BOLTING the FURIES Bolting the Furies
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BOLTING THE FURIES Bolting the Furies Helen H. Moore SONG OF THE FURIES According to Greek mythology, the Furies were ancient goddesses charged with the right to punish men for their sins. They were some- times called the Fates or the Maenads. Aeschylus, Greece, 528–456 BCE Up and lead the dance of Fate! Lift the song that mortals hate! Tell what rights are ours on earth, Over all of human birth. Swift of foot to avenge are we! He whose hands are clean and pure, Naught our wrath to dread hath he; Calm his cloudless days endure. But the man that seeks to hide Like him his gore-bedewèd hands, Witnesses to them that died, © 2020 by Helen H. Moore The blood avengers at his side, All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be The Furies’ troop forever stands. reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. O’er our victim come begin! Come, the incantation sing, ISBN: 9798647520166 Frantic all and maddening, Helen H. Moore, Las Vegas, NV, 89147 To the heart a brand of fire, The Furies’ hymn, That which claims the senses dim, Tuneless to the gentle lyre, Withering the soul within. The pride of all of human birth, All glorious in the eye of day, open my eyes. Above me are branches in leaf, above them blue sky, Dishonored slowly melts away, I normal, cloudless, like nothing happened. Beneath me is earth, Trod down and trampled to the earth, soggy and boggy. There is blood in my mouth, and I feel a tooth Whene’er our dark-stoled troop advances, rolling around. I spit it out. What has happened here? My eyelids are Whene’er our feet lead on the dismal dances. heavy, and I close them and imagine for long moments that I feel the movement of the earth underneath me, turning from west to east. I For light our footsteps are, think I may be dying; I think I may already be dead, and my mind And perfect is our might, closes in a kind of sleep. Awful remembrances of guilt and crime, I open my eyes, and now I see dark, and feel cold, and I shiver. Implacable to mortal prayer, I’m not dead, not yet. But it’s night now, and I’m cold and scared. I’m Far from the gods, unhonored, and heaven’s light, never as brave as I make myself out to be in front of people. There We hold our voiceless dwellings dread, are no people here. The leaves that I saw on the branches above me All unapproached by living or by dead. in daytime are making faint shivery sounds, as if they feel cold, and scared too. The humpbacked moon is pale and waning, but I see all What mortal feels not awe, around me fragments of broken glass shining and, in the near yonder, Nor trembles at our name, the buckled hulk of a bus, and memories begin crowding my mind. Hearing our fate-appointed power sublime, Words. Glass. Crash. Fire. Scream. And my name. Senga. Did someone Fixed by the eternal law. scream for me, call my name? Anyway, that remembered name tells For old our office, and our fame, me I am still me, still Senga. And I begin to remember the last things that happened before I opened my eyes. And my head hurts. And I’m Might never yet of its due honors fail, thirsty. I notice an electrical buzz and a hum. But no human voices. Though ’neath the earth our realm in unsunned I roll over, feel pain, feel my fingers stuck together with my own regions pale. blood. Is it really my own? Because suddenly, in the weak moonlight, against the fat roots of a tree, I see my first corpse. The girl who was vii Helen H. Moore Bolting the Furies playing guitar, singing about giving her love a cherry. Her busted know I live that way. That way the sky is violet. Growing less black, guitar is still somehow around her neck, the strap strangling her. Her anyway. And home is east, east of here, east of the big woods of Forest dead eyes are open. I see that. My dirty hands fly to my mouth. We Park. If I can get out of the woods, I can find the Interboro Parkway, were on a bus. Then I see the bus. and then I can walk to the subway, take the E or the F back home, My eyes are adjusting to the dark. and never even think about going on a protest march again. “My name is Agnes Craigie. I’m nineteen. I’m a freshman at I get up onto my knees, then onto my feet, and I begin to walk in Queens College. I’m an English major.” the opposite direction from the guitar girl’s body. I think I may be I remember the bus, and I remember the sign I was supposed the only one left alive, because aside from that strange buzz, I hear to carry—“Equal rights for women, now!” and a closed fist inside only the shiver the leaves are making in the night air. No human the circle of the sign for female. That was my sign. Some women sounds. As soon as I notice this, the more l look, the more bodies had signs that said “Death Penalty for Rapists.” I keep trudging, I see. I don’t know all the names that go with them. But then I stumbling forward. didn’t know who all was on the bus. My knees and my breath are Now I’m seeing the same ditches and gullies and bodies and tree shaking. It’s hard to balance on this broken earth. And I can’t think roots and the damp ditch where I woke up, and I realize that I’ve why it’s all broken. Uneven chunks of paved road sticking up, with stumbled and crawled in a big circle. Something stinks, and flies are clumps and layers of earth stuck to their undersides. Big gullies buzzing. I’m dizzy. The sky is getting lighter, but I’m falling into and ditches, and the roots of trees where their branches should be. the dark. I look around. My glasses are gone, but everywhere now I can And then, after hours or it might be days, someone is shaking just make out bodies, bodies of women and girls, but no men. The me. She’s shouting. driver was the only man. I don’t see him. These bodies belong to the “Senga! Open your eyes!” And I do. passengers. The driver is not in the crumpled bus, but the radio is It’s the girl I call Buffy, though that’s not her name. “Get up, still turned on, still blasting static as I half walk, half stumble along, Senga!” passing it. She’s been crying, and she looks like hell, even more like a water My head is clearing. I tell myself, as if it might be important, “It buffalo than ever, with dirt streaked all down her face, and I obey as is 1972. My name is Agnes Craigie. My parents used to call me Senga. best I can, but her shaking is making everything worse. Her voice is I live on Parsons Boulevard, Jamaica, New York. I’m a student…” loud, and she’s hurting me. She’s got hands like a farmer, huge hands. l keep walking, and now I think about my brother and my sister, “Is everyone else dead?” she’s asking. and how worried they’ll be when they hear our bus crashed, and that l don’t know, and l try to tell her so, but no sound will come. thought starts me crying. They must be frantic. I wonder how long I was out. I want to get back home. I can tell where the east is, and I viii ix Helen H. Moore “Here,” she says, and puts the lid of a thermos to my mouth. It had Kool-Aid inside it, and l choke on the sweetness, but it helps. “Finish it,” she says. “l got more.” “What happened? Where are we?” “l don’t know. Still in Queens, I think. We just got onto the Interboro when something hit us. I think something hit us.” Buffy helps me stand up. “Your head is all bloody.” She puts her arm around me and drapes my arm around her One shoulder and, still running at the mouth, walks me out of the ditch. hen the world came to, it came not to its senses but to Wits madness. Those who were left alive learned what their true needs were, which was almost as important as learning how to get them met. Oxygen, of course, then water, then food. Although no one knew it for some time, the rupture had been total, worldwide. That dawned on people gradually. All over the world, those left alive were at the mercy of place and had to get their needs met from what was around them. Eventually, life resumed its potent, inexorable pulse. Her name was Senga, and she was working this morning, foraging, looking for the small and delicate strawberries that grew without tending. She lived with some others in what had been, back when such descriptions had meaning, the largest contiguous oak forest in North America.