In the murk of his hideaway he broke the seal on the bourbon and raised his head to take a deep swallow. Throat and eyes burning, he screwed the cap back on and placed the bottle beside him. With a mutter of satisfaction he lay back, hands behind his head, and listened to the rising buzz of voices outside the house.
He was safe. But his precious knife was gone forever. He mourned his loss—the bone handle with the smooth ridges and curves that had fit so well in his fingers and against his palm, the sharp, gleaming blade. So many hours he’d practiced in front of a mirror with that knife. Dancing, twisting, pirouetting ...
He crossed his ankles and consoled himself by contemplating his immaculate red and gray Puma jogging shoes. They, more than his knife, were his stock in trade; he’d used the knife only once in a while, and for specific purpose. He’d chosen these shoes carefully, as a craftsman would choose his tools, and they had yet to fail him. Benny the jag, his envious friends called him, likening him to the stealthy jaguar that sped through the jungle with supreme menace. Puma shoes were perfect for Benny the jag ...
Treading as softly as a cat, he would glide up behind the prey he had singled out, and then strike: pull a purse off an arm or snatch it from a hand. And then he would be gone, vanishing on his swift silent shoes into the labyrinth of Eastside Detroit even before the shrieks rose from the woman he had hurled to the pavement.
Women were his only prey. Women were infinitely, variously rewarding; he stalked them with the alert instincts and appetites of his jungle namesake, relishing their shrieks of alarm, of fear. Periodically, he flicked open his bone-handled knife and backed one of them into an alley. An old woman usually—she would be too frail, too terrified to resist, her eyes wide and staring, jaw working soundlessly with the cold steel of his knife at her throat.
“Open that ugly mouth, I’m gonna cut you,” he would grate, dexterously wielding his weapon. The greater her terror, then her horror, the greater his ecstasy. Afterward, he would race down the alley, vaulting over fences and hedges in effortless escape.
Now his magical knife, his talisman, was gone, and he grieved over his loss.
He tensed reflexively at the sound of approaching sirens, then relaxed, gloating with the certainty of his safety as the wailing cut off outside the house. From the side yard, more voices came to his knowing ear, low and masculine at first, then feminine, uttering moans of shock. Then the masculine voices gained ascendancy—authoritative, issuing commands.
It was easy to imagine the scene. All the neighbors gathered like nosy birds around the body. Cops ordering them away, roping off the area. Just like TV.
Leaning on an elbow, he reached into his sack for a foam-boxed beef sandwich, grinning as he listened to the activity.
His mother and Janey arrived; he knew well the explosive putt-putt of the ancient Volkswagen Beetle which his mother had driven for as long as he could remember. He could hear no words, only the rising cadence of Janey’s voice, and then his mother’s shriek that dissolved into gulping sobs. Discomfited, he put down his sandwich.
If they’d just been home like he expected. It was early Saturday morning, after all—he had a right to expect her and Janey to be there. Was it his fault they’d had company in the house?
With the yellow Beetle gone, he’d proceeded to let himself in the way he always had, loosening the soft putty around the back basement window pane with his knife, reaching in to unlatch the window, then carefully replacing the pane, patting the putty back into place.
Then the hand had fallen on his shoulder.
Only because the knife was in his hand had he done it. Wheeled and sunk the knife in to the hilt at the same instant he heard the voice utter “Benny,” at the same instant he recognized his cousin Frank.
In the next seconds Frank clutched at him, then at the bone handle, blood spurting over his hands as he clawed at his stomach. He staggered across the yard and to the driveway, screaming his agony, then collapsing, blood bubbling from his mouth. Fat Mrs. Harris from across the alley had opened her back door—and slammed it shut.
He had run back to the basement window and opened it, dropped onto the basement floor clutching his sack of food and liquor, closed and latched the window, then climbed the stairs leading to the kitchen. And had raced for safety ...
Finished with his sandwich, he threw the scraps aside, grinning at the thought of again frustrating his mother’s unrelenting war against insects and rodents. He took another pull at his bourbon. He longed to light up a joint but knew very well how the smell would spread, carried along by airy drafts in the furnace ducts. When he was ten, had first smoked in this place, his mother’s footsteps had been a frantic staccato on the hardwood floors, her shouts frustrated fury: “Janey, Janey, where’s that cursed smell coming from!”
Two cops were talking to his mother in the living room. One, he realized with disgust, was a woman. From long practice he easily picked out the voices carried by the furnace duct that ran close by and warmed his place during the winter months.
“I don’t know,” his mother said, her voice a low dullness of shame. “I don’t see him all that often. Four months ago the last time, and only a few minutes then. The military police, they were watching and almost caught him. He joined the Army, you see, it was the best thing he could do but then he ran away from boot camp—”
He glared into the darkness of his place. That whole Army shit, none of it was his fault. Sure he joined up, but nobody told him how those Army bastards would be snarling at him, ordering him around ...
“He ran away,” his mother repeated. He could imagine her helpless shrug. “And hitchhiked back here a few weeks later. The Army’s still looking for him I imagine. When he came here that last time, they came right in after him, you see. But he got away ... somehow.”
He covered his mouth with his T-shirt sleeve to smother his laughter, and took another pull of his bourbon.
He’d found the place just after he turned nine. In a futile attempt to escape a strapping from Janey, he’d run into his bedroom, hidden in his closet.
“Stay in there ye devil!” Janey had bellowed from the bedroom door in her high Irish tenor. “Your mother and me, we’ll tend to dinner, then I’ll be tending to you!”
Resigned to his punishment, he had morosely sneaked to the bathroom and back to his closet with a glass of water, careful not to creak the floorboards. Then he had knocked over the water. But instead of becoming a spreading mess, the liquid had disappeared down a crack in the wood. He heard a metallic thrumming close below, then dripping. Feeling along the floorboards, he discovered a ridge—but could not raise it up.
He remembered then that his father, before he took off, had always claimed this old house to be a link in the Underground Railroad before the Civil War, that escaping slaves had been hidden away within these very walls. But wherever the slaves were hidden had been torn down and built over.
In wild suspicion and hope, using the heavy jackknife he had stolen from Billy O’Keefe, given impetus by Janey’s usual rumbled after-dinner compliment to his mother and the sound of chairs scraping back from the kitchen table, he pried at the ridge, working it loose. Seconds before Janey entered the bedroom, he had pulled the cunningly carpentered trapdoor down after him.
Examining his surroundings, he listened in delight to the confoundment of his mother and Janey as they searched for him. The tiny chamber was shoulder high and a bit wider than a twin bed, its darkness relieved by faint slivers of light admitted through the cracks in the floorboards of his bedroom. A badly rusted kerosene lamp gave evidence of slave days.
He immediately loved the close dark warmth, the feeling of utter safety and secrecy. He minded not at all his companions, creatures which scuttled in panic from his superior presence. Later in the basement, he discovered that the room was camouflaged by a virtually indetectable slant of the ceiling beams.
Emerging the next day only because he was hungry, he had convinced his mother and the disbelieving Jane
y that he had merely sneaked past them and out of the house. After that he vanished into his place for lengthy periods, several days at a time, bringing food with him, tracing the agitated activities of his mother and Janey by the creaking floorboards, hearing his mother’s sorrow and worry over him, Janey’s frustration and fury.
He had continued to come to his place periodically, through the basement window if his mother was away, entering the house the conventional way if she was home. The house never changed. The warm dark peace of his place was invaded only by the muted dramatics of his mother and Janey’s television programs. And by his awareness that his mother and Janey were much more than friends.
He could not confront them with what he had discovered without drawing attention to the reason for his knowledge. But he made up for it by sneering at queers in front of them. He knew full well that his mother had demanded, on pain of separation, silence from the rebellious Janey, and he loved seeing Janey’s face purple with helpless rage at his taunts.
“Mrs. Clark,” the woman cop said, “you saw the knife. Does it belong to your son?”
His mother’s wailing sob scraped across his nerves. A voice offered gruffly, “’Tis his.” Janey’s voice.
The dyke bitch was actually turning him over to the cops! Raging, his fists clenched, he stared into the darkness. If only the cops knew the bitch was queer, had turned his mother queer ...
A male cop said in a quiet, gentle voice, “He’s been a real trial to you, hasn’t he?”
“More than any mother should ever have to bear,” Janey said.
“A nightmare,” sobbed his mother. “The shame he’s brought. Every day I pray to God for salvation for this evil child of mine who brings only hurt to others.”
His mind convulsed with fury, then immediately released as he decided on his revenge. He would do what he’d done when that bitch Janey had talked his mother into throwing him out of the house. Come in the basement window with sacks of spiders, mice, ants, beetles, cockroaches, anything he could find. This time he’d even bring in rats. Then he could listen to the shrieks as that bitch and his mother found the creepy crawlies in their bed and clothing and devouring their food. Chuckling, he picked up his bottle of bourbon, and set it down moments later with a satisfied thunk.
“What was that,” said one of the cops.
He grinned.
“Probably a mouse,” said his mother. “I declare they nest in the foundations, but the exterminator people never find anything. I don’t know where all the insects come from. I smell things. I hear ... sounds from time to time.”
Just me, Ma. He was hiding his face in his T-shirt sleeve, chortling with glee.
“Frank was over this morning helping us get the plants and such taken care of, you see,” Janey said. “We planned to stay at his house a day or two—”
Why? What was this about? he wondered, shifting in his place, taking another pull on his bourbon. His cousin Frank lived—had lived—only a mile or so away.
“—And Janey and I were out getting a few groceries to bring along with us. If we’d only been here—” His mother broke off into sobs.
“Yes, ma’am,” the male cop said kindly. “Why don’t you two just relax now while we finish up here?”
Voices rose and fell throughout the morning and early afternoon. There seemed to be a lot of activity in the house considering he’d put the knife into Frank outside in the yard ... He dozed, listened to the floor creak continually with footsteps, voices murmuring in conversation. He imagined fleets of photographers, technicians looking for fingerprints, cops writing reports and searching for evidence—all because of him.
The odor of coffee reached him. His mother serving coffee to cops. He lay in his place sipping bourbon resentfully, and soon unwrapped a salami sandwich, devouring all but the crusts which he hurled into a corner. I’ll get her for this, he thought. I’ll get them both.
“We’re almost finished here,” said the woman cop. “It’s just as well you’re leaving too. For your own peace of mind, till your neighbors all settle down. If we need anything more we’ll be back tomorrow. Are you certain there’s nowhere close by your son could be hiding? We’ve blanketed the area, had helicopter reconnaissance—no sign of him, nobody in the area’s even seen him.”
“Those government people, after he deserted, they swore he was in here, they looked in the furnace, the ducts, everywhere.”
“Well, we’re satisfied with our search in here.”
His mother began to cry again; there were Janey’s comforting tones. Then feet marched over the floorboards and out of the house.
Chuckling triumphantly, he lay back. Then he looked around the dimness of his place with a crafty grin. Lots of creepy crawlies were right in here with him. He’d just catch as many as he could in his food sack, transfer them to the upper reaches of the house to await his mother’s return. He’d bring in more, lots more, later, when the coast was clear. Deftly, he bagged a spider.
Outside the old house, on the veranda, Officer MacKinnon closed her notebook. She and Officer Powell and Jane O’Grady watched two men in dark brown uniforms seal and padlock the door, post a huge warning sign.
One of the dark-uniformed men, the name Jim on his breast pocket, said solemnly, “It’s all sealed up tight as a drum, Miss O’Grady, every door and window. I flat out guarantee this’ll kill every single vermin in your house.”
Jane O’Grady nodded, then walked toward the Volkswagen Beetle where her lover sat, head in her hands. “I’d put up with insects forever,” Jane muttered, “if they could somehow exterminate just one vermin ...”
Behind her a dark plastic shroud fluttered around the house in the gentle spring wind. The red lettered sign warned:
DANGER
POISON! FUMIGATION!
ALL PERSONS ARE WARNED TO KEEP AWAY
PREMISES ARE BEING FUMIGATED
WITH POISON GAS
XESSEX
Templeton asked hesitantly, after a glance at the unpronounceable five-word name on the manifest, “What may we call you?” In the dim light of the Station control room he smoothed a self-conscious, scarred hand over his forest green uniform jacket.
“You may call me Raj.” The voice was light, musical, the words formed with awkwardness.
The Phaetan had come aboard Aries Station with proper credentials so far as Templeton could see, but he could concentrate on verification scan for only a few seconds at a time. Farlan, assigned to check the computer spec sheets, also stood transfixed and staring, boots seeming rooted to the stalamac floor.
“Raj,” repeated Templeton.
“Yes, Commander,” said Raj, supernaturally blue eyes drifting over to fix burningly on Farlan. “Monitor from Phaeta, by order of Godden, for one rote.” The words were uttered as if memorized.
Released from the Phaetan’s gaze, Templeton said with more assurance, “Everything has passed scan.”
“Yes. And what are you called?” Raj inquired of Templeton’s partner.
“N ... Neal Farlan.” Farlan cleared his throat and clasped his hands behind him, shiny black boots scuffing harshly on the metallic floor. “Neal Farlan, ma’am.”
“Ma’am? What is ma’am? I was not taught such a word. My name is Raj.”
The Phaetan was distinctly female in appearance, and surpassingly beautiful, the most beautiful creature Templeton had ever seen. Clad in a simple gold-edged scarlet tunic—perhaps a ceremonial costume as were their own green Space Service jackets—Raj was slender, statuesque, exquisitely curved. Cobalt blue eyes were fringed with thick blond eyelashes; shoulder length spun gold hair framed high cheekbones, a thin straight nose, and lips as tenderly shaped as the tiny ferns Templeton grew in the humid greenhouse of Aries Station.
“Excuse—I didn’t mean to offend—” Farlan, mottled red with embarrassment, stammered further apology, wide dark eyes fastened on the golden apparition.
Templeton, realizing that Raj had not asked his name, looked on with a grin. Then
he stared incredulously as the Phaetan’s silken skin flushed from its pale ivory color into glowing peach. He found his voice as Farlan, also gaping, faltered into silence. “We’ve heard little of your planet, other than it recently sealed agreement with ExxTel as a primary source of biurnium ore.”
“Yes,” said Raj, and continued in a pleasing lilt, “We do not travel much, or for long. Our lovely planet is dark. We do not react well to light. In light we are ... as you, when you are in water. That problem can be easily solved, of course. But being off our world for longer than a rote or two at very most seems to cause within us—” Raj paused and gestured gracefully, “—psychic damage.”
“I see,” Templeton said, and grinned again in the twilight dimness of Aries station. “Do many others on your world ... look like you?”
Raj considered him for a moment and then responded as if to an utterly preposterous question, “Of course.” With an ineffably sweet smile at Farlan, Raj extended a slender hand with long tapering fingers tipped with silver fingernails. “Nealfarlan, would you bring me to my ... quarters?”
“Of ... of course.” Farlan took the delicate hand as if he had been given an eggshell to hold. “Neal, call me Neal.”
The Phaetan turned roseate pink, and gazed at Farlan with rapidly blinking gold eyelashes. Templeton thought, if Raj isn’t flirting I never saw flirting before in my life. Good luck, he thought with amusement. You’ll need it with a Trad like Farlan.
Farlan asked in a voice that crackled with anxiety, “Sir, may I have your permission to escort our guest?”
“Have I ... gone against custom?” Raj asked, blue gaze enveloping both men.
As Commander of Aries Station, it was Templeton’s prerogative to accord the hospitality of ExxTel to its guests—the few there ever were. He said, “Not at all, Raj. Customs here are no matter. I’ll finish up the specs,” he added to Farlan, and dropped one eyelid in a half-wink.
Farlan scowled in response and turned away, to Raj.
Closed-minded young fool, Templeton thought for an innumerable time, and watched them, Farlan tall and lean and broad-shouldered, dark hair fluttering around the collar of his green jacket as he strode down the corridor; and Raj, slender and golden, an arm through Farlan’s, swaying with the grace of a willow on Earth, the Earth Templeton had put out of his mind.
Dreams and Swords Page 5