The Gutbucket Quest

by Piers Anthony

  “I think so,” Slim said. “Sort of, coming at it sideways. I just don’t know if I can do it.”

  “You already has, son. Look here, you gots to remember no matter where you is, that you’re on stage and you gots to give it everything. Don’t forget what you’re doin’ there. If you wants to show the peoples what playin’ is all about, you get on it and show ‘em. When you put your hand in the air you better mean it. You don’t get out there and act like no weasel, you stick that arm in the air and you make that guitar do its thing.

  “You see, son, people ain’t looking for the meaning of life. What they want is an experience of bein’ alive. If you wants to use the power good, if you wants to help the peoples, what you gots to show ’em is a way to live in the world, to live with people. A lump in the throat is worth two on the head. You gots to sing like you don’t need the money and dance like ain’t nobody watchin’. You do that, and the day will come when you trust you more than you do now. It’s a choice. You can be one of two things. You can look like one, or you can be one.”

  Slim started on his second bowl of chili and his third beer. He thought about what Progress had just said. It did make sense, if you thought of the blues as power. Like his own blues, though, there was a connection missing, and he had to ask. “What about love, Progress? Where does love fit in?”

  He’d come to think that, no matter how hard he loved, he didn’t know how to love, and that that was what was missing, what was holding him back.

  “Oh, son,” Progress said. “Come on and wake up, the early bird get the pancakes. Love’s what’s there, the heart and soul of it. Love’s the only thing in the world matters scratch. Everything else grows out of that.”

  Progress looked sad, and Slim wondered if he was thinking about his wife.

  “Let me tell you how to love,” the old man said. “Because there’s only one way in the world to do it right. See, when you love someone, you gots to love that person like every moment’s the last time you’ll see ’em ’cause if you don’t, if you don’t, and somethin’ happens to ’em and they die, you’ll think, ‘I didn’t hug ‘em, I didn’t tell ’em I loved ‘em,’ or you’ll think, ‘We argued and out last words was angry.’ And son, if that happens, it’ll tear your heart out the rest of your life. That’s why you gots to make the things you do and say count forever. You gots to dust your blues and make your love come down, every minute, every day. ’Cause that’s a mighty power, too. Maybe the mightiest. But it’s a power you cain’t use, cain’t hold on to. It’s a power you got to constantly give away. You see? The onliest thing in life that’s free is love. Everything else, you can earn or steal.”

  Slim shook his head. “That’s almost too deep to get under,” he said. “I hope I can love that way. I wish I could. What about you though? Why didn’t you ever get married again?”

  Nadine punched him in the gut. “Slim” she said, looking at him angrily. Then, rather than say anything else, she got up and headed to the bathroom.

  Progress chuckled through a mouthful of corn bread. “Don’t mind her,” he said. “Nadine’s a double-barreled woman. Just about the time you think the smoke’s cleared, she’ll open up and let you have the full load.” He sighed and looked at Slim with sadness in his eyes, sadness and hurt. “She don’t like to talk about her mama much. Thinks I don’t either. But don’t you worry none about her. I know she’s a hard woman, she can get way down on a man. But that’s just her way, you see. She’s all the time testin’ a man, seein’ if he lives up to it. Was I you, I’d just lay back and mole when she’s jivin’, ‘less you can think of a good answer. But when it’s time to move, then you jump up and stand out and take care of your business. You’re makin’ her love come down, don’t give up just cause it’s hard.”

  He paused reflectively. “Far as me and her mama, truth is, I just couldn’t find no better woman. There was lots before her. I’d be lyin’ if I said there wasn’t. But emotionally, sexually, in every way, there just couldn’t be no one after her. Oh, I have me a woman now and again, but it’s just feedin’ the fire. It ain’t marryin’. It’s one thing to spend a night or two with someone soft and friendly, but it’s a whole other gig to spend a life.”

  Progress looked around suspiciously. Nadine was still in the bathroom, so he moved his chair close up to Slim’s.

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, smiling. “Big secret. Maybe it’ll help you. Probably it won’t. Most folks it don’t. See, the thing is, when it comes to men and women—anybody, I guess—peoples behave the way other folks expect ’em to. You gets together with a nice lady, see, and you expect her to act in a certain way. And she’s ex-pectin’ you to act in a certain way. So’s, with each of you doin’ so much expectin’, you naturally try to live up to each other’s expectations, good or bad. So what I figure is, what you got to do is to always expect the best from people. Then they’ll try to give the best, maybe. It’s a hard way to live, I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t. It’s livin’ on faith, is what it is, but if we expect a person to act a certain way, then we moves ’em towards makin’ that the easiest way for ’em to act. So if we act in faith that the other person gonna give us their best, that’s just what they gots to do, seems like. And by actin’ in that faith, their expectations of you will change for the best. That make any sense to you?”

  “Yeah, it does,” Slim said. “It makes a lot of sense.” Slim had always expected the best, he thought. But if he was brutally honest with himself, he always expected the women to treat him cruelly and abandon him. Now he wondered if that expectation, and the way he, himself, acted because of it, was what caused the women to act the way they did. They were reflecting his pattern.

  “Good,” Progress said, shifting his chair back to its place in front of his plate. “Hush up, now. Here comes Nadine back.” Then he sniffed. “You smell anything?”

  Now Slim became aware of it. “Something burning. Bad smell. Almost like—”

  Nadine pulled out her chair to sit down, and screamed. There was something on it, burning.

  Slim lurched up, grabbing for the thing, to get it the hell out of her way. But Progress moved faster, blocking him off. “Don’ touch it”

  Then Slim realized what it was: the flaming Glory Hand. Right there by their table, on her chair. It had been out of sight until she pulled the chair out.

  A stout, tough man armed with a beltful of knives and cleavers forged across to them. Slim was alarmed, but Progress wasn’t. “What’s this?” the man demanded.

  “A Glory Hand,” Nadine said, shaken and disgusted.

  “I know that, girl! What’s it doing here?”

  “Mitchell, it’s after Slim Chance, here,” Progress said. “Showed up twice at my house. Once I threw it in the river, once I boxed it and put a hound to guard it. I sure don’ know how they got it here. Nadine was sittin’ right there not a moment ago.”

  Mitchell nodded. “Well, it ain’t going to bother you no more,” he said gruffly. He hauled a cleaver from his belt and spiked the hand with it, using precisely enough force to catch it without cutting it in half. The flames doused the moment the blade touched it. He lifted it high. “Disinfect this chair,” he barked at the waitress. “Bring ‘Dine a new one.” He marched off, bearing the hand, as the waitress hastened to exchange chairs.

  “He’s mad,” Progress said with a certain satisfaction. “There won’t be nobody sneaking nothin’ like that in here again. Nobody does a thing like that to him twice.”

  Slim, though shaken, tried to make light of it. “Sure made Nadine sound off, though”

  Nadine sat down, glaring at Slim. He only smiled at her. She looked at Progress, then back at Slim. The confusion was clear in her eyes as she looked down to dip her corn bread in her chili.

  Progress cleared his throat, and he and Slim laughed, which made Nadine glare at them again. Slim tried to concentrate on his chili and beer, but Progress wasn’t finished.

  “Slim,” he said, just as if nothing had happene
d. The gold teeth were gleaming now. “What you like to drive? We gots to get you a vehicle.”

  “Progress, I can’t let you keep buyin’ me things. It isn’t right.”

  “Daddy,” Nadine interrupted. “Let him be. If he doesn’t want it, he doesn’t.”

  “Oh, bullshit, Nadine.” He turned to Slim and looked him straight in the eye. “Look here, son,” he said. “I gots more money than I can spend. You come into this here world with nothin’. How you think you get along? You gots to have a vehicle. After this here trouble is done and you start workin’ gigs, then you pay me back as you can. Now what you like to drive?”

  Slim considered a moment. In his whole life no one had ever been generous to him before, and he didn’t know how to handle it, or even how to accept it. But he knew that he felt good for someone believing in him enough to extend the generosity.

  “I guess I pretty much like vans,” he said. “They’re all I’ve owned the last twenty years. I can fix ’em up nice and stuff.”

  “Well, then,” Progress said. “If we’re all finished eatin’, let’s go down Sixth Street and see can’t we find somethin’ you like. What you say?”

  Slim though about protesting again, uncomfortable with the gift giving, but Nadine shook her head.

  “Don’t bother to argue,” she said. “Daddy does just what he wants. And he’s right, so just sit back and enjoy it, because it’s going to happen anyway.”

  “Okay, okay,” Slim said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’ll go.”

  11

  As a poetic vehicle astonishingly free of the excess moral baggage of “civilization,” the blues provides us with exemplary criteria, requiring total candor, a willingness to assume risks, an unfettered expression of the inner personality, an unreserved fidelity to one’s deepest aspirations, an enthusiastic readiness for inspiration at all times. By the same token, the blues is absolutely incompatible with puritanism . . . piety dogmatism, smugness, classicism, artifice, fascism, masochism . . .

  —Paul Garon, Blues and the Poetic Spirit

  It was another day with breakfast. Nadine was the best cook Slim had ever known, but he was kind of surprised at the menu. Today’s breakfast consisted of refried beans, potato and egg and cheese burritos, and chiles rellenos. It wasn’t the kind, or the amount, of breakfast he was accustomed to, but as long as Nadine cooked it, he was sure he could adapt.

  For a moment he reflected on the prior meal, when the Glory Hand had shown up again, and he had almost grabbed it. Someone must have dropped it in the chair while Slim was in animated conversation with Progress, and used magic to light it. He was sure it wouldn’t return again, because Mitchell had clearly intended to destroy it. But it had been one close call. When they returned home, they had found the hound dog lying in a far corner, and the box with the hand gone. They dog had been beaten unconscious, but would survive. Obviously he had tried to defend the house, but couldn’t stand up against a metal pipe.

  “Chillen,” Progress said, once the eating was done and the table was cleared. “Today we splits up again. You got the van now, Slim, so that should be no problem. We’ve still got to get Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Willy G., Sonny Early, Spider John Koerner, and Earthman Jack. I can get those folks, they should be easy.”

  “What do we do, Daddy?” Nadine asked. “Who do we get?”

  Progress seemed very reluctant to answer and, when he did, he didn’t look at them. “I want you two,” he said quietly, “to go get Heap of Bears.”

  Nadine stiffened and whipped her head around to look at Progress. There was a look of astonished rage on her face. Her eyes were narrowed, the pupils almost pinpoints. “What!” She nearly screamed it. “You can’t mean that, not him.”

  “Nadine,” Progress said sadly. “We needs him for this. I thought maybe we could get by without him, but when they got that Glory Hand into Mitchell’s without none of us noticin’, I knew we had to step up the power. And it’s time you made your peace with it. We’ve all three got to go to Elijigbo’s tomorrow. You know how he and his people are. You gots to get this out of your system.”

  Nadine sighed. “I’ll go,” she said. “But don’t expect anything. You know how I feel.”

  She stood and stalked out the door, without saying a word or letting any one else, slamming the door behind her. Slim was puzzled. “Who’s Heap of Bears?” he asked. “And why’s Nadine so pissed about it?”

  “Well, son,” Progress said, “you know how hard Nadine is on men. Or maybe you don’t, she’s been easy on you. But she’s a total bitch sometimes. I’ve seen her cut a man down to nothin’ and leave him bleedin’ on the floor without a thought. Heap of Bears is the man made her that way. He was a cousin of her mama’s, from the Indian Nations. A Shaman, medicine man. He come to stay with us when Nadine was about sixteen. He wanted to get to know her mama. Nadine, she fell real hard for him, and he seemed to take to her, too. They was together constantly. I s’pect he was her first lover. One day he just up and left, went back to the Cheyenne to finished his training. Embarada, that was my wife’s name, she tried to explain to Nadine that since he was a Shaman, he couldn’t marry. And even if he could, the rules the tribe has to live with are hard. He could never marry blood kin on his mother’s side, which Nadine was. But Nadine, she took it hard. That was when she moved out on her own and started singin’. She never had much to do with any man after that. Until now, with you.”

  Slim was surprised. He would have expected Nadine to be sought after, the kind of woman who would enjoy her pleasures, whether she respected the man or not. But for him to be the first man she’d been involved with since she’d been sixteen, that’s not what he would have suspected. Nor was he entirely sure that was what he wanted.

  “A few years ago,” Progress continued, “Heap of Bears moved back to Tejas. Nadine ‘bout went crazy. Wanted to track him down and kill him. Now, I’m sendin’ her right to him.”

  “But won’t she—?”

  Progress shook his head. “No. Her hate’s gone too far and too old for nothin’ but pain. But you listen, son. She’s gonna need you. No matter what she says or does, you hold on tight to her, hold on tight to your love for her. I know how you feel it. I can see it in your eyes every time you look at her. I can hear your heart achin’ with it when she smiles at you or holds your hand. Now, you’re the first man she’s ever let herself down with, and I wants you two to be together. I know I’m only a foolish old man, but you’re right for each other. So you hold on to it all, today. She’ll need you.”

  “Okay, Progress. I’ll try my best.”

  “I knows you will, son. I knows you will. You best get movin’ now. I knows Nadine, and I’d bet she’s sittin’ out in that van waitin’ for you.”

  Nadine had been waiting in the van, an evil look on her face. Other than succinct directions, she hadn’t said a word as Slim drove. She just turned on the stereo, lit a joint, drank a soda and rode. Slim wanted to talk to her, wanted to say something, anything. But he couldn’t think of anything to say that he didn’t think would make things worse; or bring her anger down on him. She seemed to him, at that moment, so hurt, so small. He was used to her strength and spirit. He didn’t like seeing her like this. It bothered him a lot.

  They drove in comparative silence for three hours. The van was comfortable and had a good-size motor that made driving a pleasure. But Slim was nervous and uncomfortable because he knew Nadine hurt and he didn’t know what to do, what to expect. He knew it was at least partly his fault, because the Glory Hand was after him, and its appearance had made Progress decide that they had to enlist this Heap of Bears character.

  Finally, she pointed down a dirt road and he turned on to it. They went a mile or so through the scrub and mesquite and pulled up in front of a grouping of wickiups and hogans.

  They got out of the van and Nadine walked around to Slim. She looked at him oddly, her eyes soft and deep green. Then she pressed him up against the side of the van and kissed him, ha
rd, molding her body to his. Slim’s brain almost exploded as he put his arms around her and returned the kiss. When she released him, he nearly fell down from the sudden weakness in his knees. Talk of mercurial changes! He had thought she was mad at him all this time. If so, she had a funny way of showing it. And maybe she was mad, and doing this to set him up for a hard fall. If so, her effort was wasted; he had already fallen. For her.

  “Come on,” she said, taking his hand. He followed, in a daze, trying to keep his head. They walked through the clean, bare dirt compound to the largest, most heavily decorated tipi, through the tented door to the dim light of the interior. Inside, it was furnished with corn husks, animal skins and feathers. There were sleeping benches against the wall, and branch constructions whose function wasn’t clear. A half-naked man sat, eyes closed and peaceful, before a smoldering fire pit in the center of the floor. He heard Nadine gasp and felt her hand tighten almost painfully on his. The man’s face and body had been cicatrized: he had been cut, and flesh had drawn together around the wounds, rendering him into something strange. The pain of it must have been unbearable by any but the most truly dedicated disciple of the ritual. The scars stood out as dark black patterns against his bronze flesh.

  “Heap of Bears,” Nadine said, almost whispered.

  The man looked up at her. There was a faraway pain in his eyes. He didn’t smile.