The Best of Lucius Shepard

by The Best of Lucius Shepard (v5. 5) (epub)

  Gilbey glanced up sharply. “Oh, you mean Big Tits. She lemme check her for lumps.” He forced a grin, then went back to stirring his coffee.

  Mingolla was hurt that Gilbey hadn’t asked about his night; he wanted to tell him about Debora. But that was typical of Gilbey’s self-involvement. His narrow eyes and sulky mouth were the imprints of a mean-spiritedness that permitted few concerns aside from his own well-being. Yet despite his insensitivity, his stupid rages and limited conversation, Mingolla believed that he was smarter than he appeared, that disguising one’s intelligence must have been a survival tactic in Detroit, where he had grown up. It was his craftiness that gave him away: his insights into the personalities of adversary lieutenants; his slickness at avoiding unpleasant duty; his ability to manipulate his peers. He wore stupidity like a cloak, and perhaps he had worn it for so long that it could not be removed. Still, Mingolla envied him its virtues, especially the way it had numbed him to the assault.

  “He’s never been late before,” said Mingolla after a while.

  “So what he’s fuckin’ late!” snapped Gilbey, glowering. “He’ll be here!”

  Behind the bar, the corporal switched on a radio and spun the dial past Latin music, past Top Forty, then past an American voice reporting the baseball scores. “Hey!” called Gilbey. “Let’s hear that, man! I wanna see what happened to the Tigers.” With a shrug, the corporal complied.

  “…White Sox six, A’s three,” said the announcer. “That’s eight in a row for the Sox…”

  “White Sox are kickin’ some ass,” said the corporal, pleased.

  “The White Sox!” Gilbey sneered. “What the White Sox got ’cept a buncha beaners hittin’ two hunnerd and some coke-sniffin’ niggers? Shit! Every fuckin’ spring the White Sox are flyin’, man. But then ‘long comes summer and the good drugs hit the street and they fuckin’ die!”

  “Yeah,” said the corporal, “but this year—”

  “Take that son of a bitch Caldwell,” said Gilbey, ignoring him. “I seen him coupla years back when he had a trial with the Tigers. Man, that nigger could hit! Now he shuffles up there like he’s just feelin’ the breeze.”

  “They ain’t takin’ drugs, man,” said the corporal testily. “They can’t take ’em ’cause there’s these tests that show if they’s on somethin’.”

  Gilbey barreled ahead. “White Sox ain’t gotta chance, man! Know what the guy on TV calls ’em sometimes? The Pale Hose! The fuckin’ Pale Hose! How you gonna win with a name like that? The Tigers, now, they got the right kinda name. The Yankees, the Braves, the—”

  “Bullshit, man!” The corporal was becoming upset; he set down his clipboard and walked to the end of the bar. “What ’bout the Dodgers? They gotta wimpy name and they’re a good team. Your name don’t mean shit!”

  “The Reds,” suggested Mingolla; he was enjoying Gilbey’s rap, its stubbornness and irrationality. Yet at the same time he was concerned by its undertone of desperation: appearances to the contrary, Gilbey was not himself this morning.

  “Oh, yeah!” Gilbey smacked the table with the flat of his hand.

  “The Reds! Lookit the Reds, man! Lookit how good they been doin’ since the Cubans come into the war. You think that don’t mean nothin’? You think their name ain’t helpin’ ’em? Even if they get in the Series, the Pale fuckin’ Hose don’t gotta prayer against the Reds.” He laughed—a hoarse grunt. “I’m a Tiger fan, man, but I gotta feelin’ this ain’t their year, y’know. The Reds are tearin’ up the NL East, and the Yankees is comin’ on, and when they get together in October, man, then we gonna find out alia ’bout everything. Alia ’bout fuckin’ everything!” His voice grew tight and tremulous. “So don’t gimme no trouble ’bout the candyass Pale Hose, man! They ain’t shit and they never was and they ain’t gonna be shit ’til they change their fuckin’ name!”

  Sensing danger, the corporal backed away from confrontation, and Gilbey lapsed into a moody silence. For a while there were only the sounds of chopper blades and the radio blatting out cocktail jazz. Two mechanics wandered in for an early morning beer, and not long after that three fatherly-looking sergeants with potbellies and thinning hair and quartermaster insignia on their shoulders sat at a nearby table and started up a game of rummy. The corporal brought them a pot of coffee and a bottle of whiskey, which they mixed and drank as they played. Their game had an air of custom, of something done at this time every day, and watching them, taking note of their fat, pampered ease, their old-buddy familiarity, Mingolla felt proud of his palsied hand. It was an honorable affliction, a sign that he had participated in the heart of the war as these men had not. Yet he bore them no resentment. None whatsoever. Rather it gave him a sense of security to know that three such fatherly men were here to provide him with food and liquor and new boots. He basked in the dull, happy clutter of their talk, in the haze of cigar smoke that seemed the exhaust of their contentment. He believed that he could go to them, tell them his problems and receive folksy advice. They were here to assure him of the tightness of his purpose, to remind him of simple American values, to lend an illusion of fraternal involvement to the war, to make clear that it was merely an exercise in good fellowship and tough-mindedness, an initiation rite that these three men had long ago passed through, and after the war they would all get rings and medals and pal around together and talk about bloodshed and terror with head-shaking wonderment and nostalgia, as if bloodshed and terror were old lost friends whose natures they had not fully appreciated at the time…Mingolla realized then that a smile had stretched his facial muscles taut, and that his train of thought had been leading him into spooky mental territory. The tremors in his hand were worse than ever. He checked his watch. It was almost ten o’clock. Ten o’clock! In a panic he scraped back his chair and stood.

  “Let’s look for him,” he said to Gilbey.

  Gilbey started to say something but kept it to himself. He tapped his spoon hard against the edge of the table. Then he, too, scraped back his chair and stood.

  Baylor was not to be found at the Club Demonio or any of the bars on the west bank. Gilbey and Mingolla described him to everyone they met, but no one remembered him. The longer the search went on, the more insecure Mingolla became. Baylor was necessary, an essential underpinning of the platform of habits and routines that supported him, that let him live beyond the range of war’s weapons and the laws of chance, and should that underpinning be destroyed…In his mind’s eye he saw the platform tipping, he and Gilbey toppling over the edge, cartwheeling down into an abyss filled with black flames. Once Gilbey said, “Panama! The son of a bitch run off to Panama.” But Mingolla didn’t think this was the case. He was certain that Baylor was close at hand. His certainty had such a valence of clarity that he became even more insecure, knowing that this sort of clarity often heralded a bad conclusion.

  The sun climbed higher, its heat an enormous weight pressing down, its light leaching color from the stucco walls, and Mingolla’s sweat began to smell rancid. Only a few soldiers were on the streets, mixed in with the usual run of kids and beggars, and the bars were empty except for a smattering of drunks still on a binge from the night before. Gilbey stumped along, grabbing people by the shirt and asking his questions. Mingolla however, terribly conscious of his trembling hand, nervous to the point of stammering, was forced to work out a stock approach whereby he could get through these brief interviews. He would amble up, keeping his right side forward, and say, “I’m looking for a friend of mine. Maybe you seen him? Tall guy. Olive skin, black hair, thin. Name’s Baylor.” He learned to let this slide off his tongue in a casual unreeling.

  Finally Gilbey had had enough. “I’m gonna hang out with Big Tits,” he said. “Meet’cha at the PX tomorrow.” He started to walk off, but turned and added, “You wanna get in touch ’fore tomorrow, I’ll be at the Club Demonio.” He had an odd expression on his face. It was as if he were trying to smile reassuringly, but—due to his lack of practice with smiles—it looked forced and
foolish and not in the least reassuring.

  Around eleven o’clock Mingolla wound up leaning against a pink stucco wall, watching out for Baylor in the thickening crowds. Beside him, the sun-browned fronds of a banana tree were feathering in the wind, making a crispy sound whenever a gust blew them back into the wall. The roof of the bar across the street was being repaired: sheets of new tin alternating with narrow patches of rust that looked like enormous strips of bacon laid there to fry. Now and then he would let his gaze drift up to the unfinished bridge, a great sweep of magical whiteness curving into the blue, rising above the town and the jungle and the war. Not even the heat haze rippling from the tin roof could warp its smoothness. It seemed to be orchestrating the stench, the mutter of the crowds, and the jukebox music into a tranquil unity, absorbing those energies and returning them purified, enriched. He thought that if he stared at it long enough, it would speak to him, pronounce a white word that would grant his wishes.

  Two flat cracks—pistol shots—sent him stumbling away from the wall, his heart racing. Inside his head the shots had spoken the two syllables of Baylor’s name. All the kids and beggars had vanished. All the soldiers had stopped and turned to face the direction from which the shots had come: zombies who had heard their master’s voice.

  Another shot.

  Some soldiers milled out of a side street, talking excitedly. “…fuckin’ nuts!” one was saying, and his buddy said, “It was Sammy, man! You see his eyes?”

  Mingolla pushed his way through them and sprinted down the side street. At the end of the block a cordon of MPs had sealed off access to the right-hand turn, and when Mingolla ran up, one of them told him to stay back.

  “What is it?” Mingolla asked. “Some guy playing Sammy?”

  “Fuck off,” the MP said mildly.

  “Listen,” said Mingolla. “It might be this friend of mine. Tall, skinny guy. Black hair. Maybe I can talk to him.”

  The MP exchanged glances with his buddies, who shrugged and acted otherwise unconcerned. “Okay,” he said. He pulled Mingolla to him and pointed out a bar with turquoise walls on the next corner down. “Go on in there and talk to the captain.”

  Two more shots, then a third.

  “Better hurry,” said the MP. “Ol’ Captain Haynesworth there, he don’t put much stock in negotiations.”

  It was cool and dark inside the bar; two shadowy figures were flattened against the wall beside a window that opened onto the cross street. Mingolla could make out the glint of automatic pistols in their hands. Then, through the window, he saw Baylor pop up from behind a retaining wall: a three-foot-high structure of mud bricks running between a herbal drugstore and another bar. Baylor was shirtless, his chest painted with reddish-brown smears of dried blood, and he was standing in a nonchalant pose, with his thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets. One of the men by the window fired at him. The report was deafening, causing Mingolla to flinch and close his eyes. When he looked out the window again, Baylor was nowhere in sight.

  “Fucker’s just tryin’ to draw fire,” said the man who had shot at Baylor. “Sammy’s fast today.”

  “Yeah, but he’s slowin’ some,” said a lazy voice from the darkness at the rear of the bar. “I do believe he’s outta dope.”

  “Hey,” said Mingolla. “Don’t kill him! I know the guy. I can talk to him.”

  “Talk?” said the lazy voice. “You kin talk ’til yo’ ass turns green, boy, and Sammy ain’t gon’ listen.”

  Mingolla peered into the shadows. A big sloppy-looking man was leaning on the counter; brass insignia gleamed on his beret. “You the captain?” he asked. “They told me outside to talk to the captain.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said the man. “And I’d be purely delighted to talk with you, boy. What you wanna talk ’bout?”

  The other men laughed.

  “Why are you trying to kill him?” asked Mingolla, hearing the pitch of desperation in his voice. “You don’t have to kill him. You could use a trank gun.”

  “Got one comin’,” said the captain. “Thing is, though, yo’ buddy got hisself a coupla hostages back of that wall, and we get a chance at him ’fore the trank gun ’rives, we bound to take it.”

  “But—” Mingolla began.

  “Lemme finish, boy.” The captain hitched up his gunbelt, strolled over and draped an arm around Mingolla’s shoulder, enveloping him in an aura of body odor and whiskey breath. “See,” he went on, “we had everything under control. Sammy there—”

  “Baylor!” said Mingolla angrily. “His name’s Baylor.”

  The captain lifted his arm from Mingolla’s shoulder and looked at him with amusement. Even in the gloom Mingolla could see the network of broken capillaries on his cheeks, the bloated alcoholic features. “Right,” said the captain. “Like I’s sayin’, yo’ good buddy Mister Baylor there wasn’t doin’ no harm. Just sorta ravin’ and runnin’ round. But then ‘long comes a coupla our Marine brothers. Seems like they’d been givin’ our beaner friends a demonstration of the latest combat gear, and they was headin’ back from said demonstration when they seen our little problem and took it ‘pon themselves to play hero. Well sir, puttin’ it in a nutshell, Mister Baylor flat kicked their ass. Stomped all over their esprit de corps. Then he drags ’em back of that wall and starts messin’ with one of their guns. And—”

  Two more shots.

  “Shit!” said one of the men by the window.

  “And there he sits,” said the captain. “Fuckin’ with us. Now either the gun’s outta ammo or else he ain’t figgered out how it works. If it’s the latter case, and he does figger it out…” The captain shook his head dolefully, as if picturing dire consequences. “See my predicament?”

  “I could try talking to him,” said Mingolla. “What harm would it do?”

  “You get yourself killed, it’s your life, boy. But it’s my ass that’s gonna get hauled up on charges.” The captain steered Mingolla to the door and gave him a gentle shove toward the cordon of MPs. “’Preciate you volunteerin’, boy.”

  Later Mingolla was to reflect that what he had done had made no sense, because—whether or not Baylor had survived—he would never have been returned to the Ant Farm. But at the time, desperate to preserve the ritual, none of this occurred to him. He walked around the corner and toward the retaining wall. His mouth was dry, his heart pounded. But the shaking in his hand had stopped, and he had the presence of mind to walk in such a way that he blocked the MPs’ line of fire. About twenty feet from the wall he called out, “Hey, Baylor! It’s Mingolla, man!” And as if propelled by a spring, Baylor jumped up, staring at him. It was an awful stare. His eyes were like bulls-eyes, white showing all around the irises; trickles of blood ran from his nostrils, and nerves were twitching in his cheeks with the regularity of watchworks. The dried blood on his chest came from three long gouges; they were partially scabbed over but were oozing a clear fluid. For a moment he remained motionless. Then he reached down behind the wall, picked up a double-barreled rifle from whose stock trailed a length of flexible tubing, and brought it to bear on Mingolla.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  No flame, no explosion. Not even a click. But Mingolla felt that he’d been dipped in ice water. “Christ!” he said. “Baylor! It’s me!” Baylor squeezed the trigger again, with the same result. An expression of intense frustration washed over his face, then lapsed into that dead man’s stare. He looked directly up into the sun, and after a few seconds he smiled: he might have been receiving terrific news from on high.

  Mingolla’s senses had become wonderfully acute. Somewhere far away a radio was playing a country-and-western tune, and with its plaintiveness, its intermittent bursts of static, it seemed to him the whining of a nervous system on the blink. He could hear the MPs talking in the bar, could smell the sour acids of Baylor’s madness, and he thought he could feel the pulse of Baylor’s rage, an inconstant flow of heat eddying around him, intensifying his fear, rooting him to the spot. Baylor laid the gun dow
n, laid it down with the tenderness he might have shown toward a sick child, and stepped over the retaining wall. The animal fluidity of the movement made Mingolla’s skin crawl. He managed to shuffle backward a pace and held up his hands to ward Baylor off. “C’mon, man,” he said weakly. Baylor let out a fuming noise—part hiss, part whimper—and a runner of saliva slid between his lips. The sun was a golden bath drenching the street, kindling glints and shimmers from every bright surface, as if it were bringing reality to a boil. Somebody yelled, “Get down, boy!”

  Then Baylor flew at him, and they fell together, rolling on the hard-packed dirt. Fingers dug in behind his Adam’s apple. He twisted away, saw Baylor grinning down, all staring eyes and yellowed teeth. Strings of drool flapping from his chin. A Halloween face. Knees pinned Mingolla’s shoulders, hands gripped his hair and bashed his head against the ground. Again, and again. A keening sound switched on inside his ears. He wrenched an arm free and tried to gouge Baylor’s eyes; but Baylor bit his thumb, gnawing at the joint. Mingolla’s vision dimmed, and he couldn’t hear anything anymore. The back of his head felt mushy. It seemed to be rebounding very slowly from the dirt, higher and slower after each impact. Framed by blue sky, Baylor’s face looked to be receding, spiraling off. And then, just as Mingolla began to fade, Baylor disappeared.

  Dust was in Mingolla’s mouth, his nostrils. He heard shouts, grunts. Still dazed, he propped himself onto an elbow. A short ways off, khaki arms and legs and butts were thrashing around in a cloud of dust. Like a comic strip fight. You expected asterisks and exclamation points overhead to signify profanity. Somebody grabbed his arm, hauled him upright. The MP captain, his beefy face flushed. He frowned reprovingly as he brushed dirt from Mingolla’s clothes. “Real gutsy, boy,” he said. “And real, real stupid. He hadn’t been at the end of his run, you’d be drawin’ flies ’bout now.” He turned to a sergeant standing nearby. “How stupid you reckon that was, Phil?”