Intergalactic Medicine Show - Issue 05.pdf

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Table of Contents
Issue 5
Stories
by Peter Beagle
by Eugie Foster
Art b y Ansel mo Alliegro
Art by Liz Clarke
by Margit Elland Schmitt
by Jason Sanford
Art by Walter Simon
Art b y Nick Greenwood
-- Orson Picks --
b y Ja mi e T o dd Rubi n
by William John Watkins
Art b y Jin Ha n
Art b y Kevi n Wasde n
by T amm y Brown
Art by Raffaele Marine tti
From the Ender Saga
Included in Ender in Exile and the DabelPro Comic
by Orson Scott Card
Art by Jin Han
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Tales for the Young and Unafraid by David Lubar
Toon Out
by David Lubar
Art by Lance Card
by David Lubar
Braces
Art by Lance Card
InterGalactic Medicine Show Interviews
by Edmund R. Schubert
Essays by Orson Scott Card
Who Is Snape?
by Orson Scott Card
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We Never Talk About My Brother
by
Peter S. Beagle
Theref ore, since the world ha s still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
-- A. E. Housman
Nobody does anymore, haven't for years -- well, that's why you're
here, ain't it, one of those "Where Are They Now" pieces of yours? -
- but it's funny, when you think about it. I mean, even after what
happened, and all this time, you'd think Willa and I -- Willa' s my
sister -- you'd think we'd say at least Word One about him now and
then. To each other, maybe not to anyone else. But we don't, not
ever, even now. Hell, my wife won't talk about Esau, and she'd have
more reason than most. Lucky you found me first -- she'd have run
you right on out of the house, and she could do it, too. Tell the truth,
shame the devil, the only reason I'm sitting here talking to you at all
is you having the mother wit to bring along that bottle of Blanton's
Sing le Barrel. Lord, I swear I can not remember the last time I had
any of that in the house.
Mind if you record me? No, no, you go ahead on, get your little tape
thing going, okay by me. Doesn't make a bit of difference. You're
like to think I'm pretty crazy before we're through, one way or
another, but that don't make any difference either.
Well, okay then. Let's get started.
Last of the great TV anchormen, my brother, just as big as newsmen
ever used to get. Not like today -- too many of them in the game,
too much competition, all sort of, I don't know, interchangeable.
More and more folks getting the news on their computers, those
little earphone gadgets, I don't know what-all. It's just different than
it was. Way different. Confess I kind of like it.
A rt work by A nselmo A lliegro
But back then, back then, Esau was just a little way south of a
movie star. Couldn't walk down the street, go out grocery-shopping,
he'd get jumped by a whole mob of his fans, his groupies. Couldn't turn on the TV and not see him on half a dozen channels,
broadcasting, or being interviewed, or being a special guest on some show or other. I mean everything from big political stuff to cooking
shows, for heaven's sake. My friend Buddy Andreason, we go fishing weekends, us and Kirby Rich, Buddy used to always tease me
about it. Point to those little gir ls on the news, screaming and running after Esau for autographs, and he'd say, "Man, you could get
yourself some of that so easy! Just tell them you're his brother, you'll introduce them -- man, they'd be all over you! All ov er you!"
No, it's not a nickname, that was real. Esau Robbins. Right out of the Bible, the Old Testament, the guy who sold his birthright to his
brother for a mess of pottage. Pottage is like soup or stew, something like that. Our Papa was a big Bible reader, and there was ... I don't
know, there was stuff that was funny to him that wasn't real funny to anyone else. Like naming me and Esau like he did.
A lot easier to live with Jacob than a funny name like Esau, I guess -- you know, when you're a kid. But I wasn't all that crazy about my
name either, tell you the truth, which is why I went with Jake first time anybody ever called me that in school, never looked back. I
mean, you think about it now. The Bible Esau's the hunter, the fisherman, the outdoor guy -- okay, maybe not the brightest fellow, not
the most mannerly, maybe he cusses too much and spits his tobacco where he shouldn't, but still. And Jacob's the sneaky one, you know?
Esau's come home beat and hungry and thirsty, and Jacob tricks him -- face it, J ac ob tricks him right out of his inheritance, his whole
future, and their mama helps him do it, and God thinks that's righteous, a righteous act. Makes you wonder about some things, don't it?
Did he have a bad time of it growing up, account of his name? 'Bout like you'd expect. I had to fight his battles time to time, if some big
fellow was bullyragging him, and my sister Willa did the same, because we were the older ones, and that's just what you do, right? But
we didn't see him, you know what I mean? Didn't have any idea who he was , exc ept a nuisanc e we had to take care of, watch after, keep
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out of traffic. He's seven years younger than Willa, five years younger than me. Doesn't sound like much now, but when you're a kid it' s
a lot. He might have been growing up in China, for all we knew about him.
I'm embarrassed to say it flat out, but there's not a lot I really recall about him as a kid, before the whole thing with Donn ie Sc hm idt . I
remember Esau loved tomatoes ripe off the vine -- got into trouble every summer, stealing them out of the neighbors' yards -- and he was
scared of squirrels, can you believe that? Squirrels, for God's sake. Said they chased him. Oh, and he used to hurt himself a lot, jumping
down from higher and higher places -- ladders, trees, sheds and all such. Practicing landing, that was the idea. Practicing landing.
But I surely remember the first time I ever really looked at Esau and thought, wow, what's going on here? Not at school -- in the old Pott
Street playground, it was. Donnie Schmidt -- mean kid with red hair and a squinty eye -- Donnie had Esau down on his back, and was
just beating him like a rug. Bloody nose, big purple shiner already coming up ... I came running all the way across the playground, Willa
too, and I got Donnie by the neck and hauled him r ight off my brother. Whopped him a couple of times too, I don't mind telling you. He
was a nasty one, Donnie Schmidt.
Esau had quit fighting, but he didn't bounce up right away, and I wouldn't have neither, the whupping he'd taken. He was just staring at
Donnie, and his eyes had gone really pale, both of them, and he pointed straight at Donnie -- looked funny, I'm bound to say, with him
still lying flat down in that red-clay mud -- and he kind of whispered, " You got run over." Hadn't been as close as I was, I'd never have
heard him.
"You got run over." Like that -- like it had already happened, you see? Exactly -- like he was reading the news. You got it.
Okay. Now. This is what's important. This is where you're going to start wondering whether you should have maybe sat just a little closer
to the door. See, what happened to Donnie, didn't happen then -- it had already happened a week before. Seriously. Donnie, he didn't
disappear, blink out of sight, right when Esau said those words. He just shrugged and walked away, and Willa took Esau home to clean
him up, and I got into a one-o-cat game -- what you probably call "horse" or "catcher-f lies -up" -- with a couple of my pals until
dinnertime. And Ma yelled some at Esau for getting into a fight, but nobody else thought anything more about it, then or ever. Nobody
exc ept me.
Because when I woke up next morning, everybody in town knew Donnie Schmidt had been dead for a week. Hell, we'd all been to the
funeral.
I didn't see it happen, but Willa did -- or that's what she thought, anyway. Donnie'd been walking to school, and old Mack Moffett's car
went out of control somehow, crossed three lanes in two, three seconds, and pinned him against the wall of a house. Poor kid never knew
what hit him, and neither did anyone who ever went over the car or gave poor Mack a sobriety test. The old man died a couple of months
later, by the way. Call it shock, call it a broken heart, if you like -- I don't know.
But the point is. The point is that Donnie Schmidt was alive as could be the day before, beating up on Esau on the playground. I
remembered that. But I'd also swear on a stack of Bibles that he'd been killed in an accident the week before, and Willa would swear on
the Day of Judgment that she was there. And we'd both pass any and every lie-detector test you want to put us through. Because
we know, we know we're telling the truth, so it's not a lie. Right?
It's just not true.
Told you. Told you you'd be looking at me like that about now ... no, don't say nothing, just listen, okay? There's more.
Now I got no idea if that was the first time he did it -- made something happen by saying it already had. No idea. Like I said before, it
was just the first time I ever really saw my brother.
Nor it didn't change a lot between us, him and Willa and me. Willa was all books and choir rehearsals, and I was all cars and trucks and
hunting with my Unc le Rick, and Esau pretty much got along on his own, same as he'd always done. He was just Esau, bony as a clothes
rack, all elb ow s and knees -- Papa used to say that he was so thin you could shave with him -- but if you looked closely, I guess you
could have seen how he might yet turn out goodlooking. Only we weren't looking closely, none of us were, not even me. Not even after
Donnie. One of anything is still just one of anything, even if it's strange. You can put it out of your mind. So across the dinner table was
about it for Willa and me. If we were home.
But while I wasn't really looking, I can't say I didn't pay a little more attention in the looking I did, if you know what I mean.
One time I do recall, when Esau was maybe twelve, maybe thirteen, in there somewhere. Must have been thirteen, because I was already
out of high school and working five days a week to help with the rent. Anyway I'm up on the roof of the house on a Saturday, replacing a
few shingles got blown off in the last windstorm. Hammering and humming, not thinking about much of anything, and suddenly I turn
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my head and there's Esau, a few feet away, squatting on his heels and watching me. Never heard him climbing up, no idea how long he's
been there, but I know I don't like that look -- sets me to thinking about the one he gave Donnie. What if he says to me, " You fell off the
roof," and it turns out I'm dead, and been dead some while? So I say "Hey, you want to hand me those nails over there?" friendly and
peaceable as you like. Probably the most I've said to him in a week, more.
So he hands me the nails, and I say thanks, and I go back to work. And Esau sits watching me a few minutes more, and then he asks,
right out of nowhere, "Jake, you believe in God?"
Like that. I didn't even look up, just grunted, "Guess I do."
"You think God's nice?"
His voi c e w as s till br eak ing, I r ec all -- went up and down lik e a seesaw, made me laugh. I said, "Min ister says so."
He wouldn't quit on it, wouldn't let up. "But do you think God's nice?"
I dropped a couple of shingles, and made him go down and bring them back up to the roof for me. When he'd done that, I said, "You look
around at this world, you think God's nice?"
He didn't answer for a while, just sat there watching me work. By and by he said, "If I was God, I'd be nice."
I set my eye on him then, and I don't know what made me do it, but I said, "You would, huh? Tell it to Donnie Schmidt."
I'd never said anything like that to him before. I'd never mentioned Donnie Schmidt since the funeral, because I knew in my mind -- like
Willa, lik e everyone else -- that Donnie was dead and buried a week before him and Esau had that fight. Anyway, Esau's eyes filled up,
which hardly ever happened, he wasn't ever a crier, and his face got all red, and he stood up, and for a minute I thought he ac tua lly w as
about to come at me. But he didn't -- he just screamed, with that funny breaking voice, "I would be a nice God! I would! "
And he was off and gone, I guess down the ladder, though maybe he jumped, the way he was doing then, because he was limping a bit at
dinnertime. Anyway, we never talked about God no more, nor about Donnie Schmidt neither, at least while Esau still liv ed here.
I never talked about any of this with Papa. He was pretty much taken up with his Bible and his notions and his work at the tannery,
before he passed. But Ma saw more than she let on. One time ... there was this one time she was still up when I come home from little
Sadie Morrison's place, she as later married that Canuc k fellow , Rene Arceneaux, and she said -- that's Ma, not Sadie -- she said to me,
"Jacob, Esau's bad."
I said, "Ma, goodness' sake, don't say that. There's nothing wrong with the kid except he's kind of a pain in the ass. Otherwise I got no
quarrel with him. " Which was true enough then, and maybe still is, depending how you measure.
Ma shook her head. I remember, she was sitting r ight where you are, by the fireplace -- this was their house, you know -- just rocking
and shelling peas -- and she said, "Jacob, I ain't nearly as silly as everybody always thinks I am. I know when somebody's bad. Esau, he
makes people into ghosts."
I looked at her. I said, "Ma. Ma, don't you never go round saying stuff like that, they'll put you away for sure. You're saying Esau kills
people, and he never killed nobody!" And I believed it, you see, absolutely, even though I also knew better.
And Ma ... Ma, whatever she knew, maybe she knew it because she was just as silly as folks thought she was. Hard to say about Ma. She
said, "That gir l last year, the one he was so gone on, who wanted to go off to New York to be an actress. You remember her?"
"Susie Harkin, " I said. "Sure I remember. Plane crashed, killed everybody on board. It was real sad."
Ma didn't say nothing for a long time. Rocked and shelled, rocked and shelled. I stood and watched her, snatching myself a pea now and
then, and thinking on how wearied she was getting to look. Then she said, almost mumbling- like, "I don't think so, Jacob.
I'm persuaded she got killed in that crash, but I don't think so."
That's exactly how she put it -- exactly. I didn't say anything myself, because what could I say -- Ma, you're right, I remember it both
ways too? I remember you telling me she gave him the mitten -- that's the way Ma talks; she meant the girl broke up with him -- and left,
and I remember Susie doing just fine up there in the city, she even sent me a letter ... but I also remember her and Esau talking about
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