The Best of Lucius Shepard

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

—You might wanna wait to ask ’til Squire’s finished, I said as he turned away.

  —Oh…yeah. Okay.

  —But you better go back on in now. You wanna be there so you can get next.

  He set off again and I called to him, asked where the food was.

  —Kitchen, he said and slipped into Ava’s room.

  Eight Burger King take-out sacks were resting on the kitchen table. I found one full of double cheeseburgers and carried it onto the porch. Leeli! I shouted, and waggled the sack out through the hole in the screen door. I got burgers!

  Her head twitched, but she didn’t turn. I sat on the porch steps under the porch overhang and unwrapped a cheeseburger and had a bite. Soaked through, Leeli’s yellowy white hair had the look of the down on a baby chick. She glared at me similar to how this drunk Seminole boy I’d met in the Panama Beach lock-up one fine morning had glared: sideways, his shoulders rolled forward, with his close eye wide and the other narrowed. I figured Leeli and that Seminole had about the same ambition toward me.

  I finished the burger and Leeli stomped over, snatched the bag and switched past me into the lodge. Don’t you come after me! she said. I’m not talking to you.

  —I hear you, sugar, I said. I’ll be right in.

  With her belly full, Leeli’s mood improved. She was near to purring, curled up on the bed and looking out at the rain, but still it took me a few tries to drag her into a conversation. I was just sitting there, I said, when they started going at it. What you expect me to do?—Leave, she said. I know how Ava and Squire get. You had plenty of warning.

  —That mean you watched ’em?

  —She wants me to!

  —Then why go beating on me about it?

  She clammed up, so I worked another angle, and when that didn’t satisfy her, I said, ’Member what you told me ’bout how you felt sometimes Ava was drowning you? I think I got a taste of what you were talking about.

  A little something tweaked behind Leeli’s face, but she didn’t let it out.

  —Yeah, it was strange, I said. It was like she was pulling on me. Maybe that’s why I kept setting there.

  —She’s a witch, Leeli said. I swear she is.

  —I don’t know ’bout that.

  —That’s right! You don’t know fuck all! I’m telling you she’s got this power…it just eats away at you ’til you’re nothing. ’Til you’re like Carl or Squire.

  I spun this around and then said, That’s how come you think Carl and Squire are slow?

  —Sometimes I think that. Leeli picked at a fray on the pillowcase. Sometimes I think she just wore ’em away.

  The witchy woman had tried to draw me close and drown me in her power. This seemed crazier than what Ava had told me, but only a little. Thinking about Ava as someone who left you hollow inside but still walking around wasn’t that tough a chore. I’d known regular folks who could do the same sort of job on you and I said as much to Leeli.

  —Naw, un-uh, it’s more’n that. It’s what you were saying. She pulls at you, but she’s not playing you. It’s who she is, know what I mean? It’s like that’s all she is…this force.

  A lightning crack ran violet down the eastern sky, like we were inside a gray egg that was cracking open in the middle of hell. The thunder came a few seconds later.

  —You pull at me, too, I said. Know that? You been pulling at me since New Smyrna.

  Leeli’s face went little-girl serious and big-eyed.

  I eased down beside her, laid a hand on her hip.

  —I’m scared, she said. Ava wants to go to Mexico. I can’t think what to do.

  —Let’s leave tonight. Let’s just go.

  —Where? Where can we go?

  —This old boy I got to know in Raiford runs with some bikers got land over ’round Palatka. Cops never come near their place. We could stay ’long as we want.

  —Maybe you’d be comfortable with a buncha bikers, but I wouldn’t. She snuggled in closer. Maybe we should go with Ava and the second we get to Mexico, that’s it. Money or not.

  —I don’t like the idea of traveling more miles with her.

  —It’s the safest way. Won’t be no security to pass through with a charter. Leeli picked up my hand from her hip and moved it around so I was holding her. ‘Less you got something better’n bikers.

  I considered Lauderdale, but Lauderdale was a hell of a drive and we couldn’t stay for long at my friend’s house.

  —Ain’t you scared? Leeli asked. I can’t tell if you are or not.

  —I’m past scared, I’m on into survive. That’s why I say get shut of ’em now.

  We left it hanging that way and closed the door and got foolish on the bed. Desperate straits and the desire to forget them lit up our nerves and made us better lovers. Leeli like to have died in my arms and my heart was sprained and limping in my chest, I worked it so long and furious. I left her drowsing and went into the kitchen and had another burger and a purple milk shake that tasted like nothing purple and puddled like melted plastic in my stomach. The TV was playing in Rickey’s room. I figured Ava must have kicked him to the curb.

  I returned to the bedroom and drifted beside Leeli. My flesh felt light and insubstantial and everything had the sharpness of an important memory, how you feel the thing remembered before you see and smell and taste it. It was like the world itself was forming a memory that used me how a pearl uses a sore spot, sealing me in so I could be dug out at some later date to be admired. The rain blew slanty, then straightened out, then it blew sideways and the lightning moved closer. The air darkened to an ashy color. Things bumped and clanked against some section of the lodge. You’d have thought the rain had turned to chains. The marsh grass rippled with pantherish fury, twisting and flowing in every direction. The storm smell was ozone and dank trouble.

  Sleep wouldn’t take me. I got dressed and padded down the hall to visit Rickey. He was in his chair, scratching himself, watching the local news with the sound low. He gave a disinterested, Hey, and paid me no mind as I drew up a chair.

  —You get laid? I asked.

  —Damn! Did I! That woman’s got some evil fucking ways!

  Rickey didn’t look much different for the experience and I thought the last shriveled-up scrap of soul must have been sucked out before Ava got to him.

  He craned his neck to see me. How long y’all staying?

  —Day or two. Why, you wanna go again with her?

  —She promises not to kill me.

  —Better ask for the pony ride next time.

  Rickey coughed out a laugh and spat into the garbage alongside his chair. He spaced out on the TV and I couldn’t think of anything more to say. Rickey wasn’t much of a talker but he enjoyed people with him when he watched his programs. I knew if I didn’t hang out a while, he’d feel he wasn’t being respected, so I sat there dead-headed, peering at his mess. Must have been every kind of candy wrapper in the world scattered around that floor. It was like investigating a cave where some sick animal had puked up a month of bad meals. The next time I glanced toward the TV, I saw a blonde woman in a pants suit with her microphone stuck in the face of the gray-haired reverend I’d manhandled back in Ocala. I told Rickey to hit the volume, and when he was slow to act, I grabbed the remote and did it myself. The reverend shook his head mournfully and said, There was so much confusion, I don’t know which one actually fired. It was the skinny one I saw holding the gun, but that’s after the shooting. All I can tell you for certain is I heard somebody shout, Hands up! Who wants to die? And then I heard the shots.

  —Hands up! Who wants to die? The blonde reporter acquired a serious look as the camera went to a close-up on her. Vikay Choudhoury responded to that challenge with a hero’s answer and now he lies dead. She paused for effect and said, This is Gloria Renard. Channel Twelve—

  I thumbed the mute button. There was a cold spread of panic inside me, like I was standing on the edge of a cliff and had just lost my balance.

  —You get on outa here, Maceo!
Rickey stared at me through the straggles of his hair. I mean right fucking now!

  —I didn’t kill nobody, I said.

  —I don’t care you did or you didn’t. Every damn cop in Volusia knows who it is says that dumb fucking hands-up-who-wants-to-die bullshit. You think they won’t be snooping ’round here? Wonder is, they ain’t here already.

  —We can’t leave now. They be on us ’fore we get clear the driveway.

  Rickey reached down beside his hip and produced his pistol. I’ll shoot you my own self, you don’t get on out.

  Anger was a cold snake snapping out of me. I ripped the gun from his hand, then I stood and began punching him. He tried to block the first couple with his forearms, but each one was a lesson I’d been taught to deliver, a preachment of old pain. The blows drove him lower in the chair until his butt was hanging half off the seat and his head was jammed into the join of the cushions and there was blood in his eyes. I couldn’t have said why, but the sight of him unconscious jabbed another red-hot stick into my brain. I smashed the pistol against the wall again and again. The trigger guard fell off and the cylinder popped out from the housing and I threw the rest to the floor. I knew Rickey was right about the cops. Maybe that was what set me off. That and recognizing how good a look at my face I’d given everybody in the HoJos. When God invented the notion of crazy trumping common sense, He must’ve had me in mind for the standard model. Everything considered, it was a goddamn miracle I’d come this far in life.

  The storm lived around us. Seemed the lodge was a battery discharging thunder cracks and splintered lightning that made stretches of churning marsh grass bloom for unholy seconds against the dark gulf of land and sky. I told Leeli about Rickey and the reverend and the cops and tried once again to persuade her to leave with me. She wouldn’t budge. Mexico, she kept saying, was the way to go. I didn’t put up all that much of an argument, having no better choice to offer. We brought Ava and Carl into the conversation, leaving Squire asleep, and stood on the porch in the flickering light and hashed things out. The storm appeared to frighten Carl. He sat in one of the rotted porch chairs, his hands to his ears, rocking his upper body.

  Leeli said she knew of a little rural airport west of New Smyrna where we could charter a plane, no questions, and Ava said she and Carl and Leeli would use Rickey’s car and take care of it right away.

  —Like hell! I said. We’ll go together.

  —You crazy? You know how it is when there’s a big storm, Ava said. Accidents and drownings. Cops’ll be all over the highway. There’ll be roadblocks. They see you, we’re finished.

  —That’s right! Leeli said. They gonna be too busy to worry ’bout looking for us now.

  —I’ll be damned I’m gonna let you run off without me, I said.

  —We can’t run off! Won’t nothing be flying ’til the storm blows out. But we set things up, we can fly soon as it does.

  —Just you go then, I said to Ava.

  —I can’t leave Carl. You see how he is. And I need Leeli to point the way.

  A pitchfork of lightning ripped away the dark and the thunder had a metallic sound, like somebody was pounding out a dent in the sky. Wind shivered the lodge and slammed loose boards.

  —Naw, I said. Leeli can give you directions.

  —What if I get ’em wrong? You got Squire here. Ain’t that enough of a guarantee?

  I couldn’t see Ava’s face in that moment, but I thought I felt slyness steaming off of her. Tell her the directions, Leeli, I said.

  —All those country roads. Leeli put a hand to her brow like a mentalist trying to make contact. I can show her, but I don’t know I can tell her.

  Rain drove in through the screen and we all moved back from it except for Carl, who just sat there rocking.

  —I don’t trust you no more’n you trust me, I said to Ava. We gonna have to work something else out.

  Another lightning flash brought leached colors to the porch and fitted a long shadow beneath every object. Things looked to be tilted, as if the wind had knocked the lodge askew.

  —Hang on, Ava said, and went off toward her bedroom.

  Leeli caught my hand and said something I didn’t catch, but had the sound of an assurance, and then Ava came back out onto the porch and handed me a thick envelope.

  —Fuck’s this? I asked.

  —The rest of the money I promised Leeli. You can hold it while we’re gone.

  Leeli’s eyes got stuck on the envelope as I inspected the contents. Hundred dollar bills and plenty of them.

  —That guarantee enough for ya? Ava asked. ’Tween Squire and the money, it’s ’bout the best I can do.

  I stuffed the envelope into my hip pocket. Leeli unstuck her eyes. I could see it was a strain for her and that she didn’t love the idea of leaving the envelope behind. All right, I said. I started to deliver a warning, to pose consequences, but there didn’t seem much point to it. We all knew the lay of the land.

  —All right, I repeated. Let’s get it rolling.

  You know how it goes. Sometimes you’re so deep in the world, so mired in its trouble, you forget that you were born, you forget you were raised to be a dead man, you think you got where you’re standing all on your own and that you’re holding destiny in your hands, and when somebody passes you a golden ticket that’s stamped Freedom or Foreverafter, you don’t check to see if the ink’s dry or if there’s printing on the back, because you’re walking the road your daddy cut for you and stepping along in clothes your mama sewed, because it’s the tendency of your kind to believe the lottery can be won, great prizes are within your grasp, and though the only winning ticket ever came your parents’ way was an error in their favor made by a bartender or a grocery clerk, though you understand you’re their homemade fool, you just can’t accept that the rules of their life apply to you. That golden ticket is a guarantee all right, a twenty-four karat guaranteed loser. You know this in your heart, but you hang onto the bitch like it was a pass through the Gates of Glory or a voucher for an all-expenses-paid weekend at Casino World on the Redneck Riviera, whichever premium you prefer.

  Thoughts such as these slammed my head as I dug through Rickey’s pockets, hunting for his keys. He was still unconscious, his face swollen from the beating I’d supplied him. Looked like he’d pissed off a swarm of bees. The keys were in the bib pocket of his overalls. I stood jingling them in my hand, holding a last debate over the wisdom of giving them to Ava. An old movie was playing on the TV. Japanese men in moonsuits were gazing awestruck at a fleet of flying saucers that soon began incinerating them with fiery beams. Watching them turn into bright wavering silhouettes and vanish somehow made my decision for me.

  Things moved right smartly after that. Ava and Carl went for the car, Leeli gave me a pert little kiss and said, Be back soon, and ran off after them. I patted my hip pocket to make certain the money was still there. A minute later I was standing on the porch steps, watching a pair of red taillights, one patched with duct tape, jouncing along over the uneven ground toward the highway, shining up tracers of rain. I had a moment of dissatisfaction with my decision and I pulled Ava’s gun from the waist of my jeans with half a thought of shooting out a tire. The car stopped at the end of the drive. There wasn’t any traffic I could see and I wondered what was going on. A creep of paranoia stirred me from the steps and out in the rain. I imagined Ava and Leeli arguing over whether or not to betray me. Thunder mauled the sky. The car swung out onto the highway. I felt like six kinds of fool, with the rain running down my neck, alone as ever was, the gun cold and weighty in my hand.

  The night grew wilder yet, the thunder continuous. A ring of fiery stick men a thousand feet tall jabbed and flashed on the horizons, penning me into their magic circle. There was such a confusion of light and sound, it rooted me to the spot. Behind the lodge a clump of palms bulked up solid, taking the shape of a black frowning Buddha in my mind, scrunched up and angry from having me in his sight. It seemed I could feel the wickedness of that place and
time, the mortal separation from the flow of life that wickedness enforces. I was flying, stranded on a scrap of soggy marsh that had been chewed off from the planet and set to spinning loose in the void. The rain needled my cheeks and brow, spitting alternately dark and silver. The lodge looked to be changing shape, crouching like a beast one second, the next blurring into an emblem of negativity, a symbol on a rippling banner, then collapsing back into the ruinous thing it pretended to be. I had the idea this was my night, my big moment, that I was being showed a reflection of everything I’d said and thought and done, the chaos of my life given larger, windier form, and this was the only celebration of my useless days I’d likely get, this storm too small to have a name but big enough to damage the unprepared, the tore-down spaces, the vacant properties of the world. Then I glanced south to where Ava and Carl and Leeli had gone and saw a flash of green. Not a dazzling seam and not the dull flicker of heat lightning, but a dynamic burst of bright neon color like an enormous bug zapper taking a hit. The color hung in the air, draping its afterimages around the palm crowns, and I recalled Ava’s story about the green light coming from the UFO. I tried to think of something else it could have been. I expect there must have been a hundred possibilities, but I couldn’t come up with one. The rain slowed to a drizzle and as if the green flash had been a cue, the storm began to fade, flaring up now and again with a grumble and a distant snip of fire, then fading even more, its battery running low. Drips and plops succeeded the fury of the wind. Through scudding clouds you could glimpse a freckling of stars, and soon a slice of moon surfaced from the horizon. I knew Carl and Ava and Leeli were gone. It wasn’t the flash that told me so. Too many thoughts were flapping around in my attic for me to work that part of it out. The alignment of the world, the wrecked lodge and foundered cabins, the swaying grasses and the dark water slurping at the mucky bank, the stars and all the rest—it was like a sign saying Gone had been struck through every layer of creation.

  Naturally I didn’t entirely believe this sign. Despite Ava’s anything-goes attitude toward screwing, I figured Squire must do something special for her, and I just knew Leeli wasn’t about to leave that money on the table. I patted my hip pocket again and this time I found nothing. No bulge, no envelope sticking out. I patted my other pockets and looked on the ground close by. Since I’d come out from the porch to watch them drive away, I hadn’t hardly moved a step, but there was no sign of the envelope. I told myself the wind must have took it. I searched along the edge of the water, near the porch, and as I was poking around in the grass, kicking scrap wood and fallen shingles aside, growing more desperate every second, because with or without Leeli I needed that money to get clear of Volusia County, it occurred to me there might never have been an envelope. Maybe Ava was that much of a witch. Maybe she’d handed me a parlor trick, an illusion, and made Leeli and me see what she wanted. Maybe Leeli had been in on the hustle and just pretended to be worried about the money. It was her, wasn’t it, led me to Ava in the first place? The missing envelope and the green flash and the stories Ava told, they all washed together into a stew of possibilities. I couldn’t separate out anything from it that sounded more than half true.