by Ed Gorman
That evening we went to dinner with Ed and Carol at a lovely restaurant in our hotel. We had a great good time. Carol, who is also a writer—primarily of young-adult fiction—is an attractive blonde with delicate features, very personable and very much a lady. Ed surprised us by wearing shoes. Not to say that shoes were the only thing he was wearing. He had socks, too, and a nice suit, and I think he was also wearing a shirt, though my memory might well be faulty regarding that detail.
There was almost too much conviviality for one evening. Ed started telling jokes about Zoroastrianism, involving the god Ahura Mazda, of which he has an infinite store—always a sure sign that he is having too good a time and might begin to hyperventilate or even pass a kidney stone out of sheer exuberance. They usually begin, "Ahura Mazda, Jehova and Buddha were all in a rowboat together," or something like that. For his sake, we decided to call it an evening and meet again first thing in the morning. Carol asked if there was anything special we'd like to do or see around town (like watch corn growing), and we said that we had heard there was a large Czechoslovakian community in Cedar Rapids; as this was an ethnic group about which we knew little, we thought it might be interesting to visit any shops that dealt in Czech arts, crafts, foods, assault weapons imported from the East Bloc, and that sort of thing. We all hugged, and after Ed told one more Zoroastrianism joke—"Ahura Mazda was having lunch with two attorneys and a proctologist"—we parted for the night.
4. On the Edge of Sleep
Lying in our hotel-room bed that night, on the edge of sleep, Gerda and I spoke of what a lovely evening it had been.
"They're both so nice," Gerda said.
"It's so nice that someone you like on the phone turns out to be someone you also like in person," I said.
"I had such a nice time," Gerda said.
"That's nice," I said.
"Those Zoroastrianism jokes were hilarious."
"He was wearing shoes," I noted.
"I was a little worried when he hyperventilated."
"Yeah, I was afraid it was going to build up to a kidney-stone expulsion," I said.
"But it didn't," Gerda said, "and that's nice."
"Yes, that's very nice," I agreed.
"Tomorrow is going to be a very nice day."
"Very nice," I agreed, anticipating the morning with enormous pleasure.
5. A Very Nice Day
Overnight, Ed and Carol discovered a museum of Czechoslovakian arts and crafts in Cedar Rapids, and in the morning we happily embarked on a cultural expedition. The museum proved to be on a—how shall I say this as nicely as possible?—on a rather frayed edge of town. When we got out of Ed's car, I was hit by the most powerful stench I'd ever encountered in more than forty years of varied experience. This was a stink so profound that it not only brought tears to my eyes and forced me to clamp a handkerchief over my nose but brought me instantly to the brink of regurgitation that would have made the explosively vomiting girl in The Exorcist seem like a mere dribbler. When I looked at Gerda, I saw she had also resorted to a handkerchief over the nose. Though you might have noticed that comic hyperbole is an element of the style in which I've chosen to write this piece, you must understand that as regards this odor, I am not exaggerating in the least. This vile miasma was capable of searing the paint off a car and blinding small animals, yet Ed and Carol led us toward the museum, chatting and laughing, apparently oblivious of the hellish fetor that had nearly rendered us unconscious.
Finally, after I had clawed desperately at Ed's arm for ten or fifteen unsteady steps, I caught his attention. Choking and wheezing in disgust, I said, "Ed, for the love of God, man, what is that horrible odor?"
"Odor?" Ed said. Puzzled he stopped, turned, sniffing delicately at the air, as if seeking the elusive scent of a frail tropical flower.
"Surely you smell it," I protested. "It's so bad I'm beginning to bleed from the ears!"
"Oh, that,"Ed said. He pointed toward some huge buildings fully five hundred yards away. "That's a slaughterhouse. They must be in the middle of a hog kill, judging by the smell. It's the stink of blood, feces, urine, internal organs, all mixed up together."
"It doesn't bother you?"
"Not really. When you've smelled it often enough over the years, you get used to it."
Gagging but determined to be manly about this, I managed to follow them into the Czech museum, where the odor miraculously did not penetrate. The museum turned out to be one of the most fascinating we'd ever toured, humble quarters but a spectacular and charming collection of all things Czech.
We spent longer there than we had anticipated, and when we stepped outside again, the air was clean, the stench gone without a trace. All the paint had melted off the Gormans' car, and a couple of hundred birds had perished in flight and now littered the ground, but otherwise there was no indication that the air had ever been anything but sweet.
I thought of the delicious aroma of granola-bar manufacturing, which had marked our arrival. That was at the front door. The steaming malodor of the slaughterhouse indicated what went on at the back door. Suddenly Cedar Rapids seemed less innocent, even sinister, and I began to understand for the first time how Ed could live in such sunny, bucolic environs with the gracious and lovely Carol always nearby—and nevertheless be inspired to write about the dark side of the human heart.
6. Ed Gorman, Writer
Aside from being a great guy, Ed Gorman can write circles around a whole slew of authors who are more famous than he is. Hell, he could write hexagons around them if he wanted.
He has a knack for creating dialogue that sounds natural and true. His metaphors and similes are spare and elegant. His characters are multifaceted and often too human for their own good. His style is so clean and sharp you could almost perform surgery with it; he does, using it like a scalpel to lay bare the inner workings of the human mind and heart.
His Jack Dwyer mysteries—especially The Autumn Dead and the beautifully moody and poignant A Cry of Shadows—are as compelling and stylistically sophisticated as any detective stories I've ever read.
If Ed has a shortcoming as a writer, it is that he wants to do everything. He likes Westerns, so periodically he writes an oater—always a damned good oater, too. He likes horror stories, so now and then, writing as Daniel Ransom, he produces a horror story. He likes totally serious, almost somber detective fiction but also lighter-hearted detective fiction; he has written both types well. He likes suspense, science fiction . . . well, you get the idea. Having such a catholic taste is healthy; it contributes to his freshness of viewpoint. But when a writer actually produces work in multiple genres, he dilutes his impact with readers and has more difficulty building a reputation. I know too well. Over the years, always looking for a different challenge, I've written in virtually every genre except the Western. Finally I discovered a way to combine many of my favorite categories of fiction into one novel, which is when I started to develop a larger audience. In time, I suspect, Ed will find his own way to make his wide-ranging interests more a marketing asset than a liability. I, for one, can't wait to see what he'll give us in the years ahead.
One warning: considering how powerful Ed's prose can be, if he ever writes about a hog kill, his personal experience should lead to such pungent olfactory descriptions that readers all over the world will be hard-pressed not to void their most recent meals into the pages of that book. Don't worry, you'll be warned in advance if one of his novels has a hog-kill scene in it because, being the reader's friend, I will be sure to have an endorsement on the jacket, alerting you in language something like this: "A brilliant, dazzling, breathtaking novel, a work of sheer genius. Everyone should read Gorman—but in this case, only while wearing a protective rubber sheet or while sitting naked in a bathtub."
7. The Lovely Gorman Home
That fine spring day in Cedar Rapids, after visiting the Czech museum adjacent to the hog kill, we went to lunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant with as lavish a spread as I had ever
seen. I ate a soda cracker.
After lunch we went to Ed and Carol's house, which was most tastefully furnished. The place was spotless, with beautiful polished-wood floors, and suffused with a friendly atmosphere.
A couple of minutes after we arrived, my eyes began to sting, then burn, then flood with tears. For a moment I thought I was overcome with emotion at being welcomed into my friends' home. Then my sinuses suddenly felt as if they had been filled with cement, my face began to swell, and my lips itched. I realized that I had either been caught in the beam of an extraterrestrial death ray—or was in a house where a cat resided. As I had never previously encountered monsters from far worlds but had encountered cats to which I was allergic, I decided I could believe the Gormans when they repeatedly insisted that they were not harboring fiendish extraterrestrials but merely felines.
I wish I could tell you that their house was positively crawling with scores of cats; an eccentricity like that would make them even more fun to write about. However, as I remember, there were only two. For some reason I am not allergic to every cat who crosses my path, only to about half those I meet, but I seemed to be allergic to both the Gorman cats. Neither creature looked like a feline from hell, though they had a demonic effect on me, and in less than half an hour we had to move on.
When I stumbled out of the Gorman house, I was shockingly pale, sweating and gasping for breath. My watering eyes were so bloodshot they appeared to be on fire, and the only sound I could squeeze out of my irritated vocal cords and swollen throat was a wretched gurgle rather like that issued by a nauseated wombat.
(I realized much later, the oddest thing about that moment was the reaction of the neighbors to my near-death paroxysms on the Gormans' front lawn. None of them exhibited the least surprise or concern. It was as if they had seen scores—perhaps hundreds—of people erupting from that house in far worse condition and had become enured to the drama. Maybe they were cats from hell . . . which might explain why sometimes, instead of purring, they spoke rapid, intricately cadenced Latin.)
The Gormans, being two of the nicest people I've ever known, were excessively apologetic, as if somehow they were responsible for my stupid allergy. When I could breathe again, and when my eyes had stopped spurting blood, I found myself repeatedly assuring them that none of it was their fault, that they are allowed to have cats in the United States of America regardless of my allergy, and that they would not rot in hell because of their choice of pets.
(Ed has a tendency to feel responsible for the world and to blame himself for things beyond his control—like floods in Sri Lanka and train wrecks in Uzbekistan. Like any good Catholic boy, he knows that he is guilty for all the sins of the world, a vile repository of shameless want and need and lust, who deserves far worse punishment than any plague God could deliver upon him. In his mind, having cats to which a guest has an allergy is just one small step below taking an Uzi out to the mall and blowing away a hundred Christmas shoppers.)
8. A Thankfully Uneventful Trip to Iowa City, Iowa
Anxious to get me away from his cats and to atone for what they had done to me, Ed suggested we take a ride from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City, where we could have a pleasant stroll through Prairie Lights, a large and nationally known bookstore, then have an earlyish dinner (as Gerda and I had to rise at dawn to resume our journey to California). He assured us that Iowa City also boasted a feline slaughterhouse where we could go to compare the stink of cat kill to that of a hog kill.
Aside from a hair-raising ride due to the sheer contempt in which Ed holds those lane-dividing lines on public highways, our side trip to Iowa City was uneventful. Just good conversation—much of it book talk—and a nice dinner. I had another soda cracker. I was able to keep it down with little trouble. I was quite sure that, in a month or so, the memory of the hog-kill stench would have faded sufficiently to allow me to eat normally again, certainly before my weight had slipped much lower than ninety pounds.
9. Ed Gorman, the Phone Company, and Me
As I write this, it is nearly three years since our stay in Cedar Rapids and our two days with Ed and Carol. As both of us are to some degree workaholics and as neither of us, therefore, is much of a traveler, Ed and I have not yet managed to get together again face to face. We stay in touch by reading each other's books—and with the help of the telephone. Our conversations continue to be punctuated with a lot of laughter—a precious, vital medicine in this madhouse world. Here's a cute anecdote: sometimes at three in the morning, Ed calls up and, with a couple of handkerchiefs over the mouthpiece of his phone, distorts his voice and makes obscene threats, apparently because he's concerned about keeping my life interesting and full of color, and I am always touched by his genuine concern that I never become bored, by the fact that he would take the time and trouble to entertain me in such a fashion. He doesn't realize that I know the identity of the obscene caller, and he would surely be embarrassed to know that I am aware of his thoughtfulness. But you see, no matter how much he distorts his voice, those cats are in his study with him, and even long-distance my lips go numb and my eyes begin to bleed.
"Moonchasers" first appeared in Criminal Intent, copyright © 1993 by Ed Gorman.
"Turn Away" first appeared in The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction, copyright © 1987 by Ed Gorman.
"Seasons of the Heart" first appeared in Partners in Crime, copyright © 1994 by Ed Gorman.
"En Famine" first appeared in Ellery Queen, copyright © 1995 by Ed Gorman. "Mother Darkness" first appeared in New Crimes, copyright © 1992 by Ed Gorman.
"The Beast in the Woods" first appeared in The Mysterious West, copyright © 1994 by Ed Gorman.
"One of Those Days, One of Those Nights" first appeared in Crime Yellow, copyright © 1994 by Ed Gorman.
"Surrogate" first appeared in Murder Is My Business, copyright © 1994 by Ed Gorman.
"The Reason Why" first appeared in Criminal Elements, copyright © 1988 by Ed Gorman.
"The Ugly File" first appeared in Borderlands, copyright © 1993 by Ed Gorman.
"Friends" first appeared in New Crimes, copyright © 1990 by Ed Gorman.
"Bless Us O Lord" first appeared in Shivers, copyright © 1992 by Ed Gorman.
"Stalker" first appeared in Stalkers, copyright © 1990 by Ed Gorman.
"The Wind from Midnight" first appeared in The Bradbury Chronicles, copyright © 1991 by Ed Gorman.
"Prisoners" first appeared in New Crimes, copyright © 1989 by Ed Gorman.
"Render unto Caesar" first appeared in Pulphouse, copyright © 1991 by Ed Gorman.
"Out There in the Darkness" copyright © 1996 by Ed Gorman.
Afterword copyright © 1992 by Dean Koontz.