Dagger Key and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  I advanced him another hundred, with which he purchased two cartons of Camel Lights and a twelve-pack of Coca Cola Classic (these, I learned, were basic components of his nutrition and, along with Quaker Instant Grits, formed the bulk of his diet), and took a roundabout way home, thinking I’d give him a tour of the town where he would spend the next few weeks. Stanky displayed no interest whatsoever in the mill, the Revolutionary Era Lutheran Church, or Garnant House (home of the town’s founding father), but reacted more positively to the ziggurat at the rear of Garnant House, a corkscrew of black marble erected in eccentric tribute to the founding father’s wife, Ethelyn Garnant, who had died in childbirth; and when we reached the small central park where stands the statue of her son, Stanky said, “Hey, that’s decent, man!” and asked me to stop the car.

  The statue of William Garnant had been labeled an eyesore by the Heritage Committee, a group of women devoted to preserving our trivial past, yet they were forced to include it in their purview because it was the town’s most recognizable symbol—gift shops sold replica statuettes and the image was emblazoned on coffee mugs, post cards, paperweights, on every conceivable type of souvenir. Created in the early 1800s by Gunter Hahn, the statue presented Black William in age-darkened bronze astride a rearing stallion, wearing a loose-fitting shirt and tight trousers, gripping the reins with one hand, pointing toward the library with the other, his body twisted and head turned in the opposite direction, his mouth open in—judging by his corded neck—a cry of alarm, as if he were warning the populace against the dangers of literacy. Hahn did not take his cues from the rather sedentary monuments of his day, but, improbably, appeared to have been influenced by the work of heroic comic book artists such as Jim Steranko and Neal Adams, and thus the statue had a more fluid dynamic than was customary…or perhaps he was influenced by Black William himself, for it was he who had commissioned the sculpture and overseen its construction. This might explain the figure’s most controversial feature, that which had inspired generations of high school students to highlight it when they painted the statue after significant football victories: thanks to an elevated position in the saddle, Black William’s crotch is visible, and, whether intended or an inadvertency, an error in the casting process that produced an unwanted rumple in the bronze, it seems that he possessed quite a substantial package. It always gladdened my heart to see the ladies of the Heritage Committee, embarked upon their annual spring clean-up, scrubbing away with soap and rags at Black William’s genital pride.

  I filled Stanky in on Black William’s biography, telling him that he had fought with great valor in the Revolutionary War, but had not been accorded the status of hero, this due to his penchant for executing prisoners summarily, even those who had surrendered under a white flag. Following the war, he returned home in time to watch his father, Alan Garnant, die slowly and in agony. It was widely held that William had poisoned the old man. Alan resented the son for his part in Ethelyn’s death and had left him to be raised by his slaves, in particular by an immense African man to whom he had given the name Nero. Little is known of Nero; if more were known, we might have a fuller understanding of young William, who—from the war’s end until his death in 1808—established a reputation for savagery, his specialities being murder and rape (both heterosexual and homosexual). By all accounts, he ruled the town and its environs with the brutal excess of a feudal duke. He had a coterie of friends, who served as his loyal protectors, a group of men whose natures he had perverted, several of whom failed to survive his friendship. Accompanied by Nero, they rode roughshod through the countryside, terrorizing and defiling, killing anyone who sought to impede their progress. Other than that, his legacy consisted of the statue, the ziggurat, and a stubby tower of granite block on the bluff overlooking the town, long since crumbled into ruin.

  Stanky’s interest dwindled as I related these facts, his responses limited to the occasional “Cool,” a word he pronounced as if it had two syllables; but before we went on our way he asked, “If the guy was such a bastard, how come they named the town after him?”

  “It was a PR move,” I explained. “The town was incorporated as Garnantsburgh. They changed it after World War Two. The city council wanted to attract business to the area and they hoped the name Black William would be more memorable. Church groups and the old lady vote, pretty much all the good Christians, they disapproved of the change, but the millworkers got behind it. The association with a bad guy appealed to their self-image.”

  “Looks like the business thing didn’t work out. This place is deader than Mckeesport.” Stanky raised up in the seat to scratch his ass. “Let’s go, okay? I couldn’t sleep on the bus. I need to catch up on my Zs.”

  My house was one of the row houses facing the mill, the same Andrea and I had rented when we first arrived. I had since bought the place. The ground floor I used for office space, the second floor for the studio, and I lived on the third. I had fixed up the basement, formerly Andrea’s office, into a musician-friendly apartment—refrigerator, stove, TV, et al—and that is where I installed Stanky. The bus ride must have taken a severe toll. He slept for twenty hours.

  After three weeks I recognized that Stanky was uncommonly gifted and it was going to take longer to record him than I had presumed—he kept revealing new facets of his talent and I wanted to make sure I understood its full dimension before getting too deep into the process. I also concluded that although musicians do not, in general, adhere to an exacting moral standard, he was, talent aside, the most worthless human being I had ever met. Like many of his profession, he was lazy, irresponsible, untrustworthy, arrogant, slovenly, and his intellectual life consisted of comic books and TV. To this traditional menu of character flaws, I would add “deviant.” The first inkling I had of his deviancy was when Sabela, the Dominican woman who cleaned for me twice a week, complained about the state of the basement apartment. Since Sabela never complained, I had a look downstairs. In less than a week, he had trashed the place. The garbage was overflowing and the sink piled high with scummy dishes and pots half-full of congealed grits; the floors covered in places by a slurry of cigarette ash and grease, littered with candy wrappers and crumpled Coke cans. A smell compounded of spoilage, bad hygiene and sex seemed to rise from every surface. The plastic tip of a vibrator peeked out from beneath his grungy sheets. I assured Sabela I’d manage the situation, whereupon she burst into tears. I asked what else was troubling her and she said, “Mister Vernon, I no want him.”

  My Spanish was poor, Sabela’s English almost non-existent, but after a few minutes I divined that Stanky had been hitting on her, going so far as to grab at her breasts. This surprised me—Sabela was in her forties and on the portly side. I told her to finish with the upstairs and then she could go home. Stanky returned from a run to the 7-11 and scuttled down to the basement, roachlike in his avoidance of scrutiny. I found him watching Star Trek in the dark, remote in one hand, TV Guide (he called it “The Guide”) resting on his lap, gnawing on a Butterfingers. Seeing him so at home in his filthy nest turned up the flame under my anger.

  “Sabela refuses to clean down here,” I said. “I don’t blame her.”

  “I don’t care if she cleans,” he said with a truculent air.

  “Well, I do. You’ve turned this place into a shithole. I had a metal band down here for a month, it never got this bad. I want you to keep it presentable. No stacks of dirty dishes. No crud on the floor. And put your damn sex toys in a drawer. Understand?”

  He glowered at me.

  “And don’t mess with Sabela,” I went on. “When she wants to clean down here, you clear out. Go up to the studio. I hear about you groping her again, you can hump your way back to Mckeesport. I need her one hell of a lot more than I need you.”

  He muttered something about “another producer.”

  “You want another producer? Go for it! No doubt major labels are beating down my door this very minute, lusting after your sorry ass.”

  Stanky fidd
led with the remote and lowered his eyes, offering me a look at his infant bald spot. Authority having been established, I thought I’d tell him what I had in mind for the next weeks, knowing that his objections—given the temper of the moment—would be minimal; yet there was something so repellent about him, I still wanted to give him the boot. I had the idea that one of Hell’s lesser creatures, a grotesque, impotent toad, banished by the Powers of Darkness, had landed with a foul stink on my sofa. But I’ve always been a sucker for talent and I felt sorry for him. His past was plain. Branded as a nerd early on and bullied throughout high school, he had retreated into a life of flipping burgers and getting off on a 4-track in his mother’s basement. Now he had gravitated to another basement, albeit one with a more hopeful prospect and a better recording system.

  “Why did you get into music?” I asked, sitting beside him. “Women, right? It’s always women. Hell, I was married to a good-looking woman, smart, sexy, and that was my reason.”

  He allowed that this had been his reason as well.

  “So how’s that working out? They’re not exactly crawling all over you, huh?”

  He cut his eyes toward me and it was as if his furnace door had slid open a crack, a blast of heat and resentment shooting out. “Not great,” he said.

  “Here’s what I’m going to do.” I tapped out a cigarette from his pack, rolled it between my fingers. “Next week, I’m bringing in a drummer and a bass player to work with you. I own a part-interest in the Crucible, the alternative club in town. As soon as you get it together, we’ll put you in there for a set and showcase you for some people.”

  Stanky started to speak, but I beat him to the punch. “You follow my lead, you do what I know you can…” I said, leaving a significant pause. “I guarantee you won’t be going home alone.”

  He waited to hear more, he wanted to bask in my vision of his future, but I knew I had to use rat psychology; now that I had supplied a hit of his favorite drug, I needed to buzz him with a jolt of electricity.

  “First off,” I said, “we’re going to have to get you into shape. Work off some of those man-tits.”

  “I’m not much for exercise.”

  “That doesn’t come as a shock,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to make a new man out of you, I just want to make you a better act. Eat what I eat for a month or so, do a little cardio. You’ll drop ten or fifteen pounds.” Falsely convivial, I clapped him on the shoulder and felt a twinge of disgust, as if I had touched a hypo-allergenic cat. “The other thing,” I said. “That Local Profitt Junior name won’t fly. It sounds too much like a country band.”

  “I like it,” he said defiantly.

  “If you want the name back later, that’s up to you. For now, I’m billing you as Joe Stanky.”

  I laid the unlit cigarette on the coffee table and asked what he was watching, thinking that, for the sake of harmony, I’d bond with him a while.

  “Trek marathon,” he said.

  We sat silently, staring at the flickering black-and-white picture. My mind sang a song of commitments, duties, other places I could be. Stanky laughed, a cross between a wheeze and a hiccup.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “John Colicos sucks, man!”

  He pointed to the screen, where a swarthy man with Groucho Marx eyebrows, pointy sideburns, and a holstered ray gun seemed to be undergoing an agonizing inner crisis. “Michael Ansaara’s the only real Vulcan,” Stanky looked at me as if seeking validation. “At least,” he said, anxious lest he offend, “on the original Trek.”

  Absently, I agreed with him. My mind rejoined its song. “Okay,” I said, and stood. “I got things to do. We straight about Sabela? About keeping the place…you know? Keeping the damage down to normal levels?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay. Catch you later.”

  I started for the door, but he called to me, employing that wheedling tone with which I had become all too familiar. “Hey, Vernon?” he said. “Can you get me a trumpet?” This asked with an imploring expression, screwing up his face like a child, as if he were begging me to grant a wish.

  “You play the trumpet?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “If you promise to take care of it. Yeah, I can get hold of one.”

  Stanky rocked forward on the couch and gave a tight little fist-pump. “Decent!”

  I don’t know when Stanky and I got married, but it must have been sometime between the incident with Sabela and the night Mia went home to her mother. Certainly my reaction to the latter was more restrained than was my reaction to the former, and I attribute this in part to our union having been joined. It was a typical rock and roll marriage: talent and money making beautiful music together and doomed from the start, on occasion producing episodes in which the relationship seemed to be crystallized, allowing you to see (if you wanted to) the messy bed you had made for yourself.

  Late one evening, or maybe it wasn’t so late—it was starting to get dark early—Mia came downstairs and stepped into my office and set a smallish suitcase on my desk. She had on a jacket with a fake fur collar and hood, tight jeans, and her nice boots. She’d put a fresh raspberry streak in her black hair and her make-up did a sort of Nefertiti-meets-Liza thing. All I said was, “What did I do this time?”

  Mia’s lips pursed in a moue—it was her favorite expression and she used it at every opportunity, whether appropriate or not. She would become infuriated when I caught her practicing it in the bathroom mirror.

  “It’s not what you did,” she said. “It’s that clammy little troll in the basement.”

  “Stanky?”

  “Do you have another troll? Stanky! God, that’s the perfect name for him.” Another moue. “I’m sick of him rubbing up against me.”

  Mia had, as she was fond of saying, “been through some stuff,” and, if Stanky had done anything truly objectionable, she would have dealt with him. I figured she needed a break or else there was someone in town with whom she wanted to sleep.

  “I take it this wasn’t consensual rubbing,” I said.

  “You think you’re so funny! He comes up behind me in tight places. Like in the kitchen. And he pretends he has to squeeze past.”

  “He’s in our kitchen?”

  “You send him up to use the treadmill, don’t you?”

  “Oh…right.”

  “And he has to get water from the fridge, doesn’t he?”

  I leaned back in the chair and clasped my hands behind my head. “You want me to flog him? Cut off a hand?”

  “Would that stop it? Give me a call when he’s gone, okay?”

  “You know I will. Say hi to mom.”

  A final moue, a moue that conveyed a soupcon of regret, but—more pertinently—made plain how much I would miss her spoonful of sugar in my coffee.

  After she had gone, I sat thinking non-specific thoughts, vague appreciations of her many virtues, then I handicapped the odds that her intricate make-up signaled an affair and decided just how pissed-off to be at Stanky. I shouted downstairs for him to come join me and dragged him out for a walk into town.

  A mile and a quarter along the Polozny, then up a steep hill, would bring you to the park, a triangular section of greenery (orange-and-brownery at that time of year) bordered on the east by the library, on the west by a row of brick buildings containing gentrified shops, and, facing the point of the triangle, by McGuigan’s. For me alone, it was a brisk half-hour walk; with Stanky in tow, it took an extra twenty minutes. He was not one to hide his discomfort or displeasure. He panted, he sagged, he limped, he sighed. His breathing grew labored. The next step would be his last. Wasn’t it enough I forced him to walk three blocks to the 7-11? If his heart failed, drop his bones in a bucket of molten steel and ship his guitars home to Mckeesport, where his mother would display them, necks crossed, behind the urn on the mantle.

  These comments went unvoiced, but they were eloquently stated by his body language. He acted out every nuance of emotion, like a chi
ld showing off a new skill. Send him on an errand he considered important and he would give you his best White Rabbit, head down, hustling along on a matter of urgency to the Queen. Chastise him and he would play the penitent altar boy. When ill, he went with a hand clutching his stomach or cheek or lower back, grimacing and listless. His posturing was so pitifully false, it was disturbing to look at him. I had learned to ignore these symptoms, but I recognized the pathology that bred them—I had seen him, thinking himself unwatched, slumped on the couch, clicking the remote, the Guide spread across his lap, mired in the quicksand of depression, yet more arrogant than depressed, a crummy king forsaken by his court, desperate for admirers.

  On reaching the library, I sat on a middle step and fingered out a fatty from my jacket pocket. Stanky collapsed beside me, exhausted by the Polozny Death March he had somehow survived. He flapped a hand toward McGuigan’s and said, hopefully, “You want to get a beer?”

  “Maybe later.”

  I fired up the joint.

  “Hey!” Stanky said. “We passed a cop car on the hill, man.”

  “I smoke here all the time. As long as you don’t flaunt it, nobody cares.”

  I handed him the joint. He cupped the fire in his palm, smoking furtively. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t drink from the same glass as him—his gums were rotting, his teeth horribly decayed—but sharing a joint? What the hell. The air was nippy and the moon was hidden behind the alder’s thick leaves, which had turned but not yet fallen. Under an arc lamp, the statue of Black William gleamed as if fashioned of obsidian.