“You want sympathy, go stand near the bus stop and use it to get some change,” Lucas said. “Bring back a bottle to share and you can stay the night. Otherwise, beat it.” He had no use for pity seekers. Whether a bum or king, sooner or later everyone came to the conclusion that they got handed the black end of the stick. Won’t you all just please feel sorry for me because my life isn’t everything I wanted it to be.
Whose was?
“I never asked to be here,” the newcomer declared. “Not this scrapyard. Not even this earth—if that’s what this is.” The intruder’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial grumble, and he glowered at the heavens. “Sky’s probably a blue canvas you could peel back to reveal the sackcloth and pinhole stars of night,” he sneered. “No, I never asked to be here, this sick piece of quaint, gothic Americana on mescaline. Do you hear ME!?!”
“Yeah, yeah, ain’t nobody want to be here,” Lucas said, afraid the lunatic’s tirade would attract the wrong attention, get them kicked out. Lucas had been a teacher once, a long time ago in a life far removed from this one. There was a girl, sixteen … and white. He could say she wanted it, begged him to show her. Maybe that was even the truth. He didn’t remember now, and it didn’t really matter anyway. He spent his good years in an eight-by-ten that left him as brittle and dry as old wood, useless. Everyone had a story, and nine times out of ten it didn’t matter to anyone but the teller. “But here’s where you are, so cough up some rent, or get your ass out.”
The intruder’s eyes found his. “When I escaped, I had only the staff in my hand, now useless, and the knowledge in my head, which is beyond price. Anything else would have been impossible to carry.” Crazy Moses displayed the backs of his hands, the skin crisscrossed with a smooth paste of shiny scar tissue, joints swollen, fingers twisted.
“That happen when you ethcaped?” Marco asked.
“Yes.” Then the intruder’s eyes brightened. “But I’m sane and alive, and that puts me at a substantial advantage over the two who tried to escape with me.”
Lucas peeled the cap from his head, running a hand across the smooth scalp. He had always worn the gray woolen cap, protecting his vanity when his hair started receding. It was gone now, but the habit of the cap remained like an itch on the heel of an amputated foot. Habits were like ghosts: meaningless recollections of times long gone. Right now though, his only worry was the possibility that Crazy Moses or Mumbling Shepherd or whatever the fuck he called himself was a fugitive. Wouldn’t Benway just shit sideways over that? “Look, if you’re wanted by the law, I want you gone now. We don’t need any fugitive fuckin’ up our deal.”
Crazy Moses only shook his head. “I’m no fugitive. At least, not in the sense you mean.” He settled the staff into the crook of his elbow, examining his palm. “Can you believe that I nearly held the Nexus in this very hand? Impossible, but true. I could have been a god.” The newcomer’s expression faded to emptiness, seemingly hypnotized by the mountains of assorted garbage surrounding him, endless acres of wreckage. His fingers caressed the piece of wrinkled paper he kept clutched to his breast as a penitent man might a crucifix. “But when you reach that high, you can fall a long way.”
Lucas frowned. Crazy Moses liked to talk: to himself, to the sky, to everyone and anyone who would listen. A kinder person might say he was addressing God, but Lucas didn’t think so. The son of a devout Lutheran, Lucas knew that no one who addressed God would say to Him what this man said to the sky.
“Why the fuck’s he still here? Let’s just get rid of this asshole?”
A young man, skin gone the color of washed-out vomit from heroin addiction, stepped forward. His eyes were sunken and angry, arms scarred from the withered biceps all the way down to the wrecked veins on his fingers and hands. He’d kicked—by necessity, not choice; no money to score—and was just a washout who would drink washer fluid or inhale gasoline fumes to get high. His pores smelled of rot, and his breath of disease, and he was not long for this world, though he likely did not know it.
The man called Crazy Moses, however, did. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
“And you won’t neither—”
“His name’s Matty Cho,” Lucas interjected, throwing the young man a disapproving stare. He was actually hoping Crazy Moses would cough up half a bottle of bourbon, or even some day-old rolls. That would be fine. But the last thing he wanted was for a high-strung punk like Cho to bait the guy into a scrap—no one knew anything about the man they called Crazy Moses, or what he might do. They only knew he was crazy.
“I’m Lucas,” he continued evenly. “This is Marco.” Marco grinned at the mention of his name, showing a mouth of dirty gums and a few ragged teeth clinging blackly to the diseased flesh like tombstones in a forgotten graveyard. “Johnny.” He indicated a fat man in layers of old sweat pants and sweatshirts. Johnny had been a stockbroker before the crash. That was when Johnny lost everything he owned, and some things he didn’t. Eventually, he found his way down here where he made a living panhandling for pocket change and recovering half-smoked cigarette butts from the gutter. He sometimes liked to wipe his ass with The Wall Street Journal, and it always made him laugh when he did. His flesh hung heavily upon him in sad sags of dough, he carried pouches under his yellowing eyes, and his face was a roadmap of fine red highways. He gave Crazy Moses a half-hearted gesture that might have been a wave, or simply a request for the waitress to bring him his check.
After an empty moment of silence, Lucas looked to the intruder and said, “You mentioned a couple others what tried to escape with you.”
“Associates of mine, yes. Relations of circumstance, their company an acquired taste, like fried octopus or little children.”
“How’s that?” Lucas asked, immediately regretting it. It was a mistake to get involved. Cho was right; they should throw this guy out, and quick.
“A weakness of his,” Crazy Moses answered, “one of many. He liked to indulge himself: sweets and juju magic and occasionally pedophilia. Amazing the friends you make based on circumstance and necessity.”
Crazy Moses had a way of peppering his nonsense with intriguing tidbits, bait on a hook.
Marco passed Lucas a bottle of wine the color of cherry Kool-Aid. He prudently wiped the top before taking a swallow and passing it on to Johnny.
“So what happened to this faggoty friend o’ yours?” Johnny asked because he liked to listen to people talk, even when it was just nonsensical bullshit. His weakness was talk radio, no matter the topic. Lucas supposed it made him feel connected, like he was still a part of the human herd.
Fat chance.
Crazy Moses sighed, looking into the sky as if the answers might be written in the scaly gray of impending rain. “He went mad in the end; too many minds trapped in one brain. Hazards of the trade. Anyway, he took a shine to a young woman, but she didn’t reciprocate his affections.” Crazy Moses sighed unhappily. “He’s dead now.”
“Yeah?” Johnny asked. “How’d that happen?”
“That young woman he took such a shine to buried a gargoyle’s jawbone in the side of his skull.” Crazy Moses shifted the staff in his hand, digging the end into the dirt as if he meant to hold down the world with it. “He thought he could harness the spirit of the Guardian. Instead, it burned him alive. Like I said, hazards of the trade.”
“You’re so full o’ shit,” said Cho.
Crazy Moses simply looked up at him and smiled.
“Shut it, Matty.” Lucas said. The four of them could probably take down a crazy motherfucker, but Crazy Moses wasn’t crazy. He talked about a lot of crazy shit, but he wasn’t really crazy. And that scared Lucas more than he liked to admit. Crazy Moses was playing a game, and only he knew the rules. “What’s your name?”
“Goose Man,” the man they called Crazy Moses said, “because I look after silly geese who have no idea how important they really are.”
“Geethe ain’t thilly,” Marco piped up, eyes dilated and hazy.
In his more introspective and morbid moments, Lucas wondered which of his friends would pass on first: Johnny, the aging alcoholic whose liver might outlive his heart, but probably not. Or Marco, who could drop dead tomorrow and no one would be surprised. Cho actually had a death wish, though he wouldn’t admit it; first one to piss off the cops or the gangbangers, first one to start a fight. Lucas was fairly certain Matty had AIDS, too, though again, he would never admit to it. Lucas didn’t doubt that if he wasn’t beaten to death or killed robbing a convenience store, Cho would fall sick some night and not wake up. Matty would make his own death. The universe would see to Marco’s. Johnny was a coin-flip.
“Mah mother raithed geethe,” Marco went on. “She thaid they thmart, thmart like a dog or a hoss. They’re not thilly.”
The intruder who called himself Goose Man nodded politely at the critique. “It was an expression; reality is seldom conducive to literary perceptions. The fault lies with Jack because he refuses to control this reality. I begged him to walk away, but he wouldn’t. He’s running the show now. Look around you, gentleman, at the heaping mountains of garbage and know one thing: this is all … his … fault. I would never have made this, never diddled with painfully obvious metaphors and symbols, self-serving, pompous and bleak. I would have gone straight to the top, to the rawest, most pure world of dreams and shadows.” Then Goose Man thumped his staff imperiously on the ground. “Instead, I’m reduced to guarding a woman who can unlock the doorways between the dimensions and unzip space and time with the ease of a horny seventeen-year-old skimming out of her jeans, but who is completely unaware of herself. I was nearly a god. Now, like you, I’m simply a guardian.”
“I’m thinking Cho’s right, Goose Man,” Lucas said softly. “You’re full of shit.”
“Do you know what it is to spend your entire life trying to find a place then spend the next twenty lifetimes trying to escape it?” Goose Man gestured sharply. “Don’t answer that; it was rhetorical. There’s no possible way you could know what I know; see what I’ve seen. You can’t stay alive for two thousand years and not pick up a few tricks. The last time I walked this Earth—well, one of the Earths, anyway—I was a messiah. Now I’m nothing but a damn peeping tom, a voyeur, an impotent wretch trapped outside the glass, looking in.”
“Got passed over for a promotion once, too,” Johnny said, misunderstanding. “Went home, got piss-drunk, and threw up. Called in sick the next three days straight. They gave the job to some Cornell bitch ten years younger’n me so they could meet quotas. An MBA doesn’t mean a damn thing. I was in the trenches. The job shoulda been mine. ‘Stead, some bitch gets the job ‘cause I wasn’t born with tits, an’ I’m supposed to feel guilty for that. Shit’s unfair.”
Goose Man only smiled, but Lucas knew. This wasn’t about a corner office or stock options. Goose Man really figured he was a god, maybe even the God. And the fact that he was a bum in a junkyard really, really pissed him off.
“You been stalking that girl from the bookstore,” Matty said with a sly look. “Hanging out on her fire escape and staring at her while she sleeps. You’re just a perv.”
“I’m her protector, her guardian!” Goose Man said, offended. “God’s a romantic and a caffeine junkie with a bad sense of humor and no sense of fashion, so I’ve inherited the job from the guardian I had killed.” He issued a brittle laugh that sounded only partially sane. “But she’s the key, you understand. The one that opens every door and every lock. That’s why I have to protect her. I wonder if he even knows I’m here.”
“Who?”
But Goose Man ignored him. “I’ll bet he thinks he killed me. Probably has forgotten I even exist anymore. But he hasn’t forgotten her.” Goose Man’s left hand tightened on the scrap of paper held to his breast like a letter from a lost love, and almost to himself, he murmured, “Oh no, he has definitely not forgotten her.”
“And you think she’s gonna help you?” Lucas asked.
“No, definitely not. I expect if she knew I was alive, she’d kill me herself. Put a screwdriver in my throat or something. But she’s got the ticket to ride, gentlemen, and I have to be ready the moment that whistle blows because when that train pulls out, I intend to be hanging on like a June beetle stuck under the windshield wiper.”
Lucas shook his head. One moment, coherent; the next, a babbling lunatic.
“No, she won’t save me,” Goose Man went on. “But she’s my only means of salvation. I try to keep close to her, keep her safe in this world so that she’ll be alive and well when Jack comes to his senses and tries to rescue her. I’m sure he will; I just can’t tell when. So there I am, day or night, rain or shine. I’m the goddamn postman. I watch her when she works, when she eats, when she sleeps—”
“Seen her naked?” It was Cho who asked.
“As a point of fact, yes, but that’s unimportant. I’m above carnal impulses now. Until Jack saves her, I have to save her from herself.”
“Great. You’re a liar and a pervert.” Still Cho. “Can we get rid of this fucker?”
“Proof,” Goose Man declared loudly. “That’s it, isn’t it? You need proof!”
Lucas tipped his head, feeling hot, his skin starting to itch. It was time to end this. “Sure, asshole. You think you’re the motherfuckin’ messiah, prove it. Make a miracle, or we throw your ass out.”
Goose Man cocked his head to one side. “What would you have me do? Wrestle the devil in a pigsty, feed the masses with loaves and fishes, or maybe you have some gruesome notion about poking your finger in the wounds. Well, it’s been a long time. The scars are healed, the masses have grown fat, and Rome asserts the Devil is nothing more than an allegorical symbol. So how do I prove to you that I am what I say?”
Marco thrust the bottle at him. “We’re nearly out,” he grinned, stumps poking out mockingly.
Goose Man leaned his staff against the body of an old Chrysler and accepted the bottle, frowning. “Would it help if I told you the bottle was not half-empty, but half-full?”
“You heard the man,” Lucas said. “Make a miracle, or get the fuck out.” It seemed as good a way as any to end it.
Goose Man regarded the bottle steadily then placed the paper he carried into his pocket for safekeeping. “Bear in mind, gentleman, I’m a little rusty. The last person who needed me to prove myself asked for far less, and served me twice as well as you will.”
Then Goose Man passed the bottle back, apparently satisfied. Marco took it and tipped it into his mouth, a grin breaking across his face like he had just heard a good joke—a priest, a nun, and a plumber walk into a bar … —before spraying the contents out on the dirt. “Whadda fuck?”
Cho snatched the bottle from him, shaking it violently. What stuck to the edges of the glass was clear; not the dark, artificial red of cheap wine, but clear as glass, clear as…
“Water! It’s fuckin’ water! The fucker scammed our wine!” Cho was shaking the bottle in Goose Man’s face, screaming at the top of his lungs. “What the hell’d you do with it?”
Lucas felt lightheaded. He didn’t want to panhandle, or hang out behind the restaurants and wait on the Hefty sacks of food, half-eaten but still edible. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to forget. Forget Goose Man, forget the morning, forget the half-bottle of wine that was now only water. Forget everything.
“You had wine. Now you have water,” Goose Man said with forced patience, the tone of a man explaining complicated matters to small and unruly children. “It may not be what you wanted or expected, but that’s life. I gave you magic. That’s all you asked for.”
Then everything went to hell.
Matty smashed the bottle against Goose Man’s head, shards spraying the fender of the old Chrysler, and Marco dove at him, fists flailing. Then Matty and Johnny pulled Goose Man down from his throne, pummeling him.
And Goose Man did nothing. He simply allowed it to happen, as if he expected it, even wanted it.
Lucas stepped forward and kicked Goose Man,
limbs wooden and out of his control. A half-hearted kick at first, the second was more forceful. And suddenly, without knowing why, Lucas was savagely kicking the one they called Goose Man and Crazy Moses. And Lucas was screaming. And the other three were screaming. He had no idea why: why they were screaming, or why they were howling like animals, or even why they felt compelled to beat the man until he ceased to move, but only lay there like an empty sack of rags that they were kicking, some kind of gruesome child’s game gone horribly wrong.
For his part, Gusman Kreiger—like Goose Man, just another false name in a long list employed down through the centuries—thought the wine a poor choice in retrospect. And as the darkness swept over him, his final thought: Next time someone demands a miracle, simply walk on water; you can never go wrong with a classic.
DABBLE’S BOOKS
Dabble watched Ellen Monroe all morning. He liked the way she blinked, as if every moment was her first, a refugee dragged suddenly into the full brightness of day, startled and hesitant. She was concentrating: where she was, what she was doing, what she was saying. And when she stopped concentrating, when she disconnected herself, let herself loose in the wonderland of her own imagination, she changed. Her every move became as graceful as a bird in the air, the effortless glide of a fish through water.
She was unaware of his observations, of course; Nicholas Dabble was no voyeur. He shelved books, casting only occasional glances in her direction. Or he tallied receipts from the day before, transactions marked down in an old-style ledger, lifting his gaze from the green lines to see what she was doing or how she was acting. Sometimes he would pretend to stare out the front window idly, all the while watching her reflection as she moved around the store in a kind of quiet detachment. He was not unmindful of the fact that she was acting differently today; a little different from yesterday; even more different from the day before. Ellen was getting worse. And everything she did, every task she put herself to, was a desperate and ill-conceived endeavor at normalcy that she simply could not carry off.
The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) Page 4
