by Tony Daniel
Somebody sloshed into the shallow water outside the hoy and cursed. It was the witch, Gladys, who lived in a culvert down the way. She found the gangplank, and TB heard her pull herself up out of the water. He didn’t move to the door. She banged on it with the stick she always carried that she said was a charmed snake. Maybe it was. Stranger things had happened in the Carbuncle. People and grist combined in strange ways here, not all of them comprehensible.
“TB, I need to talk to you about something,” the witch said. TB covered his ears, but she banged again, and that didn’t help. “Let me in, TB. I know you’re home. I saw a light in there.”
“No you didn’t,” TB said to the door.
“I need to talk to you.”
“All right.” He pulled himself up and opened the door. Gladys came in and looked around the hoy like a startled bird.
“What have you got cooking?”
“Nothing.”
“Make me something.”
“Gladys, my old stove hardly works anymore.”
“Put one them rats in there and I’ll eat what it makes.”
“I won’t do it, Gladys.” TB opened his freezer box and rummaged around inside. He pulled out a Popsicle and gave it to her. “Here,” he said. “It’s chocolate, I think.”
Gladys took the Popsicle and gnawed at it as if it were a meaty bone. She was soon done, and had brown mess around her lips. She wiped it off with a ragged sleeve. “Got another?”
“No I don’t have another,” TB said. “And if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you.”
“You’re mean.”
“Those things are hard to come by.”
“How’s your jill ferret?”
“She got hurt today. Did Bob tell you? She’s going to die.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He didn’t want to talk about Jill with Gladys. He changed the subject. “We got a mess of rats out of that mulmyard.”
“There’s more where they came from.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Gladys pulled up a stool and collapsed on it. She was maybe European stock; it was hard to tell. Her face was filthy, except for a white smear where wiping the chocolate had cleaned a spot under her nose and on her chin.
“Why do you hate them so much? I know why Bob does. He’s crazy. But you’re not crazy like that.”
“I don’t hate them,” TB said. “It’s just how I make a living.”
“Is it now?”
“I don’t hate them,” TB repeated. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“I want to take a trip.”
“Towhere? ”
“I’m going to see my aunt. I got to thinking about her lately. She used to have this kitten. I was thinking I wanted a cat. For a familiar, you know. To aid me in my occult work. She’s a famous space ship pilot, you know.”
“The kitten?”
“No, my aunt is.”
“You going to take your aunt’s kitten?”
Gladys seemed very offended. “No, I’m not!” She leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. “That kitten’s all growed up now, and I think it was a girl.It will have kittens, and I can get me one of those.”
“That’s a lot of supposes,” TB said mildly.
“I’m sure of it. My angel, Tom, told me to do it.”
Tom was one of the supernatural beings Gladys claimed to be in contact with. People journeyed long distances in the Carbuncle to have her make divinings for them. It was said she could tell you exactly where to dig for silver keys.
“Well if Tom told you, then you should do it,” TB said.
“Damn right,” said Gladys. “But I want you to look after the place while I’m gone.”
“Gladys, you live in an old ditch.”
“It is a dry culvert. And I do not want anybody moving in on me while I’m gone. A place that nice is hard to come by.”
“All I can do is go down there and check on it.”
“If anybody comes along, you have to run them off.”
“I’m not going to run anybody off.”
“You have to. I’m depending on you.”
“I’ll tell them the place is already taken,” TB said. “That’s about all I can promise.”
“You tell them that it has a curse on it,” Gladys said. “And that I’ll put a curse onthem if I catch them in my house.”
TB snorted back a laugh. “All right,” he said. “Is there anything else?”
“Water my hydrangea.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“It’s a plant. Just stick your finger in the dirt and don’t water it if it’s still moist.”
“Stick my finger in the dirt?”
“It’s clean fill!”
“I’ll water it, then.”
“Will you let me sleep here tonight?”
“No, Gladys.”
“I’m scared to go back there. Harold’s being mean.” Harold was the “devil” that sat on Gladys’s other shoulder. Tom spoke into one ear, and Harold into the other. People could ask Harold about money, and he would tell Gladys the answer if he felt like it.
“You can’t stay here.” TB rose from his own seat and pulled Gladys up from the stool. She had a ripe smell when he was this close to her. “In fact, you have to go on now because I have to do something.” He guided her toward the door.
“What do you have to do?” she said. She pulled loose of his hold and stood her ground. TB walked around her and opened the door. “Something,” he said. He pointed toward the twilight outside the doorway. “Go on home, Gladys. I’ll check in on your place tomorrow.”
“I’m not leaving for two days,” she replied. “Check in on it day after tomorrow.”
“Okay then,” TB said. He motioned to the door. “You’ve got to go, Gladys, so I can get to what I need to do.”
She walked to the door, turned around. “Day after tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll be gone for a while. I’m trusting you, TB.”
“You can trust me to look in on your place.”
“And not steal anything.”
“I can promise you that, too.”
“All right, then. I’m trusting you.”
“Good night, Gladys.”
“Good night.” She finally left. After TB heard her make her way back to the swamp bank, he got up and closed the door behind her, which she’d neglected to do. Within minutes there was another knock. TB sighed and got up to answer it. He let Bob in.
Bob pulled out a jar of a jellied liquid. It was Carbuncle moonshine, as thick as week-old piss and as yellow. “Let’s drink,” he said, and set the bottle on TB’s table. “I come to get you drunk and get your mind off things.”
“I won’t drink that swill,” TB said. Bob put the jar to his mouth and swallowed two tremendous gulps. He handed the jar to TB, shaking it in his face. TB took it.
“Damn!” Bob said. “Hot damn!”
“Gladys was right about you being crazy.”
“She come around here tonight?”
“She just left. Said she wanted me to look after her place.”
“She ain’t going to see her aunt.”
“Maybe she will.”
“Like hell. Gladys never goes far from that ditch.”
TB looked down at the moonshine. He looked away from it and, trying not to taste it, took a swig. He tasted it. It was like rusty paint thinner. Some barely active grist, too. TB couldn’t help analyzing it; that was the way he was built. Cleaning agents for sewer pipes. Good God. He took another before he could think about it.
“You drink up.” Bob looked at him with a faintly jealous glare. TB handed the jar back.
“No, you.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Bob leaned back and poured the rest of the swill down his throat. When he was finished he let out a yell that startled TB, even though he was ready for it.
“I want some beer to chase it with,” Bob said.
“Beer would be good, but I don’t have any
.”
“Let’s go down to Ru June’s and shoot some pool.”
“It’s too damn late.”
“It’s early.”
TB thought about it. The moonshine warmed his gut. He could feel it threatening toeat through his gut if he didn’t dilute it with something. There was nothing further to do about Jill. She would sleep, and at some time, she would die in her sleep. He ought to stay with her. He ought to face what he had done.
“Let me get my coat.”
The Carbuncle glowed blue-green when they emerged from the hoy. High above them, like the distant shore of an enormous lake, was the other side of the cylinder. TB had been there, and most of it was a fetid slough. Every few minutes a flare of swamp-gas methane would erupt from the garbage on that side of the curve and flame into a white fireball. These fireballs were many feet across, but they looked like pinprick flashes from this distance. TB had been caught by one once. The escaping gas had capsized his little canoe, and being in the water had likely saved him from being burnt to a crisp. Yet there were people who lived on that side, too—people who knew how to avoid the gas. Most of the time.
Bob didn’t go the usual way to Ru June’s, but instead took a twisty series of passageways, some of them cut deep in the mountains of garbage, some of them actually tunnels under and through it. The Bob-ways, TB thought of them. At one point TB felt a drip from above and looked up to see gigantic stalactites formed of some damp and glowing gangrenous extrusion.
“We’re right under the old Bendy,” Bob told him. “That there’s the settle from the bottom muck.”
“What do you think it is?” TB said.
“Spent medical grist, mostly,” Bob replied. “It ain’t worth a damn, and some of it’s diseased.”
“I’ll bet.”
“This is a hell of a shortcut to Ru June’s, though.”
And it was. They emerged not a hundred feet from the tavern. The lights of the place glowed dimly behind skin windows. They mounted the porch and went in through a screen of plastic strips that was supposed to keep out the flies.
TB let his eyes adjust to the brightness inside. There was a good crowd tonight. Chen was at the bar playing dominoes with John Goodnite. The dominoes were grumbling incoherently, as dominoes did. Over by the pool table Tinny Him, Nolan, and Big Greg were watching Sister Mary the whore line up a shot. She sank a stripe. There were no numbers on the balls.
Tinny Him slapped TB on the back, and Bob went straight for the bottle of whiskey that was standing on the wall shelf beside Big Greg.
“Good old TB,” Tinny Him said. “Get you some whiskey.” He handed over a flask.
Chen looked up from his dominoes. “You drinkmy whiskey,” he said, then returned to the game. TB took a long swallow off Tinny Him’s flask. It was far better stuff than Bob’s moonshine, so he took another.
“That whore sure can pool a stick,” Nolan said, coming to stand beside them. “She’s beating up on Big Greg like he was a ugly hat.”
TB had no idea what Nolan meant. His grist patch was going bad, and he was slowly sinking into incomprehensibility for any but himself. That didn’t seem to bother him, though.
Bob was standing very close to Sister Mary and giving her advice on a shot until she reached over and without heat slapped him back into the wall. He remained there respectfully while she took her shot and sank another stripe. Big Greg whispered a curse, and the whore smiled. Her teeth were black from chewing betel nut.
TB thought about how much she charged and how much he had saved up. He wondered if she would swap a poke for a few rats, but decided against asking. Sister Mary didn’t like to barter. She wanted keys or something pretty.
Tinny Him offered TB the flask again, and he took it. “I got to talk to you,” Tinny Him said. “You got to help me with my mother.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“She’s dead is what.”
“Dead.” TB drank more whiskey. “How long?”
“Three months.”
TB stood waiting. There had to be more.
“She won’t let me bury her.”
“What do you mean she won’t let you bury her? She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, mostly.” Tinny Him looked around, embarrassed, then went on in a low voice. “Her pellicle won’t die. It keeps creeping around the house. And it’s pulling her body around like a rag doll. I can’t get her away from it.”
“You mean her body died, but her pellicle didn’t.”
“Hell yes that’s what I mean.” Tinny Him took the flask back and finished it off. “Hell, TB, what am I going to do? She’s really stinking up the place, and every time I throw the old hag out, that grist drags her right back in. It knocks on the door all night long until I have to open it.”
“You’ve got a problem.”
“Damn right I’ve got a problem. She was good old mum, but I’m starting to hate her right now, let me tell you.”
TB sighed. “Maybe I can do something,” he said. “But not tonight.”
“You could come around tomorrow. My gal’ll fix you something to eat.”
“I might just.”
“You got to help me, TB. Everybody knows you got a sweet touch with the grist.”
“I’ll do what I can,” TB said. He drifted over to the bar, leaving Tinny Him watching the pool game. He told Chen he wanted a cold beer, and Chen got it for him from a freezer box. It was a good way to chill the burning that was starting up in his stomach. He sat down on a stool at the bar and drank the beer. Chen’s bar was tiled in beaten-out snap-metal ads, all dead now and their days of roaming the corridors, sacs, bolsas, glands, and cylinders of the Met long done. Most of the advertisements were for products that he had never heard of, but the one his beer was sitting on he recognized. It was a recruiting pitch for the civil service, and there was Amés back before he was Big Cheese of the System, when he was Governor of Mercury. The snap-metal had paused in the middle of Amés’s pitch for the Met’s finest to come to Mercury and become part of the New Hierarchy. The snap-metal Amés was caught with the big mouth on his big face wide-open. The bottom of TB’s beer glass fit almost perfectly in the round “O” of it.
TB took a drink and set the glass back down. “Shut up,” he said. “Shut the hell up, why don’t you?”
Chen looked up from his dominoes, which immediately started grumbling among themselves when they felt that he wasn’t paying attention to them. “You talking to me?” he said.
TB grinned and shook his head. “I might tell you to shut up, but you don’t say much in the first place.”
Ru June’s got more crowded as what passed for night in the Carbuncle wore on. The garbage pickers, the rat hunters, and the sump farmers drifted in. Most of them were men, but there were a few women, and a few indeterminate shambling masses of rags. Somebody tried to sell him a spent coil of luciferan tubing. It was mottled along its length where it had caught a plague. He nodded while the tube monger tried to convince him that it was rechargeable but refused to barter, and the man moved on after Chen gave him a hard stare. TB ordered another beer and fished three metal keys out of his pocket. This was the unit of currency in the Carbuncle. Two were broken. One looked like it was real brass and might go to something. He put the keys on the bar and Chen quickly slid them away into a strongbox.
Bob came over and slapped TB on his back. “Why don’t you get you some whiskey?” he said. He pulled back his shirt to show TB another flask of rotgut moonshine stuck under the string that held up his trousers.
“Let me finish this beer, and I might.”
“Big Greg said somebody was asking after you.”
“Gladys was, but she found me.”
“It was a shaman-priest.”
“A what?”
“One of them Greentree ones.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“They got a church or something over in Bagtown. Sometimes they come all the way out here. Big Greg said he was doing so
mething funny with rocks.”
“With rocks?”
“That’s what the man said.”
“Are you sure that’s what he said?”
“Big Greg said it was something funny with rocks is all I know. Hey, why areyou looking funny all of a sudden?”
“I know that priest.”
“Now how could that be?”
“I know him. I wonder what he wants.”
“What all men want,” said Bob. “Whiskey and something to poke. Or just whiskey sometimes. But always at least whiskey.” He reached over the bar and felt around down behind it. “What have I got my hand on, Chen?”
Chen glanced over. “My goddamn scattergun,” he said.
Bob felt some more and pulled out a battered fiddle. “Where’s my bow?”
“Right there beside it,” Chen replied. Bob got the bow. He shook it a bit, and its grist rosined it up. Bob stood beside TB with his back to the bar. He pulled a long note off the fiddle, holding it to his chest. Then, without pause, he moved straight into a complicated reel. Bob punctuated the music with a few shouts right in TB’s ear.
“Goddamm it, Bob, you’re loud,” he said after Bob was finished.
“Got to dance,” Bob said. “Clear me a way!” he shouted to the room. A little clearing formed in the middle of the room, and Bob fiddled his way to it, then played and stomped his feet in syncopation.
“Come on, TB,” Sister Mary said. “You’re going to dance with me.” She took his arm, and he let her lead him away from the bar. He didn’t know what she wanted him to do, but she hooked her arm through his and spun him around and around until he thought he was going to spew out his guts. While he was catching his breath and getting back some measure of balance, the whore climbed up on a table and began swishing her dress to Bob’s mad fiddling. TB watched her, glad for the respite.
The whole room seemed to sway—not in very good rhythm—to the music. Between songs, Bob took hits off his moonshine and passed it up to Sister Mary, who remained on the tabletop, dancing and working several men who stood about her into a frenzy to see up her swishing dress.
