War Paint

Lacey Strag, a loner in a post-apocalyptic Front Range, rescues Aurora Town from gypsies and inspires a young man to join in the adventure.

He cussed like reciting poetry, the man called Lacy Strag, like he thought about it, like choosing the words warranted his time. Pacing outside the town walls in the dust and gravel in a black hat and long leather coat with his big black Dark Horse motorcycle stood propped up near him, strangely large and masculine next to him, he so seeming frail and prissy. I couldn’t imagine how he’d survived on the plains, his face painted white and dark makeup around his eyes and on his lips, out with the roving gangs and the wild animals. But he and the bike were covered in the road’s dust. He was a drifter, clear and simple. Strangest drifter I ever saw, and odd folk make their way to Aurora Town.

 

“Give me back my f*****g stuff, knucking cunnies!” Lacy shouted. He had arrived at our town for fuel and supplies. As per the usual extortive behavior of people in power, O’Neill, our sheriff, took Lacy’s stuff under the pretense that it would need to be checked before Lacy could be allowed into town. His bag of stuff stood open on the wall at my feet, and I stood on top of Aurora Town’s walls. I and a couple other guys shuffled through the bag, looking for what there was. Lacy had the usual drifter supplies�"little bit of a tool kit to maintain his bike, little bit of a first aid kit, some jerky, some bartering trinkets, couple spare shirts and socks and the like, and ammo. Quite a lot of ammo, a bit more than average for a drifter. Also, I found makeup. I took up and held a pencil labeled “eyeliner” and looked down at him. Lacy had dark lines of it around his eyes. It seemed so strange. I’d never seen that before.

 

“Now you listen here, boy, we’ll have no language like that in our town,” Sheriff O’Neill hollered down from the top of the wall at Lacy below. A massive wall stood around Aurora town, built on the remains of brick buildings that had, I was told, been part of a huge school. No one remembered anyone who had been alive when Aurora Town was still a school instead of a refinery town in the midst of the breaking rubble of a city crumbling to gravel and dust.

 

The people or Aurora Town had no use for much language of any kind. Simple minded folk. Aurora Town is a refinery town. We deal in fuel�"vegetable oil. Drifters blow through frequently, always with something O’Neil wants.

 

“Now you listen here, stranger, we shall return your belongings if you hold to the proposition which we have here set forward. Under those conditions will your belongings be returned and only those,” O’Neill shouted down. He had a particular idea for Lacy. Lacy made an especially convenient arrival. The deal O’Neill had in mind: Lacy’s bag for our preacher, Fr. Scoggin. Scoggin had been taken by a gang of pikeys out in the hills. The pikeys had taken up camp on the road that brought in our supply of raw and rotting vegetables that we would turn into oil. Most of our supplies came along that road as well. The pikeys had got us under siege. They were a ragged bunch, and to attack their camp alone was a suicide mission. In return for getting our preacher back Lacy’d get fuel.

A suicide mission. O’Neill knew it.

 

“Well, stranger?” O’Neill said.

 

Lacy took a long time answering. He stared up at O’Neill, O’Neill glowering back, looking oafish in the sunlight shining in his eyes. With an expression on his whited face close to pulling out his gun and blowing O’Neill away, Lacy calmly took a cigarette out of his inside pocket. He put it between his blackened lips and lit it with a match. I couldn’t think how he’d even care to paint his face like that. I wondered whether it meant anything.

 

“I’ll save your little town,” Lacy said. He turned toward his Dark Horse and flicked the match over his shoulder.

 

Shivers went all up and down me at that. Mama always said I had an active imagination. Even so, something about the way he said it made me certain that we’d never see Lacy again. That made me sad, I tell you.

 

Lacy rode east in the lowering sun.

 

A few hours later night fell in the strangled way it always did that time of year. I went to the garages where my motorcycle lived. An old Peashooter. A good bike. I tended to it whenever I had some free time. The tar-grease smell and the salty aromas of the machinery felt good and familiar. O’Neill and his deputy, Golden, wandered around in the night outside.

 

“All I’m saying is we got to prepare for the worst like what Scoggin’s always saying�"use the resources we already got,” Golden was saying. “We don’t know. That weird Lacy stranger won’t be coming back. You know it’s so. Them pikeys are sure to be coming back for thirds by crack of dawn.”

 

“I ain’t going to lead this town into a fight,” O’Neill said. “Stop your grousing.”

 

I left off tightening my motorcycle’s breaks and went to a window in the shop to look out at O’Neill and Golden talking. In the near-full moon O’Neill�"taller, wider, his long coat and broad hat dirty�"turned to face Golden. Golden had been following close and stopped. He wore a cap and a blue jacket and pair of pants, though all shadowy in the gravelly courtyard where they stood.

 

“We can defend ourselves, O’Neill. The hardware is all here,” Golden said, looking up at O’Neill. It was true. We stockpiled, guns and ammo. O’Neill believed it was the key to safety to have more guns and ammo than everyone else. He never wanted to fight but he wanted all the guns and ammo.

 

“It’s talk like that got Mayor Hinkle killed,” O’Neill said. Hinkle had been our mayor a few years back. Another group of pikeys had camped on the road and Hinkle led a band of men out to unseat them. None of those guys returned. “He thought him and his boys could fight off the bandits but they just got themselves shot up and gone to hell. That what you want for me too?”

 

“Hinkle had something to prove and you know it. He never was going to succeed and no how. Ain’t no good reason to fight them pikeys out in the plains where they know all the nooks and creeks.”

 

“I won’t hear another word. Damn it, Golden, our people are workers,” O’Neill said, cutting Golden off in the middle. Sighing, I lowered myself to sit with my back to the wall under the window. I took Lacy’s eyeliner from inside my jacket and looked at it. Couldn’t fathom the need for it, but I wanted to know. “Ain’t a soldier nor hard man among them. Ain’t nobody here fit for a fight.”

 

“You don’t trust this town enough, O’Neill,” Golden muttered. “Why, half the boys here can shoot a quail from a quarter of a mile, and there ain’t�"”

 

“Stuff it, Golden,” O’Neill said. “Keeping the peace is all we need to do now.”

 

I picked up a spare side-view mirror I had in case one on my bike broke. Looking at myself for a spell in it, I rolled the eyeliner between the fingers of my other hand. Couldn’t hurt to try it. Taking the lid of the eye-liner off, hesitating for only a moment, I began to make a slow line around my eyes, watching myself in the mirror.

 

Horde ammo is the name of the survival game. Folk treated it like money, or water�"more precious than kids. Lacy had ammo, so O’Neill took it and sent him to be killed so he wouldn’t come back for it. Fr. Scoggin went searching for ammo. I think he and O’Neill had a fight. I don’t know except that Scoggin had different ideas than O’Neill�"more active ones. O’Neill never liked different. I’m pretty sure O’Neill ordered Scoggin to go for ammo.

 

O’Neill is a little-minded man. I don’t like being under his thumb�"keeping my head down sucks. I disagree with him a lot, but keep quiet.

 

I tried to wipe the eyeliner off. I couldn’t quite get all of it. The thought of what folk would think if they saw it made me hot under the collar. I got dark eyelashes, though. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.

Morning arrived in a slow, dusty mist.

 

You can always tell when the pikeys are coming. Their bikes kick up dust for miles, the roads are so dry this season. The guys on watch ring the warning bell. Everyone should take cover. I don’t much like hiding. I prefer seeing what’s up. Instead of heading to the sturdy church building where all the rest of town goes to hide, I hustle to some crates where I can see what’s happening on top of the gates. O’Neill, Golden, and some of the guys with rifles stand up there, looking down at the bike that’s arrived. I duck behind the crates to keep out of sight.

 

So okay, I mostly don’t like hiding.

 

O’Neill shouts down from the wall at the people outside. I only heard one bike, and they’re talking too much for it to be pikeys. Damn, I wish I could hear what they’re saying. Can’t though.

The conversation ends quickly. At a signal from O’Neill, the guys inside the wall unlatch the gate. It starts to open. My heart thumps. It’s weird for it to open now, with the pikeys nearby. I stand up to look who’s bike rides through the tall, metal gates, swinging in to open.

 

The bike is big, black, a Dark Horse. Astride it the lithe, black-clad man, Lacy Strag, a crooked, smug smile on his blackened lips. Behind him, holding onto the bike, sits little Fr. Scoggin, a lost expression on his face.

 

I laugh out loud. I’m glad to see Lacy…Fr. Scoggin too, but somehow I’m glad to see Lacy.

Another night fell with a wheeze and a whumf. Someone thought a party was a good idea. Probably Scoggin�"he liked declaring big parties. Not complaining. I like a party. Lacy liked it too. Quickly, lights were strung around the patch of dry grass in the main square. Trestle tables went up fast and barrels of beer were rolled out, as people assumed Lacy had somehow, miraculously, cleaned out the pikey camp so supplies would be replenished soon. It would be a good party…though…you ever had that feeling where you think folk are celebrating now but setting themselves up to cry in the morning? I felt like that. I tried to tell myself it’d be all right, seeing as Fr. Scoggin’s round face was all over with smiles. I figured he knew best. He’d been there. Lacy must have had success.

 

I listened from nearby while folk asked Lacy how he got out. He told a long story about narrow escapes and killer shots. I didn’t believe the story. Not sure why�"something about his eyes. He looked sly and cunning�"while the town folk laughed at his quips, Lacy laughed at them but without laughing. A man who felt comfy that he’d outsmarted them nearby him laughed like that. To me, he clearly lied while he told his story. In any event, he told a good story.

 

Standing nearby, his eyeliner in my hand, I waited till he’d finished talking to the other town folk. I really wanted to ask him what it did for him, this makeup, this face paint. It made almost no sense unless it protected him from the sun. I didn’t understand. He stood from the trestle table where he and the town folk sat. Shuffling through the dry grass toward the buffet with the beer, he moved my way, because I stood near there already. It was shadowy, far from fires and far from any of the lamps strung around the courtyard. Folk kept near the light so it was quieter here too.

 

Lacy got near. He saw me standing and looked me up and down. If he judged me for anything I couldn’t tell how. There was still traces of eyeliner around my eyes�"I still hadn’t been able to get it all off. Maybe he thought it was engine grease or something. I don’t know. Kind of hoped he did. He caught sight of the pencil of eyeliner in my hand.

 

“Oh, there it is,” he said, and snatched it from me. “I needed this for tomorrow. Cucking stuff is hard to find, like, any-f*****g-where. I was about to blow out of here without any. I can make do with ashes. Ashes fall f*****g short in so many ways. This stuff is better. Heh, I would never have guessed anyone in this feather knucking blowhole would steal my eyeliner. Ammo, sure. Not my eyeliner.” He paused and looked at me as if thinking of me different now he saw I thought about the makeup. “You took it, though,” he said, then more slowly, “That’s interesting.”

 

He paused again. I think he waited for me to say something. Nothing came to mind, suddenly, though questions had been jumbling around my head a second before. I felt blank and slow.

 

“Auspice,” he said, leaning forward slightly as if imparting wisdom.

 

“Hmm?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

 

“Just a word I like,” Lacy said with a smile.

 

“Mm,” I said.

 

“You’re awkward,” Lacy said, smiling wider. He could have been laughing at me. He could also have been merely entertained. “You kind of remind me of Oliver Twist. Know who that is?” I shook my head. I wanted to know for some reason. “Pity,” he said, sniffing and not continuing. “Keep your head down tomorrow, awkward dude. I topsy-turvy places as I leave them.”

 

I was not sure what that meant.

 

Everyone had hangovers the next morning. Except me, fortunately. I climbed up to the top of the watchtower near the middle of town. It was made of old girders and rusted metal and at its dusty peak hung a big bell, for warning the town folk of danger. I don’t often drink a lot. From the high tower I could look out at the broken city, stretching in dusty squares from us. For several hundred yards on every side of the city walls, generations of folk in Aurora Town had cleared away the old houses, every old bridge, every weird sculpture. Brick by brick they’d been tore down and either used to build our wall or piled far away. We wanted the near country cleared so no attackers had good cover. Past the ring of gravelly, dry badland my father’s grandfather’s generation had helped in the completing the rubbled up cityscape stretched for miles to the horizon. Far to the west, past all the broken buildings, stood mountains. To the east some of the big buildings still stood hundreds of feet tall, with almost every glass window broken. A cold wind blew over the hills of wrecked pieces that had been most of the buildings of that old city. I sat up there a lot and wondered about the history of it all. No one knew what’d made the world go fallen and broken. It irked me sometimes that no one ever asked nor tried to discover.

 

I sighed in the chilly breeze.

 

Fortunately for Aurora Town I don’t drink a lot. That was the morning the pikey’s chose to ride on the town. I gave the bell a huge ring.

 

And Lacy, it seemed, also had no hangover. When I’d finished ringing the bell folk had roused themselves from their drunken slumber. I watched them rush around below, running out of the few brick buildings and shouting at each other. Then I looked around further and saw one motorcycle riding from the north gate, riding away from where the pikeys approached on the southeast side. The bike was a big, black Dark Horse. A long, black coat waved in the wind behind its rider. He’d never been able to ride off easy like that without the warning bell summoning everyone to the front gate. I used to try leaving sometimes to just ride around, but someone always tried to stop me.

 

I glanced down at town square to Golden’s voice. “No mistaking it, O’Neill,” Golden said, tripping across the dusty town square, trying to put his gun belt on as he followed O’Neill to the front gate.  The bandits are coming.

 

“Get that Lacy weasel,” O’Neill growled. “He brought them on us.”

 

“That don’t matter now, O’Neill,” Golden said, his voice rising. “We’ve got to fight.”

 

“S**t,” O’Neill said in his frowny voice. He paused in his stride to the front gate. His chin lowered and I could see his shoulders tighten under his coat. What he had to do next he did not want to do, that much I could see. A few guys in the crowd whispered but not many. The loudest noises were the approaching sounds of the pikeys on their trucks and bikes.

 

“All right,” O’Neill said. “Give everybody a gun.”

 

I considered going down and joining the guys heading to the gun shed. I’m a good shot, especially from a bike. Riding as an escort for the caravans had been how I got to be allowed my own bike. This had been brewing for weeks now. We needed to fight off the pikeys. I knew it. Golden knew it. Scoggin knew it. They’d fought him on it and I’d supported him. Finally having the pikeys ride on us forced our hand�"gave us the right kind of kick in the a*s. I should have been glad to see the actions start. Aurora Town was my home. Had been forever. I ought to see it defended.

 

I looked southeast toward Lacy’s receding bike. While I watched him I felt a flutter in my mind. It had never occurred to me that anything else could be done but survive in Aurora Town. The world seemed ill-suited for any other life.

 

Lacy’s long coat waved in the wind behind him as he rode away. I watched him, sadness stillness grew in me. It only got worse as I climbed down the tower. I ran to the dorms where my age group slept and got my brown jacket I wore while riding, grabbed my gun and all my ammo, and I looted the room for all the things I absolutely needed. Each item gave me pause, hesitation. I forced myself past them. I had no time to delay. I ran from there to the supply shed and stuffed my messenger bag with as much food and random essentials I could grab. My hands started shaking at that point�"second guessing whether I grabbed enough or the right stuff made it happen. Though my knees trembled I tried to ignore my body and ran from the supply shed to my bike. It was well tuned and I’d just filled it up. Putting on my goggles, I kicked it to life and skidded out of the garage, tossing up dust in my wake.

 

I stopped myself from thinking as I rode to the southeast gate. I’d start second-guessing if I did. Lacy had left the gate open and no one had noticed�"Aurora Town could be much better run. I rode out the gate and slid to a stop, dismounting to hustle back and pull the gate closed behind me. I could do that for them at least. The gate clanged shut loudly. The noise somehow startled me so I jumped. With the hairs on the back of my head raised I went back to my bike. I took a deep breath as I remounted. It was shaky, but somehow the sadness started warming. I started feeling excited.

 

Lacy’s bike left clear tracks in the dust on the road…well, clear to me. I’m good at reading tracks, always have been. On my ride I thought I could hear the gunfight start on the south end of town. It was my imagination, because I couldn’t hear anything over my bike. I imagined it anyway. I pushed my bike, taking it fast through the treacherous streets leading into the broken towers east of Aurora Town. We rarely rode this way. The cracked roads were treacherous and the massive amount of rubble we could never clear away afforded too much cover for highwaymen and the like. I’d never gone far into the tall towers. Fortunately I didn’t have to riding after Lacy because he hadn’t gone far. I found his bike parked behind a building about a mile from Aurora Town, at the edge of the tallest buildings. This one was not that tall, only twenty stories or so. Parking my bike next to Lacy’s I went to the door of the building, broken as it was. Thick dust covered the floor so I could follow Lacy’s bootprints to a set of stairs. The bootprints led me up a dozen flights then they went out onto that floor and headed through a hall, turning into a room. I went with them into the room and found it to have floor-to-ceiling windows, all broken, letting the air in. The line of sweeping mountains spiked the horizon outside the windows, and the pale sky above it. Below all, in the middle of the broken old city, sat Aurora Town in its nest of walls. Pikeys beset it on one side. The milling of a battle occurred where the pikeys hit the wall. I could just hear the rattling of guns.

 

With a bottle in one hand and a hand-rolled cigarette loose and burning in the other, Lacy sat at the edge of the window, leaning against the wall with one knee up. He smiled and blew smoke rings. When he heard the sound of my feet he glanced sideways at me. Without any attitude of surprise he waved his cigarette, greeting me. He looked back at the melee. I stood at the edge and looked down at the town. I wanted to ask whether he brought the pikeys to town. I didn’t want him to think I was accusing him of it, though. How to frame the question...it eluded me. He saved me the trouble.

 

“Yes, I told the bandits in the hills to attack the town,” he said without a hint of smugness. He just said it, like reporting the event of the day.

 

“Yeah,” I said, not sure what else to say.

 

Lacy waited for a moment, looking at me and waiting for me to say more. “Are you wondering why?” he eventually asked.

 

“Yeah,” I said.

 

“Mostly because it’s f*****g entertaining,” Lacy said, glad to be able to say it, it seemed. He smiled while he spoke. “Mostly because they took my cucking stuff and I don’t like people taking my cucking stuff. And mostly because I said I’d take care of their problem.”

 

“Not exactly what you said,” I said. Smoke rose from the skirmish outside the walls past Lacy. He glanced around at Aurora Town.

 

“Whatever. Point is they can take care of themselves,” he said. “Look at them, it’s a knucking fortress down there. Those cunnies are armed for a war. A few of them will die today, okay, but tomorrow they’ll realize they took care of their own f*****g pest problem. They’ll have self-respect for the first time in their small lives.”

 

One of the pikey trucks exploded. Someone shot an RPG at it. “I did these toe-rags a favor,” Lacy said, taking a puff of his cigarette.

 

“They might not think you did,” I said.

 

“Whatever,” Lacy said, flicking the ash of his cigarette. “These people will write up this day as a win in their history books.” He glanced up at me, smiling again. “The only stupid part is I’ll get left out of the story.” Waving his cigarette, dismissing the point, he looked back at toward the town. I don’t think he was looking quite at the town any longer. “C’est la vie.”

 

“They don’t write much history,” I said.

 

“Really? Hate. Whatever. Their loss.” Lacy watched the skirmish happen for a while longer. He watched with a blank face, speaking of it no longer, making no movements. Even so I found him in his stillness fascinating. It felt like watching frost gather on a morning in winter.

 

Without looking at me he said, “Want to get out of here?”

 

“Mm-hmm,” I said, not hesitating, not wondering why he invited me.

 

“All right. Let’s get out of here.”