Atlantis: Three Tales by Samuel R. Delany Page A

the glint of gold. For the moment—an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by—I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, “Can you see anything?” it was all I could do to get out the words, “Yes, wonderful things . . .”
    shoulders sagging beneath layered sweaters and two jackets the hands in knitted gloves with the fingers out the nails yellow passing through the light as they felt through cold air toward him talon-long on the floor the foot in its black shoe grated through scuffed light Sam tried to imagine that body holding together such an impoverished galaxy of details and lost all bodiliness until the voice fixed that darkly and shabbily invested corporeality “Come on back with me, and help me carry ’em” Sam wondered how old you had to be to have been in the Civil War anyway because Papa who was over sixty-five now had been a slave till he was seven years old in Georgia and that meant you had to be seventy-five eighty could this bent black man be that old on the second trip three boards was all Poonkin could carry at a time the light fell through the window high in the wall to light half a cardboard carton on the ground bottles standing beside it and as Sam took the boards from those wide withered hands webbed in gray knitting he glanced down to see what was in the box and resolved he would come back for a third load despite Mr. Harris and when he was back for three more boards they’d taken nine over so far he stood by the carton and said “Mr. Harris said you were in the Civil War” and Poonkin now he’d met him Sam could think of the man as Poonkin a title rather than a name Poonkin let cackled syllables fall like pebbles to hit the floor and skitter into the dark at no predictable rhythm “Yessir, I was in the war in ’Sippi. I weren’t but fifteen. But I had me a rifle and I hid in a’ ol’ barn behind some spruce trees, and anybody what come up to it I shot” and Sam laughed “Did you shoot rebels or Union men” the cackle failed was replaced by crackling words “I shotanybody who come up. Some of ’em was blue. Some of ’em was gray. But the ones who come up too near was the ones I shot. It weren’t like this last war. This last war, it look like about everybody got killed. But I’m still alive—and I believe pretty much most of the ones I shot is dead. But you more interested in that box than in the war, ain’t you, boy. What’s in there you want?” which was true because back in ’22 when the news had filled the papers of the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb Sam and John and Lewy had begun to find in the candy stores and the newsstands in downtown Raleigh the most amazing magazines with flat spines and colored covers and titles like
Adventure
and
Mystery Magazine
and
All Story Magazine
and they had bought them for a quarter each and had read “Khufu’s Real Tomb” by Talbot Mundy and Adam Hull Shirk’s “Osiris” (“Have you been reading about King Tut? If so, you’ll be interested in ‘Osiris’!”) and
Weird Tales
and
Popular Magazine
and John had found a copy of Sax Rohmer’s
Tales of Secret Egypt
and they had traded them and they had sat in the glider together out on the back porch reading or off alone on the benches beside St. Agnes which after it had been closed down as a hospital years before had been reopened as the first building on campus or crosslegged on the attic floor reading and reading and rereading of gray-eyed suntanned Englishmen and intrepid American reporters and rich well-spoken young women who rebelled against their fathers by helping the young man anyway evil Arabs and dangerous African tribes diamonds that had been in the family for generations and rubies fixed to the jade idol’s forehead since time first