Medicine Woman

An excerpt

‘Spring cleaning’ is a phrase you are going to be hearing a lot around here over the next few weeks. This is a time of change for the STSC, a time of streamlining, of reassessment, of discarding what no longer serves us to make room for brighter and better things.

The schedule here will change, the community will be improved (this is already under way), higher standards will be set with quality taking precedent over quantity.

But what will not change is the over-arching purpose of this whole project which is to create a platform for writers and artists who are too bust actually creating to bother with constant promotion, audience building and other such online games.

This has always been the mission, ever since I first began to attract a following around me.

So with that being said today’s post- perhaps the last of the ‘old’ posts- is a pure piece of promotion. You see our man

Frank Kidd

- the Pulp Vitalist himself- has written a novel. And so the one and only aim of today’s post (and this intro) is to convince you to buy it and read it immediately.

It’s not for everyone but it may well be for you.

If you have ever looked at a lurid Mass Market Paperback and sighed as you muttered ‘They don’t make ‘em like they used to.’ then it’s for you.

If you’re a fan of a real page-turning, thrilling historical yarn, then it’s for you.

And if you simply enjoy good writing, then it’s for you.

Enjoy.

TJB.

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Blurb:

Levi Thurston: mountain man, wanderer, Indian fighter. He haunts the wide open places of a newly opened West. His only companions… a reluctant coydog and a Hawken rifle.

When he is ambushed by Ute warriors, Levi takes shelter in a sacred burial ground. Convinced he has caught a curse, he must seek out a Blackfoot Medicine Woman, the young and beautiful Apaniaki, daughter of Chief Black Crow to help lift it. But what starts out as a simple-enough quest devolves into a fight for his life and an unexpected love as Levi finds himself caught in the middle of warring tribes.

Excerpt:

The cords stretched tight, lighting each of his limbs in a searing pain matched only by the corresponding stiffness in his joints. His wrists had started to bleed, and he had long since lost feeling in his fingers. His thumbs looked blue and black, both from loss of blood flow but also bruising.

Levi’s tongue had swollen from thirst, and his lips had begun to crack, and his mouth tasted copper, and the newly hatched spring sun grew in power.

As it was spring, it took a long time for the sun to have its way with him, which was perhaps worse than being staked out in the middle of a dreadful summer. For this was death by slow and soothing warmth. Death from the inside out, as his body slowly dehydrated.

To die in the middle of winter was in some ways the original lot cast for every man. The fated end every human baby had planned for them, unless they changed their lot through virtue or warfare. To die in summer, a bloody death, while soaked in sweat and hate, was a death saved only for the most diligent fighters. To die in the autumn, seemed to mark a life well lived, a fitting and noble end—a sign that God was merciful and kind. But a death like this, staked helplessly under a maternal sun, with daffodils blooming among soft new shoots of green grass, and the birds singing happy songs, seemed a death that had been colluded to. A death that fates and enemies had planned.

Already several black vultures circled high above, riding the warm winds and counting away the hours. Levi had never been a hopeless man. He had at times been guilty of a sour disposition, and perhaps even a dour outlook on the comings and goings of man, but he had never forgotten the power of a proud look, an even disposition, and the dignity of bright shiny eyes. But now, with his woman and his child stolen from him, and left to rot from within, he despaired.

He could not help but reason that he had misstepped. Forces above his knowing had gathered to instruct him in some lesson that he did not grasp. The dark star of his birth, feeling spurned, had no doubt taken to righting the order of things. He blamed himself for the situation, for listening to Apaniaki, for believing that that her people would treat them honorably. But perhaps his error began earlier than that, perhaps it began with giving any credence whatsoever to the superstitious ramblings of an Old Indian.

Or maybe it was all quite bullshit. All of it, he reasoned. The thought gave him some small comfort; some consolation in a fight well fought. Maybe things just happened. Bodies were set on a path of collision and driven only by survival and the chance for breeding. Was this not the thing called love? Was not the whole of Man’s body dedicated to such a purpose? Was this not truth, and the whole of it, the essence of existence. Man’s whole design, from his hip to shoulder, meant for the defense of his bitch and his territory, like some wild dog that roamed the black wood, destined to die in a test of hierarchy; its only legacy the bright white jagged mouths of the pups it had whelped.

Levi tested the cords once more, but the only thing that gave was the flesh on his wrists.

The sun hung high in the sky, and by late afternoon the first whisps of clouds began to blow past. He lay there watching the cotton clouds chase the vultures away. They gave up their post when the thermals disappeared, no doubt settling somewhere close by. He prayed that the clouds would bring with them a spring rain. Perhaps enough to soak the rawhide cords and turn the earth to mud beneath the stakes that held him.

And indeed, rain came just before sunset. A quick shower that soaked him to the bone. The rawhide bands, newly wet, gave his hands a small bit of relief. Catching rain in his open mouth helped soothe his swollen tongue. But as the sun disappeared behind its black horizon, the temperature dropped significantly. He lay shivering in the black of night, the stars overhead being little comfort for the sounds around him. Some way off he heard a wolf howl, a sound that made his blood run cold, bound defenseless as he was. Every scratch and titter turned field mice into specter.

There was a point in the night where he had grown so cold, and sore, and his bones ached so thoroughly that he began to sing. He did not remember any hymns, nor songs from his childhood really, and could only manage to call up a single river shanty from his time aboard the keelboat. He sang loud and deep, from the very bottom of his chest so that the vibration of it all both soothed his mind and warmed his core…

Or read the first chapter for free at Pulp West.

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