Dandelion wine, like when Jenny kisses me.

Maybe every woman in the world tastes like dandelion wine. I’ll figure that out later, because right now all I can think of is the sound of quail rushing into the air all at once.

Jenny-sounds. A French touch. They run together like raindrops carried on the wind and I can’t tell which woman is in bed with me until I hear a kitchen match strike against the wall. Who would have imagined a match flame could be so bright?

Max stands at the foot of the bed holding the match over his head, trying to disbelieve what his eyes tell him. Apple-Anne rolls away from me; she smiles at Max, the way a cat smiles at a cornered mouse.

“Ca va, Max.” A buzzing sound, like a hornet’s nest starts at the back of her throat and spreads out to fill the bedroom. A very Jenny sound.

Max retreats a step. I show him the knife I’m still holding in my hand. As the match flickers out, the room fills with the sound of flying bats. I hear Max stumble out of the room, trip over furniture, and slam his bedroom door, but Apple-Anne is close to me again and once again I can’t think of anything else.

*****

 “Mercy beaucoup.” I pour her another cup of tea and slide a pancake onto her plate like we’re an old married couple who ate thousands of breakfasts in years gone by. I’m thinking things could go on like this forever, when I hear the bedroom door open and Max pokes his head out, like a bear leaving his cave in hunting season.

His eyes are underlined with bruises from the punch I gave him yesterday. His nose is red and swollen. He looks around the room like maybe he’s trying to figure out where Jenny is hiding.

“You’ll never find her,” I wave Max into the kitchen like I’m a traffic cop and he’s a truck driver who’s too sleepy to know when it’s his turn to go. “Come in and have a pancake.”

Jenny switches to a blackbird territory song. I figure on throwing Max off the farm before the day is done. Send him away with a change of clothes and enough food to last till he gets to Hugo. Even a city boy like Max has got to see how two roosters can’t live in the same hen house—and it’s my hen house after all.

“Sit down,” I say a little too loud, and Max does sit down, but he’s not in the mood for pancakes.

Apple-Anne doesn’t make his mood any better when she walks behind him and lets out a string of words that I’m pretty sure aren’t in any French /English Dictionary. Max turns his neck to its full limit to get a look at her.

I tell him, “Easy boy,” the way you’d talk to a dog that’s all worked up about a raccoon he’s never going to catch. “You know, Max, things don’t seem to be working out.”

He starts crying again. Big tears the size of gumdrops, and he doesn’t try to slow them down even when I give him a handkerchief. Quiet tears are the worst kind, especially when a man does the crying. Most especially when it’s a man who’s seen you lying in bed next to the woman he brought to your house just yesterday.

“Adieu, Max.” She gives him a little wave and gestures toward the open door. There’s red Oklahoma clay on Apple-Anne’s fingers. Some of it comes off when she wipes them on her dress—Jenny’s dress. She smiles at Max as she sashays across the room, the way a woman smiles at a man she never wants to see again. Cicada sounds move behind her like a whirlwind.

“I’ll pack some food for you.” I put my hand on Max’s shoulder so he can’t spring up and surprise me. “I have a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans I can spare. The lumber trail will take you all the way to Hugo.”

“Don’t need your clothes. Don’t need anything that’s yours.” His eyes fill up with tears again, but hate keeps them from breaking free. He starts to leave. He turns after he passes through the door. He looks around the room like he’s memorizing every piece of furniture. He slams the door so hard the windows rattle.

Rattlesnake noises fill the room—Jenny reminding me of something that doesn’t matter now that Max is gone. Apple-Anne backs against the wall beside the door as if she’s balancing on a narrow ledge. Her eyes go flat; the black centers swell up to hide the blue color. She’s waiting for something to happen the way a spider waits for dinner to fly into her web.

The rattlesnake sounds stop as Max eases the front door open and walks inside once again, this time holding a big pistol in his hand. It’s an old-time revolver, the kind cowboys used to kill Indians like me and take their land, perfect for what Max has in mind.

I slide my hunting knife out of its sheath and hold it by the blade, like an act of surrender.

“Too late for that, Governor.” Max likes to hear the sound of his own voice making a victory speech. He’s a city boy and doesn’t understand the advantage of acting quickly.

“Where’s Anne?” he demands, and I notice she’s not in the room.

I’ll have just one chance to strike, so I wait for exactly the right moment. I’ll know when it comes.

“Answer me Governor.” Max looks like he’s about to cry again. The barrel of his pistol drops for a second but it bounces up again. Chest level.

I turn sideways a little at a time so I’ll make a harder target without scaring him.

“Where is my Anne?”

Max doesn’t have to wait long for an answer. Apple-Anne charges toward him with an eagle screech. She rakes her nails across his face, mixing the red clay on her fingers with his blood.

I throw my hunting knife with an overhand pitch. The blade tumbles twice; the point cuts through Max’s breastbone and pierces his heart. He stumbles back against the doorframe and starts a slow motion slide, but he has enough time left to point his pistol and squeeze off two quick shots. The first one catches me in the chest and the second hits me in the shoulder. It hurts, but not nearly as much as I imagined.

I stand there watching Max. He’s trying to say something important, something that will make us sorry when he’s dead. He can’t think of anything so he crosses himself Catholic style and start’s mumbling Hail Mary’s. He’ll never say enough of them to make up for murder.

How long does it take for a man shot in the chest to die? I look to see how much blood I’ve lost.

None.

Apple-Anne brushes a hand across my shirt and a little cloud of dust makes me sneeze. She shows me a little ball of clay in the palm of her hand—the exact shape of the business end of a forty-five caliber bullet. This is how she defanged the rattlesnake Max.

Cicada music fills the air as Apple-Anne puts her arms around me and covers my lips with hers. This is the song they sing after their earthbound skins are gone, while their wings pump full of blood, preparing for the miracle of flight.

“Hello Governor,” Apple-Anne says without the slightest trace of a French accent. “I’ve found my way back.”

Now I know for certain. Jenny’s eyes are blue.

Don’t bother trying to classify John T. Biggs’ stories. It is a genre stew of speculative fiction, anthropology, mystery, and humor written in a mainstream literary style. Native Americans play a significant role in John’s narratives. He reworks traditional Indian legends and sets them in modern times, the way oral historians always intended.

Sixty of John’s short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies that vary from literary to young adult speculative fiction and everything in between. Some of these stories have won regional and national awards including Grand Prize in the Writers Digest 80th annual competition, third prize in the Lorian Hemingway short story contest, and a Storyteller Magazine’s Peoples Choice Award.

John has published three novels: Owl Dreams, Popsicle Styx (Oklahoma Book Award Finalist) and Cherokee Ice. He has a brand new linked short story collection Sacred Alarm Clock, which includes the OWFI Crème de la Crème winning story, “Twenty Percent Off.”