“By the Whisky King’s hand.”
The line vanished with a cackle, and the stone rolled free, revealing another doorway. Brady filled his skin with cactus water, and in we marched.
“You full yet, Jeremiah?”
His voice was a haunting echo, unanswered from the end of the dark tunnel he waded through, up to his knees in something wet—hooch, by the whiff of it. The air seemed to carry it, blow it at our faces in breath-like intervals, then stagnate, a sour stench of mash and rye mixed with cotton mouth. I was used to it, of course, living in the most deplorable conditions for most of my life, licking up leftovers from all sides of the pond, dead or alive, but Brady trembled, memories of Daddy’s breath peeling back his steely rind.
His legs stopped moving.
“Jeremiah, you there?”
My belly was still raw from that devil’s dance I’d spewed. The cactus water would need more time to work its recharge.
“Croak, croak.” Not there yet, Brady. Cool down the pace.
“Could use some light right about now,” he said with a sigh. “Smells like Trudie’s backside in here.”
With each breath of stench the tunnel took, water—or what seemed like water at the time—rose and fell, to and fro like a frothy tide at midnight.
“We’re not going anywhere until I can see what we’re working with here. Let sister Wrath light the way.”
He pulled Wrath and ran two fingers along her barrel. “Keep it down,” he said. “Bright like a star, got it?” Her hammer slid back, easy. He pointed her up at an angle and squeezed, her bark silent as a weirdoo prayer; her cool lead lodging in the ceiling fifty paces out, a bright bullet lit up like a diamond in the sky. “Atta-girl,” he said.
I peeked out my pocket and saw the tunnel was a long massive throat held up with arches of bone every so often, lined in pink saggy flesh with throbbing varicose veins like purple snakes writhing along the walls and ceiling. What I’d thought was water turned out to be a river of red corn mash, three feet deep with human skeletons floating on the surface. Some were only half-dissolved: farmers clenching pitchforks with three-fingered hands, gunfighters petrified in quickdraw poses, poachers caught red-handed and still back-strapped to gunny sacks crammed with contraband; a sea of wayward hexers seeking out the glory of Jubilee.
“Supper’s ready, son,” a wee voice tinkled from somewhere in the darkness ahead, either the mouth or the belly end, I couldn’t tell. But if that putrid breath was blasting us frontside, it meant we were headed for the skull, the heart of Jubilee, where the Whiskey King ruled unchecked.
“Momma...?”
“Croak, croak.” You really think that’s your momma, Whiskey Chile? Wake up and smell the death. He’s baiting you.
Now the rapid twang of a wrought-iron triangle called out. “Come and get it, Brady. Supper’s getting cold.”
“Croak, croak!” Check that phony voice, Whiskey Chile. My pea-sized brain was boiling, aching to speak that rough, warm-blooded tongue. Don’t let it rattle you. Concentrate!
“Momma. Sit tight, Momma, I’m coming to get you!”
That chile’s voice, filled with hope and cotton candy dreams, nearly broke my shriveled heart. Weirdoo wasn’t enough to keep him tied down. As much as I bucked and kicked at his chest, croaked out double no’s like buckshot blows, he still ran to the mannequin’s voice, chest heaving as he kicked through red ripples and floating bones to the source.
His body was wilting, heart thrumming a funeral drum—his own funeral if those old memories were stronger than his will to make it to the other side of Daddy’s throat.
Bright eyes beamed at us through the darkness ahead, shimmering gems disguised as Momma’s baby blues. Sister Wrath’s bullet-light was far behind us now, pulsing a cautionary tale that Brady ignored. He was in a trance only fire could wake him from. Bouncing nearly out of my pocket, I mustered what little flame I had and sent it twisting up his jawline.
“Damn it!” He stopped, clutching patches of beard burning like long curly fuse lines. “What’d you do that for, bubba?”
The sound of a train horn boomed ahead. Below Momma’s bright eyes, a menacing, cow-catcher smile peeled back the darkness. Two rows of iron teeth screeched open, swallowing gulps of hooch and bone as it barreled towards us. “Never late, the endless train arrives again, the fare is always free!” Momma’s voice, now taunting, shrieked like grinding steel. “Next stop, the GRAVE!”
Move your ass, Brady!
As he sloshed to the side of the tunnel, toward thick strips of skin raised up like steps on a station platform, a foot or two above the river of hooch, I noticed that the embers of beard he’d wiped away had made sparks in spots where they’d fallen, red puffs of lily pad trailing far behind.
Why hadn’t I seen it? A river of hooch. Sister Wrath praying silently, without a spark. Chunks of Brady’s beard flaring where they’d fallen. The path ahead, now lit up on all sides around the train with wisps of fire curled back from the corners of its mouth, white-hot coal shining through its mangled teeth. The whole tunnel was a powder keg, a barrel of Daddy’s finest stock, waiting to explode.
Brady made it out of the river and onto the platform, his eyes nervously darting back and forth between a concave wall of flesh and the whoosh of flame and steel rushing up Daddy’s throat, but he was still soaked up to the knees in it—he’d burn. I panicked, leaped out of my pocket, but Brady caught me with a steady hand.
“Croak, croak,” he said, placing me back in his pocket. “Don’t you worry, Jeremiah, we ain’t crispy critters yet.”
The flaming train was a hand-toss away when Brady pulled his hunting knife and dug it into the wall. Cutting down with a single, violent stroke, he opened a skin slit big enough to fit through and dove inside, holding the flaps shut tight around him like a butterfly’s cocoon.
We watched the train blare by from the cool, sticky safety of our paper-thin skin sack, courtesy of Daddy’s fire-hardened throat. It was almost transparent. Passenger windows flashed by like the pages of a chile’s flip-book, lending action to a still scene from Brady’s past floating in the center of the car isles.
Momma eased the screen door open, stepped through the doorway of Brady’s old home, a two-story monstrosity with chipped green paint and a wrap-around porch where you could swing idly and watch your tea steep in the sun. His heart raced as she strolled to the edge of the porch and lifted her hand to block the sun’s glare, a look of quiet desperation on her face when she called out to him. She inched closer to the edge. Brady held his breath.
Through the doorway behind her, a shadow stretched across the porch, seeped out like spilled pitch on the boards. Daddy emerged. He didn’t speak or make his presence known. He crept, holding up a finger over his pale lips, as if he knew we were watching.
“Brady!” she called. “Time to come inside.”
He squirmed in our skin sack.
I thought he’d open the slit he was holding closed while the train surged by. Daddy lifted his knee, as if preparing to long-step over some unseen obstacle, planted the sole of his boot on the small of Momma’s back... and kicked.
Off the edge of the porch she went. The sharp crackle of brittle bone snapping. A gleaming smile in the darkness. The deep, quaking whistle of the train’s horn trailing off, mixing with a woman’s scream as the caboose slid by into nothingness, through the doorway we’d entered from. The fire died down, and Brady stepped out cautiously from the flaps.
The train hadn’t run on tracks but on the soft, writhing surface of a tongue stretched the entire length of the tunnel, visible now that the river of hooch had sublimated. I expected tears or a tantrum, Wrath and Fury once again emptying his burden, knees dug down in frustrated prayer, a primal scream after seeing what the Whisky King had done to his momma.
I saw none of that. It was as if he no longer carried that burden—like the train and the burning hooch and the scene on the porch had lifted it from his shoulders. His heart calmed, and he p
atted his pocket like he always did when his mind was clear, when he was finally resolved.
“So, that’s the truth of it,” he calmly said, shaking off the stickiness.
“Croak, croak, croak.”
“You don’t think so, huh? I suppose it could be a lie—another one of Daddy’s tricks to keep me guessing, throw me off the trail. Though, he always did have a sly grin on his face when he’d tell me about how Momma died. Slipped...”
There wasn’t much left to say. He could turn tail and make his way back to the runners’ shack, build a new life for himself with the knowledge—true or false—that Momma had been murdered. He could live with it. He’d lived with the deaths of the coyote runners, not that they were close.
“Only one way to find out, bubba.”
He sat with folded legs in the center of the tunnel, his face drained of all its color, and the giant tongue pulled us through that final foul doorway to Jubilee.
The runners had spoken of Jubilee from time to time. Sitting in front of their fires, cozied up together in loose packs, they’d ramble on about bar counters stretched for miles; women of the night pawing at pockets of silver and gold, soothing the harshness of the wild with wet kisses and fever dreams. They’d lick their lips at mention of spirits flowing down the walls, endless barrels and taps of whiskey and beer that warmed the belly and set the mind wandering in a sublime reverie. None of them knew what they were talking about, though. Jubilee wasn’t a destination just anybody could get to. It existed on another plane. Only the doorways could get you there. And why the doorways appeared? Well...
Figures on stilts scissored between fuming lampposts lined along the walkways, lighting them with torches as they swayed above a motely crowd of onlookers. Some cheered the act, looking up with drawn, eager faces. Most passed by indifferently, pushing through throngs of folks in animal masks, and pinstriped suits, and long trailing dresses trampled now and then by children darting through dark alleyways. The sky was pitch black, pocked with only two stars, bursting with fireworks that rained down on tin roofs. The whole place was surreal. It was the very core of the Whiskey King’s twisted mind.
“Over there,” Brady said, pointing to a large building that teetered drunkenly. It seemed to be the place most folks were heading to, the end of a long line of shops and parlors and saloons. “That has to be it.”
“Croak.”
It was the only place anyone seemed interested in, if you called blind obedience interest. We pushed ahead with the crowd. They smelled of whiskey, all of them, stumbling along the dusty street through town to the Whiskey King’s sprawling castle. Sounds of uproar and cheer came from the double doors of the building, punctuating the bustle of the crowd.
“Make way! Everyone, make way. Move it,” barked a woman surrounded by small cactus crabs. They poked at feet and ankles, thinning out the crowd around her as she traipsed through the doors. She cleared her throat. “The king has arrived!”
All around us, applause broke out. Gloved hands patted Brady’s back and shook his shoulders approvingly. His heart raced as the crowd encroached. They lifted him up on a sea of groping hands, washing him towards the woman in the doorway. She twirled a white parasol propped against her half-covered shoulder, trembling with excitement as the crowd dumped Brady ashore onto jutting floorboards where the crabs made room for him. I held tight to my pocket, hoping my flame had been renewed.
“The sisters...”
He ran his hands over empty holsters, patting his pocket, also, to make sure I was still there. “They’re gone.” He turned back and pushed against the crowd, his chest desperately heaving. But the crowd bottle-necked, forcing him inside while the woman held the doors open. “No need for violence anymore, Mr. Nokes,” she purred. “You’ve arrived, at long last. Your throne awaits.”
He dove back into the crowd, only to be lifted off his feet by two lumbering figures. Clad in long dusters and hats pulled down over their eyes, they hooked him around the arms on both sides and pulled him to the room inside.
“Do something, Jeremiah. Light it up!”
I was overwhelmed with fear.
Masked faces watched and cheered from high banisters that ran around each successive floor, all the way up to the dark sky above. They tossed maize and empty beer bottles down, as if tossing flowers on caskets hundreds of feet in the ground. The crash of brown glass smashing, kernels pelting tables and piano tops, torn clothing drifting in the acrid air, all pounded my brain as Brady called my name, urging me to find the sisters in a sea of chaos.
Bartenders zipping behind bartop along the walls called out, “Drinks are on the house tonight, citizens!” Fiddles and banjos screeched through the air, twanging a procession march for the prodigal son—for the Whisky King, they called him. Strange.
“Where is he?” Brady said to the tall figures as they slid him across the floor to a throne in the center of the room. “Where’s the one you call Whiskey King?”
They shoved him on the throne; long bundles of barbed wire looped around his hands and feet, tying him down. Where the wire tightened on wrist and ankle, he bled. The woman with the parasol stood before him, smiling still.
“Bring the king his chalice,” she said, waving a dainty hand at a bareback waiter stumbling through the crowd. He handed an unmarked bottle to the woman and cartwheeled out of sight, back to an act of tossing daggers at a woman spinning on the wall. The bareback had tagged her with two daggers already, but she just laughed like she didn’t notice the pain.
“To sins of the Father,” the woman toasted.
“...sins of the father,” the crowd cheered back.
Brady clenched his jaw, taut lips receding into his dark mustachio.
“You will drink,” she said, her smile wavering as her face flashed a portrait of Brady’s momma, then back to a pale, indifferent stare.
Brady’s head slammed back into the cushioned throne.
The wranglers approached and gripped his jaw with iron fingers, slowly prying his mouth open. “Take your medicine.” She poured a steaming green concoction down his throat. “Make sure he swallows it,” she said. A sharp punch to the gut from one of the wranglers and Brady had no choice but to drink.
The woman looked me square in the eyes and reached inside my pocket. She pinched my legs with one hand and pinched her own nose with the other. “Do you know this... fellow?” she asked Brady. Dangling upside down, I looked to Brady. The wranglers had retreated into the crowd around us, and Brady was smiling. He looked different. The boy I’d known was a man now, and the man seemed to be enjoying himself. He slumped down in his throne, a shit-eating grin pasted on his face as he looked at me like I was a stranger.
“Nope,” he said. “Toss ‘em.”
He waved his hand to the woman, and she tossed me to the green felt table in the center of the room. I sloshed in a sea of dice, dollars, and painted chips. Three children wearing vulture masks took seats around me. They pulled forks and butter knives and titled their masks up, salivating as they stared at me with wild eyes. “Best to sit still,” the card dealer said to me, “they’re always hungry.”
“I imagine,” a voice boomed from the second-floor banister, “you’ve come for my head.”
He walked briskly to a winding staircase and made his way down, dragging a golden-knobbed cane across each carpeted step. The bustle of the crowd waned in anticipation of his entrance. He wore a white suit bright as day, a white hat with the symbol of the evil eye in the center. He was much taller than I remembered, towering over the onlookers as he slunk down to the first floor. He must have been eight feet tall, at least. His pointy black goatee was oiled to a shine, and his face showed no signs of that yellow pallor prone to folks who partake of hooch. Starts in the liver and works its way up to the cheeks and eyes.
“Not your head,” Brady said, leaning forward in his new throne. “I’ve come for the story. Maybe a few rounds of truth or die.”
“Blood of my blood,” the Whisky King said.
He parted his jacket, hitched up his pants, and sat down across from Brady’s throne. I was right in the middle. Those hungry kids scattered when he sat. I finally took a breath.
“Bring my son a drink.”
“Of course, Whiskey King,” the pale woman said.
“I want it quiet in here,” he ordered. “Understood?”
“To the Father,” everyone cheered, then settled down into silence.
“I’ve got some truth talking to do, huh? Well... let’s start with introductions. You’re Brady, right? I must say, you’re a persistent little cuss. You get that from me. Welcome to Jubilee, Brady Nokes. What do you think so far?”
“The old house was cozier... more comfortable,” Brady said. “Mind loosening these wires up?”
“Full of demands, and baby shit. I can still hear you crying and moaning from time to time. Just as annoying now as you were back then. You were always demanding something. Milk. Momma. A song on the fiddle. Do you still drink milk, Brady? Still cry in your sleep?”
“Still kick helpless women off porches?”
“Touché. No... that was a one-time deal, no returns. An offering, you might call it. But don’t say I didn’t love her—don’t let that thought cross your vengeful little heart now. The price of bliss goes deeper than anything you’ve ever felt in your short life.”
“You could have used me instead.”
“Like I said, you have to love your trade-in for it to work. Besides, every king needs an heir. Isn’t that why you’re here? To steal my fiefdom, take my crown, redecorate my saloon with baby bottles, bullfrogs, and old-bastard odes. Where’d you find this one anyways?” He pointed to me. “Do you talk to him?”
“Something like that.”
“What do you want, Brady?”
“I don’t...”
“Then get! Go on back home and take the frog with you. This is my world. There’s no room for guns and cowboys clinging to the tit.”
“You owe—”
“I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”
Brady wobbled in his throne, completely overtaken by whatever’d been shoved down his throat.
S H Mansouri - [BCS273 S01] - Through the Doorways, Whiskey Chile (html) Page 2
