“This is not salvation,” Walt shouted. “This is the opposite of that.” There was another lightning flash, and the figure of the golem was thrown into sharp clarity against the rainy night. The lightning seemed to glow straight through the thing’s flesh and torn clothing, as if it were made of cheesecloth or cobweb.
“A million dollars.”
“No! For God’s sake, Bob, open your eyes.”
“Name it. Whatever you want. Say the word and it’s yours.”
“Damn it! No! Get it through your …”
“Do you think I’m joking, Walt? Are you a goddamn self-righteous moron?”
“Joking!” Walt realized that Argyle was weeping openly now, his face contorted with it. Here he was talking like the Devil himself, and out of fear of the Devil! There was a noise from ahead of them, as if the golem had moaned out loud, and Walt wondered what would happen if he sprinted ahead and just tackled the bastard, stuffed it down the storm drain, shoes and all. He watched it step up onto the curb at the opposite side of the intersection, and, just as it did, Argyle stepped down into ankle deep water, following in the thing’s wake, stepping where it had stepped. Walt kept pace with him, and they waded to the curb and up onto the sidewalk again. Clearly the golem was moving toward the Plaza, bound for the alley behind Nelson and Whidley.
Across Chapman Avenue the bell tower at St. Anthony’s rose into the sky. Dark sheets of rain slanted across the pale stucco walls. The curved base of the fallen bell was visible through the hole it had broken in the tower. Walt saw Argyle look at it, shut his eyes, and turn his head away.
“I heard that Mrs. Simms is giving the fundraiser money to the church,” Walt said to him. “All of it. In order to restore the tower. Can you beat that?”
“I didn’t mean to kill Simms.”
“I didn’t say you did. I was just saying that …”
“Give it to the children,” Argyle said.
“What? Give what? What the hell are you talking about?”
“The money. Take the money I’m offering to you and give it to the children, to Nora and Eddie. Put it in a trust fund, for God’s sake, and they’ll never have to worry about money for the rest of their lives. Do it for them if you won’t do it for yourself. You owe me, Walt. We go back a long way I screwed up bad back then, and I’m paying for it now, any way I can. So just let me make amends a little bit, will you? Go ahead and do it for the kids. Or are your principles so high and mighty that you’d take the money out of their hands too?”
Walt looked away, muddled by the thought of it. Argyle’s money could make all the difference in the world to Nora and Eddie—no hardships, no sweat. Did he have any right to turn something like that down, just on principle?
“A million dollars?” Walt asked, calculating what that would be worth, put out at interest—enough for a private college, a big house on Easy Street.
“That’s right. What’s wrong, not enough? You want more? Ten million?”
They were passing the back of Walt’s own house now, one street away, and over the garage roof of the nearby house he could see the enormous shadow of the avocado tree where Mr. Argyle the daddy longlegs lived. Used to live.
“No,” Walt said to him. “There’s not a thing that I want, not that you could give me. And there’s nothing very high and mighty about my principles. They’re small principles, but they’re mine, and right now I’m in a mood to hang onto them.”
Argyle laughed out loud, but it wasn’t a convincing laugh. They were approaching the corner of the street. The golem would turn right and head downtown, where it had an appointment with destiny. Walt determined to stick it out, to see this thing through, even though by now Ivy would be wondering where he’d gone. Jinx would be cooking dinner. The kids would be goofing around, coloring or playing Uncle Wiggly. Henry was probably out in the motor home with the space heater running, eating Cheez Its, warm and dry and listening to the rain on the roof like another man would listen to music.
“Take it,” Walt said, and he handed Argyle the paint can. “It belongs to you anyway. That’s why I brought it over to your house instead of throwing it into the ocean. If you want my opinion about it, though, about all your little tricks here, I’ll give it to you along with the can.”
For a moment Argyle was silent. Trudging along, soaked to the skin, he looked at Walt in apparent disbelief, as if being given the can had taken him utterly by surprise. Then Walt heard him mumble the word “Thanks.” After a few more steps he said, “I guess I already know your opinion.”
“Well, I’m going to give it to you anyway. That thing in the can there, that’s not salvation. If it were my bluebird, I’d throw it out, just like Henry told me to do.”
The street was a river of rushing water, curb to curb, and the windy rain swept across it in flurries, reminding Walt of a monsoon. They passed the last house on the block, and moved out into the wind that blew along Chapman Avenue. Away to the west, the lights of the Plaza shimmered and winked through the rainy dark, and Walt could see the enormous white bulk of the cellophane snowman next to the Plaza fountain, waving up the avenue toward them, as if it were happy to see them out and about on a night like this.
St. Anthony’s Church was lit up inside, and the stained-glass windows shone in a hundred different hues, illuminating a window-shaped curtain of falling rain. From somewhere within came the sound of the choir, hushed by the weather and by the wood and plaster walls of the old church building.
Argyle’s step faltered at the corner. He jerked to a stop, went on a couple paces, and stopped again. He looked around then, puzzled, like a sleepwalking man just shocked into wakefulness. The golem stood still, waiting, staring toward the Plaza. A car drove past on the street, its tires singing on the wet asphalt, and the driver looked at Walt and waved, although Walt didn’t recognize him—probably it was just the season, and he was waving for no reason at all except some sudden impulse toward friendliness.
Argyle held the paint can in both hands and stood staring at it, as if he were reading the label. And just then the wind died, making an odd creaking sound like a door opening, and Argyle threw his hands into the air like Moses smashing the tablets. He stood just so for a scattering of seconds and then hurled the paint can straight down into the flooded gutter, where it sank beneath the current.
The earth shook, and Walt staggered sideways toward the curb, grabbing onto the streetlamp to keep from falling, and in the same instant a bell began to ring, so loudly that he let go of the lamppost and pressed his hands over his ears. A flock of pigeons rose from the ruined bell tower at St. Anthony’s, flying straight into the sky, where the clouds parted to reveal a wash of stars and an enormous moon. Walt realized that it was the fallen bell that was ringing, perhaps reverberating from the shock of the earthquake, its impossibly clear tones soaring out over the neighborhood.
The paint can surfaced and bobbed away on the tide, swept toward the open mouth of a storm drain through which the floodwaters rushed in a cascading torrent. In a moment the demon and the can it lived in were swallowed up, delivered into the subterranean river that would carry it to the ocean, gone out of Old Towne, out of their lives.
THE TOLLING OF the bell faded, and the night fell silent. Walt watched Argyle, who had his face in his hands now and was standing still. The golem lay in a heap on the wet sidewalk, its face staring up at the moon.
“I’ll be damned,” Walt said finally. “I think it’s dead. It’ll miss its appointment now.”
“I guess I will too,” Argyle said. He put out his hand, and Walt shook it.
Together they walked over to the golem. Its wreck of a face bore little resemblance to Argyle’s any longer, and it lay limp and decrepit, an old mummy left out in the weather. Argyle nudged it with his foot, pushing it toward the gutter. Walt joined him, and together they slid the thing off the curb and into the torrent. It rolled away toward the storm drain, turning over in the flood before it slid headfirst beneath the sidewalk and vanishe
d, its head compressing like a wet bag, moonlight glinting for one last moment on the soles of its worn-out shoes.
* * *
THEY STOOD IN the silence, listening to the night, to the palm fronds rustling in the curbside trees. The choir started up again inside the church, and the rain fell off and then stopped entirely. Walt furled the umbrella, looped the fastener around it, and buttoned it.
“I guess I’ll head home,” Argyle said to him at last.
“Your door’s locked, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s not locked at all. Not any more.”
“Come on over to our place,” Walt said, although he realized that he still didn’t like the idea of an evening with Robert Argyle very much at all, which he knew was uncharitable. He’d have to work on that. Probably there would always be something to work on.
“I guess I won’t.”
“Nonsense. Come on over and have a bite to eat. Nora and Eddie would love it. You know what Nora calls you?”
He shook his head.
“Mr. R-Guy.”
Argyle smiled, and Walt smiled back at him.
“She’s a case, isn’t she?” Walt asked. “She’d like to see you. What do you say?”
“It’s …” He shrugged.
“Plenty of room at the inn,” Walt said. “It’s Christmas. It’s the best time of the year to let bygones be bygones. We might as well start tonight.”
“Some bygones can’t be forgotten,” Argyle said. “This business with Mr. Simms …”
“There’s tomorrow for that. Tonight we both need dry clothes and something to eat.”
Argyle stood looking at him for a moment, then said, “Okay, then.”
They walked up toward Oak Street and turned the corner, heading home. Walt could see his house halfway down the block. Ivy had strung the candycane lights around the porch. The light was on in the motor home, and Henry’s profile was silhouetted against the curtain. What was he doing, Walt wondered, working on the popes? Reading Hefernin?
“I guess I better warn you that Henry’s got a business proposition for you,” Walt said.
“For me?”
“I think you can count on hearing about it before the evening is through.”
“I’m not in business like I used to be. I guess you know that. I did some things….”
“Bygones, Bob. This plan of Henry’s is different from the kind of thing you’re talking about, whatever that is. This is some novelty items that Henry’s cooked up, and he wants me to go in partners. He’s convinced we’ll make our fortune in Japan. What he’s looking for is investors, startup cash. You’d better be ready for him.”
“This wouldn’t be the popes, would it?”
“You know about the popes?”
“Sidney Vest told me about it. Surefire moneymaker, he said.”
“Good old Sidney Vest,” Walt said uneasily.
“I’m surprised he didn’t jump on it himself. I always say that when opportunity knocks, you answer the door dressed to go out.”
“If I didn’t know better,” Walt said, giving him a narrow look, “I’d guess you’ve read Aaron Hefernin.”
“Read him?” Argyle said back to him. “I am Aaron Hefernin.”
Walt heard a child’s laughter then, unmistakably Nora’s, and she and Eddie both appeared from behind the motor home, carrying open umbrellas and followed by Ivy and Jinx, just come down off the porch for the evening walk. Nora shouted and ran on ahead, and Walt tossed his own umbrella onto the lawn. Dropping to one knee on the wet sidewalk, he opened his arms to catch her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
World Fantasy Award winning author James Blaylock, one of the pioneers of the steampunk genre, has written eighteen novels as well as scores of short stories, essays, and articles. His steampunk novel Homunculus won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and his short story "The Ape-box Affair," published in Unearth magazine, was the first contemporary steampunk story published in the U.S. Recent publications include Knights of the Cornerstone, The Ebb Tide, and The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs. He has recently finished a new steampunk novel titled The Aylesford Skull, to be published by Titan Books.
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