Daniel Gipp eliminates some dross

I heard something like a moan coming from the hollow below.

I have yet to say where Gail Hanrahan was during this exchange.  She was in the hollow, standing between me and Gipp.  When the gunfire had first sounded from Gipp's ridge Gail had dashed down the town hall steps, broke her way through the crowd, and begun running towards the hill and its spinning searchlight.  She was an athletic young woman and it did not take long for her to cover the quarter-mile from town to where she now stood.  She must have arrived before the last of us had even gotten in our cars to come out here, but since there had been no more gunfire until I presented myself as a target, I could not guess what had stopped her from going right on up to Gipp’s doorstep.  I don’t know if when he shot at me Gipp deliberately fired over her head or if she was just lucky, but she stayed where she was during most of the exchange between Gipp and me, oblivious to the words and bullets that flew by above her.  She did not have her back either to us or to Gipp, she presented a profile to both hills as she stared straight in front of her, apparently at nothing.  When Mary called for her to come stand where it was safe, Gail sat down on the grass, her legs in front of her and her ankles crossed, with her palms in her lap, like a little girl, and continued to direct her attention to neither Gipp nor us.  When I made a move to fetch her, Gipp fired upon me and I heard leaves ripping in the birch tree above my left shoulder.

The moan that I’d heard was not coming from Gail.  The moan, definitely a moan, a man's voice in pain, was heard again.  The cusp of the moon had moved between two mountains, and the valley floor turned from black to blue and pale gray.  The spot to which Gail’s attention was magnetized was out of the glare of Gipp’s light.  I could discern the shapes of two men, one lying prone, the other one on his back, open-mouthed, the saliva on his teeth reflecting the moon’s spillage and causing his mouth to glow.  I hollered out to Gipp and asked him if he had shot somebody.

He admitted he’d shot two somebodies, and when I asked him if he knew who those somebodies were, he said, “Yes.  Interlopers.”

"Did you bother to find out their names before you shot them?" I asked.

Gipp said, “I didn’t need to ask.  I knew who they were.”

The moaning man coughed once, his breath rasped for a second longer, and then he was silent.  Gail coiled over on her side and hid her face in her hands.

"It's Ron," Mary said in a voice exhausted of all emotion.  “Oh, dear God, it’s Ron.”

There was no need to ask if the other dead man was Dutch Pulsifer.  I called to Gipp, "Gipp, you son of a bitch, why did you shoot your friends?"

“They were trying to force their way in,” Gipp said, “There’s not room enough for three people.   I made that clear when were building it.  I told them that they should have been working on shelters of their own.”

“But they counted on you, Gipp!”

“Dross.”

“Dross?”

“‘You have all become dross, therefore, behold I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem.  As men gather silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into a furnace, to blow the fire upon it in order to melt it; so I will gather you in my anger and in my wrath, and I will put you in and melt you  I will gather you and blow upon you with the fire of my wrath, and you shall be melted in the midst of it.’”

I used to like to think that Gipp had always held out the hope that his pessimism was mistaken.  He had seemed to look forward to the cataclysm as a good but hard man looks forward to seeing justice done even when justice causes him pain but as a basically good man he had hoped there’d really be no need for such a hard retribution.  So, I used to think, when he saw the body of civilization drop through the gallows trap, he was filled with remorse.  It was too great a punishment, and compassion for the hanged world broke his heart.  I thought at the time that with the breaking of his heart his mind had snapped, that he had hated himself for the predictions that had come true and his reason, in despair, had throttled itself.  I now think it was a case slightly different, that his despair was real and unbearable but he was denied the comfort of going mad; so he enlisted us to help him snuff out the sadness.  We obliged.  I do not believe we had any choice.

---from The Survival of Daniel Gipp, a story by Lance Mannion.  Please consider joining the Lance Mannion Tall Tale of the Month Club.  Details below.

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[michael benton]

I would like to extend an invitation to you to join in on a collective blogging section of our upcoming winter issue of Reconstruction. The issue is the “Theories/Practices of Blogging.” In addition to the special section of posts on blogging there will be about a dozen essays on blogging.

The deadline is October 20th.

Our intent in this section of the issue will be to collect a wide range of bloggers and link up to their statements in regards to why they blog (something many of us are asked) and any statement they have on the theories/practices of blogging.

If you already have a post on this you can feel free to use it, or, if you are interested, you can submit a new one.

We will link to each statement from the issue at our site, with the intent of creating a hyperlinked list of statements on blogging that can serve as an introduction to blogging (or an expansion of knowledge for those already blogging).

If you are interested please contact me at mdbento @ gmail.com