The Best of Lucius Shepard

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

  She took off walking. Her round little butt looked real tasty in those shorts.

  —Aw, Leeli! Come on back here, girl!

  I’m not a complete fool. I understand it’s all about pussy, but pussy must be a sickness with me, otherwise I cannot explain why I let myself get pulled back into a situation I knew was a dead loser. A psychiatrist might say I was hunting for just such a situation, but if Leeli had been one of the reverend’s old gals, I wouldn’t have wasted a second before putting her in the rear view. I admit self-destruction is the way of my life. The way of every life, maybe. But the style Leeli brought to her walk-off scene, switching her hips and arching her back and giving a sad, pouty look over her shoulder, psychology wasn’t that huge a factor.

  I told her to drive and funneled Ava, Carl, and Squire into the rear of the van, then climbed in behind the passenger seat so I could keep an eye on everybody. Squire was by the doors, legs kicked out, his head wobbling like he was listening to private music. Ava was next to the wheel hub, comforting Carl, who rested his good cheek on her shoulder.

  —Get east, I said to Leeli. Use the interstate and keep it under the limit.

  Ava asked, Where we going? It was loud in the van and she had to shout it.

  —Friend of mine’s place in South Daytona!

  She thought about this and nodded gloomily.

  —Wanna tell me what’s going on? I pointed to Squire and then Carl.

  She shook her head. Not now! She shifted to accommodate Carl’s weight and said, I’d like my gun back!

  —I like maple sugar on my oatmeal, I told her. But sometimes I gotta do without!

  The sun was bouncing along just above the palm tops like a dragged bait, and the light was growing orangey, and a brown shadow gathered in the rear of the van. It was all calming somehow, the shadow and the rattling, droning speed. I felt submerged in it, a man sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool, unmindful of trouble in the air, and I worked the ride into a movie, not a big spectacular with sinister terrorist plots or world-shattering disasters, but a movie from back when stars used to play in crummy little stories about nobodies on their way to damnation. Creedence and Lynard Skynard for the soundtrack. My daddy’s kind of songs, but I liked them all the same. I found one cigarette left in my crumpled pack and lit up. It didn’t taste a thing like movie smoke must taste, clean and savory, a working man’s reward, but my exhales hazed the air so it looked old-fashioned and yellowy brown, 1970s air, air with some character, and I sat fingering the gun, trying to put my mind onto a future different from the sort promised by the movie I was in, but thinking mainly about the manager, what a strange thing it was for a man to come halfway around the world from a place where they had monkeys and elephants and shit to go with their nuclear bombs just to catch a bullet in a HoJos and die staring up at track lighting and Styrofoam ceiling tile.

  Rickey Wirgman, who I’d called my friend, was more of a brother fuck-up and former criminal associate, like a cousin you don’t have much use for but deal with on occasion. His grandfather had left him some property on the edge of the marshlands near South Daytona, a collection of weathered frame buildings alongside a stretch of open water that grandpa, if not for a crack habit and some harsh words spoken to a fellow inmate in the Volusia County Jail that caused his history to take a sudden tragic turn, might have developed into a full-blown financial disaster. A fishing camp had been his thought. In the years since he’d inherited, Rickey had run a contest to see what would fall apart the fastest, himself or the roof he slept under. He sold off pieces of the land to survive and recreated with the finest dope and the nastiest hookers. The sheds and cabins were rotting away, but the marsh was pretty in the twilight. Black watercourses meandering through tall green grasses, here and there a tiny humped island thick with palms going to silhouettes in the soft gray light, and pelicans crossing in black flapping strings against a streak of rose along the horizon, like a caption in a cool language. Exotic-looking. A Discovery Channel place. The grass was tamped down around the relics of the fishing camp. Seemed like some huge, heavy thing had made an emergency landing, maybe a big jetliner bellying in, and the survivors had squatted where they’d been spilled until death had swallowed them too, and now their shelters were decaying. Scattered around in the higher grass behind the cabins were beat-up refrigerators and washing machines and stoves. They got you thinking it wasn’t a plane had crashed, but one of those bird dinosaurs, and its teeth had busted from its mouth or it had laid a number of curious square white eggs before passing.

  We hid the van behind a shed and straggled toward the main lodge. Lodge was a hundred-dollar name for a structure that was the house equivalent of a crooked old beekeeper who had stroked out in his sleep while wearing his hat and veil. Window shadows for eyes and a gnawed-off nose opening into a screen porch and boards the color of cigarette ash and a slumped partial second story with tattery shingle tiles drooping off the roof edge. There were no lights. Frogs bleeped out in the marsh, like electric raindrops, and skeeters would cover your arm unless you kept swiping them off.

  —Nobody’s home, Leeli said in an exhausted tone.

  —Maybe. It don’t matter. The porch stair creaked and bowed to my step. The billowed-out screens were rusted through in patches, torn loose from the railing. Just pick out some rooms, I said. I’ll see if anybody’s here.

  I left the others to creep around and scare the spiders and explored some. You couldn’t find a grayer place, you searched in a cemetery. Every square inch and object had run out of time and stopped being what it once was. Phantom things that resembled tables and chairs and rugs and pictures on the walls and the walls themselves were just ghosts made of dust and habit and a gray smothery smell. The kitchen sink was gray and so were the stains on it. Peels of linoleum curled up from the floor like eucalyptus bark. The only bit of color I noticed was three custom car magazines poking from beneath an empty bookcase. Rickey’s version of the redneck dream.

  From down the hall came a gentle muttering. Around the corner I caught sight of a pale flickery glow escaping through a half-closed door. I pushed it open. A lounge chair faced a pint-sized color TV set on an orange crate. The chair was an island throne rising from an ocean of beer cans, pizza boxes, take-out cartons, grocery sacks, empty tins, condom packets, shrinkwrapped cookies, crumpled tissues, video cases, batteries. You name it, it was there. Stretched in the chair, wearing bib overalls, lording it over this his solitary realm, was the fucking vulture god of decay. He was thinner than the last I saw him, his beard about six inches longer, but he still had the worst comb-over in Central Florida. The dirt on his ankles made an argyle pattern. His right arm dangled off the chair arm, his fingers almost touching a settlement of pill bottles on the floor. He was watching football. The Gators and somebody. I asked who was winning and he tipped back his head, trying to find me, but not in an awful hurry about it.

  —Shit! The word leaked out of him like a last gasp. He gave a blitzed laugh, two grunts and a hiccup. That you, man?

  I picked a straight chair from beside a sheetless mattress in the corner and sat so he could watch me and the TV both.

  —Maceo. He made a fumbly gesture, patting an invisible dog by his knee. Crazy motherfucker. Where you been?

  —Raiford. New Smyrna for a while after.

  —Oh, yeah…right. Rickey’s face was gaunt, greasy with sweat, ready to crack and sag. The bridge of his nose was swollen and had a ragged cut across it that wasn’t healing too good.

  I asked what he was up to and he said, Dilaudid. Crystal meth. Mostly dilaudid lately. You want some? I got a shitload.

  —There’s people with me. We need to hide out here a couple or three days.

  He blinked rapidly. It was like part of his brain was attempting to semaphore another part that trouble was at hand, but the message didn’t come through. Yeah…okay, he said feebly. Wherever you want, y’know. There’s rooms. His eyes, charcoal smudges, returned to the TV. A faint cheer mounted as a tin
y guy in blue-and-orange scampered down the sideline. The Gators were kicking ass. Rickey made a grinding, choking noise in the back of his throat. I knew that paved-over feeling in the esophagus, the warm dry space that kept him safe from the guttering of his own life, the valueless thoughts featherdusting the inside of his skull. Like a perfect fever.

  —I’ll take a few of them Dilaudid, you don’t mind, I said.

  —I told you go ahead. His fingernail ticked one of the bottle caps. I got a whole shitload.

  I kneeled by the chair, palmed one of the bottles and shook four white tabs out of another.

  —You get settled, come on back you wanna talk. Rickey wriggled his ass around as if he had an itch.

  —Yeah, maybe. We’re kinda wore down.

  —Hey, Maceo!

  I could see him looking for a way to hold me there. I guess I’d reminded him he was lonely.

  —’Member that little honey you’s fucking, one with the blue streak in her hair?

  —Twila, I said.

  —Yeah, her. She got the virus. He said this with the sort of cheerful expectancy you might use to announce the birth of twins. ’Spect some of them NASCAR boys better get theyselves checked, he went on. Last I heard, she was passing out blowjobs at Mac’s Famous Bar like they was dollar kisses.

  —She musta knew what she was doing. Twila didn’t give a shit. My feet crunched the litter ocean as I stepped toward the door.

  —Maceo?

  —What?

  —You wanna bring me something from the ’frigerator? I got pizza in there and I’m too fucked-up to walk.

  —I’ll do ’er in a while.

  The corridor had gone dark. I stood a moment, getting my bearings, and heard Rickey quietly say, Oh, God…God! Maybe he was hurting, maybe the veil of the future had lifted and he saw a shadow stealing toward him. Or maybe it was the Gators done something stupid.

  Leeli had spread sheets on the bed in a room off the kitchen, and sealed a hole in the window screen with a stuffed rag, and secured a lamp for the bedside table. She was sitting on the bed, her knees tucked to her chin, tanned legs agleam in the tallowy light.

  —What we gonna do? she asked.

  —I told you what I wanted to do back in Ocala.

  She hid her face, resting her forehead on her knees. It’s not back in Ocala now. We gotta figure something to do.

  —Don’t know about you, but I’m getting high. I showed her the pills.

  —What is it?

  —Dilaudid.

  —Is it something good?

  —It’s evil. You gonna fucking adore it.

  I powdered a handful of pills in the bottom of a teacup and let Leeli feed her nose from the tip of a knife blade.

  —Oooh, she said, sliding down in the bed, closing her eyes.

  —What I tell ya?

  I did more than Leeli, enough so the world fitted around me like a warm liquid glove and there were little sparkles at the corners of my sight and when I moved my hand I felt the exact curve of my shoulder and the muscles playing sweetly in my arm. I lay back next to Leeli. The ceiling was bare gray boards and beams with black grainy patterns and sparkles pricking the gaps that were probably stars. It looked distant and enormous, part of some ancient building that was proud of itself, a church where saints and great soldiers were buried, and terrible instruction was regularly given to the faithful, lots of Go-thous and Verily-thee-must-hastens that resulted in dungeons filled with bones and chained apes with blood on their teeth and crestfallen martyrs, but it didn’t have no message for me. My eyelids were trying to droop and my mind drooped too, blissfully trivial, noticing stuff about the high, the tremor in my leg, a pincushion sensation in my left foot, a nerve jigging in my chest. Something landed softly on my stomach, its warmth spreading like a melting pat of butter. Leeli’s palm. Feel up to having some fun? she asked. Her hand slipped lower and she flicked my zipper.

  —I ain’t never gonna say no, but I’m pretty damn wasted.

  —Me, too. I don’t really need to or nothing. I just want to see what it’s like…when I’m like this, y’know. Okay?

  We fucked like space babies in no gravity, coming together at goofy angles, forgetting for long moments what we were doing, our minds scatting on some loopy riff, reawakened by the touch of lips, a breast, something that got us all juicy and eager for a time, speeding it up and lapsing again into slow motion, into stillness. It took Leeli damn near an hour to come and once she started it took her almost the same to stop. She curled up into me after like a dazed, sleek bug that had eaten too much of a leaf and said, Sweet Jesus. That was amazing! I was too gassed to respond. If we’d been a pair of spiders, she could have gnawed off my legs and laid eggs in my belly and I wouldn’t have argued the matter.

  Leeli had some trouble sleeping due to the itching that goes with the Dilaudid wearing off, but finally her breathing grew even and deep. I did a few more hits, pulled on my pants and went onto the porch. A wind had sprung up, driving away the skeeters and quieting the frogs. Clouds edged with milky light were racing the moon, parting around it, and the grasses gave forth with an approving chorus, like the sound Leeli made when the Dilaudid rushed upon her, only louder by a million throats, seeming to appreciate the architecture of dust and reflected fire in the sky, the hosanna clouds, the lacquered moon-colored water, the grasses tipped in silver, the black cut-outs of the palm islands like left-over pieces of Africa. I had that feeling of small nobility and pure solitude the world wants you to feel when it reveals this side of itself, so you’ll believe nature was this awesome beautiful peaceful rock concert deal before man come along and doggy-fucked it full of disease, and not the bloody, biting, eat-your-meat-while-it’s-alive horror show it truly is. That night I was okay about feeling this way and I walked along the shore, sucking in the odors of fish and frogs and the millions of unrecorded deaths that had accompanied the HoJo manager’s as if they were the latest Paris perfumes.

  I thought I was out there on my lonesome, just me and a scrap of wilderness and Dilaudid, but when I climbed a hummock to avoid wading through the marsh, I spied Ava, Carl, and Squire standing at the tip of a grassy point about sixty feet farther along. Ava was gesturing at the sky like she was naming stars or teaching about the weather or something. Squire and Carl, whose jaw was bandaged, were gazing upward. I was too fogged to jam their nature walk in with all the other nothing junk I knew concerning them and make any sense of it, but when they strolled off still farther from the lodge, I realized this was my opportunity to take a peek at Ava’s personals and maybe scoop up some cash. I hustled back as fast I could, which was not real fast, and located the room where she was bunking. Her tote bag was stuffed under a pillow. I found no money, but among the keys and Kleenex and cosmetics and all was a badge holder holding a photo ID. Official evidence that Ava was affiliated with the FBI. A fake, I thought, but then remembered where I’d met up with her and wasn’t so sure. At the bottom of the bag was a leatherette photo album. The first picture was an overexposed black and white shot of Ava and Carl leaning against a vintage Chevy Impala. The ’sixty-two convertible. She appeared to be around seventeen, eighteen, and wore white socks and buckle shoes and a print dress with a belling skirt that covered her legs to the mid-calves. Carl had on jeans and a sport shirt with its tail hanging out. He looked no younger than he did now. Another guy sat behind the wheel of the Impala. His face was a blur of sunlight, but going by his round head, I guessed this to be Squire. Both Ava and Carl were grinning and pointing at a shield-shaped sign on the shoulder of the road. The sign was also blurred, but readable: State Road 44.

  Several of the remaining pictures were shots of Carl, some of Ava and Carl. A few recent ones showed them with Squire. None of these said much to me, not like the first. Seeing that Ava had aged, though not so much as she should have, and Carl hadn’t aged a day, this gave rise to Star Trek movies in my head. Space aliens, UFOs, abductions, secret government projects, intelligent robots, all kinds of happy horse-shit
. A couple of times I thought I’d figured out who they must be, but if they were aliens or whatever on the run from the government, what the hell were they doing on government property? If they were working with the government, why were they hanging out with the likes of Leeli and me? And what was that house doing in the dunes near the Cape? A trap for lowlifes such as myself, I decided. That was it. Damn straight. Alien creatures from beyond the stars were studying the pork rind set. Government super-clones were learning how to mimic the scum of the earth so they would be in place to assassinate the redneck Jesus, who’d be coming to a womb in Kissimmee any day now. Or could be robot killers who did the evil bidding of the Bush administration were given vacations during which they hung out with real folks and fucked them up every whichaway. Or Squire and Carl were aliens who’d suffered brain damage in the Roswell crash and Ava was their rehab nurse, training them in the ways of society, and their vibrations were keeping her young. I got somewhat insane behind all this, creating tabloid headlines, picturing me and Leeli on the talk shows, discussing her alien lesbian lover with Jerry and Jay and David and the rest, going out to Hollywood to attend the premiere of the movie about our life story. Gradually I calmed down. There was bound to be a logical explanation for the photo and Carl’s recuperative powers and everything else. I told myself I’d get to the bottom of it eventually.

  I woke the following morning with a pistol barrel poking my nose and Rickey’s hand on my throat and his burnt-out eyes giving me a close-up of the dark sour-smelling rathole they opened into. It was like the little room he lived in was inside him, too. Straggles of hair curtained off his face, but did nothing to filter his rotten breath.

  —Motherfucker, you stole my dope! he said.

  Leeli gave a squeak and rolled off the bed, covering herself with the sheet.

  —Where the fuck is it? Rickey asked.

  —I took four goddamn tabs! I said. You want ’em back, you gonna have to scrape out my nose!