Hart & Boot & Other Stories

by Pratt, Tim

Thus tasting the fish. Thus gaining all its knowledge, and leaving his master, the hero, no wiser than before.

  That is why the salmon laughed.

  ***

  The morning after he slept with Rebekah, Graydon was perfectly charming, cooking breakfast, laughing with her, kissing her cheek. Inside, his heart was a cinder. He bid her farewell, promising to get together with her later in the week.

  When she was gone, he took four bottles of wine to the pond. He drank two, and poured the other two into the water. “Have a drink with me, Shiteater!” he shouted. “You’re my only friend!”

  The catfish did not surface.

  On Sunday, Graydon didn’t fish. During his research he’d learned that it was bad luck to fish on Sundays, and it seemed like a good time to be superstitious. Besides, he was hungover, and didn’t wake up until midafternoon. He thought about going to Atlanta, but the stores would be closed already—nothing stayed open very late in the South on Sundays.

  On Monday he went into the city and spent most of his remaining money on a speargun. He practiced in the yard with it all afternoon, shooting his sofa cushions for practice. There was no reason to rush. He wanted to do this right.

  Tuesday he rose before dawn, took the speargun and a bag of his most precious things to the pond, and waded into the water. He scattered his bait, and called for Shiteater as it began to rain.

  The catfish came out of the water and began to eat the things Graydon had scattered. Graydon watched, not moving, rain soaking his hair and filling the pond with ripples. As Shiteater swallowed the last floating thing—Rebekah’s braid—Graydon pointed the speargun at its head and fired.

  The spear sank deep into Shiteater’s head, and the fish spasmed, tail flailing against the water. Graydon wrapped both hands around the shaft of the spear and began pulling Shiteater toward the bank. It was easier than he’d expected, because the water buoyed the dead fish up. Graydon climbed onto the muddy, slick bank and wrestled Shiteater’s vast body onto the grass. He went back to the house and returned with a wheelbarrow and some scrap boards. After bracing the wheelbarrow’s wheel with a brick, he leaned the boards against the wheelbarrow, creating a makeshift ramp. Graydon shoved Shiteater’s heavy corpse up the boards until it flopped into the wheelbarrow, then wheeled it to the concrete patio behind his house. As he pushed, the rain stopped, just a brief summer shower, there and gone.

  Graydon dumped Shiteater onto the concrete and stood looking down at it, expecting some thrill of triumph, but he was still all cinders and stones inside, and felt nothing. He went inside for his knives, then set about gutting and cleaning the catfish, referring often to a book he’d bought that explained the process.

  After a while Graydon examined the contents of Shiteater’s stomach, but found little of interest, not even the things he’d most recently fed the fish—just weeds and mud. That was a disappointment. Graydon had hoped there would be... something inside. Something special.

  Well. He could still eat the catfish. That was the main thing. And it would cause something to happen—kill him, give him transcendent wisdom, make him forget, give him oblivion. Something.

  While Graydon cleaned the fish, the phone rang, but he ignored it, and eventually the caller gave up.

  Graydon was covered in blood and fishguts by the time he finished cleaning Shiteater. He wrapped the edible parts in plastic bags to keep the bugs from getting at them, then went to clean out the fireplace—Shiteater was too big for the oven, and Graydon wanted to cook him all at once.

  When the fireplace was clean, Graydon put charcoal and lighter fluid under the grate and started a fire. Once it was burning well, he put Shiteater on the grate. Soon, the fish began to roast. The smoke was strangely odorless.

  Graydon went into the bathroom and took a shower, letting the blood and guts cascade into the tub, letting the hot water pound on his over-strained muscles. After a while, afraid the fish would burn, he got out and wrapped a towel around himself.

  Rebekah was in the living room, kneeling before the fire, looking at the fish. “Hey, naked guy,” she said. “I tried to call, but you didn’t pick up. I figured you were out fishing. I guess I was right. This thing’s enormous.”

  “What are you doing here?” he said, thoroughly derailed. He hadn’t expected to see Rebekah again so soon, and he wasn’t sure what to do—as if, having successfully captured Shiteater, he had no further inner resources, and could make no more plans.

  “God, Lorrie and I had the worst fight, you wouldn’t believe it,” she said. “I had to get out of there for a while.” She leaned closer to the fire. “I think your fish is starting to crumble and fall apart,” she said, and reached out to nudge the flesh more securely onto the grate.

  “No!” Graydon shouted, stepping toward her.

  Rebekah hissed and said “Shit! I burned myself.” She stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked.

  Graydon watched her, holding his breath.

  After a long moment, Rebekah took her thumb out of her mouth. A string of glistening saliva still connected the ball of her thumb to her lips.

  She looked up at Graydon, into his face. The string of saliva broke.

  Rebekah’s eyes went wide.

  The Tyrant in Love

  The tyrant reclined on his mound of sticky pillows, staring up at the arched ceiling. A pig’s head, ragged at the neck, dangled above him on a chain. The tyrant stuck out his tongue to catch a drop of falling blood. He licked his lips, sighed, and rang a silver bell.

  Two virgins from the provinces cowered in a corner, dressed only in honey, their hair shorn to the skin. They clutched one another and watched the tyrant, who had already forgotten them, who had found their degradation routine, who would eventually feed them to the moat-beasts or give them to the guards.

  The harlequin arrived, summoned by the bell. He led an ape larger than himself on a leash. The ape wore rainbow leggings and a jester’s cap-and-bells. The harlequin, club-footed and grinning (his eyes were the color of jaundice), came dressed only in his pale, hairy skin. A faded pink ribbon dangled, wrapped around his purple erection. The ape swayed, eyes drooping, evidently drugged. “Your majesty,” the harlequin said, bowing low. He smacked the ape across the head, and it bowed in imitation. The harlequin slipped behind the ape and mimed buggering it, an exaggerated look of ecstasy on his face.

  The tyrant did not laugh, or even shift on his pillows.

  The harlequin frowned and unwrapped the pink ribbon. He draped it around the ape’s neck, then removed the cap-and-bells and hung it from his penis. “His majesty seems morose and pale as a ghost,” the harlequin sang. “What troubles him?”

  “I am bored,” the tyrant said.

  The jester clasped his hands together. “Then you must be entertained! We have a cannibal chef from the south. Do you care to dine?”

  “It does not suit my palate,” the tyrant said.

  “Then the artist, Vassini. Shall we buy his new canvases and burn them in the courtyard? His weeping always cheers you.”

  “It has been done too often. I seek novelty.”

  “There is a captured mermaid in Madame Pizarra’s brothel. I understand she is a genius with her tongue. You would not find her a cold fish.” The harlequin hopped, and the bells on his cap jingled.

  The tyrant waved a lazy hand. “Not novel enough. I had the snake-woman a month ago, and all scales seem the same.”

  The harlequin frowned. “Impalements on the vinegar-spike?”

  “No.”

  “The cripples’ street race?”

  “No.”

  “A decree of nudity, save studded collars, for all the citizens?”

  “Trite.”

  “A human cockfight, with bound hands and spiked helmets, with merchants fighting for a purse?”

  “Overdone.”

  “A feast of hearts? A war of stregas? An orgy of lepers?”

  “It all seems so pale,” the tyrant said angrily, sitting up on his pillows, pulling at the
front of his bloodstained tunic. He frowned.

  The harlequin jeered at the (formerly) virgins and threw hollowed-out eggs full of itching powder at them.

  “Harlequin,” the tyrant said suddenly. “You have served me fifteen years, ever trusted.”

  “Yes, my lord, my only friend,” the harlequin said.

  “As my advisors died, as my friends transgressed, you remained.”

  “As it pleases you.”

  “I will give you this confidence,” the tyrant said. “I have conceived of a new entertainment.”

  “Sir?” the harlequin said greedily, thinking: knives, knives, knives.

  “I will go into the city tomorrow, in secret,” the tyrant said, “and I will do good.”

  The harlequin’s erection shriveled like a salted snail. His cap-and-bells fell to the tile with a clatter. “Glorious, sir,” he said.

  ***

  The tyrant wore merchant’s clothes, a gold-embroidered shirt, tight leggings, and shiny black boots. A sword swung on his hip and a pouch of coins dangled from a chain around his neck. He went unrecognized, for few had seen the tyrant, and the portraits were all wrong.

  He helped an old woman cross a busy street, with carts and coaches rattling dangerously by. She gave him a copper penny.

  He came upon a merchant beating his slave, bought the boy, and set him free. The boy offered certain sexual services, which the tyrant politely agreed to collect another time. He thought not. The boy was ill-made, all elbows and knees.

  In an alley, a foul-smelling mugger with stringy limbs attacked him. After disarming and holding the mugger at sword-point, the tyrant spared his life.

  He threw pennies to the ghouls in the graveyard (no one knew what they did with the money) and they clung to the iron gates, shouting a thousand conflicting predictions of his death.

  He killed a red-haired strega suspected of boiling local pets and souring mother’s milk. He hung her head on her door in the middle of a poison-ivy wreath. The neighborhood cheered.

  He purchased an hour with the oldest, ugliest prostitute he could find and spent it amusing her with sleight-of-hand and massaging her bunion-covered feet. His fingers smelled like rancid cheese for the rest of the day.

  The tyrant swelled with charity. A lightness grew in his head, not unlike the euphoria he felt when smoking the apothecary’s special herbs. He discovered unfeigned smiles and good will and they pleased him. This was new. This was a novelty.

  Near day’s end, the tyrant began the trek back to the palace. He would free a few prisoners, release his new bed-slave with her sanity still intact, and halve his mother’s nightly allotment of lashes. Then he would sleep with the ugly serving girl (in a straightforward fashion, without implements) and turn in early. Doing good exhausted him almost as much as doing otherwise.

  In a small square, he saw her. She leaned over a well, drawing water. The wind, wheezing through the alleys, lifted her copper-colored hair. Her shapeless gray dress blew around her, pressing against her breasts and hips. Her dark eyes seemed preoccupied beneath her heavy brows. The sight of her gave the tyrant wonderful pains in his chest.

  The tyrant sat on a doorstep next to an old man. The man grimaced soundlessly, revealing diseased red gums.

  “Who is she?” the tyrant asked, nodding his head toward the woman.

  “Lucrezia, the goldsmith’s widow,” the man said, his no-color eyes unfocused.

  “Widow?” the tyrant said, gaily colored butterflies breaking loose in his chest. “What became of her husband?”

  “The tyrant commissioned him to make a necklace, and the tyrant” (the man tried to spit but came up dry) “didn’t like his work. The bastard. He cut her husband open with a hatchet and fed his entrails to the ravens. Lucrezia’s had to start washing and mending clothes to get by. She has a boy, too, a good lad.”

  “You shouldn’t call the tyrant a bastard,” the tyrant said. “He might hear.”

  The man spat again. This time a little moisture hit the cobblestones. “The tyrant kills when he will, whether he’s insulted or not. I’m old, and don’t fear death. Lucrezia curses the tyrant when she wakes and before bed, she doesn’t care who hears.”

  The tyrant gave the old man a small silver coin. The man bit it suspiciously. The tyrant didn’t remember killing a goldsmith, but it seemed likely he had. He thought of having Lucrezia brought to the palace, but that didn’t seem right. He didn’t want to force her affections; he wanted to win them. The prospect seemed something more than a new diversion.

  He went to the palace, his noble face crouched in thought.

  ***

  The next evening the tyrant rang a crystal bell, and the poet came. The poet, a pale effeminate youth with a lazy eye and a feather cap, hailed from the north. He bowed, trembling.

  “Tell me,” the tyrant demanded, “what is love?”

  The poet seemed surprised. His left eye looked off to the side, at nothing. “Love is a wondrous and vexing thing, my lord.”

  “How does it feel?”

  The poet mused, but only for a moment, because hesitations could kill. “Like a warmth, sir. Like sliding naked between silk sheets. Like a thirst that cannot be slaked, no matter how you fill your eyes and arms.” The poet warmed to his subject. “Love makes men whisper promises to the stars. It gives them wings, and yet chains their hearts.”

  Well, thought the tyrant, then I am in love. “How long does it last?”

  Now the poet looked confused. “Forever, sir. An evening, sir.”

  “You are not a very good poet,” said the tyrant. “But I am pleased. You will be rewarded.” The poet’s drifting eyes brightened eagerly. The tyrant looked around the room. “Would you like a bald, honey-covered virgin? Or two?” he asked politely.

  ***

  “I have found a new entertainment,” the tyrant said.

  The harlequin, who stood only four and a half feet tall, rode a naked serving boy with a bridle in his mouth. The harlequin wore black boots that reached his thighs, a broad straw hat, and nothing else. He held a shiny black crop in his left hand. Knives, knives, knives, he thought. “Yes, lord?”

  “I have found love,” the tyrant said.

  The harlequin managed a brittle smile. “Lovely, my lord,” he said. The tyrant dismissed him, and the harlequin spurred the serving boy onward. He went to his apartment and, in a fit of pique, killed his ape with a fire poker. Then he ate bananas until he got sick, and went to sleep alone.

  ***

  The tyrant obtained a small apartment (he sent the inhabitants to the platinum mines) near Lucrezia’s. He posed as a spice-dealer and began his courtship. In the past, he had never sought more than mastery over a woman’s body. The novelty of pursuing a heart delighted him.

  At first, Lucrezia rebuffed him. The tyrant persisted, buying her flowers, nutmeg cakes, and small jeweled bracelets. He developed an affection for her quick-witted son Giorgio, bouncing the copper-haired boy on his knee, teaching him to read and do sums. Giorgio called him “Uncle Tyrus” (for that was the name he assumed) and brought him drawings of goats and lions. The tyrant hung them on his apartment’s walls.

  Lucrezia loved Giorgio more than her own life, and said he had her husband’s face. She watched the tyrant play with the boy, and her practical heart softened. Lucrezia gave in to his courtship and let him take her to bed. The tyrant touched her gently. He discovered the joys of giving pleasure. Such a wonder, he thought; new delights nestled in the old.

  Meanwhile the harlequin ruled in his absence. Everyone at the palace believed the tyrant had shut himself in his rooms. No one suspected that he lived among the people. The harlequin committed daily atrocities in the tyrant’s name, but nothing worse than the tyrant had done himself. The tyrant discussed the horrors with Lucrezia. She denounced the tyrant tirelessly: monster, demon, killer, fiend. Her husband’s death stung her daily. She told the tyrant that her first husband could never be replaced in her heart.

  The tyrant marvel
ed at the rigors of her grief. Such tears! Such furies!

  Lucrezia preferred to make love sitting up, face to face. She kissed the tyrant on the eyelids and forehead, murmuring promises. One night, over a fine dinner of shellfish in the tyrant’s new apartment, Giorgio asked, “Will you be my father, Tyrus?” Lucrezia shushed him without blushing (she never blushed). The tyrant wiped his mouth, put down his napkin, and drew a golden ring from his pocket. He offered it to Lucrezia as the symbol of a promise. She kissed him fiercely, her tongue sweet on his, and they became engaged. Giorgio laughed like bells ringing and clapped his hands.

  ***

  The night before the wedding the tyrant returned to the palace and had Lucrezia brought to him. The guards dragged her in. She struggled like a wet cat until they threw her to the floor. The tyrant dismissed the guards, and Lucrezia stood. She did not run to his arms; she did not do such things. “Tyrus! Have they captured you, too?”

  The harlequin had stayed in the tyrant’s rooms while his master lived in the city. He’d left a dead maid and a headless goat in the reflecting pool. The rooms stank worse than ever. “Lucrezia, I must tell you something.” Now that the moment of drama had arrived, he wanted only to rush through it. “I am not what you think. I am not a spice merchant. I am the tyrant.”

  “That isn’t funny, Tyrus,” she said, lower lip trembling.

  “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

  Lucrezia took off the gold ring and threw it at him. She leapt, fingernails outstretched, seeking his eyes. The tyrant slapped her from the air. She hit her head on the tiles, and lay, dazed. He bound her with leather cords.

  He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, and her cheeks. She snapped wolfishly at him with her teeth. “I love you,” he murmured, “I love you, I have loved you, I will love you so.” She screamed and cursed him, but did not cry, because she cried only for the memory of her husband.

  He listened to her for a time, nodding. Then he killed her, not with knives, but with small hammers made of gold.

  ***

  “Harlequin,” said the tyrant some days later, his voice heavy as a sack of meat. “I have discovered a new entertainment.” Thick dust choked the air in his darkened rooms.