The Gutbucket Quest

by Piers Anthony

  Slim had never experienced the kind of love and affection, the neighborliness and friendship that was being offered to him here. He wasn’t even sure yet how he felt about being married all of a sudden, nor did he know how to return all the love that was being given him in any solid, emotional manner. To Nadine, yes. But to the people of the community who were opening their hearts, he didn’t know how to either accept or repay the gift. Simple thank-you’s were only tiny moments in time. They didn’t express the continuing emotional commitment that people seemed to be offering. It gave him, to his vast surprise, a sense of responsibility to them. He knew he had to do his best to get the Gutbucket back and to find a way to win the victory they all wanted. And after that, he just didn’t know.

  He wanted, and wanted very badly, to be a part of this community, of this world. He just wasn’t sure how to do it. He’d been a loner, a hermit, too long. Nadine would be here to help, he knew. But he, himself, was going to have to let go of some of the things that had always held him apart from people. He was going to have to let people be a part of his life, learn to accept their feelings. Well, he thought, that would be okay. It made him feel good in a way he hadn’t felt before.

  The party went on into the late hours. That the festival proper began the next day was not a consideration for most people. For them the festival had began with the rehearsal and had come together joyously at the wedding. The next day’s activities were simply a continuation of a celebration well begun. But Slim and Nadine, tired and seeking privacy, went to bed some time before the party wound down to a sweating, lubricated halt.

  22

  Polarity and intensification—in these Goethe believed he had discovered the two principles governing all the phenomenon of animate nature. Now we find them in twofold activity of the forces that give all musical phenomena, in so far as they are temporal succession, their characteristic organizations; in the tendency that closes, establishes symmetries, equalizes every weight by a counterweight; and in the tendency that drives on, accumulates, is responsible for constant augmentation.

  —Victor Zuckerkandle, Sound and Symbol

  The day came like fire and smoke.

  Mother Phillips blessed the opening of the festival at the break of dawn. Slim and Nadine woke with the sun and even after the late night and the excitement of the wedding, they were filed with energy and wide awake. During the night, the small part of it during which they had slept, a townful of people had come rolling in to the river. And even as the festival got started, more and more were still coming, so that the threshing floor was nearly filled for Mother Phillips’ benediction. The tent city was bustling with people buying and looking and eating. Elijigbo’s white-clad followers were acting as guides, security, clergy and all-around facilitators.

  A natural-bearded, grizzly-growly DJ named Earthman Jack took the stage, acting as the festival’s MC. He quickly, blurrily, introduced a band called Cannon’s Jug Stompers, who began to play the bouncy, humorous, insinuating jug-band music that seemed to just fit the early morning. Slim and Nadine stumbled around, minds awake, but bodies still in shock from the early hour and the late night and the abuse that they had inflicted on themselves in celebrating the marriage. They headed in the general direction of the chow tent. Most of the people they met greeted them with smiles or waves or handshakes, asking them how they were doing.

  It was tremendously exciting. Slim had played his share of outdoor festivals in the old days; the Human Be-In, one or two of the Monterey Festivals, Big Sur, more than a few of the Golden Gate Park love-ins. This festival, this world, reminded him of those. The affection, the lust, the good humor of the community invoked some of the spirit he had loved in the sixties. But, where that was childish and rebellious, many times drug-induced, the temper here was sober and adult. The drugs were still around, still being used, but they were no longer the big deal, the symbol they had been in that other time and place.

  Slim had sorely missed the old days. He’d never really gotten over their ending, always searching for a person or a place that still held some of those cherished feelings and beliefs. It wasn’t that he lived in the past. He’d kept up with the music and the times, simply because he believed if he didn’t, the world would pass him by. But the music and the times had lost an innocence and an honesty, a purity and a colorfulness, that he’d loved in the sixties.

  It was his generation, the way he’d grown up. It was what he believed in, down deep in his heart. When he’d walked in the solemn procession down Haight-Ashbury, following the painted, flower-bedecked coffin holding the soon-to-be-sacrificed symbols and remains of “Hippy,” he’d cried. And he had not been alone in his tears. And when he’d returned to the streets nearly twenty years later, when he’d seen that nothing remained of the life that had existed there, that there was only a uniform cityness where a monument should have stood, he’d cried again. This time feeling very, very alone.

  But this time, this place, this world, this Tejas had the same feeling in many ways, the same joyfulness, the same freedom. It was the sense of community, of extended family. Except for Pickens and the Vipers. Thinking about it, remembering, gave Slim much more reason to win the fight they were in. His own beloved time had been polluted and destroyed by men and a society very much like Pickens, and what he was trying to build. And Slim was damned if he was going to let them take this world away from him as well.

  “Hey, Nadine,” he said. “You think I could get a hamburger this early in the morning?”

  “Baby,” she replied, “after yesterday and last night, I think you could probably get anything you wanted.”

  “Yeah? That’s nice, huh? Let’s go eat.”

  Nadine laughed and put her arm around him as they walked. When they entered the chow tent, people applauded. Slim blushed.

  “Man, you’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” Nadine said. Which, of course, made Slim blush even more deeply.

  Someone must have guessed at his habits or, more likely been informed, because as soon as he and Nadine sat at their table, a waitress brought over hamburgers and fries for both of them.

  “See how nice it is not to have to work?” Nadine said.

  “Yeah. But your breakfasts are awfully nice, too.”

  “For you, maybe. You don’t have to cook them. You just get to eat.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Slim said. “After this is all over, I’ll cook you breakfast. How’s that?”

  “Hah” Nadine said. “Your clever little strategy has backfired. I’ll take you up on that. Will I live through it?”

  “Sure. Of course. I’m a good cook.”

  “Really?” Nadine said. “I’m surprised. Most men can’t cook.”

  “I know,” Slim replied. “I have no respect for men that don’t know how to cook. I mean, how do they survive? And if they’re married, don’t they ever like to give the women in their lives a break? I know that most men just seem to take it for granted that women cook the meals. Me, I can cook everything from hamburgers, to Mexican food to gourmet. I don’t like gourmet crap, but I can cook it.”

  “Good,” Nadine said. “You can cook for both of us, then.”

  “Really?” he said. “Can we get drunk and puke on each other all night, too?”

  “If that’s what turns you on, sure. As long as you clean up the mess.”

  “Ye Gods,” Slim said in mock seriousness. “I wonder if you can refuse to inherit the world.”

  “I think once you’re born, it’s too late.” Nadine munched on her hamburger for a while, small giggles escaping past mouthfuls of meat.

  “Listen,” she said. “Let’s get serious, okay? What about today? How are you feeling abut it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, baby. I think we’re gonna kick ass. I have to think that. I can’t let Pickens win. There’s just too much at stake, too much to lose.”

  “You scared?” she asked.

  “Damn straight.”

  “You think he’s here yet?”


  “No,” Slim said. “I think Progress would have told us. Besides, I’m not so scared of him as I am of the Gutbucket and what Elijigbo told us.”

  “You did good yesterday,” Nadine said encouragingly.

  “I know. But today is today. It’s a whole different gig. I never killed nobody before, Nadine. I never even thought about it. Now, I’m supposed to kill Pickens. I’m supposed to open up to the Gutbucket and let some crazy-ass God share my body. How am I supposed to do that?”

  She shrugged. “Just do it, I guess. I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know how I’m going to do any of what I’m supposed to do either. I just know we have to. There’s no choice.”

  “I hear that. You have any suggestions?”

  “We could go back to bed for a while. Work up a good sweat and then go listen to the music awhile.”

  Slim looked at her, at the innocent, fine-featured face, the clear green eyes, the expression of utter love and devotion in the look she returned to him. “Oh, Nadine,” he said. “How do you always know the best thing to do?”

  “I don’t,” she said. “But I know you. I know how you like to make love, what it means to you. I know that’s the only time you feel safe and secure. And that’s okay. I love it, too, with you, and I’m happy I can make you feel that way. If it was just fucking, it’d be different. But it’s not. There’s something there inside you that makes it extremely special, no matter how often it is. You have a way of letting all your love out when we make love. It’s like, at that moment, you trust and love completely. You don’t want to be anywhere else or with anybody else. Right then, you’re completely there, totally together, the three-lock box. It can make a woman feel—well, loved. I don’t know much about it, but I suspect that’s not the way it is for most people.”

  “I don’t know, either,” Slim said bashfully. “I can’t explain it. It’s even more than that, but you’re the first person to even begin to notice it or understand it at all. A lot of women, all they can see is that I want sex all the time. They don’t see the other side of it, don’t see the love and desire I’m trying to express to them. Do you know,” he said, “that in my whole entire life, I have never cheated on any woman I’ve ever been with?”

  “I believe it,” Nadine said.

  “I’ve never needed to, wanted to. I’ve never even thought about it. It was never a matter of having to resist the idea, I never had the idea. The women I’ve loved were my friends, or I wanted them to be, thought they were. And you just don’t treat friends that way, you don’t treat the people you love that way.” Slim was close to tears, but he wasn’t sure why. Somehow, everything that had happened, everything that was still going to happen, was causing all his walls to collapse, letting out all the pain and hurt and anger. It was making him give it up to Nadine.

  “Come on, baby,” she said sympathetically. “Let’s go on back to the tent. We can still talk about it, but I think it would be easier if were in bed.”

  She was right. He could let it all go when he was in her arms, when he felt safe. She held his dick, and he held her breast and told her everything, things he’d never told anyone. He told her the things he had done right, and the things he had done wrong, the things, right and wrong, that had been done to him. He poured out all the hurt and anger and frustration that had built up in his heart over the years. He tried very hard to be completely honest, not glossing over things that made him look bad, and not blaming or badmouthing the women that had passed through his life. Before he’d finished, both he and Nadine had shed a lot of tears together.

  “Slim,” she said, holding him close, stroking his dick and enjoying the unconscious thrusting of his hips into her hand. “Why are you telling me all this right now?”

  “You sure you want to know?” he asked sadly.

  “Yes, I do. Why?”

  “Well, if something happens, you know. If I screw up and get killed, if I die, I want to know that there’s one person in the world that knows me and understands me and loves me anyway, just because I’m me. Does that make sense?”

  “Oh, baby,” she said. “Hasn’t anyone ever understood you?”

  He shook his head slowly against her shoulder. “No,” he said. “All anyone’s ever done is misunderstand me. I’ve tried to talk about it before, but after you get hurt a few times you give up and just hope you can pull it off for a while without getting caught. But all the time there’s this little guy inside you, crying and hurting, wanting someone to understand and care.”

  “I care,” Nadine said. “I love you. And I think I understand, I know what hurt can do to a person’s heart. You and I, we’re not so different.”

  “You remember what I said at Belizaire’s? About black people and white people in my world?”

  “Yes, I remember. What about it?”

  Slim looked down at his pale white hand against the rich caramel of her breast, studied the deep brown and red of her large, erect nipple. “Well,” he said. “I just wondered—do you think I’m funny-looking because I’m white?”

  That seemed to crack Nadine up completely. She let go of his dick and curled up, holding her stomach and laughing. Then she regained her grasp, reached down and took him in her mouth for just a moment, then stretched out against him. He could feel her shaking a little.

  “Oh, Slim,” she said, still giggling. “Yes, I think you’re funny-looking. But believe me, it doesn’t have a thing to do with the fact that you’re white.”

  “That’s okay, then,” he said. “I was just worried.”

  There was no answer to that except to make love. It was, after the talking, a marvelous, affecting experience, and when they were satisfied, they slept.

  . . .

  “Wake up, chillen.” Progress stood above them. The gold smile wasn’t in sight. “Wake up,” he said. “T-Bone’s here. It’s time.”

  “Okay,” Slim said. He stretched and yawned as Progress walked out, then he and Nadine rose and began to dress. As they did so, Slim happened to look absently up at the plastic window in the wall of the tent. A wasp was crawling on the upper edge. It moved jerkily, a half-inch forward, halt, then another half-inch. Precisely below it, about an inch away, was a small wolf spider. It matched the wasp’s movements, step by step, scuttling along sideways, never taking its eyes off the wasp above. The spider was, at best, about the size of the wasp’s head.

  He’s gonna bite off more than he can chew, Slim thought of the spider.

  Suddenly, the wasp stopped and stood still. The spider, in small increments, crept upward and to the side of the wasp, constantly watching it, looking it in the eyes. Then the spider stopped as well, no more and no less than a half an inch from the wasp’s face. It froze. It didn’t move, it didn’t pounce, it simply stared—and stared. Then, to Slim’s amazement, the wasp fell, simply dropped. Before it hit the ground, before it had even traveled two inches downward, the spider had pounced, landed on its back and fallen to the floor with it, where it began happily and calmly eating what was, for the immature spider, a gargantuan meal.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Slim said, a wide, bemused smile lighting up his face.

  “What is it, baby?” Nadine said sleepily, struggling with her pants.

  “Oh, nothing really,” Slim replied. “I think the Gods or the Goddess or someone just tried to tell me something to help me out.”

  Nadine looked at him puzzled, shrugged, and continued dressing. “Okay,” she said. “That’s nice.”

  Slim chuckled to himself at her nonchalant attitude, putting it down to satiety and tiredness, the sleep that still held her.

  I hope I’m not turning into a mystic, he thought. But that was a sign. The wolf spider hadn’t attacked. It hadn’t pounced, it hadn’t bitten, it didn’t even have any venom to bite with, as far as he knew. It was as if it had hypnotized the much larger wasp, as if it had a power that had captivated and paralyzed it, stunned it. Even as it had sat quietly and eaten the wasp, the wasp hadn’t moved, hadn’t fought
its consumption.

  Slim had always admired the wolf spider’s eyes, or, at least, what he assumed were its eyes. He didn’t know enough about spiders and their construction to be sure. But he knew that when the light struck the spider’s distinguished face, there were bright reflections of red, blue, yellow and green, metallic glints and shinings that made the spider beautiful in the sunlight. But he had never in the world suspected that the spider, despite its exceptional eyesight, used its eyes for anything beyond seeing. And he knew, somehow, that the small stalk and kill he’d just witnessed was no accident.

  The Gods or Goddess, whoever they were, wanted to tell him something. He felt it was something more important than just the lesson in the disparity of sizes between the wasp and the spider. But, at the moment, despite the inspiring feelings the sight had given him, he didn’t understand what it signified. Perhaps later on the meaning would become clear, but for now, there was business to take care of. And despite his confusion, the small spider’s victory did make him feel good.

  It was dry and cloudy and not too hot as they stepped out of the tent. The band on stage was pumping out a good shuffle blues, and the audience on the threshing floor was clapping and shouting with the music. Progress was pacing the grass in front of the tent, hands clasped behind his back.

  “There you is,” he said. “Good, good. We’re ready for it to come down. Are you?”

  “Yeah,” Slim said. “Strangely enough, I think we are. What’s the plan?”