Ravings E-Zine Special Feature: new flash fiction, a Jataka tale

Tom Bradley received his novelist's calling at the age of nineteen. He climbed into the moonlit mountains around his hometown, where he got an unambiguous life-informing vocation with physical symptoms and everything, just like Martin Luther in the electric storm, and he doesn't recall being on acid or anything at the time. He moved to China and points east in 1985, and has been hanging around the left rim of the Pacific ever since, in a successful search for sinecures that steal virtually no time and absolutely no mental energy from his writing. Reviews and excerpts of Tom's novels, links to his online publications (Salon.com. Exquisite Corpse, McSweeney's, etc.), plus a couple hours of recorded readings, are at tombradley.org.

Two crows are perched over the city gate, through which a learned Brahman is about to pass. The first crow says, "I'm going to shit on this guy's head."

And the second crow gasps, in horror, "But that's a learned Brahman! He's got all the sacred books memorized. He's got more power than the sun, right at his fingertips. The might of Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, is a gnat-fart compared to what this prick can do. With a single thought he can cause our whole black-feathered tribe to disappear forever!"

To which the first crow replies, "But I must."

Argument over. Barely giving his friend time to fly away and hide in a cave, the prankster takes aim and pinches off a big one.

While it's still in mid-air, we cut to a different scene across town (a cinematic effect in a tale at least three thousand years old).

A sluggish slave girl has been charged with guarding the municipal pile of cereal as it dries in the sun. She wants to doze off, but whenever she closes her eyes, a little goat sneaks up and steals mouthfuls. So she arms herself with a torch. The next time the goat shows its face, she whacks it and sets its shaggy coat on fire.

It scampers to the royal elephant stable and rolls around in the manger to douse the flames, which spread to the walls and burn the place down, nearly killing a hundred thoroughbred elephants.

The king runs into the streets, distraught, weeping, desperate for expert advice. He sees a learned Brahman, who seems to be scraping something off his head.

"Oh, learned Brahman," cries the king, "with infinite wisdom, with the scriptures committed to memory! What magical medicine can you recommend for my hundred elephants, each one of whom I love as my own child? I have manpower at my disposal. If need be, I will levy every able-bodied subject in my kingdom to scour the countryside for whatever ingredients you deem necessary. We must prepare a poultice, recondite and potent, that will soothe the vast, broiled hides of my beloved elephants. What do you prescribe?"

"Crow fat," mutters the Brahman. "Barrels and barrels of fresh crow fat."