The Very Best of Charles De Lint

by Charles de Lint

  See, I grew up wanting to be one of the good guys. Call me naïve. When I realized that wasn’t happening, when I understood exactly what I’d fallen into, I had no choice but to disappear. That entailed getting out of town and staying out. Maintaining a low profile once I was gone and, most important, keeping my mouth shut.

  So when I hear that name, one part of me wants to keep walking, but curiosity’s always been a serious weakness. I turn to see what part of my past has finally caught up to me.

  I don’t recognize him right away. The lighting’s bad where he’s sitting, alone at a table, nursing a chai tea latté. Nondescript—your basic average joe, medium height, brown hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing features. The kind of man your gaze just slides over because there’s nothing there to hold it. He’s wearing a dark jacket and turtleneck.

  “I heard you were dead,” he says.

  It’s the voice I remember. That rasp, like it’s working its way through a hundred years of abusing cigarettes and whiskey. Sammy Hale. Used to run numbers for the Couteaus until he got caught dipping his hand where it shouldn’t. Not once, but twice. I check out his right hand where the fingers are cut off at the knuckles. It’s Sammy all right.

  I give him a shrug.

  “I could say the same thing about you,” I tell him.

  “I got better,” he says. Smiles.

  It’s enough to hook me, pull the line taut, then reel me in. He knows my weakness. I take one of the empty chairs at his table.

  “Sounds like a story,” I say.

  “Maybe. You still in the information business?”

  I shake my head, then touch a finger to my temple. “This is where it stays now. Can’t sell anything anymore because that’s like saying, ‘Here I am.’ But you know me.”

  He nods. “Yeah, you always had to know.”

  “So how’d you survive?” I ask.

  Again that smile. “I didn’t.”

  I hear a lot of stories, mostly from street people these days, and they’ll tell you any damn thing. What intrigues me right now is that I remember Sammy from the old days. The one thing he never had was much imagination. Why do you think he got caught ripping off the Couteaus, not once, but twice?

  I’m good at waiting. You learn more if you don’t ask questions. But I can tell that’s not how Sammy wants to play this out.

  “So what happened?” I ask.

  “I guess you could say I wandered out of the world.”

  “You know I’m not following you here,” I say.

  That smile of his plays out into a grin and then he tells me a story that even the skells hanging around outside the detox centre would be embarrassed to own up to.

  “Come with me,” he says when he’s done.

  “I can’t,” I tell him and I walk away.

  * * *

  Or maybe I didn’t walk away.

  Maybe I hear him out and that old curiosity of mine has me follow him out of the Beanery into the night. We trade the sounds of quiet conversation and the Bill Evans Trio playing on the café’s sound system for the noise of the streets, the rich smell of brewing coffee for car exhaust and the faint odor of rotting garbage. Tomorrow’s pick-up day downtown and all the bins are standing in a row along the curb.

  Sammy keeps talking, adding details. I walk along beside him, nodding to show that I’m taking it all in.

  Not that I believe him for a second.

  Carnies have always been easy fall guys for mystery and trouble. People think of them with the same uneasy mix of intolerance and envy as they do Gypsies. What a life, but they’ll rob you blind. Lock the doors when the tractor-trailers pull into town and the midway goes up. But what a life. Every day a different town, a whole new crowd of rubes to take advantage of. But keep your hand on your wallet and lock up your daughters.

  And haunted carnivals are nothing new, either. Hell, they’ve got their own little category in folklore and literature, too, from Ray Bradbury to Dean Koontz. But this Ferris wheel he’s talking up, it’s a new one for me. It’s a mechanism that doesn’t make sense in the world we all inhabit, like opening a door in your house and finding it leads into a room you’ve never seen before. I’m haunted by the idea of his carnival ride, existing sideways to the world, a big Ferris wheel with this odd sign hanging over the entrance to the ride, “Crowded After Hours.” A creaking, ancient behemoth of midway entertainment that only exists when the fair’s closed down, the booths are all dark, and the carnies have closed the doors of their trailers against the night. A midnight ride where each rider is some costumed figure from nightmare or story or dream, an uneasy crowd of gargoyles and clowns and stranger beings still, like a Mardi Gras parade on a slow-spinning wheel.

  There’s room for Spyboy there, he tells me.

  “See, you’re safe on the wheel,” Sammy says. “Safe from the world. Safe forever.”

  Maybe, I’m thinking. But are you safe from the wheel itself? Because, never mind the implausibility of it, there’s something not right about this idea of chaos married to order, all these mad troubled souls doing time in the confines of their seats, the big wheel turning slowly, creaking in the mist.

  “Just have a look,” he says, seeing my doubt.

  And I guess I will. I do. Curiosity pulling me along as we head up to the roof of the old Sovereign Building on Flood Street, just north of Kelly, in through a back door and up a stairwell until the rooftop gravel’s crunching underfoot and we’re standing at the edge of the roof, looking out. Sammy’s eyes are shining, aglow.

  “I don’t see anything,” I tell him.

  “You have to have faith,” he says. “You have to believe.”

  I squint and think I see something, some monstrous shape looming out of the night, clouded with mists, a wheel turning, the seats rocking slowly back and forth and all these…these beings on them, staring off into unimaginable distances.

  “How often do we get a chance like this?” Sammy asks me.

  I turn to look at him, still snared by his sincerity.

  “Think about it,” he says. “Every time we make a decision, we make another world. We do one thing, and we’re in the world that decision called up, but at the same time, we didn’t do it, so we’re in that other world, too. It goes on forever, all these worlds.”

  “You know, you’re not making a whole lot of sense,” I say.

  He smiles. “Just think of a world where you’re not looking over your shoulder every couple of minutes, wondering if the Couteaus have finally tracked you down and sent one of their boys to deal with you.”

  “Eternity on a Ferris wheel doesn’t really sound all that much better,” I say.

  “You’re thinking of the outside,” he tells me. “Concentrate on all the journeys you can take inside.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t get it, Sammy. I like the world. I like being in it.”

  “You just don’t know any different.” He gives me that smile again, the kind you see on the statues of saints in a church. “In some world you’ve already stepped over. You’re already riding the wheel and you can’t imagine how you’d ever have hesitated.”

  “Why me?” I ask him. “Why’d you come to me?”

  “We’re linked,” he says. “By bad blood. The Couteaus want both of us dead.”

  You’re already dead, I’m thinking, but we’ve already covered that and it didn’t get me any closer to understanding what he’s talking about. But I can see that ghostly wheel now, half here, so close we can almost reach out and grab one of the joints of its frame, half lost in a steaming mist.

  “And besides,” he says. “We’re already there.”

  He points to a seat shared by a harlequin and something truly weird: a man with the head of a quarter moon, a blue moon, like something out of a kid’s book. A man in the moon with Sammy’s features. And I can make out my own features, too, under the harlequin’s white makeup.

  “What’s with the moon head?” I ask him.

  “You know,” he say
s. “Once in a. I always wanted to be lucky. Different. The guy who comes and you don’t know what to expect, maybe good, maybe bad, but it’ll shake up your world and make some new ones because whether you like it or not, there’s a big change coming. I don’t want to be what I am, some loser you can’t remember as soon as I walk out the door.”

  “I never wanted to be a harlequin,” I say.

  He smiles, it’s like a child’s smile this time, so simple and all encompassing, the whole world smiling with you.

  “Spyboy was a kind of clown,” he says.

  “So what does that say about me?”

  “That you like to see people happy. Same as me. Look at us.” He points at the pair again. “Don’t we make you smile?”

  I’m feeling a little disoriented, dizzy almost, which is strange, though not the strangest thing to happen to me tonight. Still, I’ve always been good with heights, so this flicker of vertigo disturbs me, more than the wheel and Sammy’s story, go figure.

  “Come on,” he says.

  I don’t know why I do it, but I jump with him, off the roof, grab hold of the wheel’s frame, climb down towards where we’re already sitting, Spyboy and the Blue Moon.

  * * *

  Only maybe I don’t jump. Maybe I stand there and watch him fall, and then I go home. But I can’t get it out of my head, what he told me, the way he just jumped, the height of the building, how I never heard him land on the pavement below. I wonder if someone can die twice, except there’s no body this time, waiting for me when I step out of the door and into the alleyway. Maybe there wasn’t when the Couteaus had him shot either.

  The next day I go to work, walk in the back door of the restaurant, same as always. Raul looks up when I come in. He waits until I take off my jacket, put on an apron, start in to work on the small mountain of pots and dishes that’ve accumulated since I was last standing here at the sink.

  “There was a guy looking for you after you left yesterday,” he says.

  Sammy, I think. I want to forget all about what maybe happened last night, but the thoughts keep coming back like bad pennies.

  “Did he say what he wanted?” I ask, curious as to what Sammy might have said, still looking for a clue, trying to figure him out, where he went when he jumped off that roof.

  Raul shakes his head. “Didn’t say much of anything. He was a big guy, mean looking. Talked a little like François, only not so much. Same accent, you know?”

  I go cold at that little piece of news.

  I’ll tell you the truth, I never thought the Couteaus would bother to track me down. Where was the percentage? I didn’t rip them off like Sammy, I’ve kept my mouth shut all along, stayed low, working shit jobs, minded my own business. But I guess just walking away was insult enough for them.

  “He say anything about coming back?” I ask.

  Raul shrugged. “I didn’t like the look of him,” he says, “so I told him you quit.”

  “You didn’t lie,” I tell him, already removing the apron.

  “What’s this guy got on you?” Raul asks.

  “Nothing. He just works for some freaks who don’t like to hear the word ‘no.’ He comes back, you tell him you never saw me again.”

  Raul shrugs. “I can do that, but—”

  “I’m not saying this for me,” I tell him. “I’m saying it for you.”

  I guess he sees something in my face, a piece of how serious this is, because he swallows hard and nods. Then I’m out the door, walking fast, pulse working overtime. There’s a sick feeling in my gut and the skin between my shoulderblades is prickling like someone’s got a rifle site aimed at my back.

  Except the kind of boys the Couteaus hire like to work close, like to see the pain. I’m almost at the end of the alley, thinking I’m home free, except suddenly he’s there in front of me, like he stepped out of nowhere, knife in hand.

  I have long enough to register his fish cold eyes, the freak’s grin that splits his face, then the knife punches into my stomach. He pulls it up, tearing through my chest, and I go down. It happens so fast that the pain follows afterwards, like thunder trailing a lightning bolt.

  And everything goes black.

  * * *

  Only maybe I didn’t go out the back door, where I knew he could be waiting. Maybe I grabbed my jacket and bolted through the restaurant, out the front, and lost myself in the lunchtime crowd. But I know he’s out there, looking for me, and I don’t have anywhere to go. I never had much of a stake and what I did have is long gone. Why do you think I’m washing dishes for a living?

  So I go to ground with the skells, trade my clean jacket for some wino’s smelly coat, a couple of bucks buys me a tuque, I don’t want to know where it’s been. I rub dirt on my face and hands and I hide there in plain sight, same block as the restaurant, sprawled on the pavement, begging for spare change, waiting for the night to come so I can go looking for this wheel of Sammy’s.

  The afternoon takes a long slow stroll through what’s left of the day, but I’m not impatient. Why should I be? I’m just some harmless drunk, got an early start on the day’s inebriation. Time doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, except for how much of it stretches between bottles. Play this kind of thing right and you start to believe it yourself.

  I’m into my role, so much so that when I see the guy, I stay calm. He’s got to be the shooter the Couteaus sent, tall, sharp dresser, whistling a Doc Cheatham tune and walking loose, but the dead eyes give him away. He’s looking everywhere but at me. That’s the thing about the homeless. They’re either invisible, or a nuisance you have to ignore. I ask him for some spare change, but I don’t even register for him, his gaze slides right on by.

  I watch him make a slow pass by the restaurant, hands in his pockets. He stops, turns back to read the menu, goes in. I start to worry then. Not for me, but for Raul. I’m long past letting anyone else get hurt because of me. But the shooter’s back out a moment later. He takes a casual look down my side of the street, then ambles off the other way and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. So much for staying in character.

  It takes me a little longer to settle back into my role, but it’s an effort well-spent, for here he comes walking by again. Lee Street’s not exactly the French Quarter—even in the middle of the day Bourbon Street’s a lively place—but there’s enough going on that he doesn’t seem out of place, wandering here and there, window shopping, stopping to buy a cappuccino from a cart at the end of the block, a soft pretzel from another. He finishes them slowly on a bench near the restaurant, one of those iron and wood improvements that the merchants’ association put in a few years ago.

  He doesn’t give up his watch until it gets dark, the stores start to close down, the restaurants are in the middle of their dinner trade. I stay where I am when he leaves. It’s a long time until midnight and I might as well wait here as wander the streets. I give it until eleven-thirty before I shuffle off, heading across town to Flood Street. By the time I reach the alley behind the Sovereign Building, it’s a little past midnight.

  I’m not sure I even expected it to be there again. Maybe, if I’m to believe Sammy, in some other world I come here and find nothing. But as I step around the corner into the alley, everything shifts and sways. I walk into a thick mist that opens up a little after a few paces, but never quite clears. The Ferris wheel’s here, but it’s farther away than I expected.

  I’m standing in a field of corn stubble, the sky immense above me, the sound of crickets filling the air, a full moon hanging up at the top of the sky. A long way across the cornfield I can see a darkened carnival, the midway closed, all the rides shut down. The Ferris wheel rears above it, a black shadow that blocks the stars with its shape. I pause for a long time, taking it all in, not sure any of this is real, unable to deny that it’s here in front of me all the same. Finally I start walking once more, across the field, past the darkened booths, dry dirt scuffling underfoot. It’s quiet here, hushed like a graveyard, the way it
feels in your mind when you’re stepping in between the gravestones.

  It takes me a long time to reach the wheel. The sign’s still there above the entrance, “Crowded After Hours,” but the seats are all empty. The spokes of the wheel and the immense frame holding it seem to be made of enormous bones, the remains of behemoths and monsters. The crosspieces are carved with roses, the paint flaked and peeling where it isn’t faded. Vines grow up and around the entire structure and its massive wooden base appears to be half-covered with a clutter of fallen leaves.

  No, I realize. Not leaves, but masks. Hundreds of them, some half-buried in the dirt, or covered by the vines that grow everywhere like kudzu, their painted features flaked and faded like the roses. But others seem to be almost brand new, so new the paint looks like it’d be tacky to the touch. Old or new, they run the gamut of human expression. Smiling, laughing, weeping, angry…

  I start to move a little closer to have a better look at them, when a man suddenly leans out of the ticket booth. My pulse jumps into overtime.

  “Ticket, please,” he says.

  I blink, looking at him, an old black man in a top hat, teeth gleaming in the moonlight.

  “I don’t have a ticket,” I tell him.

  “You need a ticket,” he says.

  “Where can I buy one?”

  He laughs. “Not that kind of ticket, Spyboy.”

  Before I can ask him what he means, how he knows my name, the mists come flowing back, thick and impenetrable for a long moment. When they clear once more, I’m back in the alleyway. Or maybe I never left. The whole experience sits inside my head like a dream.

  I look up to the roof of the Sovereign Building, remembering how it was last night. The door Sammy led me through is right here in front of me. I don’t even hesitate, but open it up and start climbing the stairs. When I get out onto the roof, I walk across the gravel once more to where Sammy and I stood last night. The mists are back and I can see the wheel again through them, turning slowly, all the seats filled. I watch for a long time until the harlequin and the man with the blue moon for a head come into sight. The blue moon looks at me and lifts a hand.