CS IV - Thunder and Roses by Theodore Sturgeon

Author:Theodore Sturgeon [Sturgeon, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781583947487
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2013-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

Well Spiced

TAMARISK JUST HAPPENED. Some forgotten Conestoga cap’n had chosen the Tamarisk hollow as a route down the valley, rather than the exactly similar hollow on the other side of the rise. The town’s first building appeared when one Pericles Zapappas sold the oxen which hauled his chuck wagon. The old wagon, hub-deep in the sandy soil, was the nucleus. Because it was there, it was logical to set up a general supplies shack near it, and because of the shack and its increasing stock, settlers took to the nearby lush foothills, knowing they had a trading place. With the settlers came the helpers and the hangers-on, the blacksmiths and the gamblers, the assay office and the livery stable and the hotel.

Pericles Zapappas stuck with Tamarisk. He hadn’t planned to; he hadn’t planned not to. It was just that there were so many people to feed—and he liked feeding people. He liked to see the tin plates, and later, the thick china ones, mopped clean with great chunks of sourdough bread, or the muscular black loaves he baked himself. The old wagon soon sported a canvas awning which became a mess tent which gradually acquired wooden walls and a tin roof, and as the busy years and the busy wagon trains passed, there was a new building with a real kitchen, rows of iron skillets, three glass sugar bowls, and a spittoon.

Pericles was the only fixture that showed no change. He was a grizzled, tubby little man, with a complexion the color of a frankfurter and a skin like a silk pillow slip that has been slept on for three hot nights. His eyes were round, clear, and blue, giving the impression of red-hot portholes into an ice box. He smiled often, never laughed, and was always a little frightened—afraid that the meat wouldn’t arrive, that the coffee would boil, that a customer wasn’t getting enough to eat. He absorbed insults and compliments with the same gentle smile and the same shuffling backward retreat, as from royalty.

Tamarisk was good to live in, as such places go, when the wind was from the hills. But when it came panting up from the desert with fire and salt on its breath, the town shimmered and crackled and dried in it. It was on such a day that Fellows stamped into Pericles’s place, and the youth’s language was not one whit less blistering than the desert wind. His profanity swirled in, all but sweeping Pericles off his precarious perch on a serving table, where he was hanging mesh bags of garlic, strings of melon rind, and chains of herbs and barks to dry; for Pericles was a great hand in the spice department.

“Feed me!” roared Fellows. “By God, likker won’t do fer this. Gimme some o’ that slumgullion of yours, the kind that wallops you hot an’ then smooths you off easy.”

Pericles climbed down and framed the kid in his round blue stare. “Hey boy. Whatsa do—burn down you stable?”

“It’s thet money-jinglin’ Eastern toad, Barstow,” spat the youngster.

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