Doogie had never been strong, but he was strong now. He hauled Hemmo from the water and began pumping his chest.
“Come on, Hemmo. Come on, man,” he said as he pumped. The sky was lightening which meant that they’d been under for hours. There was little to no chance that his friend could be alive. He was about to give up, when the Finn gagged, then lurched to his side, expelling water and bile onto the rocky shore. He fell to his side, gasping.
Hemmo lay there, chest heaving, his face white, eyes wide. “What . . . what was that?” he stuttered. His eyes were red as tears found their way free. “I died, Doogie. I died.”
“You were Dixie Fried, Hemm.”
“I was,” he said, coughing. “I was fucking Dixie Fried.”
Doogie placed his right hand on Hemmo’s head. “But now you’re back.”
Hemmo locked eyes with Doogie, his eyes pleading. “Was it all real?”
“It was all real, Hemm. It was real and we were saved for a purpose.”
“Doogs. What’s going on? You’re talking funny.”
Doogie shook his head. “I can’t explain it. I’m now tied into things. I can feel the pulse and throb of the river. I can hear movement in the deep. And what about you, Hemm? What do you hear?”
Hemmo levered himself to a sitting position. He seemed about to say something, then closed his mouth and cocked his head. “I can hear . . . what is it I hear . . . ” Then his eyes brightened. “I can hear the trees.” His head twisted to the right. “And the birds. I can understand them. Doogie. I can understand the birds. Oh my God, what is going on?” he lurched to his feet. “They’re crazy, Doogie. The birds are fucking crazy.”
“Never listen to the birds.” Doogie stood as well, smiling. “You have responsibility of the land, without it, the Columbia would have nothing to feed it. My responsibility is to the river, without which, the land would die. We’re together in this, Hemmo. You and me.”
Hemmo nodded. “I feel it too. I haven’t felt so part of something since . . . since . . . ”
“We were fighting in Korea.”
“Yes!” Hemmo said pounding a fist into his hand. “Then we belonged to the army. We were saving the Korean people.”
“Now we’re part of a different army, Hemm.” Doogie turned to move. “We have a mission—mermaids to save. Won’t last until morning.” He considered the graying sky. “We haven’t much time.”
When they reached the canal, they halted. They’d been in the water a long time. Long enough for the tide to shift. Where before it had been all but dry, it was now filled with water the height of a man’s shoulders.
“Hemmo, you stay on the land. I’ll take this way.”
Doogie dove in and inhaled water until his lungs were once again filled. He swam with a grace he’d never had. Around him swam several mermaids and an immense octopus—the same one which had held fast to Hemmo until he died. As it passed, it touched him, and he felt the creature’s sadness at having done what it had. When they reached the grate, the octopus wrapped its tentacles around it and strained, but it was pulling the wrong way. Doogie touched it and sent the image of the grate opening into the room. The octopus immediately understood and began to push, as did the mermaids.
Reaching behind him, Doogie pulled out his K-Bar and began to work at the mortar the grate was set in. He began at the top, his head just barely out of the water. He’d been chipping away for several minutes, when he heard a scream from inside and saw a body plummet down the stairs. Hemmo bound down them and over the body, rushing to the grate. He had an old set of keys in his hand on a metal loop. He tried one, then the next. The third key fit the lock. He opened it, then turned and threw both the lock and the key at the Finn who was coming up behind him. The Finn tried to block it and got a boot in the jimmy for his effort.
Doogie pressed inside.
The octopus and the mermaids followed.
At this early hour, the place was empty.
The others led the healthy mermaid out and down the canal.
The sick one floated face down in her pool, unmoving, the skin more green than blue.
Doogie stared for a moment, wondering what it was he could do. Then it came to him. He dove into the water, grabbed her by the arms, and wrestled the body to the bottom of the pool. He knelt beside her, and began to pump her chest, his hands placed just above her breasts. Underwater himself, he breathed water into her lungs then continued pumping. It wasn’t long for her eyes to flutter, then open, revealing sickly yellow orbs. She’d needed some of the Columbia. In here, with the vestigial tide, it just wasn’t enough. She needed the river. She needed to get home.
He took her into his arms and climbed out of the pool.
Hemmo had worked through two Finns but a third, this one even larger than he was, body slammed him against the far wall.
“You—Jap—put my property down,” bellowed Garn.
Hemmo climbed unsteadily to his feet. “Go on,” he said, waving a hand like it wasn’t hardly anything. “I got this.”
Doogie raised an eyebrow, then turned, and ran toward the canal. With the mermaid in tow, he swam exactly twenty feet before he came up against a metal wall someone had slid in place. He felt for a seam, someplace he could put his fingers to lift or push it out of the way. He took precious minutes trying to find a way past, or under, wondering at any second if he might be seen. But try as he might, he couldn’t discern a way through.
So, with the mermaid in his arms, he stood and felt hands immediately grab him and jerk him free of the water. Then he was airborne. Still holding the mermaid, he flew through the air. He managed to turn so that he landed on his back to avoid crushing the smaller delicate creature. The water he’d been breathing spewed from his mouth. He gasped at the air. He pushed the mermaid off of him and tried to catch his breath.
He saw the boot coming. He could roll away, but instead, he rolled into it, caught the boot in between his ribs and his arms, then rolled to his right.
The Finn fell like lumber.
It was Peter, and his mouth was twisted fury.
Doogie couldn’t let him stand, so as the Finn pulled himself to his knees, Doogie kicked him in the face.
Peter fell back, dazed.
They did this twice, before Peter managed to grab Doogie’s leg. He pulled his smaller opponent close and Peter got two fingers in his eye for his effort. He let go of Doogie, who rolled away, scooped the mermaid into his arms, turned, and ran for all he was worth.
The sound of heavy feet slapping the ground behind him came closer and closer. He was out of breath, but he’d been chased before down Old Baldy and Heartbreak Ridge, so he’d become used to running for his life. But that was Korea, not the ass end of Oregon in the old fishing town of Astoria. And he’d been carrying a carbine back then instead of the slippery yet voluptuous body of a mermaid, her lips pressed against his neck sending thoughts that would make an eighty-year-old keel over for the sheer preposterousness of the position. Even now, with the Columbia River within reach, his cock was hard and his body twisted with the need to react to the mermaid’s sexual advances, his mind acting out the fantasy until he was left gasping and out of breath and barely running. The only distraction was an odd track from the new Carl Perkins’ song, “Dixie Fried,” slashing through his head: Rave on, children, I’m with you, rave on, cats, he cried. It’s almost dawn and the cops ain’t gone, and I’ve been Dixie fried.
A shout from Peter who was chasing him gave him new energy as he surged forward. The Columbia was less than fifty yards away. Hemmo was already halfway there and waiting with a length of two-by-four in each hand. All Doogie had to do was reach the river and they’d all be free.
He could barely speak, but he had to ask Hemmo. “How?” he hollered as he ran past, exhausted shorthand for how did he get past Garn. All those minutes he wasted in the canal looking for a way out let Hemmo get ahead of him. Small blessings in strange places.
“He was in the way of me helping my family,�
�� Hemmo said, with more than a hint of pleasure.
And that was all he had to say. Hemmo didn’t identify as a Finn any longer. He was now a true denizen of the Columbia, just as Doogie was. They’d not only found a home, they’d found a reason to be there. Now, while the other cats back from the war were slouching toward ignobility and possibly prison, Hemmo and Doogie had a mission. They’d become Sea Lords of the Columbia and he could feel every part of it like it was his own body.
“What?” Doogie managed to yell, more shorthand for what happened to him.
Hemmo laughed, then shouted, “He got Dixie Fried!”
Then came the sound of two pieces of wood meeting something meaty, a cry of pain, and a body hitting the ground.
Doogie liked that. And he smiled as he dove into the water, mermaid in his arms, hard-on beneath his pants, lungs filling with the joyous water of the Columbia.
* * *
WESTON OCHSE is the author of more than twenty books. His work has appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including The Tampa Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Soldier of Fortune, IDW, and DC Comics. His work has also been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award five times and he’s been honored to have won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel. He’s recently worked on several franchises, including Aliens, Predator, Hellboy, Clive Barker’s Midian, V-Wars, Joe Ledger, and X-Files. He splits his time between Arizona and Oregon and absolutely loves the outdoors. When he’s not writing, you can find him hiking, running, fly fishing, or just fusting about.
* * *
TREMBLE
by Kasey Lansdale and Joe R. Lansdale
. . . there was something in her voice, something different from any voice I’d ever heard.
* * *
THEY’VE COME TO SEE ME FOR YEARS, THE real rockabilly fans, most of them not even born when the whole thing was going on, and I’ve always told them the same old story, about how it ended for Belinda Cane. I mean they interview me for being me, Ronald Wilson, the man who played with the Hurricane Hunters, but it’s really Belinda they want to know about.
There was one piece of the story I’ve always left out. It’s a big piece, though, and the truth is, probably not very believable, though over the years there have been folks who have been suspicious. Had I not been there, and you were telling me what I’m about to tell you, I doubt I would accept it as true either.
You can believe me or not. I leave that decision to you. Now that I’m near the end of my life, I guess it’s time I set the record straight and explain what really happened in that auditorium in East Texas so many years ago, all the death and violence.
Another thing people always ask is why I don’t go out much, and why my house is soundproofed, and I always say I like it quiet and private, and that’s true, but there’s more to it than that, and it all ties in with Belinda and that day all those years back.
It’s phobic, and I know it’s unnecessary, but I feel peaceful here, and the idea of going into an old folks’ home without my soundproofing disturbs me, and the way things are going with my hip, that just might be where I’ll end up. My nephew has been eyeing me a room at the facility out west of town. The idea of me going there has even come up in conversation.
But for now, I can get around, and I feel pretty good, and the memory of what happened seems stronger today than it did ten years ago, while other memories have gone the way of the passenger pigeon. Still, memories fade as you age, so I’m recording it all here for you.
Back then the music was new, and no one had ever heard anything like it. Think about that for a moment. You get up one morning and you turn the radio on, and there’s this sound coming out of it that has never been heard before, at least not by the general populace. It’s not Frank Sinatra or Perry Como, or folk, and it’s not exactly blues, it’s passion wrapped up in greasy vocals and a hard pounding beat, all of it painted over with adolescent rebellion and too much time on our hands.
And there was this one hip-cat, Elvis Presley, and he’s singing in a way that makes you tremble, makes your foot pat, and he doesn’t look like anyone you’ve ever seen before. A god-like young man singing black folk music, bending it, shaping it in a new way, sending out shockwaves that literally changed the world. There were other greats, black artists, but it was Elvis, due to his talent, and due to the restrictions of the time that got him front stage and center, and frankly, no one else has ever quite commanded the stage the way he did.
I was seventeen then, and I could play guitar, though what I’d learned was more along the line of Bill Monroe and Roy Acuff, and in fact Elvis took Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” twisted it around, pulled it inside out, and made it sound like no one could have imagined just a day before. Made us all wonder, hell, can you do that? Yep. He just did, and when he did, it was like a hole opened up in the creative universe and a lot of us wanted to squirm through, see what was on the other side.
I immediately started trying to play that hip-cat stuff, leaning on the chord of E like it was holding me up.
***
I REMEMBER WHEN I first paid true attention to her. She had been there all along, hidden behind a bland misfit mask, but now she was taking on a different look, and that’s why I noticed her. I had a different look too, and it was the music that changed us, that brought us together like a magnet to steel.
I had on my blue jeans with the big cuffs, deep enough you could have kept your lunch money in them, had on a tee-shirt with the short sleeves rolled up to show what biceps I had. In that area, I needed a little work, but listening to the radio, to that hard-driving music, had turned me bold, made me want to look like my heroes. I had my hair slicked back with enough oil to lube a bone-dry Buick transmission, duck tail lifted up in the back, not to mention some wispy sideburns.
There Belinda was, coming down the hallway in her dark teal, half-sleeve swing dress with white fringe at the bottom and on the collar, her flame-red hair, mounded up and flared out wide, the collar fringe swishing across her sun-kissed collar bones, as she walked in men’s lace-up shoes. Instead of a purse, she had a guitar, an old, worn Martin D-45 with a leather strap.
She noticed me staring as she walked by.
“Higher the hair, closer to God,” she said. It sounded sassy, but there was something planned about it too, like she might have rehearsed it the night before in the mirror, wearing what she wore today, holding her guitar in her hand.
She floated on, left me standing there, mouth open. As I said, I’d seen her before, but then she’d been in the same kind of dresses and pinned-up hairstyles as the other girls, but now she was different, like a captured mustang set free. I don’t think I’d even heard her speak before this moment, and it was a throaty sound, wild and raw, like an animal she only let out of the cage from time to time. It wasn’t her beauty that caught my attention, though she was pretty. It was the way she moved, like she had the music already inside of her, and it was boiling and steaming, just ready to burst out.
She passed a crowd of students, the popular boys and girls, and one of them, Chris, he called out, “Hey, Belinda, I thought witches flew on brooms, not guitars.”
“Do the world a favor, Chris,” Belinda called out as she swung on down the hall, “go kill yourself.”
Belinda didn’t miss a beat. She neither slowed nor stuttered, and I watched Chris and the group of boys ribbing one another as she disappeared into a classroom. But you know, I got the feeling there was something about all that female sexuality that scared them. It’s why we kill a beautiful, poisonous snake even if it’s not bothering us. It seems too pretty and deadly to let live.
Well, I started noticing her quite a lot after that, and maybe I had a thing for her because I felt like I’d found a kindred spirit. I would see her at lunch break, out back of the school where some of the kids stole a cigarette break, or some of the girls and boys stole a kiss or two, where a few bullies beat up young kids and took their lunch money as part of what was an almost acceptable ritual. Belinda would
lean against the wall, clutching her guitar like it was a child, looking out at the others, enduring their now-and-again snide comments, lashing out with a word or two, but mostly just leaning silently, watching the way a hawk would watch prey.
One day I came up and stood by her as if we did it every day. We were silent for a while. We looked out at the other kids, laughing and grinning, their hair cut short, their clothes looking as if they had just been pressed, and she said, “They look like their mothers hang them in the closet at night, then take them down in the mornings and set them free.”
“That don’t seem all that free to me,” I said.
Belinda laughed a little. “No,” she said, “they don’t.”
“You carry that guitar, but I’ve never heard you play it.”
“Not that good at it. I use it to write songs. Sometimes, out here, I sit and write in my head, picking out a tune, but mostly I just imagine I’m playing and writing.”
“I’ve started to write a little,” I said. “Maybe we could do it together. I actually can play.”
“I can sing a little.”
It was in that moment that I realized Belinda wasn’t nearly as bold as she’d let on. We were delicate, retiring souls, all suited up in rebellion clothes.
***
WE STARTED MEETING UP regularly during lunch out behind the school, and even sometimes after school, and we’d talk music, and in the end, she would give me a ride home.
We didn’t write so much as we just talked. Talked about all kinds of things. Our families, or lack thereof, the way things were changing, the way things weren’t. Then one winter afternoon after school, as I waited to meet up with her, she didn’t show. It was cold as a dead woman’s tit in a brass bra, the sun swallowed by clouds, the air so sharp it felt as if you were swallowing razor blades. I waited and waited, rocked back and forth to get warm, waited beyond reason, but she didn’t show. I had seen her at lunch, and then everything seemed fine, so I got worried.
Pop the Clutch Page 5
