Sweeter Than Wine

by L. Neil Smith

  “And gentleman farmer, I’d have you add,” he said.

  “And gentleman farmer,” the girl added.

  The room filled with friendly laughter.

  Although the building itself appeared to be Victorian, the walls of the restaurant had been paneled over with rough planks that must have weathered on the outside of a barn somewhere for at least a century. They were decorated, in turn, with butter churns, carpet beaters, pitchforks, hoes, and spades, patented apple corers and potato peelers, horse collars, and dozens of other, less recognizable objects.

  One such object, iron, fist-sized, with a crank handle at one end, had a hand-lettered card tacked to the wall beside it: “Guess What It Is, Win A Free Steak Dinner For Two”. The traveler knew what it was, but these people wouldn’t want to know. A sort of sex-toy for the Inquisition, in the Middle Ages it had been known as “the pear of anguish”.

  How had it ended up in Kansas?

  Between the arcane artifacts hung ancient-looking photographs framed under glass that told the story of a “Wichita County War” (oddly enough, the city of Wichita was at the opposite end of the state from the county of the same name) fought in 1887 with the town of Coronado, over which would become the county seat. It was described as “the bloodiest county seat fight in the history of the American west”, implying that there had been other such conflicts. How very strange.

  Figures so legendary that even the thoroughly European traveler recognized their names—Luke Short, Ed and Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Bill Tilghman, and three of the Earp brothers—had been involved.

  It developed that the town had one motel, nearly next door to the restaurant. The traveler finished eating, paid a woman with blue hair at a cash register beside the door, and, pulling a hood up—it was a chilly morning, so it didn’t look too strange—went out to face the dawn.

  ***

  “I can’t stop loving you! I’ve made up my mind...”

  There was simply no getting away from the horrible music covering the prairie almost to the east coast. No wonder it was called the “Great American Desert”. And what passed for music in the cities was worse.

  The traveler snapped the clock radio off and hadn’t even bothered with the television. Sleeping in silence was an old, rather pleasant habit in any case. In this tiny village there was so little traffic outside, it was almost like being back in the old country, in the old days.

  Then, there had been no music at all. Remembering it as if it were yesterday, he fell asleep, and dreamed of it all through the daylight hours.

  Arising as the sun set, blood screaming for blood, the traveler left the motel. The Camaro turned east toward an “historic” park a few blocks away which had been featured in a local tourist brochure that had been left in the room along with a Gideon Bible. The traveler cruised its edges until a sign of life was seen, a young man cleaning up around the fenceposts and the bases of trees with a powered leaf blower.

  Nearby, the whitewashed bulk of a pair of cinderblock public restrooms could be seen, complete with glass brick windows and decorative scalloped cinderblock trim running around the rim of its roof.

  Camaro parked neatly in one of the spaces marked off with yellow paint lines, the traveler headed toward the facility as if in urgent need of its amenities—an urgency did move the traveler now, but of a completely different order—passing by the outdoor janitor on the way.

  “Bathroom’s locked up, just now,” the young man hollered after the hastening traveler.” I’ve got the keys. Let me come and unlock it for you.”

  The traveler nodded, having planned to call for help to attract the victim. Now it was unnecessary. Some people were so stupidly helpful. Waiting for the young man to unlock the door, when the lock finally clicked, the traveler seized him by the belt and pushed him inside, pulling the key from the lock and relocking the door from within.

  “Hey! What’d you do that for?” the man complained, picking himself up from the floor. He took a fighting stance and balled his fists. The man was young, healthy, tall, well-muscled, and would have appeared daunting to any other human being. To the traveler, he was simply food.

  Without uttering a word, the traveler seized him, turned his head aside, bit deeply into his throat, relishing the steam arising in the unheated room from the fresh blood that splashed to the floor between them. In a few moments, when the victim lay silent, motionless, and drained, the traveler washed up minimally in one of the sinks, exited the room and locked it again, throwing the man’s keychain up onto the roof.

  The Camaro turned west again, headed for the border, into night.

  11: THE LOST PICCOLO

  “All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.”—Scott Alexander

  The whole thing started just before I went to see the dentist. I’d stopped off at a little restaurant across the street from the south side of the Ludwig von Mises Memorial College campus. The institution is very small—no more than fifteen hundred students in a given year—but its faculty and student body are very choosy when it comes to lunch.

  Uncle Antoine’s Basin Street Barbecue features an interesting combination of traditional Louisiana Cajun food, and Deep South barbecue. I’d never had anything from the menu that I’d disliked. Today I was here for the crustaceans: crawdads, crayfish, crawdaddies, whatever you want to want to call them. Uncle Antoine calls them “mudbugs”.

  Some of the best cuisine in the world has been nothing more than a result of destitute, hungry folks willing to try anything. I’m sure that was true of the first people who tried mudbugs. The traditional Cajun way is to boil them in a big cauldron with Andouille sausage, corn on the cob, quartered potatoes, and other stuff, plus a lot of seasonings that give the whole thing that French-Canadian-in-Exile flavor.

  Mudbugs Evangeline a la Oncle Antoine was a much simpler dish, consisting of the eponymous arthropod steamed over beer—preferably Jax, once manufactured proudly on the river side of Jackson Square; Uncle Antoine claimed he had the last supply, but I suspected he was doing some decanting and recanting—served with drawn butter for the tail, cocktail sauce for the head, and French bread of course (hold the garlic, please), made right here in beautiful downtown New Prospect.

  My plan was to buy a pound of grabbyfish, take them home, and share them with my loyal feline companion, as I usually did at this point in the week. Mudbugs taste a little bit like shrimp, a little bit like lobster (some obsessive-compulsives even crack and pick the meat out of their tiny claws) but with a subtle, beefy undertone all their own. The edibles inside the head, chock full of vitamins and stuff, reminds me a little of the deviled egg yolks my mom used to make.

  My plan, however, went bad when I was standing at the high, curved glass cabinet Uncle Antoine used for takeout. They’d just gotten my order (they’d probably started fixing it when they saw me getting out of the car) and the girl in a big white apron was serving a young woman and her little girl, eight or ten years old (I can’t tell any more, if I ever could) who wanted to know exactly what was in crawfish etouffee.

  I was interested to hear about it, too, but I saw a reflection in the counter. Someone was at the little round table where the curious girl and her mommy had left their coats and purses, not six feet away. It was a kid—- late teens or early twenties, pretorn jeans, ragged, dirty t-shirt, flip-flops, metal studs and rings inserted in his face everywhere you looked—rifling boldly and quickly through their bags.

  “My piccolo!” yelled the outraged little girl, as the kid seized on a tiny zippered case that looked like it might have been made for a couple of stalks of celery (also good with mudbugs) and headed for the door.

  I tossed one of my business cards at the mom and said, “Call me later!”, then streaked across the little restaurant and slammed through the door. I didn’t see the kid, at first, and the sun was shining too warmly for me to detect any lingering trace of body heat he might have left on the sidewalk. I couldn’t
smell him, either, maybe thanks to the Cajun spices. Most people will turn right without thinking when they’re in a hurry and it doesn’t matter. He looked like somebody who didn’t do a lot of thinking, so that was the direction I headed.

  Amazingly, it took me a whole three blocks to catch up with the piccolo thief. He was in an alley, crouching down behind a dumpster. More olfactory interference. But it was his pounding heartbeat—clearly audible to me and about a hundred to the minute—that gave him away. I stood over him. He tried to rise. I put a fastidious index finger atop his head (his long hair was greasy) and told him, “Stay put”.

  His hands were empty, and what he was wearing wouldn’t have concealed what he’d taken, but I checked anyway, allowing him to pull his shirt up, turn out his pockets, and roll up his pants cuffs. I didn’t want to touch him. I could tell that he was going to vomit any second.

  “Calm down and tell me what you did with what you took.”

  “So you can use it as evidence to run me in?” He was surprisingly resistant.

  I replied, “I’m not a cop. I have no intention of running you in. If I did, that little girl’s piccolo would sit in evidence for weeks, not doing her any good. Tell me where you put it, and I will let you go.”

  “Yeah, right.” I’ve run into people like that, who can resist my charms. I never met one who could keep it up forever—or much over ten minutes. In this guy’s case, it was very likely drugs that were helping him. “If you’re not a cop, show me that you’re not carrying a badge.”

  “Sorry, I left the badge I don’t have at home. But maybe this will help.” One of the heavy metal lift straps on the dumpster had been dented inward, by collision with a wall or a truck or something. It was at least four inches wide and a quarter of an inch thick, ten or twelve inches of it, welded around the corner of the dumpster at both ends. I reached under it and without effort pulled it back into proper shape.

  I bared my still untrimmed fangs. “Don’t make me unhappy.”

  The thief gulped audibly. Then he pointed a shaky index finger at the dumpster. “It’s in there,” he squeaked. “You gonna let me go, now?”

  “Not quite that easy. You threw it in there, you dig it out.”

  A couple of minutes later, he’d dug it out. It wasn’t particularly difficult, being right on top of the trash. The climb I made him essay into the dumpster was meant more as punishment than practicality. The soft-sided plastic piccolo case cleaned up with no trouble. I had thought about making him lick it clean, but manfully restrained myself.

  Mommy and daughter would be grossed out.

  What I did do, once he climbed back out of the dumpster, was look him in the eye and push him just as hard as I could. “Don’t do drugs any more, you don’t need them. Clean yourself up. Get a job. Go back to school.”

  He assured me that he’d do all of those things. I was less than certain. The hardest thing in the world is for people to change their nature. Look at me, a vampire for the last 65 years, recovering a little girl’s piccolo because I liked the questions she was asking at Antoine’s.

  While I was pocketing the piccolo, my telephone began playing R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion”. I flipped it open, saying, “This is J Gifford.”

  “Mr. Gifford, this is Alicia Kelvin—it’s my daughter’s piccolo that—”

  “I’ve got it now and am heading back to Uncle Antoine’s.”

  “You have it? Oh, dear—we’re not there. We have an appointment with the orthodontist and had to leave. We’re on our way there, right now.”

  “Okay,” I told her. “You can stop by my office any time and pick it up.” I gave her the address, which is not on the card. “By an odd coincidence, I have a dentist’s appointment, myself, in about fifteen minutes.”

  We agreed on a time, which is why I was back here at the house, waiting. They arrived right on the dot, and I let them in the front door.

  “Here is your piccolo,” I began, handing it to her. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name. I know your mother’s, because she told me on the phone.”

  The cat chose that moment to put in an appearance. Usually he won’t come in the office when I have clients. I suspected an ulterior motive.

  “My name is Mary Frances Kelvin. Thank you for getting my piccolo. I’m in the band at school. I don’t know what I would have done without it.”

  “You’re very welcome, Mary Frances Kelvin.” Fiddlestring hopped up into her lap, curled up, and made himself comfortable. I sat back in my chair. “If I’m ever in need of a piccolo player, I’ll know where to look.”

  Mary Frances giggled, and began stroking the cat. He began purring.

  “What do we owe you?” the mom, Alicia, asked, getting out her checkbook. Judging by their shoes, they didn’t have a lot to spare. There was a story here—where was Mr. Kelvin, if there was a Mr. Kelvin?—but it wasn’t mine to pry into. Anyway, it didn’t matter. I’d have done the same thing for a rich kid if she’d been as smart and sweet.

  “Absolutely nothing. It was my pleasure. The young fellow who took it is very sorry, now, and asks you to forgive him. He’s a changed man.” I hoped he was a changed man. I knew he was sorry—for getting caught.

  “You’re sure?” I nodded. “Then we have something for you. We just stopped by the restaurant and they’re fresh and hot.” Of course I knew this was going to happen. I’d smelled what was in the shopping bag when I let them in. But I pretended to be surprised and I really was pleased.

  Rather than disturb the cat, Alicia rose and took the bag, which her daughter had set down on the floor beside her chair. My kind of people. “There’s some French bread in there, and Uncle Antoine threw in an order of ribs just to thank you for taking care of his other customers.”

  I opened the white plastic bag and looked inside. “Mudbugs!” I exclaimed. Fiddlestring and his boss were going to be happy campers tonight.

  I’ve always wondered what that means.

  THE TRAVELER: COLORADO

  SPRINGS, COLORADO

  “Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.”—Anatole France

  The traveler peeked out through heavy double curtains parted only a fraction of an inch, and winced at the sunlight harshly reflected from windshields and chromium on cars parked in front of the motel room.

  It was unnervingly bright outside, and, according to the local weather report on television, the day was warm for this time of year. This was not the highest altitude the traveler had ever been to—Tibet beat it by a long way—but it was surprisingly difficult to breathe; some time must be allowed for adaptation. That was why the room had been paid for three days in advance. Rest and feed were the prescription.

  Feed and rest.

  It wasn’t a particularly onerous task, even for one as energetic and restless as the traveler usually was. There was a specialized television channel that featured numerous documentaries about the ancient homeland—the traveler was coming to love these Americans and even their whiny, pathetic hangers-on the British—speculating in a hundred different ways on what must have happened back in those times to account for the way that things had turned out in the world today.

  All that they had to guess by were bones and stones.

  The whole thing was very gratifying, even if the “scientists” had most of the facts wrong. In this, considered as reporters, they were little different from that portion of the news media who were focused on the present. It was somehow personal, like getting notices the day after your performance in a play. The traveler had changed the course of human history from time to time in ways that they would never know. Or be willing to accept. Yet it had never been by any intention but necessity.

  The traveler thought about youthful times for a while. Memories of them were as sharp and clear as the memories of yesterday. The snow, the glaciers, the loess, the animals. There was a zoo in this city, according to various pamphlets in the room, that might have been worth vi
siting, if only to see animals reminiscent of days long past. It was impossible, of course, forbidden by evolution and the ungentle facts of unfriendly reality. The sun was Enemy, a hateful, baleful, lethal, featureless face in the sky that frowned on those who dared to live forever.

  But it would have been nice to see an elephant and imagine it with hair.

  It was still too early to be out and about, but the traveler had noticed an abandoned mall across the interstate highway from this motel. Another monument to the eternal greed, stupidity, and perfidy of princes, its exterior windows covered with plywood, the plywood covered with graffiti. He decided to explore it after dark. There might be an artist or two to catch there and teach the error of their ways.

  The traveler would enjoy that, very much.

  Just now, it was better to rest in the cool, dark refuge of this rented room, and even better yet to take the victims of the next few nights’ explorations somewhere that the spilling of blood wouldn’t matter. Somewhere that no one would hear them scream with surprise and pain.

  The traveler looked forward to it with an appetite that never waned. But for now, the thing to do was rest and await the coming darkness.

  Laugh at the humans’ silly guesses.

  And dream of home and times long past.

  ***

  Moving with the shadows in the failing daylight, the traveler drifted across the highway toward the abandoned mall. There was prey to be had here beyond a doubt. They could be smelled a hundred meters away: male and female, young and vital, with just the faintest hint of illegal drugs of various kinds coursing through arteries inflamed by testosterone, in the case of the males, and by fear in the case of the females.

  To the traveler, it was like a feast of spicy delicacies laid out on a groaning table, to be anticipated by the one about to partake of it and savored like Mexican green chili, a good Indian curry, or kung pao.