“I don’t think Lou started the fight,” Tatsuo countered. “He’s always a gentleman and looking for ways to avoid a fight. Or so I’ve heard.”
“Speaking of which,” Fred said.
“Is this the official interrogation?” Tatsuo asked, her eye becoming larger and rounder.
“You know, I always hated that big eyes small mouth anime shit,” Fred replied, taking out a cigar and lighting it. “This is friendly banter between minions.”
Ryan wrenched the bumper from the ruins of the Studebaker and advanced on Lou.
Lou transformed fully. In the place of the wolfman was a sable dire wolf in its prime.
The bumper struck the pavement with a resounding CLANG! Just like the fight upstairs, Lou was not where Ryan had expected him to be. The blow also overextended Ryan badly—and Lou took advantage of that, hamstringing Ryan just above the complicated knee joint. Ryan went to one knee, crossing his arms in front of his throat. Lou bit a huge hunk of meat out of Ryan’s other thigh, causing the stagman to fall over.
“I yield!” Ryan shouted, the words made barely intelligible by the stag’s palate.
Lou shifted again, back to human, his body showing years of scars.
“Too late, Ryan,” Lou said, walking to the wreckage of his car. He tore the dented passenger door from the frame and tossed it over his shoulder before rummaging under what remained of the seat. He stood up with a pistol and walked back to where Ryan was bleeding out in the street.
The APD officer standing next to me went for her pistol.
“That, Officer, is an incredibly bad idea,” Singh said, gently restraining her.
“He’s going to kill that…that thing,” the officer said, struggling against Singh’s hold.
“Yes, he is,” I replied. “It’s…cultural.”
How else do you explain that therianthropes don’t always follow human laws to a rookie cop?
“He’s allowed to do that?” she asked as Lou lined up the shot.
“Yes. Challenge was issued, and this is how it ends,” I said as two shots rang into the night. “The actual laws covering it are complicated, but Lou is within his rights.”
Ryan lay there twitching on the ground. Lou moved back to the ruins of his car, this time pulling the trunk off and pulling out a Pelican case.
“Give me a minute to cover up, huh?” Lou said, forcing the clasps on the case.
“I’ve seen a naked man before, Lou. I’ve been married twice now.”
“I guess Pelican is going to add therianthropes to their things not covered under warranty one of these days if I keep sending trashed cases back,” Lou said, ignoring my comment, so I averted my eyes while he pulled on a pair of pants and a shirt.
“They have a list of things they won’t cover?” I asked while he was tying his shoes.
“Shark attack, bear attack, and children under five,” he replied, pulling a crumpled jacket from the case.
“I have to wonder how they came up with that particular set of parameters.”
“You know, I’ve wondered that myself,” he said, taking out a Lucky Strike and lighting it with an ancient Zippo lighter. “Maybe they’ll tell me when I send this one in for replacement.”
“Why’d Ryan Challenge you?”
“He tried to activate the implant in my neck,” Lou replied. “He said something about overthrowing the humans who were keeping us down, and then started waving his hands and casting a spell.”
“How’d you keep him from activating it?”
“There’re times when punching someone in the face as hard as you can works wonders.”
* * * * *
Chapter 9 – Jesse
Mel looked at her watch. “We’ve got time for one more, if you’d like.”
“I’d really rather not,” I replied. “Besides, Billy told me time passes differently here. Why should it make a difference?”
“I told you, Limbo is now run on Modern, Efficient Lines,” Mel answered. “We’re only given so many hours a day in our ‘homes.’”
“So how can Billy stay here with me?” I asked.
“He’s got accrued time off, the little overachiever.”
“Something like sixteen years of vacation time,” Billy said. “I’ve been a spirit guide for a long time.”
“So unless Sneezy gets word I’m here, I’m safe?” I asked, relaxing for the first time.
“Sorta-kinda,” Mel said, rocking a hand from side to side. “He can’t enter Billy’s home without permission…”
“So he’s like a vampire?”
“Not really,” she said, disassembling her laptop and projector and storing them in the nothingness. “He can push to audit Billy’s home if he really suspects anything is going on here. His problem is, the Powers That Be hired the best ancient bureaucrats to run things around here, and they’re worse than devils when it comes to having to have every I dotted and T crossed.”
“I think some of them were devils,” Billy said. “They just got released from Hell to show the bureaucrats how to run things around here.”
“You know, that’s entirely possible,” Mel said. “Anything I can get you, Jesse?”
“Somewhere to plug in my cell phone would be nice. Nothing personal, Billy, but my musical tastes run more toward Rammstein and Blue October than Patti Page and Perry Como.”
Billy shook his head. “I’ve listened to that modern stuff with other clients. I don’t know what y’all see in that noise.”
“Noise? Now you sound like my grandfather,” I said. “Come to think of it, when were you born?”
“Nineteen thirty-seven, why?”
“You’re older than my grandfather. No wonder you like his music.”
“Whatever,” Billy said, turning to Mel. “I’ll keep him safe for you, though I don’t know why I’m doing it.”
“Thanks,” Mel said, mussing his hair.
Iulius handed Billy his scroll, turned, and walked out.
“I thought he needed that to do his job?” I asked, watching Mel follow Iulius out the door.
“Even magical vellum has its limits,” Billy said. “He replaces these two or three times a month sometimes. He scrapes the sheepskins himself.”
That was a dedication to his craft I’d never have if I lived to be a thousand.
“What next?” I asked.
“Well, there’s the breakfast dishes in the sink, and I really want to get rid of what’s left of that garum Iulius left behind. I mean, it is tasty, but it don’t half stink. I’ll wash if you dry.”
“I know why you wanted them to leave,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. “You wanted domestic help.”
“Really? You’re not my type,” Billy said, filling the sink with water.
We washed dishes for a while in a companionable silence. Finally, I turned to him.
“Ask it,” he said, handing me a glass to dry.
“It’s that obvious, huh?”
“Nah, the question comes up about the second day I’m with someone helping them sort out their issues. I can’t volunteer the information, so I’ve found it saves time if I just tell people to ask the question that’s on their mind.”
I shrugged. “Billy, why are you here? I mean, I know why Mel’s here, and I figure Iulius being here has something to do with the Battle of the Teutoburg, but you? You’re an enigma, Billy.”
“Well, you see Father, when a daddy and a mommy love each other very much, they have sex. When they have sex, from time to time a child results nine months later. It’s been that way for all of human history.”
I almost dropped the plate he handed me.
“Mel told me that would shut you up,” he said, washing his breakfast bowl. “I guess she was right.”
“That’s not the answer I was expecting,” I said finally.
“Yeah, well, Mel said you were a smartass and needed a bit of your own medicine,” he replied. “Truth is, I’m not a hundred percent sure why I’m here.”
“Your soul wasn’t in a sta
te of balance when you died?” I dried the plate and added it to the stack before going after the bowl.
“According to everyone I’ve talked to, I should be in Heaven, awaiting eternity or the chance at rebirth, my choice,” he replied. “I mean, sure, I wasn’t perfect, but I’d never really sinned, either. Well, none of the big seven anyway.”
“The big seven?”
“Yeah, you know, the seven deadly sins—lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. I thought you were a priest?”
“I am. I just never heard anyone refer to the capital vices as if they were a collegiate athletic conference before,” I replied before setting the now dry bowl down.
“You mean like the Southwest Conference?” he asked. “Come to think of it, The Big Seven does sound like a bunch of colleges.”
“See what I mean?” I added another bowl to the pile. “Back to my original question though. You sure you don’t know why you’re here?”
He washed and rinsed the last bowl, ironically enough the one that had held the garum, before answering.
“You know, you’re really nosey,” he said, handing me the bowl.
“I’ve been told its one of my greatest strengths and greatest failures.”
“I know why I’m here. However, to explain it, I have to show you something. Something I’ve never shown anyone before.”
“I don’t want to do anything that’s going to make you uncomfortable,” I said, drying my hands and carefully hanging the towel so it would air dry.
“No…no, Saint Isidora warned me this day would come when she recruited me for the job. I need a couple of minutes,” he said, walking down the hall to his bedroom.
“Saint Isidora? The fourth century fool for Christ?” I asked his back.
“Yes. Look her up in your Calendar of the Church,” he answered.
I didn’t need to look her up. I always figured she watched over me, one fool to another.
“Come on back,” Billy said, ten-fifteen minutes later.
I walked down the hall. It took me a minute to realize what had changed in his room—the wooden aircraft models that hung from the ceiling were in the process of falling to the floor.
“This,” he gestured at the falling models, “is how I let mamma know I was leaving. There are things about that day I remember, you know? I was at work after school. It was just another day, as far as I was concerned.”
I walked in and sat down at his desk. There was a big, blue metal box with a microscope painted on it under the desk.
“The storm blew up quick—the sun had been out all day, but around four it started raining. You ever been in a rain so hard you can’t see your hand in front of your face, Father?”
“Got caught in a storm like that while I was in Iraq. They tell you it never rains in the desert, but when it rains, it rains.”
He laid a hand on my shoulder while I was thinking about that storm—I’d been on base for once and headed to the Exchange when the skies let loose. One minute it had been a cloudy November afternoon, and then blood red mud started falling from the sky, followed by a cleansing rain. I’d gotten lucky on two fronts—I ducked into a bus stop that KBR had just built on base as the rain started pissing down, and I had my Gore-Tex with me, so I could stay dry. Well, mostly dry.
“It was like that, without the mud,” Billy said, taking his hand off my shoulder.
“What?”
“You remember what Mel was taking about?”
“Showing me, not telling me?”
“Yeah. Thing is, I can’t do that without your permission.”
I rolled my shoulders. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“Thank you, Father,” he said, laying a hand on my shoulder again.
Unlike the last couple of times with Mel, something opened…
* * *
My sister followed me to the door. “You going to be home for dinner?”
“Yes, fuss, I’ll be home for dinner,” I answered, opening the screen.
Outside, it was a hot, muggy May afternoon.
“Daddy calls me that. You don’t get to!”
“Okay, I won’t call you that anymore…fuss,” I said, smiling down at her. Before she could tell me not to call her that again, I went down the steps and caught the bus to the Sun Pool. I could have walked it in about twenty minutes, but I wanted to get to work on time.
“Hey, Billy,” WJ said as I walked past the ticket booth where he was sweeping the concrete.
“WJ, what do you have planned for us?”
“Same thing we were doing on Friday, cleaning things up to get the pool ready for the summer.”
I waved to Tommy where he was fishing leaves out of the pool, before going downstairs into the dressing room to grab a broom and sweep up. I saw the other guys, Bobby, Stan, and Robert, come into the area and go to work.
We had been working for about forty-five minutes when the weather changed—dark green-black clouds rolled in from the south, and it started raining. There was a little ticket taker’s booth on the edge of the pool—when the pool was open, people would give us their tickets to swim there. All six of us crammed into that shack to ride the storm out. The rain was coming down so hard on the roof of the ticket booth it was hard to hear yourself think, let alone hold a conversation.
“You think this is going to blow over?” Bobby yelled to WJ.
WJ was in charge—he was a student at Baylor, and the city had made him the head lifeguard.
“Probably, but we’re under a tornado warning,” WJ shouted back.
“Nothing to worry about then,” Stan replied.
Local legend was that Waco was safe from tornados because of the hills that surrounded the town. Daddy always said that was so much bull, but it made people feel safer.
We all jumped when the lights started flickering.
“Let’s go for shelter,” WJ shouted over the increased pounding of the storm.
We followed WJ down into the basement under the old Cotton Palace Stage; when the Cotton Palace had been a going concern, the basement had been where the dressing rooms were for the actors. The city had renovated them into dressing rooms for the pool—you’d get a wire basket to put your clothes in and a giant clothespin with a matching number that you’d hand over to get your basket back. We gathered around the counter where we issued the baskets in the middle of the basement.
The storm started picking up. We could see outside, because there were some louvered windows at ground level to let light into the basement.
I watched the storm suck the glass out of one of the windows and start tossing debris around. Down there in the basement, it sounded like a train passing over a trestle.
Stan shouted something and crouched down next to the counter.
“LET’S GO SEE WHATS GOING ON UP THERE!” WJ screamed over the force of the storm. Tommy, Robert, and Bobby followed him upstairs.
I crouched down next to Stan. He was praying. I tried to get him to follow WJ and the others upstairs, but he wouldn’t budge.
CRACK.
I looked up in time to see the ceiling, which was the bottom of the stage, come crushing down on us.
“Billy.”
The last thing I remembered was tons of concrete crushing the breath out of me. Now someone was shouting at me louder than anyone had ever shouted before.
“Is this better?” the voice asked.
I wasn’t sure where I was. It was very dark. A light, a single candle’s flame, flickered to life, giving me a point of reference.
“Who’s there?”
“No need to shout,” the voice said, it and the flickering light getting closer.
Finally, I could see a red-haired woman dressed in a simple robe of dark cloth. She was the source of the flickering light.
“Who…who are you?” I asked, looking around. We stood on a gray, featureless plane.
“I am Isidora the Fool,” she replied.
“I guess I’m not in Texas anymore,” I said.
“No, you’re quite dead, actually,” Isidora said. “It’s the manner of your death that is important, however.”
“There’s something about being crushed to death under tons of concrete that makes me special?”
“Not really,” Isidora said. “Thousands were killed in that manner during the war.”
“Then what makes my death special?”
“You chose not to abandon your friend. All the others who were in that basement with you? They survived. They’re trying to dig you and Stan out of the rubble as we speak.”
I thought about the foot-thick concrete walls and the steel girders that had made up the old Cotton Palace Stage.
“They won’t be able to do any good,” I said.
“No, they won’t,” Isidora agreed, sadly. “You, however, have a choice.”
“The dead have choices?”
“Some do, yes. You are one of those who has a choice.”
“What’s my choice? Heaven or…the other place?”
“No, my child. If you choose not to accept the task I offer, you will continue on your journey to heaven, where your grandfather awaits your arrival. He thinks you will take the task, however.”
I vaguely remembered my grandfather—he had died when I was seven, just before my sister was born.
“My father says one should never blindly accept a task, no matter how much a relative recommends it.”
“Your father is a wise man. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to become a spirit guide here in Limbo.”
I looked at the plane around me, then back at Isidora. “Okay. If this is Limbo, what does a spirit guide do here?”
“A spirit guide assists souls who are on the cusp of heaven or hell when they die to resolve the issues binding them to the world, allowing them to pass onto the afterlife.”
“Pardon me, Isidora you said your name was?”
She nodded.
“Pardon me, Isidora, but that sounds like, well, it sounds like so much fertilizer.”
“I told them that advertising agent was insane when he wrote that description,” she replied, a smile crossing her lips. “And yes, before you ask, your task would be more than just simple spirit guide.”
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