Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan (Volume One)

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “Silly fool,” she whispers, knows it’s goddamned ridiculous to be scared of an ugly old tree when there’s plenty enough else to be scared of in this city; silly bitch, but there’s her church-neat line of charms and candles, anyway, painted saints and plastic Jesus and Mother Mary on the windowsill. Her careful shrine just in case it’s not so silly to be afraid of ghosts after all, ghosts and worse things than ghosts.

  They used to hang pirates from that tree, someone said, and thieves and runaway slaves, too. Just about everyone got hung from that tree, depending on who you happen to ask. And there’s also the tale about the Storyville lovers: impossible and magic days a hundred years ago when hooking and gambling were legal, Storyville red-light before the whole district was razed for more legitimate corruption: a gentleman gambler from Memphis, or St. Louis, or Chicago, and he fell in hopeless love with a black girl, or a mulattress, under this very tree, except she was a loup-garou, and when she finally showed him her real face he went stark raving bug-fuck mad. Some claim you can still find their initials carved in the trunk, name-scars trapped inside a heart, if you know where to look, can still hear her crying if the moon and wind are right. Can still hear the greenstick snap of his bones between her teeth.

  None of that folktale shit even half as bad as the bleached animal skulls and little skeletons wired together wrong ways round, charms the voodoo women still leave in the limbs when no one’s watching, the things JoJo won’t ever cut down, won’t even let Arlo get near them, never mind the awful racket they make whenever a storm blows up.

  And tonight it just stares right back at her, that magnolia and all its guarded secrets, truths and lies and half-truths, steadfast, constant while the world moves around it. Not tonight it ain’t gonna blink for you or for nobody else, not a chance, she thinks, and then Chantel Jackson crosses herself, reaches for the dangling cord to lower the blind, and down there in the always-shadow that grows beneath a tree like this tree she sees the men coming, the dark and confident men on the overgrown walk to the front door nailed shut. And one face glances up, and maybe it sees her, small and haunted in the frame of her window, and maybe it doesn’t, but it smiles, either way, and she hears the wind, and the bones in the tree, like champing teeth and judgment.

  The door bursts open, cracking splinter-nail explosion, door years sealed and boarded but off its rusted hinges in one small part of an instant and split straight down the center. Arlo doesn’t wait to see, one hand beneath the bar and right back up with the shotgun Jo keeps mounted there, twelve-gauge slide-action always loaded, and he levels it at the bad shit pouring through the shattered door. Men huge and black and hard enough they barely seem real, skin like angry, living night, the flat glint of submachine gun steel and machete blades; the domino players cursing, scatter of bodies as Arlo levels the Winchester’s barrel at the Haitians, white tiles flying like broken teeth, tables and chairs up for shields before the thunder. God of sounds so loud and sudden it wipes away anything else in the buckshot spray, and Arlo blasts the first big fucker through the door, and he also hits a man named Scooter Washington, slow and skinny shit into JoJo for almost ten thousand dollars, and Scooter falls just as hard.

  Jimmy DeSade is moving now, scrambled vault uninvited over the bar and something coming out of his jacket, but no time for Arlo to see just what as he pumps the shotgun again, empty shell spit, and he makes thunder one more time before the Haitians are talking back, staccato bursts chewing apart the room, wood and plaster and flesh all the same. Hot buzz past Arlo’s left ear, and the long mirror behind the bar comes apart, razor-shard rain as he drops to the floor, and it seems like every bullet ever made is hitting the bar, punching straight through the oak and finding the steel plating hidden underneath.

  “Shit,” he says, can hardly hear himself over the Uzis, but “Shit, shit, shit” anyhow, and Jimmy DeSade doesn’t say a word, big-ass revolver in his steady white hands, the six-shot cylinder flipped open, chambers full, snapped closed again, careful man double-checking; the glass still falling on them, downpour of glass and whiskey, rum and all the sweet and sticky liqueurs. And then silence as harsh and sudden as the gunfire, heady quiet weighted at the edges with the choking stink of gunpowder and spilled alcohol.

  “Sonofabitch.” Arlo knows how scared he sounds but doesn’t care. Then the booming, pissed-off voice from the other side – ”Hey there, Mr. JoJo Franklin!” – alligator-bellow voice pounding air still friable from the guns. “Where are you at, Mr. JoJo Franklin?”

  “You know these people?” and a full moment passes before Arlo realizes that the question is meant for him, Jimmy DeSade and his shiny black Smith and Wesson crouched back here with him, and Arlo wonders if his chances are really that much better on this side of the bar.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know them. They were around last night. Business with Jo, but I don’t know what, honest. A bunch of Haitians from the other side of the river – ”

  “I say, I done come to talk to you, Mr. JoJo Franklin!”

  Arlo swallows, fever-dry swallow, closes his eyes and digs down deep for calm, anything to make his hands stop shaking. “That one talking, he was with the Tonton Macoute, I think, before Duvalier went down.”

  “That’s sure some reassuring shit, Arlo,” words sizzling out between clenched teeth, and Jimmy DeSade stares up at the place where the mirror used to be.

  “I don’t know his name – ”

  “Going to have to start shooting again if you ain’t gonna talk!” the Haitian shouts, and Arlo can hear the impatient, grinding sound of their boots on broken glass. “Going to have to start killing some of these fine people out here, Mr. JoJo Franklin!”

  Jimmy DeSade bows his head, the tip of his sharp nose resting against the shark-fin sight at the end of the pistol’s long barrel; he sighs, and that’s another bad sound to make Arlo’s stomach roll. “Stupid bastard’s probably halfway to Baton Rouge by now,” Jimmy DeSade whispers. “Wouldn’t you say that’s a fair enough guess, Arlo?”

  “Yeah, probably,” not like he’s gonna disagree, no matter what he thinks, and not like he has any fucking idea where Jo might be at the moment, just wishing he was there, too, and it was somewhere far away, wishing he’d taken Rabbit and hit the road a long time ago. “We’re absolutely fucked,” he says. And Jimmy DeSade looks at him, and the sunglasses have slipped down his nose a little ways, far enough that Arlo gets a glimpse of the grey-blue eyes back there, almost the same eyes as Rabbit’s: wolf eyes, and now he thinks maybe he’s going to throw up after all.

  “Sooner or later, everybody’s fucked,” Jimmy DeSade says calmly, resolutely, as he thumbs back the revolver’s hammer and stands up.

  After the bald man’s come, and Rabbit lies on his stomach on the bed, squeaky springs finally silent again and his asshole on fire, forget the witch hazel, he’s gonna be wearing fucking maxi pads on his butt. Semen-wet, sweat-damp down there; blood, too, but he lies very still while the man puts his clothes on again, zips himself up, and Rabbit only clenches his fists a little because it hurts, and he wants to be alone. Wants to fix and go to sleep and forget these two ever happened.

  “Good fuck, masisi,” the man says, his satisfied grunt like Rabbit’s stepfather pushing back from the dinner table after a big meal. “A shame that I have to kill a pretty piece of ass like you,” and the words not quite registering, threat too many steps removed from here and now, as unreal and far away as the tall, death-quiet man standing at the door, but Rabbit’s rolling over, turning so he can see the big bald man and his rumpled clothes and the machete in his right hand.

  “It ain’t nothing personal,” he says, the sour hint of a smile at the thick corners of his mouth. “Je suis un pauvre Tonton, Miss Chantel, and I just do what my boss say to do, and he say it will teach JoJo Franklin a lesson if we kill his special whore.”

  Rabbit’s mouth open and the words jammed in his throat, I ain’t Chantel, words dead as corn in fear-dry fields, spit gone to paste. And the bald
man’s arm rises like proof of guilt and penalty being served.

  “No, no. I’m not Chantel,” ugly croak across Rabbit’s lips, not his voice, but those were words, words this man should understand, even this man with an arm that ends in that long dark blade. “You got the wrong room – ”

  Abrupt apocalypse, then, downstairs cacophony and Armageddon coming up through the floorboards, everything there but the trumpets; Rabbit moving, belly scramble across the bed, and he can feel the shudder of shotgun blasts, one, two, before the machine-gun tattoo begins, and by then he’s off the other side of the bed, falling like this was the edge of a flat world, no sound as he hits the floor because there’s so much sound already. Blood in his mouth because he’s bitten the tip of his tongue, and one hand’s pushing in between the mattress and box springs, frantic grope, and it’s there somewhere, it’s always fucking there so why can’t he find it. I don’t give a shit if it scares you, Arlo said. You’re gonna take it and put it someplace you can get to it fast if you ever have to, okay? But this isn’t fast enough, not nearly fast enough.

  Downstairs, the gunfire stops, and now there’s just his heart and the bald man’s footsteps coming round the end of the bed, the bald man cussing the stupid little faggot on the floor, and Rabbit’s hand closes around the cold butt of the pistol.

  “I can make it fast for you,” the bald man says, “if you just be still for me,” and then he’s looking at the gun in Rabbit’s trembling hand, Rabbit scooting backwards across the floor, hard bump into the nightstand, and something falls off, breaks loud and wet. The bald man is laughing now. “Oh, you gonna shoot me, eh? You gonna shoot poor Charlot with that silly – ” And Arlo says so calm and patient, Squeeze the trigger, just point it and squeeze the trigger, so Rabbit squeezes, winces expectantly, but it’s not such a big sound after all, bottle-rocket pop, firecracker pop, and then that hole opening up like magic in the bald man’s neck. Neat little hole barely big enough to put a pinky finger in, just a little blood for him to look so surprised as the machete clatters to the floor and his big hands fumble for his throat.

  Rabbit squeezes the trigger again, and the man stumbles, sinking slowly to his knees, and there’s still nothing much on his face but surprise. Grin wide and white teeth bared, mouth open to speak but there’s only more blood, a fat red trickle from the corner of his mouth and down his chin.

  “Fucking die, goddamnit,” Rabbit growls, but it’s like someone else said that, someone in a movie, and the next bullet hits the bald man square in the face; there’s lots of blood this time, a warm and sticky mist that gets Rabbit before the man tumbles over on his side and lies dead on top of the machete. A quick glance at the tall man, almost-forgotten accomplice, and Rabbit’s adrenaline-stiff arms pointing the pistol that way, but he hasn’t moved, slack face just as blank as before, the dead man’s jacket still draped across one arm.

  “Whatever this shit’s about,” says Jimmy DeSade, speaking so calmly to the big Haitian, “it doesn’t have anything to do with me.” Arlo’s still crouched on the floor with the shotgun, wondering if he can make the stairs without getting killed, maybe even make it all the way up to Rabbit’s room, and then the both of them could duck down the rickety back steps to the alley and get the fuck away from here, just as far and fast as they can run.

  “Who the hell are you?” says the big Haitian, and Jimmy DeSade replies, “Nobody. Nobody that wants any trouble,” and then he kicks Arlo hard in the hip with the sharp toe of one of his sharp black boots.

  “All we got here tonight is trouble,” says the Haitian and he laughs, laughter rumbling around the room like reckless desolation. “So you in the wrong damn place, Mr. Skinnybones White Man, if you don’t want no trouble.” And then Jimmy DeSade gives Arlo the boot again.

  “Fuck you,” he says, before he has time to think better of it, words out before there’s any stopping himself.

  “I don’t work for JoJo Franklin,” says Jimmy DeSade. “Whatever he’s done to you, it’s got nothing to do with me. And I don’t give a shit and a holler what you do to him. He probably has it coming.”

  Silence for a moment, like maybe the Haitian’s thinking all this over, and Jimmy DeSade may as well be marble as flesh and bone, may as well be carved out of fucking ice, standing there with his finger on the trigger and the long barrel pointed straight ahead.

  “But maybe I don’t care ’bout that, Mr. Skinnybones,” the Haitian rumbles. “Maybe I’m so pissed off tonight I just want to kill me all the ugly white motherfuckers I can find.”

  Copperhead words from Jimmy DeSade’s pale lips, then, whisper-hiss dripping down on Arlo’s ears – “Get the hell up here, Arlo, or I swear to fucking God I’m gonna shoot you myself.” And because there’s nothing left to do, because he doesn’t have the guts to run, doesn’t have the guts to stay put, Arlo slowly stands up. Slow as a man can move, slow as dawn at the end of the world’s longest night. He clutches the shotgun to his chest, crucifix of steel, gunpowder rosary, and the two men are talking again, but there’s no room in his head for anything now but the meat-hammer sound of his heart.

  And the sudden, clumsy thump and thud of footsteps on the stairs.

  It’s not like in the movies, not at all, slow-motion painful so everything makes sense even if there’s nothing he can do to stop it; no time for regret and pointless dot-to-dot foresight. Time for nothing but scalding adrenaline and the Winchester coming down, pumped and both barrels emptied before Arlo knows it’s Rabbit, Rabbit half naked on the stairs and the tall black man trailing behind, tall man in a Mickey-the-fucking-Mouse T-shirt and Can you believe that shit? Tall man there to catch the body, all that’s left after Arlo’s pulled the trigger and the iron shot has done its work and there’s only the crimson-black hole where Rabbit’s belly was and the empty look on his pretty face that isn’t surprise or accusation or pain or anything else Arlo’s ever seen before.

  A cold pearl sun almost up and the eastern sky turning oyster-white off towards Biloxi and Mobile; Jimmy DeSade sits hunched behind the Lincoln’s steering wheel, trying not to notice the muddy, dark waters of Lake Pontchartrain, the waves rough and sleek as reptile skin beneath the long bridge out of New Orleans. He lights a cigarette and keeps his eyes on the road, stares down the car’s long hood, the tarnished ornament like his pistol’s sight and his foot on the trigger.

  Nothing he could have done back there, nothing else at all but what he did; twelve fat kilos of primo coke traded to the Haitians for his skin, and they let him walk away, luckiest fucking day of his whole shitty life, and there ought to be relief burning him up from the inside out, but there’s just the image of Arlo kneeling over the ruined body of the dark boy in women’s underwear. Arlo screaming, tin-and-gravel man-scream, a sound to keep the dead awake nights, and everything so ridiculously goddamn still as the shotgun turned towards the Haitians. The cartoon sharp bang when Jimmy DeSade put a bullet in Arlo’s head, bang, and the Winchester clattering to the floor. He knows it was that bullet saved his life, not the fucking dope; that’s a stone-cold fact, and there’s nothing he can ever do to change it.

  Jimmy DeSade stares out at the stark and brightening world from behind his tinted lenses, and his big car rolls east, and the sun makes no difference whatsoever.

  * * *

  Breakfast in the House of the Rising Sun

  Jimmy DeSade and I were shadow lovers for years, and never mind Salmagundi, who was also my lover for years. This story was conceived in the summer of 1995, much of which I spent in Poppy’s old house in New Orleans, sweating through long magnolia-scented nights. I was just beginning to find my voice here, my first voice, which would serve me well for a few years.

  Estate

  Rough and hungry boy, barely nineteen, that first time Silas Desvernine saw the Storm King, laid bright young eyes to raw granite and green rash rising up and up above the river and then lost again in the Hudson morning mist. The craggy skull of the world, he thought, scalped by some Red Indian god and
left to bleed, grain by mica grain, and he leaned out past the uncertain rails of the ferryboat’s stern, frothy wake-slash on the dark water and no reflection there. He squinted, and there was the railroad’s iron scar winding around its base, cross-tie stitches, and already the fog was swallowing the mountain, the A. F. Beach’s restless side-wheel carrying him away, upriver, deeper into the Highlands, towards Newburgh and work in Albany. Now he opens his leathery old eyelids and it’s deadest winter 1941, not that wet May morning in 1889. Old, old man, parchment and twigs, instead of that boy, and he’s been nodding off again, drifting away, but her voice has brought him back. Her voice across the decades, and he wipes away a stringy bit of drool at the corner of his mouth.

  “Were you dreaming again?” she asks, soft velvet tongue from her corner, and he blinks, stares up into the cold, empty light spilling down through the high windows, stingy, narrow slits in the stone of the long mansard roof.

  “No,” he mumbles. No, but he understands damn well there’s no point to the lie, no hiding himself from her, but at least he’s made the effort.

  “Yes. You were,” she says, Jesus, that voice that’s never a moment older than the first time and the words squeeze his tired heart. “You were dreaming about Storm King, the first time you saw the mountain, the first morning.”

  “Please,” no strength in him, begging and she stops, all he knows of mercy. He wishes the sun were warm on his face, warm where it falls in weak-tea pools across the clutter of his gallery. Most of his collection here, the better part, gathered around him like the years and the creases in his stubbled face. Dying man’s pride, dead-man-to-be obsession, possessions, these things he spent a life gathering, stolen or secreted, but made his own so they could be no one else’s. The things sentenced to float out his little forever in murky formalin tombs, specimen jars and stoppered bottles, a thousand milky eyes staring nowhere. Glass eyes in taxidermied skulls, bodies stuffed with sawdust; wings and legs spread wide and pinned inside museum cases. Old bones yellowed and wired together in shabby mockeries of life, older bones gone to silica and fossilized, varnished, shellacked. Plaster and imagination wherever something might have been lost. Here, the teeth of leviathans; there, the claws of a behemoth. A piece of something fleshy that once fell from the sky over Missouri and kept inside a bell jar. Toads from stones found a mile underground. Sarcophagi and defiled Egyptian nobility raveling inside, crumbling like him, and a chunk of amber as big as an orange and the carbonized hummingbird trapped inside fifty million years.