Wetbones

by John Shirley

  Her gaze came to rest on the crack in the wall. She hurried to it and squatted on the floor, thumped on the wall with the flat of her hand. Sometimes he didn't answer.

  This time he answered. "Eury?" Mitch's voice. Sounding far away and unattached, like a voice heard from a TV in the next apartment.

  She flattened herself against the wall, her ear pressed to the crack, head tilted down so she could talk into it. "Did you hear those gunshots? Do you think it's anything…?"

  "I've seen them play with guns before."

  She choked on a sob. She wasn't going to be rescued. Why should she be? It was always the same. She knew that from when she'd worked out that her mama saw her as a way to get G.A. and extra foodstamps and then money from white assholes. She was just a lump of flesh that moved around and waited to be used for something. She always had been. Why should anybody come to get her out of here?

  But something in her hissed like an angry cat, made her keep looking for a way out; made her ask, "You talk to that Handy Man like you said, Mitch?"

  "Yeah. Yeah. I asked him. Told him I didn't want to be -" He sniggered idiotically. "- to be, like, a hodad around here. He said maybe I'd be like the More Man someday, and maybe not, and it was something you have or you don't have… and we'd know when the time came and… I think he was just playing with me… He doesn't seem like he's even really here… Like in his head he's always someplace else… He started talking German to me, once, but dude must know I can't speak German…"

  "Mitch… You ask him about me?"

  "He wouldn't say anything. But they're going to use us soon. I know it. There's a rhythm here…"

  "They give you Reward?"

  "Head Syrup? Not for a long time now. They're saving us…"

  There was another way out, she thought. "Mitch – if they busy, it might be somebody could kill theyself, you think, before they git on it?"

  "Maybe. I wish we could kill each other. Wouldn't that be good?"

  "What?"

  He went on with a hoarse excitement, "We could strangle each other and try to do it so that we each killed the other at exactly the same second. It'd be tricky, because one would tend to fall over before the other but

  – well, maybe something sharp would be better… I've got some broken glass…"

  "Mitch, what the fuck you talking about? You trying to get into they heads? Is that why you saying this?"

  "We could break through the walls so we could get to each other and then we could -"

  " Mitch, shut up! Just fucking shut up! "

  He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I'll wait over here on my bed till you feel better."

  She heard him move; and the creak of the bedsprings. Then she heard a plaintive keening from the room below. She thought she could feel the cry vibrate in the boards under her hands.

  Watts, Los Angeles

  It was somebody's apartment, he had no idea whose. He was being herded about by Gretchen, just now, and she'd herded him here, and he was so stoned he hardly noticed anything about it, except that it was almost as bare as Hardwick's. And it was a little bigger and the stove was still there.

  There were also four children in it. Garner noticed them only abstractedly at first. Four black kids, one of them about three years old, sleeping – or trying to – on the bare floor mattress, as Garner and Gretchen and the kids' father, if that's who he was, took hits off the pipe in the kitchen area of the apartment. Little details slipped through to Garner from time to time, when he wasn't hitting the pipe: the floor sagged; the walls were yellow; the light from the kitchen glared onto the dull faces of the black children sharing a single blanket.

  Garner had used his Visa card, the only credit card he had, to get cash, and they were going through that now. He was almost out of money again. How long had he been on this run? How long had he been chasing the high? It was late at night. He could hardly feel his arms and legs. He had made a few tentative tries at getting Gretchen alone, ended up looking like a jackass as he tried to fuck her standing in a bathroom; couldn't even get it up. Hadn't tried to argue with her when she said they didn't have time for this, they had to get some more crack.

  And now, once more, the stuff wasn't working. It was just making him antsy for the next hit. He was almost assed out: busted, wasted, unable to buy more. How much money did he have left? Twenty bucks maybe? Maybe if he could get away from these two parasite – this babbling, yellow-eyed, middle-aged man who sometimes sputtered into a non sequitur of cursing like a victim of Tourette's Syndrome, and sallow, shrivelling Gretchen with her darting fingers. He hadn't been able to go ten feet without them following him. That motherfucker Hardwick had his van… was either stripping it or ferrying people around for money and selling everything in it piece by piece…

  The last of the high seeped away from him, leaving him only tweaky rigidity in his nerves, lust for the pipe no matter how empty its reward, and the aching pit of depression that made him feel cold and hollow as a brass statue.

  Why wasn't he dead yet? Constance was dead…

  "You hear dat?" the guy said. What was his name? Charlie? "That de rollers?"

  Gretchen shook her head. "They no cops here. You tweakin."

  Charlie forgot about it, hunched down to pick at flecks of ceiling plaster that had fallen into the cracks between the floorboards. Tweaking them up between thumb and forefinger. Tasting them. Spitting them out. Garner had to fight the urge to do the same.

  Thing to do was find a dealer, Garner thought; find a dealer maybe on his way to the set, smash his head with a bottle or something, take his dope and take his gun. That way he'd either get killed or he'd get some cash. Get some dope. Another hit. And then another hit.

  He felt like he was dying the way Constance had died. He was being slowly crushed and cut up, too. By dope and the projects.

  Maybe it was working out.

  "We assed out," Gretchen said, scraping the last of the resin from the pipe with a coat hanger wire.

  It struck Garner again how easily he'd slipped back into the street mix. Years of being away, being clean, teaching others to stay clean. But who could blame him, after what had happened to Constance?

  Oh yes. The addict in Garner had seen its opportunity. And Garner was back out on the street and all the years working in the ministry might not have existed at all. He knew with a calloused certainty now that he had become a drug counsellor to keep himself clean; he had preached at himself by preaching at other people. Now he had come full circle, dumped from the butt-end of the night. A familiar feeling: being a human ashtray; burnt out and choked. Soon, inexorably, he'd be broke. Shot to the curb. This was the way it always happened, of course, for everyone. He could think: I knew it would end this way. It always does. Sure he'd known, and he could say he'd come in with his eyes open…

  But it just didn't help much.

  The crack was gone – except, doubtless, for the little bumps of rock that both Gretchen and Charlie had craftily pocketed at some point. No use trying to pry that out of them. There was simply no more crack. There was just the pipe and the room and the two parasites calling themselves Gretchen and Charlie and the four children on the floor.

  He saw them now. The kids. He seemed to feel the sight of them lying there in the same room with strangers smoking crack in the middle of the night. None of them asleep but knowing from experience it was best to fake sleep or the crazy motherfucker Charlie with his spluttering curses would kick the shit out of them…

  It smacked into Gamer then like a baseball bat: The realization. He was doing this to the kids. He, Reverend Garner. He was contributing. He had paid for the cloud of secondary crack smoke that descended now over that three year old.

  "I wonder can you get you C.A. check now?" Charlie was saying. He was talking to Gretchen. "I mean in the fuckin mo'ning, can you get one, if you show you pregnant."

  Garner looked at her. She didn't look…

  He looked at her harder. She was pregnant. The 2nd trime
ster, maybe. Of course he'd known it. She was emaciated but… in the bathroom when she'd tugged those pants down…

  She was pregnant. He was giving crack to the baby in her womb. He. Garner. Was helping funnel crack to the baby in Gretchen's womb; was merchandizing the misery of the kids on the mattress.

  Gretchen was watching him. Saw the panic on his face.

  "Let's go get a hit," she said, trying to head him off. "I'm fi'in to find this girl you going to like, she do somethin' for you fo' a ten rock -"

  But he lumbered for the door. Pausing long enough to babble, "I'm sorry – I'm – I'm sorry – " at the children. Before fumbling the lock open, bolting out into the hall.

  Gretchen and Charlie came trotting up behind him as he plunged down the stairwell. Into darkness.

  Oh shit. He was in a dark stairway in the Projects. A fucking maze the cops wouldn't come into unless they were forced to.

  Feet and heart clattering, he descended into the stink of urine; of rotten chicken from a garbage bag someone had left on the stairs. He nearly lost his footing, stumbling over the bag, but found the cold iron of the railing as he fell, caught himself. A light came wobbling behind: Gretchen and Charlie – who was muttering "Motherfucking motherfucker tryin gaff me off, owes me some shit I done let him use my place, I fittin to kick his mo'fuckin ass," – coming down after him, using a Bic to light the way.

  Then Garner found a doorway, was out in the open air. But in the midst of the Projects. He stood there gasping, pulse hammering in his ears, thinking he might have a heart attack. Trying to look for the street, but the concrete walls seem to melt into dead ends of graffiti and trash, wherever he looked.

  Four men were standing together ten feet away, staring at him. They were all wearing baseball caps turned backwards on their heads and identical gold coloured suit jackets and fake gold chains and red laces in their sneakers. Project gangsters. "Who he wid?" one of them said.

  "He ain't wid shit."

  They started moving toward him.

  Gretchen stepped out of the door behind him, and Charlie. "He wid me."

  ''Bullshit. He ain nobody. Fuck him."

  One of them moved around behind Garner, as he was trying to decide which way to run, and grabbed his hair. That was first. Garner shouted in pain, and yelled, "Gretchen!" The gangster dragged him by the hair back into the stairway. Garner struggled, but it only made the pain worse.

  The others had vise-grips on his arms, were all dragging him along now, though Gretchen was yelling in the background somewhere. Something about how he was hers, she'd found him, they had to give her some of this…

  In the ephemeral flare of a Bic he glimpsed the place they dragged him to. It was a basement of the Projects. A furnace room, strewn with trash. Something moved sinuously in one corner. All thoughts of self destruction vanished in the prospect opening before him: He wanted to get away before they did what this room and this time and these people promised they could do.

  It would go on and on…

  He screamed and tried to wrench free but someone smashed an elbow into his nose; he felt it pop like a smashed grape. Someone kicked his feet out from under him. He could hear Gretchen yelling something; felt hands pawing his wallet from his pocket. Other. hands skinning off his pants. A low pitched grinding as someone kicked him in the ribs; a squealing sound as someone kicked him in the head. The flicker of a lighter.

  "What he got? He got rock? Lemme see that fuckin' wallet, bitch. He got -"

  "He think he goin somewhere." They started again. Starbursts, flashes of light that were the kicks to his head. Tasting the floor through blood and smelling hot piss splashing around him and hearing Gretchen laugh…

  And it did: He'd been right. It went on and on.

  10

  Near Malibu

  Lonny wasn't sure how long he'd been crouching in the old cactus garden between the main house and the smaller one out back. He'd crawled in on his hands and knees and nestled among the yucca spears and he had only been jabbed once or twice. He held the gun lovingly as a kitten in his hand as he peered through the bushes, wishing he'd never come, feeling sure that Mitch was dead. Not wanting to find what they'd done to Orphy.

  How could people like this hang out in the world at all? Why was it allowed?

  There was a light in the window of the guest house, downstairs. Once, he thought he heard Orphy's voice from over there. Some of the others came and went – just shapes in the darkness, some of them nude, some of them in sloppy clothes – and now here came four more, so he scrunched, down lower, biting off a shout when he accidently drove a cactus needle into his right arm near the elbow. Grimacing, he felt for the broken-off needle and plucked it out. He was going to lose an eye in here next. Had to get out.

  But he was safe in the cacti. Maybe he should stay till daylight. These sick fuckers probably slept during the day. Or maybe they never slept. That wouldn't surprise him, either.

  Two more of them went by, carrying something long and sodden that dripped onto bricks. What they were carrying didn't have to be a man's severed arm. Not necessarily.

  They paused a moment, next to the pool. One of them bent and seemed to tease the surface of the water with the drippy end of the thing he carried in his hand. Lonny thought he saw something sparkle, faintly, in the pool, then, but he wasn't sure. The two laughed. Were they men? Yes, now, seeing them pass across the open area of the terrace where more starlight reached them, he could see they were white men, both clothed but one of them with his dick hanging out his fly – from here it looked like a little white worm.

  They paused at the door to the back house – and both glanced over their shoulders at the cactus garden. A flash of teeth as they grinned. Then they went into the house.

  Holy shit, Lonny thought. The fuckers knew he was there. They'd known it all along.

  They wouldn't leave things like this.

  Lonny crouched lower, got down under the curve of the yucca spears, and squirmed like a soldier moving under barbed wire, pulling himself with his elbows, till he got free of the cactus garden. Then he got to his feet and ran in a crouch across the big terrace.

  He still had the gun, anyway.

  And he had to know. He scurried up to the lower window of the guest house. The windows were curtained. He heard voices. One of them was Orphy. Sounding delirious. He had a drunk, disbelieving quality about his voice and Lonny couldn't work out exactly what Orphy was saying.

  He made up his mind. He went toward the door, circling the treetrunk-thick stem of the huge rose bush growing up the side of the place – looking quickly away from the yellow bony thing wired into the roses. (Bones with only the grease of a human body left on them.) Gun at the ready, Lonny walked through the front door of the guest house. There was a hallway, strewn with trash and rose petals. Beyond it, a sickly gray light from the hall corner.

  The trash moved. Lonny stared. There was a man among the bottles and cans and old rags. He looked like a rag himself. He was crawling through the trash toward Lonny. He wore only bloodstained diapers. Baby's disposable diapers. Scabby rips all over his gray skin. He was… Lonny shook his head with amazement. He'd never seen anyone that skinny except on TV commercials about those starving kids overseas. A skeleton with skin shrunk-wrapped on it.

  "Don't…" the guy rasped. No hair on his head. His eyes looking two different directions. "Don't…" The voice like a rustle of paper, barely audible. His body made a dry scraping on the floor when he moved a few inches closer. Saying, " Don't let them do this to you."

  Lonny's mouth went dry. Instantly. He turned to run – then he heard Orphy yell his name. " Lonny ya fucking… Feez motherfucker… Don't… Lonny…! " Something skewed wrong in his voice – the words were pleadings, protests – but the tone was childishly happy.

  "I've got the gun," Lonny murmured. And maybe they had Mitch with Orphy.

  He forced himself to go around the corner and look through the door into the room.

  There was one
dirty white bulb directly in the middle of the ceiling. Under it was a kind of platform, about bed-height from the floor. It took him several seconds of staring to be sure that the platform and the chairs around it were made of human arms and legs. The bone-ends, the bits of meat at the join, showed it was real. They'd preserved it and crudely stitched it together and tied it up with strips of skin; clunky and haphazard looking, but it held together as Orphy thrashed on it.

  Orpheus was strapped spread eagled, naked on the bed with the Feasters – so Lonny thought of them – crouched around him, or sitting in bodypart chairs. They were connected to him. Something like stretched-out bits of glue ran from their mouths and exposed genitals, into Orpheus. The stretched-out bits quivered and flowed, and Lonny could see that they were alive, that they were something…

  Something like worms. And they were part of the people around the bed, half a dozen people including the guy who called himself the More Man and the little guy, the Handy Man, and a woman whose eyes seemed to shine… you couldn't see her face at all, there was a kind of gas mask effect because the transparent slick white stuff had erupted from her mouth to cover most of her face. The other worm things squirmed into the wounds on Orpheus's throat… Another woman crouched over his genitals, chewing them up, as a worm thrashed whitely next to her pink tongue… A fat man crouched next to Orpheus's foot; the ankle had been broken, a bone end sheering out through the breached skin and the guy was licking marrow from it. Orpheus looked down at the guy and made a sound of pleasure.

  Orpheus made that sound?

  They'd done something to him. He was writhing,

  Lonny saw now, not in pain but in ecstasy… as the More Man used the severed arm of the security guard to fuck a wound in Orphy's side, the arm a dildo. Orphy writing in repugnant happiness. Feeling no pain while they snapped his bones. He looked invitingly at Lonny. Mucous bubbling from his mouth as he urged: "Git on, Lon!" he said wetly. "Take a hit!"